Datasets:

AlekseyKorshuk

/

drama-books

like 2

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-justin-lee-starry-night/

Justin Lee Starry Night Starry Night Made by: Justin Lee [Inspiration: I was I Was Part of the Queen’s Guard in England] For: Abby Luna, Tylor Misner   Starry Night   It was morning, and thus started my usual routine of being a farmer, in the middle of the dustbowl, going out mid-day, trying to toil the dirt, even though there wasn’t even much then. But today, my days were going to change for the worse. I has a call coming in, *Ring Ring*. Of course I didn’t answer, because all that were calling nowadays were telemarketers, or scammers, so I ignored it. “Daddy! Telephone! They say it’s important!” That was my daughter, Tia, and now Tia was a smart young girl, she knew many things that many kids I met her age never knew, hell, she even knew more than me at that age. “Hello? Yes he is outside, wait… How do you know my name? Oh, yes, I’ll go get him.” *Tia’s Perspective* Ugh, gotta go get my dad again, but I wonder who that was on the phone, she sounded nice, but she was also really mean, and what was that about knowing my name? I should just forget about it. “Dad!” I called out, but no answer. Where is he? That was when I saw a figure in the distance. It was my dad, “Dad they want to talk to you.” And then when I came up to him, I tapped his shoulder. And then he turned around so quickly I swear that he teleported, his eyes were glassed over, all white, and his skin was so pale you could clearly see his veins, and he was saying something that I couldn’t quite make out until he leaned into my ear, he whispered, “Tia will meet Rosalia, and Rosalia will kill Tia.” Then he had collapsed in my arms.   *Dad’s Perspective* I woke to Tia next to me in the house. She was crying, the last thing I remember was when Tia called for me, nothing else. “Tia.” She looked up, tears falling down her cheeks. “Dad, what do you remember?” And I was confused, did I do something, did I have a seizure, passed out? “I remember being in the field, and then you called my name, that’s it. What did I say?” She looked up at me, the tears not falling still, and she said: “You said” Tia will meet Rosalia, and Rosalia will kill Tia.” I looked down at her, wondering what that meant, and in that moment, I too, cried, and saw what she saw, through my own eyes.       *Tia’s Perspective* Later that day we slept, I barely managed to sleep, but then he came and told me that, we will be careful, and that the weather will keep anybody from coming to our house, especially someone named Rosalia. To be honest that cheered me up, and I took my daddy’s word for it. Then a call happened, *Ring Ring*, I Ignored it, knowing that it’s the women I hung up on earlier, looking for my father, I told her to call me tomorrow. *Ring Ring* It came again, and then, as if she had given up, it stopped, and then I heard my father’s voice: “Hello? Yes, you need to speak to my daughter? Tell me, what is it that is so important? Is it her grades in school? No? Then what is it, fine then, I’ll let you talk to her, but only in the morning. No you will not speak to her now, she is asleep, fine, goodbye.” I wonder who it is, and what they need.   * 6:00 AM * *Tia’s Perspective* I wake up to my dad downstairs, drinking coffee, he wakes up pretty early, and he barely even works the fields. “Tia,” He says, “There was a call for you, and she wants to speak to you.” I was confused, “Where is the phone? Can I call them now?” He hesitates before saying “The phone is on the counter, and yes you can, they really want to talk to you.” I walk over to the phone, “What’s the number dad?” “Tia, its 1-720-119-1212,” So I dial the number, and after 3 rings it answers, “Hello? Tia?” “Yes it’s me, who are you?” “My name is Rosalia, and you are Tia .” My eye’s bulge in shock, “And you will die now.” I feel as though hands clutch my chest, and I have difficulty breathing, I collapse on the floor, and then the pain eases, my dad rushes toward me, a look of worry on his face, and he holds me in his arms, he is saying something, but I can’t hear it well, like if I'm underwater, and then he is asking what it feels like, “Dad, I ask you two things. Only two.” He nods his head in agreement. “The first is that you listen.” I feel tears in my eyes, and I let them fall. “I always thought that death would be painful, but I only feel weak, and I always wondered what my role was, what was my purpose? Today I realized, my purpose was to be a great daughter, to a wonderful dad. The second one is to leave me, because no father deserves to see their daughter die.” He looks at me, and nods his head no, “No, I do not deserve to see my daughter die, but my daughter does not deserve to die alone.” And so he holds me closer to him, and I use the last of my strength to lift my arms around his head. “I’m Sorry, for all I’ve done.” “No Tia, I should be the one who is sorry, as I didn’t leave you.” “Thank you. Dad.”       There was one “Easter Egg” kinda, as the numbers 11-9-12-12 are number versions of K.I.L.L. Let me know over E-mail what you thought! E-mail: [email protected] Publication Date: April 29th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-wd0c5759af11455

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-vanessa-hopeless-despair/

Vanessa Hopeless Despair The start It was a normal morning for Emily. She woke up, had breakfast, got dressed, and walked to school. Walking down the street she ran into her best friend Buffy. Buffy has a interesting way of expressing herself. She is the complete opposite of Emily. Emily is the nicest person in school, she has the best grades, and is the most liked person in school. On the other hand Buffy is the meanest person in school, has awful grades, and is the least liked person in school. “Hey Emily wait up!” Buffy yelled down the street. “Hi Buffy!” Emily yelled. “So where are you going Emily?” “To school and, so are you.” “Na I was thinking of skipping today.” “Um no you are coming to school if you like it or not. We have a test today that you have to pass or you will fail 11th grade.....again.” “Fine I will go to school! But just because I am sick of Mr.Fafful.” “Good girl.” she laughed. As the girls walked into class there sat Emily’s crush Jason. He had blonde hair, and brown eyes. He was every girls dream guy. He’s tall, muscular, and very handsome. “Emily stop staring you are going to scare him off.” Buffy said “I can’t he is just so, so, so...perfect. And we should be together.” Jason walked over to Emily and sat down. He was looking at Emily and finally he said, “Hey.” With a smile. “Hey whats up?” Emily said shyly. “Ah nothing much what about you?” “Just waiting for class to start.” “Cool. So I see you got Buffy to come to school today. How did you do that?” He laughed. The bell rang and class had started. “I’ll tell you later” Emily whispered. As the last bell rang Mr.Fafful walked in to the classroom. He is short, bald, and very bitter, to everyone. “All right class you have a big test today. I hope you all are ready for it.” Said Mr.Fafful. “Do any of you have questions before I hand out the test?” “Um yeah whats the test about?” Buffy asked “As if I could care” she whispered. “Buffy have you paid any attention at all during the year?” Mr.Fafful said irritated. “Uh yeah, duh!” she said snottily. “Okay so tell me what class you are in.” He said irritated again. “Umm is it gym? Art class? Science? Global?” Buffy said with not a care in the world. “Buffy! Stop messing around!” Emily whispered. “No! Its math!” He yelled. Buffy gave him an evil glare. Then Mr.Fafful handed out the test facing downwards. “Now you may all begin.” As everyone began there quiz Buffy is trying to cheat off of the person in front of her. Buffy started poking her, trying to get her to move. “Hey kid what did you get for number twelve? I can’t see your paper, do you mind moving it for me?” “Mr.Fafful, Buffy is cheating of my test!” The kid yells. “I am not, don’t lie!” Buffy yelled back. “Girls knock it off there is a test going on! Mindy move to another place and Buffy stop cheating off Mindy’s paper!” Mr.Fafful yelled across the room. After the test Emily and Buffy walked down to lunch. Down the hallway, every nerd ran away as they saw Buffy. “Hey do you have any money I can have for lunch?” Buffy asked. “Can’t you bring your own for once? I mean seriously this is the third day in a row!” “Fine I will get my money off some nerd.” Buffy reached over grabbed a nerd by his shirt and told him to give her some money. “No. Just here bring your own tomorrow I got ya again.” Emily said annoyed. “Thanks Em I will try to pay you back soon.” She said all most promisingly. She let go of the nerd’s shirt. “Oh whatever.” she laughed “I am starting to wonder why I hang out with you.” she chuckled. “Because you complete me, you keep me centered for the most part. And besides you are the only one who was never scared of me unlike everyone else.” “Yeah, and now look at us BFF’s for ten years.” “Yeah, you are the only one that I can talk to without any criticism for most the most part. And most of the criticism is just trying to help me with my problems that I have with my life and stuff.” “Yeah, you came a long way since I got a hold of you. Your welcome.” Emily laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Buffy joked. “Hey do you want to come over after school?” “Yeah I guess I will. It will be a chance for you to do your homework with me. Not just copy it but actually do it.”Emily said. Buffy stopped and thought about it. “Actually, lets go to your house my mom is having plastic surgery tonight and I don’t want to see her when she gets home so she can ask me how she looks and all that crap. She never looks any better when she comes back from plastic surgery, just more disgusting.” Buffy said grossed out. Both Emily and Buffy shake it out of their minds, and keep walking. Family time “Emily time to get up we are going to grandma’s for your cousins birthday.” Emily’s mom whispered as she woke her up. Emily got dressed, ate breakfast, and left with her mom, brother, and dad. She pulled in the drive with her family at her grandma’s yard. Everyone watching as they got out of the car. “Hello everybody!” Emily’s grandma yelled. “Hello! How you doing?” Her aunt yelled. “Im doing good what about you?” Emily replied. “Oh Im fine.” Her aunt replied. Emily is thinking to herself, “Why is my aunt wearing booty shorts, three inch wedge heels, and a shirt that a teenager would wear? She’s dressed as if she was one herself. But she is far from it. Isn’t she in her forties by now? That should not be.” Then her cousin Patty comes up to her and gives her a huge hug. She is squeezing Emily like she is trying to pop her head off. Not letting go Emily could barely breathe. Emily is trying to get away. “Hi sweetheart! I missed you! How are you?!” Patty yelled in her ear. As Emily pulls away from her she says, “Im fine. Happy Birthday.” She said annoyed by Patty’s yelling in her ear. “Oh thank you Emily. Do you know how old I am today?” she said excitedly. “Yeah you are twenty-two.” “I am twenty-two! Can you believe this? Me twenty-two!” She yelled happily. Emily walked away slowly trying not to be seen by Patty and went to her grandma and asked “Has Patty called the police lately? You know for no reason, just because she is mad at you?” “Yes, just last week because I wouldn’t let her go out with her friends, she called and said I was keeping her captive.” Emily’s grandma said. “Wow she really has some issues. Why doesn’t Aunt Susie just leave her in the mental hospital for a little while more?” “They can’t keep her there forever!” Grandma snapped at Emily. “Well I know that!” Emily said irritated. Emily left to go inside to eat. Everyone ate, talked and caught up with everyone. All of the weird conversations going on about football, college, gambling, and issues going on in our family. “Time for dessert!” Grandma yelled. “Ooohhh yummy yum yum I want cake and ice cream with lots of toppings and everything on it!” Patty yelled excitedly. “All right Patty calm down you can have it in just a minute let me make it first.” Grandma said. Grandma put chocolate, caramel, sprinkles, whipped cream and pineapple on Patty’s. About an hour after everyone ate their ice cream and cake Emily, her mom, dad, and brother left grandma’s house. When they got home Emily went up to her room to find Buffy sleeping in her bed. Buffy was snoring up a huge storm, Emily thought “And thats why I don’t sleep in the same room when you sleep over.” Emily tip-toes over as quiet as a mouse and screams in Buffy’s ear “Wake up you lazy bum!” Buffy jumps out of her bed. Flopping around, on the floor and she hits her head on her desk. “Ow what did you do that for I taking a nap.” “Why are you here taking a nap in my bed?” Emily said laughing. “Because my house is full of reject parents and I can’t get any sleep there.” “Oh well, why didn’t you sleep last night then?” “I forgot to.” “You forgot to?” “Yeah.” “How do you forget to sleep! That is the worst excuse I have ever heard about why someone didn’t sleep!” Emily said laughing. “Yeah, yeah, yeah I know. No I’m just kidding I was up all night fighting with my mom.” “Oh what about this time” “I asked her what time it was and she started yelling at me about how she doesn’t have a job and that I should get one if I want to know what time it is. You know normal mother, daughter fights.” “Thats not normal mother, daughter fights. Normal fights is when you want a car, or you want to got to you boyfriends house, or she tells you to do the dishes. Thats normal fights.” Emily explained. “Well not in my house.” Buffy laughed. “Hey can I spend the night?” Buffy asked. “Sure let me ask my mom.” She told Buffy. “Hey mom can Buffy spend the night?” She yelled. “Is she already here?” Her mom yelled back. “Yes.” “I guess so” “Okay Buffy you can stay.” “Sweet!” Buffy said. The girls went outside on the trampoline. Emily is doing her gymnastics on the trampoline and Buffy is watching.Emily is flipping, jumping, leaping, and doing almost any thing she can think of. Then Buffy went on the trampoline just jumping up and down, nothing special. “Whats that?” Emily laughed. It’s my gymnastics. Aren’t they so much better that yours?” Buffy laughed. “Oh yeah tons.” Emily laughed. Back to school “Good morning class take out your text books and read chapter ten.” Mr.Fafful said. He was wearing his usual comb over, and big nerdy classes. He wears the same awful bow tie, and his hair is all greasy, and gross. He has never been anyones favorite teacher, and probably never will. He has a tendency to get on everyones last nerves. Especially Buffy’s, they have always hated each other, since the first day of class. “I really don’t want to.” Buffy said out loud to the whole class and to Mr.Fafful. “Well to bad! Get reading! Now!” Mr.Fafful yelled. “Make me you old hag!” Buffy yelled. “Thats it go to the principles now!” “Thats it go to the principles now!” Buffy mocked him. “Go!” Mr.Fafful yelled. Buffy walked to the principle’s office. “What are you here for this time Buffy?” The principle asked. “Well fist I said I didn’t want to read something then Mr.Fafful got all up in my face. So that is how I got here.” Buffy explained. “Ok, Im going to let you off with a warning because you have been out of trouble lately.” Buffy walked back to class, with a grin on her face. She gave Mr.Fafful an “I told you so look”. Mr.Fafful just about snapped when he saw her walk in. “What are you doing back?! You should be in detention by now.” Mr.Fafful said. “I got a warning since I have been good lately.” Buffy said in a mocking way. “Take a seat!” Mr.Fafful said angrily. He continued with his lesson. Walking back from school they took a “shortcut” to Emily’s house. The girls were going through bad part of the town. Emily is looking concerned and suddenly said “Where are we going? You said this is a shortcut and I don’t know why, but I let you bring me! Why did I let you Bring me?!” “Calm down I always come this way.” Buffy said. Emily stopped in front of a dark ally. “Buffy can I go home now? Please.” “Yeah thats where we are going.” Emily starts to walk, but before she does someone grabs her out of the ally. Emily screams on top of her lungs, her mouth gets covered by a cloth being shoved into her mouth. Buffy turned and ran after Emily. Buffy’s running as fast as she can catching up to the brutal mugger. Buffy caught up, tackled him, and pinned him against the ground. She starts beating him, trying to get him to talk. “Whats your issue man?! We were just walking along! You can’t just take my friend and start beating her! What the hell is wrong with you?!” Buffy screams in his face. He lost conscience, Emily called the police, Buffy is still beating him to a bloody pulp. The police show up, Emily is crying her eyes out because she is so scared, Buffy is trying to calm her down, and apologizing for bringing her here. The police take the un-conscience man in the back of the police car, the car has flashing red and blue lights, the siren is blasting to warn everyone to be careful while driving and driving by. Emily’s mom heard what had happened. “Emily are you okay?!” Emily’s mom panicked. “Yeah Im okay.” Emily replied. “I warned you not to ever go into that part of town! I thought I raised you better than that!” Emily’s mom yelled. “But Buffy...” Emily froze in mid sentence. Her mother looked at her getting more and more angry. “I knew that that girl would cause you to do bad things, and get you in trouble!” “But mom!” “And another thing, I don’t want you talking, or hanging around with Buffy anymore!” Her mom said angrily. “Ugggghhhh!” Emily growled as she stormed up to her room. She fell on her bed face down. She didn’t move. Frozen in anger, she started to cry, she sat up. “I can’t believe this! And now I can’t ever talk to Buffy ever again. I can’t believe I gave Buffy up like that. But on the other Buffy did all most get me killed. But she saved me and all most killed the dude who mugged me.” She was saying quietly to herself. As she laid on her bed she wondered over and over again trying to figure what she should do. Hours had gone by. Her mom walked in her room to see how she is doing. “Are you okay Emily? You’ve been up here for a while.” Her mom said. “Yeah i’m fine, it’s just...she paused. “I don’t know what I should do. I know you said I should stay away from Buffy, but she saved my life today, and I can’t just abandon her now.” Emily’s mom leaned in a hugged her. “I know how you feel, but it will get better. And so will Buffy, she can find her way. You led her on her right path, she has a small clue on whats going on in life now.” Emily’s mom said. Her mom got up and left. She stopped at the door and said “Do you want anything to eat?” “No I’m not hungry. Thanks.” Emily replied. “Okay but if you get hungry there is leftovers in the fridge.” Her mom left. Emily turned to shut off the lights, and went to sleep. *Ah* young love “Hey Emily, can I ask you something?” Jason asked. “Y-Yeah go ahead.” Emily said shyly. “Well, I was wondering if you would like to, you know, um go out with me?” Jason asked. “Yes!, uh um yeah ha ha.” Emily shouted. “Sweet.” Jason said. Emily and Jason walked to class hand in hand. Emily felt like the most lucky girl in the world. “I can’t believe this! The best thing in the world is happening to me, right after the worst thing. I wonder if its the universe saying they are sorry?” Emily thought to herself. Her and Jason are walking down the hall and they pass Buffy. Emily didn’t even notice her, even when Buffy yelled her name trying to get her attention. Buffy turned and walked away, trying to forget that her best friend had abandoned her. Buffy had left school. A Few Months Later..... Emily and Jason are still going strong. Emily brought Jason home for the first time, and her dad had a little man to man talk. He said “So you like my daughter do you now? Well she is my little girl and all ways will be. She is everything to me and her mother. You will give her complete respect, and if you ever do anything to hurt my little girl....” He paused. “Nobody will ever known you have existed. And don’t tell Emily what we have talked about. Do you hear me?” He said finally. Jason shook his head. Emily came down and sees Jason's terrified face. She stares at her father and says “What did you do to him?” Her father smiles and said “Just making sure he treats you correctly. Now Jason is it? Go on up but remember what I said.” Jason get up and walks over to Emily. Emily moves closer to him, and takes his hand. Her father clears his throat. They turn around, and Jason lets go of her hand. Up in Emily’s room she said “What did my dad say to you?” “Oh nothing, just that he hopes that we are happy together.” He said shyly. “Oh okay. Well is that all he said?” Emily said with puppy dog eyes. “Yeah.” He said looking across the room with a blank expression on his face.Trying to avoid the look she was giving him. “Well....what do you want to do?” Jason asked. Emily thought for a minute. While she thought she was looking around the room trying to find something to do. She started laughing “I have absolutely nothing.” Jason laughed with her. “Do you have any movies? Maybe we could watch one.” Jason asked. “Yeah they are down in my parents room. I’ll be right back, unless you want to come help me look for one to watch?” She asked hoping that he would come with her. Jason got up as Emily was walking towards the door. Jason grabs her by the shoulder and turns her around towards his face. He then reaches behind her and shuts the door. “Actually, I have something better to do,” Jason smirks. He grabs the back of Emily’s neck and kisses her. Emily was a little uneasy at first but then she was more comfortable. Jason backs up for a breath, and Emily is stunned. She is speechless at the kiss. “What did you think about that? Is it to soon or no?” Jason said hoping that she would say that is was just on time or something similar to that. She looks at him, smiles and says “That was amazing! That was....” she stopped. “What?” Jason said worried. “If I tell you, you might laugh at me.” Emily said sadly. Looking away from him. Jason tilts her head so she is looking at him, and says “Your my girlfriend and I all ways want to her what you have to say.” He said with a smile. Emily smiles, glances at the floor, and looks back up to Jason and says slowly. “That kiss...was..well my...first one and out of every boy in the world i’m glad it was with you.” She smiles a little embarrassed. Jason looks at her and smiles, like he is relieved. Emily looks at him, and frowns. “Whats wrong? I knew telling you that would make you do that I--” “Whoa-whoa, hold on a minute, can I tell you something?” Jason says. Emily nods her head. “Well your my first kiss to. I all ways liked you. Since I moved here in 7th grade. I waited and when I got the guts I asked. It only took five years for me to get up the courage to ask you.” he laughed. Emily is blushing like she has never before. She is embarrassed and hides her face. Jason takes her hands away from her face and says “Don’t hide you face, its to beautiful to hide.” He say smiling. Then they stand there in front of the door, hugging. Her mom walks up the stairs and and peeks through the door, and smiles. She walks back down stairs, and starts fixing lunch for Jason and Emily. She calls them down for lunch and asked what they were doing. “Oh nothing much, just talking, and hanging out, you know the usual.” Emily replies with a smile on her face. “Mmm lunch, what are we having?” Emily asks. “We are having Mac & cheese, with turkey sandwiches.” Emily’s mom answered. After Jason and Emily ate their lunch they headed back up to Emily’s room. Buffy's story Meanwhile....... on Buffy’s side of the story she has been hanging around the miserable side of town. She has been actually hanging with her mom, well almost. “What is gods name of hell are you doing home? I thought that I told you to never, ever, EVER come back!” Buffy’s mom screamed. “You did but I could really care less what you say right about now!” Buffy yelled back. “Who cares what you feel like and what you want or whatever you said.” Her mom screams “I’m not in the freaking mood right now mom just leave me the hell alone!” Buffy hollers almost crying. Buffy was trying to hold it in but with all the stress that she has been in, since Emily has left her alone. She bust into tears, crying right in front of her mom. “Why are you crying? You never cry, ever not even when you got shot in the leg with a pistil. So why are you crying now? I could care less but this is just strange.” Her mom said almost with worry. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Ok” Buffy’s mom says happily and starts to walk off. “It’s Emily! I took a shortcut through this part of town trying to get to her house and she got mugged. So I went and beat the dude up, and then the cops came and spilt us up. Then the cops called Emily’s mom so now she is not aloud to talk to me, hang with me, or anything! And not only that but now she is dating Jason who takes her away from me even more! He keeps her mind off things and she could probably care less about me now!” Buffy confesses and runs off, out of the house, and down the street. The police spot Buffy run, they start their cars and chase after her. Buffy turns around and runs faster, not wanting to be caught. They cut her off in an ally. She turns around to face the cops. She’s breathing heavier than she ever had. They point their guns at her, she starts hyperventilating, and passes out. The cops take her to the hospital to see what was wrong. As Buffy is in her room, just waking up she see’s Emily walk in. Buffy’s relived that there is someone there for her and she smiles with relief. Emily walks over and sits down next to her. “How are you feeling?” Emily said concerned. Buffy looks at her and laughs. “Do you actually care? Im surprised you didn’t bring Jason. It’s like thats who you ever hangout with or talk to anymore.” Buffy said. Emily sighed and looked around the room feeling guilty, she gets up and starts to walk out then turns around and says “Im sorry Buffy I never meant to block you out of my life. I was just trying to stay on my moms good side for a little while, then Jason asked me out and you know i all ways wanted to go out with him, and I couldn't pass up an offer like that. And I guess i have been a little love struck these last few months. And you know what? Im sorry, ok? Im sorry i blocked you out. Im sorry that I am love struck, and i’m sorry for everything these passed months!” Emily admits, crying she runs out of the room. Buffy gets up and follows her out trying to catch up. But Buffy is to late, she see’s Emily drive off in her car. Buffy walks back up to her room and lays down. And tries to go to sleep. testing their friendship Later that day Buffy was released from the hospital, and tries to go find Emily. She drives to Emily’s house, and Emily’s mom comes out. “What are you doing here Buffy?” Emily’s mom says. As she waits for Buffy’s answer she glares at her with an evil eye. “Is Emily home? I need to talk to her.” Buffy says quietly. Her mom just look like her. “Why do you need to talk to her? She went to apologize, to you and you flipped out on her! Give me one good...no one great reason why I should let you talk to my daughter?” She says firmly to Buffy. Buffy looks around, saying nothing, she turns around and gets into her car, and drives away. “I thought so.” Emily's mom says and walks back into the house. Emily walk down stairs, lays down on the couch, and goes to sleep. Her mom comes over and wakes her up. “Are you okay honey?” She says kindly. Emily looks up and nods. Her mom gets up and walks back to the kitchen. The phone rings, her mom answers it. “Hello?” “Hey is Emily there? Its Jason.” He said, through the phones static. Emily’s mom looks over at her and says, “You know why don’t you just come over, Emily needs a friend right now.” “ All right i’ll be right over.” He says. The he hangs up, the phone. A few minutes later, his car pulls in the drive, he walks to the door and lets himself in, as usual. Emily walks over to him and gives him a big hug. Her eye’s start to tear up. Jason holds her tight and asks “Whats wrong Emily?” Jason says concerned. Emily looks up at him and whispers softly, with slight tears softly running down her cheek. “Buffy and I had a fight and I think she isn’t going to be forgiving me anytime soon.” “What happened?” Jason asked. As Emily told Jason the story, they start to walk to up to her room. They reach the top of the stairs, Emily finishes her story. Jason with nothing to say hugs her. Publication Date: March 8th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-zzvmiller

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-honeysuckle-blossom-anna-smiths-diary/

honeysuckle blossom anna smiths diary the worlds best book this book is about love 12:30 pm sunday it is sunday today the worst day ever my mum is making me baby sit  my little, annoying sister she is always pulling pranks on me i should not have to put up with that i am nearlly 15, soon i am going to tell my mum that i do not want to baby sit clary (my little sister).   it is not fair that for my birthday i ask for a lap top and guess what i  dont get a laptop but clary gets a tablet she is only 5 years old it is not fair any way back to my life i am having a sleep over today and i am inviting: julia molly jasmin saraphine lira and izzy   they going to be here in then minuets yay cant wait i wish i could have a sleepover more often i only get one every 6 months. 1:00 pm still sunday yay all my friends are here and i got my mum to bring home some goodies for the sleep ove tonight is going to be amazing. my mum cant make me let clary join in with any thing because she is two young haha clary.   we are just about to watch scary movie 5 with mini donoughts , we pove our donoughts my mum bought lots of them for us.   "so anna what boys have caught your eye at the moment ?" asked saraphine   "none at the moment how about you" i say   and the suddenly my dad pops his head round the door   "every thing going alright"   and  then izzy picks up her pillow and lobs it at the door " get out " she shouts   1:05 pm still sunday "omg anna you get no privacy in this house" says jasmine in a funny tone " i know guess what they made me do yesterday they made me baby sit clary" i said "they didn't" said lyra  "i fell so sorry for you" molly  says   a few moment later clary nocked on the door and asked if she could sleep with us tonight because she had a nightmare but we all say no.     2:00 pm sunday i am know feeling guilty for my little sister i have not been the nicest of people to her.   a few seconds after that happened i trie to apoligize but it does not seem to work she just ran off crying know i feel really guilty.   "guys i will be back in a sec i just need to go and apoligize to clary."   "i would'nt worry about her she is a little idiot" said julia   ok she has said a lot of mean things in the past but know she has just crossed the line   2:05 pm sunday "ok every body out you have just crossed the line" i said   the all packed there stuff a whent home. once they have all gone i went to find clary to apoligize i found her sitting on her bed "clary i am so sorry i have sent them all home but know that i have done that i will probably be the only one that doesn't have friends at school but oh well who cares family are more important than friends do you still want to sleep in my room tonight" i said   "yes please" she squeaked so we got her stuff and walked all the way to my room and settled down  to watch a movie   "i will always love you clary no matter what" i said "i love you to " she replied   the end Text: gdhsesby Images: yesbdb Editing: 45whyte Translation: yehs5e All rights reserved. Publication Date: August 16th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-al0010aef118d35

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sir-james-matthew-barrie-the-admirable-crichton/

Sir James Matthew Barrie The Admirable Crichton A moment before the curtain rises, the Hon. Ernest Woolley drives up to the door of Loam House in Mayfair. There is a happy smile on his pleasant, insignificant face, and this presumably means that he is thinking of himself. He is too busy over nothing, this man about town, to be always thinking of himself, but, on the other hand, he almost never thinks of any other person. Probably Ernest's great moment is when he wakes of a morning and realises that he really is Ernest, for we must all wish to be that which is our ideal. We can conceive him springing out of bed light-heartedly and waiting for his man to do the rest. He is dressed in excellent taste, with just the little bit more which shows that he is not without a sense of humour: the dandiacal are often saved by carrying a smile at the whole thing in their spats, let us say. Ernest left Cambridge the other day, a member of The Athenaeum (which he would be sorry to have you confound with a club in London of the same name). He is a bachelor, but not of arts, no mean epigrammatist (as you shall see), and a favourite of the ladies. He is almost a celebrity in restaurants, where he dines frequently, returning to sup; and during this last year he has probably paid as much in them for the privilege of handing his hat to an attendant as the rent of a working-man's flat. He complains brightly that he is hard up, and that if somebody or other at Westminster does not look out the country will go to the dogs. He is no fool. He has the shrewdness to float with the current because it is a labour-saving process, but he has sufficient pluck to fight, if fight he must (a brief contest, for he would soon be toppled over). He has a light nature, which would enable him to bob up cheerily in new conditions and return unaltered to the old ones. His selfishness is his most endearing quality. If he has his way he will spend his life like a cat in pushing his betters out of the soft places, and until he is old he will be fondled in the process. He gives his hat to one footman and his cane to another, and mounts the great staircase unassisted and undirected. As a nephew of the house he need show no credentials even to Crichton, who is guarding a door above. It would not be good taste to describe Crichton, who is only a servant; if to the scandal of all good houses he is to stand out as a figure in the play, he must do it on his own, as they say in the pantry and the boudoir. We are not going to help him. We have had misgivings ever since we found his name in the title, and we shall keep him out of his rights as long as we can. Even though we softened to him he would not be a hero in these clothes of servitude; and he loves his clothes. How to get him out of them? It would require a cataclysm. To be an indoor servant at all is to Crichton a badge of honour; to be a butler at thirty is the realisation of his proudest ambitions. He is devotedly attached to his master, who, in his opinion, has but one fault, he is not sufficiently contemptuous of his inferiors. We are immediately to be introduced to this solitary failing of a great English peer. This perfect butler, then, opens a door, and ushers Ernest into a certain room. At the same moment the curtain rises on this room, and the play begins. It is one of several reception-rooms in Loam House, not the most magnificent but quite the softest; and of a warm afternoon all that those who are anybody crave for is the softest. The larger rooms are magnificent and bare, carpetless, so that it is an accomplishment to keep one's feet on them; they are sometimes lent for charitable purposes; they are also all in use on the night of a dinner-party, when you may find yourself alone in one, having taken a wrong turning; or alone, save for two others who are within hailing distance. This room, however, is comparatively small and very soft. There are so many cushions in it that you wonder why, if you are an outsider and don't know that, it needs six cushions to make one fair head comfy. The couches themselves are cushions as large as beds, and there is an art of sinking into them and of waiting to be helped out of them. There are several famous paintings on the walls, of which you may say 'Jolly thing that,' without losing caste as knowing too much; and in cases there are glorious miniatures, but the daughters of the house cannot tell you of whom; 'there is a catalogue somewhere.' There are a thousand or so of roses in basins, several library novels, and a row of weekly illustrated newspapers lying against each other like fallen soldiers. If any one disturbs this row Crichton seems to know of it from afar and appears noiselessly and replaces the wanderer. One thing unexpected in such a room is a great array of tea things. Ernest spots them with a twinkle, and has his epigram at once unsheathed. He dallies, however, before delivering the thrust. ERNEST. I perceive, from the tea cups, Crichton, that the great function is to take place here. CRICHTON (with a respectful sigh). Yes, sir. ERNEST (chuckling heartlessly). The servants' hall coming up to have tea in the drawing-room! (With terrible sarcasm.) No wonder you look happy, Crichton. CRICHTON (under the knife). No, sir. ERNEST. Do you know, Crichton, I think that with an effort you might look even happier. (CRICHTON smiles wanly.) You don't approve of his lordship's compelling his servants to be his equals--once a month? CRICHTON. It is not for me, sir, to disapprove of his lordship's radical views. ERNEST. Certainly not. And, after all, it is only once a month that he is affable to you. CRICHTON. On all other days of the month, sir, his lordship's treatment of us is everything that could be desired. ERNEST. (This is the epigram.) Tea cups! Life, Crichton, is like a cup of tea; the more heartily we drink, the sooner we reach the dregs. CRICHTON (obediently). Thank you, sir. ERNEST (becoming confidential, as we do when we have need of an ally). Crichton, in case I should be asked to say a few words to the servants, I have strung together a little speech. (His hand strays to his pocket.) I was wondering where I should stand. (He tries various places and postures, and comes to rest leaning over a high chair, whence, in dumb show, he addresses a gathering. CRICHTON, with the best intentions, gives him a footstool to stand on, and departs, happily unconscious that ERNEST in some dudgeon has kicked the footstool across the room.) ERNEST (addressing an imaginary audience, and desirous of startling them at once). Suppose you were all little fishes at the bottom of the sea-- (He is not quite satisfied with his position, though sure that the fault must lie with the chair for being too high, not with him for being too short. CRICHTON'S suggestion was not perhaps a bad one after all. He lifts the stool, but hastily conceals it behind him on the entrance of the LADIES CATHERINE and AGATHA, two daughters of the house. CATHERINE is twenty, and AGATHA two years younger. They are very fashionable young women indeed, who might wake up for a dance, but they are very lazy, CATHERINE being two years lazier than AGATHA.) ERNEST (uneasily jocular, because he is concealing the footstool). And how are my little friends to-day? AGATHA (contriving to reach a settee). Don't be silly, Ernest. If you want to know how we are, we are dead. Even to think of entertaining the servants is so exhausting. CATHERINE (subsiding nearer the door). Besides which, we have had to decide what frocks to take with us on the yacht, and that is such a mental strain. ERNEST. You poor over-worked things. (Evidently AGATHA is his favourite, for he helps her to put her feet on the settee, while CATHERINE has to dispose of her own feet.) Rest your weary limbs. CATHERINE (perhaps in revenge). But why have you a footstool in your hand? AGATHA. Yes? ERNEST. Why? (Brilliantly; but to be sure he has had time to think it out.) You see, as the servants are to be the guests I must be butler. I was practising. This is a tray, observe. (Holding the footstool as a tray, he minces across the room like an accomplished footman. The gods favour him, for just here LADY MARY enters, and he holds out the footstool to her.) Tea, my lady? (LADY MARY is a beautiful creature of twenty-two, and is of a natural hauteur which is at once the fury and the envy of her sisters. If she chooses she can make you seem so insignificant that you feel you might be swept away with the crumb-brush. She seldom chooses, because of the trouble of preening herself as she does it; she is usually content to show that you merely tire her eyes. She often seems to be about to go to sleep in the middle of a remark: there is quite a long and anxious pause, and then she continues, like a clock that hesitates, bored in the middle of its strike.) LADY MARY (arching her brows). It is only you, Ernest; I thought there was some one here (and she also bestows herself on cushions). ERNEST (a little piqued, and deserting the footstool). Had a very tiring day also, Mary? LADY MARY (yawning). Dreadfully. Been trying on engagement-rings all the morning. ERNEST (who is as fond of gossip as the oldest club member). What's that? (To AGATHA.) Is it Brocklehurst? (The energetic AGATHA nods.) You have given your warm young heart to Brocky? (LADY MARY is impervious to his humour, but he continues bravely.) I don't wish to fatigue you, Mary, by insisting on a verbal answer, but if, without straining yourself, you can signify Yes or No, won't you make the effort? (She indolently flashes a ring on her most important finger, and he starts back melodramatically.) The ring! Then I am too late, too late! (Fixing LADY MARY sternly, like a prosecuting counsel.) May I ask, Mary, does Brocky know? Of course, it was that terrible mother of his who pulled this through. Mother does everything for Brocky. Still, in the eyes of the law you will be, not her wife, but his, and, therefore, I hold that Brocky ought to be informed. Now-- (He discovers that their languorous eyes have closed.) If you girls are shamming sleep in the expectation that I shall awaken you in the manner beloved of ladies, abandon all such hopes. (CATHERINE and AGATHA look up without speaking.) LADY MARY (speaking without looking up). You impertinent boy. ERNEST (eagerly plucking another epigram from his quiver). I knew that was it, though I don't know everything. Agatha, I'm not young enough to know everything. (He looks hopefully from one to another, but though they try to grasp this, his brilliance baffles them.) AGATHA (his secret admirer). Young enough? ERNEST (encouragingly). Don't you see? I'm not young enough to know everything. AGATHA. I'm sure it's awfully clever, but it's so puzzling. (Here CRICHTON ushers in an athletic, pleasant-faced young clergyman, MR. TREHERNE, who greets the company.) CATHERINE. Ernest, say it to Mr. Treherne. ERNEST. Look here, Treherne, I'm not young enough to know everything. TREHERNE. How do you mean, Ernest? ERNEST. (a little nettled). I mean what I say. LADY MARY. Say it again; say it more slowly. ERNEST. I'm--not--young--enough--to--know--everything. TREHERNE. I see. What you really mean, my boy, is that you are not old enough to know everything. ERNEST. No, I don't. TREHERNE. I assure you that's it. LADY MARY. Of course it is. CATHERINE. Yes, Ernest, that's it. (ERNEST, in desperation, appeals to CRICHTON.) ERNEST. I am not young enough, Crichton, to know everything. (It is an anxious moment, but a smile is at length extorted from CRICHTON as with a corkscrew.) CRICHTON. Thank you, sir. (He goes.) ERNEST (relieved). Ah, if you had that fellow's head, Treherne, you would find something better to do with it than play cricket. I hear you bowl with your head. TREHERNE (with proper humility). I'm afraid cricket is all I'm good for, Ernest. CATHERINE (who thinks he has a heavenly nose). Indeed, it isn't. You are sure to get on, Mr. Treherne. TREHERNE. Thank you, Lady Catherine. CATHERINE. But it was the bishop who told me so. He said a clergyman who breaks both ways is sure to get on in England. TREHERNE. I'm jolly glad. (The master of the house comes in, accompanied by LORD BROCKLEHURST. The EARL OF LOAM is a widower, a philanthropist, and a peer of advanced ideas. As a widower he is at least able to interfere in the domestic concerns of his house--to rummage in the drawers, so to speak, for which he has felt an itching all his blameless life; his philanthropy has opened quite a number of other drawers to him; and his advanced ideas have blown out his figure. He takes in all the weightiest monthly reviews, and prefers those that are uncut, because he perhaps never looks better than when cutting them; but he does not read them, and save for the cutting it would suit him as well merely to take in the covers. He writes letters to the papers, which are printed in a type to scale with himself, and he is very jealous of those other correspondents who get his type. Let laws and learning, art and commerce die, but leave the big type to an intellectual aristocracy. He is really the reformed House of Lords which will come some day. Young LORD BROCKLEHURST is nothing save for his rank. You could pick him up by the handful any day in Piccadilly or Holborn, buying socks--or selling them.) LORD LOAM (expansively). You are here, Ernest. Feeling fit for the voyage, Treherne? TREHERNE. Looking forward to it enormously. LORD LOAM. That's right. (He chases his children about as if they were chickens.) Now then, Mary, up and doing, up and doing. Time we had the servants in. They enjoy it so much. LADY MARY. They hate it. LORD LOAM. Mary, to your duties. (And he points severely to the tea-table.) ERNEST (twinkling). Congratulations, Brocky. LORD BROCKLEHURST (who detests humour). Thanks. ERNEST. Mother pleased? LORD BROCKLEHURST (with dignity). Mother is very pleased. ERNEST. That's good. Do you go on the yacht with us? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Sorry I can't. And look here, Ernest, I will not be called Brocky. ERNEST. Mother don't like it? LORD BROCKLEHURST. She does not. (He leaves ERNEST, who forgives him and begins to think about his speech. CRICHTON enters.) LORD LOAM (speaking as one man to another). We are quite ready, Crichton. (CRICHTON is distressed.) LADY MARY (sarcastically). How Crichton enjoys it! LORD LOAM (frowning). He is the only one who doesn't; pitiful creature. CRICHTON (shuddering under his lord's displeasure). I can't help being a Conservative, my lord. LORD LOAM. Be a man, Crichton. You are the same flesh and blood as myself. CRICHTON (in pain). Oh, my lord! LORD LOAM (sharply). Show them in; and, by the way, they were not all here last time. CRICHTON. All, my lord, except the merest trifles. LORD LOAM. It must be every one. (Lowering.) And remember this, Crichton, for the time being you are my equal. (Testily.) I shall soon show you whether you are not my equal. Do as you are told. (CRICHTON departs to obey, and his lordship is now a general. He has no pity for his daughters, and uses a terrible threat.) And girls, remember, no condescension. The first who condescends recites. (This sends them skurrying to their labours.) By the way, Brocklehurst, can you do anything? LORD BROCKLEHURST. How do you mean? LORD LOAM. Can you do anything--with a penny or a handkerchief, make them disappear, for instance? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Good heavens, no. LORD LOAM. It's a pity. Every one in our position ought to be able to do something. Ernest, I shall probably ask you to say a few words; something bright and sparkling. ERNEST. But, my dear uncle, I have prepared nothing. LORD LOAM. Anything impromptu will do. ERNEST. Oh--well--if anything strikes me on the spur of the moment. (He unostentatiously gets the footstool into position behind the chair. CRICHTON reappears to announce the guests, of whom the first is the housekeeper.) CRICHTON (reluctantly). Mrs. Perkins. LORD LOAM (shaking hands). Very delighted, Mrs. Perkins. Mary, our friend, Mrs. Perkins. LADY MARY. How do you do, Mrs. Perkins? Won't you sit here? LORD LOAM (threateningly). Agatha! AGATHA (hastily). How do you do? Won't you sit down? LORD LOAM (introducing). Lord Brocklehurst--my valued friend, Mrs. Perkins. (LORD BROCKLEHURST bows and escapes. He has to fall back on ERNEST.) LORD BROCKLEHURST. For heaven's sake, Ernest, don't leave me for a moment; this sort of thing is utterly opposed to all my principles. ERNEST (airily). You stick to me, Brocky, and I'll pull you through. CRICHTON. Monsieur Fleury. ERNEST. The chef. LORD LOAM (shaking hands with the chef). Very charmed to see you, Monsieur Fleury. FLEURY. Thank you very much. (FLEURY bows to AGATHA, who is not effusive.) LORD LOAM (warningly). Agatha--recitation! (She tosses her head, but immediately finds a seat and tea for M. FLEURY. TREHERNE and ERNEST move about, making themselves amiable. LADY MARY is presiding at the tea-tray.) CRICHTON. Mr. Rolleston. LORD LOAM (shaking hands with his valet). How do you do, Rolleston? (CATHERINE looks after the wants of ROLLESTON.) CRICHTON. Mr. Tompsett. (TOMPSETT, the coachman, is received with honours, from which he shrinks.) CRICHTON. Miss Fisher. (This superb creature is no less than LADY MARY'S maid, and even LORD LOAM is a little nervous.) LORD LOAM. This is a pleasure, Miss Fisher. ERNEST (unabashed). If I might venture, Miss Fisher (and he takes her unto himself). CRICHTON. Miss Simmons. LORD LOAM (to CATHERINE'S maid). You are always welcome, Miss Simmons. ERNEST (perhaps to kindle jealousy in Miss FISHER). At last we meet. Won't you sit down? CRICHTON. Mademoiselle Jeanne. LORD LOAM. Charmed to see you, Mademoiselle Jeanne. (A place is found for AGATHA'S maid, and the scene is now an animated one; but still our host thinks his girls are not sufficiently sociable. He frowns on LADY MARY.) LADY MARY (in alarm). Mr. Treherne, this is Fisher, my maid. LORD LOAM (sharply). Your what, Mary? LADY MARY. My friend. CRICHTON. Thomas. LORD LOAM. How do you do, Thomas? (The first footman gives him a reluctant hand.) CRICHTON. John. LORD LOAM. How do you do, John? (ERNEST signs to LORD BROCKLEHURST, who hastens to him.) ERNEST (introducing). Brocklehurst, this is John. I think you have already met on the door-step. CRICHTON. Jane. (She comes, wrapping her hands miserably in her apron.) LORD LOAM (doggedly). Give me your hand, Jane. CRICHTON. Gladys. ERNEST. How do you do, Gladys. You know my uncle? LORD LOAM. Your hand, Gladys. (He bestows her on AGATHA.) CRICHTON. Tweeny. (She is a very humble and frightened kitchenmaid, of whom we are to see more.) LORD LOAM. So happy to see you. FISHER. John, I saw you talking to Lord Brocklehurst just now; introduce me. LORD BROCKLEHURST (at the same moment to ERNEST). That's an uncommon pretty girl; if I must feed one of them, Ernest, that's the one. (But ERNEST tries to part him and FISHER as they are about to shake hands.) ERNEST. No you don't, it won't do, Brocky. (To Miss FISHER.) You are too pretty, my dear. Mother wouldn't like it. (Discovering TWEENY.) Here's something safer. Charming girl, Brocky, dying to know you; let me introduce you. Tweeny, Lord Brocklehurst--Lord Brocklehurst, Tweeny. (BROCKLEHURST accepts his fate; but he still has an eye for FISHER, and something may come of this.) LORD LOAM (severely). They are not all here, Crichton. CRICHTON (with a sigh). Odds and ends. (A STABLE-BOY and a PAGE are shown in, and for a moment no daughter of the house advances to them.) LORD LOAM (with a roving eye on his children). Which is to recite? (The last of the company are, so to say, embraced.) LORD LOAM (to TOMPSETT, as they partake of tea together). And how are all at home? TOMPSETT. Fairish, my lord, if 'tis the horses you are inquiring for? LORD LOAM. No, no, the family. How's the baby? TOMPSETT. Blooming, your lordship. LORD LOAM. A very fine boy. I remember saying so when I saw him; nice little fellow. TOMPSETT (not quite knowing whether to let it pass). Beg pardon, my lord, it's a girl. LORD LOAM. A girl? Aha! ha! ha! exactly what I said. I distinctly remember saying, If it's spared it will be a girl. (CRICHTON now comes down.) LORD LOAM. Very delighted to see you, Crichton. (CRICHTON has to shake hands.) Mary, you know Mr. Crichton? (He wanders off in search of other prey.) LADY MARY. Milk and sugar, Crichton? CRICHTON. I'm ashamed to be seen talking to you, my lady. LADY MARY. To such a perfect servant as you all this must be most distasteful. (CRICHTON is too respectful to answer.) Oh, please do speak, or I shall have to recite. You do hate it, don't you? CRICHTON. It pains me, your ladyship. It disturbs the etiquette of the servants' hall. After last month's meeting the pageboy, in a burst of equality, called me Crichton. He was dismissed. LADY MARY. I wonder--I really do--how you can remain with us. CRICHTON. I should have felt compelled to give notice, my lady, if the master had not had a seat in the Upper House. I cling to that. LADY MARY. Do go on speaking. Tell me, what did Mr. Ernest mean by saying he was not young enough to know everything? CRICHTON. I have no idea, my lady. LADY MARY. But you laughed. CRICHTON. My lady, he is the second son of a peer. LADY MARY. Very proper sentiments. You are a good soul, Crichton. LORD BROCKLEHURST (desperately to TWEENY). And now tell me, have you been to the Opera? What sort of weather have you been having in the kitchen? (TWEENY gurgles.) For Heaven's sake, woman, be articulate. CRICHTON (still talking to LADY MARY). No, my lady; his lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall. LORD LOAM (overhearing this). What's that? No equality? Can't you see, Crichton, that our divisions into classes are artificial, that if we were to return to nature, which is the aspiration of my life, all would be equal? CRICHTON. If I may make so bold as to contradict your lordship-- LORD LOAM (with an effort). Go on. CRICHTON. The divisions into classes, my lord, are not artificial. They are the natural outcome of a civilised society. (To LADY MARY.) There must always be a master and servants in all civilised communities, my lady, for it is natural, and whatever is natural is right. LORD LOAM (wincing). It is very unnatural for me to stand here and allow you to talk such nonsense. CRICHTON (eagerly). Yes, my lord, it is. That is what I have been striving to point out to your lordship. AGATHA (to CATHERINE). What is the matter with Fisher? She is looking daggers. CATHERINE. The tedious creature; some question of etiquette, I suppose. (She sails across to FISHER.) How are you, Fisher? FISHER (with a toss of her head). I am nothing, my lady, I am nothing at all. AGATHA. Oh dear, who says so? FISHER (affronted). His lordship has asked that kitchen wench to have a second cup of tea. CATHERINE. But why not? FISHER. If it pleases his lordship to offer it to her before offering it to me-- AGATHA. So that is it. Do you want another cup of tea, Fisher? FISHER. No, my lady--but my position--I should have been asked first. AGATHA. Oh dear. (All this has taken some time, and by now the feeble appetites of the uncomfortable guests have been satiated. But they know there is still another ordeal to face--his lordship's monthly speech. Every one awaits it with misgiving--the servants lest they should applaud, as last time, in the wrong place, and the daughters because he may be personal about them, as the time before. ERNEST is annoyed that there should be this speech at all when there is such a much better one coming, and BROCKLEHURST foresees the degradation of the peerage. All are thinking of themselves alone save CRICHTON, who knows his master's weakness, and fears he may stick in the middle. LORD LOAM, however, advances cheerfully to his doom. He sees ERNEST'S stool, and artfully stands on it, to his nephew's natural indignation. The three ladies knit their lips, the servants look down their noses, and the address begins.) LORD LOAM. My friends, I am glad to see you all looking so happy. It used to be predicted by the scoffer that these meetings would prove distasteful to you. Are they distasteful? I hear you laughing at the question. (He has not heard them, but he hears them now, the watchful CRICHTON giving them a lead.) No harm in saying that among us to-day is one who was formerly hostile to the movement, but who to-day has been won over. I refer to Lord Brocklehurst, who, I am sure, will presently say to me that if the charming lady now by his side has derived as much pleasure from his company as he has derived from hers, he will be more than satisfied. (All look at TWEENY, who trembles.) For the time being the artificial and unnatural--I say unnatural (glaring at CRICHTON, who bows slightly)--barriers of society are swept away. Would that they could be swept away for ever. (The PAGEBOY cheers, and has the one moment of prominence in his life. He grows up, marries and has children, but is never really heard of again.) But that is entirely and utterly out of the question. And now for a few months we are to be separated. As you know, my daughters and Mr. Ernest and Mr. Treherne are to accompany me on my yacht, on a voyage to distant parts of the earth. In less than forty-eight hours we shall be under weigh. (But for CRICHTON'S eye the reckless PAGEBOY would repeat his success.) Do not think our life on the yacht is to be one long idle holiday. My views on the excessive luxury of the day are well known, and what I preach I am resolved to practise. I have therefore decided that my daughters, instead of having one maid each as at present, shall on this voyage have but one maid between them. (Three maids rise; also three mistresses.) CRICHTON. My lord! LORD LOAM. My mind is made up. ERNEST. I cordially agree. LORD LOAM. And now, my friends, I should like to think that there is some piece of advice I might give you, some thought, some noble saying over which you might ponder in my absence. In this connection I remember a proverb, which has had a great effect on my own life. I first heard it many years ago. I have never forgotten it. It constantly cheers and guides me. That proverb is--that proverb was--the proverb I speak of-- (He grows pale and taps his forehead.) LADY MARY. Oh dear, I believe he has forgotten it. LORD LOAM (desperately). The proverb--that proverb to which I refer-- (Alas, it has gone. The distress is general. He has not even the sense to sit down. He gropes for the proverb in the air. They try applause, but it is no help.) I have it now--(not he). LADY MARY (with confidence). Crichton. (He does not fail her. As quietly as if he were in goloshes, mind as well as feet, he dismisses the domestics; they go according to precedence as they entered, yet, in a moment, they are gone. Then he signs to MR. TREHERNE, and they conduct LORD LOAM with dignity from the room. His hands are still catching flies; he still mutters, 'The proverb--that proverb'; but he continues, owing to CRICHTON'S skilful treatment, to look every inch a peer. The ladies have now an opportunity to air their indignation.) LADY MARY. One maid among three grown women! LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mary, I think I had better go. That dreadful kitchenmaid-- LADY MARY. I can't blame you, George. (He salutes her.) LORD BROCKLEHURST. Your father's views are shocking to me, and I am glad I am not to be one of the party on the yacht. My respect for myself, Mary, my natural anxiety as to what mother will say. I shall see you, darling, before you sail. (He bows to the others and goes.) ERNEST. Selfish brute, only thinking of himself. What about my speech? LADY MARY. One maid among three of us. What's to be done? ERNEST. Pooh! You must do for yourselves, that's all. LADY MARY. Do for ourselves. How can we know where our things are kept? AGATHA. Are you aware that dresses button up the back? CATHERINE. How are we to get into our shoes and be prepared for the carriage? LADY MARY. Who is to put us to bed, and who is to get us up, and how shall we ever know it's morning if there is no one to pull up the blinds? (CRICHTON crosses on his way out.) ERNEST. How is his lordship now? CRICHTON. A little easier, sir. LADY MARY. Crichton, send Fisher to me. (He goes.) ERNEST. I have no pity for you girls, I-- LADY MARY. Ernest, go away, and don't insult the broken-hearted. ERNEST. And uncommon glad I am to go. Ta-ta, all of you. He asked me to say a few words. I came here to say a few words, and I'm not at all sure that I couldn't bring an action against him. (He departs, feeling that he has left a dart behind him. The girls are alone with their tragic thoughts.) LADY MARY (becomes a mother to the younger ones at last). My poor sisters, come here. (They go to her doubtfully.) We must make this draw us closer together. I shall do my best to help you in every way. Just now I cannot think of myself at all. AGATHA. But how unlike you, Mary. LADY MARY. It is my duty to protect my sisters. CATHERINE. I never knew her so sweet before, Agatha. (Cautiously.) What do you propose to do, Mary? LADY MARY. I propose when we are on the yacht to lend Fisher to you when I don't need her myself. AGATHA. Fisher? LADY MARY (who has the most character of the three). Of course, as the eldest, I have decided that it is my maid we shall take with us. CATHERINE (speaking also for AGATHA). Mary, you toad. AGATHA. Nothing on earth would induce Fisher to lift her hand for either me or Catherine. LADY MARY. I was afraid of it, Agatha. That is why I am so sorry for you. (The further exchange of pleasantries is interrupted by the arrival of FISHER.) LADY MARY. Fisher, you heard what his lordship said? FISHER. Yes, my lady. LADY MARY (coldly, though the others would have tried blandishment). You have given me some satisfaction of late, Fisher, and to mark my approval I have decided that you shall be the maid who accompanies us. FISHER (acidly). I thank you, my lady. LADY MARY. That is all; you may go. FISHER (rapping it out). If you please, my lady, I wish to give notice. (CATHERINE and AGATHA gleam, but LADY MARY is of sterner stuff.) LADY MARY (taking up a book). Oh, certainly--you may go. CATHERINE. But why, Fisher? FISHER. I could not undertake, my lady, to wait upon three. We don't do it. (In an indignant outburst to LADY MARY.) Oh, my lady, to think that this affront-- LADY MARY (looking up). I thought I told you to go, Fisher. (FISHER stands for a moment irresolute; then goes. As soon as she has gone LADY MARY puts down her book and weeps. She is a pretty woman, but this is the only pretty thing we have seen her do yet.) AGATHA (succinctly). Serves you right. (CRICHTON comes.) CATHERINE. It will be Simmons after all. Send Simmons to me. CRICHTON (after hesitating). My lady, might I venture to speak? CATHERINE. What is it? CRICHTON. I happen to know, your ladyship, that Simmons desires to give notice for the same reason as Fisher. CATHERINE. Oh! AGATHA (triumphant). Then, Catherine, we take Jeanne. CRICHTON. And Jeanne also, my lady. (LADY MARY is reading, indifferent though the heavens fall, but her sisters are not ashamed to show their despair to CRICHTON.) AGATHA. We can't blame them. Could any maid who respected herself be got to wait upon three? LADY MARY (with languid interest). I suppose there are such persons, Crichton? CRICHTON (guardedly). I have heard, my lady, that there are such. LADY MARY (a little desperate). Crichton, what's to be done? We sail in two days; could one be discovered in the time? AGATHA (frankly a supplicant). Surely you can think of some one? CRICHTON (after hesitating). There is in this establishment, your ladyship, a young woman-- LADY MARY. Yes? CRICHTON. A young woman, on whom I have for some time cast an eye. CATHERINE (eagerly). Do you mean as a possible lady's-maid? CRICHTON. I had thought of her, my lady, in another connection. LADY MARY. Ah! CRICHTON. But I believe she is quite the young person you require. Perhaps if you could see her, my lady-- LADY MARY. I shall certainly see her. Bring her to me. (He goes.) You two needn't wait. CATHERINE. Needn't we? We see your little game, Mary. AGATHA. We shall certainly remain and have our two-thirds of her. (They sit there doggedly until CRICHTON returns with TWEENY, who looks scared.) CRICHTON. This, my lady, is the young person. CATHERINE (frankly). Oh dear! (It is evident that all three consider her quite unsuitable.) LADY MARY. Come here, girl. Don't be afraid. (TWEENY looks imploringly at her idol.) CRICHTON. Her appearance, my lady, is homely, and her manners, as you may have observed, deplorable, but she has a heart of gold. LADY MARY. What is your position downstairs? TWEENY (bobbing). I'm a tweeny, your ladyship. CATHERINE. A what? CRICHTON. A tweeny; that is to say, my lady, she is not at present, strictly speaking, anything; a between maid; she helps the vegetable maid. It is she, my lady, who conveys the dishes from the one end of the kitchen table, where they are placed by the cook, to the other end, where they enter into the charge of Thomas and John. LADY MARY. I see. And you and Crichton are--ah--keeping company? (CRICHTON draws himself up.) TWEENY (aghast). A butler don't keep company, my lady. LADY MARY (indifferently). Does he not? CRICHTON. No, your ladyship, we butlers may--(he makes a gesture with his arms)--but we do not keep company. AGATHA. I know what it is; you are engaged? (TWEENY looks longingly at CRICHTON.) CRICHTON. Certainly not, my lady. The utmost I can say at present is that I have cast a favourable eye. (Even this is much to TWEENY.) LADY MARY. As you choose. But I am afraid, Crichton, she will not suit us. CRICHTON. My lady, beneath this simple exterior are concealed a very sweet nature and rare womanly gifts. AGATHA. Unfortunately, that is not what we want. CRICHTON. And it is she, my lady, who dresses the hair of the ladies'-maids for our evening meals. (The ladies are interested at last.) LADY MARY. She dresses Fisher's hair? TWEENY. Yes, my lady, and I does them up when they goes to parties. CRICHTON (pained, but not scolding). Does! TWEENY. Doos. And it's me what alters your gowns to fit them. CRICHTON. What alters! TWEENY. Which alters. AGATHA. Mary? LADY MARY. I shall certainly have her. CATHERINE. We shall certainly have her. Tweeny, we have decided to make a lady's-maid of you. TWEENY. Oh lawks! AGATHA. We are doing this for you so that your position socially may be more nearly akin to that of Crichton. CRICHTON (gravely). It will undoubtedly increase the young person's chances. LADY MARY. Then if I get a good character for you from Mrs. Perkins, she will make the necessary arrangements. (She resumes reading.) TWEENY (elated). My lady! LADY MARY. By the way, I hope you are a good sailor. TWEENY (startled). You don't mean, my lady, I'm to go on the ship? LADY MARY. Certainly. TWEENY. But--(To CRICHTON.) You ain't going, sir? CRICHTON. No. TWEENY (firm at last). Then neither ain't I. AGATHA. YOU must. TWEENY. Leave him! Not me. LADY MARY. Girl, don't be silly. Crichton will be--considered in your wages. TWEENY. I ain't going. CRICHTON. I feared this, my lady. TWEENY. Nothing'll budge me. LADY MARY. Leave the room. (CRICHTON shows TWEENY out with marked politeness.) AGATHA. Crichton, I think you might have shown more displeasure with her. CRICHTON (contrite). I was touched, my lady. I see, my lady, that to part from her would be a wrench to me, though I could not well say so in her presence, not having yet decided how far I shall go with her. (He is about to go when LORD LOAM returns, fuming.) LORD LOAM. The ingrate! The smug! The fop! CATHERINE. What is it now, father? LORD LOAM. That man of mine, Rolleston, refuses to accompany us because you are to have but one maid. AGATHA. Hurrah! LADY MARY (in better taste). Darling father, rather than you should lose Rolleston, we will consent to take all the three of them. LORD LOAM. Pooh, nonsense! Crichton, find me a valet who can do without three maids. CRICHTON. Yes, my lord. (Troubled.) In the time--the more suitable the party, my lord, the less willing will he be to come without the--the usual perquisites. LORD LOAM. Any one will do. CRICHTON (shocked). My lord! LORD LOAM. The ingrate! The puppy! (AGATHA has an idea, and whispers to LADY MARY.) LADY MARY. I ask a favour of a servant?--never! AGATHA. Then I will. Crichton, would it not be very distressing to you to let his lordship go, attended by a valet who might prove unworthy? It is only for three months; don't you think that you--you yourself--you-- (As CRICHTON sees what she wants he pulls himself up with noble, offended dignity, and she is appalled.) I beg your pardon. (He bows stiffly.) CATHERINE (to CRICHTON). But think of the joy to Tweeny. (CRICHTON is moved, but he shakes his head.) LADY MARY (so much the cleverest). Crichton, do you think it safe to let the master you love go so far away without you while he has these dangerous views about equality? (CRICHTON is profoundly stirred. After a struggle he goes to his master, who has been pacing the room.) CRICHTON. My lord, I have found a man. LORD LOAM. Already? Who is he? (CRICHTON presents himself with a gesture.) Yourself? CATHERINE. Father, how good of him. LORD LOAM (pleased, but thinking it a small thing). Uncommon good. Thank you, Crichton. This helps me nicely out of a hole; and how it will annoy Rolleston! Come with me, and we shall tell him. Not that I think you have lowered yourself in any way. Come along. (He goes, and CRICHTON is to follow him, but is stopped by AGATHA impulsively offering him her hand.) CRICHTON (who is much shaken). My lady--a valet's hand! AGATHA. I had no idea you would feel it so deeply; why did you do it? (CRICHTON is too respectful to reply.) LADY MARY (regarding him). Crichton, I am curious. I insist upon an answer. CRICHTON. My lady, I am the son of a butler and a lady's-maid--perhaps the happiest of all combinations, and to me the most beautiful thing in the world is a haughty, aristocratic English house, with every one kept in his place. Though I were equal to your ladyship, where would be the pleasure to me? It would be counterbalanced by the pain of feeling that Thomas and John were equal to me. CATHERINE. But father says if we were to return to nature-- CRICHTON. If we did, my lady, the first thing we should do would be to elect a head. Circumstances might alter cases; the same person might not be master; the same persons might not be servants. I can't say as to that, nor should we have the deciding of it. Nature would decide for us. LADY MARY. You seem to have thought it all out carefully, Crichton. CRICHTON. Yes, my lady. CATHERINE. And you have done this for us, Crichton, because you thought that--that father needed to be kept in his place? CRICHTON. I should prefer you to say, my lady, that I have done it for the house. AGATHA. Thank you, Crichton. Mary, be nicer to him. (But LADY MARY has begun to read again.) If there was any way in which we could show our gratitude. CRICHTON. If I might venture, my lady, would you kindly show it by becoming more like Lady Mary. That disdain is what we like from our superiors. Even so do we, the upper servants, disdain the lower servants, while they take it out of the odds and ends. (He goes, and they bury themselves in cushions.) AGATHA. Oh dear, what a tiring day. CATHERINE. I feel dead. Tuck in your feet, you selfish thing. (LADY MARY is lying reading on another couch.) LADY MARY. I wonder what he meant by circumstances might alter cases. AGATHA (yawning). Don't talk, Mary, I was nearly asleep. LADY MARY. I wonder what he meant by the same person might not be master, and the same persons might not be servants. CATHERINE. Do be quiet, Mary, and leave it to nature; he said nature would decide. LADY MARY. I wonder-- (But she does not wonder very much. She would wonder more if she knew what was coming. Her book slips unregarded to the floor. The ladies are at rest until it is time to dress.) End of Act I. Two months have elapsed, and the scene is a desert island in the Pacific, on which our adventurers have been wrecked. The curtain rises on a sea of bamboo, which shuts out all view save the foliage of palm trees and some gaunt rocks. Occasionally Crichton and Treherne come momentarily into sight, hacking and hewing the bamboo, through which they are making a clearing between the ladies and the shore; and by and by, owing to their efforts, we shall have an unrestricted outlook on to a sullen sea that is at present hidden. Then we shall also be able to note a mast standing out of the water--all that is left, saving floating wreckage, of the ill-fated yacht the Bluebell. The beginnings of a hut will also be seen, with Crichton driving its walls into the ground or astride its roof of saplings, for at present he is doing more than one thing at a time. In a red shirt, with the ends of his sailor's breeches thrust into wading-boots, he looks a man for the moment; we suddenly remember some one's saying--perhaps it was ourselves--that a cataclysm would be needed to get him out of his servant's clothes, and apparently it has been forthcoming. It is no longer beneath our dignity to cast an inquiring eye on his appearance. His features are not distinguished, but he has a strong jaw and green eyes, in which a yellow light burns that we have not seen before. His dark hair, hitherto so decorously sleek, has been ruffled this way and that by wind and weather, as if they were part of the cataclysm and wanted to help his chance. His muscles must be soft and flabby still, but though they shriek aloud to him to desist, he rains lusty blows with his axe, like one who has come upon the open for the first time in his life, and likes it. He is as yet far from being an expert woodsman--mark the blood on his hands at places where he has hit them instead of the tree; but note also that he does not waste time in bandaging them--he rubs them in the earth and goes on. His face is still of the discreet pallor that befits a butler, and he carries the smaller logs as if they were a salver; not in a day or a month will he shake off the badge of servitude, but without knowing it he has begun. But for the hatchets at work, and an occasional something horrible falling from a tree into the ladies' laps, they hear nothing save the mournful surf breaking on a coral shore. They sit or recline huddled together against a rock, and they are farther from home, in every sense of the word, than ever before. Thirty-six hours ago, they were given three minutes in which to dress, without a maid, and reach the boats, and they have not made the best of that valuable time. None of them has boots, and had they known this prickly island they would have thought first of boots. They have a sufficiency of garments, but some of them were gifts dropped into the boat--Lady Mary's tarpaulin coat and hat, for instance, and Catherine's blue jersey and red cap, which certify that the two ladies were lately before the mast. Agatha is too gay in Ernest's dressing-gown, and clutches it to her person with both hands as if afraid that it may be claimed by its rightful owner. There are two pairs of bath slippers between the three of them, and their hair cries aloud and in vain for hairpins. By their side, on an inverted bucket, sits Ernest, clothed neatly in the garments of day and night, but, alas, bare-footed. He is the only cheerful member of this company of four, but his brightness is due less to a manly desire to succour the helpless than to his having been lately in the throes of composition, and to his modest satisfaction with the result. He reads to the ladies, and they listen, each with one scared eye to the things that fall from trees. ERNEST (who has written on the fly-leaf of the only book saved from the wreck). This is what I have written. 'Wrecked, wrecked, wrecked! on an island in the Tropics, the following: the Hon. Ernest Woolley, the Rev. John Treherne, the Ladies Mary, Catherine, and Agatha Lasenby, with two servants. We are the sole survivors of Lord Loam's steam yacht Bluebell, which encountered a fearful gale in these seas, and soon became a total wreck. The crew behaved gallantly, putting us all into the first boat. What became of them I cannot tell, but we, after dreadful sufferings, and insufficiently clad, in whatever garments we could lay hold of in the dark'-- LADY MARY. Please don't describe our garments. ERNEST.--'succeeded in reaching this island, with the loss of only one of our party, namely, Lord Loam, who flung away his life in a gallant attempt to save a servant who had fallen overboard.' (The ladies have wept long and sore for their father, but there is something in this last utterance that makes them look up.) AGATHA. But, Ernest, it was Crichton who jumped overboard trying to save father. ERNEST (with the candour that is one of his most engaging qualities). Well, you know, it was rather silly of uncle to fling away his life by trying to get into the boat first; and as this document may be printed in the English papers, it struck me, an English peer, you know-- LADY MARY (every inch an English peer's daughter). Ernest, that is very thoughtful of you. ERNEST (continuing, well pleased).--'By night the cries of wild cats and the hissing of snakes terrify us extremely'--(this does not satisfy him so well, and he makes a correction)--'terrify the ladies extremely. Against these we have no weapons except one cutlass and a hatchet. A bucket washed ashore is at present our only comfortable seat'-- LADY MARY (with some spirit). And Ernest is sitting on it. ERNEST. H'sh! Oh, do be quiet.--'To add to our horrors, night falls suddenly in these parts, and it is then that savage animals begin to prowl and roar.' LADY MARY. Have you said that vampire bats suck the blood from our toes as we sleep? ERNEST. No, that's all. I end up, 'Rescue us or we perish. Rich reward. Signed Ernest Woolley, in command of our little party.' This is written on a leaf taken out of a book of poems that Crichton found in his pocket. Fancy Crichton being a reader of poetry. Now I shall put it into the bottle and fling it into the sea. (He pushes the precious document into a soda-water bottle, and rams the cork home. At the same moment, and without effort, he gives birth to one of his most characteristic epigrams.) The tide is going out, we mustn't miss the post. (They are so unhappy that they fail to grasp it, and a little petulantly he calls for CRICHTON, ever his stand-by in the hour of epigram. CRICHTON breaks through the undergrowth quickly, thinking the ladies are in danger.) CRICHTON. Anything wrong, sir? ERNEST (with fine confidence). The tide, Crichton, is a postman who calls at our island twice a day for letters. CRICHTON (after a pause). Thank you, sir. (He returns to his labours, however, without giving the smile which is the epigrammatist's right, and ERNEST is a little disappointed in him.) ERNEST. Poor Crichton! I sometimes think he is losing his sense of humour. Come along, Agatha. (He helps his favourite up the rocks, and they disappear gingerly from view.) CATHERINE. How horribly still it is. LADY MARY (remembering some recent sounds). It is best when it is still. CATHERINE (drawing closer to her). Mary, I have heard that they are always very still just before they jump. LADY MARY. Don't. (A distinct chapping is heard, and they are startled.) LADY MARY (controlling herself). It is only Crichton knocking down trees. CATHERINE (almost imploringly). Mary, let us go and stand beside him. LADY MARY (coldly). Let a servant see that I am afraid! CATHERINE. Don't, then; but remember this, dear, they often drop on one from above. (She moves away, nearer to the friendly sound of the axe, and LADY MARY is left alone. She is the most courageous of them as well as the haughtiest, but when something she had thought to be a stick glides toward her, she forgets her dignity and screams.) LADY MARY (calling). Crichton, Crichton! (It must have been TREHERNE who was tree-felling, for CRICHTON comes to her from the hut, drawing his cutlass.) CRICHTON (anxious). Did you call, my lady? LADY MARY (herself again, now that he is there). I! Why should I? CRICHTON. I made a mistake, your ladyship. (Hesitating.) If you are afraid of being alone, my lady-- LADY MARY. Afraid! Certainly not. (Doggedly.) You may go. (But she does not complain when he remains within eyesight cutting the bamboo. It is heavy work, and she watches him silently.) LADY MARY. I wish, Crichton, you could work without getting so hot. CRICHTON (mopping his face). I wish I could, my lady. (He continues his labours.) LADY MARY (taking off her oilskins). It makes me hot to look at you. CRICHTON. It almost makes me cool to look at your ladyship. LADY MARY (who perhaps thinks he is presuming). Anything I can do for you in that way, Crichton, I shall do with pleasure. CRICHTON (quite humbly). Thank you, my lady. (By this time most of the bamboo has been cut, and the shore and sea are visible, except where they are hidden by the half completed hut. The mast rising solitary from the water adds to the desolation of the scene, and at last tears run down LADY MARY'S face.) CRICHTON. Don't give way, my lady, things might be worse. LADY MARY. My poor father. CRICHTON. If I could have given my life for his. LADY MARY. You did all a man could do. Indeed I thank you, Crichton. (With some admiration and more wonder.) You are a man. CRICHTON. Thank you, my lady. LADY MARY. But it is all so awful. Crichton, is there any hope of a ship coming? CRICHTON (after hesitation). Of course there is, my lady. LADY MARY (facing him bravely). Don't treat me as a child. I have got to know the worst, and to face it. Crichton, the truth. CRICHTON (reluctantly). We were driven out of our course, my lady; I fear far from the track of commerce. LADY MARY. Thank you; I understand. (For a moment, however, she breaks down. Then she clenches her hands and stands erect.) CRICHTON (watching her, and forgetting perhaps for the moment that they are not just a man and woman). You're a good pluckt 'un, my lady. LADY MARY (falling into the same error). I shall try to be. (Extricating herself.) Crichton, how dare you? CRICHTON. I beg your ladyship's pardon; but you are. (She smiles, as if it were a comfort to be told this even by CRICHTON.) And until a ship comes we are three men who are going to do our best for you ladies. LADY MARY (with a curl of the lip). Mr. Ernest does no work. CRICHTON (cheerily). But he will, my lady. LADY MARY. I doubt it. CRICHTON (confidently, but perhaps thoughtlessly). No work--no dinner--will make a great change in Mr. Ernest. LADY MARY. No work--no dinner. When did you invent that rule, Crichton? CRICHTON (loaded with bamboo). I didn't invent it, my lady. I seem to see it growing all over the island. LADY MARY (disquieted). Crichton, your manner strikes me as curious. CRICHTON (pained). I hope not, your ladyship. LADY MARY (determined to have it out with him). You are not implying anything so unnatural, I presume, as that if I and my sisters don't work there will be no dinner for us? CRICHTON (brightly). If it is unnatural, my lady, that is the end of it. LADY MARY. If? Now I understand. The perfect servant at home holds that we are all equal now. I see. CRICHTON (wounded to the quick). My lady, can you think me so inconsistent? LADY MARY. That is it. CRICHTON (earnestly). My lady, I disbelieved in equality at home because it was against nature, and for that same reason I as utterly disbelieve in it on an island. LADY MARY (relieved by his obvious sincerity). I apologise. CRICHTON (continuing unfortunately). There must always, my lady, be one to command and others to obey. LADY MARY (satisfied). One to command, others to obey. Yes. (Then suddenly she realises that there may be a dire meaning in his confident words.) Crichton! CRICHTON (who has intended no dire meaning). What is it, my lady? (But she only stares into his face and then hurries from him. Left alone he is puzzled, but being a practical man he busies himself gathering firewood, until TWEENY appears excitedly carrying cocoa-nuts in her skirt. She has made better use than the ladies of her three minutes' grace for dressing.) TWEENY (who can be happy even on an island if CRICHTON is with her). Look what I found. CRICHTON. Cocoa-nuts. Bravo! TWEENY. They grows on trees. CRICHTON. Where did you think they grew? TWEENY. I thought as how they grew in rows on top of little sticks. CRICHTON (wrinkling his brows). Oh Tweeny, Tweeny! TWEENY (anxiously). Have I offended of your feelings again, sir? CRICHTON. A little. TWEENY (in a despairing outburst). I'm full o' vulgar words and ways; and though I may keep them in their holes when you are by, as soon as I'm by myself out they comes in a rush like beetles when the house is dark. I says them gloating-like, in my head--'Blooming' I says, and 'All my eye,' and 'Ginger,' and 'Nothink'; and all the time we was being wrecked I was praying to myself, 'Please the Lord it may be an island as it's natural to be vulgar on.' (A shudder passes through CRICHTON, and she is abject.) That's the kind I am, sir. I'm 'opeless. You'd better give me up. (She is a pathetic, forlorn creature, and his manhood is stirred.) CRICHTON (wondering a little at himself for saying it). I won't give you up. It is strange that one so common should attract one so fastidious; but so it is. (Thoughtfully.) There is something about you, Tweeny, there is a je ne sais quoi about you. TWEENY (knowing only that he has found something in her to commend). Is there, is there? Oh, I am glad. CRICHTON (putting his hand on her shoulder like a protector). We shall fight your vulgarity together. (All this time he has been arranging sticks for his fire.) Now get some dry grass. (She brings him grass, and he puts it under the sticks. He produces an odd lens from his pocket, and tries to focus the sun's rays.) TWEENY. Why, what's that? CRICHTON (the ingenious creature). That's the glass from my watch and one from Mr. Treherne's, with a little water between them. I'm hoping to kindle a fire with it. TWEENY (properly impressed). Oh sir! (After one failure the grass takes fire, and they are blowing on it when excited cries near by bring them sharply to their feet. AGATHA runs to them, white of face, followed by ERNEST.) ERNEST. Danger! Crichton, a tiger-cat! CRICHTON (getting his cutlass). Where? AGATHA. It is at our heels. ERNEST. Look out, Crichton. CRICHTON. H'sh! (TREHERNE comes to his assistance, while LADY MARY and CATHERINE join AGATHA in the hut.) ERNEST. It will be on us in a moment. (He seizes the hatchet and guards the hut. It is pleasing to see that ERNEST is no coward.) TREHERNE. Listen! ERNEST. The grass is moving. It's coming. (It comes. But it is no tiger-cat; it is LORD LOAM crawling on his hands and knees, a very exhausted and dishevelled peer, wondrously attired in rags. The girls see him, and with glad cries rush into his arms.) LADY MARY. Father. LORD LOAM. Mary--Catherine--Agatha. Oh dear, my dears, my dears, oh dear! LADY MARY. Darling. AGATHA. Sweetest. CATHERINE. Love. TREHERNE. Glad to see you, sir. ERNEST. Uncle, uncle, dear old uncle. (For a time such happy cries fill the air, but presently TREHERNE is thoughtless.) TREHERNE. Ernest thought you were a tiger-cat. LORD LOAM (stung somehow to the quick). Oh, did you? I knew you at once, Ernest; I knew you by the way you ran. (ERNEST smiles forgivingly.) CRICHTON (venturing forward at last). My lord, I am glad. ERNEST (with upraised finger). But you are also idling, Crichton. (Making himself comfortable on the ground.) We mustn't waste time. To work, to work. CRICHTON (after contemplating him without rancour). Yes, sir. (He gets a pot from the hut and hangs it on a tripod over the fire, which is now burning brightly.) TREHERNE. Ernest, you be a little more civil. Crichton, let me help. (He is soon busy helping CRICHTON to add to the strength of the hut.) LORD LOAM (gazing at the pot as ladies are said to gaze on precious stones). Is that--but I suppose I'm dreaming again. (Timidly.) It isn't by any chance a pot on top of a fire, is it? LADY MARY. Indeed, it is, dearest. It is our supper. LORD LOAM. I have been dreaming of a pot on a fire for two days. (Quivering.) There 's nothing in it, is there? ERNEST. Sniff, uncle. (LORD LOAM sniffs.) LORD LOAM (reverently). It smells of onions! (There is a sudden diversion.) CATHERINE. Father, you have boots! LADY MARY. So he has. LORD LOAM. Of course I have. ERNEST (with greedy cunning). You are actually wearing boots, uncle. It's very unsafe, you know, in this climate. LORD LOAM. Is it? ERNEST. We have all abandoned them, you observe. The blood, the arteries, you know. LORD LOAM. I hadn't a notion. (He holds out his feet, and ERNEST kneels.) ERNEST. O Lord, yes. (In another moment those boots will be his.) LADY MARY (quickly). Father, he is trying to get your boots from you. There is nothing in the world we wouldn't give for boots. ERNEST (rising haughtily, a proud spirit misunderstood). I only wanted the loan of them. AGATHA (running her fingers along them lovingly). If you lend them to any one, it will be to us, won't it, father. LORD LOAM. Certainly, my child. ERNEST. Oh, very well. (He is leaving these selfish ones.) I don't want your old boots. (He gives his uncle a last chance.) You don't think you could spare me one boot? LORD LOAM (tartly). I do not. ERNEST. Quite so. Well, all I can say is I'm sorry for you. (He departs to recline elsewhere.) LADY MARY. Father, we thought we should never see you again. LORD LOAM. I was washed ashore, my dear, clinging to a hencoop. How awful that first night was. LADY MARY. Poor father. LORD LOAM. When I woke, I wept. Then I began to feel extremely hungry. There was a large turtle on the beach. I remembered from the Swiss Family Robinson that if you turn a turtle over he is helpless. My dears, I crawled towards him, I flung myself upon him--(here he pauses to rub his leg)--the nasty, spiteful brute. LADY MARY. You didn't turn him over? LORD LOAM (vindictively, though he is a kindly man). Mary, the senseless thing wouldn't wait; I found that none of them would wait. CATHERINE. We should have been as badly off if Crichton hadn't-- LADY MARY (quickly). Don't praise Crichton. LORD LOAM. And then those beastly monkeys, I always understood that if you flung stones at them they would retaliate by flinging cocoa-nuts at you. Would you believe it, I flung a hundred stones, and not one monkey had sufficient intelligence to grasp my meaning. How I longed for Crichton. LADY MARY (wincing). For us also, father? LORD LOAM. For you also. I tried for hours to make a fire. The authors say that when wrecked on an island you can obtain a light by rubbing two pieces of stick together. (With feeling.) The liars! LADY MARY. And all this time you thought there was no one on the island but yourself? LORD LOAM. I thought so until this morning. I was searching the pools for little fishes, which I caught in my hat, when suddenly I saw before me--on the sand-- CATHERINE. What? LORD LOAM. A hairpin. LADY MARY. A hairpin! It must be one of ours. Give it me, father. AGATHA. No, it's mine. LORD LOAM. I didn't keep it. LADY MARY (speaking for all three). Didn't keep it? Found a hairpin on an island, and didn't keep it? LORD LOAM (humbly). My dears. AGATHA (scarcely to be placated). Oh father, we have returned to nature more than you bargained for. LADY MARY. For shame, Agatha. (She has something on her mind.) Father, there is something I want you to do at once--I mean to assert your position as the chief person on the island. (They are all surprised.) LORD LOAM. But who would presume to question it? CATHERINE. She must mean Ernest. LADY MARY. Must I? AGATHA. It's cruel to say anything against Ernest. LORD LOAM (firmly). If any one presumes to challenge my position, I shall make short work of him. AGATHA. Here comes Ernest; now see if you can say these horrid things to his face. LORD LOAM. I shall teach him his place at once. LADY MARY (anxiously). But how? LORD LOAM (chuckling). I have just thought of an extremely amusing way of doing it. (As ERNEST approaches.) Ernest. ERNEST (loftily). Excuse me, uncle, I'm thinking. I'm planning out the building of this hut. LORD LOAM. I also have been thinking. ERNEST. That don't matter. LORD LOAM. Eh? ERNEST. Please, please, this is important. LORD LOAM. I have been thinking that I ought to give you my boots. ERNEST. What! LADY MARY. Father. LORD LOAM (genially). Take them, my boy. (With a rapidity we had not thought him capable of, ERNEST becomes the wearer of the boots.) And now I dare say you want to know why I give them to you, Ernest? ERNEST (moving up and down in them deliciously). Not at all. The great thing is, 'I've got 'em, I've got 'em.' LORD LOAM (majestically, but with a knowing look at his daughters). My reason is that, as head of our little party, you, Ernest, shall be our hunter, you shall clear the forests of those savage beasts that make them so dangerous. (Pleasantly.) And now you know, my dear nephew, why I have given you my boots. ERNEST. This is my answer. (He kicks off the boots.) LADY MARY (still anxious). Father, assert yourself. LORD LOAM. I shall now assert myself. (But how to do it? He has a happy thought.) Call Crichton. LADY MARY. Oh father. (CRICHTON comes in answer to a summons, and is followed by TREHERNE.) ERNEST (wondering a little at LADY MARY'S grave face). Crichton, look here. LORD LOAM (sturdily). Silence! Crichton, I want your advice as to what I ought to do with Mr. Ernest. He has defied me. ERNEST. Pooh! CRICHTON (after considering). May I speak openly, my lord? LADY MARY (keeping her eyes fixed on him). That is what we desire. CRICHTON (quite humbly). Then I may say, your lordship, that I have been considering Mr. Ernest's case at odd moments ever since we were wrecked. ERNEST. My case? LORD LOAM (sternly). Hush. CRICHTON. Since we landed on the island, my lord, it seems to me that Mr. Ernest's epigrams have been particularly brilliant. ERNEST (gratified). Thank you, Crichton. CRICHTON. But I find--I seem to find it growing wild, my lord, in the woods, that sayings which would be justly admired in England are not much use on an island. I would therefore most respectfully propose that henceforth every time Mr. Ernest favours us with an epigram his head should be immersed in a bucket of cold spring water. (There is a terrible silence.) LORD LOAM (uneasily). Serve him right. ERNEST. I should like to see you try to do it, uncle. CRICHTON (ever ready to come to the succour of his lordship). My feeling, my lord, is that at the next offence I should convey him to a retired spot, where I shall carry out the undertaking in as respectful a manner as is consistent with a thorough immersion. (Though his manner is most respectful, he is firm; he evidently means what he says.) LADY MARY (a ramrod). Father, you must not permit this; Ernest is your nephew. LORD LOAM (with his hand to his brow). After all, he is my nephew, Crichton; and, as I am sure, he now sees that I am a strong man-- ERNEST (foolishly in the circumstances). A strong man. You mean a stout man. You are one of mind to two of matter. (He looks round in the old way for approval. No one has smiled, and to his consternation he sees that CRICHTON is quietly turning up his sleeves. ERNEST makes an appealing gesture to his uncle; then he turns defiantly to CRICHTON.) CRICHTON. Is it to be before the ladies, Mr. Ernest, or in the privacy of the wood? (He fixes ERNEST with his eye. ERNEST is cowed.) Come. ERNEST (affecting bravado). Oh, all right. CRICHTON (succinctly). Bring the bucket. (ERNEST hesitates. He then lifts the bucket and follows CRICHTON to the nearest spring.) LORD LOAM (rather white). I'm sorry for him, but I had to be firm. LADY MARY. Oh father, it wasn't you who was firm. Crichton did it himself. LORD LOAM. Bless me, so he did. LADY MARY. Father, be strong. LORD LOAM (bewildered). You can't mean that my faithful Crichton-- LADY MARY. Yes, I do. TREHERNE. Lady Mary, I stake my word that Crichton is incapable of acting dishonourably. LADY MARY. I know that; I know it as well as you. Don't you see that that is what makes him so dangerous? TREHERNE. By Jove, I--I believe I catch your meaning. CATHERINE. He is coming back. LORD LOAM (who has always known himself to be a man of ideas). Let us all go into the hut, just to show him at once that it is our hut. LADY MARY (as they go). Father, I implore you, assert yourself now and for ever. LORD LOAM. I will. LADY MARY. And, please, don't ask him how you are to do it. (CRICHTON returns with sticks to mend the fire.) LORD LOAM (loftily, from the door of the hut). Have you carried out my instructions, Crichton? CRICHTON (deferentially). Yes, my lord. (ERNEST appears, mopping his hair, which has become very wet since we last saw him. He is not bearing malice, he is too busy drying, but AGATHA is specially his champion.) AGATHA. It's infamous, infamous. LORD LOAM: (strongly). My orders, Agatha. LADY MARY. Now, father, please. LORD LOAM (striking an attitude). Before I give you any further orders, Crichton-- CRICHTON. Yes, my lord. LORD LOAM. (delighted) Pooh! It's all right. LADY MARY. No. Please go on. LORD LOAM. Well, well. This question of the leadership; what do you think now, Crichton? CRICHTON. My lord, I feel it is a matter with which I have nothing to do. LORD LOAM. Excellent. Ha, Mary? That settles it, I think. LADY MARY. It seems to, but--I'm not sure. CRICHTON. It will settle itself naturally, my lord, without any interference from us. (The reference to nature gives general dissatisfaction.) LADY MARY. Father. LORD LOAM (a little severely). It settled itself long ago, Crichton, when I was born a peer, and you, for instance, were born a servant. CRICHTON (acquiescing). Yes, my lord, that was how it all came about quite naturally in England. We had nothing to do with it there, and we shall have as little to do with it here. TREHERNE (relieved). That's all right. LADY MARY (determined to clinch the matter). One moment. In short, Crichton, his lordship will continue to be our natural head. CRICHTON. I dare say, my lady, I dare say. CATHERINE. But you must know. CRICHTON. Asking your pardon, my lady, one can't be sure--on an island. (They look at each other uneasily.) LORD LOAM (warningly). Crichton, I don't like this. CRICHTON (harassed). The more I think of it, your lordship, the more uneasy I become myself. When I heard, my lord, that you had left that hairpin behind--(He is pained.) LORD LOAM (feebly). One hairpin among so many would only have caused dissension. CRICHTON (very sorry to have to contradict him). Not so, my lord. From that hairpin we could have made a needle; with that needle we could, out of skins, have sewn trousers of which your lordship is in need; indeed, we are all in need of them. LADY MARY (suddenly self-conscious). All? CRICHTON. On an island, my lady. LADY MARY. Father. CRICHTON (really more distressed by the prospect than she). My lady, if nature does not think them necessary, you may be sure she will not ask you to wear them. (Shaking his head.) But among all this undergrowth-- LADY MARY. Now you see this man in his true colours. LORD LOAM (violently). Crichton, you will either this moment say, 'Down with nature,'. CRICHTON (scandalised). My Lord! LORD LOAM (loftily). Then this is my last word to you; take a month's notice. (If the hut had a door he would now shut it to indicate that the interview is closed.) CRICHTON (in great distress). Your lordship, the disgrace-- LORD LOAM (swelling). Not another word: you may go. LADY MARY (adamant). And don't come to me, Crichton, for a character. ERNEST (whose immersion has cleared his brain). Aren't you all forgetting that this is an island? (This brings them to earth with a bump. LORD LOAM looks to his eldest daughter for the fitting response.) LADY MARY (equal to the occasion). It makes only this difference--that you may go at once, Crichton, to some other part of the island. (The faithful servant has been true to his superiors ever since he was created, and never more true than at this moment; but his fidelity is founded on trust in nature, and to be untrue to it would be to be untrue to them. He lets the wood he has been gathering slip to the ground, and bows his sorrowful head. He turns to obey. Then affection for these great ones wells up in him.) CRICHTON. My lady, let me work for you. LADY MARY. Go. CRICHTON. You need me so sorely; I can't desert you; I won't. LADY MARY (in alarm, lest the others may yield). Then, father, there is but one alternative, we must leave him. (LORD LOAM is looking yearningly at CRICHTON.) TREHERNE. It seems a pity. CATHERINE (forlornly). You will work for us? TREHERNE. Most willingly. But I must warn you all that, so far, Crichton has done nine-tenths of the scoring. LADY MARY. The question is, are we to leave this man? LORD LOAM (wrapping himself in his dignity). Come, my dears. CRICHTON. My lord! LORD LOAM. Treherne--Ernest--get our things. ERNEST. We don't have any, uncle. They all belong to Crichton. TREHERNE. Everything we have he brought from the wreck--he went back to it before it sank. He risked his life. CRICHTON. My lord, anything you would care to take is yours. LADY MARY (quickly). Nothing. ERNEST. Rot! If I could have your socks, Crichton-- LADY MARY. Come, father; we are ready. (Followed by the others, she and LORD LOAM pick their way up the rocks. In their indignation they scarcely notice that daylight is coming to a sudden end.) CRICHTON. My lord, I implore you--I am not desirous of being head. Do you have a try at it, my lord. LORD LOAM (outraged). A try at it! CRICHTON (eagerly). It may be that you will prove to be the best man. LORD LOAM. May be! My children, come. (They disappear proudly in single file.) TREHERNE. Crichton, I'm sorry; but of course I must go with them. CRICHTON. Certainly, sir. (He calls to TWEENY, and she comes from behind the hut, where she has been watching breathlessly.) Will you be so kind, sir, as to take her to the others? TREHERNE. Assuredly. TWEENY. But what do it all mean? CRICHTON. Does, Tweeny, does. (He passes her up the rocks to TREHERNE.) We shall meet again soon, Tweeny. Good night, sir. TREHERNE. Good night. I dare say they are not far away. CRICHTON (thoughtfully). They went westward, sir, and the wind is blowing in that direction. That may mean, sir, that nature is already taking the matter into her own hands. They are all hungry, sir, and the pot has come a-boil. (He takes off the lid.) The smell will be borne westward. That pot is full of nature, Mr. Treherne. Good night, sir. TREHERNE. Good night. (He mounts the rocks with TWEENY, and they are heard for a little time after their figures are swallowed up in the fast growing darkness. CRICHTON stands motionless, the lid in his hand, though he has forgotten it, and his reason for taking it off the pot. He is deeply stirred, but presently is ashamed of his dejection, for it is as if he doubted his principles. Bravely true to his faith that nature will decide now as ever before, he proceeds manfully with his preparations for the night. He lights a ship's lantern, one of several treasures he has brought ashore, and is filling his pipe with crumbs of tobacco from various pockets, when the stealthy movements of some animal in the grass startles him. With the lantern in one hand and his cutlass in the other, he searches the ground around the hut. He returns, lights his pipe, and sits down by the fire, which casts weird moving shadows. There is a red gleam on his face; in the darkness he is a strong and perhaps rather sinister figure. In the great stillness that has fallen over the land, the wash of the surf seems to have increased in volume. The sound is indescribably mournful. Except where the fire is, desolation has fallen on the island like a pall. Once or twice, as nature dictates, CRICHTON leans forward to stir the pot, and the smell is borne westward. He then resumes his silent vigil. Shadows other than those cast by the fire begin to descend the rocks. They are the adventurers returning. One by one they steal nearer to the pot until they are squatted round it, with their hands out to the blaze. LADY MARY only is absent. Presently she comes within sight of the others, then stands against a tree with her teeth clenched. One wonders, perhaps, what nature is to make of her.) End of Act II. The scene is the hall of their island home two years later. This sturdy log-house is no mere extension of the hut we have seen in process of erection, but has been built a mile or less to the west of it, on higher ground and near a stream. When the master chose this site, the others thought that all he expected from the stream was a sufficiency of drinking water. They know better now every time they go down to the mill or turn on the electric light. This hall is the living-room of the house, and walls and roof are of stout logs. Across the joists supporting the roof are laid many home-made implements, such as spades, saws, fishing-rods, and from hooks in the joists are suspended cured foods, of which hams are specially in evidence. Deep recesses half way up the walls contain various provender in barrels and sacks. There are some skins, trophies of the chase, on the floor, which is otherwise bare. The chairs and tables are in some cases hewn out of the solid wood, and in others the result of rough but efficient carpentering. Various pieces of wreckage from the yacht have been turned to novel uses: thus the steering-wheel now hangs from the centre of the roof, with electric lights attached to it encased in bladders. A lifebuoy has become the back of a chair. Two barrels have been halved and turn coyly from each other as a settee. The farther end of the room is more strictly the kitchen, and is a great recess, which can be shut off from the hall by folding doors. There is a large open fire in it. The chimney is half of one of the boats of the yacht. On the walls of the kitchen proper are many plate-racks, containing shells; there are rows of these of one size and shape, which mark them off as dinner plates or bowls; others are as obviously tureens. They are arranged primly as in a well-conducted kitchen; indeed, neatness and cleanliness are the note struck everywhere, yet the effect of the whole is romantic and barbaric. The outer door into this hall is a little peculiar on an island. It is covered with skins and is in four leaves, like the swing doors of fashionable restaurants, which allow you to enter without allowing the hot air to escape. During the winter season our castaways have found the contrivance useful, but Crichton's brain was perhaps a little lordly when he conceived it. Another door leads by a passage to the sleeping-rooms of the house, which are all on the ground-floor, and to Crichton's work-room, where he is at this moment, and whither we should like to follow him, but in a play we may not, as it is out of sight. There is a large window space without a window, which, however, can be shuttered, and through this we have a view of cattle-sheds, fowl-pens, and a field of grain. It is a fine summer evening. Tweeny is sitting there, very busy plucking the feathers off a bird and dropping them on a sheet placed for that purpose on the floor. She is trilling to herself in the lightness of her heart. We may remember that Tweeny, alone among the women, had dressed wisely for an island when they fled the yacht, and her going-away gown still adheres to her, though in fragments. A score of pieces have been added here and there as necessity compelled, and these have been patched and repatched in incongruous colours; but, when all is said and done, it can still be maintained that Tweeny wears a skirt. She is deservedly proud of her skirt, and sometimes lends it on important occasions when approached in the proper spirit. Some one outside has been whistling to Tweeny; the guarded whistle which, on a less savage island, is sometimes assumed to be an indication to cook that the constable is willing, if the coast be clear. Tweeny, however, is engrossed, or perhaps she is not in the mood for a follower, so he climbs in at the window undaunted, to take her willy nilly. He is a jolly-looking labouring man, who answers to the name of Daddy, and--But though that may be his island name, we recognise him at once. He is Lord Loam, settled down to the new conditions, and enjoying life heartily as handy-man about the happy home. He is comfortably attired in skins. He is still stout, but all the flabbiness has dropped from him; gone too is his pomposity; his eye is clear, brown his skin; he could leap a gate. In his hands he carries an island-made concertina, and such is the exuberance of his spirits that, as he lights on the floor, he bursts into music and song, something about his being a chickety chickety chick chick, and will Tweeny please to tell him whose chickety chick is she. Retribution follows sharp. We hear a whir, as if from insufficiently oiled machinery, and over the passage door appears a placard showing the one word 'Silence.' His lordship stops, and steals to Tweeny on his tiptoes. LORD LOAM. I thought the Gov. was out. TWEENY. Well, you see he ain't. And if he were to catch you here idling-- (LORD LOAM pales. He lays aside his musical instrument and hurriedly dons an apron. TWEENY gives him the bird to pluck, and busies herself laying the table for dinner.) LORD LOAM (softly). What is he doing now? TWEENY. I think he's working out that plan for laying on hot and cold. LORD LOAM (proud of his master). And he'll manage it too. The man who could build a blacksmith's forge without tools-- TWEENY (not less proud). He made the tools. LORD LOAM. Out of half a dozen rusty nails. The saw-mill, Tweeny; the speaking-tube; the electric lighting; and look at the use he has made of the bits of the yacht that were washed ashore. And all in two years. He's a master I'm proud to pluck for. (He chirps happily at his work, and she regards him curiously.) TWEENY. Daddy, you're of little use, but you're a bright, cheerful creature to have about the house. (He beams at this commendation.) Do you ever think of old times now? We was a bit different. LORD LOAM (pausing). Circumstances alter cases. (He resumes his plucking contentedly.) TWEENY. But, Daddy, if the chance was to come of getting back? LORD LOAM. I have given up bothering about it. TWEENY. You bothered that day long ago when we saw a ship passing the island. How we all ran like crazy folk into the water, Daddy, and screamed and held out our arms. (They are both a little agitated.) But it sailed away, and we've never seen another. LORD LOAM. If we had had the electrical contrivance we have now we could have attracted that ship's notice. (Their eyes rest on a mysterious apparatus that fills a corner of the hall.) A touch on that lever, Tweeny, and in a few moments bonfires would be blazing all round the shore. TWEENY (backing from the lever as if it might spring at her). It's the most wonderful thing he has done. LORD LOAM (in a reverie). And then--England--home! TWEENY (also seeing visions). London of a Saturday night! LORD LOAM. My lords, in rising once more to address this historic chamber-- TWEENY. There was a little ham and beef shop off the Edgware Road--(The visions fade; they return to the practical.) LORD LOAM. Tweeny, do you think I could have an egg to my tea? (At this moment a wiry, athletic figure in skins darkens the window. He is carrying two pails, which are suspended from a pole on his shoulder, and he is ERNEST. We should say that he is ERNEST completely changed if we were of those who hold that people change. As he enters by the window he has heard LORD LOAM's appeal, and is perhaps justifiably indignant.) ERNEST. What is that about an egg? Why should you have an egg? LORD LOAM (with hauteur). That is my affair, sir. (With a Parthian shot as he withdraws stiffly from the room.) The Gov. has never put my head in a bucket. ERNEST (coming to rest on one of his buckets, and speaking with excusable pride. To TWEENY). Nor mine for nearly three months. It was only last week, Tweeny, that he said to me, 'Ernest, the water cure has worked marvels in you, and I question whether I shall require to dip you any more.' (Complacently.) Of course that sort of thing encourages a fellow. TWEENY (who has now arranged the dinner table to her satisfaction). I will say, Erny, I never seen a young chap more improved. ERNEST (gratified). Thank you, Tweeny, that's very precious to me. (She retires to the fire to work the great bellows with her foot, and ERNEST turns to TREHERNE, who has come in looking more like a cow-boy than a clergyman. He has a small box in his hand which he tries to conceal.) What have you got there, John? TREHERNE. Don't tell anybody. It is a little present for the Gov.; a set of razors. One for each day in the week. ERNEST (opening the box and examining its contents.) Shells! He'll like that. He likes sets of things. TREHERNE (in a guarded voice). Have you noticed that? ERNEST. Rather. TREHERNE. He's becoming a bit magnificent in his ideas. ERNEST (huskily). John, it sometimes gives me the creeps. TREHERNE (making sure that TWEENY is out of hearing). What do you think of that brilliant robe he got the girls to make for him. ERNEST (uncomfortably). I think he looks too regal in it. TREHERNE. Regal! I sometimes fancy that that's why he's so fond of wearing it. (Practically.) Well, I must take these down to the grindstone and put an edge on them. ERNEST (button-holing him). I say, John, I want a word with you. TREHERNE. Well? ERNEST (become suddenly diffident). Dash it all, you know, you're a clergyman. TREHERNE. One of the best things the Gov. has done is to insist that none of you forget it. ERNEST (taking his courage in his hands). Then--would you, John? TREHERNE. What? ERNEST (wistfully). Officiate at a marriage ceremony, John? TREHERNE (slowly). Now, that's really odd. ERNEST. Odd? Seems to me it's natural. And whatever is natural, John, is right. TREHERNE. I mean that same question has been put to me today already. ERNEST (eagerly). By one of the women? TREHERNE. Oh no; they all put it to me long ago. This was by the Gov. himself. ERNEST. By Jove! (Admiringly.) I say, John, what an observant beggar he is. TREHERNE. Ah! You fancy he was thinking of you? ERNEST. I do not hesitate to affirm, John, that he has seen the love-light in my eyes. You answered-- TREHERNE. I said Yes, I thought it would be my duty to officiate if called upon. ERNEST. You're a brick. TREHERNE (still pondering). But I wonder whether he was thinking of you? ERNEST. Make your mind easy about that. TREHERNE. Well, my best wishes. Agatha is a very fine girl. ERNEST. Agatha? What made you think it was Agatha? TREHERNE. Man alive, you told me all about it soon after we were wrecked. ERNEST. Pooh! Agatha's all very well in her way, John, but I'm flying at bigger game. TREHERNE. Ernest, which is it? ERNEST. Tweeny, of course. TREHERNE. Tweeny? (Reprovingly.) Ernest, I hope her cooking has nothing to do with this. ERNEST (with dignity). Her cooking has very little to do with it. TREHERNE. But does she return your affection. ERNEST (simply). Yes, John, I believe I may say so. I am unworthy of her, but I think I have touched her heart. TREHERNE (with a sigh). Some people seem to have all the luck. As you know, Catherine won't look at me. ERNEST. I'm sorry, John. TREHERNE. It's my deserts; I'm a second eleven sort of chap. Well, my heartiest good wishes, Ernest. ERNEST. Thank you, John. How's the little black pig to-day? TREHERNE (departing). He has begun to eat again. (After a moment's reflection ERNEST calls to TWEENY.) ERNEST. Are you very busy, Tweeny? TWEENY (coming to him good-naturedly). There's always work to do; but if you want me, Ernest-- ERNEST. There's something I should like to say to you if you could spare me a moment. TWEENY. Willingly. What is it? ERNEST. What an ass I used to be, Tweeny. TWEENY (tolerantly). Oh, let bygones be bygones. ERNEST (sincerely, and at his very best). I'm no great shakes even now. But listen to this, Tweeny; I have known many women, but until I knew you I never knew any woman. TWEENY (to whose uneducated ears this sounds dangerously like an epigram). Take care--the bucket. ERNEST (hurriedly). I didn't mean it in that way. (He goes chivalrously on his knees.) Ah, Tweeny, I don't undervalue the bucket, but what I want to say now is that the sweet refinement of a dear girl has done more for me than any bucket could do. TWEENY (with large eyes). Are you offering to walk out with me, Erny? ERNEST (passionately). More than that. I want to build a little house for you--in the sunny glade down by Porcupine Creek. I want to make chairs for you and tables; and knives and forks, and a sideboard for you. TWEENY (who is fond of language). I like to hear you. (Eyeing him.) Would there be any one in the house except myself, Ernest? ERNEST (humbly). Not often; but just occasionally there would be your adoring husband. TWEENY (decisively). It won't do, Ernest. ERNEST (pleading). It isn't as if I should be much there. TWEENY. I know, I know; but I don't love you, Ernest. I'm that sorry. ERNEST (putting his case cleverly). Twice a week I should be away altogether--at the dam. On the other days you would never see me from breakfast time to supper. (With the self-abnegation of the true lover.) If you like I'll even go fishing on Sundays. TWEENY. It's no use, Erny. ERNEST (rising manfully). Thank you, Tweeny; it can't be helped. (Then he remembers.) Tweeny, we shall be disappointing the Gov. TWEENY (with a sinking). What's that? ERNEST. He wanted us to marry. TWEENY (blankly). You and me? the Gov.! (Her head droops woefully. From without is heard the whistling of a happier spirit, and TWEENY draws herself up fiercely.) That's her; that's the thing what has stole his heart from me. (A stalwart youth appears at the window, so handsome and tingling with vitality that, glad to depose CRICHTON, we cry thankfully, 'The Hero at last.' But it is not the hero; it is the heroine. This splendid boy, clad in skins, is what nature has done for LADY MARY. She carries bow and arrows and a blow-pipe, and over her shoulder is a fat buck, which she drops with a cry of triumph. Forgetting to enter demurely, she leaps through the window.) (Sourly.) Drat you, Polly, why don't you wipe your feet? LADY MARY (good-naturedly). Come, Tweeny, be nice to me. It's a splendid buck. (But TWEENY shakes her off, and retires to the kitchen fire.) ERNEST. Where did you get it? LADY MARY (gaily). I sighted a herd near Penguin's Creek, but had to creep round Silver Lake to get to windward of them. However, they spotted me and then the fun began. There was nothing for it but to try and run them down, so I singled out a fat buck and away we went down the shore of the lake, up the valley of rolling stones; he doubled into Brawling River and took to the water, but I swam after him; the river is only half a mile broad there, but it runs strong. He went spinning down the rapids, down I went in pursuit; he clambered ashore, I clambered ashore; away we tore helter-skelter up the hill and down again. I lost him in the marshes, got on his track again near Bread Fruit Wood, and brought him down with an arrow in Firefly Grove. TWEENY (staring at her). Aren't you tired? LADY MARY. Tired! It was gorgeous. (She runs up a ladder and deposits her weapons on the joists. She is whistling again.) TWEENY (snapping). I can't abide a woman whistling. LADY MARY (indifferently). I like it. TWEENY (stamping her foot). Drop it, Polly, I tell you. LADY MARY (stung). I won't. I'm as good as you are. (They are facing each other defiantly.) ERNEST (shocked). Is this necessary? Think how it would pain him. (LADY MARY's eyes take a new expression. We see them soft for the first time.) LADY MARY (contritely). Tweeny, I beg your pardon. If my whistling annoys you, I shall try to cure myself of it. (Instead of calming TWEENY, this floods her face in tears.) Why, how can that hurt you, Tweeny dear? TWEENY. Because I can't make you lose your temper. LADY MARY (divinely). Indeed, I often do. Would that I were nicer to everybody. TWEENY. There you are again. (Wistfully.) What makes you want to be so nice, Polly? LADY MARY (with fervour). Only thankfulness, Tweeny. (She exults.) It is such fun to be alive. (So also seem to think CATHERINE and AGATHA, who bounce in with fishing-rods and creel. They, too, are in manly attire.) CATHERINE. We've got some ripping fish for the Gov.'s dinner. Are we in time? We ran all the way. TWEENY (tartly). You'll please to cook them yourself, Kitty, and look sharp about it. (She retires to her hearth, where AGATHA follows her.) AGATHA (yearning). Has the Gov. decided who is to wait upon him to-day? CATHERINE (who is cleaning her fish). It's my turn. AGATHA (hotly). I don't see that. TWEENY (with bitterness). It's to be neither of you, Aggy; he wants Polly again. (LADY MARY is unable to resist a joyous whistle.) AGATHA (jealously). Polly, you toad. (But they cannot make LADY MARY angry.) TWEENY (storming). How dare you look so happy? LADY MARY (willing to embrace her). I wish, Tweeny, there was anything I could do to make you happy also. TWEENY. Me! Oh, I'm happy. (She remembers ERNEST, whom it is easy to forget on an island.) I've just had a proposal, I tell you. (LADY MARY is shaken at last, and her sisters with her.) AGATHA. A proposal? CATHERINE (going white). Not--not--(She dare not say his name.) ERNEST (with singular modesty). You needn't be alarmed; it's only me. LADY MARY (relieved). Oh, you! AGATHA (happy again). Ernest, you dear, I got such a shock. CATHERINE. It was only Ernest. (Showing him her fish in thankfulness.) They are beautifully fresh; come and help me to cook them. ERNEST (with simple dignity). Do you mind if I don't cook fish to-night? (She does not mind in the least. They have all forgotten him. A lark is singing in three hearts.) I think you might all be a little sorry for a chap. (But they are not even sorry, and he addresses AGATHA in these winged words:) I'm particularly disappointed in you, Aggy; seeing that I was half engaged to you, I think you might have had the good feeling to be a little more hurt. AGATHA. Oh, bother. ERNEST (summing up the situation in so far as it affects himself). I shall now go and lie down for a bit. (He retires coldly but unregretted. LADY MARY approaches TWEENY with her most insinuating smile.) LADY MARY. Tweeny, as the Gov. has chosen me to wait on him, please may I have the loan of it again? (The reference made with such charming delicacy is evidently to TWEENY's skirt.) TWEENY (doggedly). No, you mayn't. AGATHA (supporting TWEENY). Don't you give it to her. LADY MARY (still trying sweet persuasion). You know quite well that he prefers to be waited on in a skirt. TWEENY. I don't care. Get one for yourself. LADY MARY. It is the only one on the island. TWEENY. And it's mine. LADY MARY (an aristocrat after all). Tweeny, give me that skirt directly. CATHERINE. Don't. TWEENY. I won't. LADY MARY (clearing for action). I shall make you. TWEENY. I should like to see you try. (An unseemly fracas appears to be inevitable, but something happens. The whir is again heard, and the notice is displayed 'Dogs delight to bark and bite.' Its effect is instantaneous and cheering. The ladies look at each other guiltily and immediately proceed on tiptoe to their duties. These are all concerned with the master's dinner. CATHERINE attends to his fish. AGATHA fills a quaint toast-rack and brings the menu, which is written on a shell. LADY MARY twists a wreath of green leaves around her head, and places a flower beside the master's plate. TWEENY signs that all is ready, and she and the younger sisters retire into the kitchen, drawing the screen that separates it from the rest of the room. LADY MARY beats a tom-tom, which is the dinner bell. She then gently works a punkah, which we have not hitherto observed, and stands at attention. No doubt she is in hopes that the Gov. will enter into conversation with her, but she is too good a parlour-maid to let her hopes appear in her face. We may watch her manner with complete approval. There is not one of us who would not give her L26 a year. The master comes in quietly, a book in his hand, still the only book on the island, for he has not thought it worth while to build a printing-press. His dress is not noticeably different from that of the others, the skins are similar, but perhaps these are a trifle more carefully cut or he carries them better. One sees somehow that he has changed for his evening meal. There is an odd suggestion of a dinner jacket about his doeskin coat. It is, perhaps, too grave a face for a man of thirty-two, as if he were over much immersed in affairs, yet there is a sunny smile left to lighten it at times and bring back its youth; perhaps too intellectual a face to pass as strictly handsome, not sufficiently suggestive of oats. His tall figure is very straight, slight rather than thick-set, but nobly muscular. His big hands, firm and hard with labour though they be, are finely shaped--note the fingers so much more tapered, the nails better tended than those of his domestics; they are one of many indications that he is of a superior breed. Such signs, as has often been pointed out, are infallible. A romantic figure, too. One can easily see why the women-folks of this strong man's house both adore and fear him. He does not seem to notice who is waiting on him to-night, but inclines his head slightly to whoever it is, as she takes her place at the back of his chair. LADY MARY respectfully places the menu-shell before him, and he glances at it.) CRICHTON. Clear, please. (LADY MARY knocks on the screen, and a serving hutch in it opens, through which TWEENY offers two soup plates. LADY MARY selects the clear, and the aperture is closed. She works the punkah while the master partakes of the soup.) CRICHTON (who always gives praise where it is due). An excellent soup, Polly, but still a trifle too rich. LADY MARY. Thank you. (The next course is the fish, and while it is being passed through the hutch we have a glimpse of three jealous women. LADY MARY'S movements are so deft and noiseless that any observant spectator can see that she was born to wait at table.) CRICHTON (unbending as he eats). Polly, you are a very smart girl. LADY MARY (bridling, but naturally gratified). La! CRICHTON (smiling). And I'm not the first you've heard it from, I'll swear. LADY MARY (wriggling). Oh God! CRICHTON. Got any followers on the island, Polly? LADY MARY (tossing her head). Certainly not. CRICHTON. I thought that perhaps John or Ernest-- LADY MARY (tilting her nose). I don't say that it's for want of asking. CRICHTON (emphatically). I'm sure it isn't. (Perhaps he thinks he has gone too far.) You may clear. (Flushed with pleasure, she puts before him a bird and vegetables, sees that his beaker is fitted with wine, and returns to the punkah. She would love to continue their conversation, but it is for him to decide. For a time he seems to have forgotten her.) CRICHTON. Did you lose any arrows to-day? LADY MARY. Only one in Firefly Grove. CRICHTON. You were as far as that? How did you get across the Black Gorge? LADY MARY. I went across on the rope. CRICHTON. Hand over hand? LADY MARY (swelling at the implied praise). I wasn't in the least dizzy. CRICHTON (moved). You brave girl! (He sits back in his chair a little agitated.) But never do that again. LADY MARY (pouting). It is such fun, Gov. CRICHTON (decisively). I forbid it. LADY MARY (the little rebel). I shall. CRICHTON (surprised). Polly! (He signs to her sharply to step forward, but for a moment she holds back petulantly, and even when she does come it is less obediently than like a naughty, sulky child. Nevertheless, with the forbearance that is characteristic of the man, he addresses her with grave gentleness rather than severely.) You must do as I tell you, you know. LADY MARY (strangely passionate). I shan't. CRICHTON (smiling at her fury). We shall see. Frown at me, Polly; there, you do it at once. Clench your little fists, stamp your feet, bite your ribbons--(A student of women, or at least of this woman, he knows that she is about to do those things, and thus she seems to do them to order. LADY MARY screws up her face like a baby and cries. He is immediately kind.) You child of nature; was it cruel of me to wish to save you from harm? LADY MARY (drying her eyes). I'm an ungracious wretch. Oh God, I don't try half hard enough to please you. I'm even wearing--(she looks down sadly)--when I know you prefer it. CRICHTON (thoughtfully). I admit I do prefer it. Perhaps I am a little old-fashioned in these matters. (Her tears again threaten.) Ah, don't, Polly; that's nothing. LADY MARY. If I could only please you, Gov. CRICHTON (slowly). You do please me, child, very much--(he half rises)--very much indeed. (If he meant to say more he checks himself. He looks at his plate.) No more, thank you. (The simple island meal is ended, save for the walnuts and the wine, and CRICHTON is too busy a man to linger long over them. But he is a stickler for etiquette, end the table is cleared charmingly, though with dispatch, before they are placed before him. LADY MARY is an artist with the crumb-brush, and there are few arts more delightful to watch. Dusk has come sharply, and she turns on the electric light. It awakens CRICHTON from a reverie in which he has been regarding her.) CRICHTON. Polly, there is only one thing about you that I don't quite like. (She looks up, making a moue, if that can be said of one who so well knows her place. He explains.) That action of the hands. LADY MARY. What do I do? CRICHTON. So--like one washing them. I have noticed that the others tend to do it also. It seems odd. LADY MARY (archly). Oh Gov., have you forgotten? CRICHTON. What? LADY MARY. That once upon a time a certain other person did that. CRICHTON (groping). You mean myself? (She nods, and he shudders.) Horrible! LADY MARY (afraid she has hurt him). You haven't for a very long time. Perhaps it is natural to servants. CRICHTON. That must be it. (He rises.) Polly! (She looks up expectantly, but he only sighs and turns away.) LADY MARY (gently). You sighed, Gov. CRICHTON. Did I? I was thinking. (He paces the room and then turns to her agitatedly, yet with control over his agitation. There is some mournfulness in his voice.) I have always tried to do the right thing on this island. Above all, Polly, I want to do the right thing by you. LADY MARY (with shining eyes). How we all trust you. That is your reward, Gov. CRICHTON (who is having a fight with himself). And now I want a greater reward. Is it fair to you? Am I playing the game? Bill Crichton would like always to play the game. If we were in England--(He pauses so long that she breaks in softly.) LADY MARY. We know now that we shall never see England again. CRICHTON. I am thinking of two people whom neither of us has seen for a long time--Lady Mary Lasenby, and one Crichton, a butler. (He says the last word bravely, a word he once loved, though it is the most horrible of all words to him now.) LADY MARY. That cold, haughty, insolent girl. Gov., look around you and forget them both. CRICHTON. I had nigh forgotten them. He has had a chance, Polly--that butler--in these two years of becoming a man, and he has tried to take it. There have been many failures, but there has been some success, and with it I have let the past drop off me, and turned my back on it. That butler seems a far-away figure to me now, and not myself. I hail him, but we scarce know each other. If I am to bring him back it can only be done by force, for in my soul he is now abhorrent to me. But if I thought it best for you I'd haul him back; I swear as an honest man, I would bring him back with all his obsequious ways and deferential airs, and let you see the man you call your Gov. melt for ever into him who was your servant. LADY MARY (shivering). You hurt me. You say these things, but you say them like a king. To me it is the past that was not real. CRICHTON (too grandly). A king! I sometimes feel--(For a moment the yellow light gleams in his green eyes. We remember suddenly what TREHERNE and ERNEST said about his regal look. He checks himself.) I say it harshly, it is so hard to say, and all the time there is another voice within me crying--(He stops.) LADY MARY (trembling but not afraid). If it is the voice of nature-- CRICHTON (strongly). I know it to be the voice of nature. LADY MARY (in a whisper). Then, if you want to say it very much, Gov., please say it to Polly Lasenby. CRICHTON (again in the grip of an idea). A king! Polly, some people hold that the soul but leaves one human tenement for another, and so lives on through all the ages. I have occasionally thought of late that, in some past existence, I may have been a king. It has all come to me so naturally, not as if I had had to work it out, but-as-if-I-remembered. 'Or ever the knightly years were gone, With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave.' It may have been; you hear me, it may have been. LADY MARY (who is as one fascinated). It may have been. CRICHTON. I am lord over all. They are but hewers of wood and drawers of water for me. These shores are mine. Why should I hesitate; I have no longer any doubt. I do believe I am doing the right thing. Dear Polly, I have grown to love you; are you afraid to mate with me? (She rocks her arms; no words will come from her.) 'I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave.' LADY MARY (bewitched). You are the most wonderful man I have ever known, and I am not afraid. (He takes her to him reverently. Presently he is seated, and she is at his feet looking up adoringly in his face. As the tension relaxes she speaks with a smile.) I want you to tell me--every woman likes to know--when was the first time you thought me nicer than the others? CRICHTON (who, like all big men, is simple). I think a year ago. We were chasing goats on the Big Slopes, and you out-distanced us all; you were the first of our party to run a goat down; I was proud of you that day. LADY MARY (blushing with pleasure). Oh Gov., I only did it to please you. Everything I have done has been out of the desire to please you. (Suddenly anxious.) If I thought that in taking a wife from among us you were imperilling your dignity-- CRICHTON (perhaps a little masterful). Have no fear of that, dear. I have thought it all out. The wife, Polly, always takes the same position as the husband. LADY MARY. But I am so unworthy. It was sufficient to me that I should be allowed to wait on you at that table. CRICHTON. You shall wait on me no longer. At whatever table I sit, Polly, you shall soon sit there also. (Boyishly.) Come, let us try what it will be like. LADY MARY. As your servant at your feet. CRICHTON. No, as my consort by my side. (They are sitting thus when the hatch is again opened and coffee offered. But LADY MARY is no longer there to receive it. Her sisters peep through in consternation. In vain they rattle the cup and saucer. AGATHA brings the coffee to CRICHTON.) CRICHTON (forgetting for the moment that it is not a month hence). Help your mistress first, girl. (Three women are bereft of speech, but he does not notice it. He addresses CATHERINE vaguely.) Are you a good girl, Kitty? CATHERINE (when she finds her tongue). I try to be, Gov. CRICHTON (still more vaguely). That's right. (He takes command of himself again, and signs to them to sit down. ERNEST comes in cheerily, but finding CRICHTON here is suddenly weak. He subsides on a chair, wondering what has happened.) CRICHTON (surveying him). Ernest. (ERNEST rises.) You are becoming a little slovenly in your dress, Ernest; I don't like it. ERNEST (respectfully). Thank you. (ERNEST sits again. DADDY and TREHERNE arrive.) CRICHTON. Daddy, I want you. LORD LOAM (with a sinking). Is it because I forgot to clean out the dam? CRICHTON (encouragingly). No, no. (He pours some wine into a goblet.) A glass of wine with you, Daddy. LORD LOAM (hastily). Your health, Gov. (He is about to drink, but the master checks him.) CRICHTON. And hers. Daddy, this lady has done me the honour to promise to be my wife. LORD LOAM (astounded). Polly! CRICHTON (a little perturbed). I ought first to have asked your consent. I deeply regret--but nature; may I hope I have your approval? LORD LOAM. May you, Gov.? (Delighted.) Rather! Polly! (He puts his proud arms round her.) TREHERNE. We all congratulate you, Gov., most heartily. ERNEST. Long life to you both, sir. (There is much shaking of hands, all of which is sincere.) TREHERNE. When will it be, Gov.? CRICHTON (after turning to LADY MARY, who whispers to him). As soon as the bridal skirt can be prepared. (His manner has been most indulgent, and without the slightest suggestion of patronage. But he knows it is best for all that he should keep his place, and that his presence hampers them.) My friends, I thank you for your good wishes, I thank you all. And now, perhaps you would like me to leave you to yourselves. Be joyous. Let there be song and dance to-night. Polly, I shall take my coffee in the parlour--you understand. (He retires with pleasant dignity. Immediately there is a rush of two girls at LADY MARY.) LADY MARY. Oh, oh! Father, they are pinching me. LORD LOAM (taking her under his protection). Agatha, Catherine, never presume to pinch your sister again. On the other hand, she may pinch you henceforth as much as ever she chooses. (In the meantime TWEENY is weeping softly, and the two are not above using her as a weapon.) CATHERINE. Poor Tweeny, it's a shame. AGATHA. After he had almost promised you. TWEENY (loyally turning on them). No, he never did. He was always honourable as could be. 'Twas me as was too vulgar. Don't you dare say a word agin that man. ERNEST (to LORD LOAM). You'll get a lot of tit-bits out of this, Daddy. LORD LOAM. That's what I was thinking. ERNEST (plunged in thought). I dare say I shall have to clean out the dam now. LORD LOAM (heartlessly). I dare say. (His gay old heart makes him again proclaim that he is a chickety chick. He seizes the concertina.) TREHERNE (eagerly). That's the proper spirit. (He puts his arm round CATHERINE, and in another moment they are all dancing to Daddy's music. Never were people happier on an island. A moment's pause is presently created by the return of CRICHTON, wearing the wonderful robe of which we have already had dark mention. Never has he looked more regal, never perhaps felt so regal. We need not grudge him the one foible of his rule, for it is all coming to an end.) CRICHTON (graciously, seeing them hesitate). No, no; I am delighted to see you all so happy. Go on. TREHERNE. We don't like to before you, Gov. CRICHTON (his last order). It is my wish. (The merrymaking is resumed, and soon CRICHTON himself joins in the dance. It is when the fun is at its fastest and most furious that all stop abruptly as if turned to stone. They have heard the boom of a gun. Presently they are alive again. ERNEST leaps to the window.) TREHERNE (huskily). It was a ship's gun. (They turn to CRICHTON for confirmation; even in that hour they turn to CRICHTON.) Gov.? CRICHTON. Yes. (In another moment LADY MARY and LORD LOAM are alone.) LADY MARY (seeing that her father is unconcerned). Father, you heard. LORD LOAM (placidly). Yes, my child. LADY MARY (alarmed by his unnatural calmness). But it was a gun, father. LORD LOAM (looking an old man now, and shuddering a little). Yes--a gun--I have often heard it. It's only a dream, you know; why don't we go on dancing? (She takes his hands, which have gone cold.) LADY MARY. Father. Don't you see, they have all rushed down to the beach? Come. LORD LOAM. Rushed down to the beach; yes, always that--I often dream it. LADY MARY. Come, father, come. LORD LOAM. Only a dream, my poor girl. (CRICHTON returns. He is pale but firm.) CRICHTON. We can see lights within a mile of the shore--a great ship. LORD LOAM. A ship--always a ship. LADY MARY. Father, this is no dream. LORD LOAM (looking timidly at CRICHTON). It's a dream, isn't it? There's no ship? CRICHTON (soothing him with a touch). You are awake, Daddy, and there is a ship. LORD LOAM (clutching him). You are not deceiving me? CRICHTON. It is the truth. LORD LOAM (reeling). True?--a ship--at last! (He goes after the others pitifully.) CRICHTON (quietly). There is a small boat between it and the island; they must have sent it ashore for water. LADY MART. Coming in? CRICHTON. No. That gun must have been a signal to recall it. It is going back. They can't hear our cries. LADY MARY (pressing her temples). Going away. So near--so near. (Almost to herself.) I think I'm glad. CRICHTON (cheerily). Have no fear. I shall bring them back. (He goes towards the table on which is the electrical apparatus.) LADY MARY (standing on guard as it were between him and the table). What are you going to do? CRICHTON. To fire the beacons. LADY MARY. Stop! (She faces him.) Don't you see what it means? CRICHTON (firmly). It means that our life on the island has come to a natural end. LADY MARY (husky). Gov., let the ship go-- CRICHTON. The old man--you saw what it means to him. LADY MARY. But I am afraid. CRICHTON (adoringly). Dear Polly. LADY MARY. Gov., let the ship go. CRICHTON (she clings to him, but though it is his death sentence he loosens her hold). Bill Crichton has got to play the game. (He pulls the levers. Soon through the window one of the beacons is seen flaring red. There is a long pause. Shouting is heard. ERNEST is the first to arrive.) ERNEST. Polly, Gov., the boat has turned back. They are English sailors; they have landed! We are rescued, I tell you, rescued! LADY MARY (wanly). Is it anything to make so great a to-do about? ERNEST (staring). Eh? LADY MARY. Have we not been happy here? ERNEST. Happy? Lord, yes. LADY MARY (catching hold of his sleeve). Ernest, we must never forget all that the Gov. has done for us. ERNEST (stoutly). Forget it? The man who could forget it would be a selfish wretch and a--But I say, this makes a difference! LADY MARY (quickly). No, it doesn't. ERNEST (his mind tottering). A mighty difference! (The others come running in, some weeping with joy, others boisterous. We see blue-jackets gazing through the window at the curious scene. LORD LOAM comes accompanied by a naval officer, whom he is continually shaking by the hand.) LORD LOAM. And here, sir, is our little home. Let me thank you in the name of us all, again and again and again. OFFICER. Very proud, my lord. It is indeed an honour to have been able to assist so distinguished a gentleman as Lord Loam. LORD LOAM. A glorious, glorious day. I shall show you our other room. Come, my pets. Come, Crichton. (He has not meant to be cruel. He does not know he has said it. It is the old life that has come back to him. They all go. All leave CRICHTON except LADY MARY.) LADY MARY (stretching out her arms to him). Dear Gov., I will never give you up. (There is a salt smile on his face as he shakes his head to her. He lets the cloak slip to the ground. She will not take this for an answer; again her arms go out to him. Then comes the great renunciation. By an effort of will he ceases to be an erect figure; he has the humble bearing of a servant. His hands come together as if he were washing them.) CRICHTON (it is the speech of his life). My lady. (She goes away. There is none to salute him now, unless we do it.) End of Act III. Some months have elapsed, and we have again the honour of waiting upon Lord Loam in his London home. It is the room of the first act, but with a new scheme of decoration, for on the walls are exhibited many interesting trophies from the island, such as skins, stuffed birds, and weapons of the chase, labelled 'Shot by Lord Loam,' 'Hon. Ernest Woolley's Blowpipe' etc. There are also two large glass cases containing other odds and ends, including, curiously enough, the bucket in which Ernest was first dipped, but there is no label calling attention to the incident. It is not yet time to dress for dinner, and his lordship is on a couch, hastily yet furtively cutting the pages of a new book. With him are his two younger daughters and his nephew, and they also are engaged in literary pursuits; that is to say, the ladies are eagerly but furtively reading the evening papers, of which Ernest is sitting complacently but furtively on an endless number, and doling them out as called for. Note the frequent use of the word 'furtive.' It implies that they do not wish to be discovered by their butler, say, at their otherwise delightful task. AGATHA (reading aloud, with emphasis on the wrong words'). 'In conclusion, we most heartily congratulate the Hon. Ernest Woolley. This book of his, regarding the adventures of himself and his brave companions on a desert isle, stirs the heart like a trumpet.' (Evidently the book referred to is the one in LORD LOAM'S hands.) ERNEST (handing her a pink paper). Here is another. CATHERINE (reading). 'From the first to the last of Mr. Woolley's engrossing pages it is evident that he was an ideal man to be wrecked with, and a true hero.' (Large-eyed.) Ernest! ERNEST (calmly). That's how it strikes them, you know. Here's another one. AGATHA (reading). 'There are many kindly references to the two servants who were wrecked with the family, and Mr. Woolley pays the butler a glowing tribute in a footnote.' (Some one coughs uncomfortably.) LORD LOAM (who has been searching the index for the letter L). Excellent, excellent. At the same time I must say, Ernest, that the whole book is about yourself. ERNEST (genially). As the author-- LORD LOAM. Certainly, certainly. Still, you know, as a peer of the realm--(with dignity)--I think, Ernest, you might have given me one of your adventures. ERNEST. I say it was you who taught us how to obtain a fire by rubbing two pieces of stick together. LORD LOAM (beaming). Do you, do you? I call that very handsome. What page? (Here the door opens, and the well-bred CRICHTON enters with the evening papers as subscribed for by the house. Those we have already seen have perhaps been introduced by ERNEST up his waistcoat. Every one except the intruder is immediately self-conscious, and when he withdraws there is a general sigh of relief. They pounce on the new papers. ERNEST evidently gets a shock from one, which he casts contemptuously on the floor.) AGATHA (more fortunate). Father, see page 81. 'It was a tiger-cat,' says Mr. Woolley, 'of the largest size. Death stared Lord Loam in the face, but he never flinched.' LORD LOAM (searching his book eagerly). Page 81. AGATHA. 'With presence of mind only equalled by his courage, he fixed an arrow in his bow.' LORD LOAM. Thank you, Ernest; thank you, my boy. AGATHA. 'Unfortunately he missed.' LORD LOAM. Eh? AGATHA. 'But by great good luck I heard his cries'-- LORD LOAM. My cries? AGATHA.--'and rushing forward with drawn knife, I stabbed the monster to the heart.' (LORD LOAM shuts his book with a pettish slam. There might be a scene here were it not that CRICHTON reappears and goes to one of the glass cases. All are at once on the alert and his lordship is particularly sly.) LORD LOAM. Anything in the papers, Catherine? CATHERINE. No, father, nothing--nothing at all. ERNEST (it pops out as of yore). The papers! The papers are guides that tell us what we ought to do, and then we don't do it. (CRICHTON having opened the glass case has taken out the bucket, and ERNEST, looking round for applause, sees him carrying it off and is undone. For a moment of time he forgets that he is no longer on the island, and with a sigh he is about to follow CRICHTON and the bucket to a retired spot. The door closes, and ERNEST comes to himself.) LORD LOAM (uncomfortably). I told him to take it away. ERNEST. I thought--(he wipes his brow)--I shall go and dress. (He goes.) CATHERINE. Father, it's awful having Crichton here. It's like living on tiptoe. LORD LOAM (gloomily). While he is here we are sitting on a volcano. AGATHA. How mean of you! I am sure he has only stayed on with us to--to help us through. It would have looked so suspicious if he had gone at once. CATHERINE (revelling in the worst) But suppose Lady Brocklehurst were to get at him and pump him. She's the most terrifying, suspicious old creature in England; and Crichton simply can't tell a lie. LORD LOAM. My dear, that is the volcano to which I was referring. (He has evidently something to communicate.) It's all Mary's fault. She said to me yesterday that she would break her engagement with Brocklehurst unless I told him about--you know what. (All conjure up the vision of CRICHTON.) AGATHA. Is she mad? LORD LOAM. She calls it common honesty. CATHERINE. Father, have you told him? LORD LOAM (heavily). She thinks I have, but I couldn't. She's sure to find out to-night. (Unconsciously he leans on the island concertina, which he has perhaps been lately showing to an interviewer as something he made for TWEENY. It squeaks, and they all jump.) CATHERINE. It's like a bird of ill-omen. LORD LOAM (vindictively). I must have it taken away; it has done that twice. (LADY MARY comes in. She is in evening dress. Undoubtedly she meant to sail in, but she forgets, and despite her garments it is a manly entrance. She is properly ashamed of herself. She tries again, and has an encouraging success. She indicates to her sisters that she wishes to be alone with papa.) AGATHA. All right, but we know what it's about. Come along, Kit. (They go. LADY MARY thoughtlessly sits like a boy, and again corrects herself. She addresses her father, but he is in a brown study, and she seeks to draw his attention by whistling. This troubles them both.) LADY MARY. How horrid of me! LORD LOAM (depressed). If you would try to remember-- LADY MARY (sighing). I do; but there are so many things to remember. LORD LOAM (sympathetically). There are--(in a whisper). Do you know, Mary, I constantly find myself secreting hairpins. LADY MARY. I find it so difficult to go up steps one at a time. LORD LOAM. I was dining with half a dozen members of our party last Thursday, Mary, and they were so eloquent that I couldn't help wondering all the time how many of their heads he would have put in the bucket. LADY MARY. I use so many of his phrases. And my appetite is so scandalous. Father, I usually have a chop before we sit down to dinner. LORD LOAM. As for my clothes--(wriggling). My dear, you can't think how irksome collars are to me nowadays. LADY MARY. They can't be half such an annoyance, father, as--(She looks dolefully at her skirt.) LORD LOAM (hurriedly). Quite so--quite so. You have dressed early to-night, Mary. LADY MARY. That reminds me; I had a note from Brocklehurst saying that he would come a few minutes before his mother as--as he wanted to have a talk with me. He didn't say what about, but of course we know. (His lordship fidgets.) (With feeling.) It was good of you to tell him, father. Oh, it is horrible to me--(covering her face). It seemed so natural at the time. LORD LOAM (petulantly). Never again make use of that word in this house, Mary. LADY MARY (with an effort). Father, Brocklehurst has been so loyal to me for these two years that I should despise myself were I to keep my--my extraordinary lapse from him. Had Brocklehurst been a little less good, then you need not have told him my strange little secret. LORD LOAM (weakly). Polly--I mean Mary--it was all Crichton's fault, he-- LADY MARY (with decision). No, father, no; not a word against him though. I haven't the pluck to go on with it; I can't even understand how it ever was. Father, do you not still hear the surf? Do you see the curve of the beach? LORD LOAM. I have begun to forget--(in a low voice). But they were happy days; there was something magical about them. LADY MARY. It was glamour. Father, I have lived Arabian nights. I have sat out a dance with the evening star. But it was all in a past existence, in the days of Babylon, and I am myself again. But he has been chivalrous always. If the slothful, indolent creature I used to be has improved in any way, I owe it all to him. I am slipping back in many ways, but I am determined not to slip back altogether--in memory of him and his island. That is why I insisted on your telling Brocklehurst. He can break our engagement if he chooses. (Proudly.) Mary Lasenby is going to play the game. LORD LOAM. But my dear-- (LORD BROCKLEHURST is announced.) LADY MARY (meaningly). Father, dear, oughtn't you to be dressing? LORD LOAM (very unhappy). The fact is--before I go--I want to say-- LORD BROCKLEHURST. Loam, if you don't mind, I wish very specially to have a word with Mary before dinner. LORD LOAM. But-- LADY MARY. Yes, father. (She induces him to go, and thus courageously faces LORD BROCKLEHURST to hear her fate.) I am ready, George. LORD BROCKLEHURST (who is so agitated that she ought to see he is thinking not of her but of himself). It is a painful matter--I wish I could have spared you this, Mary. LADY MARY. Please go on. LORD BROCKLEHURST. In common fairness, of course, this should be remembered, that two years had elapsed. You and I had no reason to believe that we should ever meet again. (This is more considerate than she had expected.) LADY MARY (softening). I was so lost to the world, George. LORD BROCKLEHURST (with a groan). At the same time, the thing is utterly and absolutely inexcusable-- LADY MARY (recovering her hauteur). Oh! LORD BROCKLEHURST. And so I have already said to mother. LADY MARY (disdaining him). You have told her? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Certainly, Mary, certainly; I tell mother everything. LADY MARY (curling her lip). And what did she say? LORD BROCKLEHURST. To tell the truth, mother rather pooh-poohed the whole affair. LADY MARY (incredulous). Lady Brocklehurst pooh-poohed the whole affair! LORD BROCKLEHURST. She said, 'Mary and I will have a good laugh over this.' LADY MARY (outraged). George, your mother is a hateful, depraved old woman. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mary! LADY MARY (turning away). Laugh indeed, when it will always be such a pain to me. LORD BROCKLEHURST (with strange humility). If only you would let me bear all the pain, Mary. LADY MARY (who is taken aback). George, I think you are the noblest man-- (She is touched, and gives him both her hands. Unfortunately he simpers.) LORD BROCKLEHURST. She was a pretty little thing. (She stares, but he marches to his doom.) Ah, not beautiful like you. I assure you it was the merest flirtation; there were a few letters, but we have got them back. It was all owing to the boat being so late at Calais. You see she had such large, helpless eyes. LADY MARY (fixing him). George, when you lunched with father to-day at the club-- LORD BROCKLEHURST. I didn't. He wired me that he couldn't come. LADY MARY (with a tremor). But he wrote you? LORD BROCKLEHURST. No. LADY MARY (a bird singing in her breast). You haven't seen him since? LORD BROCKLEHURST. No. (She is saved. Is he to be let off also? Not at all. She bears down on him like a ship of war.) LADY MARY. George, who and what is this woman? LORD BROCKLEHURST (cowering). She was--she is--the shame of it--a lady's-maid. LADY MARY (properly horrified). A what? LORD BROCKLEHURST. A lady's-maid. A mere servant, Mary. (LADY MARY whirls round so that he shall not see her face.) I first met her at this house when you were entertaining the servants; so you see it was largely your father's fault. LADY MARY (looking him up and down). A lady's-maid? LORD BROCKLEHURST (degraded). Her name was Fisher. LADY MARY. My maid! LORD BROCKLEHURST (with open hands). Can you forgive me, Mary? LADY MARY. Oh George, George! LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mother urged me not to tell you anything about it; but-- LADY MARY (from her heart). I am so glad you told me. LORD BROCKLEHURST. You see there was nothing wrong in it. LADY MARY (thinking perhaps of another incident). No, indeed. LORD BROCKLEHURST (inclined to simper again). And she behaved awfully well. She quite saw that it was because the boat was late. I suppose the glamour to a girl in service of a man in high position-- LADY MARY. Glamour!--yes, yes, that was it. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mother says that a girl in such circumstances is to be excused if she loses her head. LADY MARY (impulsively). George, I am so sorry if I said anything against your mother. I am sure she is the dearest old thing. LORD BROCKLEHURST (in calm waters at last). Of course for women of our class she has a very different standard. LADY MARY (grown tiny). Of course. LORD BROCKLEHURST. You see, knowing how good a woman she is herself, she was naturally anxious that I should marry some one like her. That is what has made her watch your conduct so jealously, Mary. LADY MARY (hurriedly thinking things out). I know. I--I think, George, that before your mother comes I should like to say a word to father. LORD BROCKLEHURST (nervously). About this? LADY MARY. Oh no; I shan't tell him of this. About something else. LORD BROCKLEHURST. And you do forgive me, Mary? LADY MARY (smiling on him). Yes, yes. I--I am sure the boat was very late, George. LORD BROCKLEHURST (earnestly). It really was. LADY MARY. I am even relieved to know that you are not quite perfect, dear. (She rests her hands on his shoulders. She has a moment of contrition.) George, when we are married, we shall try to be not an entirely frivolous couple, won't we? We must endeavour to be of some little use, dear. LORD BROCKLEHURST (the ass). Noblesse oblige. LADY MARY (haunted by the phrases of a better man). Mary Lasenby is determined to play the game, George. (Perhaps she adds to herself, 'Except just this once.' A kiss closes this episode of the two lovers; and soon after the departure of LADY MARY the COUNTESS OF BROCKLEHURST is announced. She is a very formidable old lady.) LADY BROCKLEHURST. Alone, George? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Mother, I told her all; she has behaved magnificently. LADY BROCKLEHURST (who has not shared his fears). Silly boy. (She casts a supercilious eye on the island trophies.) So these are the wonders they brought back with them. Gone away to dry her eyes, I suppose? LORD BROCKLEHURST (proud of his mate). She didn't cry, mother. LADY BROCKLEHURST. No? (She reflects.) You're quite right. I wouldn't have cried. Cold, icy. Yes, that was it. LORD BROCKLEHURST (who has not often contradicted her). I assure you, mother, that wasn't it at all. She forgave me at once. LADY BROCKLEHURST (opening her eyes sharply to the full). Oh! LORD BROCKLEHURST. She was awfully nice about the boat being late; she even said she was relieved to find that I wasn't quite perfect. LADY BROCKLEHURST (pouncing). She said that? LORD BROCKLEHURST. She really did. LADY BROCKLEHURST. I mean I wouldn't. Now if I had said that, what would have made me say it? (Suspiciously.) George, is Mary all we think her? LORD BROCKLEHURST (with unexpected spirit). If she wasn't, mother, you would know it. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Hold your tongue, boy. We don't really know what happened on that island. LORD BROCKLEHURST. You were reading the book all the morning. LADY BROCKLEHURST. How can I be sure that the book is true? LORD BROCKLEHURST. They all talk of it as true. LADY BROCKLEHURST. How do I know that they are not lying? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Why should they lie? LADY BROCKLEHURST. Why shouldn't they? (She reflects again.) If I had been wrecked on an island, I think it highly probable that I should have lied when I came back. Weren't some servants with them? LORD BROCKLEHURST. Crichton, the butler. (He is surprised to see her ring the bell.) Why, mother, you are not going to-- LADY BROCKLEHURST. Yes, I am. (Pointedly.) George, watch whether Crichton begins any of his answers to my questions with 'The fact is.' LORD BROCKLEHURST. Why? LADY BROCKLEHURST. Because that is usually the beginning of a lie. LORD BROCKLEHURST (as CRICHTON opens the door). Mother, you can't do these things in other people's houses. LADY BROCKLEHURST (coolly, to CRICHTON). It was I who rang. (Surveying him through her eyeglass.) So you were one of the castaways, Crichton? CRICHTON. Yes, my lady. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Delightful book Mr. Woolley has written about your adventures. (CRICHTON bows.) Don't you think so? CRICHTON. I have not read it, my lady. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Odd that they should not have presented you with a copy. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Presumably Crichton is no reader. LADY BROCKLEHURST. By the way, Crichton, were there any books on the island? CRICHTON. I had one, my lady--Henley's poems. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Never heard of him. (CRICHTON again bows.) LADY BROCKLEHURST (who has not heard of him either). I think you were not the only servant wrecked? CRICHTON. There was a young woman, my lady. LADY BROCKLEHURST. I want to see her. (CRICHTON bows, but remains.) Fetch her up. (He goes.) LORD BROCKLEHURST (almost standing up to his mother). This is scandalous. LADY BROCKLEHURST (defining her position). I am a mother. (CATHERINE and AGATHA enter in dazzling confections, and quake in secret to find themselves practically alone with LADY BROCKLEHURST.) (Even as she greets them.) How d'you do, Catherine--Agatha? You didn't dress like this on the island, I expect! By the way, how did you dress? (They have thought themselves prepared, but--) AGATHA. Not--not so well, of course, but quite the same idea. (They are relieved by the arrival of TREHERNE, who is in clerical dress.) LADY BROCKLEHURST. How do you do, Mr. Treherne? There is not so much of you in the book as I had hoped. TREHERNE (modestly). There wasn't very much of me on the island, Lady Brocklehurst. LADY BROCKLEHURST. How d'ye mean? (He shrugs his honest shoulders.) LORD BROCKLEHURST. I hear you have got a living, Treherne. Congratulations. TREHERNE. Thanks. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Is it a good one? TREHERNE. So--so. They are rather weak in bowling, but it's a good bit of turf. (Confidence is restored by the entrance of ERNEST, who takes in the situation promptly, and, of course, knows he is a match for any old lady.) ERNEST (with ease). How do you do, Lady Brocklehurst. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Our brilliant author! ERNEST (impervious to satire). Oh, I don't know. LADY BROCKLEHURST. It is as engrossing, Mr. Woolley, as if it were a work of fiction. ERNEST (suddenly uncomfortable). Thanks, awfully. (Recovering.) The fact is--(He is puzzled by seeing the Brocklehurst family exchange meaning looks.) CATHERINE (to the rescue). Lady Brocklehurst, Mr. Treherne and I--we are engaged. AGATHA. And Ernest and I. LADY BROCKLEHURST (grimly). I see, my dears; thought it wise to keep the island in the family. (An awkward moment this for the entrance of LORD LOAM and LADY MARY, who, after a private talk upstairs, are feeling happy and secure.) LORD LOAM (with two hands for his distinguished guest). Aha! ha, ha! younger than any of them, Emily. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Flatterer. (To LADY MARY.) You seem in high spirits, Mary. LADY MARY (gaily). I am. LADY BROCKLEHURST (with a significant glance at LORD BROCKLEHURST). After-- LADY MARY. I--I mean. The fact is-- (Again that disconcerting glance between the Countess and her son.) LORD LOAM (humorously). She hears wedding bells, Emily, ha, ha! LADY BROCKLEHURST (coldly). Do you, Mary? Can't say I do; but I'm hard of hearing. LADY MARY (instantly her match). If you don't, Lady Brocklehurst, I'm sure I don't. LORD LOAM (nervously). Tut, tut. Seen our curios from the island, Emily; I should like you to examine them. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Thank you, Henry. I am glad you say that, for I have just taken the liberty of asking two of them to step upstairs. (There is an uncomfortable silence, which the entrance of CRICHTON with TWEENY does not seem to dissipate. CRICHTON is impenetrable, but TWEENY hangs back in fear.) LORD BROCKLEHURST (stoutly). Loam, I have no hand in this. LADY BROCKLEHURST (undisturbed). Pooh, what have I done? You always begged me to speak to the servants, Henry, and I merely wanted to discover whether the views you used to hold about equality were adopted on the island; it seemed a splendid opportunity, but Mr. Woolley has not a word on the subject. (All eyes turn to ERNEST.) ERNEST (with confidence). The fact is-- (The fatal words again.) LORD LOAM (not quite certain what he is to assure her of). I assure you, Emily-- LADY MARY (as cold as steel). Father, nothing whatever happened on the island of which I, for one, am ashamed, and I hope Crichton will be allowed to answer Lady Brocklehurst's questions. LADY BROCKLEHURST. To be sure. There's nothing to make a fuss about, and we're a family party. (To CRICHTON.) Now, truthfully, my man. CRICHTON (calmly). I promise that, my lady. (Some hearts sink, the hearts that could never understand a Crichton.) LADY BROCKLEHURST (sharply). Well, were you all equal on the island? CRICHTON. No, my lady. I think I may say there was as little equality there as elsewhere. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Ah the social distinctions were preserved? CRICHTON. As at home, my lady. LADY BROCKLEHURST. The servants? CRICHTON. They had to keep their place. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Wonderful. How was it managed? (With an inspiration.) You, girl, tell me that? (Can there be a more critical moment?) TWEENY (in agony). If you please, my lady, it was all the Gov.'s doing. (They give themselves up for lost. LORD LOAM tries to sink out of sight.) CRICHTON. In the regrettable slang of the servants' hall, my lady, the master is usually referred to as the Gov. LADY BROCKLEHURST. I see. (She turns to LORD LOAM.) You-- LORD LOAM (reappearing). Yes, I understand that is what they call me. LADY BROCKLEHURST (to CRICHTON). You didn't even take your meals with the family? CRICHTON. No, my lady, I dined apart. (Is all safe?) LADY BROCKLEHURST (alas). You, girl, also? Did you dine with Crichton? TWEENY (scared). No, your ladyship. LADY BROCKLEHURST (fastening on her). With whom? TWEENY. I took my bit of supper with--with Daddy and Polly and the rest. (Vae victis.) ERNEST (leaping into the breach). Dear old Daddy--he was our monkey. You remember our monkey, Agatha? AGATHA. Rather! What a funny old darling he was. CATHERINE (thus encouraged). And don't you think Polly was the sweetest little parrot, Mary? LADY BROCKLEHURST. Ah! I understand; animals you had domesticated? LORD LOAM (heavily). Quite so--quite so. LADY BROCKLEHURST. The servants' teas that used to take place here once a month-- CRICHTON. They did not seem natural on the island, my lady, and were discontinued by the Gov.'s orders. LORD BROCKLEHURST. A clear proof, Loam, that they were a mistake here. LORD LOAM (seeing the opportunity for a diversion). I admit it frankly. I abandon them. Emily, as the result of our experiences on the island, I think of going over to the Tories. LADY BROCKLEHURST. I am delighted to hear it. LORD LOAM (expanding). Thank you, Crichton, thank you; that is all. (He motions to them to go, but the time is not yet.) LADY BROCKLEHURST. One moment. (There is a universal but stifled groan.) Young people, Crichton, will be young people, even on an island; now, I suppose there was a certain amount of--shall we say sentimentalising, going on? CRICHTON. Yes, my lady, there was. LORD BROCKLEHURST (ashamed). Mother! LADY BROCKLEHURST (disregarding him). Which gentleman? (To TWEENY) You, girl, tell me. TWEENY (confused). If you please, my lady-- ERNEST (hurriedly). The fact is--(He is checked as before, and probably says 'D--n' to himself, but he has saved the situation.) TWEENY (gasping). It was him--Mr. Ernest, your ladyship. LADY BROCKLEHURST (counsel for the prosecution). With which lady? AGATHA. I have already told you, Lady Brocklehurst, that Ernest and I-- LADY BROCKLEHURST. Yes, now; but you were two years on the island. (Looking at LADY MARY). Was it this lady? TWEENY. No, your ladyship. LADY BROCKLEHURST. Then I don't care which of the others it was. (TWEENY gurgles.) Well, I suppose that will do. LORD BROCKLEHURST. Do! I hope you are ashamed of yourself, mother. (To CRICHTON, who is going). You are an excellent fellow, Crichton; and if, after we are married, you ever wish to change your place, come to us. LADY MARY (losing her head for the only time). Oh no, impossible-- LADY BROCKLEHURST (at once suspicious). Why impossible? (LADY MARY cannot answer, or perhaps she is too proud.) Do you see why it should be impossible, my man? (He can make or mar his unworthy MARY now. Have you any doubt of him?) CRICHTON. Yes, my lady. I had not told you, my lord, but as soon as your lordship is suited I wish to leave service. (They are all immensely relieved, except poor TWEENY.) TREHERNE (the only curious one). What will you do, Crichton? (CRICHTON shrugs his shoulders; 'God knows', it may mean.) CRICHTON. Shall I withdraw, my lord? (He withdraws without a tremor, TWEENY accompanying him. They can all breathe again; the thunderstorm is over.) LADY BROCKLEHURST (thankful to have made herself unpleasant). Horrid of me, wasn't it? But if one wasn't disagreeable now and again, it would be horribly tedious to be an old woman. He will soon be yours, Mary, and then--think of the opportunities you will have of being disagreeable to me. On that understanding, my dear, don't you think we might--? (Their cold lips meet.) LORD LOAM (vaguely). Quite so--quite so. (CRICHTON announces dinner, and they file out. LADY MARY stays behind a moment and impulsively holds out her hand.) LADY MARY. To wish you every dear happiness. CRICHTON (an enigma to the last.) The same to you, my lady. LADY MARY. Do you despise me, Crichton? (The man who could never tell a lie makes no answer.) You are the best man among us. CRICHTON. On an island, my lady, perhaps; but in England, no. LADY MARY. Then there's something wrong with England. CRICHTON. My lady, not even from you can I listen to a word against England. LADY MARY. Tell me one thing: you have not lost your courage? CRICHTON. No, my lady. (She goes. He turns out the lights.) Publication Date: August 5th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-bx.barrie

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-megan-bretbrunner-land-bound/

megan bretbrunner land bound chapter one: NCIS At the juice net 12 o'clock Kyoko pov "So Cleo is it true you get to be the dolfin trainer?" I asked. "Yeah but I can't take it then I'd be the main attraction. Not ronny " Cleo said sadly. "To bad by the way didn't you get a new job kyoko?" Asked bella. "Yeah that's what I wanted to talk to you about," I told them. "I'm moving to America," I told them. "What!?!" They shouted. "It's in America," I told them. "When are you leaving?" Rikki. Asked. "A week," I told them. "Lets go for a swim to mako," Emma told us. We nodded. We walked to the beach. We came tordes. The water I stepped into the water and felt my tail forming. We dived in and started using our mermaid speed. We went threw the entrance of the cave we surfaced. "So what are we going to do?" I asked flicking my tail. "I think you should take the chance you did say it was the best inn the world," Emma said. "But we aren't going to be Abel. To brake you out if someone finds out," Rikki retorted. "Don't worry I won't tell anyone I'm not that supid by the way where's bella?" I asked. Then I saw bella came through the entrance. "Hey bells," I said. "Bella I'm moving," I told her. She looked at me like she was about to cry. A week later... I was on the plane I opened the window there was the full moon out the window oops I staired at the moon then every thing went black... Moon struck pov Kyoko looked at the person next to her,"we must swim to mako island," she giggled."I want my tail," I told him. I walked into the bathroom and ran my hand under the fosit and then sat down. My tail formed and I clapped. Then I fell asleep. Kyoko's pov I woke up in an air plane bathroom. I walked back to my seat when the plane. I went to NCIS head quarters I walked in and saw an old man, "hello can you tell me where abby is" I asked. "Down the hall to the right,"? He said. I walked into cabby's office. "Hello are you kyoko I'll help you. Find your team," she said. She led me to my team. "Hello. My names Mcgee," a man told me. We went out to catch the guy. There I saw him he started throwing punches at me Wichita I blocked he didn't have a gun so ii put my hand behind my back and make lightning strike then the most horrrible thing happened it started raining I punched the guy unconches I then fell to the ground my tail getting scratched. The whole team gasped. "How?" He asked. "I turned into a mermaid because of a cave," I told them. "I can't believe it," Mcgee gasped. "Don't tell," told them. He got out his cellphone. "Ducky and abby we got something for you," he told the person on the phone. He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me onto this stretcher thing they put restraints on me. "Let me go!" I shouted at them. They put me into the car I dried and my legs came back then he poured a bucket of water on me. We arrived at the hq. They took me into a small room I regognized as abby's lab. "Let me go!" I shouted. Abby took off my restrants I rolled of the stretcher and landed on the ground. Ducky came tords. Me. "How?" He asked. "I turn into a mermaid when I get wet will you hand me a towel?" I asked. "No," he told me then grabbed me around the waist and put me on this table thing. Then I got dry and my legs were back. "Abby get the darts," ducky said to abby. They grabbed a farthing I felt a pain in my arm and every thing went dark. Dr. Denmornts pov I was doing my work when I got a phone call, "hey we have something to give you we'll be there ASAP," he told me. "Ok,". "By the way you'll need a big tank," he told me. "Ok," I told him as I hung up. In ten minutes there was a knock on my lab door I opened it. There was a girl on a stretcher. He pushed the stretcher into the room. "Why did you bring me a girl," I asked. "Just watch," he said as he took out a cup and poured it on her ten seconds later she had a long gold tail. "Wow," I gasped. She started to stir. "Who are you,'" she asked sleepily. " doctor denmord," I told her. "Please don't hurt me," she said. "You sleek English?" I asked. "Yeah I'm a mermaid not a Alain," she told me."I'm sorry," I told her."what can you do?" I asked. "It depends how well you treat me," she told me. "Cu's if you don't I could boil your blood, burn you alive, or strike you with lightning," she told me. "Uh ok I promise not to be mean unless you won't do what I say,:" I told. Her. "And If you try to use your powers on me I'll tie your hands, and fingers toghether," I told her. "Gp figure," she sighed. I took off one of her scales and she whimpered. I looked at it under the micro scope suddenly her legs came back and the scale turned into skin. "This is against human rights," she spat at me," . "Well you aren't. Human now are you," I told her. "I am right now dumbo look," she told me pointing to her legs. Kyokos pov Come on Madison," she told me. "Don't. Call me that my name is kyoko," I spat. She stuck her tinge out. "real mature," I said sarcastically. Then she threw me into this tank thing. I formed a tail. I might as well surprise her I swam at full speed threw the water. She wrote something down on her clip board. "How fast was that?" She asked amazed. I surfaced. "About ninth miles per hour," I told her. She wrote it down. "Can you show me your powers," she asked. "Sure," but we might want to get outside first," I told her. She agreed. We walked outside. I made lightning strike then made a tree catch on fire. She wrote on her clipboard. "Do all of you have beautiful singing," she asked. "No what kind of idiot said that," I asked. She wrote some more. "Hey?" I asked. "Yes?" She asked. "What if we make a deal you will let me go but I come back at 11 every day and leave at 4," o told. Her. "Sounds fair," she said. sleepaily chapter 1: a fish out of water Kyoko pov I woke up with a sore arm. I called Cleo, Hello?", she asked. 'Meet me at mako," I told her. "K bye," she said. I went to the beach and dove into the water and swam to mako supriseingly it only took ten minutes. I surfaced in the moon pool. "Hey I have some rally bad news," I told her. "What?" She asked. "The secrets out," I told her. She gasped. "Tell me happened?" She begged. I told her the whole story. "Your so dumb kyoko," she snapped. "What ever I gotta go," I told her. I swam out of the cave and swam back to America. I went to the lab. "I see you kept your end of the deal," the doctor said smiling. "What are we going to do today?" I asked. "Well I was thinking we could get an x-ray then i'de like to just talk," she said. "Sounds ok," I told her. "No I mean in mermaid form," she told me. "I know," I told her. She put me on a stretcher then poured some water on me then took the x-rays. Then we went back to her lab. "So what do you want to know?" I asked. "How you became a mermaid," she told me. "Ok Dr.denmord," I said. "Please call me beth," she said. "Ok beth well I found a cave and I got in it dering. A full moon and the next thing I know I'm a fish," I laughed. "Hmm ". "Where is it?" She asked. "Well there one in Australia on an island called mako, and there's one in ierlend," I said. "Does the full moon effect you?" She asked. "Yeah a lot you can see the next full moon is tonight," I told her. "Cool," she said excitedly. "I'll. Stay until then. After the sun went down... Hey look I.said then I opened the curtains revealing a full moon... Moonstruck pov "I like the moon," I giggled. "I want my tail," I giggled. I climbed out the window. "Where are you going?" She asked. "Come on we must go to mako island," I giggled pulling her into the water. "Grab my fin," I said. She did. I swam to the moon pool. I got out then she started to get out. " don't get out now it's the best part,' I giggled. She looked up and saw the moon above her she emdiatly got out. "It's too late I laughed. I splashed beth and she grew a pale blue tail. I giggled. Beth's pov Omg I just got turned I was looking down at my tail touched it it felt.slimy. m Next morning... Kyokos. Pov I woke up on the moon pool floor. I looked at beth who smiled at me. "I didn't. Do soling stupid did I?" I asked. "Yes you did," she told me. "What?" I asked. "You turned me into a mermaid," she laughed. I gulped. "Oops sorry I told you the moon makes me whacky," I said. "Wait I think I've heard of this moon didn't you notice it was a luner. Eclipse lazar night it makes a Special mermaid it lets you touCH water without loping a tail I think you have to be in water completely," I said."oh good," she sighed. "Well. We are going to keep doing the meetings," she told me. "Ok," I said. "Hey I gotta go to work," I told her. "Ok." We swam back. I went to to NCIS head quarters. "Hey I'm sorry I helped him," she said. '"It's. Ok no harm done,' I said. '"What's our case?" I asked. "Male 18 stabbed to death," she said. "Ok," I said walking to my team. "Hey I'm back," I told the. "Ok and we think you could be useful kyoko," he said. "How so?" I asked. "Your powers," he said. I smiled. "Ok". ")eta go," Mcgee said. "Ok,". We headed to the man when he saw us he ran I made the wind pick up so it as gard to run then made lighrtning strike him he fell to the ground. "Good job kyoko," he said. "Does Gibbs. Know about the whole fish thing?" I asked. "Don't worry he's tottaly. Fine with it," Mcgee said. "Good," I said. "Oh and he wants to see your tail," Mcgee laughed. "Fine," glared. We headed back. I walked into Gibbses office. "I'm here,"I said. "I want to see your tail," he said. "Ok," I said. I spit on my arm and popped a tail. "Wow," he gasped. "I thought Mcgee was just needing with me," he said shocked. "I gotta go," I told him. Then I made a fist and dried my tail. He staired at me as if I had three heads. I then left. I swam to mako then I saw 4 tails. I surfaced. "Hey guys people at my job seam to really exept. Me as a mermaid," I said smiling. "We'rei"we're happy for you," they said. chapter3: gone public One weak later... "So beth how is the research going?" I asked. "Really good actually," she said. "How good?" I asked. "Like ready to go public good," she said. "Uh I'll have to think about it," I said. She pouted. "Fine," I said. "I'll do it slowly," I said. "What does that mean?" She asked. "I mean I'm not going to go in front of the whole state at once and say hey look at this," I told her. She nodded. I'll tell my parents tonight," I said.. that night I swam to Australia. I. Knocked on my perants door. Dad came to the door he hugged me when he saw me. "Hi baby," he said. "Dad get mom and Jake and Fred, and John," I told him. They came down. "Guys I have something to tell you," I told them. "What they all asked. "I'm a mermaid look," I said as I spat on my arm and I popped my tail. "They all gasped. "I left for Australia. Nine minutes ago," I said they gasped. "I gotta go," I told them. I swam back home. Then the next day I went to a a school a nd taught about mermaid. "Hey lady this is science not mythalagy," a girl said. "Oh really watch," I said I took the glass and polluted it on my self. I popped a tail. The crowd gasped. "Not such a myth now huh," I joked. "Take all the pictures you want," I told them then they got out cameras. "Dude if the whole school is taking pics turn the flash off it's annoying," I told them. They agreed. I clenched my fist steam came from my scales and then I had my legs back. "Do you have powers?" A small girl asked. "Yes I'll.show you," I told them we went out side. I made lightning strike then I sent a Bush on fire. They gasaid." Ok class dismissed," I said. I walked home while on my way home a boy from the class came and sprayed. Me. I sat down emdetaitly then I popped a tail. "Quit it dud," I told him. "Sorry ma'am," he said. "Fine but do that again I'll tell your teacher to give you detention," I told him clencking my fist and getting my legs back. I thought to myself, I can just see it now: I will not spray the mermaid. I giggled. I walked home. I went on facebook and it was covered with pictures of my tail. I sighed. And went to bed. The next morning... I woke to a knock on my door. I opened it and there were about twenty people at my door step. "What?" I asked. Then there was every buddy shouting questions. "One at a time!" I shouted. "You in the pink," I called. "Can I see your tail?" The girl asked. "Fine be right back," I told them. I came back out with a glass of water and sat down then poured it on my arm. I grew my long golden tail that I loved. They gasped. "You with the blue hat," I said. "Do you have powers?" He asked. "Yes but I'll only tell you one wich. Is heating," I told them. "Yes you with the hair bow," I said. "How do you become a mermaid or merman," she asked. "I plead the fifth," I said. "Before you ask me another question no I'm not the only mermaid but I won't say who's who," I told them. "Now I wanted to tell you I will except interviews and pictures and I'll let the scientists see me," I told them. I dried myself with my fist and got my legs. Then I went to work. I arrived at head quarters then I walked to my team. "So what am I doing today?" I asked. "You'll be working with abby today," Gibbs said. I went to abby's lab. "What's up abby?" I asked. "Nothing mutch by the way I think it's so cool your a mermaid," she said. "So what are we doing?" I asked. "I was sundering if. Ducky could take a look at you?" She said. "Sure," I told her. She walked me to duckys. "Hello miss clearwater clearwater," he said. "Do what ever you want," I told him. He smiled and nodded. I hopped up on the table. He "i kind of need to put you asleep for this," he said. "Sure," I said. He poured a bucket of water on me then stuck a needle in my arm I felt a shooting pain then every thing went black... Ducky's. Pov I put her to sleep then did an internal eggsam then when I was done I stitched her up and then she drieb I took her to the x-ray rooming took one of her in human dorm then I set it to take x-rays every second. I started it then poured some water on heritage took the x-rays then I I carried her back to the room and lied her on a soft bed her mouth then shut and she opened her eyes and I said. "Are you all right?" Yeah. "Yeeah but I gotta got to duckys," she said. "Your already here," I told her. "That was fast," she giggled. Then abby walked in, "hows she doing?" Abby asked. "She fine she's just really loopy," I told abby. She began to say."is it the second tosday of last month?" She asked dazeded. "Make that very very loopy," I said. Kyokos pov I awoke and sat up I felt a sharp pain from waist to my toes I gasped. "Why am I so sore?" I asked. "We did an egzam on you," he said. "And took x-rays of your transformation wanna see?" Abby asked. I nodded. It looked so cool as my bones conjoined. To one. I" I might not faze if I were you for a couple of days," he told me. I nodded. I walked home that night I got a knock on my door I opened it and there was a reporter there. "Hello can I have an interview?" He asked. "Sure," I said. I sat down on the couch. "So how long have you been a mermaid?" He asked. "Five years," I told him. "Are there other mermaids?" He asked. "Yes I know four," I told him. "So how do you become a mer-person?" He asked. "A cave called a moon pool," I told him. "Does the moon effect you?" He asked. "Yes it does," I said. "Do you have powers?" He asked. "Yes I can heat things, make lightning, and set things on fire," I told him. "How fast can you swim?" He asked. "156 mph Max," I said. "Can I see your tail?" He asked. "Fine," I said. I poured a glass of water on myself. Ipopped a tail I almost let out a scream because my tail hurt so bad. "Wow, can I touch it?" He asked. "Yes but be gentle I just got an internal egzam," I said. He ran his hand over my tail lightly. "So can I see you heat your tail away or what ever?" He asked. I shrugged then made a fist and got my legs back. "Cool!" He exclaimed. Al"wait can I have a picture of your tail?" He asked. "No I don't think so because I literally just got an eggsam so it hurts to faze right now sorry," I told him. He just shrugged. "Look I should be going," he said. "See you," I said. I went to sleep... The next morning I woke up and headed to the store people started murdering as I walked by. I saw a new guy he came up to me and said "are you the kyoko they've. Been talking about?" He asked. "Yep that's me," I said. He smiled. "Well it's nice to meet you," he said. "So are you new?" I asked. "Yeah just moved in," he said. "So is it true about the rummors?" He asked. "Yep," I said. "Hey I didn't get your name?" I said. "Oh right its Alex," he said. "Hello Alex," I said. "See you later," I said. Then when I was done at the store I went to the beach when I was walking tords the water I saw Alex. " hey Alex want to go swimming although I'll probably beat you because of my tail," I said. "Sure I'd like to see your tail," he said. He got in the water this time the my tail didn't hurt as much I grabbed his hand and pulled him along. He came up for air. "Want to see something?" I asked him he nodded. We sldove back under and grabbed hands again I swam at tull speed to mako I surface then he surfaced but then I saw four faces. "Hey guys," I said. "Who's your friend?" Rikki asked. "Ok this is Alex, Alex this is Cleo,Rikki,Emma's,and bella," I told him. "Guess what every one found out about mermaids and I got dissected," I said. "Yo didn't tell about us did you?""Cleo asked nervisly. "They don't know about us do they?" Emma worried. "No I didn't tell them about you," I told them chapter4: full moon Kyok's point of view I was woke up by the door again I got up and answered it there was a young looking reporter. "May I help you?" I asked. "Yes can I have an interview?" She asked. "Sure," I told her. "Sorry for being in my pjs," I told her. "So first of all can I have a photo?" She asked. I nodded and went to get a glass of water I sat down and poured it on myself. She took a couple pictures. "Do you mind if we film the interview?" Ishe asked. "I don't care," I told her. "So how did you become a mermaid?" She asked. "Well I found a cave and I was in the water under the full moon," I told her. "So do mermaids really get moonstruck?" She asked. I nodded. "Yes it has effects on us usually just makes us act drunk," I told her. "Or something like that," I mummbled. "Is there a under water language," she asked. "No we only speak English," I said. "Do you have under water cities," she asked. "Not that I know of," I told her honestly. "Can I feel your tail?" She asked. "Sure," I said. She ran her hand over my tail. "Ew slimy," she said. "Yep well it is a fish tail," I giggled. "Can you show me your powers?" She asked. I just nodded. I clenched my fist and got my legs back. "Come on outside," I told her. We walked into my yard where I made a tree catch on fire then made lightning strike the reporter gasped. "I kind. Have to go," I told the reporter nodded. I walked down to the beach where. I saw four girls that I knew and loved cleo,Rikki,Emma,and bella.I to them. "Guys what are you doing here?" I asked. "We were bored and wanted a sleep over so here we are," Rikki smiled. "Thanks will you you guys help me take up the card board to the windows?" I asked. "Oh it's a full moon here?" They asked. "Yeah tonight," I told them "fine we'll help moon proof your house," Cleo giggled. "So hows Australia guys?" I asked. "Oh really good guess what there's a new care," Cleo said. "What happened it rikki's?" I asked. "It went out of business," Rikki said sadly. "Why?" I exclaimed. "Not anough money," she said. We walked back to my house and moon proofed it. Then the sun went down. "Hey Cleo I wrote a song want to here it," I asked. She nodded. It's ok the be who you are Just remember where your from Don't let the world push you around And remember to look up when your down They clapped. "Hey I gotta go to the bathroom," I told them. They said ok. I walked into the bathroom I started to wan away but then I saw the moons reflection. And every thing went black... Moonstruck kyoko's pov I giggled I started to run the bath water then Emma walked in "what are you doing?" She asked. "I want my tail," I sighed.and before she could stop me I stuck my hand in the water. Then I pulled down the card board and then she saw the moon she giggled."want to get in?" I asked giggling. Publication Date: February 21st 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-megangirl23

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-1/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Surprise The long lost sister appears "Kazuto! your going to be late for school" his aunt yelled from the bottom of the stair case,Kazuto stayed asleep as his alarm clock went off, he sprung outta bed and slammed the alarm clock got dressed super fast and ran down the stairs and grabbed a peice of toast and ran straight out the door, as he was running straight down the street to the school yard he ran into asuna as he yelled "no time to talk!" he'd run inside the class room "sorry im late!" said kazuto and the teacher just looked at him weird "you're not late" kazuto would take his seat as the teacher started the class the girl that sat next to kazuto was yuki asuna, "hey kazuto did you hear were getting a new student today. "Please welcome our new student gal sinon" the teacher said excitedly as the student walked in to the class room and she stared at the class looking around suddenly looking at kazuto as she runs and yells at yuki asuna "thats my seat, i sit next to this boy now move" she said "but this is my seat" yuki said she looked in to gals eyes as they were fiery red, yuki then got up and moved from the desk to a new one as gal sat in the chair moving her desk together with kazuto " uh what are you doing gal" kazuto said looking confused she then looked him in the eyes " you're my brother" she said with a sweet look on her face smiling. yuki asuna in her new seat would stare at them to as she sees the girl hugging kazuto she'd whisper to her self " thats my boyfreind" she'd stand and march straight up to them both " what are you doing to my bf!" she yelled with her hair turned red as kazuto turned around " its not what it looks like" as he ran across the room scared as he'd run outta the room thinking that yuki has gone crazy "why are you running kazuto i just wanna talk to you" he kept running and went home till the next day.   Publication Date: October 8th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-narutolover11

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-lemon-piez-lost-chains/

lemon piez lost chains to my friends lost chains chapter 1: SAKURA "Sakura Sakura come.... Come with me"  "no...nooooooo". "Sakura Sakura wake up". "Oh morning mom what time is it.". 8:50 MMMMMMOOOOOOMMMMM WHYDIDNT U WAKE ME UP. BYE MOM. My name is Sakura. Today is the first day of my new school monster's high. My mom made me go there. The uniforn id creepy, it has chains is black and red and has its own cape! Oh here we are now that i see all of then is looking at me and they are monsters! No silly Sakura it might be coseplay or something. Sakura here here! Oh it a teacher. Umm mrs mrs. Its mrs dracula. Um mrs. Dracula why is everyone dressed like a monster? Dressed? No they are real monsters......... Wait a human? No wait u smell like a demon but demons are rare. U can say ledendary.  Wait what monsters? Ugg  {faints} Publication Date: September 5th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-ue6371274a77225

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-anna-near-to-you/

Anna Near to you... Near to you... Kalte Nachtluft streift mein Gesicht. Doch es fühlt sich wundervoll an. Den dunklen, kühlen Hauch zu spüren - ihn einatmen und verinnerlichen. In den klaren, wolkenlosen Himmel zu blicken, die tausend leuchtenden Sterne zu sehen, lässt meine Gedanken langsam abschweifen ... Ich sitze an meinem Lieblingsplatz - für mich der schönste Ort der ganzen Welt. Die Abendsonne strahlt mir ins Gesicht und fällt auf die Felsen unter mir. Der Himmel fern am Horizont färbt sich blutrot. Hier, an diesem Ort, ist alles so still. Als ob die Zeit hier stehengeblieben wäre. Nichts hätte sich verändert.Es fühlt sich schön an, einfach hier zu sitzen, dem kleinen grasbewachsenen Fleck, der Mittags vom Schatten eines kleinen Baumes verdunkelt wird, wenn die Sonne scheint. Ich bin weit weg von der normalen, viel zu schnellen Welt. Es tut gut, hier das Gefühl zu haben, auf Wolken zu schweben. Es fühlt sich so leicht und unbeschwert an, dass ich es eigentlich bloß träumen kann. Und leider ist es auch so. Doch dieser eine Moment, in dem ich nur die sommerliche Luft einatme, die Augen schließe und die letzten Sonnenstrahlen des heutigen Tages genieße, ist besonders. Ich fühle mich seltsam frei. Als ob die Last, die auf meinen Schultern liegt, einfach die Klippen vor mir runtergefallen wäre. Ich wünsche mir so, dass es wirklich so ist. Oft habe ich nachgedacht, mich einfach fallen zu lassen. Warten, bis ich unten angekommen bin und auf die unendlich tiefe Schwärze, die einfach alles Schlechte für immer verschlucken würde. Doch heute dachte ich nicht daran. An diesem Tag hatte ich einen anderen Gedanken: "Ja. Irgendwann wird die Last über die Felsen stürzen. Doch ohne mich." Ich werde hier oben stehen bleiben und ihr nachschauen. Den schweren Ketten. Den großen Schlössern, wie sie dort unten am Stein in tausend Teile zerbrechen. Und dann werde ich endlich frei sein. Ich werde wieder klar sehen können.... Ich wache auf und bemerke, dass ich wieder in meinem Bett liege. Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, wie ich wieder dorthin gekommen war. War ich heute Nacht wieder durch die Haustüre gegangen? Doch egal, wie sehr ich mich bemühe, es fällt mir einfach nicht ein. Ich weiß nurnoch, dass ich draußen in unserer Straße stand, mitten in der Nacht, und die frische, kühle Luft genoss. Mit einem Lächeln auf den Lippen an diesen Gedanken, stehe ich auf, gehe ins Bad und dusche mich. Die warme Luft kondensiert an der kalten Scheibe, als ich die Glastüren öffne und mich in ein Handtuch einwickle. Ich trocke mich ab und ziehe mich anschließend an. Keine besonders hübsche Sachen, denn das brauche ich auch nicht. Dort, wo ich hingehe findet man mich auch schön. Ich öffne die Türe, um nach draußen zu gehen. Währenddessen fällt mir mein Schlüssel wieder ein. Wo hatte ich ihn nur hingelegt? Hatte ich ihn gestern Nacht verloren? Doch ich kann mich nicht erinnern, dass ich ihn dabei hatte ... "Komisch", denke ich, "wie bin ich dann wohl reingekommen?" Doch schon nach kurzer Zeit verfließen diese Gedanken wieder. Denn ich erinnere mich, wo ich eigentlich hinwill. Und dort zählen solche kleinen Dinge nicht.Ich erinnere mich gut daran, wie ich dieses wunderbare kleine Fleckchen fand. Ich verlor mich mal wieder in der unendlich Trauer, die ich jeden Tag fühle. Es war frisch und wolkig draußen - der Herbt kam. Ich sah die vielen bunten Blätter im starken Wid fliegen, als ich lief. Einfach wegging von zu Hause. Ich ging einen unbekannten, schmalen Schotterweg entlang, vorbei an Wiesen, einem kleinen Bach und dann sah ich sie, die riesigen Felswände. Umrandet von vielen Bäumen und Sträuchern. Mein Herz klopfte seltsam schnell, als ich den kleinen Weg verließ, und auf den Ort zusteuerte, der irgendetwas Besonderes an sich hatte. Auf meinem Weg dorthin beobachtete ich ständig nur diese eine Stelle. Dieser kleine Teil, hoch oben. Ein von Gras bewachsener Vorsprung, über dem ein kleiner Baum stand. Ich achtete kaum mehr auf den löchrigen Boden. Meine Füße gingen wie von selbst vornan ohne jedoch einmal zu stolpern oder in eines der Löcher zu fallen, und dann stand ich da. Direkt vor der riesigen Steinwand. Es sah atemberaubend aus. So wunderschön, wie die großen Felsen in den Himmel ragten. Ich wollt eunbedingt dort hinauf. Mich in das Gras setzen, den Duft des Baumes riechen, die Luft schmecken und während ich über das nachdachte, erblickten meine Augen den schmalen Pfad, der durch den kleinen Wald führte, steil den Berg hinauf, direkt zu der Stelle, die ich zu erreichen versuchte. Fest entschlossen erklomm ich den Berg. Und plötzlich öffnete sich die dicke, graue Wolkendecke am Himmel und ließ die herbstlich warme Sonne direkt in mein Gesicht scheinen. Ich wusste, dass ich etwas gefunden hatte, das womöglich alles verändern würde. Nach einer gefühlten halben Stunde kam ich endlich oben an und sah, dass sich der Wald lichtete. Ich war völlig außer Atem und wollte mich einfach setzen, denn meine Füße schmerzten. Also lief ich noch ein paar Schritte und setzte mich dann einfach auf das leicht nasse Gras. Ich schloss die Augen und genoss einfach den wunderbaren Wind im Gesicht. Als ich sie wieder öffnete, war ich überwältigt; ich saß genau an der Stelle, zu der ich wollte! Ich hatte mich unbewusst auf den kleinen grasbewachsenen Fleck gesetzt, der von dem kleinen Baum beschatten wurde - hoch oben auf der Felswand. Ich blickte hinunter und sah die wunderschöne, sonnenbeschienene Welt zu meinen Füßen. Mir kamen bei diesem Anblick die Tränen und ich dachte nur:"Das kann nur Schicksal sein, dass ich genau hier gelandet bin." Vorsichtig stand ich auf, und blickte wieder auf diesen wundervollen Ort, der in diesem Augenblick nur mir gehörte.Ich muss noch ein kleines Stückchen laufen, und ich bin wieder dort. An dieser für mich heiligen Stelle. Und dann stehe ich da, und plötzlich wird der Wind immer stärker. Er pfeift mir um die Ohren und lässt das Laub des kleinen Baumes bedrohlich rascheln, die Äste biegen sich schwer unter dem heftigen Wind. Doch es jagt mir keine Angst ein, denn für mich fühlt es sich so an, als ob dieser Wind meine endlosen Sorgen einfach wegwehen will; dass er sie ganz weit weg mit sich forttragen will. "Ja, an diesem Ort herrscht wirklich Magie", flüstere ich leise. Denn solange ich hier bin, bin ich glücklich. An mir zieht alles vorbei. Da hört der heftige Wind wie von Zauberhand wieder auf. Ich setze mich und sehe plötzlich etwas in der Sonne glitzern. Ganz leicht strahlt es mich an, als ob es mir sagen will, dass ich dorthin gehen soll. Also stehe ich auf, in dem Wissen, dass es einfach ein Zeichen sein muss. Als ich mich dorthin bewege, fällt mir mein Schlüssel wieder ein. "Ich werde ihn schon finden", dachte ich nur kurz.Und ja, ich fand ihn auch wieder. Denn als ich an dem kleinen schimmernden Gegenstand ankam und ihn aus dem Gras aufheben wollte, erkannte ich es: meinen Schlüssel. Ich dachte nicht einmal daran, wie ich denn ohne ich gestern ins Haus kam. Dieser Ort verbarg so viele Geheimnisse und Wunder, dass ich das alles hier für normal hielt. Doch eines wusste ich ganz sicher:Das, was ich mir gestern gedacht hatte, würde eines Tages wahr werden. Denn mein Schlüssel war für mich das Zeichen, dass ich irgendwann hier oben stehen werde, die Schlösser meiner unendlich schweren Ketten damit öffnen werde und sie die Felsen hinunter werfen werde....Alles war noch genau wie früher. Der Baum, die Wiesen, die Felsen. Nein, hier hatte sich nichts verändert. Nur ich. Ich wohnte schon lange nichtmehr hier. Ich war nichtmehr das kleine 15-jährige Mädchen von damals. Ich war eine erwachsene Frau, die alles geschafft hatte, was sie in ihrem Leben hatte erreichen wollen. Denn Gott stellte mir einige seiner Engel zu Seite, die mir helfen sollte, den rechten Weg einzuschlagen. Und dank ihrer Hilfe schaffte ich es dann letztendlich.Lange war ich nichtmehr hier, doch es war für mich immer noch der schönste Platz der Erde.Ich erinnere mich heute zurück. Nach so vielen Jahren. Trotzdem hatte ich mein damaliges Versprechen nie vergessen. Meinen kleinen Schlüssel - ich hatte ihn immer aufgehoben. Nach dieser langen Zeit.Damals war ich 15, und ich trage ihn immernoch um den Hals. Doch heute wird es das letzte Mal sein. Denn ich stehe wieder hier - wie früher. Die gleichen Klippen, der gleiche sanfte Wind. Ich nehme mir die Kette mit dem Schlüssel vom Hals. Schaue ihn noch einmal ganz genau an, denke an die Zeit zurück, in der alles so schwer war. Im Stillen danke ich Gott - und diesem Ort - denn sie hatten mich leben lassen.Doch heute würde alles vorbei sein. Ich drücke ihn an meine Brust, lasse ihn langsam aus meinen Fingern gleiten und lasse ihn los ...Und plötzlich spricht mein Herz zu mir: "Du kannst ruhig mitgehen. Niemand wird dir böse sein, versprochen. ER erwartet dich schon." Und ohne auch nur eine Sekunde darüber nachzudenken, weiß ich, dass es richtig ist. Ich gehe zum Rand der Klippen, bis meine Zehspitzen die Kante überragen. Langsam atme ich aus und ein und bemerke, wie der Wind wieder zunimmt. Mein letzter Gedanke, den ich auf dieser Welt hatte, war: "Danke. Für alles." Und dann ließ ich mich einfach fallen, und es fühlte sich garnicht schlimm an.Jetzt sitze ich im Himmel und warte, bis jemand Neues meinen Platz, meine Welt entdeckt. Und dass ich demjenigen ein Engel sein darf, so wie ich meine hatte. Text: Anna Images: Anna All rights reserved. Publication Date: January 12th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-anna.damn

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-kaite-goddard-my-life/

kaite goddard, kaite goddard my life whut bulling did to me my life I cut my salf to reles my hert i stell do i need hulp i tock pills and over dose my frind My frend was not soportuv kill I omost kill my sulf Publication Date: February 12th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-qiab2820ec5ba25

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-auburnlalala-different-dna/

auburnlalala different dna what is haunting me? Publication Date: October 23rd 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-auburnlalala

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-latoya-hinds-behind-close-door-039-s/

Latoya Hinds Behind close door's Life is a Gift This book is dedicated to young females, like my self to stay in school and get the best education possible.Because oppertunity may only come one time. Text: I wrote this book on August 22,2010 All rights reserved. Publication Date: August 22nd 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-deepwithinme6

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-eunice-choi-you-can-039-t-sit-with-us/

Eunice Choi You Can't Sit With Us Novel #1 from the "You Can't Sit With Us" series dedicated to my dear friend Maria Broom, my first friend I made when I moved to California - Good luck to her as she moves to Manhattan, New York. I wish you all the best and pray for your bright future. Chapter One - New Beginning The Hawthornes Estate Peyton’s Bedroom (The iPad) August 28, 2013 Thursday 11:28 am ___________________________________   “Yesssssss!” air kicked Peyton as she jumped on her bed. “Watch out Maroon 5! Here comes KY-BLU!” Her beautiful golden retriever, Diamonds, followed close behind and jumped on her all white crisp sheets.   “I’ve got to let KY-BLU know,” she said as she dashed for her white Galaxy S5. In a ring and half the girl at the other end picked up.   “Heyy Peyton,” said the girl at the end.   “Bon jour Riley, hold.” replied Peyton.   “Kay.” she said back. In less than a minute Peyton was talking in a five way call.   “So,” Peyton said into her phone, “I’ve got EFU news for KY-BLU’s ears. And our ears only.”   “Ooooooo” said Piper. “Haven’t heard an 'exclusively for us news' in a while, what is it?”   “Calm your tomato, Piper,” replied Peyton. “You’ll find out soon enough. This information is too precious to be shared through a piece of technology.”   “Whatever it is, I agree with Peyton,” agreed Riley.   “So um Peyton, when are you planning to tell us exactly?” asked Phoebe   “Tonight, at Summer Sommernight.” Peyton said with enthusiasm.   “Oh, yes! And you’re planning to wear a 10.0 cute outfit I assume?” inquired Tristina.   “De-nied, 10.1” replied Peyton. “Brendon and I are picking you guys up 2:30 on the dot. Dress code, night club.”   “Done,” said Phoebe.   “Done.”   “Done.”   “annnnd done,” finished Riley.   As Peyton hung up and threw her phone on her bed, she sensed a tingly feeling of excitement and somewhat nervousness for a new year up ahead. Who knew what Kirin High had planned for her.  __________________________________________________________________________________   Chapter Two - Parents Aren't Always Fun Hawthorne’s Family Room/Kitchen/The iPad August 28 11:45 am ________________________   “Hey Russell, where’s Scarlett?” asked Peyton as she flip flopped into the family room with her Jimmy Choo sandals slapping against her heels.   “How many times do I have to tell you, address me probably please,” said Russell.   “Oh, well  Dad , have you seen  Mom ?”   “Probably in the kitchen with the cooking friends of hers. Now please get out I have to finish up my meeting here.”   “Oh,” realized Peyton as she saw another group six men in fancy clothing and dress shoes sitting in a circle on their new Ethan Allen turquoise leather loveseat.   “Sure, los cientos, Papa.”   “No problem, sugar. And I already told Brendon about tonight so no worries,” replied Russell.   “Gracias, ciao!” waved Peyton and walked out.   *** When Peyton walked into their black interior granite and marble kitchen, all she saw was flowers. Frosting flowers  everywhere .   “Mom, what happened to the kitchen?” asked Peyton.   “Oh! Well Ruby and I just learned how to make frosting flowers here from Chef Juanito,” giggled Scarlett with her friend. “So we’re practicing. Do you like it?”   “Ugh Mom, do you know how many calories that thing is? Gawd, get it away from me,” grunted Peyton as she stomped away.   *** Back in her room, Peyton went on her iPad Mini and decided to input the Current State of Union of the morning. She didn’t understand why her family never appreciated what her thoughts and opinions were. But she decided, she’ll get over it because tonight, is meant to be perfect.   Peyton’s Current State of Union In    Out Summer Sommernight Summer Parent Night KY-BLU The Pretty Committee Night Club  Cupcake Club __________________________________________     Chapter Three - This is more like it! The Hawthornes’ Mercedes Benz SUV/Beverly Hills Mall August 28 2:34 pm _________________________________   “Brendon, can you step on it? I made an 2:40 appointment and Dominique doesn’t like waiting,” demanded Peyton to her driver.   “Yawhhh and I don’t wanna wait with all the LBRs,” said Riley.   “Point,” agreed Phoebe.   “Do you hawnestly think that Dominique is going to make us wait with the LBRs? I don’t think so, not even if we’re an hour late. I just don’t wanna keep Dominique waiting,” pointed out Peyton.   “Point,” agreed Phoebe again as she held up her index finger.   “And I still need to go buy a new dress, ugh! I cannot believe my sister actually exploded it!” exclaimed Piper, “I was so looking forward on wearing that. Penny is so dead when I get back tonight.”   “Calm it, Pipes. You have me,” assured Peyton.   “Love you Peyton, but whatever, I’ll just get a limited edition from the Paris Dream Fashion Line,” replied Piper.   “Oh by the way,” interrupted Riley, “What is this TGTBT news you were talking about?”   “You shall find out tonight at the Summer Sommernight,” Peyton said with a wink.   “Ooooo suspicious, girl,” joked Tristina. “It’s all in the head,” Peyton joked back as she tapped her head.   After the next five minutes, the five girls were dropped off at the Beverly Hills Mall. “Thanks, Brendon. Bring the limo and we’ll see you at five.”   “Sure, will do,” nodded Brendon.   “Thanks! Ciao!” replied Peyton as she slammed the door and the five girls marched into the mall. *** If you lived in the Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, or even the So Cal area, anyone you would ever go up to would know the KY-BLU if you asked. They could name all their names, details about them and etcetera. It was heard that these five girls were more popular than Justin Bieber in Southern Cali and even in New York.   *** When Peyton Hawthorne, Riley Lockwood, Piper Harrington, Tristina Rutherford, and Phoebe Esposito walked in the glass revolving doors, everyone stopped in their tracks to see Cali’s fabulous five. Also known as KY-BLU.   It seemed like some kind of Mean Girls movie as peoples’ jaw dropped with every flip of their hair. And how they would walk into a pole for every step KY-BLU took. It’s an incredible sight and nothing, and absolutely nothing could ruin this bond.   First is Phoebe Esposito. She’s the girly girl of the group. Dark glossy brunette with a 5’3” height and small frame. Stunning red lips and dark brown eyes and tan olive skin. Known for her Spanish beauty and C-cups. Has been the leader of BH’s number one dance team CWC (Charm Without Cruelty) since age 4. Her dad works as Apple Co’s top lawyer. Nothing can convince this girl to play sports. She’s known as the “spanish hottie” that attracts guys and a big flirt which no one can ever avoid falling for.   Next up is Tristina Rutherford. Smart, cute, and athletic is her main thing. Dirty blonde with natural beach waves and bangs just above her eyes, light skin with light freckles but has a rose touch to it. Tallest of the girls at 5’5” and her light brown eyes give it the “beach girl” mood. Been on the Girl’s JV Volleyball team for quite some time and loves to go surfing and shopping during her free time. Her dad is the owner of Ritz Carlton Hotel and she has a tiger in her backyard. Likes smart and cute guys who are athletic and loves to read. Actually likes doing some work and does volunteering during her summer.   Third is Piper Harrington. Red flaming hair and pale face. Her eyes are a bright royal blue which totally matches her fire red hair. She’s in between Tristina and Phoebe at 5’4” and she absolutely loves eating (tries to maintain her body with dieting). Big frame, but skinny. A little wide compared to the rest of the girls but a total drop dead gorgeous with her strawberry hair as an attraction. Friends sometimes call her tomato. The clown of the group. Piper’s mom is the host of NYC & Beverly Hills Fashion Show host. Loves cute guys too but ones that joke around a lot and who loves to eat but that’s not fat. Love, love, loveeees head scarfs and would love to wear one anywhere if given a chance.   Fourth is Riley Lockwood. Bright blonde hair with green aqua eyes and dark dark lashes. The smart and mature one of the group. Sand colored skin with natural blush is a dead giveaway when she’s embarrassed. Is totally into lacrosse and would love to go play nationals one day. Is it weird how she likes romance stories like The Notebook and The Lucky One? She’s more a hipster girl that loves Urban and Anthropology though it’s pretty cheap compared to other brands. Is sweet to everyone and absolutely j’adores shopping. Let’s go Brandy anytime! Stay weird and love you to the moon and back.   Last but not least is Peyton Hawthorne. The leader. The alpha.  The  one and only. No one can ever take her spot and they never will. Known for her hotness and perfection. Honey colored hair and bright amber eyes. Tan cream ivory skin and no sign of imperfection on her face. Not a slight mistake. Ski slope nose, bright pink lips, and fluttering dark lashes. Friends call her “Pey” for short and is often called “50” with her girls by the University guys because the KY-BLU plus her were all rated tens and it equals fifty. She comes in second with B-cups. Perfect height at 5’3” and is in JV in both Girls Soccer and Cheer squad. Perfect figure eight with a slim waist and small frame. Plays center mid and the flyer and is beautiful both inside and out. Sweet to everyone and no guys can ever pass by her without drooling. Dad is CEO of Beverly Hills Architecture Institute and her mother is the owner of the New York City and Beverly Hills District and is in charge of each building, taxes, and government work. Often works with her husband Russell to discuss new designs around the city.   As they walked through the mall, it was like some kind of perfume swept through the air, making everyone stop in their tracks to see what it was. But yes, that unchangeable trend of perfume was the KY-BLU.   * * * “Ahhhh the sweet smell of honeysuckle and pear!” exclaimed Peyton.   “Iz dat maii Paiiiii-ton I heah?!” asked Dominique.   “For sure, Dominique,” said Peyton as she flashed a wink.   “Aghhh I missed you so much!” exclaimed Piper.   “But you caiime with yoo mothah two days ago hun,” said Dominique.   “I know  but stillllll,” whined Piper.   “Ugh, she’s such a tomato head,” whispered Tristina to Riley.   “That’s the Pipes for you,” said Riley back.   “Si, ella hablo mucho,” agreed Phoebe rolling her eyes.   “Oh my goodness! Phoebe Esposito, roight? I hahven’t seen yo mothah since last munth! What hawppened, dahling?!” screeched Dominique.   “Los cientos, Dominique. Mi mamá is helping out Giana for her New York & Beverly Hills Fashion Show and the mission is to travel around the east coast from Florida all the way up to Maine and go to the most famous salons and beauty shops and doing live interviews. So that’s why she’s been gone the past few weeks. Aye hay muchas trabajas! Mi mamá es mucha cansada.”   “It’s alroight, she’ll be fine, I guarantee that,” said Dominique.   “Umm Dominique,” interrupted Peyton, “We seriously need to start right now! We only have two and a half hours!”   “Agreed. Dominique, I want Pedro to start with my hair,” requested Riley.   “And Antonio with mine!” joined in Tristina.   “Does Nacho still work here?” joked Piper, “Kidding! Call Jose for me,” she said.   “Hey hey, no one ever takes mi Miguelito,” said Phoebe with caution. “Tus chicas better back off.”   “I’m hogging Dominique for the day,” Peyton said as she added a wink.   “Alroight! Let’s get started than!” Dominique said as he clapped his hands, “Much much sowry but closing for the rest of the day to the other customers. I already have moi sweet peas to take care of.” Chapter Four - Summer Sommernight Summer Sommernight August 28 5:20 pm _____________________________   “Girls, fall back,” ordered Peyton. The girls immediately obeyed and they walked in a straight line, side by side, one foot in front of the other, so perfectly aligned.   Honestly give the girls one good reason why people shouldn’t stare when they walk in!   “Is it just me or are those guys checking you out, Peyton?” inquired Riley as they were getting checked in.   “They’re checking you out, Brooke,” replied Peyton with a wink.   “Oh stawp it, you,” said Riley as her face flushed.   “What are you guys blushing about?” asked Piper as she put her arm around Peyton’s shoulder.   “Your hair,” replied Riley flatly.   “What? What’s wrong with it?” asked Piper as she slightly freaked.   “Zip it, the guys are headed this way,” Peyton warned. As hilarious as it was, the five girls rapidly re-applied lip gloss, fluffed their hair, checked their dresses for lints, and began chatting and laughing casually.   Sure enough one of the guys walked over to Phoebe and offered her a bottle of San Pellegrino. Smiling slyly, Phoebe took it and purposely touched his hand.   “Hey Peyton, I just came over so I could introduce my friends to yours.” said the cute guy with perfect beach brown hair.   “Oh, awesome, these are my friends Piper Harrington, Riley Lockwood, Tristina Rutherford, and Phoebe Esposito,” said Peyton as she gestured toward her friends.   Piper smiled. Riley waved. Tristina nodded. and of course, Phoebe winked.   “My name’s Karstn Graves and as you know I’m Peyton’s friend. These are my friends Greg Parken, Ryan Eguchi, Chad Gibbon, and Jason Vega,” said Karstn as he also gestured toward his friends.   Each of the guys took turns saying hi and just smiling. Just then someone walked up to the podium.   “Alright, if everyone could find partners for the next dance, the best couple will win a 50 inch Samsung plasma flat screen TV and a gigantic stuffed bear!” said the host.   “Gawd, hawnestly, the way that they actually use TV and a stuffed bear to bribe people,” commented Phoebe.   At that, Jason chuckled and asked, “Care for a dance than?”   “Oh my gawd, haha sure,” said Phoebe gleefully as she linked her arm to his waiting arm and took off to the dance floor.   “Well don’t they look like a cute future couple,” said Piper breaking the awkward silence.   “You know who else would make a cute future couple?” inquired Chad suspiciously.   “Oh, who?” asked Piper as her bright blue eyes sparkled.   “You and me,” said Chad as he kept his perfect white smile.   Piper slapped her thigh, “Awh, come on Chad, hitting on girls already? Chill, it’s only been 15 minutes into the party,” but still happily she walked off to the dance floor, arm linked to her new friend.   Slowly and slowly, Tristina and Riley also joined the other girls on the dance floors after Ryan and Greg shyly asked them to dance. After they left, Karstn and Peyton were finally alone which made electric sparks sending in their directions in every single way possible.   “Care for a dance?” asked Karstn.   “Hahah oh Karstn, sure,” agreed Peyton. As they walked into the middle of the dance floor, everything seemed to mute around them. Not in the romantic, “hey let’s kiss all of a sudden” thing but just a comfortable feeling that you might get when you’re holding your dad’s hand.   “How was your summer so far, Peyton?” inquired Karstn.   The sound of her name through his mouth sounded a little weird but it felt good. Like somehow she owned him. That nothing could separate them from anything at that perfect moment.   “It was really busy actually… I had to do a lot of volunteer work and I went to two retreats to Cedar Crest by Big Bear. Mostly spent it though skype-ing my girls,” she added as she giggled softly, “what about you, Karstn? How was yours?”   “Spent most of it at soccer practice and camp and then helped my older brother repair his motorcycle from time to time,” he replied.   “That sounds sweet,” she replied. But in her head she had so many things to say… so many questions to ask… so many things she wanted to do. But it seemed like everything was held inside a high pressured jar about to explode any moment if she couldn’t control it.   Breaking the short silence, Karstn asked, “So we’re still going along with the date this Sunday?”   “Oh, that,” Peyton replied casually, “of course, how can I say no?”   He just threw back his head and smiled and slowly placed his hands on Peyton’s waist and slow danced right when the song When I Was Your Man came on.   Peyton slowly raised her arm to his neck and danced swayed side to side as she glanced around quickly for her friends. Much to her surprise, they were doing the same thing, all looking very comfortable and happy. Slow thoughts were going to her head when all of a sudden the music switches to Oppa, Gangnam Style and everyone starts horse dancing like crazy.   Out of the corner of her eye, Peyton sees Piper and Chad twerking back to back. Piper sees Peyton looking and she shoots her a wink sending Chad looking in Peyton and Karstn’s direction.   “Looking good you guys,” shouts Chad.   Instead of being embarrassed, Karstn says something back to Peyton’s surprise, “and you guys are going to reproduce twerking like that!”   “We’re getting into it,” says Chad with a sneaky smile.   “Hey Peyton!” yells Piper, “you know the - ”  but she was cut off by the speaker at the podium once again and the music slowly fades off.   “Thank you to those who participated in 2013 Summer Sommernight’s couple dance competition. I will now announce the winner from an anonymous voting from the audience,” announced the speaker.   The KY-BLU and the guys huddled up together in their group waiting for the results.   “No haters when we win this thing, alright?” joked Piper.   “Did you mean when we win it, Pipes?” shot back Phoebe.   “Come awn guys, it’s only a little competition. But the best dancers are always winners,” included Riley.   “I second with Riley,” added Ryan.   “Shhhh guys I wanna hear the results,” said Tristina as she shushed the group.   “For all of you who participated, there was a slight change to this year’s competition,” said the speaker. Everyone looked at each other with confusion as murmurs spread around the crowd, “This year, we will have five winning couples for the five different categories, and here they are,” said the woman as she continued. “The Most Outgoing Couple goes to….. drumroll please…… Piper Harrington and Chad Gibbon! Congratulations!”   “Yeahh! I knew it, awesome dancing, Chad,” said Piper as she high-fived Chad.   “You were not so bad yourself,” replied Chad.   “Zip it guys, there’s still four more winners left,” said Phoebe as she shushed them again.   “The Most Sexiest Couple goes to….. Phoebe Esposito and Jason Vega! Congratulations!” announced the speaker.   “Ayyee! Muy bueno! Gracias mi Jasonito,” gushed Phoebe as she squeezed Jason with a gigantic hug.   “De nada, Phoebe. It was a pleasure,” said Jason with a smile.   “Next, the Most Happiest Looking Couple goes to…. Tristina Rutherford and Greg Parken! Congratulations!”   “Yes!” said Greg as he punched the air with his fist, “Great job out there, Tris!”   “Oh hahah, thanks, you too, Greg,” replied Tris shyly.   “Next the Most Skilled Couple goes to….. Riley Lockwood and Ryan Eguchi! Congratulations!” announced the speaker.   “I knew it!” said Karstn as he air punched in front of him as Riley bounced on her toes happily.   “Lastly.. the Most Loveable Couple goes to….. Peyton Hawthorne and Karstn Graves! Congratulations!” shouted the speaker.   “Ahhh my Peyton, I knew we could do it,” said Karstn.   “Ahahah thanks Karstn, you were good too,” said Peyton as she gave him a hug.   “I can see why you guys won the most lovable couple,” commented Ryan, “looking cute you guys, looking cute.”   “Aye, Karstn, friends okay? F.R.I.E.N.D.S.,” denied Peyton.   “Ooo friendzoned mann,” booed Karstn’s friends.   “Knock it off you guys,” said Karstn slightly embarrassed.   “How’re you guys getting home?” asked Greg. “Want us to escort you guys home?”   “Brendon actually dropped us off here with a limo and he’s picking us up at 8:00 by the lobby,” answered Riley.   “Who’s Brendon? Is that another guy you guys are hanging out with?” asked Ryan kind of defensively.   “Why should we tell you?” teased Tristina, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll let you guys know after we’re done with Brendon,” she said as she added a wink.   “Okay… just, just don’t do anything… sketchy…” said Jason.   “Ayeee~ do not worry mi Jasonito! We gals will do what we gotta do and let you gentlemenitos know!” replied Phoebe as-matter-factly.   “Oh… ahah okay, yeah sure,” Jason replied.   “Eyyyy, Brendon’s here you guys, legggoo,” gestured Peyton as she was grabbing her silver Prada clutch.   “Oof! Time to go! It was fun tonight, Chad! Bye!” waved Piper.   “I’ll text you,” Chad replied.   “Same with us,” said Greg and Ryan.   “Adioosss chicos! Hasta luegooooo!” said Phoebe as she blew a kiss.   “Ermergerd Phoebe, hurry it up, this weather is making my skin crackle,” said Riley as she made Phoebe hurry up.   Chapter Five - Aftershock maybe? Hawthorne’s Limo August 28 8:04 ___________________________   “Best. Dance. Ever.” Enunciated Tristina. “I mean, did you see the way Ryan was holding me when we were dancing? Ugh, I think I can still feel his fingers on my waist.”   “Ya know, I would tell you to snap out of it but I can’t deny my love for Chad either,” added Piper.   “Ayeee I already know mi Jasonito está encantando con mi. The looks in sus ojos proves everything,” agreed Phoebe.   “Greg was actually really sweet, when I saw him at school, I always thought he was so serious,” added Riley.   “Well, Karstn and I are not going anywhere so don’t you guys even think about hooking us up,” warned Peyton.   “Awhhh cmonn but you guys totally like each other! Why deny it?” asked Piper.   “You know what they say, strong denial also means strong feelings,” corrected Tristina.   “So speaking of strong denials, what about you, Tristina? How are you feeling about the night you spent with Ryan today?” inquired Peyton.   “He’s nice I guess, I don’t know. I don’t see anything special in him. I just don’t wanna fall for anyone. I haven’t dated anyone yet and you guys know that. I’m new to this kinda stuff,” explained Tristina as she blushed.   “It’s okay, we’re always here for you. If you need advice, let us know,” assured Riley.   “Tu futura es solo uno step away! Call moi!” winked Phoebe as she held up an imaginary phone to her ears.   Just then, the front separation window from the driver’s seat to the back, rolled down and Brendon announced that they have arrived to Piper’s house. They dropped off Piper and continued on their way till they dropped off Riley, then Phoebe, then Tristina, then finally back to Peyton’s house.   Peyton sat in the limo wondering how things are gonna turn out now. They had taken one step closer to the boys, but what now? Only 15 days left of summer. How is she going to prepare for her Sophmore year?   Everything was swirling around inside Peyton’s head and she decided this was when she needed her Palm Pilot. And this is what she recorded:   Current State of Union IN                                 OUT Assurance                  Confusion Gals                             Pals School                        Dances ___________________________                   Chapter Six - The TGTBT News (Too good to be true) Piper Harrington’s Estate August 30 12:15pm ____________________________________   “I swear, Woki’s sashimi is the way to go,” mumbled Riley.   “I haven’t had a single roll since the last time I ate bad sushi,” said Tristina.   “But you guys gotta admit, this is pretty do-able for a Saturday lunch,” pointed out Piper.   “Point,” Phoebe replied with her chopsticks held up.   “Peyton, snap outa it girl, what the heck is wrong with ya?” snapped Piper. “I’m eating all your tempera if you don’t start eating it.”   “I will, I will. Don’t blame me if the Tweety bird is distracting me,” replied Peyton.   “So Peyton,” Phoebe started, “I’ve come to realize when I got home the other day that you never told us what the EFU news was! Que lastima!”   “Oh that, hahah well first of all, mi padre got Backstage Maroon 5 tickets for us!”   “AGHHHHHHHHHHHH!” cheered all the girls at once.   “WHEREEEEE?!” hollered Piper.   “WHENNNNNNNN?!” exploded Riley.   “AYEEEEE QUE PASO?!” yelled Phoebe.   “HOWWW?!” screeched Tristina.   “Well, you know my dad. He was designing the new stage and the amphitheater for downtown Beverly Hills and he gets a knock on his office door. So this guy comes in claiming to be Maroon 5’s manager and everything. He asked my dad if Maroon 5 can hold the ever first concert in the all new Beverly Hills amphitheater. They wanted to have a Super Concert and all so they offered to pay 7 million dollars but then my dad said he’ll just do it cuz he doesn’t need the money but they forced him to take it anyways. So then he saw a picture of us in his office and asked Russell if we that was a picture of the all-so-famous KY-BLU and offered exclusive VVIP tickets that has access to the backstage and the front pit seats. Then he told me dad something about how he was still looking for a tour guide for the boys and wondered if we, like as in, KY-BLU can spend a whole day with them, showing them around Beverly, LA, and down to Newport Beach.”   “OH. MY. GAWD,” said the girls simultaneously with their jaws dropped...     ****Note from the Author***** sorry guys! that's all i wrote for today! hope you come back to read the rest of it! Publication Date: June 29th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-nt1b3e1ca780b35

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-perry-mitchell-the-happy-inuit/

Perry Mitchell The Happy Inuit Eskimo Inuits Text: Inuits All rights reserved. Publication Date: May 12th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-peza08

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-daniel-the-daniel-show/

daniel the daniel show show Publication Date: January 13th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-dan930

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-nigeria-richardson-judgeful/

NIGERIA RICHARDSON JUDGEFUL ITS TO MUCH!! THIS DEDICATION IS TO EVERYONE WHO IS JUDGED ABOUT EVERYTHING........... CHAPTER 1 BEING JUDGED ABOUT EVERYTHANG IS ANNOYING...DONT YOU THINK!! SO,THIS GIRL NAMED FELICIA,JUDGES PEOPLE ABOUT EVERY LITTLE THING,IF ITS NOT THE HAIR ,ITS THE SHOES,IF ITS NOT THE SHOES ITS YOUR CLOTHES.WELL,I GET TIRED OF THAT.ANYWY,SO IM IN THIS LOVELY RELATIONSHIP, WITH A NICE SWEET GUY.THIS FELICIA IS GOING TO JUDGE ME ABOUT MY RELATIONSHIP.SHE HAS A BAE..NAMED HARRY,WELL SHE THINKS SHE HAS THE MOST WONDERFUL RELATIONSHIP ON EARTH.WELL,GUESS WHAT BOOWH,YOU DONT.... CHAPTER 2 ME AND MY FRIEND KERA DONT LIKE HER ....BUT WE STILL TALK TO HER....I MEAN IS THAT FAKE OR NAH?......SHE'S TO PRISSY FOR ME......SHE'S MIXED AND TO UUUGHHHH........BUT I KNOW THIS BOOK WASNT VERY LONG AT ALL ,BUT IF U WANT MORE .....................EMAIL ME AT;[email protected] I DONT MIND IF U HAVE ANY QUESTIONS EMAIL ME IF U WANT MORE ABOUT THE BOOK EMAIL ME............ P.S. THANX FOR READING THE BOOK ;)  Publication Date: October 8th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-go90325ee5a5345

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sir-james-matthew-barrie-dear-brutus/

Sir James Matthew Barrie Dear Brutus ACT I The scene is a darkened room, which the curtain reveals so stealthily that if there was a mouse on the stage it is there still. Our object is to catch our two chief characters unawares; they are Darkness and Light. The room is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of the obscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's garden bathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room and garden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is only the pause in which old enemies regard each other before they come to the grip. The moonshine stealing about among the flowers, to give them their last instructions, has left a smile upon them, but it is a smile with a menace in it for the dwellers in darkness. What we expect to see next is the moonshine slowly pushing the windows open, so that it may whisper to a confederate in the house, whose name is Lob. But though we may be sure that this was about to happen it does not happen; a stir among the dwellers in darkness prevents it. These unsuspecting ones are in the dining-room, and as a communicating door opens we hear them at play. Several tenebrious shades appear in the lighted doorway and hesitate on the two steps that lead down into the unlit room. The fanciful among us may conceive a rustle at the same moment among the flowers. The engagement has begun, though not in the way we had intended. VOICES.-- 'Go on, Coady: lead the way.' 'Oh dear, I don't see why I should go first.' 'The nicest always goes first.' 'It is a strange house if I am the nicest.' 'It is a strange house.' 'Don't close the door; I can't see where the switch is.' 'Over here.' They have been groping their way forward, blissfully unaware of how they shall be groping there again more terribly before the night is out. Some one finds a switch, and the room is illumined, with the effect that the garden seems to have drawn back a step as if worsted in the first encounter. But it is only waiting. The apparently inoffensive chamber thus suddenly revealed is, for a bachelor's home, creditably like a charming country house drawing-room and abounds in the little feminine touches that are so often best applied by the hand of man. There is nothing in the room inimical to the ladies, unless it be the cut flowers which are from the garden and possibly in collusion with it. The fireplace may also be a little dubious. It has been hacked out of a thick wall which may have been there when the other walls were not, and is presumably the cavern where Lob, when alone, sits chatting to himself among the blue smoke. He is as much at home by this fire as any gnome that may be hiding among its shadows; but he is less familiar with the rest of the room, and when he sees it, as for instance on his lonely way to bed, he often stares long and hard at it before chuckling uncomfortably. There are five ladies, and one only of them is elderly, the Mrs. Coade whom a voice in the darkness has already proclaimed the nicest. She is the nicest, though the voice was no good judge. Coady, as she is familiarly called and as her husband also is called, each having for many years been able to answer for the other, is a rounded old lady with a beaming smile that has accompanied her from childhood. If she lives to be a hundred she will pretend to the census man that she is only ninety-nine. She has no other vice that has not been smoothed out of existence by her placid life, and she has but one complaint against the male Coady, the rather odd one that he has long forgotten his first wife. Our Mrs. Coady never knew the first one but it is she alone who sometimes looks at the portrait of her and preserves in their home certain mementoes of her, such as a lock of brown hair, which the equally gentle male Coady must have treasured once but has now forgotten. The first wife had been slightly lame, and in their brief married life he had carried solicitously a rest for her foot, had got so accustomed to doing this, that after a quarter of a century with our Mrs. Coady he still finds footstools for her as if she were lame also. She has ceased to pucker her face over this, taking it as a kind little thoughtless attention, and indeed with the years has developed a friendly limp. Of the other four ladies, all young and physically fair, two are married. Mrs. Dearth is tall, of smouldering eye and fierce desires, murky beasts lie in ambush in the labyrinths of her mind, she is a white-faced gypsy with a husky voice, most beautiful when she is sullen, and therefore frequently at her best. The other ladies when in conclave refer to her as The Dearth. Mrs. Purdie is a safer companion for the toddling kind of man. She is soft and pleading, and would seek what she wants by laying her head on the loved one's shoulder, while The Dearth might attain it with a pistol. A brighter spirit than either is Joanna Trout who, when her affections are not engaged, has a merry face and figure, but can dismiss them both at the important moment, which is at the word 'love.' Then Joanna quivers, her sense of humour ceases to beat and the dullest man may go ahead. There remains Lady Caroline Laney of the disdainful poise, lately from the enormously select school where they are taught to pronounce their r's as w's; nothing else seems to be taught, but for matrimonial success nothing else is necessary. Every woman who pronounces r as w will find a mate; it appeals to all that is chivalrous in man. An old-fashioned gallantry induces us to accept from each of these ladies her own estimate of herself, and fortunately it is favourable in every case. This refers to their estimate of themselves up to the hour of ten on the evening on which we first meet them; the estimate may have changed temporarily by the time we part from them on the following morning. What their mirrors say to each of them is, A dear face, not classically perfect but abounding in that changing charm which is the best type of English womanhood; here is a woman who has seen and felt far more than her reticent nature readily betrays; she sometimes smiles, but behind that concession, controlling it in a manner hardly less than adorable, lurks the sigh called Knowledge; a strangely interesting face, mysterious; a line for her tombstone might be 'If I had been a man what adventures I could have had with her who lies here.' Are these ladies then so very alike? They would all deny it, so we must take our own soundings. At this moment of their appearance in the drawing-room at least they are alike in having a common interest. No sooner has the dining-room door closed than purpose leaps to their eyes; oddly enough, the men having been got rid of, the drama begins. ALICE DEARTH (the darkest spirit but the bravest). We must not waste a second. Our minds are made up, I think? JOANNA. Now is the time. MRS. COADE (at once delighted and appalled). Yes, now if at all; but should we? ALICE. Certainly; and before the men come in. MABEL PURDIE. You don't think we should wait for the men? They are as much in it as we are. LADY CAROLINE (unlucky, as her opening remark is without a single r). Lob would be with them. If the thing is to be done at all it should be done now. MRS. COADE. IS it quite fair to Lob? After all, he is our host. JOANNA. Of course it isn't fair to him, but let's do it, Coady. MRS. COADE. Yes, let's do it! MABEL. Mrs. Dearth _is_ doing it. ALICE (who is writing out a telegram). Of course I am. The men are not coming, are they? JOANNA (reconnoitring). NO; your husband is having another glass of port. ALICE. I am sure he is. One of you ring, please. (The bold Joanna rings.) MRS. COADE. Poor Matey! LADY CAROLINE. He wichly desewves what he is about to get. JOANNA. He is coming! Don't all stand huddled together like conspirators. MRS. COADE. It is what we are! (Swiftly they find seats, and are sunk thereon like ladies waiting languidly for their lords when the doomed butler appears. He is a man of brawn, who could cast any one of them forth for a wager; but we are about to connive at the triumph of mind over matter.) ALICE (always at her best before "the bright face of danger"). Ah, Matey, I wish this telegram sent. MATEY (a general favourite). Very good, ma'am. The village post office closed at eight, but if your message is important-- ALICE. It is; and you are so clever, Matey, I am sure that you can persuade them to oblige you. MATEY (taking the telegram). I will see to it myself, ma'am; you can depend on its going. (There comes a little gasp from COADY, which is the equivalent to dropping a stitch in needle-work.) ALICE (who is THE DEARTH now). Thank you. Better read the telegram, Matey, to be sure that you can make it out. (MATEY reads it to himself, and he has never quite the same faith in woman again. THE DEARTH continues in a purring voice.) Read it aloud, Matey. MATEY. Oh, ma'am! ALICE (without the purr). Aloud. (Thus encouraged he reads the fatal missive.) MATEY. 'To Police Station, Great Cumney. Send officer first thing to-morrow morning to arrest Matey, butler, for theft of rings.' ALICE. Yes, that is quite right. MATEY. Ma'am! (But seeing that she has taken up a book, he turns to LADY CAROLINE.) My lady! LADY CAROLINE (whose voice strikes colder than THE DEARTH'S). Should we not say how many wings? ALICE. Yes, put in the number of rings, Matey. (MATEY does not put in the number, but he produces three rings from unostentatious parts of his person and returns them without noticeable dignity to their various owners.) MATEY (hopeful that the incident is now closed). May I tear up the telegram, ma'am? ALICE. Certainly not. LADY CAROLINE. I always said that this man was the culpwit. I am nevaw mistaken in faces, and I see bwoad awwows all over youws, Matey. (He might reply that he sees w's all over hers, but it is no moment for repartee.) MATEY. It is deeply regretted. ALICE (darkly). I am sure it is. JOANNA (who has seldom remained silent for so long). We may as well tell him now that it is not our rings we are worrying about. They have just been a means to an end, Matey. (The stir among the ladies shows that they have arrived at the more interesting point.) ALICE. Precisely. In other words that telegram is sent unless-- (MATEY'S head rises.) JOANNA. Unless you can tell us instantly whet peculiarity it is that all we ladies have in common. MABEL. Not only the ladies; all the guests in this house. ALICE. We have been here a week, and we find that when Lob invited us he knew us all so little that we begin to wonder why he asked us. And now from words he has let drop we know that we were invited because of something he thinks we have in common. MABEL. But he won't say what it is. LADY CAROLINE (drawing back a little from JOANNA). One knows that no people could be more unlike. JOANNA (thankfully). One does. MRS. COADE. And we can't sleep at night, Matey, for wondering what this something is. JOANNA (summing up). But we are sure you know, and it you don't tell us--quod. MATEY (with growing uneasiness). I don't know what you mean, ladies. ALICE. Oh yes, you do. MRS. COADE You must admit that your master is a very strange person. MATEY (wriggling). He is a little odd, ma'am. That is why every one calls him Lob; not Mr. Lob. JOANNA. He is so odd that it has got on my nerves that we have been invited here for some sort of horrid experiment. (MATEY shivers.) You look as if you thought so too! MATEY. Oh no, miss, I--he-- (The words he would keep back elude him). You shouldn't have come, ladies; you didn't ought to have come. (For the moment he is sorrier for them than for himself.) LADY CAROLINE. (Shouldn't have come). Now, my man, what do you mean by that? MATEY. Nothing, my lady: I--I just mean, why did you come if you are the kind he thinks? MABEL. The kind he thinks? ALICE. What kind does he think? Now we are getting at it. MATEY (guardedly). I haven't a notion, ma'am. LADY CAROLINE (whose w's must henceforth be supplied by the judicious reader). Then it is not necessarily our virtue that makes Lob interested in us? MATEY (thoughtlessly). No, my lady; oh no, my lady. (This makes an unfavourable impression.) MRS. COADE. And yet, you know, he is rather lovable. MATEY (carried away). He is, ma'am, He is the most lovable old devil--I beg pardon, ma'am. JOANNA. You scarcely need to, for in a way it is true. I have seen him out there among his flowers, petting them, talking to them, coaxing them till they simply _had_ to grow. ALICE (making use perhaps of the wrong adjective). It is certainly a divine garden. (They all look at the unblinking enemy.) MRS. COADE (not more deceived than the others). How lovely it is in the moonlight. Roses, roses, all the way. (Dreamily.) It is like a hat I once had when I was young. ALICE. Lob is such an amazing gardener that I believe he could even grow hats. LADY CAROLINE (who will catch it for this). He is a wonderful gardener; but is that quite nice at his age? What _is_ his age, man? MATEY (shuffling). He won't tell, my lady. I think he is frightened that the police would step in if they knew how old he is. They do say in the village that they remember him seventy years ago, looking just as he does to-day. ALICE. Absurd. MATEY. Yes, ma'am; but there are his razors. LADY CAROLINE. Razors? MATEY. You won't know about razors, my lady, not being married--as yet--excuse me. But a married lady can tell a man's age by the number of his razors. (A little scared.) If you saw his razors--there is a little world of them, from patents of the present day back to implements so horrible, you can picture him with them in his hand scraping his way through the ages. LADY CAROLINE. You amuse one to an extent. Was he ever married? MATEY (too lightly). He has quite forgotten, my lady. (Reflecting.) How long ago is it since Merry England? LADY CAROLINE. Why do you ask? MABEL. In Queen Elizabeth's time, wasn't it? MATEY. He says he is all that is left of Merry England: that little man. MABEL (who has brothers). Lob? I think there is a famous cricketer called Lob. MRS. COADE. Wasn't there a Lob in Shakespeare? No, of course I am thinking of Robin Goodfellow. LADY CAROLINE. The names are so alike. JOANNA. Robin Goodfellow was Puck. MRS. COADE (with natural elation). That is what was in my head. Lob was another name for Puck. JOANNA. Well, he is certainly rather like what Puck might have grown into if he had forgotten to die. And, by the way, I remember now he does call his flowers by the old Elizabethan names. MATEY. He always calls the Nightingale Philomel, miss--if that is any help. ALICE (who is not omniscient). None whatever. Tell me this, did he specially ask you all for Midsummer week? (They assent.) MATEY (who might more judiciously have remained silent). He would! MRS. COADE. Now what do you mean? MATEY. He always likes them to be here on Midsummer night, ma'am. ALICE. Them? Whom? MATEY. Them who have that in common. MABEL. What can it be? MATEY. I don't know. LADY CAROLINE (suddenly introspective). I hope we are all nice women? We don't know each other very well. (Certain suspicions are reborn in various breasts.) Does anything startling happen at those times? MATEY. I don't know. JOANNA. Why, I believe this is Midsummer Eve! MATEY. Yes, miss, it is. The villagers know it. They are all inside their houses, to-night--with the doors barred. LADY CAROLINE. Because of--of him? MATEY. He frightens them. There are stories. ALICE. What alarms them? Tell us--or--(She brandishes the telegram.) MATEY. I know nothing for certain, ma'am. I have never done it myself. He has wanted me to, but I wouldn't. MABEL. Done what? MATEY (with fine appeal). Oh. ma'am, don't ask me. Be merciful to me, ma'am. I am not bad naturally. It was just going into domestic service that did for me; the accident of being flung among bad companions. It's touch and go how the poor turn out in this world; all depends on your taking the right or the wrong turning. MRS. COADE (the lenient). I daresay that is true. MATEY (under this touch of sun). When I was young, ma'am, I was offered a clerkship in the city. If I had taken it there wouldn't be a more honest man alive to-day. I would give the world to be able to begin over again. (He means every word of it, though the flowers would here, if they dared, burst into ironical applause.) MRS. COADE. It is very sad, Mrs. Dearth. ALICE. I am sorry for him; but still-- MATEY (his eyes turning to LADY CAROLINE). What do you say, my lady? LADY CAROLINE (briefly). As you ask me, I should certainly say jail. MATEY (desperately). If you will say no more about this, ma'am--I'll give you a tip that is worth it. ALICE. Ah, now you are talking. LADY CAROLINE. Don't listen to him. MATEY (lowering). You are the one that is hardest on me. LADY CAROLINE. Yes, I flatter myself I am. MATEY (forgetting himself). You might take a wrong turning yourself, my lady. LADY CAROLINE, I? How dare you, man. (But the flowers rather like him for this; it is possibly what gave them a certain idea.) JOANNA (near the keyhole of the dining-room door). The men are rising. ALICE (hurriedly). Very well, Matey, we agree--if the 'tip' is good enough. LADY CAROLINE. You will regret this. MATEY. I think not, my lady. It's this: I wouldn't go out to-night if he asks you. Go into the garden, if you like. The garden is all right. (He really believes this.) I wouldn't go farther--not to-night. MRS. COADE. But he never proposes to us to go farther. Why should he to-night? MATEY. I don't know, ma'am, but don't any of you go--(devilishly) except you, my lady; I should like you to go. LADY CAROLINE. Fellow! (They consider this odd warning.) ALICE. Shall I? (They nod and she tears up the telegram.) MATEY (with a gulp). Thank you, ma'am. LADY CAROLINE. You should have sent that telegram off. JOANNA. You are sure you have told us all you know, Matey? MATEY. Yes, miss. (But at the door he is more generous.) Above all, ladies, I wouldn't go into the wood. MABEL. The wood? Why, there is no wood within a dozen miles of here. MATEY. NO, ma'am. But all the same I wouldn't go into it, ladies--not if I was you. (With this cryptic warning he leaves them, and any discussion of it is prevented by the arrival of their host. LOB is very small, and probably no one has ever looked so old except some newborn child. To such as watch him narrowly, as the ladies now do for the first time, he has the effect of seeming to be hollow, an attenuated piece of piping insufficiently inflated; one feels that if he were to strike against a solid object he might rebound feebly from it, which would be less disconcerting if he did not obviously know this and carefully avoid the furniture; he is so light that the subject must not be mentioned in his presence, but it is possible that, were the ladies to combine, they could blow him out of a chair. He enters portentously, his hands behind his back, as if every bit of him, from his domed head to his little feet, were the physical expressions of the deep thoughts within him, then suddenly he whirls round to make his guests jump. This amuses him vastly, and he regains his gravity with difficulty. He addresses MRS. COADE.) LOB. Standing, dear lady? Pray be seated. (He finds a chair for her and pulls it away as she is about to sit, or kindly pretends to be about to do so, for he has had this quaint conceit every evening since she arrived.) MRS. COADE (who loves children). You naughty! LOB (eagerly). It is quite a flirtation, isn't it? (He rolls on a chair, kicking out his legs in an ecstasy of satisfaction. But the ladies are not certain that he is the little innocent they have hitherto thought him. The advent of MR. COADE and MR. PURDIE presently adds to their misgivings. MR. COADE is old, a sweet pippin of a man with a gentle smile for all; he must have suffered much, you conclude incorrectly, to acquire that tolerant smile. Sometimes, as when he sees other people at work, a wistful look takes the place of the smile, and MR. COADE fidgets like one who would be elsewhere. Then there rises before his eyes the room called the study in his house, whose walls are lined with boxes marked A. B. C. to Z. and A2. B2. C2. to K2. These contain dusty notes for his great work on the Feudal System, the notes many years old, the work, strictly speaking, not yet begun. He still speaks at times of finishing it but never of beginning it. He knows that in more favourable circumstances, for instance if he had been a poor man instead of pleasantly well to do, he could have flung himself avidly into that noble undertaking; but he does not allow his secret sorrow to embitter him or darken the house. Quickly the vision passes, and he is again his bright self. Idleness, he says in his game way, has its recompenses. It is charming now to see how he at once crosses to his wife, solicitous for her comfort. He is bearing down on her with a footstool when MR. PURDIE comes from the dining-room. He is the most brilliant of our company, recently notable in debate at Oxford, where he was runner-up for the presidentship of the Union and only lost it because the other man was less brilliant. Since then he has gone to the bar on Monday, married on Tuesday and had a brief on Wednesday. Beneath his brilliance, and making charming company for himself, he is aware of intellectual powers beyond his years. As we are about to see, he has made one mistake in his life which he is bravely facing.) ALICE. Is my husband still sampling the port, Mr. Purdie? PURDIE (with a disarming smile for the absent DEARTH). Do you know, I believe he is. Do the ladies like our proposal, Coade? COADE. I have not told them of it yet. The fact is, I am afraid that it might tire my wife too much. Do you feel equal to a little exertion to-night, Coady, or is your foot troubling you? MRS. COADE (the kind creature). I have been resting it, Coady. COADE (propping it on the footstool). There! Is that more comfortable? Presently, dear, if you are agreeable we are all going out for a walk. MRS. COADE (quoting MATEY). The garden is all right. PURDIE (with jocular solemnity). Ah, but it is not to be the garden. We are going farther afield. We have an adventure for to-night. Get thick shoes and a wrap, Mrs. Dearth; all of you. LADY CAROLINE (with but languid interest). Where do you propose to take us? PURDIE. To find a mysterious wood. (With the word 'wood' the ladies are blown upright. Their eyes turn to LOB, who, however, has never looked more innocent). JOANNE. Are you being funny, Mr. Purdie? You know quite well that there are not any trees for miles around. You have said yourself that it is the one blot on the landscape. COADE (almost as great a humorist as PURDIE). Ah, on ordinary occasions! But allow us to point out to you, Miss Joanna, that this is Midsummer Eve. (LOB again comes sharply under female observation.) PURDIE. Tell them what you told us, Lob. LOB (with a pout for the credulous). It is all nonsense, of course; just foolish talk of the villagers. They say that on Midsummer Eve there is a strange wood in this part of the country. ALICE (lowering). Where? PURDIE. Ah, that is one of its most charming features. It is never twice in the same place apparently. It has been seen on different parts of the Downs and on More Common; once it was close to Radley village and another time about a mile from the sea. Oh, a sporting wood! LADY CAROLINE. And Lob is anxious that we should all go and look for it? COADE. Not he; Lob is the only sceptic in the house. Says it is all rubbish, and that we shall be sillies if we go. But we believe, eh, Purdie? PURDIE (waggishly). Rather! LOB (the artful). Just wasting the evening. Let us have a round game at cards here instead. PURDIE (grandly), No, sir, I am going to find that wood. JOANNA. What is the good of it when it is found? PURDIE. We shall wander in it deliciously, listening to a new sort of bird called the Philomel. (LOB is behaving in the most exemplary manner; making sweet little clucking sounds.) JOANNA (doubtfully). Shall we keep together, Mr. Purdie? PURDIE. No, we must hunt in pairs. JOANNA. (converted). I think it would be rather fun. Come on, Coady, I'll lace your boots for you. I am sure your poor foot will carry you nicely. ALICE. Miss Trout, wait a moment. Lob, has this wonderful wood any special properties? LOB. Pooh! There's no wood. LADY CAROLINE. You've never seen it? LOB. Not I. I don't believe in it. ALICE. Have any of the villagers ever been in it? LOB (dreamily). So it's said; so it's said. ALICE. What did they say were their experiences? LOB. That isn't known. They never came back. JOANNA (promptly resuming her seat). Never came back! LOB. Absurd, of course. You see in the morning the wood was gone; and so they were gone, too. (He clucks again.) JOANNA. I don't think I like this wood. MRS. COADE. It certainly is Midsummer Eve. COADE (remembering that women are not yet civilised). Of course if you ladies are against it we will drop the idea. It was only a bit of fun. ALICE (with a malicious eye on LOB). Yes, better give it up--to please Lob. PURDIE. Oh, all right, Lob. What about that round game of cards? (The proposal meets with approval.) LOB (bursting into tears). I wanted you to go. I had set my heart on your going. It is the thing I wanted, and it isn't good for me not to get the thing I want. (He creeps under the table and threatens the hands that would draw him out.) MRS. COADE. Good gracious, he has wanted it all the time. You wicked Lob! ALICE. Now, you see there _is_ something in it. COADE. Nonsense, Mrs. Dearth, it was only a joke. MABEL (melting). Don't cry, Lobby. LOB. Nobody cares for me--nobody loves me. And I need to be loved. (Several of them are on their knees to him.) JOANNA. Yes, we do, we all love you. Nice, nice Lobby. MABEL. Dear Lob, I am so fond of you. JOANNA. Dry his eyes with my own handkerchief. (He holds up his eyes but is otherwise inconsolable.) LADY CAROLINE. Don't pamper him. LOB (furiously). I need to be pampered. MRS. COADE. You funny little man. Let us go at once and look for his wood. (All feel that thus alone can his tears be dried.) JOANNA. Boots and cloaks, hats forward. Come on, Lady Caroline, just to show you are not afraid of Matey. (There is a general exodus, and LOB left alone emerges from his temporary retirement. He ducks victoriously, but presently is on his knees again distressfully regarding some flowers that have fallen from their bowl.) LOB. Poor bruised one, it was I who hurt you. Lob is so sorry. Lie there! (To another.) Pretty, pretty, let me see where you have a pain? You fell on your head; is this the place? Now I make it better. Oh, little rascal, you are not hurt at all; you just pretend. Oh dear, oh dear! Sweetheart, don't cry, you are now prettier than ever. You were too tall. Oh, how beautifully you smell now that you are small. (He replaces the wounded tenderly in their bowl.) rink, drink. Now, you are happy again. The little rascal smiles. All smile, please--nod heads--aha! aha! You love Lob--Lob loves you. (JOANNA and MR. PURDIE stroll in by the window.) JOANNA. What were you saying to them, Lob? LOB. I was saying 'Two's company, three's none.' (He departs with a final cluck.) JOANNA. That man--he suspects! (This is a very different JOANNA from the one who has so far flitted across our scene. It is also a different PURDIE. In company they seldom look at each other, though when the one does so the eyes of the other magnetically respond. We have seen them trivial, almost cynical, but now we are to greet them as they know they really are, the great strong-hearted man and his natural mate, in the grip of the master passion. For the moment LOB'S words have unnerved JOANNA and it is JOHN PURDIE's dear privilege to soothe her.) PURDIE. No one minds Lob. My dear, oh my dear. JOANNA (faltering). Yes, but he saw you kiss my hand. Jack, if Mabel were to suspect! PURDIE (happily). There is nothing for her to suspect. JOANNA (eagerly). No, there isn't, is there? (She is desirous ever to be without a flaw.) Jack, I am not doing anything wrong, am I? PURDIE. You! (With an adorable gesture she gives him one of her hands, and manlike he takes the other also.) JOANNA. Mabel is your wife, Jack. I should so hate myself if I did anything that was disloyal to her. PURDIE (pressing her hand to her eyes as if counting them, in the strange manner of lovers). Those eyes could never be disloyal--my lady of the nut-brown eyes. (He holds her from him, surveying her, and is scorched in the flame of her femininity.) Oh, the sveldtness of you. (Almost with reproach.) Joanna, why are you so sveldt! (For his sake she would be less sveldt if she could, but she can't. She admits her failure with eyes grown still larger, and he envelops her so that he may not see her. Thus men seek safety.) JOANNA (while out of sight). All I want is to help her and you. PURDIE. I know--how well I know--my dear brave love. JOANNA. I am very fond of Mabel, Jack. I should like to be the best friend she has in the world. PURDIE. You are, dearest. No woman ever had a better friend. JOANNA. And yet I don't think she really likes me. I wonder why? PURDIE (who is the bigger brained of the two.) It is just that Mabel doesn't understand. Nothing could make me say a word against my wife. JOANNA (sternly). I wouldn't listen to you if you did. PURDIE. I love you all the more, dear, for saying that. But Mabel is a cold nature and she doesn't understand. JOANNA (thinking never of herself but only of him). She doesn't appreciate your finer qualities. PURDIE (ruminating). That's it. But of course I am difficult. I always was a strange, strange creature. I often think, Joanna, that I am rather like a flower that has never had the sun to shine on it nor the rain to water it. JOANNA. You break my heart. PURDIE (with considerable enjoyment). I suppose there is no more lonely man than I walking the earth to-day. JOANNA (beating her wings). It is so mournful. PURDIE. It is the thought of you that sustains me, elevates me. You shine high above me like a star. JOANNA. No, no. I wish I was wonderful, but I am not. PURDIE. You have made me a better man, Joanna. JOANNA. I am so proud to think that. PURDIE. You have made me kinder to Mabel. JOANNA. I am sure you are always kind to her. PURDIE. Yes, I hope so. But I think now of special little ways of giving her pleasure. That never-to-be-forgotten day when we first met, you and I! JOANNA (fluttering nearer to him.) That tragic, lovely day by the weir. Oh, Jack! PURDIE. Do you know how in gratitude I spent the rest of that day? JOANNA (crooning). Tell me. PURDIE. I read to Mabel aloud for an hour. I did it out of kindness to her, because I had met you. JOANNA. It was dear of you. PURDIE. Do you remember that first time my arms--your waist--you are so fluid, Joanna. (Passionately.) Why are you so fluid? JOANNA (downcast). I can't help it, Jack. PURDIE. I gave her a ruby bracelet for that. JOANNA. It is a gem. You have given that lucky woman many lovely things. PURDIE. It is my invariable custom to go straight off and buy Mabel something whenever you have been sympathetic to me. Those new earrings of hers--they are in memory of the first day you called me Jack. Her Paquin gown--the one with the beads--was because you let me kiss you. JOANNA. I didn't exactly let you. PURDIE. No, but you have such a dear way of giving in. JOANNA. Jack, she hasn't worn that gown of late. PURDIE. No, nor the jewels. I think she has some sort of idea now that when I give her anything nice it means that you have been nice to me. She has rather a suspicious nature, Mabel; she never used to have it, but it seems to be growing on her. I wonder why, I wonder why? (In this wonder which is shared by JOANNA their lips meet, and MABEL, who has been about to enter from the garden quietly retires.) JOANNA. Was that any one in the garden? PURDIE (returning from a quest). There is no one there now. JOANNA. I am sure I heard some one. If it was Mabel! (With a perspicacity that comes of knowledge of her sex.) Jack, if she saw us she will think you were kissing me. (These fears are confirmed by the rather odd bearing of MABEL, who now joins their select party.) MABEL (apologetically). I am so sorry to interrupt you, Jack; but please wait a moment before you kiss her again. Excuse me, Joanna. (She quietly draws the curtains, thus shutting out the garden and any possible onlooker.) I did not want the others to see you; they might not understand how noble you are, Jack. You can go on now. (Having thus passed the time of day with them she withdraws by the door, leaving JACK bewildered and JOANNA knowing all about it.) JOANNA. How extraordinary! Of all the--! Oh, but how contemptible! (She sweeps to the door and calls to MABEL by name.) MABEL (returning with promptitude). Did you call me, Joanna? JOANNA (guardedly). I insist on an explanation. (With creditable hauteur.) What were you doing in the garden, Mabel? MABEL (who has not been so quiet all day). I was looking for something I have lost. PURDIE (hope springing eternal). Anything important? MABEL. I used to fancy it, Jack. It is my husband's love. You don't happen to have picked it up, Joanna? If so and you don't set great store by it I should like it back--the pieces, I mean. (MR. PURDIE is about lo reply to this, when JOANNA rather wisely fills the breach.) JOANNA. Mabel, I--I will not be talked to in that way. To imply that I--that your husband--oh, shame! PURDIE (finely). I must say, Mabel, that I am a little disappointed in you. I certainly understood that you had gone upstairs to put on your boots. MABEL. Poor old Jack. (She muses.) A woman like that! JOANNA (changing her comment in the moment of utterance), I forgive you Mabel, you will be sorry for this afterwards. PURDIE (warningly, but still reluctant to think less well of his wife). Not a word against Joanna, Mabel. If you knew how nobly she has spoken of you. JOANNA (imprudently). She does know. She has been listening. (There is a moment's danger of the scene degenerating into something mid-Victorian. Fortunately a chivalrous man is present to lift it to a higher plane. JOHN PURDIE is one to whom subterfuge of any kind is abhorrent; if he has not spoken out before it is because of his reluctance to give MABEL pain. He speaks out now, and seldom probably has he proved himself more worthy.) PURDIE. This is a man's business. I must be open with you now, Mabel: it is the manlier way. If you wish it I shall always be true to you in word and deed; it is your right. But I cannot pretend that Joanna is not the one woman in the world for me. If I had met her before you--it's Kismet, I suppose. (He swells.) JOANNA (from a chair). Too late, too late. MABEL (although the woman has seen him swell). I suppose you never knew what true love was till you met her, Jack? PURDIE. You force me to say it. Joanna and I are as one person. We have not a thought at variance. We are one rather than two. MABEL (looking at JOANNA). Yes, and that's the one! (With the cheapest sarcasm.) I am so sorry to have marred your lives. PURDIE. If any blame there is, it is all mine; she is as spotless as the driven snow. The moment I mentioned love to her she told me to desist. MABEL. Not she. JOANNA. So you were listening! (The obtuseness of MABEL is very strange to her.) Mabel, don't you see how splendid he is! MABEL. Not quite, Joanna. (She goes away. She is really a better woman than this, but never capable of scaling that higher plane to which he has, as it were, offered her a hand.) JOANNA. How lovely of you, Jack, to take it all upon yourself. PURDIE (simply). It is the man's privilege. JOANNA. Mabel has such a horrid way of seeming to put people in the wrong. PURDIE. Have you noticed that? Poor Mabel, it is not an enviable quality. JOANNA (despondently). I don't think I care to go out now. She has spoilt it all. She has taken the innocence out of it, Jack. PURDIE (a rock). We must be brave and not mind her. Ah, Joanna, if we had met in time. If only I could begin again. To be battered for ever just because I once took the wrong turning, it isn't fair. JOANNA (emerging from his arms). The wrong turning! Now, who was saying that a moment ago--about himself? Why, it was Matey. (A footstep is heard.) PURDIE (for the first time losing patience with his wife). Is that her coming back again? It's too bad. (But the intruder is MRS. DEARTH, and he greets her with relief.) Ah, it is you, Mrs. Dearth. ALICE. Yes, it is; but thank you for telling me, Mr. Purdie. I don't intrude, do I? JOANNA (descending to the lower plane, on which even goddesses snap). Why should you? PURDIE. Rather not. We were--hoping it would be you. We want to start on the walk. I can't think what has become of the others. We have been looking for them everywhere. (He glances vaguely round the room, as if they might so far have escaped detection.) ALICE (pleasantly). Well, do go on looking; under that flower-pot would be a good place. It is my husband I am in search of. PURDIE (who likes her best when they are in different rooms). Shall I rout him out for you? ALICE. How too unutterably kind of you, Mr. Purdie. I hate to trouble you, but it would be the sort of service one never forgets. PURDIE. You know, I believe you are chaffing me. ALICE. No, no, I am incapable of that. PURDIE. I won't be a moment. ALICE. Miss Trout and I will await your return with ill-concealed impatience. (They await it across a table, the newcomer in a reverie and JOANNA watching her. Presently MRS. DEARTH looks up, and we may notice that she has an attractive screw of the mouth which denotes humour.) Yes, I suppose you are right; I dare say I am. JOANNA (puzzled). I didn't say anything. ALICE. I thought I heard you say 'That hateful Dearth woman, coming butting in where she is not wanted.' (Joanna draws up her sveldt figure, but a screw of one mouth often calls for a similar demonstration from another, and both ladies smile. They nearly become friends.) JOANNA. You certainly have good ears. ALICE (drawling). Yes, they have always been rather admired. JOANNA (snapping). By the painters for whom you sat when you were an artist's model? ALICE (measuring her). So that has leaked out, has it! JOANNA (ashamed). I shouldn't have said that. ALICE (their brief friendship over). Do you think I care whether you know or not? JOANNA (making an effort to be good). I'm sure you don't. Still, it was cattish of me. ALICE. It was. JOANNA (in flame). I don't see it. (MRS. DEARTH laughs and forgets her, and with the entrance of a man from the dining room JOANNA drifts elsewhere. Not so much a man, this newcomer, as the relic of what has been a good one; it is the most he would ever claim for himself. Sometimes, brandy in hand, he has visions of the WILL DEARTH he used to be, clear of eye, sees him but a field away, singing at his easel or, fishing-rod in hand, leaping a stile. Our WILL stares after the fellow for quite a long time, so long that the two melt into the one who finishes LOB's brandy. He is scarcely intoxicated as he appears before the lady of his choice, but he is shaky and has watery eyes.) (ALICE has had a rather wild love for this man, or for that other one, and he for her, but somehow it has gone whistling down the wind. We may expect therefore to see them at their worst when in each other's company.) DEARTH (who is not without a humorous outlook on his own degradation). I am uncommonly flattered, Alice, to hear that you have sent for me. It quite takes me aback. ALICE (with cold distaste). It isn't your company I want, Will. DEARTH. You know. I felt that Purdie must have delivered your message wrongly. ALICE. I want you to come with us on this mysterious walk and keep an eye on Lob. DEARTH. On poor little Lob? Oh, surely not. ALICE. I can't make the man out. I want you to tell me something; when he invited us here, do you think it was you or me he specially wanted? DEARTH. Oh, you. He made no bones about it; said there was something about you that made him want uncommonly to have you down here. ALICE. Will, try to remember this: did he ask us for any particular time? DEARTH. Yes, he was particular about its being Midsummer week. ALICE. Ah! I thought so. Did he say what it was about me that made him want to have me here in Midsummer week? DEARTH. No, but I presumed it must be your fascination, Alice. ALICE. Just so. Well, I want you to come out with us to-night to watch him. DEARTH. Crack-in-my-eye-Tommy, spy on my host! And such a harmless little chap, too. Excuse me, Alice. Besides I have an engagement. ALICE. An engagement--with the port decanter, I presume. DEARTH. A good guess, but wrong. The decanter is now but an empty shell. Still, how you know me! My engagement is with a quiet cigar in the garden. ALICE. Your hand is so unsteady, you won't be able to light the match. DEARTH. I shall just manage. (He triumphantly proves the exact truth of his statement.) ALICE. A nice hand for an artist! DEARTH. One would scarcely call me an artist now-a-days. ALICE. Not so far as any work is concerned. DEARTH. Not so far as having any more pretty dreams to paint is concerned. (Grinning at himself.) Wonder why I have become such a waster, Alice? ALICE. I suppose it was always in you. DEARTH (with perhaps a glimpse of the fishing-rod). I suppose so; and yet I was rather a good sort in the days when I went courting you. ALICE. Yes, I thought so. Unlucky days for me, as it has turned out. DEARTH (heartily). Yes, a bad job for you. (Puzzling unsteadily over himself.) I didn't know I was a wrong 'un at the time; thought quite well of myself, thought a vast deal more of you. Crack-in-my-eye-Tommy, how I used to leap out of bed at 6 A.M. all agog to be at my easel; blood ran through my veins in those days. And now I'm middle-aged and done for. Funny! Don't know how it has come about, nor what has made the music mute. (Mildly curious.) When did you begin to despise me, Alice? ALICE. When I got to know you really, Will; a long time ago. DEARTH (bleary of eye). Yes, I think that is true. It was a long time ago, and before I had begun to despise myself. It wasn't till I knew you had no opinion of me that I began to go down hill. You will grant that, won't you; and that I did try for a bit to fight on? If you had cared for me I wouldn't have come to this, surely? ALICE. Well, I found I didn't care for you, and I wasn't hypocrite enough to pretend I did. That's blunt, but you used to admire my bluntness. DEARTH. The bluntness of you, the adorable wildness of you, you untamed thing! There were never any shades in you; kiss or kill was your motto, Alice. I felt from the first moment I saw you that you would love me or knife me. (Memories of their shooting star flare in both of them for as long as a sheet of paper might take to burn.) ALICE. I didn't knife you. DEARTH. No. I suppose that was where you made the mistake. It is hard on you, old lady. (Becoming watery.) I suppose it's too late to try to patch things up? ALICE. Let's be honest; it is too late, Will. DEARTH (whose tears would smell of brandy). Perhaps if we had had children--Pity! ALICE. A blessing I should think, seeing what sort of a father they would have had. DEARTH (ever reasonable). I dare say you're right. Well, Alice, I know that somehow it's my fault. I'm sorry for you. ALICE. I'm sorry for myself. If I hadn't married you what a different woman I should be. What a fool I was. DEARTH. Ah! Three things they say come not back to men nor women--the spoken word, the past life and the neglected opportunity. Wonder if we should make any more of them, Alice, if they did come back to us. ALICE. You wouldn't. DEARTH (avoiding a hiccup). I guess you're right. ALICE. But I-- DEARTH (sincerely). Yes, what a boon for you. But I hope it's not Freddy Finch-Fallowe you would put in my place; I know he is following you about again. (He is far from threatening her, he has too beery an opinion of himself for that.) ALICE. He followed me about, as you put it, before I knew you. I don't know why I quarrelled with him. DEARTH. Your heart told you that he was no good, Alice. ALICE. My heart told me that you were. So it wasn't of much service to me, my heart! DEARTH. The Honourable Freddy Finch-Fallowe is a rotter. ALICE (ever inflammable). You are certainly an authority on the subject. DEARTH (with the sad smile of the disillusioned). You have me there. After which brief, but pleasant, little connubial chat, he pursued his dishonoured way into the garden. (He is however prevented doing so for the moment by the return of the others. They are all still in their dinner clothes though wearing wraps. They crowd in through the door, chattering.) LOB. Here they are. Are you ready, dear lady? MRS. COADE (seeing that DEARTH's hand is on the window curtains). Are you not coming with us to find the wood, Mr. Dearth. DEARTH. Alas, I am unavoidably detained. You will find me in the garden when you come back. JOANNA (whose sense of humour has been restored). If we ever do come back! DEARTH. Precisely. (With a groggy bow.) Should we never meet again, Alice, fare thee well. Purdie, if you find the tree of knowledge in the wood bring me back an apple. PURDIE. I promise. LOB. Come quickly. Matey mustn't see me. (He is turning out the lights.) LADY CAROLINE (pouncing). Matey? What difference would that make, Lob? LOB. He would take me off to bed; it's past my time. COADE (not the least gay of the company). You know, old fellow, you make it very difficult for us to embark upon this adventure in the proper eerie spirit. DEARTH. Well, I'm for the garden. (He walks to the window, and the others are going out by the door. But they do not go. There is a hitch somewhere--at the window apparently, for DEARTH, having begun to draw the curtains apart lets them fall, like one who has had a shock. The others remember long afterwards his grave face as he came quietly back and put his cigar on the table. The room is in darkness save for the light from one lamp.) PURDIE (wondering). How, now, Dearth? DEARTH. What is it we get in that wood, Lob? ALICE. Ah, he won't tell us that. LOB (shrinking). Come on! ALICE (impressed by the change that has come over her husband). Tell us first. LOB (forced to the disclosure). They say that in the wood you get what nearly everybody here is longing for--a second chance. (The ladies are simultaneously enlightened.) JOANNA (speaking for all). So that is what we have in common! COADE: (with gentle regret). I have often thought, Coady, that if I had a second chance I should be a useful man instead of just a nice lazy one. ALICE (morosely). A second chance! LOB. Come on. PURDIE (gaily). Yes, to the wood--the wood! DEARTH (as they are going out by the door). Stop, why not go this way? (He pulls the curtains apart, and there comes a sudden indrawing of breath from all, for no garden is there now. In its place is an endless wood of great trees; the nearest of them has come close to the window. It is a sombre wood, with splashes of moonshine and of blackness standing very still in it.) (The party in the drawing-room are very still also; there is scarcely a cry or a movement. It is perhaps strange that the most obviously frightened is LOB who calls vainly for MATEY. The first articulate voice is DEARTH'S.) DEARTH (very quietly). Any one ready to risk it? PURDIE (after another silence). Of course there is nothing in it--just DEARTH (grimly). Of course. Going out, Purdie? (PURDIE draws back.) MRS. DEARTH (the only one who is undaunted). A second chance! (She is looking at her husband. They all look at him as if he had been a leader once.) DEARTH (with his sweet mournful smile). I shall be back in a moment--probably. (As he passes into the wood his hands rise, as if a hammer had tapped him on the forehead. He is soon lost to view.) LADY CAROLINE (after a long pause). He does not come back. MRS. COADE. It's horrible. (She steals off by the door to her room, calling to her husband to do likewise. He takes a step after her, and stops in the grip of the two words that holds them all. The stillness continues. At last MRS. PURDIE goes out into the wood, her hands raised, and is swallowed up by it.) PURDIE. Mabel! ALICE (sardonically). You will have to go now, Mr. Purdie. (He looks at JOANNA, and they go out together, one tap of the hammer for each.) LOB. That's enough. (Warningly.) Don't you go, Mrs. Dearth. You'll catch it if you go. ALICE. A second chance! (She goes out unflinching.) LADY CAROLINE. One would like to know. (She goes out. MRS. COADE'S voice is heard from the stair calling to her husband. He hesitates but follows LADY CAROLINE. To LOB now alone comes MATEY with a tray of coffee cups.) MATEY (as he places his tray on the table). It is past your bed-time, sir. Say good-night to the ladies, and come along. LOB. Matey, look! (MATEY looks.) MATEY (shrinking). Great heavens, then it's true! LOB. Yes, but I--I wasn't sure. (MATEY approaches the window cautiously to peer out, and his master gives him a sudden push that propels him into the wood. LOB's back is toward us as he stands alone staring out upon the unknown. He is terrified still; yet quivers of rapture are running up and down his little frame.) ACT II We are translated to the depths of the wood in the enchantment of a moonlight night. In some other glade a nightingale is singing, in this one, in proud motoring attire, recline two mortals whom we have known in different conditions; the second chance has converted them into husband and wife. The man, of gross muddy build, lies luxurious on his back exuding affluence, a prominent part of him heaving playfully, like some little wave that will not rest in a still sea. A handkerchief over his face conceals from us what Colossus he may be, but his mate is our Lady Caroline. The nightingale trills on, and Lady Caroline takes up its song. LADY CAROLINE. Is it not a lovely night, Jim. Listen, my own, to Philomel; he is saying that he is lately married. So are we, you ducky thing. I feel, Jim, that I am Rosalind and that you are my Orlando. (The handkerchief being removed MR. MATEY is revealed; and the nightingale seeks some farther tree.) MATEY. What do you say I am, Caroliny? LADY CAROLINE (clapping her hands). My own one, don't you think it would be fun if we were to write poems about each other and pin them on the tree trunks? MATEY (tolerantly). Poems? I never knew such a lass for high-flown language. LADY CAROLINE. Your lass, dearest. Jim's lass. MATEY (pulling her ear). And don't you forget it. LADY CAROLINE (with the curiosity of woman). What would you do if I were to forget it, great bear? MATEY. Take a stick to you. LADY CAROLINE (so proud of him). I love to hear you talk like that; it is so virile. I always knew that it was a master I needed. MATEY. It's what you all need. LADY CAROLINE. It is, it is, you knowing wretch. MATEY. Listen, Caroliny. (He touches his money pocket, which emits a crinkly sound--the squeak of angels.) That is what gets the ladies. LADY CAROLINE. How much have you made this week, you wonderful man? MATEY (blandly). Another two hundred or so. That's all, just two hundred or so. LADY CAROLINE (caressing her wedding ring). My dear golden fetter, listen to him. Kiss my fetter, Jim. MATEY. Wait till I light this cigar. LADY CAROLINE. Let me hold the darling match. MATEY. Tidy-looking Petitey Corona, this. There was a time when one of that sort would have run away with two days of my screw. LADY CAROLINE. How I should have loved, Jim, to know you when you were poor. Fancy your having once been a clerk. MATEY (remembering Napoleon and others). We all have our beginnings. But it wouldn't have mattered how I began, Caroliny: I should have come to the top just the same. (Becoming a poet himself.) I am a climber and there are nails in my boots for the parties beneath me. Boots! I tell you if I had been a bootmaker, I should have been the first bootmaker in London. LADY CAROLINE (a humourist at last). I am sure you would, Jim; but should you have made the best boots? MATEY (uxoriously wishing that others could have heard this). Very good. Caroliny; that is the nearest thing I have heard you say. But it's late; we had best be strolling back to our Rolls-Royce. LADY CAROLINE (as they rise). I do hope the ground wasn't damp. MATEY. Don't matter if it was; I was lying on your rug. (Indeed we notice now that he has had all the rug, and she the bare ground. JOANNA reaches the glade, now an unhappy lady who has got what she wanted. She is in country dress and is unknown to them as they are to her.) Who is the mournful party? JOANNA (hesitating). I wonder, sir, whether you happen to have seen my husband? I have lost him in the wood. MATEY. We are strangers in these parts ourselves, missis. Have we passed any one, Caroliny? LADY CAROLINE (coyly). Should we have noticed, dear? Might it be that old gent over there? (After the delightful manner of those happily wed she has already picked up many of her lover's favourite words and phrases.) JOANNA. Oh no, my husband is quite young. (The woodlander referred to is MR COADE in gala costume; at his mouth a whistle he has made him from some friendly twig. To its ravishing music he is seen pirouetting charmingly among the trees, his new occupation.) MATEY (signing to the unknown that he is wanted). Seems a merry old cock. Evening to you, sir. Do you happen to have seen a young gentleman in the wood lately, all by himself, and looking for his wife? COADE (with a flourish of his legs). Can't say I have. JOANNA (dolefully). He isn't necessarily by himself; and I don't know that he is looking for me. There may be a young lady with him. (The more happily married lady smiles, and Joanna is quick to take offence.) JOANNA. What do you mean by that? LADY CAROLINE (neatly). Oho--if you like that better. MATEY. Now, now, now--your manners, Caroliny. COADE. Would he be singing or dancing? JOANNA. Oh no--at least, I hope not. COADE (an artist to the tips). Hope not? Odd! If he is doing neither I am not likely to notice him, but if I do, what name shall I say? JOANNA (gloating not). Purdie; I am Mrs. Purdie. COADE. I will try to keep a look-out, and if I see him ... but I am rather occupied at present ... (The reference is to his legs and a new step they are acquiring. He sways this way and that, and, whistle to lips, minuets off in the direction of Paradise.) JOANNA (looking elsewhere). I am sorry I troubled you. I see him now. LADY CAROLINE. Is he alone? (JOANNA glares at her.) Ah, I see from your face that he isn't. MATEY (who has his wench in training). Caroliny, no awkward questions. Evening, missis, and I hope you will get him to go along with you quietly. (Looking after COADE.) Watch the old codger dancing. (Light-hearted as children they dance after him, while JOANNA behind a tree awaits her lord. PURDIE in knickerbockers approaches with misgivings to make sure that his JOANNA is not in hiding, and then he gambols joyously with a charming confection whose name is MABEL. They chase each other from tree to tree, but fortunately not round JOANNA'S tree.) MABEL (as he catches her). No, and no, and no. I don't know you nearly well enough for that. Besides, what would your wife say! I shall begin to think you are a very dreadful man, Mr. Purdie. PURDIE (whose sincerity is not to be questioned). Surely you might call me Jack by this time. MABEL (heaving). Perhaps, if you are very good, Jack. PURDIE (of noble thoughts compact). If only Joanna were more like you. MABEL. Like me? You mean her face? It is a--well, if it is not precisely pretty, it is a good face. (Handsomely.) I don't mind her face at all. I am glad you have got such a dependable little wife, Jack. PURDIE (gloomily). Thanks. MABEL (seated with a moonbeam in her lap). What would Joanna have said if she had seen you just now? PURDIE. A wife should be incapable of jealousy. MABEL Joanna jealous? But has she any reason? Jack, tell me, who is the woman? PURDIE (restraining himself by a mighty effort, for he wishes always to be true to JOANNA). Shall I, Mabel, shall I? MABEL (faltering, yet not wholly giving up the chase). I can't think who she is. Have I ever seen her? PURDIE. Every time you look in a mirror. MABEL (with her head on one side). How odd, Jack, that can't be; when I look in a mirror I see only myself. PURDIE (gloating). How adorably innocent you are, Mabel. Joanna would have guessed at once. (Slowly his meaning comes to her, and she is appalled.) MABEL. Not that! PURDIE (aflame). Shall I tell you now? MABEL (palpitating exquisitely). I don't know, I am not sure. Jack, try not to say it, but if you feel you must, say it in such a way that it would not hurt the feelings of Joanna if she happened to be passing by, as she nearly always is. (A little moan from JOANNA'S tree is unnoticed.) PURDIE. I would rather not say it at all than that way. (He is touchingly anxious that she should know him as he really is.) I don't know, Mabel, whether you have noticed that I am not like other men. (He goes deeply into the very structure of his being.) All my life I have been a soul that has had to walk alone. Even as a child I had no hope that it would be otherwise. I distinctly remember when I was six thinking how unlike other children I was. Before I was twelve I suffered from terrible self-depreciation; I do so still. I suppose there never was a man who had a more lowly opinion of himself. MABEL. Jack, you who are so universally admired. PURDIE. That doesn't help; I remain my own judge. I am afraid I am a dark spirit, Mabel. Yes, yes, my dear, let me leave nothing untold however it may damage me in your eyes. Your eyes! I cannot remember a time when I did not think of Love as a great consuming passion; I visualised it, Mabel, as perhaps few have done, but always as the abounding joy that could come to others but never to me. I expected too much of women: I suppose I was touched to finer issues than most. That has been my tragedy. MABEL. Then you met Joanna. PURDIE. Then I met Joanna. Yes! Foolishly, as I now see, I thought she would understand that I was far too deep a nature really to mean the little things I sometimes said to her. I suppose a man was never placed in such a position before. What was I to do? Remember, I was always certain that the ideal love could never come to me. Whatever the circumstances, I was convinced that my soul must walk alone. MABEL. Joanna, how could you. PURDIE (firmly). Not a word against her, Mabel; if blame there is the blame is mine. MABEL. And so you married her. PURDIE. And so I married her. MABEL. Out of pity. PURDIE. I felt it was a man's part. I was such a child in worldly matters that it was pleasant to me to have the right to pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb the well of my emotions. MABEL. Then you met me. PURDIE. Then I met you. MABEL. Too late--never--forever--forever--never. They are the saddest words in the English tongue. PURDIE. At the time I thought a still sadder word was Joanna. MABEL. What was it you saw in me that made you love me? PURDIE (plumbing the well of his emotions). I think it was the feeling that you are so like myself. MABEL (with great eyes). Have you noticed that, Jack? Sometimes it has almost terrified me. PURDIE. We think the same thoughts; we are not two, Mabel; we are one. Your hair-- MABEL. Joanna knows you admire it, and for a week she did hers in the same way. PURDIE. I never noticed. MABEL. That was why she gave it up. And it didn't really suit her. (Ruminating.) I can't think of a good way of doing dear Joanna's hair. What is that you are muttering to yourself, Jack? Don't keep anything from me. PURDIE. I was repeating a poem I have written: it is in two words, 'Mabel Purdie.' May I teach it to you, sweet: say 'Mabel Purdie' to me. MABEL (timidly covering his mouth with her little hand). If I were to say it, Jack, I should be false to Joanna: never ask me to be that. Let us go on. PURDIE (merciless in his passion). Say it, Mabel, say it. See I write it on the ground with your sunshade. MABEL. If it could be! Jack, I'll whisper it to you. (She is whispering it as they wander, not two but one, farther into the forest, ardently believing in themselves; they are not hypocrites. The somewhat bedraggled figure of Joanna follows them, and the nightingale resumes his love-song. 'That's all you know, you bird!' thinks Joanna cynically. The nightingale, however, is not singing for them nor for her, but for another pair he has espied below. They are racing, the prize to be for the one who first finds the spot where the easel was put up last night. The hobbledehoy is sure to be the winner, for she is less laden, and the father loses time by singing as he comes. Also she is all legs and she started ahead. Brambles adhere to her, one boot has been in the water and she has as many freckles as there are stars in heaven. She is as lovely as you think she is, and she is aged the moment when you like your daughter best. A hoot of triumph from her brings her father to the spot.) MARGARET. Daddy, Daddy. I have won. Here is the place. Crack-in-my-eye-Tommy! (He comes. Crack-in-my-eye-Tommy, this engaging fellow in tweeds is MR. DEARTH, ablaze in happiness and health and a daughter. He finishes his song, picked up in the Latin Quarter.) DEARTH. Yes, that is the tree I stuck my easel under last night, and behold the blessed moon behaving more gorgeously than ever. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, old moon; but you ought to know by now how time passes. Now, keep still, while I hand you down to posterity. (The easel is erected, MARGARET helping by getting in the way.) MARGARET (critical, as an artist's daughter should be.) The moon is rather pale to-night, isn't she? DEARTH. Comes of keeping late hours. MARGARET (showing off). Daddy, watch me, look at me. Please, sweet moon, a pleasant expression. No, no, not as if you were sitting or it; that is too professional. That is better; thank you. Now keep it. That is the sort of thing you say to them, Dad. DEARTH (quickly at work). I oughtn't to have brought you out so late; you should be tucked up in your cosy bed at home. MARGARET (pursuing a squirrel that isn't there). With the pillow anyhow. DEARTH. Except in its proper place. MARGARET (wetting the other foot). And the sheet over my face. DEARTH. Where it oughtn't to be. MARGARET (more or less upside down). And Daddy tiptoeing in to take it off. DEARTH. Which is more than you deserve. MARGARET (in a tree). Then why does he stand so long at the door? And before he has gone she bursts out laughing, for she has been awake all the time. DEARTH. That's about it. What a life! But I oughtn't to have brought you here. Best to have the sheet over you when the moon is about; moonlight is bad for little daughters. MARGARET (pelting him with nuts). I can't sleep when the moon's at the full; she keeps calling to me to get up. Perhaps I am _her_ daughter too. DEARTH. Gad, you look it to-night. MARGARET. Do I? Then can't you paint me into the picture as well as Mamma? You could call it 'A Mother and Daughter' or simply 'Two ladies.' if the moon thinks that calling me her daughter would make her seem too old. DEARTH. O matre pulchra filia pulchrior. That means, 'O Moon--more beautiful than any twopenny-halfpenny daughter.' MARGARET (emerging in an unexpected place). Daddy, do you really prefer her? DEARTH. 'Sh! She's not a patch on you; it's the sort of thing we say to our sitters to keep them in good humour. (He surveys ruefully a great stain on her frock.) I wish to heaven, Margaret, we were not both so fond of apple-tart. And what's this? (Catching hold of her skirt.) MARGARET (unnecessarily). It's a tear. DEARTH. I should think it is a tear. MARGARET. That boy at the farm did it. He kept calling Snubs after me, but I got him down and kicked him in the stomach. He is rather a jolly boy. DEARTH. He sounds it. Ye Gods, what a night! MARGARET (considering the picture). And what a moon! Dad, she is not quite so fine as that. DEARTH. 'Sh! I have touched her up. MARGARET. Dad, Dad--what a funny man! (She has seen MR. COADE with whistle, enlivening the wood. He pirouettes round them and departs to add to the happiness of others. MARGARET gives an excellent imitation of him at which her father shakes his head, then reprehensibly joins in the dance. Her mood changes, she clings to him.) MARGARET. Hold me tight, Daddy, I 'm frightened. I think they want to take you away from me. DEARTH. Who, gosling? MARGARET. I don't know. It's too lovely, Daddy; I won't be able to keep hold of it. DEARTH. What is? MARGARET. The world--everything--and you, Daddy, most of all. Things that are too beautiful can't last. DEARTH (who knows it). Now, how did you find that out? MARGARET (still in his arms). I don't know, Daddy, am I sometimes stranger than other people's daughters? DEARTH. More of a madcap, perhaps. MARGARET (solemnly). Do you think I am sometimes too full of gladness? DEARTH. My sweetheart, you do sometimes run over with it. (He is at his easel again.) MARGARET (persisting). To be very gay, dearest dear, is so near to being very sad. DEARTH (who knows it). How did you find that out, child? MARGARET. I don't know. From something in me that's afraid. (Unexpectedly.) Daddy, what is a 'might-have-been?' DEARTH. A might-have-been? They are ghosts, Margaret. I daresay I 'might have been' a great swell of a painter, instead of just this uncommonly happy nobody. Or again, I might have been a worthless idle waster of a fellow. MARGARET (laughing). You! DEARTH. Who knows? Some little kink in me might have set me off on the wrong road. And that poor soul I might so easily have been might have had no Margaret. My word, I'm sorry for him. MARGARET. So am I. (She conceives a funny picture.) The poor old Daddy, wandering about the world without me! DEARTH. And there are other 'might-have-beens'--lovely ones, but intangible. Shades, Margaret, made of sad folk's thoughts. MARGARET (jigging about). I am so glad I am not a shade. How awful it would be, Daddy, to wake up and find one wasn't alive. DEARTH. It would, dear. MARGARET. Daddy, wouldn't it be awful. I think men need daughters. DEARTH. They do. MARGARET. Especially artists. DEARTH. Yes, especially artists. MARGARET. Especially artists. DEARTH. Especially artists. MARGARET (covering herself with leaves and kicking them off). Fame is not everything. DEARTH. Fame is rot; daughters are the thing. MARGARET. Daughters are the thing. DEARTH. Daughters are the thing. MARGARET. I wonder if sons would be even nicer? DEARTH. Not a patch on daughters. The awful thing about a son is that never, never--at least, from the day he goes to school--can you tell him that you rather like him. By the time he is ten you can't even take him on your knee. Sons are not worth having, Margaret. Signed W. Dearth. MARGARET. But if you were a mother, Dad, I daresay he would let you do it. DEARTH. Think so? MARGARET. I mean when no one was looking. Sons are not so bad. Signed, M. Dearth. But I'm glad you prefer daughters. (She works her way toward him on her knees, making the tear larger.) At what age are we nicest, Daddy? (She has constantly to repeat her questions, he is so engaged with his moon.) Hie, Daddy, at what age are we nicest? Daddy, hie, hie, at what age are we nicest? DEARTH. Eh? That's a poser. I think you were nicest when you were two and knew your alphabet up to G but fell over at H. No, you were best when you were half-past three; or just before you struck six; or in the mumps year, when I asked you in the early morning how you were and you said solemnly 'I haven't tried yet.' MARGARET (awestruck). Did I? DEARTH. Such was your answer. (Struggling with the momentous question.) But I am not sure that chicken-pox doesn't beat mumps. Oh Lord, I'm all wrong. The nicest time in a father's life is the year before she puts up her hair. MARGARET (topheavy with pride in herself). I suppose that is a splendid time. But there's a nicer year coming to you. Daddy, there is a nicer year coming to you. DEARTH. Is there, darling? MARGARET. Daddy, the year she does put up her hair! DEARTH. (with arrested brush). Puts it up for ever? You know, I am afraid that when the day for that comes I shan't be able to stand it. It will be too exciting. My poor heart, Margaret. MARGARET (rushing at him). No, no, it will be lucky you, for it isn't to be a bit like that. I am to be a girl and woman day about for the first year. You will never know which I am till you look at my hair. And even then you won't know, for if it is down I shall put it up, and if it is up I shall put it down. And so my Daddy will gradually get used to the idea. DEARTH. (wryly). I see you have been thinking it out. MARGARET (gleaming). I have been doing more than that. Shut your eyes, Dad, and I shall give you a glimpse into the future. DEARTH. I don't know that I want that: the present is so good. MARGARET. Shut your eyes, please. DEARTH. No, Margaret. MARGARET. Please, Daddy. DEARTH. Oh, all right. They are shut. MARGARET. Don't open them till I tell you. What finger is that? DEARTH. The dirty one. MARGARET (on her knees among the leaves). Daddy, now I am putting up my hair. I have got such a darling of a mirror. It is such a darling mirror I 've got, Dad. Dad, don't look. I shall tell you about it. It is a little pool of water. I wish we could take it home and hang it up. Of course the moment my hair is up there will be other changes also; for instance, I shall talk quite differently. DEARTH. Pooh. Where are my matches, dear? MARGARET, Top pocket, waistcoat. DEARTH (trying to light his pipe in darkness). You were meaning to frighten me just now. MARGARET. No. I am just preparing you. You see, darling, I can't call you Dad when my hair is up. I think I shall call you Parent. (He growls.) Parent dear, do you remember the days when your Margaret was a slip of a girl, and sat on your knee? How foolish we were, Parent, in those distant days. DEARTH. Shut up, Margaret. MARGARET. Now I must be more distant to you; more like a boy who could not sit on your knee any more. DEARTH. See here, I want to go on painting. Shall I look now? MARGARET. I am not quite sure whether I want you to. It makes such a difference. Perhaps you won't know me. Even the pool is looking a little scared. (The change in her voice makes him open his eyes quickly. She confronts him shyly.) What do you think? Will I do? DEARTH. Stand still, dear, and let me look my fill. The Margaret that is to be. MARGARET (the change in his voice falling clammy on her). You'll see me often enough, Daddy, like this, so you don't need to look your fill. You are looking as long as if this were to be the only time. DEARTH. (with an odd tremor). Was I? Surely it isn't to be that. MARGARET. Be gay, Dad. (Bumping into him and round him and over him.) You will be sick of Margaret with her hair up before you are done with her. DEARTH. I expect so. MARGARET. Shut up, Daddy. (She waggles her head, and down comes her hair.) Daddy, I know what you are thinking of. You are thinking what a handful she is going to be. DEARTH. Well, I guess she is. MARGARET (surveying him from another angle). Now you are thinking about--about my being in love some day. DEARTH (with unnecessary warmth). Rot! MARGARET (reassuringly). I won't, you know; no, never. Oh, I have quite decided, so don't be afraid, (Disordering his hair.) Will you hate him at first, Daddy? Daddy, will you hate him? Will you hate him, Daddy? DEARTH (at work). Whom? MARGARET. Well, if there was? DEARTH. If there was what, darling? MARGARET. You know the kind of thing I mean, quite well. Would you hate him at first? DEARTH. I hope not. I should want to strangle him, but I wouldn't hate him. MARGARET. _I_ would. That is to say, if I liked him. DEARTH. If you liked him how could you hate him? MARGARET. For daring! DEARTH. Daring what? MARGARET. You know. (Sighing.) But of course I shall have no say in the matter. You will do it all. You do everything for me. DEARTH (with a groan). I can't help it. MARGARET. You will even write my love-letters, if I ever have any to write, which I won't. DEARTH (ashamed). Surely to goodness, Margaret, I will leave you alone to do that! MARGARET. Not you; you will try to, but you won't be able. DEARTH (in a hopeless attempt at self-defence). I want you, you see, to do everything exquisitely. I do wish I could leave you to do things a little more for yourself. I suppose it's owing to my having had to be father and mother both. I knew nothing practically about the bringing up of children, and of course I couldn't trust you to a nurse. MARGARET (severely). Not you; so sure you could do it better yourself. That's you all over. Daddy, do you remember how you taught me to balance a biscuit on my nose, like a puppy? DEARTH (sadly). Did I? MARGARET. You called me Rover. DEARTH. I deny that. MARGARET. And when you said 'snap' I caught the biscuit in my mouth. DEARTH. Horrible. MARGARET (gleaming). Daddy, I can do it still! (Putting a biscuit on her nose.) Here is the last of my supper. Say 'snap,' Daddy. DEARTH. Not I. MARGARET. Say 'snap,' please. DEARTH. I refuse. MARGARET. Daddy! DEARTH. Snap. (She catches the biscuit in her mouth.) Let that be the last time, Margaret. MARGARET. Except just once more. I don't mean now, but when my hair is really up. If I should ever have a--a Margaret of my own, come in and see me, Daddy, in my white bed, and say 'snap'--and I'll have the biscuit ready. DEARTH (turning away his head). Right O. MARGARET. Dad, if I ever should marry, not that I will but if I should--at the marriage ceremony will you let me be the one who says 'I do'? DEARTH. I suppose I deserve this. MARGARET (coaxingly). You think I 'm pretty, don't you, Dad, whatever other people say? DEARTH. Not so bad. MARGARET. I _know_ I have nice ears. DEARTH. They are all right now, but I had to work on them for months. MARGARET. You don't mean to say that you did my ears? DEARTH. Rather! MARGARET (grown humble). My dimple is my own. DEARTH. I am glad you think so. I wore out the point of my little finger over that dimple. MARGARET. Even my dimple! Have I anything that is really mine? A bit of my nose or anything? DEARTH. When you were a babe you had a laugh that was all your own. MARGARET. Haven't I it now? DEARTH. It's gone. (He looks ruefully at her.) I'll tell you how it went. We were fishing in a stream--that is to say, I was wading and you were sitting on my shoulders holding the rod. We didn't catch anything. Somehow or another--I can't think how I did it--you irritated me, and I answered you sharply. MARGARET (gasping). I can't believe that. DEARTH. Yes, it sounds extraordinary, but I did. It gave you a shock, and, for the moment, the world no longer seemed a safe place to you; your faith in me had always made it safe till then. You were suddenly not even sure of your bread and butter, and a frightened tear came to your eyes. I was in a nice state about it, I can tell you. (He is in a nice state about it still.) MARGARET. Silly! (Bewildered) But what has that to do with my laugh, Daddy? DEARTH. The laugh that children are born with lasts just so long as they have perfect faith. To think that it was I who robbed you of yours! MARGARET. Don't, dear. I am sure the laugh just went off with the tear to comfort it, and they have been playing about that stream ever since. They have quite forgotten us, so why should we remember them. Cheeky little beasts! Shall I tell you my farthest back recollection? (In some awe.) I remember the first time I saw the stars. I had never seen night, and then I saw it and the stars together. Crack-in-my-eye Tommy, it isn't every one who can boast of such a lovely, lovely, recollection for their earliest, is it? DEARTH. I was determined your earliest should be a good one. MARGARET (blankly). Do you mean to say you planned it? DEARTH. Rather! Most people's earliest recollection is of some trivial thing; how they cut their finger, or lost a piece of string. I was resolved my Margaret's should be something bigger. I was poor, but I could give her the stars. MARGARET (clutching him round the legs). Oh, how you love me, Daddikins. DEARTH. Yes, I do, rather. (A vagrant woman has wandered in their direction, one whom the shrill winds of life have lashed and bled; here and there ragged graces still cling to her, and unruly passion smoulders, but she, once a dear, fierce rebel, with eyes of storm, is now first of all a whimperer. She and they meet as strangers.) MARGARET (nicely, as becomes an artist's daughter.) Good evening. ALICE. Good evening, Missy; evening, Mister. DEARTH (seeing that her eyes search the ground). Lost anything? ALICE. Sometimes when the tourists have had their sandwiches there are bits left over, and they squeeze them between the roots to keep the place tidy. I am looking for bits. DEARTH. You don't tell me you are as hungry as that? ALICE (with spirit). Try me. (Strange that he should not know that once loved husky voice.) MARGARET (rushing at her father and feeling all his pockets.) Daddy, that was my last biscuit! DEARTH. We must think of something else. MARGARET (taking her hand). Yes, wait a bit, we are sure to think of something. Daddy, think of something. ALICE (sharply). Your father doesn't like you to touch the likes of me. MARGARET. Oh yes, he does. (Defiantly) And if he didn't, I'd do it all the same. This is a bit of _myself_, daddy. DEARTH. That is all you know. ALICE (whining). You needn't be angry with her. Mister; I'm all right. DEARTH. I am not angry with her; I am very sorry for you. ALICE (flaring). if I had my rights, I would be as good as you--and better. DEARTH. I daresay. ALICE. I have had men-servants and a motor-car. DEARTH. Margaret and I never rose to that. MARGARET (stung). I have been in a taxi several times, and Dad often gets telegrams. DEARTH. Margaret! MARGARET. I'm sorry I boasted. ALICE. That's nothing. I have a town house--at least I had ... At any rate he said there was a town house. MARGARET (interested). Fancy his not knowing for certain. ALICE. The Honourable Mrs. Finch-Fallowe--that's who I am. MARGARET (cordially). It's a lovely name. ALICE. Curse him. MARGARET. Don't you like him? DEARTH. We won't go into that. I have nothing to do with your past, but I wish we had some food to offer you. ALICE. You haven't a flask? DEARTH. No, I don't take anything myself. But let me see.... MARGARET (sparkling). I know! You said we had five pounds. (To the needy one.) Would you like five pounds? DEARTH. Darling, don't be stupid; we haven't paid our bill at the inn. ALICE (with bravado). All right; I never asked you for anything. DEARTH. Don't take me up in that way: I have had my ups and downs myself. Here is ten bob and welcome. (He surreptitiously slips a coin into MARGARET'S hand.) MARGARET. And I have half a crown. It is quite easy for us. Dad will be getting another fiver any day. You can't think how exciting it is when the fiver comes in; we dance and then we run out and buy chops. DEARTH. Margaret! ALICE. It's kind of you. I'm richer this minute than I have been for many a day. DEARTH. It's nothing; I am sure you would do the same for us. ALICE. I wish I was as sure. DEARTH. Of course you would. Glad to be of any help. Get some victuals as quickly as you can. Best of wishes, ma'am, and may your luck change. ALICE. Same to you, and may yours go on. MARGARET. Good-night. ALICE. What is her name, Mister? DEARTH (who has returned to his easel). Margaret. ALICE. Margaret. You drew something good out of the lucky bag when you got her, Mister. DEARTH. Yes. ALICE. Take care of her; they are easily lost. (She shuffles away.) DEARTH. Poor soul. I expect she has had a rough time, and that some man is to blame for it--partly, at any rate. (Restless) That woman rather affects me, Margaret; I don't know why. Didn't you like her husky voice? (He goes on painting.) I say, Margaret, we lucky ones, let's swear always to be kind to people who are down on their luck, and then when we are kind let's be a little kinder. MARGARET (gleefully). Yes, let's. DEARTH. Margaret, always feel sorry for the failures, the ones who are always failures--especially in my sort of calling. Wouldn't it be lovely, to turn them on the thirty-ninth year of failure into glittering successes? MARGARET. Topping. DEARTH. Topping. MARGARET. Oh, topping. How could we do it, Dad? DEARTH. By letter. 'To poor old Tom Broken Heart, Top Attic, Garret Chambers, S.E.--'DEAR SIR,--His Majesty has been graciously pleased to purchase your superb picture of Marlow Ferry.' MARGARET. 'P.S.--I am sending the money in a sack so as you can hear it chink.' DEARTH. What could we do for our friend who passed just now? I can't get her out of my head. MARGARET. You have made me forget her. (Plaintively) Dad, I didn't like it. DEARTH. Didn't like what, dear? MARGARET (shuddering). I didn't like her saying that about your losing me. DEARTH (the one thing of which he is sure). I shan't lose you. MARGARET (hugging his arm). It would be hard for me if you lost me, but it would be worse for you. I don't know how I know that, but I do know it. What would you do without me? DEARTH (almost sharply). Don't talk like that, dear. It is wicked and stupid, and naughty. Somehow that poor woman--I won't paint any more to-night. MARGARET. Let's get out of the wood; it frightens me. DEARTH. And you loved it a moment ago. Hullo! (He has seen a distant blurred light in the wood, apparently from a window.) I hadn't noticed there was a house there. MARGARET (tingling). Daddy, I feel sure there wasn't a house there! DEARTH. Goose. It is just that we didn't look: our old way of letting the world go hang; so interested in ourselves. Nice behaviour for people who have been boasting about what they would do for other people. Now I see what I ought to do. MARGARET. Let's get out of the wood. DEARTH. Yes, but my idea first. It is to rouse these people and get food from them for the husky one. MARGARET (clinging to him). She is too far away now. DEARTH. I can overtake her. MARGARET (in a frenzy). Don't go into that house, Daddy! I don't know why it is, but I am afraid of that house! (He waggles a reproving finger at her.) DEARTH. There is a kiss for each moment until I come back. (She wipes them from her face.) Oh, naughty, go and stand in the corner. (She stands against a tree but she stamps her foot.) Who has got a nasty temper! (She tries hard not to smile, but she smiles and he smiles, and they make comic faces at each other, as they have done in similar circumstances since she first opened her eyes.) I shall be back before you can count a hundred. (He goes off humming his song so that she may still hear him when he is lost to sight; all just as so often before. She tries dutifully to count her hundred, but the wood grows dark and soon she is afraid again. She runs from tree to tree calling to her Daddy. We begin to lose her among the shadows.) MARGARET (Out of the impalpable that is carrying her away). Daddy, come back; I don't want to be a might-have-been. ACT III Lob's room has gone very dark as it sits up awaiting the possible return of the adventurers. The curtains are drawn, so that no light comes from outside. There is a tapping on the window, and anon two intruders are stealing about the floor, with muffled cries when they meet unexpectedly. They find the switch and are revealed as Purdie and his Mabel. Something has happened to them as they emerged from the wood, but it is so superficial that neither notices it: they are again in the evening dress in which they had left the house. But they are still being led by that strange humour of the blood. MABEL (looking around her curiously). A pretty little room; I wonder who is the owner? PURDIE. It doesn't matter; the great thing is that we have escaped Joanna. MABEL. Jack, look, a man! (The term may not be happily chosen, but the person indicated is Lob curled up on his chair by a dead fire. The last look on his face before he fell asleep having been a leery one it is still there.) PURDIE. He is asleep. MABEL. Do you know him? PURDIE. Not I. Excuse me, sir, Hi! (No shaking, however, wakens the sleeper.) MABEL. Darling, how extraordinary. PURDIE (always considerate). After all, precious, have we any right to wake up a stranger, just to tell him that we are runaways hiding in his house? MABEL (who comes of a good family). I think he would expect it of us. PURDIE (after trying again). There is no budging him. MABEL (appeased). At any rate, we have done the civil thing. (She has now time to regard the room more attentively, including the tray of coffee cups which MATEY had left on the table in a not unimportant moment of his history.) There have evidently been people here, but they haven't drunk their coffee. Ugh! cold as a deserted egg in a bird's nest. Jack, if you were a clever detective you could construct those people out of their neglected coffee cups. I wonder who they are and what has spirited them away? PURDIE. Perhaps they have only gone to bed. Ought we to knock them up? MABEL (after considering what her mother would have done). I think not, dear. I suppose we have run away, Jack--meaning to? PURDIE (with the sturdiness that weaker vessels adore). Irrevocably. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... (He becomes conscious that something has happened to LOB'S leer. It has not left his face but it has shifted.) He is not shamming, do you think? MABEL. Shake him again. PURDIE (after shaking him). It's all right. Mabel, if the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... MABEL. Poor little Joanna! Still, if a woman insists on being a pendulum round a man's neck ... PURDIE. Do give me a chance, Mabel. If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime ... (JOANNA comes through the curtains so inopportunely that for the moment he is almost pettish.) May I say, this is just a little too much, Joanna! JOANNA (unconscious as they of her return to her dinner gown). So, sweet husband, your soul is still walking alone, is it? MABEL (who hates coarseness of any kind). How can you sneak about in this way, Joanna? Have you no pride? JOANNA (dashing away a tear). Please to address me as Mrs. Purdie, madam. (She sees LOB.) Who is this man? PURDIE. We don't know; and there is no waking him. You can try, if you like. (Failing to rouse him JOANNA makes a third at table. They are all a little inconsequential, as if there were still some moon-shine in their hair.) JOANNA. You were saying something about the devotion of a lifetime; please go on. PURDIE (diffidently). I don't like to before you, Joanna. JOANNA (becoming coarse again). Oh, don't mind me. PURDIE (looking like a note of interrogation). I should certainly like to say it. MABEL (loftily). And I shall be proud to hear it. PURDIE. I should have liked to spare you this, Joanna; you wouldn't put your hands over your ears? JOANNA (alas). No, sir. MABEL. Fie, Joanna. Surely a wife's natural delicacy ... PURDIE (severely). As you take it in that spirit, Joanna, I can proceed with a clear conscience. If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime--(He reels a little, staring at LOB, over whose face the leer has been wandering like an insect.) MABEL. Did he move? PURDIE. It isn't that. I am feeling--very funny. Did one of you tap me just now on the forehead? (Their hands also have gone to their foreheads.) MABEL. I think I have been in this room before. PURDIE (flinching). There is something coming rushing back to me. MABEL. I seem to know that coffee set. If I do, the lid of the milk jug is chipped. It is! JOANNA. I can't remember this man's name; but I am sure it begins with L. MABEL. Lob. PURDIE. Lob. JOANNA. Lob. PURDIE. Mabel, your dress? MABEL (beholding it). How on earth...? JOANNA. My dress! (To PURDIE.) You were in knickerbockers in the wood. PURDIE. And so I am now. (He sees he is not.) Where did I change? The wood! Let me think. The wood ... the wood, certainly. But the wood wasn't the wood. JOANNA (revolving like one in pursuit). My head is going round. MABEL. Lob's wood! I remember it all. We were here. We did go. PURDIE. So we did. But how could...? where was...? JOANNE. And who was...? MABEL And what was...? PURDIE (even in this supreme hour a man). Don't let go. Hold on to what we were doing, or we shall lose grip of ourselves. Devotion. Something about devotion. Hold on to devotion. 'If the dog-like devotion of a lifetime...' Which of you was I saying that to? MABEL. To me. PURDIE. Are you sure? MABEL (shakily). I am not quite sure. PURDIE (anxiously). Joanna, what do you think? (With a sudden increase of uneasiness.) Which of you is my wife? JOANNA (without enthusiasm). I am. No, I am not. It is Mabel who is your wife! MABEL. Me? PURDIE (with a curious gulp). Why, of course you are, Mabel! MABEL. I believe I am! PURDIE. And yet how can it be? I was running away with you. JOANNA (solving that problem). You don't need to do it now. PURDIE. The wood. Hold on to the wood. The wood is what explains it. Yes, I see the whole thing. (He gazes at LOB.) You infernal old rascal! Let us try to think it out. Don't any one speak for a moment. Think first. Love ... Hold on to love. (He gets another tap.) I say, I believe I am not a deeply passionate chap at all; I believe I am just .... a philanderer! MABEL. It is what you are. JOANNA (more magnanimous). Mabel, what about ourselves? PURDIE (to whom it is truly a nauseous draught). I didn't know. Just a philanderer! (The soul of him would like at this instant to creep into another body.) And if people don't change, I suppose we shall begin all over again now. JOANNA (the practical). I daresay; but not with each other. I may philander again, but not with you. (They look on themselves without approval, always a sorry occupation. The man feels it most because he has admired himself most, or perhaps partly for some better reason.) PURDIE (saying good-bye to an old friend). John Purdie, John Purdie, the fine fellow I used to think you! (When he is able to look them in the face again.) The wood has taught me one thing, at any rate. MABEL (dismally). What, Jack? PURDIE. That it isn't accident that shapes our lives. JOANNA. No, it's Fate. PURDIE (the truth running through him, seeking for a permanent home in him, willing to give him still another chance, loth to desert him). It's not Fate, Joanna. Fate is something outside us. What really plays the dickens with us is some thing in ourselves. Something that makes us go on doing the same sort of fool things, however many chances we get. MABEL. Something in ourselves? PURDIE (shivering). Something we are born with. JOANNA. Can't we cut out the beastly thing? PURDIE. Depends, I expect, on how long we have pampered him. We can at least control him if we try hard enough. But I have for the moment an abominably clear perception that the likes of me never really tries. Forgive me, Joanna--no, Mabel--both of you. (He is a shamed man.) It isn't very pleasant to discover that one is a rotter. I suppose I shall get used to it. JOANNA. I could forgive anybody anything to-night. (Candidly.) It is so lovely not to be married to you, Jack. PURDIE (spiritless). I can understand that. I do feel small. JOANNA (the true friend). You will soon swell up again. PURDIE (for whom, alas, we need not weep). That is the appalling thing. But at present, at any rate, I am a rag at your feet, Joanna--no, at yours, Mabel. Are you going to pick me up? I don't advise it. MABEL. I don't know whether I want to, Jack. To begin with, which of us is it your lonely soul is in search of? JOANNA. Which of us is the fluid one, or the fluider one? MABEL. Are you and I one? Or are you and Joanna one? Or are the three of us two? JOANNA. He wants you to whisper in his ear, Mabel, the entrancing poem, 'Mabel Purdie.' Do it, Jack; there will be nothing wrong in it now. PURDIE. Rub it in. MABEL. When I meet Joanna's successor-- PURDIE (quailing). No, no, Mabel none of that. At least credit me with having my eyes open at last. There will be no more of this. I swear it by all that is-- JOANNA (in her excellent imitation of a sheep). Baa-a, he is off again. PURDIE. Oh Lord, so I am. MABEL. Don't, Joanna. PURDIE (his mind still illumined). She is quite right--I was. In my present state of depression--which won't last--I feel there is something in me that will make me go on being the same ass, however many chances I get. I haven't the stuff in me to take warning. My whole being is corroded. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about--'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.' JOANNA. For 'dear Brutus' we are to read 'dear audience' I suppose? PURDIE. You have it. JOANNA. Meaning that we have the power to shape ourselves? PURDIE. We have the power right enough. JOANNA. But isn't that rather splendid? PURDIE. For those who have the grit in them, yes. (Still seeing with a strange clearness through the chink the hammer has made.) And they are not the dismal chappies; they are the ones with the thin bright faces. (He sits lugubriously by his wife and is sorry for the first time that she has not married a better man.) I am afraid there is not much fight in me, Mabel, but we shall see. If you catch me at it again, have the goodness to whisper to me in passing, 'Lob's Wood.' That may cure me for the time being. MABEL (still certain that she loved him once but not so sure why.) Perhaps I will ... as long as I care to bother, Jack. It depends on you how long that is to be. JOANNA (to break an awkward pause). I feel that there is hope in that as well as a warning. Perhaps the wood may prove to have been useful after all. (This brighter view of the situation meets with no immediate response. With her next suggestion she reaches harbour.) You know, we are not people worth being sorrowful about--so let us laugh. (The ladies succeed in laughing though not prettily, but the man has been too much shaken.) JOANNA (in the middle of her laugh). We have forgotten the others! I wonder what is happening to them? PURDIE (reviving). Yes, what about them? Have they changed! MABEL. I didn't see any of them in the wood. JOANNA. Perhaps we did see them without knowing them; we didn't know Lob. PURDIE (daunted). That's true. JOANNA. Won't it be delicious to be here to watch them when they come back, and see them waking up--or whatever it was we did. PURDIE. What was it we did? I think something tapped me on the forehead. MABEL (blanching). How do we know the others will come back? JOANNA (infected). We don't know. How awful! MABEL. Listen! PURDIE. I distinctly hear some one on the stairs. MABEL. It will be Matey. PURDIE (the chink beginning to close). Be cautious both of you; don't tell him we have had any ... odd experiences. (It is, however, MRS. COADE who comes downstairs in a dressing-gown and carrying a candle and her husband's muffler.) MRS. COADE. So you are back at last. A nice house, I must say. Where is Coady? PURDIE (taken aback). Coady! Did he go into the wood, too? MRS. COADE (placidly). I suppose so. I have been down several times to look for him. MABEL. Coady, too! JOANNA (seeing visions). I wonder ... Oh, how dreadful! MRS. COADE. What is dreadful, Joanna? JOANNA (airily). Nothing. I was just wondering what he is doing. MRS. COADE. Doing? What should he be doing? Did anything odd happen to you in the wood? PURDIE (taking command). No, no, nothing. JOANNA. We just strolled about, and came back. (That subject being exhausted she points to LOB). Have you noticed him? MRS. COADE. Oh, yes; he has been like that all the time. A sort of stupor, I think; and sometimes the strangest grin comes over his face. PURDIE (wincing). Grin? MRS. COADE. Just as if he were seeing amusing things in his sleep. PURDIE (guardedly). I daresay he is. Oughtn't we to get Matey to him? MRS. COADE. Matey has gone, too. PURDIE. Wha-at! MRS. COADE. At all events he is not in the house. JOANNA (unguardedly). Matey! I wonder who is with him. MRS. COADE. Must somebody be with him? JOANNA. Oh, no, not at all. (They are simultaneously aware that someone outside has reached the window.) MRS. COADE. I hope it is Coady. (The other ladies are too fond of her to share this wish.) MABEL. Oh, I hope not. MRS. COADE (blissfully). Why, Mrs. Purdie? JOANNA (coaxingly). Dear Mrs. Coade, whoever he is, and whatever he does, I beg you not to be surprised. We feel that though we had no unusual experiences in the wood, others may not have been so fortunate. MABEL. And be cautious, you dear, what you say to them before they come to. MRS. COADE. 'Come to'? You puzzle me. And Coady didn't have his muffler. (Let it be recorded that in their distress for this old lady they forget their own misadventures. PURDIE takes a step toward the curtains in a vague desire to shield her;--and gets a rich reward; he has seen the coming addition to their circle.) PURDIE (elated and pitiless). It is Matey! (A butler intrudes who still thinks he is wrapped in fur.) JOANNA (encouragingly). Do come in. MATEY. With apologies, ladies and gents ... May I ask who is host? PURDIE (splashing in the temperature that suits him best). A very reasonable request. Third on the left. MATEY (advancing upon Lob). Merely to ask, sir, if you can direct me to my hotel? (The sleeper's only response is a alight quiver in one leg.) The gentleman seems to be reposing. MRS. COADE. It is Lob. MATEY. What is lob, ma'am? MRS. COADE (pleasantly curious). Surely you haven't forgotten? PURDIE (over-riding her). Anything we can do for you, sir? Just give it a name. JOANNA (in the same friendly spirit). I hope you are not alone: do say you have some lady friends with you. MATEY (with an emphasis on his leading word). My wife is with me. JOANNA. His wife! ... (With commendation.) You have been quick! MRS. COADE. I didn't know you were married. MATEY. Why should you, madam? You talk as if you knew me. MRS. COADE. Good gracious, do you really think I don't? PURDIE (indicating delicately that she is subject to a certain softening). Sit down, won't you, my dear sir, and make yourself comfy. MATEY (accustomed of late to such deferential treatment). Thank you. But my wife ... JOANNA (hospitably). Yes, bring her in; we are simply dying to make her acquaintance. MATEY. You are very good; I am much obliged. MABEL (as he goes out). Who can she be? JOANNA (leaping). Who, who, who! MRS. COADE. But what an extraordinary wood. He doesn't seem to know who he is at all. MABEL (soothingly). Don't worry about that, Coady darling. He will know soon enough. JOANNA (again finding the bright side). And so will the little wife! By the way, whoever she is, I hope she is fond of butlers. MABEL (who has peeped). It is Lady Caroline! JOANNA (leaping again). Oh, joy, joy! And she was so sure she couldn't take the wrong turning! (Lady Caroline is evidently still sure of it.) MATEY. May I present my wife--Lady Caroline Matey. MABEL (glowing). How do you do! PURDIE. Your servant, Lady Caroline. MRS. COADE. Lady Caroline Matey! You? LADY CAROLINE (without an r in her). Charmed, I'm sure. JOANNA (neatly). Very pleased to meet any wife of Mr. Matey. PURDIE (taking the floor). Allow me. The Duchess of Candelabra. The Ladies Helena and Matilda M'Nab. I am the Lord Chancellor. MABEL. I have wanted so long to make your acquaintance. LADY CAROLINE. Charmed. JOANNA (gracefully). These informal meetings are so delightful, don't you think? LADY CAROLINE. Yes, indeed. MATEY (the introductions being thus pleasantly concluded). And your friend by the fire? PURDIE. I will introduce you to him when you wake up--I mean when he wakes up. MATEY. Perhaps I ought to have said that I am _James_ Matey. LADY CAROLINE (the happy creature). _The_ James Matey. MATEY. A name not, perhaps, unknown in the world of finance. JOANNA. Finance? Oh, so you did take that clerkship in the City! MATEY (a little stiffly). I began as a clerk in the City, certainly; and I am not ashamed to admit it. MRS. COADE (still groping). Fancy that, now. And did it save you? MATEY. Save me, madam? JOANNA. Excuse us--we ask odd questions in this house; we only mean, did that keep you honest? Or are you still a pilferer? LADY CAROLINE (an outraged swan). Husband mine, what does she mean? JOANNA. No offence; I mean a pilferer on a large scale. MATEY (remembering certain newspaper jealousy). If you are referring to that Labrador business--or the Working Women's Bank ... PURDIE (after the manner of one who has caught a fly). O-ho, got him! JOANNA (bowing). Yes, those are what I meant. MATEY (stoutly). There was nothing proved. JOANNA (like one calling a meeting). Mabel, Jack, here is another of us! You have gone just the same way again, my friend. (Ecstatically.) There is more in it, you see, than taking the wrong turning; you would always take the wrong turning. (The only fitting comment.) Tra-la-la! LADY CAROLINE. If you are casting any aspersions on my husband, allow me to say that a prouder wife than I does not to-day exist. MRS. COADE (who finds herself the only clear-headed one). My dear, do be careful. MABEL. So long as you are satisfied, dear Lady Caroline. But I thought you shrank from all blood that was not blue. LADY CAROLINE. You thought? Why should you think about me? I beg to assure you that I adore my Jim. (She seeks his arm, but her Jim has encountered the tray containing coffee cups and a cake, and his hands close on it with a certain intimacy.) Whatever are you doing, Jim? MATEY. I don't understand it, Caroliny; but somehow I feel at home with this in my hands. MABEL. 'Caroliny!' MRS. COADE. Look at me well; don't you remember me? MATEY (musing). I don't remember you; but I seem to associate you with hard-boiled eggs. (With conviction.) You like your eggs hard-boiled. PURDIE. Hold on to hard-boiled eggs! She used to tip you especially to see to them. (MATEY'S hand goes to his pocket.) Yes, that was the pocket. LADY CAROLINE (with distaste). Tip! MATEY (without distaste). Tip! PURDIE. Jolly word, isn't it? MATEY (raising the tray). It seems to set me thinking. LADY CAROLINE (feeling the tap of the hammer). Why is my work-basket in this house? MRS. COADE. You are living here, you know. LADY CAROLINE. That is what a person feels. But when did I come? It is very odd, but one feels one ought to say when did one go. PURDIE. She is coming to with a wush! MATEY (under the hammer). Mr.... Purdie! LADY CAROLINE. MRS. Coade! MATEY. The Guv'nor! My clothes! LADY CAROLINE. One is in evening dress! JOANNA (charmed to explain). You will understand clearly in a minute, Caroliny. You didn't really take that clerkship, Jim; you went into domestic service; but in the essentials you haven't altered. PURDIE (pleasantly). I'll have my shaving water at 7.30 sharp, Matey. MATEY (mechanically). Very good, sir. LADY CAROLINE. Sir? Midsummer Eve! The wood! PURDIE. Yes, hold on to the wood. MATEY. You are ... you are ... you are Lady Caroline Laney! LADY CAROLINE. It is Matey, the butler! MABEL. You seemed quite happy with him, you know, Lady Caroline. JOANNA (nicely). We won't tell. LADY CAROLINE (subsiding). Caroline Matey! And I seemed to like it! How horrible! MRS. COADE (expressing a general sentiment). It is rather difficult to see what we should do next. MATEY (tentatively). Perhaps if I were to go downstairs? PURDIE. It would be conferring a personal favour on us all. (Thus encouraged MATEY and his tray resume friendly relations with the pantry.) LADY CAROLINE (with itching fingers as she glares at Lob). It is all that wretch's doing. (A quiver from Lob's right leg acknowledges the compliment. The gay music of a pipe is heard from outside.) JOANNA (peeping). Coady! MRS. COADE. Coady! Why is he so happy? JOANNA (troubled). Dear, hold my hand. MRS. COADE (suddenly trembling). Won't he know me? PURDIE (abashed by that soft face). Mrs. Coade, I 'm sorry. It didn't so much matter about the likes of us, but for your sake I wish Coady hadn't gone out. MRS. COADE. We that have been happily married this thirty years. COADE (popping in buoyantly). May I intrude? My name is Coade. The fact is I was playing about in the wood on a whistle, and I saw your light. MRS. COADE (the only one with the nerve to answer). Playing about in the wood with a whistle! COADE (with mild dignity). And why not, madam? MRS. COADE. Madam! Don't you know me? COADE. I don't know you ... (Reflecting.) But I wish I did. MRS. COADE. Do you? Why? COADE. If I may say so, you have a very soft, lovable face. (Several persons breathe again.) MRS. COADE (inquisitorially). Who was with you, playing whistles in the wood? (The breathing ceases.) COADE. No one was with me. (And is resumed.) MRS. COADE. No ... lady? COADE. Certainly not. (Then he spoils it.) I am a bachelor. MRS. COADE. A bachelor! JOANNA. Don't give way, dear; it might be much worse. MRS. COADE. A bachelor! And you are sure you never spoke to me before? Do think. COADE. Not to my knowledge. Never ... except in dreams. MABEL (taking a risk). What did you say to her in dreams? COADE. I said, 'My dear.' (This when uttered surprises him.) Odd! JOANNA. The darling man! MRS. COADE (wavering). How could you say such things to an old woman? COADE (thinking it out). Old? I didn't think of you as old. No, no, young--with the morning dew on your face--coming across a lawn--in a black and green dress--and carrying such a pretty parasol. MRS. COADE (thrilling). That was how he first met me! He used to love me in black and green; and it _was_ a pretty parasol. Look, I am old... So it can't be the same woman. COADE (blinking). Old? Yes, I suppose so. But it is the same soft, lovable face, and the same kind, beaming smile that children could warm their hands at. MRS. COADE. He always liked my smile. PURDUE. So do we all. COADE (to himself). Emma! MRS. COADE. He hasn't forgotten my name! COADE. It is sad that we didn't meet long ago. I think I have been waiting for you. I suppose we have met too late? You couldn't overlook my being an old fellow, could you, eh? JOANNA. How lovely; he is going to propose to her again. Coady, you happy thing, he is wanting the same soft face after thirty years! MRS. COADE (undoubtedly hopeful). We mustn't be too sure, but I think that is it. (Primly.) What is it exactly that you want, Mr. Coade? COADE (under a lucky star). I want to have the right to hold the parasol over you. Won't you be my wife, my dear, and so give my long dream of you a happy ending? MRS. COADE (preening). Kisses are not called for at our age, Coady, but here is a muffler for your old neck. COADE. My muffler; I have missed it. (It is however to his forehead that his hand goes. Immediately thereafter he misses his sylvan attire.) Why ... why ... what ... who ... how is this? PURDIE (nervously). He is coming to. COADE (reeling and righting himself). Lob! (The leg indicates that he has got it.) Bless me, Coady, I went into that wood! MRS. COADE. And without your muffler, you that are so subject to chills. What are you feeling for in your pocket? COADE. The whistle. It is a whistle I--Gone! of course it is. It's rather a pity, but ... (Anxious.) Have I been saying awful things to you? MABEL. You have been making her so proud. It is a compliment to our whole sex. You had a second chance, and it is her, again! COADE. Of course it is. (Crestfallen.) But I see I was just the same nice old lazy Coady as before; and I had thought that if I had a second chance, I could do things. I have often said to you, Coady, that it was owing to my being cursed with a competency that I didn't write my great book. But I had no competency this time, and I haven't written a word. PURDIE (bitterly enough). That needn't make you feel lonely in this house. MRS. COADE (in a small voice). You seem to have been quite happy as an old bachelor, dear. COADE. I am surprised at myself, Emma, but I fear I was. MRS. COADE (with melancholy perspicacity). I wonder if what it means is that you don't especially need even me. I wonder if it means that you are just the sort of amiable creature that would be happy anywhere, and anyhow? COADE. Oh dear, can it be as bad as that! JOANNA (a ministering angel she). Certainly not. It is a romance, and I won't have it looked upon as anything else. MRS. COADE. Thank you, Joanna. You will try not to miss that whistle, Coady? COADE (getting the footstool for her). You are all I need. MRS. COADE. Yes; but I am not so sure as I used to be that it is a great compliment. JOANNA. Coady, behave. (There is a knock on the window.) PURDIE (peeping). Mrs. Dearth! (His spirits revive.) She is alone. Who would have expected that of _her_? MABEL. She is a wild one, Jack, but I sometimes thought rather a dear; I do hope she has got off cheaply. (ALICE comes to them in her dinner gown.) PURDIE (the irrepressible). Pleased to see you, stranger. ALICE (prepared for ejection.) I was afraid such an unceremonious entry might startle you. PURDIE. Not a bit. ALICE (defiant). I usually enter a house by the front door. PURDIE. I have heard that such is the swagger way. ALICE (simpering). So stupid of me. I lost myself in the wood ... and ... JOANNA (genially). Of course you did. But never mind that; do tell us your name. LADY CAROLINE (emerging again). Yes, yes, your name. ALICE. Of course, I am the Honourable Mrs. Finch-Fallowe. LADY CAROLINE. Of course, of course! PURDIE. I hope Mr. Finch-Fallowe is very well? We don't know him personally, but may we have the pleasure of seeing him bob up presently? ALICE. No, I am not sure where he is. LADY CAROLINE (with point). I wonder if the dear clever police know? ALICE (imprudently). No, they don't. (It is a very secondary matter to her. This woman of calamitous fires hears and sees her tormentors chiefly as the probable owner, of the cake which is standing on that tray.) So awkward, I gave my sandwiches to a poor girl and her father whom I met in the wood, and now ... isn't it a nuisance--I am quite hungry. (So far with a mincing bravado.) May I? (Without waiting for consent she falls to upon the cake, looking over it like one ready to fight them for it.) PURDIE (sobered again). Poor soul. LADY CAROLINE. We are so anxious to know whether you met a friend of ours in the wood--a Mr. Dearth. Perhaps you know him, too? ALICE. Dearth? I don't know any Dearth. MRS. COADE. Oh, dear what a wood! LADY CAROLINE. He is quite a front door sort of man; knocks and rings, you know. PURDIE. Don't worry her. ALICE (gnawing). I meet so many; you see I go out a great deal. I have visiting-cards--printed ones. LADY CAROLINE. How very distingue. Perhaps Mr. Dearth has painted your portrait; he is an artist. ALICE. Very likely; they all want to paint me. I daresay that is the man to whom I gave my sandwiches. MRS. COADE. But I thought you said he had a daughter? ALICE. Such a pretty girl; I gave her half a crown. COADE. A daughter? That can't be Dearth. PURDIE (darkly). Don't be too sure. Was the man you speak of a rather chop-fallen, gone-to-seed sort of person. ALICE. No, I thought him such a jolly, attractive man. COADE. Dearth jolly, attractive! Oh no. Did he say anything about his wife? LADY CAROLINE, Yes, do try to remember if he mentioned her. ALICE (snapping). No, he didn't. PURDIE. He was far from jolly in her time. ALICE (with an archness for which the cake is responsible). Perhaps that was the lady's fault. (The last of the adventurers draws nigh, carolling a French song as he comes.) COADE. Dearth's voice. He sounds quite merry! JOANNA (protecting). Alice, you poor thing. PURDIE. This is going to be horrible. (A clear-eyed man of lusty gait comes in.) DEARTH. I am sorry to bounce in on you in this way, but really I have an excuse. I am a painter of sorts, and... (He sees he has brought some strange discomfort here.) MRS. COADE. I must say, Mr. Dearth, I am delighted to see you looking so well. Like a new man, isn't he? (No one dares to answer.) DEARTH. I am certainly very well, if you care to know. But did I tell you my name? JOANNA (for some one has to speak). No, but--but we have an instinct in this house. DEARTH. Well, it doesn't matter. Here is the situation; my daughter and I have just met in the wood a poor woman famishing for want of food. We were as happy as grigs ourselves, and the sight of her distress rather cut us up. Can you give me something for her? Why are you looking so startled? (Seeing the remains of the cake.) May I have this? (A shrinking movement from one of them draws his attention, and he recognises in her the woman of whom he has been speaking. He sees her in fine clothing and he grows stern.) I feel I can't be mistaken; it was you I met in the wood? Have you been playing some trick on me? (To the others.) It was for her I wanted the food. ALICE (her hand guarding the place where his gift lies). Have you come to take hack the money you gave me? DEARTH. Your dress! You were almost in rags when I saw you outside. ALICE (frightened as she discovers how she is now attired). I don't ... understand ... COADE (gravely enough). For that matter, Dearth, I daresay you were different in the wood, too. (DEARTH sees his own clothing.) DEARTH. What...! ALICE (frightened). Where am I? (To Mrs. Coade.) I seem to know you ... do I? MRS. COADE (motherly). Yes, you do; hold my hand, and you will soon remember all about it. JOANNA. I am afraid, Mr. Dearth, it is harder for you than for the rest of us. PURDIE (looking away). I wish I could help you, but I can't; I am a rotter. MABEL. We are awfully sorry. Don't you remember ... Midsummer Eve? DEARTH (controlling himself). Midsummer Eve? This room. Yes, this room ... You was it you? ... were going out to look for something ... The tree of knowledge, wasn't it? Somebody wanted me to go, too ... Who was that? A lady, I think ... Why did she ask me to go? What was I doing here? I was smoking a cigar ... I laid it down, there ... (He finds the cigar.) Who was the lady? ALICE (feebly). Something about a second chance. MRS. COADE. Yes, you poor dear, you thought you could make so much of it. DEARTH. A lady who didn't like me-- (With conviction.) She had good reasons, too--but what were they...? ALICE. A little old man! He did it. What did he do? (The hammer is raised.) DEARTH. I am ... it is coming back--I am not the man I thought myself. ALICE. I am not Mrs. Finch-Fallowe. Who am I? DEARTH (staring at her). You were that lady. ALICE. It is you--my husband! (She is overcome.) MRS. COADE. My dear, you are much better off, so far as I can see, than if you were Mrs. Finch-Fallowe. ALICE (with passionate knowledge). Yes, yes indeed! (Generously.) But he isn't. DEARTH. Alice! ... I--(He tries to smile.) I didn't know you when I was in the wood with Margaret. She ... she ... Margaret... (The hammer falls.) O my God! (He buries his face in his hands.) ALICE. I wish--I wish-- (She presses his shoulder fiercely and then stalks out by the door.) PURDIE (to LOB, after a time). You old ruffian. DEARTH. No, I am rather fond of him, our lonely, friendly little host. Lob, I thank thee for that hour. (The seedy-looking fellow passes from the scene.) COADE. Did you see that his hand is shaking again? PURDIE. The watery eye has come back. JOANNA. And yet they are both quite nice people. PURDIE (finding the tragedy of it). We are all quite nice people. MABEL. If she were not such a savage! PURDIE. I daresay there is nothing the matter with her except that she would always choose the wrong man, good man or bad man, but the wrong man for her. COADE. We can't change. MABEL. Jack says the brave ones can. JOANNA. 'The ones with the thin bright faces.' MABEL. Then there is hope for you and me, Jack. PURDIE (ignobly). I don't expect so. JOANNA (wandering about the room, like one renewing acquaintance with it after returning from a journey). Hadn't we better go to bed? It must be getting late. PURDIE. Hold on to bed! (They all brighten.) MATEY (entering). Breakfast is quite ready. (They exclaim.) LADY CAROLINE. My watch has stopped. JOANNA. And mine. Just as well perhaps! MABEL. There is a smell of coffee. (The gloom continues to lift.) COADE. Come along, Coady; I do hope you have not been tiring your foot. MRS. COADE. I shall give it a good rest to-morrow, dear. MATEY. I have given your egg six minutes, ma'am. (They set forth once more upon the eternal round. The curious JOANNA remains behind.) JOANNA. A strange experiment, Matey; does it ever have any permanent effect? MATEY (on whom it has had none). So far as I know, not often, miss; but, I believe, once in a while. (There is hope in this for the brave ones. If we could wait long enough we might see the DEARTHS breasting their way into the light.) _He_ could tell you. (The elusive person thus referred to kicks responsively, meaning perhaps that none of the others will change till there is a tap from another hammer. But when MATEY goes to rout him from his chair he is no longer there. His disappearance is no shock to MATEY, who shrugs his shoulders and opens the windows to let in the glory of a summer morning. The garden has returned, and our queer little hero is busy at work among his flowers. A lark is rising.) The End Publication Date: August 5th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-bx.barrie

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sir-james-matthew-barrie-what-every-woman-knows/

Sir James Matthew Barrie What Every Woman Knows ACT I (James Wylie is about to make a move on the dambrod, and in the little Scotch room there is an awful silence befitting the occasion. James with his hand poised--for if he touches a piece he has to play it, Alick will see to that--raises his red head suddenly to read Alick's face. His father, who is Alick, is pretending to be in a panic lest James should make this move. James grins heartlessly, and his fingers are about to close on the 'man' when some instinct of self-preservation makes him peep once more. This time Alick is caught: the unholy ecstasy on his face tells as plain as porridge that he has been luring James to destruction. James glares; and, too late, his opponent is a simple old father again. James mops his head, sprawls in the manner most conducive to thought in the Wylie family, and, protruding his underlip, settles down to a reconsideration of the board. Alick blows out his cheeks, and a drop of water settles on the point of his nose. You will find them thus any Saturday night (after family worship, which sends the servant to bed); and sometimes the pauses are so long that in the end they forget whose move it is. It is not the room you would be shown into if you were calling socially on Miss Wylie. The drawing-room for you, and Miss Wylie in a coloured merino to receive you; very likely she would exclaim, "This is a pleasant surprise!" though she has seen you coming up the avenue and has just had time to whip the dustcloths off the chairs, and to warn Alick, David and James, that they had better not dare come in to see you before they have put on a dickey. Nor is this the room in which you would dine in solemn grandeur if invited to drop in and take pot-luck, which is how the Wylies invite, it being a family weakness to pretend that they sit down in the dining-room daily. It is the real living-room of the house, where Alick, who will never get used to fashionable ways, can take off his collar and sit happily in his stocking soles, and James at times would do so also; but catch Maggie letting him. There is one very fine chair, but, heavens, not for sitting on; just to give the room a social standing in an emergency. It sneers at the other chairs with an air of insolent superiority, like a haughty bride who has married into the house for money. Otherwise the furniture is homely; most of it has come from that smaller house where the Wylies began. There is the large and shiny chair which can be turned into a bed if you look the other way for a moment. James cannot sit on this chair without gradually sliding down it till he is lying luxuriously on the small of his back, his legs indicating, like the hands of a clock, that it is ten past twelve; a position in which Maggie shudders to see him receiving company. The other chairs are horse-hair, than which nothing is more comfortable if there be a good slit down the seat. The seats are heavily dented, because all the Wylie family sit down with a dump. The draught-board is on the edge of a large centre table, which also displays four books placed at equal distances from each other, one of them a Bible, and another the family album. If these were the only books they would not justify Maggie in calling this chamber the library, her dogged name for it; while David and James call it the west-room and Alick calls it 'the room,' which is to him the natural name for any apartment without a bed in it. There is a bookcase of pitch pine, which contains six hundred books, with glass doors to prevent your getting at them. No one does try to get at the books, for the Wylies are not a reading family. They like you to gasp when you see so much literature gathered together in one prison-house, but they gasp themselves at the thought that there are persons, chiefly clergymen, who, having finished one book, coolly begin another. Nevertheless it was not all vainglory that made David buy this library: it was rather a mighty respect for education, as something that he has missed. This same feeling makes him take in the Contemporary Review and stand up to it like a man. Alick, who also has a respect for education, tries to read the Contemporary, but becomes dispirited, and may be heard muttering over its pages, 'No, no use, no use, no,' and sometimes even 'Oh hell.' James has no respect for education; and Maggie is at present of an open mind. They are Wylie and Sons of the local granite quarry, in which Alick was throughout his working days a mason. It is David who has raised them to this position; he climbed up himself step by step (and hewed the steps), and drew the others up after him. 'Wylie Brothers,' Alick would have had the firm called, but David said No, and James said No, and Maggie said No; first honour must be to their father; and Alick now likes it on the whole, though he often sighs at having to shave every day; and on some snell mornings he still creeps from his couch at four and even at two (thinking that his mallet and chisel are calling him), and begins to pull on his trousers, until the grandeur of them reminds him that he can go to bed again. Sometimes he cries a little, because there is no more work for him to do for ever and ever; and then Maggie gives him a spade (without telling David) or David gives him the logs to saw (without telling Maggie). We have given James a longer time to make his move than our kind friends in front will give him, but in the meantime something has been happening. David has come in, wearing a black coat and his Sabbath boots, for he has been to a public meeting. David is nigh forty years of age, whiskered like his father and brother (Alick's whiskers being worn as a sort of cravat round the neck), and he has the too brisk manner of one who must arrive anywhere a little before any one else. The painter who did the three of them for fifteen pounds (you may observe the canvases on the walls) has caught this characteristic, perhaps accidentally, for David is almost stepping out of his frame, as if to hurry off somewhere; while Alick and James look as if they were pinned to the wall for life. All the six of them, men and pictures, however, have a family resemblance, like granite blocks from their own quarry. They are as Scotch as peat for instance, and they might exchange eyes without any neighbour noticing the difference, inquisitive little blue eyes that seem to be always totting up the price of things. The dambrod players pay no attention to David, nor does he regard them. Dumping down on the sofa he removes his 'lastic sides, as his Sabbath boots are called, by pushing one foot against the other, gets into a pair of hand-sewn slippers, deposits the boots as according to rule in the ottoman, and crosses to the fire. There must be something on David's mind to-night, for he pays no attention to the game, neither gives advice (than which nothing is more maddening) nor exchanges a wink with Alick over the parlous condition of James's crown. You can hear the wag-at-the-wall clock in the lobby ticking. Then David lets himself go; it runs out of him like a hymn:) DAVID. Oh, let the solid ground Not fail beneath my feet, Before my life has found What some have found so sweet. [This is not a soliloquy, but is offered as a definite statement. The players emerge from their game with difficulty.] ALICK [with JAMES's crown in his hand]. What's that you're saying, David? DAVID [like a public speaker explaining the situation in a few well-chosen words]. The thing I'm speaking about is Love. JAMES [keeping control of himself]. Do you stand there and say you're in love, David Wylie? DAVID. Me; what would I do with the thing? JAMES [who is by no means without pluck]. I see no necessity for calling it a thing. [They are two bachelors who all their lives have been afraid of nothing but Woman. DAVID in his sportive days--which continue--has done roguish things with his arm when conducting a lady home under an umbrella from a soiree, and has both chuckled and been scared on thinking of it afterwards. JAMES, a commoner fellow altogether, has discussed the sex over a glass, but is too canny to be in the company of less than two young women at a time.] DAVID [derisively]. Oho, has she got you, James? JAMES [feeling the sting of it]. Nobody has got me. DAVID. They'll catch you yet, lad. JAMES. They'll never catch me. You've been nearer catched yourself. ALICK. Yes, Kitty Menzies, David. DAVID [feeling himself under the umbrella]. It was a kind of a shave that. ALICK [who knows all that is to be known about women and can speak of them without a tremor]. It's a curious thing, but a man cannot help winking when he hears that one of his friends has been catched. DAVID. That's so. JAMES [clinging to his manhood]. And fear of that wink is what has kept the two of us single men. And yet what's the glory of being single? DAVID. There's no particular glory in it, but it's safe. JAMES [putting away his aspirations]. Yes, it's lonely, but it's safe. But who did you mean the poetry for, then? DAVID. For Maggie, of course. [You don't know DAVID and JAMES till you know how they love their sister MAGGIE.] ALICK. I thought that. DAVID [coming to the second point of his statement about Love]. I saw her reading poetry and saying those words over to herself. JAMES. She has such a poetical mind. DAVID. Love. There's no doubt as that's what Maggie has set her heart on. And not merely love, but one of those grand noble loves; for though Maggie is undersized she has a passion for romance. JAMES [wandering miserably about the room]. It's terrible not to be able to give Maggie what her heart is set on. [The others never pay much attention to JAMES, though he is quite a smart figure in less important houses.] ALICK [violently]. Those idiots of men. DAVID. Father, did you tell her who had got the minister of Galashiels? ALICK [wagging his head sadly]. I had to tell her. And then I--I-- bought her a sealskin muff, and I just slipped it into her hands and came away. JAMES [illustrating the sense of justice in the Wylie family]. Of course, to be fair to the man, he never pretended he wanted her. DAVID. None of them wants her; that's what depresses her. I was thinking, father, I would buy her that gold watch and chain in Snibby's window. She hankers after it. JAMES [slapping his pocket]. You're too late, David; I've got them for her. DAVID. It's ill done of the minister. Many a pound of steak has that man had in this house. ALICK. You mind the slippers she worked for him? JAMES. I mind them fine; she began them for William Cathro. She's getting on in years, too, though she looks so young. ALICK. I never can make up my mind, David, whether her curls make her look younger or older. DAVID [determinedly]. Younger. Whist! I hear her winding the clock. Mind, not a word about the minister to her, James. Don't even mention religion this day. JAMES. Would it be like me to do such a thing? DAVID. It would be very like you. And there's that other matter: say not a syllable about our having a reason for sitting up late to- night. When she says it's bed-time, just all pretend we're not sleepy. ALICK. Exactly, and when-- [Here MAGGIE enters, and all three are suddenly engrossed in the dambrod. We could describe MAGGIE at great length. But what is the use? What you really want to know is whether she was good-looking. No, she was not. Enter MAGGIE, who is not good-looking. When this is said, all is said. Enter MAGGIE, as it were, with her throat cut from ear to ear. She has a soft Scotch voice and a more resolute manner than is perhaps fitting to her plainness; and she stops short at sight of JAMES sprawling unconsciously in the company chair.] MAGGIE. James, I wouldn't sit on the fine chair. JAMES. I forgot again. [But he wishes she had spoken more sharply. Even profanation of the fine chair has not roused her. She takes up her knitting, and they all suspect that she knows what they have been talking about.] MAGGIE. You're late, David, it's nearly bed-time. DAVID [finding the subject a safe one]. I was kept late at the public meeting. ALICK [glad to get so far away from Galashiels]. Was it a good meeting? DAVID. Fairish. [with some heat] That young John Shand WOULD make a speech. MAGGIE. John Shand? Is that the student Shand? DAVID. The same. It's true he's a student at Glasgow University in the winter months, but in summer he's just the railway porter here; and I think it's very presumptuous of a young lad like that to make a speech when he hasn't a penny to bless himself with. ALICK. The Shands were always an impudent family, and jealous. I suppose that's the reason they haven't been on speaking terms with us this six years. Was it a good speech? DAVID [illustrating the family's generosity]. It was very fine; but he needn't have made fun of ME. MAGGIE [losing a stitch]. He dared? DAVID [depressed]. You see I can not get started on a speech without saying things like 'In rising FOR to make a few remarks.' JAMES. What's wrong with it? DAVID. He mimicked me, and said, 'Will our worthy chairman come for to go for to answer my questions?' and so on; and they roared. JAMES [slapping his money pocket]. The sacket. DAVID. I did feel bitterly, father, the want of education. [Without knowing it, he has a beautiful way of pronouncing this noble word.] MAGGIE [holding out a kind hand to him]. David. ALICK. I've missed it sore, David. Even now I feel the want of it in the very marrow of me. I'm ashamed to think I never gave you your chance. But when you were young I was so desperate poor, how could I do it, Maggie? MAGGIE. It wasn't possible, father. ALICK [gazing at the book-shelves]. To be able to understand these books! To up with them one at a time and scrape them as clean as though they were a bowl of brose. Lads, it's not to riches, it's to scholarship that I make my humble bow. JAMES [who is good at bathos]. There's ten yards of them. And they were selected by the minister of Galashiels. He said-- DAVID [quickly]. James. JAMES. I mean--I mean-- MAGGIE [calmly]. I suppose you mean what you say, James. I hear, David, that the minister of Galashiels is to be married on that Miss Turnbull. DAVID [on guard]. So they were saying. ALICK. All I can say is she has made a poor bargain. MAGGIE [the damned]. I wonder at you, father. He's a very nice gentleman. I'm sure I hope he has chosen wisely. JAMES. Not him. MAGGIE [getting near her tragedy]. How can you say that when you don't know her? I expect she is full of charm. ALICK. Charm? It's the very word he used. DAVID. Havering idiot. ALICK. What IS charm, exactly, Maggie? MAGGIE. Oh, it's--it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. Some women, the few, have charm for all; and most have charm for one. But some have charm for none. [Somehow she has stopped knitting. Her men-folk are very depressed. JAMES brings his fist down on the table with a crash.] JAMES [shouting]. I have a sister that has charm. MAGGIE. No, James, you haven't. JAMES [rushing at her with the watch and chain]. Ha'e, Maggie. [She lets them lie in her lap.] DAVID. Maggie, would you like a silk? MAGGIE. What could I do with a silk? [With a gust of passion] You might as well dress up a little brown hen. [They wriggle miserably.] JAMES [stamping]. Bring him here to me. MAGGIE. Bring whom, James? JAMES. David, I would be obliged if you wouldn't kick me beneath the table. MAGGIE [rising]. Let's be practical; let's go to our beds. [This reminds them that they have a job on hand in which she is not to share.] DAVID [slily]. I don't feel very sleepy yet. ALICK. Nor me either. JAMES. You've just taken the very words out of my mouth. DAVID [with unusual politeness]. Good-night to you Maggie. MAGGIE [fixing the three of them]. ALL of you unsleepy, when, as is well known, ten o'clock is your regular bed-time? JAMES. Yes, it's common knowledge that we go to our beds at ten. [Chuckling] That's what we're counting on. MAGGIE. Counting on? DAVID. You stupid whelp. JAMES. What have I done? MAGGIE [folding her arms]. There's something up. You've got to tell me, David. DAVID [who knows when he is beaten]. Go out and watch, James. MAGGIE. Watch? [JAMES takes himself off, armed, as MAGGIE notices, with a stick.] DAVID [in his alert business way]. Maggie, there are burglars about. MAGGIE. Burglars? [She sits rigid, but she is not the kind to scream.] DAVID. We hadn't meant for to tell you till we nabbed them; but they've been in this room twice of late. We sat up last night waiting for them, and we're to sit up again to-night. MAGGIE. The silver plate. DAVID. It's all safe as yet. That makes us think that they were either frightened away these other times, or that they are coming back for to make a clean sweep. MAGGIE. How did you get to know about this? DAVID. It was on Tuesday that the polissman called at the quarry with a very queer story. He had seen a man climbing out at this window at ten past two. MAGGIE. Did he chase him? DAVID. It was so dark he lost sight of him at once. ALICK. Tell her about the window. DAVID. We've found out that the catch of the window has been pushed back by slipping the blade of a knife between the woodwork. MAGGIE. David. ALICK. The polissman said he was carrying a little carpet bag. MAGGIE. The silver plate IS gone. DAVID. No, no. We were thinking that very likely he has bunches of keys in the bag. MAGGIE. Or weapons. DAVID. As for that, we have some pretty stout weapons ourselves in the umbrella stand. So, if you'll go to your bed, Maggie-- MAGGIE. Me? and my brothers in danger. ALICK. There's just one of them. MAGGIE. The polissman just saw one. DAVID [licking his palms]. I would be very pleased if there were three of them. MAGGIE. I watch with you. I would be very pleased if there were four of them. DAVID. And they say she has no charm! [JAMES returns on tiptoe as if the burglars were beneath the table. He signs to every one to breathe no more, and then whispers his news.] JAMES. He's there. I had no sooner gone out than I saw him sliding down the garden wall, close to the rhubarbs. ALICK. What's he like? JAMES. He's an ugly customer. That's all I could see. There was a little carpet bag in his hand. DAVID. That's him. JAMES. He slunk into the rhodydendrons, and he's there now, watching the window. DAVID. We have him. Out with the light. [The room is beautified by a chandelier fitted for three gas jets, but with the advance of progress one of these has been removed and the incandescent light put in its place. This alone is lit. ALICK climbs a chair, pulls a little chain, and the room is now but vaguely lit by the fire. It plays fitfully on four sparkling faces.] MAGGIE. Do you think he saw you, James? JAMES. I couldn't say, but in any case I was too clever for him. I looked up at the stars, and yawned loud at them as if I was tremendous sleepy. [There is a long pause during which they are lurking in the shadows. At last they hear some movement, and they steal like ghosts from the room. We see DAVID turning out the lobby light; then the door closes and an empty room awaits the intruder with a shudder of expectancy. The window opens and shuts as softly as if this were a mother peering in to see whether her baby is asleep. Then the head of a man shows between the curtains. The remainder of him follows. He is carrying a little carpet bag. He stands irresolute; what puzzles him evidently is that the Wylies should have retired to rest without lifting that piece of coal off the fire. He opens the door and peeps into the lobby, listening to the wag-at-the-wall clock. All seems serene, and he turns on the light. We see him clearly now. He is JOHN SHAND, age twenty-one, boots muddy, as an indignant carpet can testify. He wears a shabby topcoat and a cockerty bonnet; otherwise he is in the well- worn corduroys of a railway porter. His movements, at first stealthy, become almost homely as he feels that he is secure. He opens the bag and takes out a bunch of keys, a small paper parcel, and a black implement that may be a burglar's jemmy. This cool customer examines the fire and piles on more coals. With the keys he opens the door of the bookcase, selects two large volumes, and brings them to the table. He takes off his topcoat and opens his parcel, which we now see contains sheets of foolscap paper. His next action shows that the 'jemmy' is really a ruler. He knows where the pen and ink are kept. He pulls the fine chair nearer to the table, sits on it, and proceeds to write, occasionally dotting the carpet with ink as he stabs the air with his pen. He is so occupied that he does not see the door opening, and the Wylie family staring at him. They are armed with sticks.] ALICK [at last]. When you're ready, John Shand. [JOHN hints back, and then he has the grace to rise, dogged and expressionless.] JAMES [like a railway porter]. Ticket, please. DAVID. You can't think of anything clever for to go for to say now, John. MAGGIE. I hope you find that chair comfortable, young man. JOHN. I have no complaint to make against the chair. ALICK [who is really distressed]. A native of the town. The disgrace to your family! I feel pity for the Shands this night. JOHN [glowering]. I'll thank you, Mr. Wylie, not to pity my family. JAMES. Canny, canny. MAGGIE [that sense of justice again]. I think you should let the young man explain. It mayn't be so bad as we thought. DAVID. Explain away, my billie. JOHN. Only the uneducated would need an explanation. I'm a student, [with a little passion] and I'm desperate for want of books. You have all I want here; no use to you but for display; well, I came here to study. I come twice weekly. [Amazement of his hosts.] DAVID [who is the first to recover]. By the window. JOHN. Do you think a Shand would so far lower himself as to enter your door? Well, is it a case for the police? JAMES. It is. MAGGIE [not so much out of the goodness of her heart as to patronise the Shands]. It seems to me it's a case for us all to go to our beds and leave the young man to study; but not on that chair. [And she wheels the chair away from him.] JOHN. Thank you, Miss Maggie, but I couldn't be beholden to you. JAMES. My opinion is that he's nobody, so out with him. JOHN. Yes, out with me. And you'll be cheered to hear I'm likely to be a nobody for a long time to come. DAVID [who had been beginning to respect him]. Are you a poor scholar? JOHN. On the contrary, I'm a brilliant scholar. DAVID. It's siller, then? JOHN [glorified by experiences he has shared with many a gallant soul]. My first year at college I lived on a barrel of potatoes, and we had just a sofa-bed between two of us; when the one lay down the other had to get up. Do you think it was hardship? It was sublime. But this year I can't afford it. I'll have to stay on here, collecting the tickets of the illiterate, such as you, when I might be with Romulus and Remus among the stars. JAMES [summing up]. Havers. DAVID [in whose head some design is vaguely taking shape]. Whist, James. I must say, young lad, I like your spirit. Now tell me, what's your professors' opinion of your future. JOHN. They think me a young man of extraordinary promise. DAVID. You have a name here for high moral character. JOHN. And justly. DAVID. Are you serious-minded? JOHN. I never laughed in my life. DAVID. Who do you sit under in Glasgow? JOHN. Mr. Flemister of the Sauchiehall High. DAVID. Are you a Sabbath-school teacher? JOHN. I am. DAVID. One more question. Are you promised? JOHN. To a lady? DAVID. Yes. JOHN. I've never given one of them a single word of encouragement. I'm too much occupied thinking about my career. DAVID. So. [He reflects, and finally indicates by a jerk of the head that he wishes to talk with his father behind the door.] JAMES [longingly]. Do you want me too? [But they go out without even answering him.] MAGGIE. I don't know what maggot they have in their heads, but sit down, young man, till they come back. JOHN. My name's Mr. Shand, and till I'm called that I decline to sit down again in this house. MAGGIE. Then I'm thinking, young sir, you'll have a weary wait. [While he waits you can see how pinched his face is. He is little more than a boy, and he seldom has enough to eat. DAVID and ALICK return presently, looking as sly as if they had been discussing some move on the dambrod, as indeed they have.] DAVID [suddenly become genial]. Sit down, Mr. Shand, and pull in your chair. You'll have a thimbleful of something to keep the cold out? [Briskly] Glasses, Maggie. [She wonders, but gets glasses and decanter from the sideboard, which JAMES calls the chiffy. DAVID and ALICK, in the most friendly manner, also draw up to the table.] You're not a totaller, I hope? JOHN [guardedly]. I'm practically a totaller. DAVID. So are we. How do you take it? Is there any hot water, Maggie? JOHN. If I take it at all, and I haven't made up my mind yet, I'll take it cold. DAVID. You'll take it hot, James? JAMES [also sitting at the table but completely befogged]. No, I-- DAVID [decisively] I think you'll take it hot, James. JAMES [sulking]. I'll take it hot. DAVID. The kettle, Maggie. [JAMES has evidently to take it hot so that they can get at the business now on hand, while MAGGIE goes kitchenward for the kettle.] ALICK. Now, David, quick, before she comes back. DAVID. Mr. Shand, we have an offer to make you. JOHN [warningly]. No patronage. ALICK. It's strictly a business affair. DAVID. Leave it to me, father. It's this--[But to his annoyance the suspicious MAGGIE has already returned with the kettle.] Maggie, don't you see that you're not wanted? MAGGIE [sitting down by the fire and resuming her knitting]. I do, David. DAVID. I have a proposition to put before Mr. Shand, and women are out of place in business transactions. [The needles continue to click.] ALICK [sighing]. We'll have to let her bide, David. DAVID [sternly]. Woman. [But even this does not budge her.] Very well then, sit there, but don't interfere, mind. Mr. Shand, we're willing, the three of us, to lay out L300 on your education if-- JOHN. Take care. DAVID [slowly, which is not his wont]. On condition that five years from now, Maggie Wylie, if still unmarried, can claim to marry you, should such be her wish; the thing to be perfectly open on her side, but you to be strictly tied down. JAMES [enlightened]. So, so. DAVID [resuming his smart manner]. Now, what have you to say? Decide. JOHN [after a pause]. I regret to say-- MAGGIE. It doesn't matter what he regrets to say, because I decide against it. And I think it was very ill-done of you to make any such proposal. DAVID [without looking at her]. Quiet, Maggie. JOHN [looking at her]. I must say, Miss Maggie, I don't see what reasons YOU can have for being so set against it. MAGGIE. If you would grow a beard, Mr. Shand, the reasons wouldn't be quite so obvious. JOHN. I'll never grow a beard. MAGGIE. Then you're done for at the start. ALICK. Come, come. MAGGIE. Seeing I have refused the young man-- JOHN. Refused! DAVID. That's no reason why we shouldn't have his friendly opinion. Your objections, Mr. Shand? JOHN. Simply, it's a one-sided bargain. I admit I'm no catch at present; but what could a man of my abilities not soar to with three hundred pounds? Something far above what she could aspire to. MAGGIE. Oh, indeed! DAVID. The position is that without the three hundred you can't soar. JOHN. You have me there. MAGGIE. Yes, but-- ALICK. You see YOU'RE safeguarded, Maggie; you don't need to take him unless you like, but he has to take you. JOHN. That's an unfair arrangement also. MAGGIE. I wouldn't dream of it without that condition. JOHN. Then you ARE thinking of it? MAGGIE. Poof! DAVID. It's a good arrangement for you, Mr. Shand. The chances are you'll never have to go on with it, for in all probability she'll marry soon. JAMES. She's tremendous run after. JOHN. Even if that's true, it's just keeping me in reserve in case she misses doing better. DAVID [relieved]. That's the situation in a nutshell. JOHN. Another thing. Supposing I was to get fond of her? ALICK [wistfully]. It's very likely. JOHN. Yes, and then suppose she was to give me the go-by? DAVID. You have to risk that. JOHN. Or take it the other way. Supposing as I got to know her I COULD NOT endure her? DAVID [suavely]. You have both to take risks. JAMES [less suavely]. What you need, John Shand, is a clout on the head. JOHN. Three hundred pounds is no great sum. DAVID. You can take it or leave it. ALICK. No great sum for a student studying for the ministry! JOHN. Do you think that with that amount of money I would stop short at being a minister? DAVID. That's how I like to hear you speak. A young Scotsman of your ability let loose upon the world with L300, what could he not do? It's almost appalling to think of; especially if he went among the English. JOHN. What do you think, Miss Maggie? MAGGIE [who is knitting]. I have no thoughts on the subject either way. JOHN [after looking her over]. What's her age? She looks young, but they say it's the curls that does it. DAVID [rather happily]. She's one of those women who are eternally young. JOHN. I can't take that for an answer. DAVID. She's twenty-five. JOHN. I'm just twenty-one. JAMES. I read in a book that about four years' difference in the ages is the ideal thing. [As usual he is disregarded.] DAVID. Well, Mr. Shand? JOHN [where is his mother?]. I'm willing if she's willing. DAVID. Maggie? MAGGIE. There can be no 'if' about it. It must be an offer. JOHN. A Shand give a Wylie such a chance to humiliate him? Never. MAGGIE. Then all is off. DAVID. Come, come, Mr. Shand, it's just a form. JOHN [reluctantly]. Miss Maggie, will you? MAGGIE [doggedly]. Is it an offer? JOHN [dourly]. Yes. MAGGIE [rising]. Before I answer I want first to give you a chance of drawing back. DAVID. Maggie. MAGGIE [bravely]. When they said that I have been run after they were misleading you. I'm without charm; nobody has ever been after me. JOHN. Oho! ALICK. They will be yet. JOHN [the innocent]. It shows at least that you haven't been after them. [His hosts exchange a self-conscious glance.] MAGGIE. One thing more; David said I'm twenty-five, I'm twenty-six. JOHN. Aha! MAGGIE. Now be practical. Do you withdraw from the bargain, or do you not? JOHN [on reflection]. It's a bargain. MAGGIE. Then so be it. DAVID [hurriedly]. And that's settled. Did you say you would take it hot, Mr. Shand? JOHN. I think I'll take it neat. [The others decide to take it hot, and there is some careful business here with the toddy ladles.] ALICK. Here's to you, and your career. JOHN. Thank you. To you, Miss Maggie. Had we not better draw up a legal document? Lawyer Crosbie could do it on the quiet. DAVID. Should we do that, or should we just trust to one another's honour? ALICK [gallantly]. Let Maggie decide. MAGGIE. I think we would better have a legal document. DAVID. We'll have it drawn up to-morrow. I was thinking the best way would be for to pay the money in five yearly instalments. JOHN. I was thinking, better bank the whole sum in my name at once. ALICK. I think David's plan's the best. JOHN. I think not. Of course if it's not convenient to you-- DAVID [touched to the quick]. It's perfectly convenient. What do you say, Maggie? MAGGIE. I agree with John. DAVID [with an odd feeling that MAGGIE is now on the other side]. Very well. JOHN. Then as that's settled I think I'll be stepping. [He is putting his papers back in the bag.] ALICK [politely]. If you would like to sit on at your books-- JOHN. As I can come at any orra time now I think I'll be stepping. [MAGGIE helps him into his topcoat.] MAGGIE. Have you a muffler, John? JOHN. I have. [He gets it from his pocket.] MAGGIE. You had better put it twice round. [She does this for him.] DAVID. Well, good-night to you, Mr. Shand. ALICK. And good luck. JOHN. Thank you. The same to you. And I'll cry in at your office in the morning before the 6:20 is due. DAVID. I'll have the document ready for you. [There is the awkward pause that sometimes follows great events.] I think, Maggie, you might see Mr. Shand to the door. MAGGIE. Certainly. [JOHN is going by the window.] This way, John. [She takes him off by the more usual exit.] DAVID. He's a fine frank fellow; and you saw how cleverly he got the better of me about banking the money. [As the heads of the conspirators come gleefully together] I tell you, father, he has a grand business head. ALICK. Lads, he's canny. He's cannier than any of us. JAMES. Except maybe Maggie. He has no idea what a remarkable woman Maggie is. ALICK. Best he shouldn't know. Men are nervous of remarkable women. JAMES. She's a long time in coming back. DAVID [not quite comfortable]. It's a good sign. H'sh. What sort of a night is it, Maggie? MAGGIE. It's a little blowy. [She gets a large dustcloth which is lying folded on a shelf, and proceeds to spread it over the fine chair. The men exchange self-conscious glances.] DAVID [stretching himself]. Yes--well, well, oh yes. It's getting late. What is it with you, father? ALICK. I'm ten forty-two. JAMES. I'm ten-forty. DAVID. Ten forty-two. [They wind up their watches.] MAGGIE. It's high time we were bedded. [She puts her hands on their shoulders lovingly, which is the very thing they have been trying to avoid.] You're very kind to me. DAVID. Havers. ALICK. Havers. JAMES [but this does not matter]. Havers. MAGGIE [a little dolefully]. I'm a sort of sorry for the young man, David. DAVID. Not at all. You'll be the making of him. [She lifts the two volumes.] Are you taking the books to your bed, Maggie? MAGGIE. Yes. I don't want him to know things I don't know myself. [She departs with the books; and ALICK and DAVID, the villains, now want to get away from each other.] ALICK. Yes--yes. Oh yes--ay, man--it is so--umpha. You'll lift the big coals off, David. [He wanders away to his spring mattress. DAVID removes the coals.] JAMES [who would like to sit down and have an argy-bargy]. It's a most romantical affair. [But he gets no answer.] I wonder how it'll turn out? [No answer.] She's queer, Maggie. I wonder how some clever writers has never noticed how queer women are. It's my belief you could write a whole book about them. [DAVID remains obdurate.] It was very noble of her to tell him she's twenty-six. [Muttering as he too wanders away.] But I thought she was twenty-seven. [DAVID turns out the light.] ACT II [Six years have elapsed and John Shand's great hour has come. Perhaps his great hour really lies ahead of him, perhaps he had it six years ago; it often passes us by in the night with such a faint call that we don't even turn in our beds. But according to the trumpets this is John's great hour; it is the hour for which he has long been working with his coat off; and now the coat is on again (broadcloth but ill- fitting), for there is no more to do but await results. He is standing for Parliament, and this is election night. As the scene discloses itself you get, so to speak, one of John Shand's posters in the face. Vote for Shand. Shand, Shand, Shand. Civil and Religious Liberty, Faith, Hope, Freedom. They are all fly- blown names for Shand. Have a placard about Shand, have a hundred placards about him, it is snowing Shand to-night in Glasgow; take the paste out of your eye, and you will see that we are in one of Shand's committee rooms. It has been a hairdresser's emporium, but Shand, Shand, Shand has swept through it like a wind, leaving nothing but the fixtures; why shave, why have your head doused in those basins when you can be brushed and scraped and washed up for ever by simply voting for Shand? There are a few hard chairs for yelling Shand from, and then rushing away. There is an iron spiral staircase that once led to the ladies' hairdressing apartments, but now leads to more Shand, Shand, Shand. A glass door at the back opens on to the shop proper, screaming Civil and Religious Liberty, Shand, as it opens, and beyond is the street crammed with still more Shand pro and con. Men in every sort of garb rush in and out, up and down the stair, shouting the magic word. Then there is a lull, and down the stair comes Maggie Wylie, decidedly overdressed in blue velvet and (let us get this over) less good- looking than ever. She raises her hands to heaven, she spins round like a little teetotum. To her from the street, suffering from a determination of the word Shand to the mouth, rush Alick and David. Alick is thinner (being older), David is stouter (being older), and they are both in tweeds and silk hats.] MAGGIE. David--have they--is he? quick, quick! DAVID. There's no news yet, no news. It's terrible. [The teetotum revolves more quickly.] ALICK. For God's sake, Maggie, sit down. MAGGIE. I can't, I can't. DAVID. Hold her down. [They press her into a chair; JAMES darts in, stouter also. His necktie has gone; he will never again be able to attend a funeral in that hat.] JAMES [wildly]. John Shand's the man for you. John Shand's the man for you. John Shand's the man for you. DAVID [clutching him]. Have you heard anything? JAMES. Not a word. ALICK. Look at her. DAVID. Maggie [he goes on his knees beside her, pressing her to him in affectionate anxiety]. It was mad of him to dare. MAGGIE. It was grand of him. ALICK [moving about distraught]. Insane ambition. MAGGIE. Glorious ambition. DAVID. Maggie, Maggie, my lamb, best be prepared for the worst. MAGGIE [husky]. I am prepared. ALICK. Six weary years has she waited for this night. MAGGIE. Six brave years has John toiled for this night. JAMES. And you could have had him, Maggie, at the end of five. The document says five. MAGGIE. Do you think I grudge not being married to him yet? Was I to hamper him till the fight was won? DAVID [with wrinkled brows]. But if it's lost? [She can't answer.] ALICK [starting]. What's that? [The three listen at the door, the shouting dies down.] DAVID. They're terrible still; what can make them so still? [JAMES spirits himself away. ALICK and DAVID blanch to hear MAGGIE speaking softly as if to JOHN.] MAGGIE. Did you say you had lost, John? Of course you would lose the first time, dear John. Six years. Very well, we'll begin another six to-night. You'll win yet. [Fiercely] Never give in, John, never give in! [The roar of the multitude breaks out again and comes rolling nearer.] DAVID. I think he's coming. [JAMES is fired into the room like a squeezed onion.] JAMES. He's coming! [They may go on speaking, but through the clang outside none could hear. The populace seems to be trying to take the committee room by assault. Out of the scrimmage a man emerges dishevelled and bursts into the room, closing the door behind him. It is JOHN SHAND in a five guinea suit, including the hat. There are other changes in him also, for he has been delving his way through loamy ground all those years. His right shoulder, which he used to raise to pound a path through the crowd, now remains permanently in that position. His mouth tends to close like a box. His eyes are tired, they need some one to pull the lids over them and send him to sleep for a week. But they are honest eyes still, and faithful, and could even light up his face at times with a smile, if the mouth would give a little help.] JOHN [clinging to a chair that he may not fly straight to heaven]. I'm in; I'm elected. Majority two hundred and forty-four; I'm John Shand, M.P. [The crowd have the news by this time and their roar breaks the door open. JAMES is off at once to tell them that he is to be SHAND'S brother-in-law. A teardrop clings to ALICK's nose; DAVID hits out playfully at JOHN, and JOHN in an ecstasy returns the blow.] DAVID. Fling yourself at the door, father, and bar them out. Maggie, what keeps you so quiet now? MAGGIE [weak in her limbs]. You're sure you're in, John? JOHN. Majority 244. I've beaten the baronet. I've done it, Maggie, and not a soul to help me; I've done it alone. [His voice breaks; you could almost pick up the pieces.] I'm as hoarse as a crow, and I have to address the Cowcaddens Club yet; David, pump some oxygen into me. DAVID. Certainly, Mr. Shand. [While he does it, MAGGIE is seeing visions.] ALICK. What are you doing, Maggie? MAGGIE. This is the House of Commons, and I'm John, catching the Speaker's eye for the first time. Do you see a queer little old wifie sitting away up there in the Ladies' Gallery? That's me. 'Mr. Speaker, sir, I rise to make my historic maiden speech. I am no orator, sir'; voice from Ladies' Gallery, 'Are you not, John? you'll soon let them see that'; cries of 'Silence, woman,' and general indignation. 'Mr. Speaker, sir, I stand here diffidently with my eyes on the Treasury Bench'; voice from the Ladies' Gallery, 'And you'll soon have your coat-tails on it, John'; loud cries of 'Remove that little old wifie,' in which she is forcibly ejected, and the honourable gentleman resumes his seat in a torrent of admiring applause. [ALICK and DAVID waggle their proud heads.] JOHN [tolerantly]. Maggie, Maggie. MAGGIE. You're not angry with me, John? JOHN. No, no. MAGGIE. But you glowered. JOHN. I was thinking of Sir Peregrine. Just because I beat him at the poll he took a shabby revenge; he congratulated me in French, a language I haven't taken the trouble to master. MAGGIE [becoming a little taller]. Would it help you, John, if you were to marry a woman that could speak French? DAVID [quickly]. Not at all. MAGGIE [gloriously]. Mon cher Jean, laissez-moi parler le francais, voulez-vous un interprete? JOHN. Hullo! MAGGIE. Je suis la soeur francaise de mes deux freres ecossais. DAVID [worshipping her]. She's been learning French. JOHN [lightly]. Well done. MAGGIE [grandly]. They're arriving. ALICK. Who? MAGGIE. Our guests. This is London, and Mrs. John Shand is giving her first reception. [Airily] Have I told you, darling, who are coming to-night? There's that dear Sir Peregrine. [To ALICK] Sir Peregrine, this is a pleasure. Avez-vous...So sorry we beat you at the poll. JOHN. I'm doubting the baronet would sit on you, Maggie. MAGGIE. I've invited a lord to sit on the baronet. Voila! DAVID [delighted]. You thing! You'll find the lords expensive. MAGGIE. Just a little cheap lord. [JAMES enters importantly.] My dear Lord Cheap, this is kind of you. [JAMES hopes that MAGGIE's reason is not unbalanced.] DAVID [who really ought to have had education]. How de doo, Cheap? JAMES [bewildered]. Maggie--- MAGGIE. Yes, do call me Maggie. ALICK [grinning]. She's practising her first party, James. The swells are at the door. JAMES [heavily]. That's what I came to say. They are at the door. JOHN. Who? JAMES. The swells; in their motor. [He gives JOHN three cards.] JOHN. 'Mr. Tenterden.' DAVID. Him that was speaking for you? JOHN. The same. He's a whip and an Honourable. 'Lady Sybil Tenterden.' [Frowns.] Her! She's his sister. MAGGIE. A married woman? JOHN. No. 'The Comtesse de la Briere.' MAGGIE [the scholar]. She must be French. JOHN. Yes; I think she's some relation. She's a widow. JAMES. But what am I to say to them? ['Mr. Shand's compliments, and he will be proud to receive them' is the very least that the Wylies expect.] JOHN [who was evidently made for great ends]. Say I'm very busy, but if they care to wait I hope presently to give them a few minutes. JAMES [thunderstruck]. Good God, Mr. Shand! [But it makes him JOHN'S more humble servant than ever, and he departs with the message.] JOHN [not unaware of the sensation he has created]. I'll go up and let the crowd see me from the window. MAGGIE. But--but--what are we to do with these ladies? JOHN [as he tramps upwards]. It's your reception, Maggie; this will prove you. MAGGIE [growing smaller]. Tell me what you know about this Lady Sybil? JOHN. The only thing I know about her is that she thinks me vulgar. MAGGIE. You? JOHN. She has attended some of my meetings, and I'm told she said that. MAGGIE. What could the woman mean? JOHN. I wonder. When I come down I'll ask her. [With his departure MAGGIE'S nervousness increases.] ALICK [encouragingly]. In at them, Maggie, with your French. MAGGIE. It's all slipping from me, father. DAVID [gloomily]. I'm sure to say 'for to come for to go.' [The newcomers glorify the room, and MAGGIE feels that they have lifted her up with the tongs and deposited her in one of the basins. They are far from intending to be rude; it is not their fault that thus do swans scatter the ducks. They do not know that they are guests of the family, they think merely that they are waiting with other strangers in a public room; they undulate inquiringly, and if MAGGIE could undulate in return she would have no cause for offence. But she suddenly realises that this is an art as yet denied her, and that though DAVID might buy her evening-gowns as fine as theirs [and is at this moment probably deciding to do so], she would look better carrying them in her arms than on her person. She also feels that to emerge from wraps as they are doing is more difficult than to plank your money on the counter for them. The COMTESSE she could forgive, for she is old; but LADY SYBIL is young and beautiful and comes lazily to rest like a stately ship of Tarsus.] COMTESSE [smiling divinely, and speaking with such a pretty accent]. I hope one is not in the way. We were told we might wait. MAGGIE [bravely climbing out of the basin]. Certainly--I am sure if you will be so--it is-- [She knows that DAVID and her father are very sorry for her.] [A high voice is heard orating outside.] SYBIL [screwing her nose deliciously]. He is at it again, Auntie. COMTESSE. Mon Dieu! [Like one begging pardon of the universe] It is Mr. Tenterden, you understand, making one more of his delightful speeches to the crowd. WOULD you be so charming as to shut the door? [This to DAVID in such appeal that she is evidently making the petition of her life. DAVID saves her.] MAGGIE [determined not to go under]. J'espere que vous--trouvez-- cette--reunion--interessante? COMTESSE. Vous parlez francais? Mais c'est charmant! Voyons, causons un peu. Racontez-moi tout de ce grand homme, toutes les choses merveilleuses qu'il a faites. MAGGIE. I--I--Je connais--[Alas!] COMTESSE [naughtily]. Forgive me, Mademoiselle, I thought you spoke French. SYBIL [who knows that DAVID admires her shoulders]. How wicked of you, Auntie. [To MAGGIE] I assure you none of us can understand her when she gallops at that pace. MAGGIE [crushed]. It doesn't matter. I will tell Mr. Shand that you are here. SYBIL [drawling]. Please don't trouble him. We are really only waiting till my brother recovers and can take us back to our hotel. MAGGIE. I'll tell him. [She is glad to disappear up the stair.] COMTESSE. The lady seems distressed. Is she a relation of Mr. Shand? DAVID. Not for to say a relation. She's my sister. Our name is Wylie. [But granite quarries are nothing to them.] COMTESSE. How do you do. You are the committee man of Mr. Shand? DAVID. No, just friends. COMTESSE [gaily to the basins]. Aha! I know you. Next, please! Sybil, do you weigh yourself, or are you asleep? [LADY SYBIL has sunk indolently into a weighing-chair.] SYBIL. Not quite, Auntie. COMTESSE [the mirror of la politesse]. Tell me all about Mr. Shand. Was it here that he--picked up the pin? DAVID. The pin? COMTESSE. As I have read, a self-made man always begins by picking up a pin. After that, as the memoirs say, his rise was rapid. [DAVID, however, is once more master of himself, and indeed has begun to tot up the cost of their garments.] DAVID. It wasn't a pin he picked up, my lady; it was L300. ALICK [who feels that JOHN's greatness has been outside the conversation quite long enough]. And his rise wasn't so rapid, just at first, David! DAVID. He had his fight. His original intention was to become a minister; he's university-educated, you know; he's not a working-man member. ALICK [with reverence]. He's an M.A. But while he was a student he got a place in an iron-cementer's business. COMTESSE [now far out of her depths]. Iron-cementer? DAVID. They scrape boilers. COMTESSE. I see. The fun men have, Sybil! DAVID [with some solemnity]. There have been millions made in scraping boilers. They say, father, he went into business so as to be able to pay off the L300. ALICK [slily]. So I've heard. COMTESSE. Aha--it was a loan? [DAVID and ALICK are astride their great subject now.] DAVID. No, a gift--of a sort--from some well-wishers. But they wouldn't hear of his paying it off, father! ALICK. Not them! COMTESSE [restraining an impulse to think of other things]. That was kind, charming. ALICK [with a look at DAVID]. Yes. Well, my lady, he developed a perfect genius for the iron-cementing. DAVID. But his ambition wasn't satisfied. Soon he had public life in his eye. As a heckler he was something fearsome; they had to seat him on the platform for to keep him quiet. Next they had to let him into the Chair. After that he did all the speaking; he cleared all roads before him like a fire-engine; and when this vacancy occurred, you could hardly say it did occur, so quickly did he step into it. My lady, there are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make. COMTESSE. I can well believe it. And now he has said farewell to boilers? DAVID [impressively]. Not at all; the firm promised if he was elected for to make him their London manager at L800 a year. COMTESSE. There is a strong man for you, Sybil; but I believe you ARE asleep. SYBIL [stirring herself]. Honestly, I'm not. [Sweetly to the others] But would you mind finding out whether my brother is drawing to a close? [DAVID goes out, leaving poor ALICK marooned. The COMTESSE is kind to him.] COMTESSE. Thank you very much. [Which helps ALICK out.] Don't you love a strong man, sleepy head? SYBIL [preening herself]. I never met one. COMTESSE. Neither have I. But if you DID meet one, would he wakes you up? SYBIL. I dare say he would find there were two of us. COMTESSE [considering her]. Yes, I think he would. Ever been in love, you cold thing? SYBIL [yawning]. I have never shot up in flame, Auntie. COMTESSE. Think you could manage it? SYBIL. If Mr. Right came along. COMTESSE. As a girl of to-day it would be your duty to tame him. SYBIL. As a girl of to-day I would try to do my duty. COMTESSE. And if it turned out that HE tamed you instead? SYBIL. He would have to do that if he were MY Mr. Right. COMTESSE. And then? SYBIL. Then, of course, I should adore him. Auntie, I think if I ever really love it will be like Mary Queen of Scots, who said of her Bothwell that she could follow him round the world in her nighty. COMTESSE. My petite! SYBIL. I believe I mean it. COMTESSE. Oh, it is quite my conception of your character. Do you know, I am rather sorry for this Mr. John Shand. SYBIL [opening her fine eyes]. Why? He is quite a boor, is he not? COMTESSE. For that very reason. Because his great hour is already nearly sped. That wild bull manner that moves the multitude--they will laugh at it in your House of Commons. SYBIL [indifferent]. I suppose so. COMTESSE. Yet if he had education--- SYBIL. Have we not been hearing how superbly he is educated? COMTESSE. It is such as you or me that he needs to educate him now. You could do it almost too well. SYBIL [with that pretty stretch of neck]. I am not sufficiently interested. I retire in your favour. How would you begin? COMTESSE. By asking him to drop in, about five, of course. By the way, I wonder is there a Mrs. Shand? SYBIL. I have no idea. But they marry young. COMTESSE. If there is not, there is probably a lady waiting for him, somewhere in a boiler. SYBIL. I dare say. [MAGGIE descends.] MAGGIE. Mr. Shand will be down directly. COMTESSE. Thank you. Your brother has been giving us such an interesting account of his career. I forget, Sybil, whether he said that he was married. MAGGIE. No, he's not married; but he will be soon. COMTESSE. Ah! [She is merely making conversation.] A friend of yours? MAGGIE [now a scorner of herself]. I don't think much of her. COMTESSE. In that case, tell me all about her. MAGGIE. There's not much to tell. She's common, and stupid. One of those who go in for self-culture; and then when the test comes they break down. [With sinister enjoyment] She'll be the ruin of him. COMTESSE. But is not that sad! Figure to yourself how many men with greatness before them have been shipwrecked by marrying in the rank from which they sprang. MAGGIE. I've told her that. COMTESSE. But she will not give him up? MAGGIE. No. SYBIL. Why should she if he cares for her? What is her name? MAGGIE. It's--Maggie. COMTESSE [still uninterested]. Well, I am afraid that Maggie is to do for John. [JOHN comes down.] Ah, our hero! JOHN. Sorry I have kept you waiting. The Comtesse? COMTESSE. And my niece Lady Sybil Tenterden. [SYBIL'S head inclines on its stem.] She is not really all my niece; I mean I am only half of her aunt. What a triumph, Mr. Shand! JOHN. Oh, pretty fair, pretty fair. Your brother has just finished addressing the crowd, Lady Sybil. SYBIL. Then we must not detain Mr. Shand, Auntie. COMTESSE [who unless her heart is touched thinks insincerity charming]. Only one word. I heard you speak last night. Sublime! Just the sort of impassioned eloquence that your House of Commons loves. JOHN. It's very good of you to say so. COMTESSE. But we must run. Bon soir. [SYBIL bows as to some one far away.] JOHN. Good-night, Lady Sybil. I hear you think I'm vulgar. [Eyebrows are raised.] COMTESSE. My dear Mr. Shand, what absurd--- JOHN. I was told she said that after hearing me speak. COMTESSE. Quite a mistake, I--- JOHN [doggedly]. Is it not true? SYBIL ['waking up']. You seem to know, Mr. Shand; and as you press me so unnecessarily--well, yes, that is how you struck me. COMTESSE. My child! SYBIL [who is a little agitated]. He would have it. JOHN [perplexed]. What's the matter? I just wanted to know, because if it's true I must alter it. COMTESSE. There, Sybil, see how he values your good opinion. SYBIL [her svelte figure giving like a fishing-rod]. It is very nice of you to put it in that way, Mr. Shand. Forgive me. JOHN. But I don't quite understand yet. Of course, it can't matter to me, Lady Sybil, what you think of me; what I mean is, that I mustn't be vulgar if it would be injurious to my career. [The fishing-rod regains its rigidity.] SYBIL. I see. No, of course, I could not affect your career, Mr Shand. JOHN [who quite understands that he is being challenged]. That's so, Lady Sybil, meaning no offence. SYBIL [who has a naughty little impediment in her voice when she is most alluring]. Of course not. And we are friends again? JOHN. Certainly. SYBIL. Then I hope you will come to see me in London as I present no terrors. JOHN [he is a man, is JOHN]. I'll be very pleased. SYBIL. Any afternoon about five. JOHN. Much obliged. And you can teach me the things I don't know yet, if you'll be so kind. SYBIL [the impediment becoming more assertive]. If you wish it, I shall do my best. JOHN. Thank you, Lady Sybil. And who knows there may be one or two things I can teach you. SYBIL [it has now become an angel's hiccough]. Yes, we can help one another. Good-bye till then. JOHN. Good-bye. Maggie, the ladies are going. [During this skirmish MAGGIE has stood apart. At the mention of her name they glance at one another. JOHN escorts SYBIL, but the COMTESSE turns back.] COMTESSE. Are you, then, THE Maggie? [MAGGIE nods rather defiantly and the COMTESSE is distressed.] But if I had known I would not have said those things. Please forgive an old woman. MAGGIE. It doesn't matter. COMTESSE. I--I dare say it will be all right. Mademoiselle, if I were you I would not encourage those tete-a-tetes with Lady Sybil. I am the rude one, but she is the dangerous one; and I am afraid his impudence has attracted her. Bon voyage, Miss Maggie. MAGGIE. Good-bye--but I CAN speak French. Je parle francais. Isn't that right? COMTESSE. But, yes, it is excellent. [Making things easy for her] C'est tres bien. MAGGIE. Je me suis embrouillee--la derniere fois. COMTESSE. Good! Shall I speak more slowly? MAGGIE. No, no. Nonon, non, faster, faster. COMTESSE. J'admire votre courage! MAGGIE. Je comprends chaque mot. COMTESSE. Parfait! Bravo! MAGGIE. Voila! COMTESSE. Superbe! [She goes, applauding; and MAGGIE has a moment of elation, which however has passed before JOHN returns for his hat.] MAGGIE. Have you more speaking to do, John? [He is somehow in high good-humour.] JOHN. I must run across and address the Cowcaddens Club. [He sprays his throat with a hand-spray.] I wonder if I AM vulgar, Maggie? MAGGIE. You are not, but _I_ am. JOHN. Not that _I_ can see. MAGGIE. Look how overdressed I am, John. I knew it was too showy when I ordered it, and yet I could not resist the thing. But I will tone it down, I will. What did you think of Lady Sybil? JOHN. That young woman had better be careful. She's a bit of a besom, Maggie. MAGGIE. She's beautiful, John. JOHN. She has a neat way of stretching herself. For playing with she would do as well as another. [She looks at him wistfully.] MAGGIE. You couldn't stay and have a talk for a few minutes? JOHN. If you want me, Maggie. The longer you keep them waiting, the more they think of you. MAGGIE. When are you to announce that we're to be married, John? JOHN. I won't be long. You've waited a year more than you need have done, so I think it's your due I should hurry things now. MAGGIE. I think it's noble of you. JOHN. Not at all, Maggie; the nobleness has been yours in waiting so patiently. And your brothers would insist on it at any rate. They're watching me like cats with a mouse. MAGGIE. It's so little I've done to help. JOHN. Three hundred pounds. MAGGIE. I'm getting a thousand per cent for it. JOHN. And very pleased I am you should think so, Maggie. MAGGIE. Is it terrible hard to you, John? JOHN. It's not hard at all. I can say truthfully, Maggie, that all, or nearly all, I've seen of you in these six years has gone to increase my respect for you. MAGGIE. Respect! JOHN. And a bargain's a bargain. MAGGIE. If it wasn't that you're so glorious to me, John, I would let you off. [There is a gleam in his eye, but he puts it out.] JOHN. In my opinion, Maggie, we'll be a very happy pair. [She accepts this eagerly.] MAGGIE. We know each other so well, John, don't we? JOHN. I'm an extraordinary queer character, and I suppose nobody knows me well except myself; but I know you, Maggie, to the very roots of you. [She magnanimously lets this remark alone.] MAGGIE. And it's not as if there was any other woman you--fancied more, John. JOHN. There's none whatever. MAGGIE. If there ever should be--oh, if there ever should be! Some woman with charm. JOHN. Maggie, you forget yourself. There couldn't be another woman once I was a married man. MAGGIE. One has heard of such things. JOHN. Not in Scotsmen, Maggie; not in Scotsmen. MAGGIE. I've sometimes thought, John, that the difference between us and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women but soft in all other respects. JOHN. You've forgotten the grandest moral attribute of a Scotsman, Maggie, that he'll do nothing which might damage his career. MAGGIE. Ah, but John, whatever you do, you do it so tremendously; and if you were to love, what a passion it would be. JOHN. There's something in that, I suppose. MAGGIE. And then, what could I do? For the desire of my life now, John, is to help you to get everything you want, except just that I want you to have me, too. JOHN. We'll get on fine, Maggie. MAGGIE. You're just making the best of it. They say that love is sympathy, and if that's so, mine must be a great love for you, for I see all you are feeling this night and bravely hiding; I feel for you as if I was John Shand myself. [He sighs.] JOHN. I had best go to the meeting, Maggie. MAGGIE. Not yet. Can you look me in the face, John, and deny that there is surging within you a mighty desire to be free, to begin the new life untrammelled? JOHN. Leave such maggots alone, Maggie. MAGGIE. It's a shame of me not to give you up. JOHN. I would consider you a very foolish woman if you did. MAGGIE. If I were John Shand I would no more want to take Maggie Wylie with me through the beautiful door that has opened wide for you than I would want to take an old pair of shoon. Why don't you bang the door in my face, John? [A tremor runs through JOHN.] JOHN. A bargain's a bargain, Maggie. [MAGGIE moves about, an eerie figure, breaking into little cries. She flutters round him, threateningly.] MAGGIE. Say one word about wanting to get out of it, and I'll put the lawyers on you. JOHN. Have I hinted at such a thing? MAGGIE. The document holds you hard and fast. JOHN. It does. [She gloats miserably.] MAGGIE. The woman never rises with the man. I'll drag you down, John. I'll drag you down. JOHN. Have no fear of that, I won't let you. I'm too strong. MAGGIE. You'll miss the prettiest thing in the world, and all owing to me. JOHN. What's that? MAGGIE. Romance. JOHN. Poof. MAGGIE. All's cold and grey without it, John. They that have had it have slipped in and out of heaven. JOHN. You're exaggerating, Maggie. MAGGIE. You've worked so hard, you've had none of the fun that comes to most men long before they're your age. JOHN. I never was one for fun. I cannot call to mind, Maggie, ever having laughed in my life. MAGGIE. You have no sense of humour. JOHN. Not a spark. MAGGIE. I've sometimes thought that if you had, it might make you fonder of me. I think one needs a sense of humour to be fond of me. JOHN. I remember reading of some one that said it needed a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman's head. MAGGIE. Yes, that's been said. JOHN. What beats me, Maggie, is how you could insert a joke with an operation. [He considers this and gives it up.] MAGGIE. That's not the kind of fun I was thinking of. I mean fun with the lasses, John--gay, jolly, harmless fun. They could be impudent fashionable beauties now, stretching themselves to attract you, like that hiccoughing little devil, and running away from you, and crooking their fingers to you to run after them. [He draws a big breath.] JOHN. No, I never had that. MAGGIE. It's every man's birthright, and you would have it now but for me. JOHN. I can do without, Maggie. MAGGIE. It's like missing out all the Saturdays. JOHN. You feel sure, I suppose, that an older man wouldn't suit you better, Maggie? MAGGIE. I couldn't feel surer of anything. You're just my ideal. JOHN. Yes, yes. Well, that's as it should be. [She threatens him again.] MAGGIE. David has the document. It's carefully locked away. JOHN. He would naturally take good care of it. [The pride of the Wylies deserts her.] MAGGIE. John, I make you a solemn promise that, in consideration of the circumstances of our marriage, if you should ever fall in love I'll act differently from other wives. JOHN. There will be no occasion, Maggie. [Her voice becomes tremulous.] MAGGIE. John, David doesn't have the document. He thinks he has, but I have it here. [Somewhat heavily JOHN surveys the fatal paper.] JOHN. Well do I mind the look of it, Maggie. Yes, yes, that's it. Umpha. MAGGIE. You don't ask why I've brought it. JOHN. Why did you? MAGGIE. Because I thought I might perhaps have the courage and the womanliness to give it back to you. [JOHN has a brief dream.] Will you never hold it up against me in the future that I couldn't do that? JOHN. I promise you, Maggie, I never will. MAGGIE. To go back to The Pans and take up my old life there, when all these six years my eyes have been centred on this night! I've been waiting for this night as long as you have been; and now to go back there, and wizen and dry up, when I might be married to John Shand! JOHN. And you will be, Maggie. You have my word. MAGGIE. Never--never--never. [She tears up the document. He remains seated immovable, but the gleam returns to his eye. She rages first at herself and then at him.] I'm a fool, a fool, to let you go. I tell you, you'll rue this day, for you need me, you'll come to grief without me. There's nobody can help you as I could have helped you. I'm essential to your career, and you're blind not to see it. JOHN. What's that, Maggie? In no circumstances would I allow any meddling with my career. MAGGIE. You would never have known I was meddling with it. But that's over. Don't be in too great a hurry to marry, John. Have your fling with the beautiful dolls first. Get the whiphand of the haughty ones, John. Give them their licks. Every time they hiccough let them have an extra slap in memory of me. And be sure to remember this, my man, that the one who marries you will find you out. JOHN. Find me out? MAGGIE. However careful a man is, his wife always finds out his failings. JOHN. I don't know, Maggie, to what failings you refer. [The Cowcaddens Club has burst its walls, and is pouring this way to raise the new Member on its crest. The first wave hurls itself against the barber's shop with cries of 'Shand, Shand, Shand.' For a moment, JOHN stems the torrent by planting his back against the door.] You are acting under an impulse, Maggie, and I can't take advantage of it. Think the matter over, and we'll speak about it in the morning. MAGGIE. No, I can't go through it again. It ends to-night and now. Good luck, John. [She is immediately submerged in the sea that surges through the door, bringing much wreckage with it. In a moment the place is so full that another cupful could not find standing room. Some slippery ones are squeezed upwards and remain aloft as warnings. JOHN has jumped on to the stair, and harangues the flood vainly like another Canute. It is something about freedom and noble minds, and, though unheard, goes to all heads, including the speaker's. By the time he is audible sentiment has him for her own.] JOHN. But, gentlemen, one may have too much even of freedom [No, no.] Yes, Mr. Adamson. One may want to be tied. [Never, never.] I say yes, Willie Cameron; and I have found a young lady who I am proud to say is willing to be tied to me. I'm to be married. [Uproar.] Her name's Miss Wylie. [Transport.] Quiet; she's here now. [Frenzy.] She was here! Where are you, Maggie? [A small voice--'I'm here.' A hundred great voices--'Where--where--where?' The small voice--'I'm so little none of you can see me.'] [Three men, name of Wylie, buffet their way forward.] DAVID. James, father, have you grip of her? ALICK. We've got her. DAVID. Then hoist her up. [The queer little elated figure is raised aloft. With her fingers she can just touch the stars. Not unconscious of the nobility of his behaviour, the hero of the evening points an impressive finger at her.] JOHN. Gentlemen, the future Mrs. John Shand! [Cries of 'Speech, speech!'] No, no, being a lady she can't make a speech, but--- [The heroine of the evening surprises him.] MAGGIE. I can make a speech, and I will make a speech, and it's in two words, and they're these [holding out her arms to enfold all the members of the Cowcaddens Club]--My Constituents! [Dementia.] ACT III [A few minutes ago the Comtesse de la Briere, who has not recently been in England, was shown into the London home of the Shands. Though not sufficiently interested to express her surprise in words, she raised her eyebrows on finding herself in a charming room; she has presumed that the Shand scheme of decoration would be as impossible as themselves. It is the little room behind the dining-room for which English architects have long been famous; 'Make something of this, and you will indeed be a clever one,' they seem to say to you as they unveil it. The Comtesse finds that John has undoubtedly made something of it. It is his 'study' (mon Dieu, the words these English use!) and there is nothing in it that offends; there is so much not in it too that might so easily have been there. It is not in the least ornate; there are no colours quarrelling with each other (unseen, unheard by the blissful occupant of the revolving chair); the Comtesse has not even the gentle satisfaction of noting a 'suite' in stained oak. Nature might have taken a share in the decorations, so restful are they to the eyes; it is the working room of a man of culture, probably lately down from Oxford; at a first meeting there is nothing in it that pretends to be what it is not. Our visitor is a little disappointed, but being fair-minded blows her absent host a kiss for disappointing her. He has even, she observes with a twinkle, made something of the most difficult of his possessions, the little wife. For Maggie, who is here receiving her, has been quite creditably toned down. He has put her into a little grey frock that not only deals gently with her personal defects, but is in harmony with the room. Evidently, however, she has not 'risen' with him, for she is as ever; the Comtesse, who remembers having liked her the better of the two, could shake her for being so stupid. For instance, why is she not asserting herself in that other apartment? The other apartment is really a correctly solemn dining-room, of which we have a glimpse through partly open folding-doors. At this moment it is harbouring Mr. Shand's ladies' committee, who sit with pens and foolscap round the large table, awaiting the advent of their leader. There are nobly wise ones and some foolish ones among them, for we are back in the strange days when it was considered 'unwomanly' for women to have minds. The Comtesse peeps at them with curiosity, as they arrange their papers or are ushered into the dining-room through a door which we cannot see. To her frivolous ladyship they are a species of wild fowl, and she is specially amused to find her niece among them. She demands an explanation as soon as the communicating doors close.] COMTESSE. Tell me since when has my dear Sybil become one of these ladies? It is not like her. [MAGGIE is obviously not clever enough to understand the woman question. Her eye rests longingly on a half-finished stocking as she innocently but densely replies:] MAGGIE. I think it was about the time that my husband took up their cause. [The COMTESSE has been hearing tales of LADY SYBIL and the barbarian; and after having the grace to hesitate, she speaks with the directness for which she is famed in Mayfair.] COMTESSE. Mrs. Shand, excuse me for saying that if half of what I hear be true, your husband is seeing that lady a great deal too often. [MAGGIE is expressionless; she reaches for her stocking, whereat her guest loses patience.] Oh, mon Dieu, put that down; you can buy them at two francs the pair. Mrs. Shand, why do not you compel yourself to take an intelligent interest in your husband's work? MAGGIE. I typewrite his speeches. COMTESSE. But do you know what they are about? MAGGIE. They are about various subjects. COMTESSE. Oh! [Did MAGGIE give her an unseen quizzical glance before demurely resuming the knitting? One is not certain, as JOHN has come in, and this obliterates her. A 'Scotsman on the make,' of whom DAVID has spoken reverently, is still to be read--in a somewhat better bound volume--in JOHN SHAND's person; but it is as doggedly honest a face as ever; and he champions women, not for personal ends, but because his blessed days of poverty gave him a light upon their needs. His self-satisfaction, however, has increased, and he has pleasantly forgotten some things. For instance, he can now call out 'Porter' at railway stations without dropping his hands for the barrow. MAGGIE introduces the COMTESSE, and he is still undaunted.] JOHN. I remember you well--at Glasgow. COMTESSE. It must be quite two years ago, Mr. Shand. [JOHN has no objection to showing that he has had a classical education.] JOHN. Tempus fugit, Comtesse. COMTESSE. I have not been much in this country since then, and I return to find you a coming man. [Fortunately his learning is tempered with modesty.] JOHN. Oh, I don't know, I don't know. COMTESSE. The Ladies' Champion. [His modesty is tempered with a respect for truth.] JOHN. Well, well. COMTESSE. And you are about, as I understand, to introduce a bill to give women an equal right with men to grow beards [which is all she knows about it. He takes the remark literally.] JOHN. There's nothing about beards in it, Comtesse. [She gives him time to cogitate, and is pleased to note that there is no result.] Have you typed my speech, Maggie? MAGGIE. Yes; twenty-six pages. [She produces it from a drawer.] [Perhaps JOHN wishes to impress the visitor.] JOHN. I'm to give the ladies' committee a general idea of it. Just see, Maggie, if I know the peroration. 'In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, these are the reasonable demands of every intelligent Englishwoman'-- I had better say British woman--'and I am proud to nail them to my flag'--- [The visitor is properly impressed.] COMTESSE. Oho! defies his leaders! JOHN. 'So long as I can do so without embarrassing the Government.' COMTESSE. Ah, ah, Mr. Shand! JOHN. 'I call upon the Front Bench, sir, loyally but firmly'-- COMTESSE. Firm again! JOHN. --'either to accept my Bill, or to promise WITHOUT DELAY to bring in one of their own; and if they decline to do so I solemnly warn them that though I will not press the matter to a division just now'-- COMTESSE. Ahem! JOHN. 'I will bring it forward again in the near future.' And now Comtesse, you know that I'm not going to divide--and not another soul knows it. COMTESSE. I am indeed flattered by your confidence. JOHN. I've only told you because I don't care who knows now. COMTESSE. Oh! [Somehow MAGGIE seems to be dissatisfied.] MAGGIE. But why is that, John? JOHN. I daren't keep the Government in doubt any longer about what I mean to do. I'll show the whips the speech privately to-night. MAGGIE [who still wants to know]. But not to go to a division is hedging, isn't it? Is that strong? JOHN. To make the speech at all, Maggie, is stronger than most would dare. They would do for me if I went to a division. MAGGIE. Bark but not bite? JOHN. Now, now, Maggie, you're out of your depth. MAGGIE. I suppose that's it. [The COMTESSE remains in the shallows.] COMTESSE. But what will the ladies say, Mr. Shand? JOHN. They won't like it, Comtesse, but they've got to lump it. [Here the maid appears with a card for MAGGIE, who considers it quietly.] JOHN. Any one of importance? MAGGIE. No. JOHN. Then I'm ready, Maggie. [This is evidently an intimation that she is to open the folding-doors, and he makes an effective entrance into the dining-room, his thumb in his waistcoat. There is a delicious clapping of hands from the committee, and the door closes. Not till then does MAGGIE, who has grown thoughtful, tell her maid to admit the visitor.] COMTESSE. Another lady, Mrs. Shand? MAGGIE. The card says 'Mr. Charles Venables.' [The COMTESSE is really interested at last.] COMTESSE. Charles Venables! Do you know him? MAGGIE. I think I call to mind meeting one of that name at the Foreign Office party. COMTESSE. One of that name! He who is a Minister of your Cabinet. But as you know him so little why should he call on you? MAGGIE. I wonder. [MAGGIE's glance wanders to the drawer in which she has replaced JOHN's speech.] COMTESSE. Well, well, I shall take care of you, petite. MAGGIE. Do you know him? COMTESSE. Do I know him! The last time I saw him he asked me to--to-- hem!--ma cherie, it was thirty years ago. MAGGIE. Thirty years! COMTESSE. I was a pretty woman then. I dare say I shall detest him now; but if I find I do not--let us have a little plot--I shall drop this book; and then perhaps you will be so charming as--as not to be here for a little while? [MR. VENABLES, who enters, is such a courtly seigneur that he seems to bring the eighteenth century with him; you feel that his sedan chair is at the door. He stoops over MAGGIE's plebeian hand.] VENABLES. I hope you will pardon my calling, Mrs. Shand; we had such a pleasant talk the other evening. [MAGGIE, of course, is at once deceived by his gracious manner.] MAGGIE. I think it's kind of you. Do you know each other? The Comtesse de la Briere. [He repeats the name with some emotion, and the COMTESSE, half mischievously, half sadly, holds a hand before her face.] VENABLES. Comtesse. COMTESSE. Thirty years, Mr. Venables. [He gallantly removes the hand that screens her face.] VENABLES. It does not seem so much. [She gives him a similar scrutiny.] COMTESSE. Mon Dieu, it seems all that. [They smile rather ruefully. MAGGIE like a kind hostess relieves the tension.] MAGGIE. The Comtesse has taken a cottage in Surrey for the summer. VENABLES. I am overjoyed. COMTESSE. No, Charles, you are not. You no longer care. Fickle one! And it is only thirty years. [He sinks into a chair beside her.] VENABLES. Those heavenly evenings, Comtesse, on the Bosphorus. COMTESSE. I refuse to talk of them. I hate you. [But she drops the book, and MAGGIE fades from the room. It is not a very clever departure, and the old diplomatist smiles. Then he sighs a beautiful sigh, for he does all things beautifully.] VENABLES. It is moonlight, Comtesse, on the Golden Horn. COMTESSE. Who are those two young things in a caique? VENABLES. Is he the brave Leander, Comtesse, and is she Hero of the Lamp? COMTESSE. No, she is the foolish wife of the French Ambassador, and he is a good-for-nothing British attache trying to get her husband's secrets out of her. VENABLES. Is it possible! They part at a certain garden gate. COMTESSE. Oh, Charles, Charles! VENABLES. But you promised to come back; I waited there till dawn. Blanche, if you HAD come back-- COMTESSE. How is Mrs. Venables? VENABLES. She is rather poorly. I think it's gout. COMTESSE. And you? VENABLES. I creak a little in the mornings. COMTESSE. So do I. There is such a good man at Wiesbaden. VENABLES. The Homburg fellow is better. The way he patched me up last summer--Oh, Lord, Lord! COMTESSE. Yes, Charles, the game is up; we are two old fogies. [They groan in unison; then she raps him sharply on the knuckles.] Tell me, sir, what are you doing here? VENABLES. Merely a friendly call. COMTESSE. I do not believe it. VENABLES. The same woman; the old delightful candour. COMTESSE. The same man; the old fibs. [She sees that the door is asking a question.] Yes, come, Mrs. Shand, I have had quite enough of him; I warn you he is here for some crafty purpose. MAGGIE [drawing back timidly]. Surely not? VENABLES. Really, Comtesse, you make conversation difficult. To show that my intentions are innocent, Mrs. Shand, I propose that you choose the subject. MAGGIE [relieved]. There, Comtesse. VENABLES. I hope your husband is well? MAGGIE. Yes, thank you. [With a happy thought] I decide that we talk about him. VENABLES. If you wish it. COMTESSE. Be careful; HE has chosen the subject. MAGGIE. _I_ chose it, didn't I? VENABLES. You know you did. MAGGIE [appealingly]. You admire John? VENABLES. Very much. But he puzzles me a little. You Scots, Mrs. Shand, are such a mixture of the practical and the emotional that you escape out of an Englishman's hand like a trout. MAGGIE [open-eyed]. Do we? VENABLES. Well, not you, but your husband. I have known few men make a worse beginning in the House. He had the most atrocious bow-wow public-park manner--- COMTESSE. I remember that manner! MAGGIE. No, he hadn't. VENABLES [soothingly]. At first. But by his second session he had shed all that, and he is now a pleasure to listen to. By the way, Comtesse, have you found any dark intention in that? COMTESSE. You wanted to know whether he talks over these matter with his wife; and she has told you that he does not. MAGGIE [indignantly]. I haven't said a word about it, have I? VENABLES. Not a word. Then, again, I admire him for his impromptu speeches. MAGGIE. What is impromptu? VENABLES. Unprepared. They have contained some grave blunders not so much of judgment as of taste--- MAGGIE [hotly]. _I_ don't think so. VENABLES. Pardon me. But he has righted himself subsequently in the neatest way. I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching. Well, Comtesse, I see you have something to say. COMTESSE. You are wondering whether she can tell you who gives him his second thoughts. MAGGIE. Gives them to John? I would like to see anybody try to give thoughts to John. VENABLES. Quite so. COMTESSE. Is there anything more that has roused your admiration Charles? VENABLES [purring]. Let me see. Yes, we are all much edified by his humour. COMTESSE [surprised indeed]. His humour? That man! MAGGIE [with hauteur]. Why not? VENABLES. I assure you, Comtesse, some of the neat things in his speeches convulse the house. A word has even been coined for them-- Shandisms. COMTESSE [slowly recovering from a blow]. Humour! VENABLES. In conversation, I admit, he strikes one as being--ah-- somewhat lacking in humour. COMTESSE [pouncing]. You are wondering who supplies his speeches with the humour. MAGGIE. Supplies John? VENABLES. Now that you mention it, some of his Shandisms do have a curiously feminine quality. COMTESSE. You have thought it might be a woman. VENABLES. Really, Comtesse-- COMTESSE. I see it all. Charles, you thought it might be the wife! VENABLES [flinging up his hands]. I own up. MAGGIE [bewildered]. Me? VENABLES. Forgive me, I see I was wrong. MAGGIE [alarmed]. Have I been doing John any harm? VENABLES. On the contrary, I am relieved to know that there are no hairpins in his speeches. If he is at home, Mrs. Shand, may I see him? I am going to be rather charming to him. MAGGIE [drawn in two directions]. Yes, he is--oh yes--but-- VENABLES. That is to say, Comtesse, if he proves himself the man I believe him to be. [This arrests MAGGIE almost as she has reached the dining-room door.] MAGGIE [hesitating]. He is very busy just now. VENABLES [smiling]. I think he will see me. MAGGIE. Is it something about his speech? VENABLES [the smile hardening]. Well, yes, it is. MAGGIE. Then I dare say I could tell you what you want to know without troubling him, as I've been typing it. VENABLES [with a sigh]. I don't acquire information in that way. COMTESSE. I trust not. MAGGIE. There's no secret about it. He is to show it to the whips tonight. VENABLES [sharply]. You are sure of that? COMTESSE. It is quite true, Charles. I heard him say so; and indeed he repeated what he called the 'peroration' before me. MAGGIE. I know it by heart. [She plays a bold game.] 'These are the demands of all intelligent British women, and I am proud to nail them to my flag'-- COMTESSE. The very words, Mrs. Shand. MAGGIE [looking at her imploringly]. 'And I don't care how they may embarrass the Government.' [The COMTESSE is bereft of speech, so suddenly has she been introduced to the real MAGGIE SHAND]. 'If the right honourable gentleman will give us his pledge to introduce a similar Bill this session I will willingly withdraw mine; but otherwise I solemnly warn him that I will press the matter now to a division.' [She turns her face from the great man; she has gone white.] VENABLES [after a pause]. Capital. [The blood returns to MAGGIE's heart.] COMTESSE [who is beginning to enjoy herself very much]. Then you are pleased to know that he means to, as you say, go to a division? VENABLES. Delighted. The courage of it will be the making of him. COMTESSE. I see. VENABLES. Had he been to hedge we should have known that he was a pasteboard knight and have disregarded him. COMTESSE. I see. [She desires to catch the eye of MAGGIE, but it is carefully turned from her.] VENABLES. Mrs. Shand, let us have him in at once. COMTESSE. Yes, yes, indeed. [MAGGIE's anxiety returns, but she has to call JOHN in.] JOHN [impressed]. Mr. Venables! This is an honour. VENABLES. How are you, Shand? JOHN. Sit down, sit down. [Becoming himself again.] I can guess what you have come about. VENABLES. Ah, you Scotsmen. JOHN. Of course I know I'm harassing the Government a good deal-- VENABLES [blandly]. Not at all, Shand. The Government are very pleased. JOHN. You don't expect me to believe that? VENABLES. I called here to give you the proof of it. You may know that we are to have a big meeting at Leeds on the 24th, when two Ministers are to speak. There is room for a third speaker, and I am authorised to offer that place to you. JOHN. To me! VENABLES. Yes. JOHN [swelling]. It would be--the Government taking me up. VENABLES. Don't make too much of it; it would be an acknowledgment that they look upon you as one of their likely young men. MAGGIE. John! JOHN [not found wanting in a trying hour]. It's a bribe. You are offering me this on condition that I don't make my speech. How can you think so meanly of me as to believe that I would play the women's cause false for the sake of my own advancement. I refuse your bribe. VENABLES [liking him for the first time]. Good. But you are wrong. There are no conditions, and we want you to make your speech. Now do you accept? JOHN [still suspicious]. If you make me the same offer after you have read it. I insist on your reading it first. VENABLES [sighing]. By all means. [MAGGIE is in an agony as she sees JOHN hand the speech to his leader. On the other hand, the COMTESSE thrills.] But I assure you we look on the speech as a small matter. The important thing is your intention of going to a division; and we agree to that also. JOHN [losing his head]. What's that? VENABLES. Yes, we agree. JOHN. But--but--why, you have been threatening to excommunicate me if I dared. VENABLES. All done to test you, Shand. JOHN. To test me? VENABLES. We know that a division on your Bill can have no serious significance; we shall see to that. And so the test was to be whether you had the pluck to divide the House. Had you been intending to talk big in this speech, and then hedge, through fear of the Government, they would have had no further use for you. JOHN [heavily]. I understand. [But there is one thing he cannot understand, which is, why VENABLES should be so sure that he is not to hedge.] VENABLES [turning over the pages carelessly]. Any of your good things in this, Shand? JOHN [whose one desire is to get the pages back]. No, I--no--it isn't necessary you should read it now. VENABLES [from politeness only]. Merely for my own pleasure. I shall look through it this evening. [He rolls up the speech to put it in his pocket. JOHN turns despairingly to MAGGIE, though well aware that no help can come from her.] MAGGIE. That's the only copy there is, John. [To VENABLES] Let me make a fresh one, and send it to you in an hour or two. VENABLES [good-naturedly]. I could not put you to that trouble, Mrs. Shand. I will take good care of it. MAGGIE. If anything were to happen to you on the way home, wouldn't whatever is in your pocket be considered to be the property of your heirs? VENABLES [laughing]. Now there is forethought! Shand, I think that after that--! [He returns the speech to JOHN, whose hand swallows it greedily.] She is Scotch too, Comtesse. COMTESSE [delighted]. Yes, she is Scotch too. VENABLES. Though the only persons likely to do for me in the street, Shand, are your ladies' committee. Ever since they took the horse out of my brougham, I can scent them a mile away. COMTESSE. A mile? Charles, peep in there. [He softly turns the handle of the dining-room door, and realises that his scent is not so good as he had thought it. He bids his hostess and the COMTESSE good-bye in a burlesque whisper and tiptoes off to safer places. JOHN having gone out with him, MAGGIE can no longer avoid the COMTESSE's reproachful eye. That much injured lady advances upon her with accusing finger.] COMTESSE. So, madam! [MAGGIE is prepared for her.] MAGGIE. I don't know what you mean. COMTESSE. Yes, you do. I mean that there IS some one who 'helps' our Mr. Shand. MAGGIE. There's not. COMTESSE. And it IS a woman, and it's you. MAGGIE. I help in the little things. COMTESSE. The little things! You are the Pin he picked up and that is to make his fortune. And now what I want to know is whether your John is aware that you help at all. [JOHN returns, and at once provides the answer.] JOHN. Maggie, Comtesse, I've done it again! MAGGIE. I'm so glad, John. [The COMTESSE is in an ecstasy.] COMTESSE. And all because you were not to hedge, Mr. Shand. [His appeal to her with the wistfulness of a schoolboy makes him rather attractive.] JOHN. You won't tell on me, Comtesse! [He thinks it out.] They had just guessed I would be firm because they know I'm a strong man. You little saw, Maggie, what a good turn you were doing me when you said you wanted to make another copy of the speech. [She is dense.] MAGGIE. How, John? JOHN. Because now I can alter the end. [She is enlightened.] MAGGIE. So you can! JOHN. Here's another lucky thing, Maggie: I hadn't told the ladies' committee that I was to hedge, and so they need never know. Comtesse, I tell you there's a little cherub who sits up aloft and looks after the career of John Shand. [The COMTESSE looks not aloft but toward the chair at present occupied by MAGGIE.] COMTESSE. Where does she sit, Mr. Shand? [He knows that women are not well read.] JOHN. It's just a figure of speech. [He returns airily to his committee room; and now again you may hear the click of MAGGIE's needles. They no longer annoy the COMTESSE; she is setting them to music.] COMTESSE. It is not down here she sits, Mrs. Shand, knitting a stocking. MAGGIE. No, it isn't. COMTESSE. And when I came in I gave him credit for everything; even for the prettiness of the room! MAGGIE. He has beautiful taste. COMTESSE. Good-bye, Scotchy. MAGGIE. Good-bye, Comtesse, and thank you for coming. COMTESSE. Good-bye--Miss Pin. [MAGGIE rings genteelly.] MAGGIE. Good-bye. [The COMTESSE is now lost in admiration of her.] COMTESSE. You divine little wife. He can't be worthy of it, no man could be worthy of it. Why do you do it? [MAGGIE shivers a little.] MAGGIE. He loves to think he does it all himself; that's the way of men. I'm six years older than he is. I'm plain, and I have no charm. I shouldn't have let him marry me. I'm trying to make up for it. [The COMTESSE kisses her and goes away. MAGGIE, somewhat foolishly, resumes her knitting.] [Some days later this same room is listening--with the same inattention--to the outpouring of JOHN SHAND's love for the lady of the hiccoughs. We arrive--by arrangement--rather late; and thus we miss some of the most delightful of the pangs. One can see that these two are playing no game, or, if they are, that they little know it. The wonders of the world [so strange are the instruments chosen by Love] have been revealed to JOHN in hiccoughs; he shakes in SYBIL's presence; never were more swimming eyes; he who has been of a wooden face till now, with ways to match, has gone on flame like a piece of paper; emotion is in flood in him. We may be almost fond of JOHN for being so worshipful of love. Much has come to him that we had almost despaired of his acquiring, including nearly all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace, they face each other in awful rapture.] JOHN. In a room, Sybil, I go to you as a cold man to a fire. You fill me like a peal of bells in an empty house. [She is being brutally treated by the dear impediment, for which hiccough is such an inadequate name that even to spell it is an abomination though a sign of ability. How to describe a sound that is noiseless? Let us put it thus, that when SYBIL wants to say something very much there are little obstacles in her way; she falters, falls perhaps once, and then is over, the while her appealing orbs beg you not to be angry with her. We may express those sweet pauses in precious dots, which some clever person can afterwards string together and make a pearl necklace of them.] SYBIL. I should not ... let you say it, ... but ... you ... say it so beautifully. JOHN. You must have guessed. SYBIL. I dreamed ... I feared ... but you were ... Scotch, and I didn't know what to think. JOHN. Do you know what first attracted me to you, Sybil? It was your insolence. I thought, 'I'll break her insolence for her.' SYBIL. And I thought... 'I'll break his str...ength!' JOHN. And now your cooing voice plays round me; the softness of you, Sybil, in your pretty clothes makes me think of young birds. [The impediment is now insurmountable; she has to swim for it, she swims toward him.] It is you who inspire my work. [He thrills to find that she can be touched without breaking.] SYBIL. I am so glad... so proud... JOHN. And others know it, Sybil, as well as I. Only yesterday the Comtesse said to me, 'No man could get on so fast unaided. Cherchez la femme, Mr. Shand.' SYBIL. Auntie said that? JOHN. I said 'Find her yourself, Comtesse.' SYBIL. And she? JOHN. She said 'I have found her,' and I said in my blunt way, 'You mean Lady Sybil,' and she went away laughing. SYBIL. Laughing? JOHN. I seem to amuse the woman. [Sybil grows sad.] SYBIL. If Mrs. Shand--It is so cruel to her. Whom did you say she had gone to the station to meet? JOHN. Her father and brothers. SYBIL. It is so cruel to them. We must think no more of this. It is mad... ness. JOHN. It's fate. Sybil, let us declare our love openly. SYBIL. You can't ask that, now in the first moment that you tell me of it. JOHN. The one thing I won't do even for you is to live a life of underhand. SYBIL. The... blow to her. JOHN. Yes. But at least she has always known that I never loved her. SYBIL. It is asking me to give... up everything, every one, for you. JOHN. It's too much. [JOHN is humble at last.] SYBIL. To a woman who truly loves, even that is not too much. Oh! it is not I who matter--it is you. JOHN. My dear, my dear. SYBIL. So gladly would I do it to save you; but, oh, if it were to bring you down! JOHN. Nothing can keep me down if I have you to help me. SYBIL. I am dazed, John, I... JOHN. My love, my love. SYBIL. I... oh... here... JOHN. Be brave, Sybil, be brave. SYBIL. .......... [In this bewilderment of pearls she melts into his arms. MAGGIE happens to open the door just then; but neither fond heart hears her.] JOHN. I can't walk along the streets, Sybil, without looking in all the shop windows for what I think would become you best. [As awkwardly as though his heart still beat against corduroy, he takes from his pocket a pendant and its chain. He is shy, and she drops pearls over the beauty of the ruby which is its only stone.] It is a drop of my blood, Sybil. [Her lovely neck is outstretched, and he puts the chain round it. MAGGIE withdraws as silently as she had come; but perhaps the door whispered 'd--n' as it closed, for SYBIL wakes out of Paradise.] SYBIL. I thought---Did the door shut? JOHN. It was shut already. [Perhaps it is only that SYBIL is bewildered to find herself once again in a world that has doors.] SYBIL. It seemed to me--- JOHN. There was nothing. But I think I hear voices; they may have arrived. [Some pretty instinct makes SYBIL go farther from him. MAGGIE kindly gives her time for this by speaking before opening the door.] MAGGIE. That will do perfectly, David. The maid knows where to put them. [She comes in.] They've come, John; they WOULD help with the luggage. [JOHN goes out. MAGGIE is agreeably surprised to find a visitor.] How do you do, Lady Sybil? This is nice of you. SYBIL. I was so sorry not to find you in, Mrs. Shand. [The impediment has run away. It is only for those who love it.] MAGGIE. Thank you. You'll sit down? SYBIL. I think not; your relatives--- MAGGIE. They will be so proud to see that you are my friend. [If MAGGIE were less simple her guest would feel more comfortable. She tries to make conversation.] SYBIL. It is their first visit to London? [Instead of relieving her anxiety on this point, MAGGIE has a long look at the gorgeous armful.] MAGGIE. I'm glad you are so beautiful, Lady Sybil. [The beautiful one is somehow not flattered. She pursues her investigations with growing uneasiness.] SYBIL. One of them is married now, isn't he? [Still there is no answer; MAGGIE continues looking at her, and shivers slightly.] Have they travelled from Scotland to-day? Mrs. Shand, why do you look at me so? The door did open! [MAGGIE nods.] What are you to do? MAGGIE. That would be telling. Sit down, my pretty. [As SYBIL subsides into what the Wylies with one glance would call the best chair, MAGGIE's men-folk are brought in by JOHN, all carrying silk hats and looking very active after their long rest in the train. They are gazing about them. They would like this lady, they would like JOHN, they would even like MAGGIE to go away for a little and leave them to examine the room. Is that linen on the walls, for instance, or just paper? Is the carpet as thick as it feels, or is there brown paper beneath it? Had MAGGIE got anything off that bookcase on account of the worm-hole? DAVID even discovers that we were simpletons when we said there was nothing in the room that pretended to be what it was not. He taps the marble mantelpiece, and is favourably impressed by the tinny sound.] DAVID. Very fine imitation. It's a capital house, Maggie. MAGGIE. I'm so glad you like it. Do you know one another? This is my father and my brothers, Lady Sybil. [The lovely form inclines towards them. ALICK and DAVID remain firm on their legs, but JAMES totters.] JAMES. A ladyship! Well done, Maggie. ALICK [sharply]. James! I remember you, my lady. MAGGIE. Sit down, father. This is the study. [JAMES wanders round it inquisitively until called to order.] SYBIL. You must be tired after your long journey. DAVID [drawing the portraits of himself and partners in one lightning sketch]. Tired, your ladyship? We sat on cushioned seats the whole way. JAMES [looking about him for the chair you sit on]. Every seat in this room is cushioned. MAGGIE. You may say all my life is cushioned now, James, by this dear man of mine. [She gives JOHN'S shoulder a loving pressure, which SYBIL feels is a telegraphic communication to herself in a cypher that she cannot read. ALICK and the BROTHERS bask in the evidence of MAGGIE's happiness.] JOHN [uncomfortably]. And is Elizabeth hearty, James? JAMES [looking down his nose in the manner proper to young husbands when addressed about their wives]. She's very well, I thank you kindly. MAGGIE. James is a married man now, Lady Sybil. [SYBIL murmurs her congratulations.] JAMES. I thank you kindly. [Courageously] Yes, I'm married. [He looks at DAVID and ALICK to see if they are smiling; and they are.] It wasn't a case of being catched; it was entirely of my own free will. [He looks again; and the mean fellows are smiling still.] Is your ladyship married? SYBIL. Alas! no. DAVID. James! [Politely.] You will be yet, my lady. [SYBIL indicates that he is kind indeed.] JOHN. Perhaps they would like you to show them their rooms, Maggie? DAVID. Fine would we like to see all the house as well as the sleeping accommodation. But first--[He gives his father the look with which chairmen call on the next speaker.] ALICK. I take you, David. [He produces a paper parcel from a roomy pocket.] It wasn't likely, Mr. Shand, that we should forget the day. JOHN. The day? DAVID. The second anniversary of your marriage. We came purposely for the day. JAMES [his fingers itching to take the parcel from his father]. It's a lace shawl, Maggie, from the three of us, a pure Tobermory; you would never dare wear it if you knew the cost. [The shawl in its beauty is revealed, and MAGGIE hails it with little cries of joy. She rushes at the donors and kisses each of them just as if she were a pretty woman. They are much pleased and give expression to their pleasure in a not very dissimilar manner.] ALICK. Havers. DAVID. Havers. JAMES. Havers. JOHN. It's a very fine shawl. [He should not have spoken, for he has set JAMES'S volatile mind working.] JAMES. You may say so. What did you give her, Mr. Shand? JOHN [suddenly deserted by God and man]. Me? ALICK. Yes, yes, let's see it. JOHN. Oh--I-- [He is not deserted by MAGGIE, but she can think of no way out.] SYBIL [prompted by the impediment, which is in hiding, quite close]. Did he ... forget? [There is more than a touch of malice in the question. It is a challenge, and the Wylies as a family are almost too quick to accept a challenge.] MAGGIE [lifting the gage of battle]. John forget? Never! It's a pendant, father. [The impediment bolts. JOHN rises.] ALICK. A pendant? One of those things on a chain? [He grins, remembering how once, about sixty years ago, he and a lady and a pendant--but we have no time for this.] MAGGIE. Yes. DAVID [who has felt the note of antagonism and is troubled]. You were slow in speaking of it, Mr. Shand. MAGGIE [This is her fight.] He was shy, because he thought you might blame him for extravagance. DAVID [relieved]. Oh, that's it. JAMES [licking his lips]. Let's see it. MAGGIE [a daughter of the devil]. Where did you put it, John? [JOHN's mouth opens but has nothing to contribute.] SYBIL [the impediment has stolen back again]. Perhaps it has been ... mislaid. [The BROTHERS echo the word incredulously.] MAGGIE. Not it. I can't think where we laid it down, John. It's not on that table, is it, James? [The Wylies turn to look, and MAGGIE's hand goes out to LADY SYBIL: JOHN SHAND, witness. It is a very determined hand, and presently a pendant is placed in it.] Here it is! [ALICK and the BROTHERS cluster round it, weigh it and appraise it.] ALICK. Preserve me. Is that stone real, Mr. Shand? JOHN [who has begun to look his grimmest]. Yes. MAGGIE [who is now ready, if he wishes it, to take him on too]. John says it's a drop of his blood. JOHN [wishing it]. And so it is. DAVID. Well said, Mr. Shand. MAGGIE [scared]. And now, if you'll come with me, I think John has something he wants to talk over with Lady Sybil. [Recovering and taking him on.] Or would you prefer, John, to say it before us all? SYBIL [gasping]. No! JOHN [flinging back his head]. Yes, I prefer to say it before you all. MAGGIE [flinging back hers]. Then sit down again. [The WYLIES wonderingly obey.] SYBIL. Mr. Shand, Mr. Shand!-- JOHN. Maggie knows, and it was only for her I was troubled. Do you think I'm afraid of them? [With mighty relief] Now we can be open. DAVID [lowering]. What is it? What's wrong, John Shand? JOHN [facing him squarely]. It was to Lady Sybil I gave the pendant, and all my love with it. [Perhaps JAMES utters a cry, but the silence of ALICK and DAVID is more terrible.] SYBIL [whose voice is smaller than we had thought]. What are you to do? [It is to MAGGIE she is speaking.] DAVID. She'll leave it for us to do. JOHN. That's what I want. [The lords of creation look at the ladies.] MAGGIE [interpreting]. You and I are expected to retire, Lady Sybil, while the men decide our fate. [SYBIL is ready to obey the law, but MAGGIE remains seated.] Man's the oak, woman's the ivy. Which of us is it that's to cling to you, John? [With three stalwarts glaring at him, JOHN rather grandly takes SYBIL'S hand. They are two against the world.] SYBIL [a heroine]. I hesitated, but I am afraid no longer; whatever he asks of me I will do. [Evidently the first thing he asks of her is to await him in the dining-room.] It will mean surrendering everything for him. I am glad it means all that. [She passes into the dining-room looking as pretty as a kiss.] MAGGIE. So that settles it. ALICK. I'm thinking that doesn't settle it. DAVID. No, by God! [But his love for MAGGIE steadies him. There is even a note of entreaty in his voice.] Have you nothing to say to her, man? JOHN. I have things to say to her, but not before you. DAVID [sternly]. Go away, Maggie. Leave him to us. JAMES [who thinks it is about time that he said something]. Yes, leave him to us. MAGGIE. No, David, I want to hear what is to become of me; I promise not to take any side. [And sitting by the fire she resumes her knitting. The four regard her as on an evening at The Pans a good many years ago.] DAVID [barking]. How long has this been going on? JOHN. If you mean how long has that lady been the apple of my eye, I'm not sure; but I never told her of it until today. MAGGIE [thoughtfully and without dropping a stitch]. I think it wasn't till about six months ago, John, that she began to be very dear to you. At first you liked to bring in her name when talking to me, so that I could tell you of any little things I might have heard she was doing. But afterwards, as she became more and more to you, you avoided mentioning her name. JOHN [surprised]. Did you notice that? MAGGIE [in her old-fashioned way]. Yes. JOHN. I tried to be done with it for your sake. I've often had a sore heart for you, Maggie. JAMES. You're proving it! MAGGIE. Yes, James, he had. I've often seen him looking at me very sorrowfully of late because of what was in his mind; and many a kindly little thing he has done for me that he didn't use to do. JOHN. You noticed that too! MAGGIE. Yes. DAVID [controlling himself]. Well, we won't go into that; the thing to be thankful for is that it's ended. ALICK [who is looking very old]. Yes, yes, that's the great thing. JOHN. All useless, sir, it's not ended; it's to go on. DAVID. There's a devil in you, John Shand. JOHN [who is an unhappy man just now]. I dare say there is. But do you think he had a walk over, Mr. David? JAMES. Man, I could knock you down! MAGGIE. There's not one of you could knock John down. DAVID [exasperated]. Quiet, Maggie. One would think you were taking his part. MAGGIE. Do you expect me to desert him at the very moment that he needs me most? DAVID. It's him that's deserting you. JOHN. Yes, Maggie, that's what it is. ALICK. Where's your marriage vow? And your church attendances? JAMES [with terrible irony]. And your prize for moral philosophy? JOHN [recklessly]. All gone whistling down the wind. DAVID. I suppose you understand that you'll have to resign your seat. JOHN [his underlip much in evidence]. There are hundreds of seats, but there's only one John Shand. MAGGIE [but we don't hear her]. That's how I like to hear him speak. DAVID [the ablest person in the room]. Think, man, I'm old by you, and for long I've had a pride in you. It will be beginning the world again with more against you than there was eight years ago. JOHN. I have a better head to begin it with than I had eight years ago. ALICK [hoping this will bite]. She'll have her own money, David! JOHN. She's as poor as a mouse. JAMES [thinking possibly of his Elizabeth's mother]. We'll go to her friends, and tell them all. They'll stop it. JOHN. She's of age. JAMES. They'll take her far away. JOHN. I'll follow, and tear her from them. ALICK. Your career--- JOHN [to his credit]. To hell with my career. Do you think I don't know I'm on the rocks? What can you, or you, or you, understand of the passions of a man! I've fought, and I've given in. When a ship founders, as I suppose I'm foundering, it's not a thing to yelp at. Peace, all of you. [He strides into the dining-room, where we see him at times pacing the floor.] DAVID [to JAMES, who gives signs of a desire to take off his coat]. Let him be. We can't budge him. [With bitter wisdom] It's true what he says, true at any rate about me. What do I know of the passions of a man! I'm up against something I don't understand. ALICK. It's something wicked. DAVID. I dare say it is, but it's something big. JAMES. It's that damned charm. MAGGIE [still by the fire]. That's it. What was it that made you fancy Elizabeth, James? JAMES [sheepishly]. I can scarcely say. MAGGIE. It was her charm. DAVID. HER charm! JAMES [pugnaciously]. Yes, HER charm. MAGGIE. She had charm for James. [This somehow breaks them up. MAGGIE goes from one to another with an odd little smile flickering on her face.] DAVID. Put on your things, Maggie, and we'll leave his house. MAGGIE [patting his kind head]. Not me, David. [This is a MAGGIE they have known but forgotten; all three brighten.] DAVID. You haven't given in! [The smile flickers and expires.] MAGGIE. I want you all to go upstairs, and let me have my try now. JAMES. Your try? ALICK. Maggie, you put new life into me. JAMES. And into me. [DAVID says nothing; the way he grips her shoulder says it for him.] MAGGIE. I'll save him, David, if I can. DAVID. Does he deserve to be saved after the way he has treated you? MAGGIE. You stupid David. What has that to do with it. [When they have gone, JOHN comes to the door of the dining-room. There is welling up in him a great pity for MAGGIE, but it has to subside a little when he sees that the knitting is still in her hand. No man likes to be so soon supplanted. SYBIL follows, and the two of them gaze at the active needles.] MAGGIE [perceiving that she has visitors]. Come in, John. Sit down, Lady Sybil, and make yourself comfortable. I'm afraid we've put you about. [She is, after all, only a few years older than they and scarcely looks her age; yet it must have been in some such way as this that the little old woman who lived in a shoe addressed her numerous progeny.] JOHN. I'm mortal sorry, Maggie. SYBIL [who would be more courageous if she could hold his hand]. And I also. MAGGIE [soothingly]. I'm sure you are. But as it can't be helped I see no reason why we three shouldn't talk the matter over in a practical way. [SYBIL looks doubtful, but JOHN hangs on desperately to the word practical.] JOHN. If you could understand, Maggie, what an inspiration she is to me and my work. SYBIL. Indeed, Mrs. Shand, I think of nothing else. MAGGIE. That's fine. That's as it should be. SYBIL [talking too much]. Mrs. Shand, I think you are very kind to take it so reasonably. MAGGIE. That's the Scotch way. When were you thinking of leaving me, John? [Perhaps this is the Scotch way also; but SYBIL is English, and from the manner in which she starts you would say that something has fallen on her toes.] JOHN [who has heard nothing fall]. I think, now that it has come to a breach, the sooner the better. [His tone becomes that of JAMES when asked after the health of his wife.] When it is convenient to you, Maggie. MAGGIE [making a rapid calculation]. It couldn't well be before Wednesday. That's the day the laundry comes home. [SYBIL has to draw in her toes again.] JOHN. And it's the day the House rises. [Stifling a groan] It may be my last appearance in the House. SYBIL [her arms yearning for him]. No, no, please don't say that. MAGGIE [surveying him sympathetically]. You love the House, don't you, John, next to her? It's a pity you can't wait till after your speech at Leeds. Mr. Venables won't let you speak at Leeds, I fear, if you leave me. JOHN. What a chance it would have been. But let it go. MAGGIE. The meeting is in less than a month. Could you not make it such a speech that they would be very loth to lose you? JOHN [swelling]. That's what was in my mind. SYBIL [with noble confidence]. And he could have done it. MAGGIE. Then we've come to something practical. JOHN [exercising his imagination with powerful effect]. No, it wouldn't be fair to you if I was to stay on now. MAGGIE. Do you think I'll let myself be considered when your career is at stake. A month will soon pass for me; I'll have a lot of packing to do. JOHN. It's noble of you, but I don't deserve it, and I can't take it from you. MAGGIE. Now's the time, Lady Sybil, for you to have one of your inspiring ideas. SYBIL [ever ready]. Yes, yes--but what? [It is odd that they should both turn to MAGGIE at this moment.] MAGGIE [who has already been saying it to herself]. What do you think of this: I can stay on here with my father and brothers; and you, John, can go away somewhere and devote yourself to your speech? SYBIL. Yes. JOHN. That might be. [Considerately] Away from both of you. Where could I go? SYBIL [ever ready]. Where? MAGGIE. I know. [She has called up a number on the telephone before they have time to check her.] JOHN [on his dignity]. Don't be in such a hurry, Maggie. MAGGIE. Is this Lamb's Hotel? Put me on to the Comtesse de la Briere, please. SYBIL [with a sinking]. What do you want with Auntie? MAGGIE. Her cottage in the country would be the very place. She invited John and me. JOHN. Yes, but-- MAGGIE [arguing]. And Mr. Venables is to be there. Think of the impression you could make on HIM, seeing him daily for three weeks. JOHN. There's something in that. MAGGIE. Is it you, Comtesse? I'm Maggie Shand. SYBIL. You are not to tell her that--? MAGGIE. No. [To the COMTESSE] Oh, I'm very well, never was better. Yes, yes; you see I can't, because my folk have never been in London before, and I must take them about and show them the sights. But John could come to you alone; why not? JOHN [with proper pride]. If she's not keen to have me, I won't go. MAGGIE. She's very keen. Comtesse, I could come for a day by and by to see how you are getting on. Yes--yes--certainly. [To JOHN] She says she'll be delighted. JOHN [thoughtfully]. You're not doing this, Maggie, thinking that my being absent from Sybil for a few weeks can make any difference? Of course it's natural you should want us to keep apart, but-- MAGGIE [grimly]. I'm founding no hope on keeping you apart, John. JOHN. It's what other wives would do. MAGGIE. I promised to be different. JOHN [his position as a strong man assured]. Then tell her I accept. [He wanders back into the dining-room.] SYBIL. I think--[she is not sure what she thinks]--I think you are very wonderful. MAGGIE. Was that John calling to you? SYBIL. Was it? [She is glad to join him in the dining-room.] MAGGIE. Comtesse, hold the line a minute. [She is alone, and she has nearly reached the end of her self-control. She shakes emotionally and utters painful little cries; there is something she wants to do, and she is loth to do it. But she does it.] Are you there, Comtesse? There's one other thing, dear Comtesse; I want you to invite Lady Sybil also; yes, for the whole time that John is there. No, I'm not mad; as a great favour to me; yes, I have a very particular reason, but I won't tell you what it is; oh, call me Scotchy as much as you like, but consent; do, do, do. Thank you, thank you, good-bye. [She has control of herself now, and is determined not to let it slip from her again. When they reappear the stubborn one is writing a letter.] JOHN. I thought I heard the telephone again. MAGGIE [looking up from her labours]. It was the Comtesse; she says she's to invite Lady Sybil to the cottage at the same time. SYBIL. Me! JOHN. To invite Sybil? Then of course I won't go, Maggie. MAGGIE [wondering seemingly at these niceties]. What does it matter? Is anything to be considered except the speech? [It has been admitted that she was a little devil.] And, with Sybil on the spot, John, to help you and inspire you, what a speech it will be! JOHN [carried away]. Maggie, you really are a very generous woman. SYBIL [convinced at last]. She is indeed. JOHN. And you're queer too. How many women in the circumstances would sit down to write a letter? MAGGIE. It's a letter to you, John. JOHN. To me? MAGGIE. I'll give it to you when it's finished, but I ask you not to open it till your visit to the Comtesse ends. JOHN. What is it about? MAGGIE. It's practical. SYBIL [rather faintly]. Practical? [She has heard the word so frequently to-day that it is beginning to have a Scotch sound. She feels she ought to like MAGGIE, but that she would like her better if they were farther apart. She indicates that the doctors are troubled about her heart, and murmuring her adieux she goes. JOHN, who is accompanying her, pauses at the door.] JOHN [with a queer sort of admiration for his wife]. Maggie, I wish I was fond of you. MAGGIE [heartily]. I wish you were, John. [He goes, and she resumes her letter. The stocking is lying at hand, and she pushes it to the floor. She is done for a time with knitting.] ACT IV [Man's most pleasant invention is the lawn-mower. All the birds know this, and that is why, when it is at rest, there is always at least one of them sitting on the handle with his head cocked, wondering how the delicious whirring sound is made. When they find out, they will change their note. As it is, you must sometimes have thought that you heard the mower very early in the morning, and perhaps you peeped in neglige from your lattice window to see who was up so early. It was really the birds trying to get the note. On this broiling morning, however, we are at noon, and whoever looks will see that the whirring is done by Mr. Venables. He is in a linen suit with the coat discarded (the bird is sitting on it), and he comes and goes across the Comtesse's lawns, pleasantly mopping his face. We see him through a crooked bowed window generously open, roses intruding into it as if to prevent its ever being closed at night; there are other roses in such armfuls on the tables that one could not easily say where the room ends and the garden begins. In the Comtesse's pretty comic drawing-room (for she likes the comic touch when she is in England) sits John Shand with his hostess, on chairs at a great distance from each other. No linen garments for John, nor flannels, nor even knickerbockers; he envies the English way of dressing for trees and lawns, but is too Scotch to be able to imitate it; he wears tweeds, just as he would do in his native country where they would be in kilts. Like many another Scot, the first time he ever saw a kilt was on a Sassenach; indeed kilts were perhaps invented, like golf, to draw the English north. John is doing nothing, which again is not a Scotch accomplishment, and he looks rather miserable and dour. The Comtesse is already at her Patience cards, and occasionally she smiles on him as if not displeased with his long silence. At last she speaks:] COMTESSE. I feel it rather a shame to detain you here on such a lovely day, Mr. Shand, entertaining an old woman. JOHN. I don't pretend to think I'm entertaining you, Comtesse. COMTESSE. But you ARE, you know. JOHN. I would be pleased to be told how? [She shrugs her impertinent shoulders, and presently there is another heavy sigh from JOHN.] COMTESSE. Again! Why do not you go out on the river? JOHN. Yes, I can do that. [He rises.] COMTESSE. And take Sybil with you. [He sits again.] No? JOHN. I have been on the river with her twenty times. COMTESSE. Then take her for a long walk through the Fairloe woods. JOHN. We were there twice last week. COMTESSE. There is a romantically damp little arbour at the end of what the villagers call the Lovers' Lane. JOHN. One can't go there every day. I see nothing to laugh at. COMTESSE. Did I laugh? I must have been translating the situation into French. [Perhaps the music of the lawn-mower is not to JOHN's mood, for he betakes himself to another room. MR. VENABLES pauses in his labours to greet a lady who has appeared on the lawn, and who is MAGGIE. She is as neat as if she were one of the army of typists [who are quite the nicest kind of women], and carries a little bag. She comes in through the window, and puts her hands over the COMTESSE's eyes.] COMTESSE. They are a strong pair of hands, at any rate. MAGGIE. And not very white, and biggish for my size. Now guess. [The COMTESSE guesses, and takes both the hands in hers as if she valued them. She pulls off MAGGIE's hat as if to prevent her flying away.] COMTESSE. Dear abominable one, not to let me know you were coming. MAGGIE. It is just a surprise visit, Comtesse. I walked up from the station. [For a moment MAGGIE seems to have borrowed SYBIL'S impediment.] How is--everybody? COMTESSE. He is quite well. But, my child, he seems to me to be a most unhappy man. [This sad news does not seem to make a most unhappy woman of the child. The COMTESSE is puzzled, as she knows nothing of the situation save what she has discovered for herself.] Why should that please you, O heartless one? MAGGIE. I won't tell you. COMTESSE. I could take you and shake you, Maggie. Here have I put my house at your disposal for so many days for some sly Scotch purpose, and you will not tell me what it is. MAGGIE. No. COMTESSE. Very well, then, but I have what you call a nasty one for you. [The COMTESSE lures MR. VENABLES into the room by holding up what might be a foaming glass of lemon squash.] Alas, Charles, it is but a flower vase. I want you to tell Mrs. Shand what you think of her husband's speech. [MR. VENABLES gives his hostess a reproachful look.] VENABLES. Eh--ah--Shand will prefer to do that himself. I promised the gardener--I must not disappoint him--excuse me-- COMTESSE. You must tell her, Charles. MAGGIE. Please, Mr. Venables, I should like to know. [He sits down with a sigh and obeys.] VENABLES. Your husband has been writing the speech here, and by his own wish he read it to me three days ago. The occasion is to be an important one; and, well, there are a dozen young men in the party at present, all capable of filling a certain small ministerial post. [He looks longingly at the mower, but it sends no message to his aid.] And as he is one of them I was anxious that he should show in this speech of what he is capable. MAGGIE. And hasn't he? [Not for the first time MR. VENABLES wishes that he was not in politics.] VENABLES. I am afraid he has. COMTESSE. What is wrong with the speech, Charles? VENABLES. Nothing--and he can still deliver it. It is a powerful, well-thought-out piece of work, such as only a very able man could produce. But it has no SPECIAL QUALITY of its own--none of the little touches that used to make an old stager like myself want to pat Shand on the shoulder. [The COMTESSE's mouth twitches, but MAGGIE declines to notice it.] He pounds on manfully enough, but, if I may say so, with a wooden leg. It is as good, I dare say, as the rest of them could have done; but they start with such inherited advantages, Mrs. Shand, that he had to do better. MAGGIE. Yes, I can understand that. VENABLES. I am sorry, Mrs. Shand, for he interested me. His career has set me wondering whether if _I_ had begun as a railway porter I might not still be calling out, 'By your leave.' [MAGGIE thinks it probable but not important] MAGGIE. Mr. Venables, now that I think of it, surely John wrote to me that you were dissatisfied with his first speech, and that he was writing another. [The COMTESSE's eyes open very wide indeed.] VENABLES. I have heard nothing of that, Mrs. Shand. [He shakes his wise head.] And in any case, I am afraid--[He still hears the wooden leg.] MAGGIE. But you said yourself that his second thoughts were sometimes such an improvement on the first. [The COMTESSE comes to the help of the baggage.] COMTESSE. I remember you saying that, Charles. VENABLES. Yes, that has struck me. [Politely] Well, if he has anything to show me--In the meantime-- [He regains the lawn, like one glad to escape attendance at JOHN'S obsequies. The COMTESSE is brought back to speech by the sound of the mower--nothing wooden in it.] COMTESSE. What are you up to now, Miss Pin? You know as well as I do that there is no such speech. [MAGGIE's mouth tightens.] MAGGIE. I do not. COMTESSE. It is a duel, is it, my friend? [The COMTESSE rings the bell and MAGGIE's guilty mind is agitated.] MAGGIE. What are you ringing for? COMTESSE. As the challenged one, Miss Pin, I have the choice of weapons. I am going to send for your husband to ask him if he has written such a speech. After which, I suppose, you will ask me to leave you while you and he write it together. [MAGGIE wrings her hands.] MAGGIE. You are wrong, Comtesse; but please don't do that. COMTESSE. You but make me more curious, and my doctor says that I must be told everything. [The COMTESSE assumes the pose of her sex in melodrama.] Put your cards on the table, Maggie Shand, or--[She indicates that she always pinks her man. MAGGIE dolefully produces a roll of paper from her bag.] What precisely is that? [The reply is little more than a squeak.] MAGGIE. John's speech. COMTESSE. You have written it yourself! [MAGGIE is naturally indignant.] MAGGIE. It's typed. COMTESSE. You guessed that the speech he wrote unaided would not satisfy, and you prepared this to take its place! MAGGIE. Not at all, Comtesse. It is the draft of his speech that he left at home. That's all. COMTESSE. With a few trivial alterations by yourself, I swear. Can you deny it? [No wonder that MAGGIE is outraged. She replaces JOHN's speech in the bag with becoming hauteur.] MAGGIE. Comtesse, these insinuations are unworthy of you. May I ask where is my husband? [The COMTESSE drops her a curtsey.] COMTESSE. I believe your Haughtiness may find him in the Dutch garden. Oh, I see through you. You are not to show him your speech. But you are to get him to write another one, and somehow all your additions will be in it. Think not, creature, that you can deceive one so old in iniquity as the Comtesse de la Briere. [There can be but one reply from a good wife to such a charge, and at once the COMTESSE is left alone with her shame. Anon a footman appears. You know how they come and go.] FOOTMAN. You rang, my lady? COMTESSE. Did I? Ah, yes, but why? [He is but lately from the ploughshare and cannot help her. In this quandary her eyes alight upon the bag. She is unfortunately too abandoned to feel her shame; she still thinks that she has the choice of weapons. She takes the speech from the bag and bestows it on her servitor.] Take this to Mr. Venables, please, and say it is from Mr. Shand. [THOMAS--but in the end we shall probably call him JOHN--departs with the dangerous papers; and when MAGGIE returns she finds that the COMTESSE is once more engaged in her interrupted game of Patience.] You did not find him? [All the bravery has dropped from MAGGIE's face.] MAGGIE. I didn't see him, but I heard him. SHE is with him. I think they are coming here. [The COMTESSE is suddenly kind again.] COMTESSE. Sybil? Shall I get rid of her? MAGGIE. No, I want her to be here, too. Now I shall know. [The COMTESSE twists the little thing round.] COMTESSE. Know what? MAGGIE. As soon as I look into his face I shall know. [A delicious scent ushers in the fair SYBIL, who is as sweet as a milking stool. She greets MRS. SHAND with some alarm.] MAGGIE. How do you do, Lady Sybil? How pretty you look in that frock. [SYBIL rustles uncomfortably.] You are a feast to the eye. SYBIL. Please, I wish you would not. [Shall we describe SYBIL'S frock, in which she looks like a great strawberry that knows it ought to be plucked; or would it be easier to watch the coming of JOHN? Let us watch JOHN.] JOHN. You, Maggie! You never wrote that you were coming. [No, let us watch MAGGIE. As soon as she looked into his face she was to know something of importance.] MAGGIE [not dissatisfied with what she sees]. No, John, it's a surprise visit. I just ran down to say good-bye. [At this his face falls, which does not seem to pain her.] SYBIL [foreseeing another horrible Scotch scene]. To say good-bye? COMTESSE [thrilling with expectation]. To whom, Maggie? SYBIL [deserted by the impediment, which is probably playing with rough boys in the Lovers' Lane]. Auntie, do leave us, won't you? COMTESSE. Not I. It is becoming far too interesting. MAGGIE. I suppose there's no reason the Comtesse shouldn't be told, as she will know so soon at any rate? JOHN. That's so. [SYBIL sees with discomfort that he is to be practical also.] MAGGIE. It's so simple. You see, Comtesse, John and Lady Sybil have fallen in love with one another, and they are to go off as soon as the meeting at Leeds has taken place. [The COMTESSE's breast is too suddenly introduced to Caledonia and its varied charms.] COMTESSE. Mon Dieu! MAGGIE. I think that's putting it correctly, John. JOHN. In a sense. But I'm not to attend the meeting at Leeds. My speech doesn't find favour. [With a strange humility] There's something wrong with it. COMTESSE. I never expected to hear you say that, Mr. Shand. JOHN [wondering also]. I never expected it myself. I meant to make it the speech of my career. But somehow my hand seems to have lost its cunning. COMTESSE. And you don't know how? JOHN. It's inexplicable. My brain was never clearer. COMTESSE. You might have helped him, Sybil. SYBIL [quite sulkily]. I did. COMTESSE. But I thought she was such an inspiration to you, Mr. Shand. JOHN [going bravely to SYBIL'S side]. She slaved at it with me. COMTESSE. Strange. [Wickedly becoming practical also] So now there is nothing to detain you. Shall I send for a fly, Sybil? SYBIL [with a cry of the heart]. Auntie, do leave us. COMTESSE. I can understand your impatience to be gone, Mr. Shand. JOHN [heavily]. I promised Maggie to wait till the 24th, and I'm a man of my word. MAGGIE. But I give you back your word, John. You can go now. [JOHN looks at SYBIL, and SYBIL looks at JOHN, and the impediment arrives in time to take a peep at both of them.] SYBIL [groping for the practical, to which we must all come in the end]. He must make satisfactory arrangements about you first. I insist on that. MAGGIE [with no more imagination than a hen]. Thank you, Lady Sybil, but I have made all my arrangements. JOHN [stung]. Maggie, that was my part. MAGGIE. You see, my brothers feel they can't be away from their business any longer; and so, if it would be convenient to you, John, I could travel north with them by the night train on Wednesday. SYBIL. I--I----The way you put things---! JOHN. This is just the 21st. MAGGIE. My things are all packed. I think you'll find the house in good order, Lady Sybil. I have had the vacuum cleaners in. I'll give you the keys of the linen and the silver plate; I have them in that bag. The carpet on the upper landing is a good deal frayed, but--- SYBIL. Please, I don't want to hear any more. MAGGIE. The ceiling of the dining-room would be the better of a new lick of paint--- SYBIL [stamping her foot, small fours]. Can't you stop her? JOHN [soothingly]. She's meaning well. Maggie, I know it's natural to you to value those things, because your outlook on life is bounded by them; but all this jars on me. MAGGIE. Does it? JOHN. Why should you be so ready to go? MAGGIE. I promised not to stand in your way. JOHN [stoutly]. You needn't be in such a hurry. There are three days to run yet. [The French are so different from us that we shall probably never be able to understand why the COMTESSE laughed aloud here.] It's just a joke to the Comtesse. COMTESSE. It seems to be no joke to you, Mr. Shand. Sybil, my pet, are you to let him off? SYBIL [flashing]. Let him off? If he wishes it. Do you? JOHN [manfully]. I want it to go on. [Something seems to have caught in his throat: perhaps it is the impediment trying a temporary home.] It's the one wish of my heart. If you come with me, Sybil, I'll do all in a man's power to make you never regret it. [Triumph of the Vere de Veres.] MAGGIE [bringing them back to earth with a dump]. And I can make my arrangements for Wednesday? SYBIL [seeking the COMTESSE's protection]. No, you can't. Auntie, I am not going on with this. I'm very sorry for you, John, but I see now--I couldn't face it--- [She can't face anything at this moment except the sofa pillows.] COMTESSE [noticing JOHN'S big sigh of relief]. So THAT is all right, Mr. Shand! MAGGIE. Don't you love her any more, John? Be practical. SYBIL [to the pillows]. At any rate I have tired of him. Oh, best to tell the horrid truth. I am ashamed of myself. I have been crying my eyes out over it--I thought I was such a different kind of woman. But I am weary of him. I think him--oh, so dull. JOHN [his face lighting up]. Are you sure that is how you have come to think of me? SYBIL. I'm sorry; [with all her soul] but yes--yes--yes. JOHN. By God, it's more than I deserve. COMTESSE. Congratulations to you both. [SYBIL runs away; and in the fulness of time she married successfully in cloth of silver, which was afterwards turned into a bed-spread.] MAGGIE. You haven't read my letter yet, John, have you? JOHN. No. COMTESSE [imploringly]. May I know to what darling letter you refer? MAGGIE. It's a letter I wrote to him before he left London. I gave it to him closed, not to be opened until his time here was ended. JOHN [as his hand strays to his pocket]. Am I to read it now? MAGGIE. Not before her. Please go away, Comtesse. COMTESSE. Every word you say makes me more determined to remain. MAGGIE. It will hurt you, John. [Distressed] Don't read it; tear it up. JOHN. You make me very curious, Maggie. And yet I don't see what can be in it. COMTESSE. But you feel a little nervous? Give ME the dagger. MAGGIE [quickly]. No. [But the COMTESSE has already got it.] COMTESSE. May I? [She must have thought they said Yes, for she opens the letter. She shares its contents with them.] 'Dearest John, It is at my request that the Comtesse is having Lady Sybil at the cottage at the same time as yourself.' JOHN. What? COMTESSE. Yes, she begged me to invite you together. JOHN. But why? MAGGIE. I promised you not to behave as other wives would do. JOHN. It's not understandable. COMTESSE. 'You may ask why I do this, John, and my reason is, I think that after a few weeks of Lady Sybil, every day, and all day, you will become sick to death of her. I am also giving her the chance to help you and inspire you with your work, so that you may both learn what her help and her inspiration amount to. Of course, if your love is the great strong passion you think it, then those weeks will make you love her more than ever and I can only say good-bye. But if, as I suspect, you don't even now know what true love is, then by the next time we meet, dear John, you will have had enough of her.--Your affectionate wife, Maggie.' Oh, why was not Sybil present at the reading of the will! And now, if you two will kindly excuse me, I think I must go and get that poor sufferer the eau de Cologne. JOHN. It's almost enough to make a man lose faith in himself. COMTESSE. Oh, don't say that, Mr. Shand. MAGGIE [defending him]. You mustn't hurt him. If you haven't loved deep and true, that's just because you have never met a woman yet, John, capable of inspiring it. COMTESSE [putting her hand on MAGGIE's shoulder]. Have you not, Mr. Shand? JOHN. I see what you mean. But Maggie wouldn't think better of me for any false pretences. She knows my feelings for her now are neither more nor less than what they have always been. MAGGIE [who sees that he is looking at her as solemnly as a volume of sermons printed by request]. I think no one could be fond of me that can't laugh a little at me. JOHN. How could that help? COMTESSE [exasperated]. Mr. Shand, I give you up. MAGGIE. I admire his honesty. COMTESSE. Oh, I give you up also. Arcades ambo. Scotchies both. JOHN [when she has gone]. But this letter, it's not like you. By Gosh, Maggie, you're no fool. [She beams at this, as any wife would.] But how could I have made such a mistake? It's not like a strong man. [Evidently he has an inspiration.] MAGGIE. What is it? JOHN [the inspiration]. AM I a strong man? MAGGIE. You? Of course you are. And self-made. Has anybody ever helped you in the smallest way? JOHN [thinking it out again]. No, nobody. MAGGIE. Not even Lady Sybil? JOHN. I'm beginning to doubt it. It's very curious, though, Maggie, that this speech should be disappointing. MAGGIE. It's just that Mr. Venables hasn't the brains to see how good it is. JOHN. That must be it. [But he is too good a man to rest satisfied with this.] No, Maggie, it's not. Somehow I seem to have lost my neat way of saying things. MAGGIE [almost cooing]. It will come back to you. JOHN [forlorn]. If you knew how I've tried. MAGGIE [cautiously]. Maybe if you were to try again; and I'll just come and sit beside you, and knit. I think the click of the needles sometimes put you in the mood. JOHN. Hardly that; and yet many a Shandism have I knocked off while you were sitting beside me knitting. I suppose it was the quietness. MAGGIE. Very likely. JOHN [with another inspiration]. Maggie! MAGGIE [again]. What is it, John? JOHN. What if it was you that put those queer ideas into my head! MAGGIE. Me? JOHN. Without your knowing it, I mean. MAGGIE. But how? JOHN. We used to talk bits over; and it may be that you dropped the seed, so to speak. MAGGIE. John, could it be this, that I sometimes had the idea in a rough womanish sort of way and then you polished it up till it came out a Shandism? JOHN [slowly slapping his knee]. I believe you've hit it, Maggie: to think that you may have been helping me all the time--and neither of us knew it! [He has so nearly reached a smile that no one can say what might have happened within the next moment if the COMTESSE had not reappeared.] COMTESSE. Mr. Venables wishes to see you, Mr. Shand. JOHN [lost, stolen, or strayed a smile in the making]. Hum! COMTESSE. He is coming now. JOHN [grumpy]. Indeed! COMTESSE [sweetly]. It is about your speech. JOHN. He has said all he need say on that subject, and more. COMTESSE [quaking a little]. I think it is about the second speech. JOHN. What second speech? [MAGGIE runs to her bag and opens it.] MAGGIE [horrified]. Comtesse, you have given it to him! COMTESSE [impudently]. Wasn't I meant to? JOHN. What is it? What second speech? MAGGIE. Cruel, cruel. [Willing to go on her knees] You had left the first draft of your speech at home, John, and I brought it here with-- with a few little things I've added myself. JOHN [a seven-footer]. What's that? MAGGIE [four foot ten at most]. Just trifles--things I was to suggest to you--while I was knitting--and then, if you liked any of them you could have polished them--and turned them into something good. John, John--and now she has shown it to Mr. Venables. JOHN [thundering]. As my work, Comtesse? [But the COMTESSE is not of the women who are afraid of thunder.] MAGGIE. It is your work--nine-tenths of it. JOHN [in the black cap]. You presumed, Maggie Shand! Very well, then, here he comes, and now we'll see to what extent you've helped me. VENABLES. My dear fellow. My dear Shand, I congratulate you. Give me your hand. JOHN. The speech? VENABLES. You have improved it out of knowledge. It is the same speech, but those new touches make all the difference. [JOHN sits down heavily.] Mrs. Shand, be proud of him. MAGGIE. I am. I am, John. COMTESSE. You always said that his second thoughts were best, Charles. VENABLES [pleased to be reminded of it]. Didn't I, didn't I? Those delicious little touches! How good that is, Shand, about the flowing tide. COMTESSE. The flowing tide? VENABLES. In the first speech it was something like this--'Gentlemen, the Opposition are calling to you to vote for them and the flowing tide, but I solemnly warn you to beware lest the flowing tide does not engulf you.' The second way is much better. COMTESSE. What is the second way, Mr. Shand? [JOHN does not tell her.] VENABLES. This is how he puts it now. [JOHN cannot help raising his head to listen.] 'Gentlemen, the Opposition are calling to you to vote for them and the flowing tide, but I ask you cheerfully to vote for us and DAM the flowing tide.' [VENABLES and his old friend the COMTESSE laugh heartily, but for different reasons.] COMTESSE. It IS better, Mr. Shand. MAGGIE. _I_ don't think so. VENABLES. Yes, yes, it's so virile. Excuse me, Comtesse, I'm off to read the whole thing again. [For the first time he notices that JOHN is strangely quiet.] I think this has rather bowled you over, Shand. [JOHN's head sinks lower.] Well, well, good news doesn't kill. MAGGIE [counsel for the defence]. Surely the important thing about the speech is its strength and knowledge and eloquence, the things that were in the first speech as well as in the second. VENABLES. That of course is largely true. The wit would not be enough without them, just as they were not enough without the wit. It is the combination that is irresistible. [JOHN's head rises a little.] Shand, you are our man, remember that, it is emphatically the best thing you have ever done. How this will go down at Leeds! [He returns gaily to his hammock; but lower sinks JOHN'S head, and even the COMTESSE has the grace to take herself off. MAGGIE's arms flutter near her husband, not daring to alight.] MAGGIE. You heard what he said, John. It's the combination. Is it so terrible to you to find that my love for you had made me able to help you in the little things? JOHN. The little things! It seems strange to me to hear you call me by my name, Maggie. It's as if I looked on you for the first time. MAGGIE. Look at me, John, for the first time. What do you see? JOHN. I see a woman who has brought her husband low. MAGGIE. Only that? JOHN. I see the tragedy of a man who has found himself out. Eh, I can't live with you again, Maggie. [He shivers.] MAGGIE. Why did you shiver, John? JOHN. It was at myself for saying that I couldn't live with you again, when I should have been wondering how for so long you have lived with me. And I suppose you have forgiven me all the time. [She nods.] And forgive me still? [She nods again.] Dear God! MAGGIE. John, am I to go? or are you to keep me on? [She is now a little bundle near his feet.] I'm willing to stay because I'm useful to you, if it can't be for a better reason. [His hand feels for her, and the bundle wriggles nearer.] It's nothing unusual I've done, John. Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It's our only joke. Every woman knows that. [He stares at her in hopeless perplexity.] Oh, John, if only you could laugh at me. JOHN. I can't laugh, Maggie. [But as he continues to stare at her a strange disorder appears in his face. MAGGIE feels that it is to be now or never.] MAGGIE. Laugh, John, laugh. Watch me; see how easy it is. [A terrible struggle is taking place within him. He creaks. Something that may be mirth forces a passage, at first painfully, no more joy in it than in the discoloured water from a spring that has long been dry. Soon, however, he laughs loud and long. The spring water is becoming clear. MAGGIE claps her hands. He is saved.] Publication Date: August 6th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-bx.barrie

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-nikki-a-weidner-misery-loves-company/

Nikki A. Weidner Misery Loves Company Chapter 1- Keith's POV Publication Date: April 24th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-deadened.hopes

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-tammy-case-broken-heartbeat/

Tammy Case Broken Heartbeat The door closed behind me, latch clicking as I leaned against it. I squeezed my eyes shut. My hand slowly released its grip on the doorknob, and wound into my hair instead. Just one more night. Once more before I locked away the memories and the hopes forever. I could give myself another night of sweet torture, and then it had to be finished. I opened my eyes and crossed the room. Softly my fingers traced the window frame before resting on the lock. The lock that had never been latched, just in case. My other hand made a fist and pressed against my mouth, as I thought back to the few physical mementos I had owned. Some pictures, a CD-not much, never comparing to the real thing, but just as lost to me. I would give anything to have them now, to sweeten the pain as I let my heart open and crack again. But they were gone. As he was. Away to his distractions and ethereal pastimes... No. Not the right kind of torture. Tonight we were focusing on the desires of the soul, not the harsh truths of the mind. Reality did not enter into this equation. I forced the window open, feeling it groan and stutter, reluctant to move after so long. Standing there as I stared out into the empty night, I denied what I knew deep down. A tear gently rolled down my cheek. He was never coming back. But just for tonight, I would tell myself he could be out there. Maybe tonight he was waiting to be let into my room again, ready to take me into his marble embrace. Kneeling, I laid my chin on my arms, folded on the windowsill as I watched the wind play in the tree outside my window. There was no stopping the tears now. Maybe it wasn't a good idea, letting my heart have this night... I stretched one arm out into the darkness, hand reaching, eyes closed. I willed for a cold hand to grasp it. Pressing my face into my wet sleeve, I knew the touch wouldn't come, but I hoped, deep in my broken heart. I longed for those arms to hold me close again. I always would. Shaking with sobs, I crushed myself against the wall. At the same time, I was shoving my arm as far out the window as I could. But I had to try, just a little farther, reaching out just a bit more... He had to be there. Had to. I loved him. He couldn't leave me alone like this, when I needed him. One arm curled tightly against my body. The other dug into the sill, losing circulation in my desperation to reach a soul whose longing matched mine. But he wasn't coming. Not anymore. "Edward," I whispered, my voice hoarse. "Please. Just-please." Through teary eyes, I could almost see a shadow moving through the trees. Then I blinked, and it was gone, a part of the night again. I dragged my arm back through the window as I collapsed. I clung to myself, pressing my cheek against a gently creaking floorboard. "Edward." I stayed there until my sobs eventually quieted. Exhausted, I listened for the unlikely footfall among the sounds of the night, but all I heard was the beat of my broken heart. Slowly I put the memories back, one by one, behind their rusty lock. Publication Date: January 24th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-dearalice18

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sierra-k-y-just-a-regular-me/

Sierra K Y Just a Regular . . .Me By: SKY Wednesday, October 10 Another regular Wednesday. I just can’t wait for Friday. I missed the bus, (because of my stupid alarm clock) fell in some mud, ruining my brand-new jeans, and, of course, was extremely annoyed by Vanessa and the “Cliques”. That’s my nickname for all the popular kid groups. Vanessa, by the way, is the queen of all the Cliques. She’s mean, she’s popular, and any guy would drop dead from her so called “gorgeous looks”. She always passes me in the hall, snickers, looking down like she disapproves of me with my loser clothes and says “Geeks, they ruin my day, “as if she decides what’s best, coolest , and what not. If you asked my opinion, she’s one ugly, stinky, dumb, troll that can disguise herself very, very, well. Like one of those Spiderwick demons. All of the students here would do ANYTHING to be her friend, (and don’t get me started on what all the boys, who want a date, would do for her.) Any who, we had the dreaded, P.E today. P.E is the worst class for many reasons . . . 1. It makes you sweat and stink. 2. It makes you tired and weak. 3. It embarrasses you in front of the whole class if you make the slightest mistake 4. It has the worst teacher ever! If you are playing a competitive sport, and you lose, you have to climb ropes while trying not to get hit by dodge balls thrown by the rest of the class. We have it right after lunch, making everyone sick to their stomach. 7. Many other reasons, but I don’t even want to go there. For lunch we had the mystery meat with a side of mixed fruit. What could be worse? I think they have everything except fruit in the mixed fruit. I’m pretty sure they put what they clean out of the shower stalls in the mystery meat. Although people are trying to convince me I was imagining, I swear my food actually moved. EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!So, after lunch everyone started looking a little green, and P.E didn’t make it any better what-so-ever! The only reason I really go to school is because of my best friend in the entire universe, Leila . . . and maybe because of my crush, Kason. The only things that are bad about him are that Vanessa likes him, which kind of makes him an impossible crush, and the fact that Leila also has a crush on him. I’m pretty sure he likes one of us because he’s always talking to us instead of the popular guys; I’m just not sure which of us he likes. SO complicated. Other than school, Vanessa, and the rest of the bad things I mentioned, my life is good. Not great, but good. My mom just made me some of her famous feel-good soup. I can hear her sweet sounding voice calling my name. ”Rose, I made your favorite soup, hurry downstairs, it’s getting cold.” Oh yeah, Rose is my name. I go by my middle name, because my mom thinks it “represents” me. Ever since, my face turned completely red, at a Kindergarten play, she’s called me that. I ran downstairs. The wonderful smell of chicken and a variety of spices filled the air. I sighed, taking in a deep breath. I rushed to the dining room table where my turquoise bowl sat, not wanting to wait even a second to take a spoonful of my mom’s wonderful, sensational soup, but the unthinkable had happened. My bowl was empty besides some noodles and maybe a drop of broth. I heard giggling under the table. My body filled with anger. “GET OUT HERE YOU LITTLE BRAT!!!!!” I yelled as I rushed under the table at lightning speed. I grabbed his shirt before he had a chance to escape. If you thought no one could ever be so attached to soup, than you’re wrong. “Mommy! She’s hurting me! Get her off!” he yelled as I started to knock him to the floor. “Rose! There is no reason to be hurting your brother like that.” I can’t say I was surprised. Even though I had barely touched him, his crying act always fooled mom. I grumbled under my breath. “Mommy, it hurts so badly!” “Rose, to your room, now,”my mom said in a tone that meant she was serious. “But, mom! That’s not fair!” I said in my defense. “What’s not fair? That you get the consequences for your actions?” “No! But, look Jake’s fine.” At the mention of his name my brother looked up. “Oh . . . WAHHHH!!!” he said bursting into fake tears. “Just go to your room, Rose.” “But-“ “NOW!” she yelled angrily. I trudged up the stairs, and into my room. I flopped down on my bed where I am now. I guess I’ll just have to go to sleep on an empty stomach. Thursday October 11 Thursday again? I thought we had Thursday last week. I don’t want to wake up! Jake came in my room and shook me so hard; I think my arm went to Jupiter. There are only a couple good things about Thursday. The next day is Friday, and I get to sit by anyone in class, because it’s SCIENCE! Kason and Leila are in that class too, so I sat next to them! Today we have (drumroll please) Art, yay!!!! Art is the best class in the whole entire day of Thursday. We get to use watercolors today to color our still life projects we did last week. I drew a wooden man-doll, Leila drew a seashell, and Kason drew an apple next to a glass bottle. I think ours turned out pretty good. Vanessa drew a pine cone, which looked like a porcupine holding a suffocated squirrel. She used it for fishing out compliments by saying it was ugly, which I agreed with. There’s nothing like insulting Queen of Cliques first thing in the morning. We just had lunch. All of the Cliques sitting at their popular table; with everyone crowding their precious ruler, Vanessa. I was sitting at the “loser” table with Leila, and some other kids that didn’t qualify to be part of the Cliques. Today we had pizza with a side of cookies. I love Thursday’s lunches. The lunch ladies are still mean, but they usually lighten up a little on Thursday. After lunch it’s math and we always learn the hardest stuff. Our teacher, Mr. Kandercane (Mr. Candy Cane to most) expects us to learn the whole unit in less than a week. He asked me to come up to the board and do this equation: I made the mistake of writing this: ∑ ™ β £ ≥ ≠ ∞ I don’t know what that even means! I kind of just put some symbols I knew, so I wasn’t surprised when he told me it was wrong and to sit down. Then he asked Leila to answer it. She went up and neatly wrote: The Answer!!! “Correct!” Mr. Kandercane congratulated. ”At least someone here pays attention,” he added under his breath. When Leila came back to her seat, one of the kids behind me muttered “Teacher’s Pet, Teacher’s Pet.” I turned around. Leila wasn’t beaming anymore. She looked really hurt. “It’s okay, it was just a stupid joke,” I said trying to sound comforting. Leila cheered up a little. Finally, it was Language Arts. I don’t really like language arts except for the fact it’s my last class. Today we had to write an essay on cursive. We had to write about either getting rid of it or keeping it. I really don’t care if we keep cursive or not, but I wrote about keeping it. Then my teacher started talking on how we have to write a story about a magical website… blah, blah, blah. I finished my story and earned a perfect score for my creativity, but I didn’t want to brag because bragging reminds me of Vanessa. School was finally over. I had to go to the mall with Mom and Jake because Jake’s friend (Leo, I think) was having a birthday party so Jake needed to buy him a present and my mom had to get her friends’ a wedding present. “You take Jake to the kids’ aisle and we’ll meet back here for lunch,” my mom told me. Jake rushed off to see all the toys. “I want this one, and this one, and this one.” He said grabbing some toys off the shelf. “This isn’t for you,” I scolded. “But I want these toys!” he yelled and started crying. “Okay, okay, but we’ll have to ask mom.” He stopped crying. What a fake-crier. We found a gift for . . . Landon? Something with an “L”. When we met up with my mom she asked why Jake was holding so many toys. I told her what happened, expecting her to tell Jake to put the toys he wants back on the shelf. Instead she said, “Two or three toys couldn’t hurt.” “Then can I get a new jacket? Mine is really worn out,” I asked. “Sweetie, we are not made out of money,” she said in her gentle but firm voice. I was about to argue but seeing the look in her eyes made me think twice and I decided it wasn’t worth it. When we got home, I made myself the biggest sandwich ever made in the history of sandwich making. I ate it in almost two bites. I was so lazy after that I flopped on the couch and started to watch my favorite television show ever. I fell asleep as I touched the soft, plushy, and heavenly couch. Friday, October 12 I had the weirdest dream. I was at school (worst dream-place ever) and I had a big toe leech stuck to my elbow. Hey it’s a dream. Just then I tripped on an elephant, and Vanessa was riding it. She had a flaming whip, and was laughing at me. Then Leila appeared and Vanessa called her a teacher’s pet, and then she turned into a dog with a collar that said “Please return to Mr. Kandercane if found”. Suddenly, I was in a meadow with frogs hopping everywhere, and they were croaking my actual name, Judith. What an embarrassing moment. Then Vanessa came in, on this time, a flying fish. “You’re name’s Judith? OMG, that’s the worst name in the entire universe. I don’t think aliens would be caught dead with a name like that! I can’t wait to tell everyone. Muh ha ha ha!” She said mockingly. I tried to run but I slipped in a puddle of . . . ew, It’s Leila’s dog saliva. I was freaking out, mainly because the saliva was warm, and because the P.E teacher showed up. She was meaner, buffer, hairier, and uglier than before. “Onto the ropes ” She shouted “Now!!!!” I was close to screaming when I was clutching the ropes; lava bubbling underneath me. Everyone was calling my name and throwing electric dodge balls at me and I couldn’t do anything about it. Suddenly, I felt my brother breaking my ribs by jumping on me, holding his new toys, trying to get me up. He was singing one of the hit songs, “Friday”. “Get off of me you fatso!!!” I yelled before pushing him off the bed. He giggled. “Look who’s talking! You’re the Queen of Fatties!” “Mom finally made me your queen? “ I said feeling smart. Mom called us down. “You’ll miss the bus, again Rose. Jake, you can skip school today. I mean, you have a cold, right?” mom called “Oh . . . yeah! (Cough, cough)” “You little faker!” “Hey, I’m not a faker. You’re just jealous,” Jake said “Yeah, I’m jealous of a lying little suck-up,” I said sarcastically. He stuck out his tongue right before mom showed up. Jake pretended to cough again. “You poor thing, I’ll make you some feel-good soup with extra broth. . .” said mom running her hands through his hair. “. . . And Rose you are going to be late!!! Gees . . . you never listen do you.” I got up and got dressed. I went downstairs and grabbed a granola bar. I ran outside and saw the bus at the corner, I barely made it on. The bus-driver gave me a crooked grin as I struggled to get on out of breath. “The bus is too geeky to ride, that’s why I have my chauffeur drive me in my limousine to school every day, “said Vanessa at school. I think it’s my only transportation, so I don’t complain even though there is dirt on the floor, the heater and air conditioner are broken, it stinks like nobody’s business (except for maybe a dog’s business, if you know what I mean) and there is gum under and on seats. My granola bar was way too . . . what the word? Overdue. It was too hard to bite and was completely stale. The oats looked like animal voodoo. Any who, Vanessa sat there bragging about who-knows-what, when Kason walked over. “Hey Kason,” Vanessa flirted, twirling her hair. “Hey . . .” he replied. “Don’t you have some other people to annoy or something?” Courtney asked Vanessa. Courtney is one of the “nerds”. I like her because she speaks her mind, even to Vanessa. “Courtney, why are you even on this planet, I mean we don’t need more freaks breathing my air. I bought air and it’s too expensive to waste on losers like you,” Vanessa said. By the time she finished criticizing Courtney, Kason had gone to class, even though we have 10 minutes left. “Wow Courtney, look what you did! You freaked my BF out.” “You did that yourself Vanessa, I mean he got scared because of your freaky smell, and vaguely bug-like looks, oh yeah, don’t even get me started on your cheap hobo-ish makeup,” Courtney said. For the first time Vanessa was speechless. Courtney had a triumphant look as Vanessa stormed away defeated. “Wow, Courtney! You are so cool! I mean you stood up to Vanessa even with your popularity at stake! But, I guess you’ll be remembered as the Geek Who Stood Up To Vanessa,” said Leila. “Vanessa is just a regular person . . . with huge issues,” Courtney said. “and I don’t care about the popularity or the drama. I just want to focus on my school work.” “Yeah,” said J.J., one of Courtney’s friends. “You focus on school work by picking fights with Vanessa,” he teased. “I am not picking fights with Vanessa!” Courtney objected blushing, and slugging J.J. in the arm. OOOOWWWW !” J.J. howled, also blushing. They both like each other, but neither admits it. Then the bell rang and we all headed to our classes. 1st period was short like the others, because it was the Friday the teachers had a huge and very important meeting with the Academicawest or something like that. “Since class is short today it is a free period, so you can play some games and talk but keep the voice level down,” said Ms. Kate as she turned some music on. Ms. Kate is my favorite teachers because she’s super fun and we are allowed to eat traditional Spanish food in her class. Any who, I received some scratch paper from Ms. Kate and drew a picture of this super cute elf girl with curly hair. It looked like this: “That’s really good,” someone behind me said. I turned around and saw Kason standing next to me. I felt my face getting hot. “Are you okay, you’re turning really red, like impossible red,” Kason said looking worried. “Yeah, I just have a . . . condition . . . yeah. It makes my face all red,” I said probably sounding like a total dork. “Well, I really like your drawing,” he said before walking away awkwardly. “I am such a nerd,” I muttered under my breath as Leila walked over. “He SO likes you! Man, I wish he gave me that much attention,” Leila said jealously. “Yeah, right. I’m too much of a geek. I mean I look like those creepy weirdo girls on those shows you love to watch. I’ve have the glasses, the horrid hair,” I said sluggishly. Hey, it’s not my fault I have my parents’ blind eyes and my grandma’s hair. My mom hates my hair right now so I get only two choices, either to cut it off like a boys or grow it out long. I decided on the second one. When I’m older, I hope I could have saved up enough money for contacts, but that’s a long ways away. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!” Vanessa screamed as she jumped up on a chair. “SPIDER!!!!” “I’m sure it’s just a leaf Vanessa, don’t get too dumb just yet.” Courtney said nonchalantly. “La, la, la, la, la, la, la!” Vanessa said trying to block out Courtney’s voice. “ I can’t here you!” Then Kason went over and pick up the arachnid. “It’s harmless. Not even fully grown yet,” he said as he dropped the spider out the window. “OMG Kason! You saved me from that nasty thing. You are such a hero!” said Vanessa bringing all the attention back to herself. “Can’t get any more desperate than that,” said Courtney. “Stop being so mean to me. I am just an innocent girl thanking her hero for saving her.” “You are so annoying,” said Alexander or Alex the Brains. “OMG Alex! You should be the last person to comment on something being annoying,” said Vanessa as snotty as ever. I walked away avoiding the fights. It was NERDS VS CLIQUES and frankly I didn’t want to be either. Then the bell rang for 2nd period which was Social Studies, but today the counselor was coming in to talk with the class. She is fun and nice. She is a perky blonde who has us draw a lot, which is fine by me. First we played telephone. The first round “My Disappearing Pig Put A Banana in His Ear” turned into “My Invisible Dad Danced on A Pear .” The second time “ Charley is A Unicorn” turned into “Wall-E Eats Corn.” It was fun and interesting to see how one thing turns into another. She explained how when rumors are spread how easily it is for one thing to sound like a totally different thing, and the truth could easily turn into a lie by a simple misunderstanding. Then, we had to do a rough draft of a banner showing something involving citizenship. My group decided to do it like this: (picture) We spent the whole period drawing ad coloring this. Vanessa started bragging on and on about clothes, money, etc. “When will she give it a break? We all know she’s rich, has all the designer clothes, blah, blah, blah, “Courtney whispered to me. I chuckled. “Wow! You two are such gossipers. Rude, much?” Vanessa said to us. “Totally!” one of the other Clique members agreed. “Look who’s talking, Ms. Rude herself,” Courtney said wit fully. “Ugh . . . Do you have to ruin everyone’s day?” Vanessa replied. “No that’s your job.” “You are so mean!”Vanessa said angrily. “It’s so sad that you talk to yourself, especially if you’re going to insult yourself,” Courtney said with fake sympathy. “You’re annoying!” Vanessa exclaimed. “There she goes again. Calling herself names and such. Poor Vanessa, she needs serious help. Actually, my mom has a friend who works with the loonies.” “Seriously! OMG!!!” Vanessa yelled before running off to gossip with the Cliques. “I just love watching her get upset,” said Courtney. “You know that makes you seem like a mean, evil torturer, right?” commented J.J. “Wow, J.J., way to sum it up,” Leila joined in. “Stop teasing me,” Courtney said. It seemed like she lost all her courage. I was so confused :( . “Time’s up for pictures,” called the counselor. “Yay! Lunch-time :) !” I called. I was starved! When we got to the lunch room Courtney looked sad. “What’s wrong?” asked J.J. “Well, I didn’t want to tell you guys, but . . . .” her voice trailed off. “What?” asked Leila. “Well, I’m . . . moving to New York. My dad got this awesome job there.” J.J.’s face paled. “Wha . . . What?” asked J.J. shaking. “When?” “My mom’s just letting me stay here forHalloween.” We didn’t talk for the rest of lunch. Suddenly my salad didn’t look pleasing. I felt sick, to the pit of my stomach. I watched the people around me leave the lunchroom. I left when there were only few students spread around the room. We had a few minutes until 3rd period which was History with Mr. Mien (aka Mr. Mean). We have to each take a 30 minute turn to teach the class a subject we haven’t learned. Last time this boy named Danny made us read these history books, but we didn’t have time to finish the books and we had to take a quiz on it, so pretty much everyone failed and each grade on our quizzes we got was a portion of our final participation grade. When it was my turn, I could barely stand without blushing crazily. I was talking about how“The Shot Heard Around the World” started the war. It was a pretty boring subject because I couldn’t do much with it, and I’m not into that sort of stuff. I ended up making crossword puzzles and word searches on this cool website. All you had to do was put in the words you wanted and it sorted itself out. Then I handed out some candy. Leila’s project was so cool. She did a puppet show, a play, and divided the room up into red coats and blue coats. We, then, went outside and had a game of revolutionary dodge ball. Totally beats word finds. :( Then the bell rang, and we all ran inside. We got our stuff and rushed into the halls. I saw Kason talking to Leila about something. They were laughing and he said something about liking something (or someone) and about it (or her) was cool. I guess he likes Leila al lot. ( SO JELOUS! :( ) The bell rang for 4th period. It was half computers with Mr. Nike and half library with Mr. Smith. In computers we just had to type a little and play some typing games. Class goes by really fast so not much happened, but in library Vanessa continued bragging about how her and this guy from California are dating. So weird! Any who, Mr. Smith started talking about how the school is going to have a Pumpkin Fest. on October . It’s like a school carnival, but we will be having hayrides, a corn maze, halloween music, food, and games. Everyone seemed really excited about the festival. Mr. Smith also said that afterward everyone could tell or read scary stories. “I am going to tell a story so scary even Vanessa will wet her designer pants!” boasted Joe, the class clown. Some kids giggled at the joke, but immediately stopped when Vanessa glared at them. “Nothing scares me,” Vanessa said to Joe. “Except for breaking a nail, being dumped, someone ruining her make-up in public . . . “ Courtney whispered. “Ugh . . . I just can’t wait till you leave this school, but I feel bad for the students in New York that will have to put up with you.” Vanessa said. “Well, at least they don’t have to see that face of yours,” Courtney argued back. “Girls, stop arguing,” said Mr. Smith. “Whatever,” muttered Vanessa. Mr. Smith gave us a couple minutes to get a book before our next class. I got a how-to-cook book. Trey (one of the geeks) checked out When Dinosaurs Ruled the World, which didn’t look very pleasing from the front cover. “I wonder what time it is. I want to know how many hours ‘till school ends. I have a manicure waiting for me at the spa,” said Vanessa trying to get Kason to look over. I was trying not to look at her in disgust, but it was so hard not to. “Wow Vanessa, you do really need that manicure. I hope school ends soon,” said Courtney as casual as possible. I giggled a little under my breath which Vanessa might have heard, although she didn’t. “You are really getting on my nerves Courtney. You better watch what you say,” Vanessa said trying to sound intimidating. Courtney smirked like she didn’t care just when the bell rang. “I hate that sound so much,” said Courtney covering her ears. “What, the bell? I don’t think it’s that bad.” I told Courtney. “No, Vanessa’s voice. It’s so annoying, and weird,” she said being funny. In the hall Leila caught up to me. “Hey, are you mad at me or something?”she said looking confused. “Why would I be mad at you?” “Well, you didn’t sit next to me or talk to me in computers or library,” she explained. “Oh . . . I’m sorry. On a totally unrelated subject, what were you and Kason talking about in the hall?” “Why?”she asked suspiciously. “I kind of overheard parts of it-” “What parts?” “He said something about liking someone because they’re cool and-” “Okay! First of all that “someone” is a something. Second of all that “something” was my presentation in history. He liked all of the stuff I did.” “That makes SO much more sense!” I exclaimed. The bell rang. “OMG! We’re going to be late for class!” We rushed down the halls, squeezing past other kids trying to get to their classes. We, finally, made it to 5th period, Music with Mrs. Walker. She was an okay teacher, but she was very strict. If I even whisper, I get in a lot of trouble, but even if Joe interrupts the class repetivly and makes inappropriate jokes she laughs or gives him a “warning”. Today we had a substitute named Mr. Shaman, and because he wasn’t a “music expert” we just did a worksheet on identifying music notes, then played some games. School ended at 12:45 instead of 3:05 and Leila asked me if I could come over for a sleep-over. “It will be so much fun! Mia (Leila's 18 year old sister) and Courtney are coming, so it will be awesome for you to come to! Here you can use my phone to call your mom,” she said pulling out her pink and jeweled Apple iPhone 4S. I was like the only 12 year old without a phone. I pushed down on the numbers of my mom’s cell. The numbers appeared on the screen as the ringer beeped into my ear. “Hello, Mrs. Peggy Luther speaking,” answered my mom. “Hey, mom, can I spend the night at Leila’s?”I asked. “If it’s okay with her parents it’s okay with me.” I looked at Leila, and she said her parents approved. “It is. Thanks mom. Love you,” I said. “Love you, too. Bye,” she said before hanging up. “Yes !” I yelled excitedly. “Woo - Hoo!” Leila said bouncing up and down, making her blonde curls dance about. We found Courtney and waited for Mrs. Benson (Leila’s mom). I recognized the blue porsche as it pulled into the school parking lot. We all climbed into the car. “How have you girls been?” she asked in a sweet voice. “Good.” “Fine.” “Okay” “You girls have very specific moods,” Mrs. Benson teased. We talked about school stuff until we got to Leila’s house. I had been to Leila’s house before, but I forgot how big it was. I mean, it’s HUGE! (picture) It’s hard to remember Leila’s rich, because I used to think all rich people acted like Vanessa, (spoiled, boastful, rude, and annoying, ) and fortunately Leila was nothing like Vanessa. Any who, right as Leila opened the door a girl jumped on her knocking her to the floor wrapped in a giant bear hug. “Hey! I haven’t seen you since I moved into my new house, which was when? Forever ago?” “Last month,” corrected Leila suffocating under the weight of the 124 pound 18 year old. Mia stood up and grabbed Leila’s hand, helping her to her feet. Mia looked over at me and Courtney as if studying us. She had the same blonde hair and tan skin as Leila but she was a whole head taller than her. I realized she was in jeans with holes in the knees. She also was wearing a shirt with a pig on it and a pig hat. Her curly hair was in two ponytail that went about two inches above her shoulders. She had no make-up on but her face was smooth and clean. She stood at an angle leaning to her left. Her eyes were hazel unlike Leila’s brown chestnut eyes. Her curled bangs hung slightly over her eyes. “Is she Rose?” Mia asked Leila pointing to Courtney. Leila moved Mia’s hand so it pointed towards me. “Oh,”she said nodding. “And this is Courtney,” Leila introduced. “Hello!” Mia said to both of us. “Hey.” “Hi.” “You have got some seriously talkative friends,” Mia said to Leila. I started blushing. “Dang Rose, you are seriously red.” “She’s a blusher,”said Courtney which made me blush even more. We decided to go and get some movies, popcorn, and other party snacks while Mrs. Benson ordered pizza. We climbed into Mia’s pink Civic. The seats were really smooth and the air smelled of a mixture of oranges and mangos. She turned on the radio and found Our Song by Taylor Swift. (one of my favorite songs :) ). Apparently Courtney and Leila knew it too because they started singing along. I joined in. Then Love Song by Sara Bareilles came on.We sang to all the songs we knew until we came to a GIANT store. I had never heard of it but Leila seemed to have been there before. We got out of the car and walked across the parking lot. When we went inside, the store looked bigger on the inside than the outside. There were costumers walking around casually. There was also a bunch of employees wearing matching yellow and green outfits. Some were helping costumers, or at the cash registers. Others boxing and unboxing items. A lady walked up to us. She was in the green and yellow uniform with the store’s logo printed on the side next to her name tag that read Hello My Name Is Jane. She wore a yellow headband across her dark bobbed hair to go with her outfit and had a smile (covered with way too much red lipstick) plastered onto her face. “May I help you lovely young ladies? Oh, by the way, I love your hat,” she said. “Thank you. Um, we’re looking for popcorn, sodas, that kind of stuff,” Mia said awkwardly. “Oh, right this way, to aisle seven,” she said walking away. We followed her to an area of the store filled with party food, snacks, everything else. “Here you go, ladies. I hope you find everything you need and have a nice day,” Jane said. She left us and went to a couple of other costumers that just walked into the store. “Okay, now we just have to get everything we need; soda and popcorn. m I missing anything?” Mia asked looking at us. “Oh, yeah chips. Do you all like sour cream and onion flavor?”We all nodded before she grabbed a bag off the shelf. We also grabbed some Pepsi and extra buttered popcorn. We decided to get some candy before we left. When we arrived to the cash register we were welcomed by a new employee named Samuel. He wasn’t as cheerful as Jane though. He kept mumbling to himself and looking down. We got what we needed and headed out to the parking lot. When we got out, Mia reached into her purse. “Dang it!” she cursed. “What?” asked Leila. “My keys aren’t in here,” she said worried. “Did you leave them in the car?”I asked trying to be helpful. “No, I remember having them in the store.” Then Samuel came out. “Excuse me,” he said to Mia. “You left these by the cash register,” he said handing her the keys and her zebra-printed wallet. She checked her purse looking confused. “Thank you,” she said putting them into her purse. “Yeah,” he said before awkwardly walking back to the store. “Well, that was very nice of him to return your stuff,” said Courtney. “Are you sure he didn’t take any money,”Leila wondered. “It’s all here,” Mia said checking her wallet. “Maybe he thought he’d get a kiss,” Leila teased as we got into the car. “Whatever,” Mia said hitting Leila laughing. “OMG! It’s all ready 3 o’clock! We have got to get home.” This time Turning Tables by Adele was playing. Then a different song, I had never heard of before, blared through the speakers. We quickly pulled into the driveway and unloaded our stuff. The pizza guy was parked around the corner. When we were inside, the air smelled deliciously of cheese and pepperoni. Mrs. Benson had just payed the pizza man, and he was just heading out the door, when he bumped into Mia. Her bag split open and the soda fell onto the floor, leaking. Soon, there was a puddle of Pepsi running down the floor. “I am so sorry,” apologized the man. Mrs. Benson brought a pile of napkins and everyone helped clean the mess up. “I think I have some extra sodas in the car, maybe even this brand. I’ll go check.” He left and soon came back with three bottles. There was Pepsi, Root Beer, and Sprite. “You can have the extra ones because there kind of warm, and because of the inconvenience.” “Thanks, I guess,” Mia said before putting the soda into the fridge. After he left, Mia showed us a hilarious video called Potter Puppet Pals In The Mysterious Ticking Noise on Youtube.It was so funny. It had characters from the Harry Potter series, but they were puppets. They did a skit and sang a silly song. We had our dinner and soda.Then we found a movie and popped the popcorn. Even though it was only 5 o’clock, the sun had already set. We watched the show and talked about girl stuff, like our crushes and such. When we were playing Truth or Dare, the lights went off. Some of us screamed, until Mrs. Benson came down with a flashlight. “It’s okay. A storm came in and blew out the power.” For the first time I noticed the rain pounding on the windows. Man, I am so oblivious. “I was just talking to Courtney’s mom and their power is gone, too, even all the way up the hill on Oak Street.” We got some more flashlights and lit some candles. We started playing Clue and Scribbilish. Scribbilish is like telephone except you draw. You pick a card and draw what it says without writing letters or numbers. Then you pass it to the next person and they write what they think it means, then the next person draws what the 2nd person wrote the sentence about. It is one of my favorite games. Then we made a bed on the floor and everyone started to fall asleep, but for some reason I couldn’t. I tried waking one of the other girls up, but that didn’t work, so I decided to write in here a little longer. Well, I guess I’m kind of tired. I need to at least try to go to sleep. Saturday, October 13 Mrs.Benson makes the best breakfast ever! She made cinnamon rolls, bacon, hash browns, and chocolate pancakes, and she expects us to eat it all! She says she makes so much because girls these days don’t eat anything. I love eating at Leila’s! I’m just surprised that she doesn’t have a cook to make the breakfast if she’s so rich and all. I hope I don't have to go home soon. To Be Continued . . . Mabye . . . Publication Date: January 29th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-sky050401

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-ashline-st-simon-strange-stuff/

ASHLINE ST.SIMON STRANGE STUFF Publication Date: May 4th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-lovleyviona

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sabrina-solderirs/

sabrina solderirs dead solders to the army navy and those kids whos parents die in accidents and never come back and all the air force. daddy come home i was sitting at the front poch with mama died and my daddy of to war i was all alone but the day you came back you died saving the whole army camp that i cried when my soldier friends came to they asked for my mother and i said she was died and my god stepped out of the crowd crying when he heard the news. when she told them i said i do have godfather though. genral jhon steped out of the crowed to the front door i said dont let anything or anybody take me away please i dont want to leave i now my dads alive i now he is when i said that i burst out crying daddy was gone and i new it to but i didn't give up faith thta night the first time i prayed to god asked him for my father back and i read the whole bibble to get god to lisson and he did. the next day at my fathers memorial they read his will and i found out that i get a bizzilion dollars but that still couln't relace my mom that night i was at my window righting a song to put on my mothers grave . then i saw a million candle lights of the whole town coming to bless me and my house i saw the priest they were coming to see me when i heard my fathers voice but nobody else did and i saw his figure outside and i screamed and when i opend my door i saw the priest i said" my dadys alive hes here i want to see him. when every one heard the door slam they saw him to and stepped out of the way and i ran to him i said"daddy dont leave me mommys died i thought you were died i will get a job or something to get you to stop the wars and the work please daddy and i was cring so hard i had a spot on my dads uniform"honey i wont dont cry i am here now dont cry im here ""daddy still dont leave me please dont. and the end i was crying daddys home when i leave for college i'm not going to leave until my daddys dead but the night he came home i slep in the bed with him and i screamed i shook daddy i checked for a pulse and he died nobody could belive it i had no parents. Text: the says pirating is bad All rights reserved. Publication Date: August 20th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-shodges31548

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-megan-bretbrunner-exposed/

megan bretbrunner exposed part one chapter one Harry has walking down the street when he sees his best muggle friend "hey what's up," he asked. "Nothing much you?" She asks. "Same," he says. "Want to get some icecream?" He asked. "No". ""Look veronica there's something I've been keeping from you," he says. "And what's that?" She asks. "I'm a," he says. "Spit it out," she told him. "Fine...I'm a... wizard," he told her. "Yeah right," she said rolling her eyes. "Come with me and I'll show you," he told her. "What ever," she said disbelieving. Harry took her to an abandoned alley way. He took his wand out of his pocket and did the levatation spell a trash bag lifted up off the ground. "Oh my gosh!" She squealed. Then all the sudden she said, "hey I gotta go Harry," she told him. Harry nodded. He apperated to his house. He read for a little then desired to get on facebook there was a post that knocked the wind out of him it said. "Hey just found Harry's. Dirty liyttle secret wait for it he a wizard wand and every thing". He went to sleep thinking they wouldn't believe her. He called her the next morning. " hey what are you thinking our existance is a secret" he said. She agread. "Hey Harry can I come over?" She asked. "Sure". She arrived in ten minutes later. "Hey Harry can I see more wizard stuff?" She asked. "Like what?" He asked. "Can I see you do a spell?" She asked. "Sure this one will blow your mind," he told her then he said expecto. Patronum a stag erupted from his wand. She clapped. "Can you do any thing else," she asked. "Of course," he said. "So can you tell me more and I won't tell," she said her fingers were crossed. "Sure what would you like to know," he asked. "Uh do do wizards have to be born in a magical family?" She asked. "Well no they can be born into a human family or magical my best friend is from a human family and shes the top witch in the class," he said. " oh and we call mlnone magic folk muggles," he said. "Wow can I see another spell," she asked and Harry nodded. Harry got out his wand and made it shoot sparks and when he wasn't looking snapped a picture. "so how old does one have to be before one turns into a wizard?" She asked. "No its not like that they can not become one they are born one and they start school at 11," he said.. "can I see one of the books," she asked. Harry nodded. Harry handed her a standard book of spells grade 1. She looked throught it. "Harry can I get blood samples or anything I'm. Really curious," she asked. "Sure,". She got the needle out and stuck it in Harry's. Arm he moaned. She studied it for a while. "Hey Harry did you know your results show a high magnetic field," she said. "Hey Harry can I take you down to my lab," she asked. "What am I a lab rat," he grumbled. "I take that as a yes," she squeaked. She took Harry to this really big lab with all kinds of machines. There in the corner was a cat scanner. "Harry one more thing just one more," she said. "Fine,". She got him into the cat scan machine. After wards. "Hey Harry look," she told him. "What?" He asked. "You use 100% of your brain cupasity. While normal people use only like twelve," she said. "One more question what do they make the wands out of?" She asked. "Things like dragon heart string, unicorn hair, fenix feather, things like that," he told her. "Oh well its geting late so I'll take you home," I told him. "No you don't have to I can apperate, " he told her. "What's that?" She asked. "Its like telaporting," he said. "Talk to you later veronica," he said before. He apparated. He got on facebook there was a new post that knocked him out of his chair. It told all about witches and wizards it even had a picture of me casting a spell I looked at the bottom and it said it was pposted by veronica green. I called her right away. "What the hell veronica you said you wouldn't. Tell then you go online and spill your guts about the magical world," he shouted at her. "I crossed my finge"she said. He hung up. He heard a knock on the door he opened the door and there was a small group of people and when he opened the door the people started snapping pictures of Harry. Haarey spanned the door and went to the phone he called Hermione. " help the magical world has been exposed," he shouted. "Oh no what did you do I'll connect Ron," she said two minutes later Ron was on the phone. Harry explained what happened. "Blind be Harry were you really that stupid," Ron said. "Get over here now!" Harry commanded them. N Text: i own only veronica and a couple others All rights reserved. Publication Date: February 14th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-megangirl23

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-mickel-grimes-hee-haw/

Mickel Grimes Hee Haw copyright2010 Hi my name is Joe Joe He Haw oh sorry I love to say that. Joe Joe get your behind in here before I open a can of whip tail.That was Granny she probly saw the suprise me and the dog left her in the field. Hi paw I thought you was working today.No son today I thought we could have a little father son time.That sounds like I am gonner see the most richiest people down yonder. Paw come on lets catch turtles or even better lizard for you know lizard soup!Son I'm gonna teach you how to catch fishies.Where we gonner get fishing poles.Wally World that's where.Yay I never been to a place that rich people own. The End of part 1 next part in july Publication Date: May 21st 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-mickey1

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-jesse-cawthon-whos-gonna-win/

Jesse Cawthon whos gonna win two teams compete whos gonna win whos gonna win by:jesse cawthon Ring ,ring ,ring, the horn awakes me from my confey bed.Girls time to get ready for the day.As i moan and groan i began to stretch and awake my friend lily.Lily is a hard sleeper she never wakes up to the dumb horn its always me that does.As i finish awaking lily we get up and began getting ready for training and if i hadnt mintioned me and lily are on a cheer team together and i am bella and the head/team captian of team jets and lily is the runner up 2nd captian incase im gone.on way down stairs and meet up with are team one are way we see the sassy panda bears but were used to seeing them giving us dirty looks because thats what there made for apparently.as we make are way down the last steps we see are team sitting at the big conference table austin stands and said lets get to work i remark we shall.We began walking to are gym on the other side of the jotp/jaguars own the place high school as we arrive in the gym we start practicing are famous jets dance.Practice last for 2 hours and we are released.on my way out of the gym my friend myah ask me for a ride home in my shiny mustang i exclamined as she tries to take step in my car noooo wipe your feet off a couple seconds later sorry im i neat freak when arriving at home mom ask what took so long i say i had to take myah home she said ok thats fine.ma said dont forget we are going to california tomorrow i remark i am all set and packed.I give ma and pa a kiss goodnight.When awaking in the morning i take off to california............5 months later i arrive back with my team and learn the new cheer they came up with it was amazing so we ALL learned it perfectly and it turned out that we the jets to have are own minds and spirit cause we beat the panda bears after all. Publication Date: June 9th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-nenaboo123456

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-me-super/

Me Super Super idk Publication Date: October 2nd 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-teddy878

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-part-13/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Surprise part 13 Double date! Kazuto awoke with gal at his side as he kissed her on the forehead as she woke up "morning" he said with a smile as he got up and looked her "this time ill make breakfast for you, ok my dearest Gal " he said with a smile and walked out of the room as she layed there in his bed smiling as kazuto walked down stares silica was watching tv "imma make breakfast silica" he said with a smile as she nodded when he finished cooking he put the plates on the table and took one up to Gal " here you go my love" he'd give her everything on a plater as he smiled at her "thank you hun" she said with a smile as she kissed him and started to dig in "ill be downstairs with my aunt and silica ok, call me when your done im taking care of you today" he said with a smile and walked out side of his room down the stair as she just smiled and ate the food with an excited look, later on after she finished eating kazuto came into the room to find her asleep as he grabed the platter and took it down stairs as he walked bk to the kitchen putting it in the sink and went back upstairs to his room as he layed down next to her as she woke up hugging him nd kissing him deeply as they stayed kissing and she suddenly stoped and smiled at him "i love you" she said with a smile at him as kazuto kissed her again and put the covers over them, later that day they got up from the bed and got dressed to go out to be with klien and elisbeth "hey kazuto how've you been" klien said with a smile as Gal kissed kazuto "i've been pretty happy and what are we doing today" kazuto asked with a smile as elisbeth kissed klien "were going on a double date" she said with a smile looking at kazuto and gal "ok, lets do this double date" Gal said with a smile as she held on to kazuto's hand walking down the street to the restraunt "i heard this place is pretty good" klien said with a confident look on his face as they walked inside they as the waitress took them to there seat as they were talking about wht they have been up to when they finished it was already late but tommarrow was the festival of lovers so Klien and elisbeth were going "lets go to kazuto" Gal said with a smile as he nodded "alright well meet you two there". kazuto said with a smile as he walked Gal home. The lovers festival The next morning Gal woke up extra early and got ready putting on a kimono and told silica to put one on to as they were ready to leave kazuto's aunt looked at them "you two look beautiful, you did that for kazuto didnt you" she said witha smile as gal and silica nodded and when he came down stairs they all went to the lovers festival to meet up with klien and elisbeth by the time they found one another it was already the afternoon so they went to eat before the fireworks started as they finished klien and elisbeth parted ways with kazuto Gal and silica, "lets go watch the firework you two" kazuto said with a pleasant look on his face as they found a concluded spot where they can see the fireworks and be alone as Gal kisses kazuto "i love you" Gal said with a smile as silica just looked at the fireworks smiling "you two get a room" she said with a giggle as she kept watching and Gal and kazuto stopped kissing and just watched the fireworks as she smiled and hugged kazuto from the joy of being there with him as they watched. Publication Date: October 11th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-dnf10382a424525

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-crashley-nichole-better/

Crashley Nichole Better Why? So here I sit Bored and depressed Thinking of ways That I can become a success It's nerve wrecking Sitting at home When others are out having a good time and you are all alone It makes me wonder If life is still worth living But then again I should be thankful For what I have been given The pressure of being a loner Is unbearable But the unemployment rate Is understandable I feel like a loser Sitting here writing this But I love to write So you can give my butt a kiss I feel like everyone hates me And that I am socially rejected But it doesn't matter I am as good as dead I bet you are reading this and I bet you are ready to judge Be my guest It doesn't bring me any luck Sometimes I wonder Why I was put on this earth Like what my purpose is here and why I am feeling so hurt My life really sucks And I try to fool myself Into thinking it doesn't When in reality I have nothing I feel like I am standing in the rain Crying in pain Thinking of everybody in vein I'm similar to Short term memory I meet people But they never remember me This is not what I want I need structure I need to start building my life Or I will find it hard to survive I can't continue staying at home Relying on people To give me something I realize That I have to get out and get it I feel like I try so hard But people only make my life harder It's like I'll never win So I light up a circle of candles And sit in the center Telling myself That I can be a winner I hate the position That I am in right now But eventually things will get better and I won't have to frown But until then I'll sit and wait Until I can get back on my feet And set everything straight Who are you?  “Who are you?” Time asked me with a sigh,And my family tree echoed with a loud cry!I felt sick to my stomach and I felt blue…I answered as I trembled: “I wish I knew.”Then Time entered through my back doorsBarged on my uneven creaking floorboards,And Time uncovered my many regretsWhich exceeded my accumulated debts.Have I disappointed Time’s perfection?My rhythm & rhyme lacked -The Golden Section-The essence for Time’s balanced growth,And this is Time’s truth and solemn oath.Logic and emotion are Time’s key measuresNeeded to discover Time’s hidden treasures,Like Bach’s first-rate compositionsOr Mozart’s divine musical intuitions.Mozart genius haunted Salieri,I wish I were Antonio Salieri…At least Salieri crossed path with a genius.And Salieri tried to be Mozart like, bold grace and ingeniousIs it not the journey that counts? I was once told,Instead of stagnant dollar amounts mouldy and coldAmassed in my secret bank vault?That caused my spirit to die by default…And the thorn in my flesh etc… and suddenly Time,My Time stopped and ended my rhythm and rhyme.Would I be remembered after I am gone?“No!” Echoed the valley down below, “No one…And may God find mercy and honour your short poetic run,After you’re laid down beyond the light’s reach from the Sun.” Coming Soon!  I just got to school and all i see is the stares, looking at me like im differant, im not. I keep looking for you, for your smile, god and your body, i just want to lay next to you, i can feel your body.. inching its way on topp of me.. looking in my eyes, whispering "you're so sexy"  Where were you? Lies Publication Date: May 18th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-do548bec7c3ff45

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-alada-porter-where-i-039-m-left-to-die/

Alada Porter Where I'm Left To Die REC ROOM “Come on Mr. Larson, you’ll love it here, once you get used to it,” she said, her face hovering inches from mine so that I could see every blackhead on her nose, every wiry brown hair sprouting from her upper lip, and marvel at the mauve lipstick smeared across her yellow teeth. Looking at her fat, glistening face made me yearn for my youth, when nurses were beautiful and didn’t try to wear you down with bullshit. “Won’t you cheer up for me?” she asked after a long silence, as though she really believed in the power of such small words. I shook my head, and she sighed, taking her place behind me to wheel me into the Rec Room. Even with all the windows open it was humid. The fan chugged away, desperately trying to create some sort of air circulation, but the heat was an impenetrable force. Even the walls seemed to be suffering, the cherubs in the wallpaper wrinkled and stretched out, their pale faces turned yellowish brown under the constant pressure of heat and age, what had once been pretty boys now became fat old men. In some places the wallpaper had curled in on itself, revealing the bare wall beneath it, as though ashamed of what it had become. “Can someone turn on the damn air conditioning?” I said finally, wiping my forehead. “Oh, we don’t have any air conditioning here; it’s not good for the patients,” a nurse said, looking up from her game of chess with a man who clearly did not have the mental capacity to play chutes and ladders, let alone chess. If I was younger I would have gotten mad, but as it was I just shook my head and tried to find something pleasant to look at. If I didn’t think about it maybe I could convince myself it didn’t exist. A TV sat in the corner, looking older and weaker than any of the residents, with two giant dents on the top and side; dents which were no doubt the cause of the flickering picture quality and the permanent green and yellow tints to the images when they were viewable at all. But nobody else seemed to think it was an issue. Huddled there on the pale gray couch, they stared at the smiling green face of Johnny Carson with the careless open faces of dead fish, eyes glazed over with cataracts and mouths dripping with drool. On the other side of the room was the game area, if you could call a wooden table with a chess board on it and a long plastic green table with several sets of beat up looking checker boards a ‘game area’. On the long table a single old lady was playing checkers by herself, her brow furrowed in concentration as her shaking fingers tried to hold onto a piece for more than a millisecond before dropping it. Again and again she tried, and again and again she failed, the sound of the little plastic piece hitting the table unbearable somehow. Eventually she just let her hands fall to her sides, her back hunched over the table. The wooden chair shivered under the weight of her tears. Silently I lowered my face into my hands, the image of my children dropping me off here and never looking back flickering through my mind, and before I knew it I was sobbing. I could hear my cries echoing through the room but nobody looked, or came over, or said anything. What a place to die. Publication Date: June 7th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-mokomonko

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-krissykiller-the-breaking-of-the-innocent/

KrissyKiller the Breaking of the Innocent when nothing else will work... What is a bully? Let me tell you my definition. A bully is someone who constantly puts other people down because of how they look, talk, or who they hang out with. My name is Amaranda Lynn VonDanue. I am 16 years old and I have been bullied since I can remember. I am not one of the pretty popular girls; I am a band geek that gets good grades. I have braces, bright red hair, and my face is covered in freckles. I have one friend, her name is Becky. Becky is a short plump girl with zits on her face and large glasses. We grew up next door to each other and go to the same school. Both of us always find ourselves in the same situation. We find ourselves at either my house or hers crying on each other’s shoulders. Every day we get up and walk to school together. Usually we make it to school without incident. But there was one day near the school’s entrance a group of popular kids drove by us and threw eggs at us. One hit Becky right on her new school dress, and another hit me in my hair. We ran to my house because my mother was already at work, and spent the day crying. We never said one cruel word to any of the other kids who make fun of us. The very next day we went to school and were called into the principal’s office. He wanted to know why we hadn’t shown up to school, because we weren’t the type of kids who miss school. We told him what had happened but didn’t tell him the name of the kids, because honestly we didn’t know the kids names. He had an idea which group of kids we were talking about and he promised us disciplinary measures would be taken. Apparently the kids had no problem laughing when the principal questioned them about it. They were suspended from school for a week, and apparently their parents weren’t too happy about it. Great you say? WRONG! They turned their attention to getting back at us for getting them in so much trouble. After a week or so the kids that had thrown the eggs at us cornered us in the school’s parking lot. They screamed at us that we ruined their lives, because none of them were allowed to do anything. Becky and I apologized over and over and tried to tell them that we hadn’t told on them. We didn’t even know who they were, they were a grade ahead of us and we only passed them in the halls. They called us liars and circled around us. The girls stepped forward and started pushing us. We begged them to stop, but they wouldn’t hear a word of what we had to say. Finally the girls began pulling our hair and punching us. Then when they had beaten us to the ground they kicked us. When they were done they laughed and spit on us before they walked away. We each spent some time in the hospital. Becky had a broken nose and a cracked rib. I had a large cut on my forehead that needed stitches, a fractured wrist, and a black eye. Our parents tried to press charges, but no one would step up and tell what they saw. So there was not much else to be done. When our time at the hospital was up we returned home, we spent every day together. We didn’t want to go back to school, we begged and pleaded with our parents to let us be home schooled. But at the end we were scheduled to go back to school when we were fully healed. That was when Becky and I decided we wanted to end our lives together. We made a suicide pact, and decided that we would wait until the day before we were to return to school. We spent our last days spending time with our families and making sure they knew that we loved them. Our last day finally came. We lit candles, turned down the lights, and dressed in our best clothes. Then we each said our good byes and with tear streaked cheeks we slit our wrists. We held each other’s hands while the blood drained from our wrists. When we died it was how we had always done things. Together. We didn’t go to heaven, but then again we knew we wouldn’t. However to our surprise we didn’t go to hell. We found ourselves somewhere in-between. This is the story I whisper to all the kids that think it is fun to belittle others. I whisper this story to the kids that get pleasure from other’s pain. And I remind the kids that made fun of Becky and I that this is what bullying puts a person through. Its hell and I pray that no other person should feel the way we felt; that made us put an end to lives that had only just begun. Publication Date: August 6th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-krissykiller

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-nayy-delesa-rakia-rakelle/

Nayy Delesa Rakia && Rakelle Their Bond Is What Kept Them Alive [ 12 Years Earlier ) RaKelle and Rakia sat on the dirty mattress in the abandoned house alone , The place was dirty and infested with insects and sometimes rats . They sat alone in the dark crying , They cried for many different reasons . They were hungry , dirty , and alone . They didnt know where there mother was but that wasnt unusual , Their mother is a crackhead and she leaves them very often for weeks at a time . Every time she leaves she says " Stay here , Momma will be back " And each time she comes back she always has a different man with her ..... Rakelle is 7 yrs old but she is very grown up for her age being that she takes care of her 5 year old sister Rakia . As they sat in the dark place trying to fight their hunger Rakia begins to throw up . Rakelle holds her hair and rubs her back until she gets it all out . When she does , She wipes her mouth on her sleeve and lays her head in Rakelle 's lap . " Kell ? Is momma ever coming back ? " Rakia asked with sadness in her small voice . " I dont know Kia i really dont know " Rakelle answered her . " My stomach hurts Kell " " I know so does mine " Rakelle knew that they couldnt fight their hunger much longer and she had no clue when her mother was coming back so something had to be done . " Come on Kia " Rakelle said pulling her off the dirty mattress . " Where we going ? " " To get some food " " But Kell Momma said to never leave if she isnt with us " " Look Kia , Momma aint here now so im in charge And i said lets go " " Okay " Rakia grabbed Rakelles hand and they walked out of the abandoned house and to a corner store , Where RaKell tried stealing some chips for them but got caught and the police was called . They were taken into Child Protective Services . The social worker took them into two seperate rooms , Which they thought was only temporary , They never thought they would be split up for good . Chapter 1 : RaKia 's Troubled Ways . Rakia looked over herself in her full length mirror she had on some super short shorts and and black tank top and some black flip flops . She put her long black hair in a ponytail and headed to school . Rakia is now 17 and lost in a big world trying to find her way . She hangs with the wrong people and slacks in school . She has been living with her foster mother Diana since she was 5 years old .... So when she got to school she walked over to her friends Trisha and Dre . They were both smoking a blunt outside the school . " Hey Kia ! " Trisha said . " Hey yall " Rakia grabbed the blunt from Dre and took a few hits . " Damn Kia , Fuckin up the rotation " Dre said and laughed ." " Shut up Dre " Kia said . Dre was really attracted to Rakia but she wasnt into him like that because a part of her didnt want to be with his bad boy type because deep down she knew he was no good . " Aye yall wanna skip school ? " Dre asked . " Shit im down " RaKia said . " Well yall go by yall selves i have to go stay in school today the principal called my mom and yall know how she is " Trisha said . " Yeah we know , Well go to class we ah catch up with you later " " Okay bye yall " Trisha walked inside the building , And RaKia and Dre walked the opposite way to Dre 's house , When they got there they sat on the couch and chilled . " So Kia why do you be putting up this wall whenever i try to talk to you ? " Dre asked . " Because i dont like you like that " " Damn ma , You had me thinking me and you was gone be together " He said and laughed . " Ahaha shut up Dre " " Sike naw , But foreal whats up with you ? " " What you mean ? " " I mean like i been knowing you for over 3 years now , But i know nothing about you , You never talk about your life " " Thats because my life is complicated " " Well Kia everybody 's life aint all peaches and cherries " Rakia looked down and played with her necklace , Which was a 15k gold necklace that said Kell on it . " Who 's Kell ? " Dre asked . " My sister " " Sister ? I didnt know you had a sister " " Thats cuz i didnt ever tell you " " And why is that ? " " Becuase .. " " Cuz why ? " " We were split up when we were young and i never seen her after that i dont even know if she 's alive or safe " " Damn ma , You never ask you foster mom if she knows anything about your sister ? " " Yeah , But she alwyas beats around the bush or says she desnt know anything " " Oh thats fucked up Kia , Why 'd yall get split up ? " " Long story rather not talk about it " " Okay ma , But im sure your sister is somewhere safe " " Yeah i hope so " Rakia laid her head back on the couch and let the weed take over her mind , She didnt want to think about her past life it hurts too much . Chapter 2 : RaKelle 's Life . RaKelle sat on her queen sized bed and played with her necklace around her neck which said Kia on it . As she twirled the chain in her hands her cell phone rang . She looked at the screen and saw it was her so called boyfriend Anthony so she ignored the call . Anthony and RaKelle have been dating on and off for a few years , But Anthony is a cheater and a liar . He cheated on RaKelle a few times and she forgave him time after time because she felt in her heart that love was strong and it would keep them together through anything . But now she is getting tired of his bullshit and so she is thinking of calling it quits . Her phone rang again and this time it was her friend Paris . " Hey girl " Rakia said as she answered . " Heyy what you doing ? " Paris asked . " Nothing avoiding Aj 's no good ass " " Ahaha , Aye we need a night out " " Yeah we do ! " " Tonight its a party you down ? " " Yeahh bitchh you know it , They doing ID check ? Because you know we too young " " Ahaha i know people who know people so we good " " Okay cool " " K so ima pick you up at 10 " " Okay later " " Later " RaKelle got up off her bed and headed to the bathroom to take a shower , She is now 19 years old an just graduated high school and moved into her own house . She used to live with her foster parents but she was happy to move out because they never got along ..... After showering she put on a pink and gray leopard print tight short dress with some gray and pink shoes . She put her long black hair into some curls and put on some makeup , And was ready to go . As she was putting on her jewelry her cell rang it was Anthony she sighed and press talk . " Hello ? " She answwred . " Yo Kell wtf i been calling and texting you all day . Where you been ? " " I been minded my business something you should try " " Really Kell ? " " Yess really Aj ! Im tired of your bullshit , The cheating the lying all of it ! Im sick of it ! And so im going out to night with my bad bitches and we gone do us , And ima find a nigga thats worth my time unlike your broke sorry ass ! So dont call or text me no more cuz im through with your no good ass " CLICK !! RaKelle hung up on him and threw her phone in her purse it was time for her to live her life for her . Chapter 3 : You Need To Make Some Changes ! . RaKia opened the front door as quietly as she could . It was 3 am on a school night and she had been out all night . She tried to get in the house without waking up her foster mother Diana but she was unsuccessful . Diana was sitting on the couch waiting for her . RaKia rolled her eyes at the fact that she was in for another lecture . She took a seat on the love seat and waited for Diana to start yelling . " Where you been RaKia ? " Diana asked calmly . " Out with friends " " And by friends , You mean that no good crew you hang with ? " " Yes them " " Look RaKia im not going to yell because it seems like when i do yell you dont listen so ima tlk to you like an adult .... You need to change RaKia because this path you going down aint gone lead you no where but to jail or the grave . Honey you are so smart and intelligent but you make poor choices i want so much more for you but you gotta want it for yourself you got to want to change . You can be anything you want to be in this world but you choose to throw your life away , And let me tell you something the road you going down will only end in destruction . " As Diana spoke to her RaKia 's eyes filled with tears , She wanted to change she just didnt know how . She wanted to be better she didnt want to end up like her birth mother she wanted to be better than that because thats what RaKelle would have wanted . " Im sorry Diana " RaKia said through tears . " Baby dont tell me your sorry , Just show me you can turn your life around " " I will , Im gonna do better from now on . " " Good now go on to bed you got school tomorrow . " RaKia walked up to her room and laid in her bed , She reached under her pillow and pulled out the old ripped picture of her and RaKelle . " I miss you Kell " RaKia said out loud and kissed the picture . She cried her self to sleep like she did every night . But this night was different , She had a change of heart she wanted to change and she was determined to do just that . [ The Next Day ) Rakia got up and took a showered , After showering she went to her closet and instead of her usual short revealing clothes she decided on some tight levi skinnies a gray v neck tee and some matching flip flops . She through her har in a messy bun and grabbed her bag .... When she arrived to school she walked right passed Dre and Trisha . As of today those are her old friends she decided that those are the type of people who bring her down and she doesnt need that anymore . Rakia Ar'Mani DeLeon is going to change her life and live better and be better . Not just for her long lost sister but for herself as well . Chapter 4 : New Fish In The Sea . RaKelle and her bestfriend Paris walked around the mall , Not really shopping for clothes more like boy shopping . After RaKelle told Paris about her break up with Aj , Paris insisted that the 2 of them head to the mall in search for new guys . " Ughh P can we just leave ? Aint no boys here i want to see " RaKelle said . " No , Thats because we havent walked everywhere yet . Geez Kell lighten up " " I am lightened , Now can we go get some food im starving " " Okay " They walked over to the food court and decided to get some chinese food , After getting their food they sat down and ate . While eating Paris noticed that Rakelle was being unusually quiet and not hr normal up beat self . " Hey Kell what going on with you ? " " Nothing why'd you ask ? " " Dont say nothing because i've known you long enough to know when something is bothering you . So what is it ? Is it the break up with Aj ? " " No thats not it . I mean yeah i loved him and all but that break up was long over due " " Okay so what is it ? " " My sister , I miss her so much P i dont even know if she's safe if she's warm or harmed i dont know ... " She couldnt finish her sentence because she began to cry , Paris hated to see her like this and she knew there wasnt much she could do besides be there for her and console her . " Hey sshhh , Im sure she's fine and in a safe place and she's loved and healthy and i bet she misses you too " Paris said while rubbing her back . Paris knew her words werent enough but they must have helped a little because Rakelle stopped cryinr and cracked a small smile . " Thanks P you always know what to say " " No need to thank me thats what im here for , Now wipe your face because its 3 fine ass dudes coming our way " Rakelle looked back and saw 3 good looking dudes approaching their table . She quickly fixed her face and the guys walked over and intoduced themselves . " Hey how yall doing ? " One boy asked . " Good now that yall over here " Paris said and flashed her million dollar smile . " Aha thats good , Do yall mind if we sit with yall ? " " No not at all " They pulled up chairs and sat down . " Im Austin and these my boys Que and Dame " " Nice to meet yall im Paris " Rakelle couldnt keep her eyes off Austin she was imediately attracted to him . He was just hr type and had all the things she liked : Tattoos , Piercings , Grey eyes , Tall , Nice smile , Dimples , And just all around good looking . " And you are ? " Austin asked Rakelle . " Im Rakelle " " Thats a pretty name " " Thank you " Rakelle said and smiled . " But the reason we came over to talk to yall is bcause we want to invite yall to our party we throwing at Club X , We only inviting beautiful women and we want yall to come " Que said . " Oh really and whats the occasion ? " Paris asked . " Im turning 21 on saturday " Austin said . " Yup and we going hard for my boy all weekend , So yall gone slide through or what ? " Dame said . " Hmm I dont know it just depends on what we doing this weekend but we'll be sure to keep yall in mind " Paris said . " Okay cool , Well i hope to see you there " Austin said while lookin directly at RaKelle . She smiled and the 3 boys got up and walked away . " Okay we are most definitely going to that party " Paris exclaimed . " You damn right " RaKelle agreed and they high fived . Chapter 5 : Friends Like You Are 1 Of A Kind ! RaKia walked through the school afeteria with her lunch tray in hand , She was roaming the room for somewhere to sit . Usually she sat with Dre and Trisha , But now that she cut them out her life she really didnt have any friends . " Hey you can sit here if you like " RaKia looked over and seen Ryan offering her a seat , She lightly smiled and sat down across from him . " So how have you been ? " Ryan asked . " Umm not great but its getting better " RaKia answered . " Thats good " The 2 of them really didnt know what to say to each other so it was awkaward silence throug the whole lunch ... See heres the story between them two , They were really good friends during freshman and sophmore year . RaKia didnt care what any body thought about her hanging with the rich whiteboy Ryan and he didnt care what people thought about him hanging with her . They were inseperable until this year RaKia began hanging with Dre and Trisha and she started dissing Ryan and then she stopped being his friend completely , But he never treated her different he was always nice to her even when she wasnt so nice to him . And now that she thinks about it she feels horrible . " Look im sorry about everything " RaKia said . " Dont be its okay " He said . " No , Its not okay . I treated you horribly for no reason and i dont even know why it was just me being stupid and im so sorry . You were there for me when nobody else was and you didnt deserve to be treated that way and again im sorry " " I forgive you " He said and smiled . " You shouldnt , But im glad you do " RaKia said . " Cool " They ate and talked and they actually had a good conversation , It was like they never stopped being friends . Their friendship came natural and it wasnt forced . When lunch was over Ryan walked her to class like old times . " So since were back on good terms we should hang , I missed you Kia " " I missed you too Ryan , And yeah of course . I could actually use your help .. I have a Trig test and i need you to tutor me , Will you do it ? " " Of course , How about today after school ? " " Umm yeah sounds great , Do you mind if we do it at my house ? Im sort of not allowed to go anywhere becuase i missed curfew the other night " " Okay yeah thats cool , I'll meet up with you after school " " Okay great " " Later " " Later " Rakia went to class and Ryan did the same , RaKia was actually really glad she apologized to Ryan and that they were cool again , It was as if this big weight lifted off her chest ... ( After school ) RaKia met Ryan in the parking lot he was leaning on the hood of his 2011 all black Lambo . " Hey you ready ? " He asked . " Yeah " They hopped in the car and drove off . When they arrived at RaKia's the smell of food filled the house , They walked in the kitchen where Diana was cooking . She smiled when she saw Ryan , She was very fond of him . " Ryan , Hey honey ! " She said while hugging him . " Hey Mrs . D " " Its so nice to see you , How have you been ? " " I've been good how about you ? " " Oh im hanging in there , You staying for dinner ? " " Well i wasnt planning on it , But i'd love to " " Good " " Okay well we're going up to my room to study " RaKia butted in . " Okay " They went up to her room and made their selves comfortable and got right to studying . " You know sometimes i think .. How could someone like you be friends with someone like me ? " RaKia said . " I think that same exact thing " Ryan said . " Really why ? " " Because your smart funny and just an all around cool person " Him saying that made RaKia smile . " I dont deserve you " " Yes you do , You deserve nothing but good things . Your an amazing person and i just wish you could see that " " Thank you Ryan " " You dont have to thank me just speaking the truth " " No i do need to thank you . For always being there for me even when i wasnt there for you , Your a great frind and im lucky to have you " " Well your welcome , Now come on we got alot of work to do " RaKia smiled and got back to work , She was truly lucky to have Ryan as a friend . Publication Date: April 6th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-nayydoll

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sola-luna-i-am-you/

Sola Luna I am you and you are me To my friends and L.A. tutor Chapter 1: Grandmother... I will write more later. I'm just creating the book. I apologize if you actually wanted to read this book. m(>.<)m Text: I wrote this. I apologize if my book is similar to your's Images: Google images. All rights reserved. Publication Date: November 21st 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-sola.luna

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-cherry-c-life-death-lava-and-cut/

Cherry C. Life, Death, Lava, and CUT! Note From Jackie Chan? Dear Reader, For choosing to read this, you are quite one for a good adventure and happy endings, am I correct? But in here this very memory, the text will not be what you are hoping to see and imagine. To tell story of such a tragic event and a family of six, is quite a challenge, but something I am willing to try, in order to make me rich...but wait, I already am rich...but wait again, that makes me even richer! Well, anyone who just read that would be wondering, “Who is that selfish person, only caring about wealth and being rich?” Well I am no other than Jackie Chan. No, I am not the famous actor and master of martial arts, but the evil mastermind of a GIRL who lives in a poor village as a disguise. The filthy clothes of tribal villagers are such a disgrace! But with my desperation for money, I did the horrid task. Now, I will go back to talking about the family. Professor Alison was a loving average mother who was a geological scientist that studied mainly the features of the United States of America. She loves challenges that involve death or life situations and being able to tackle them and coming out alive and well. For those who didn’t know her, you would think that she was a rich supermodel who didn’t care about others. Her silky chestnut hair framed out her flawless face, her even bangs just out of the way of her aquamarine eyes, her designer wardrobe taking up five closets, and her effortless makeup, were all just part of her. Though a scientist, she still wanted to look her best. Her husband, Jack, on the other hand was scared of a lot of things: from heights, bugs, and even Chinese takeout, he was, yes, the complete opposite of the brave and beautiful Alison. He wasn’t the best looking, but was loyal and respectful, unlike the other men Alison would date. They would make her pay for dinners and taxis. They also slammed doors in her face! But Jack won her over with his manners and half-decent appearance. The young 28 year-old couple have four precious kids, Casey, Bob, Lucie, and Camille. Casey was an average teenager with a love of skateboarding, music, and the latest video game consoles. Camille, his twin, enjoyed music and art, using nature to incorporate into her natural talents. Bob was a little toddler, who was outgrowing most of his belongings, and the naming of “toddler” into “kid”. Lucie was the middle child, only at age eight, and loves basketball and skating, so she does both of them, at every chance she gets. The four kids were like the normal siblings: they didn’t exactly get along very well. The kids had one very important similarity, their pet dog. Mindy is a corgi puppy who loved to play with Bob and Lucie. (The little ones had lots of spare time and no or little homework.) Despite the family’s differences, they were a loving and caring bunch. And right now, you are going to enforce the power of the six, and my “helping” them in their situations. With honor, Jackie Chan (Not the actor and martial arts master! Get your facts straight!) Hawaii, Here We Come! “Hello? This is Alison and I have discovered a new island off the side of Kilauea,” the mom of four kids said to her boss into her iPhone 4. Being a scientist, she had all of the latest technology and uses them the best she can with tests and expeditions for her job. ”Yes, we all will be going to the island,” she replied to the other end of the phone. “And how many people are going, Miss?” the man on the other line was confirming the airline tickets for Professor Alison and her family: her husband, her four kids, and her loyal pet. “Yes, that will be 4 adult tickets, 2 kids tickets, and 1 pet carrier for our airplane trip to Kauai this Saturday at 8:00am, right?” she replied to the man. And right after did she realize that there was something to worry about on her project: Mt. Kilauea. The mountain was not just any mountain, but a shield volcano, that formed on top on a hot spot near the Hawaiian Islands. But with her plans already made and finalized, she and her family are going to take on whatever is going to happen, whether good or bad. “Please fasten your seat belts, are preparing to liftoff to the beautiful island of Kauai!” the pilot announced, preparing for liftoff from none other than the San Francisco International Airport. Mindy was in a pet carrier in with the luggage, while the rest of the family was on the plane. “I can’t wait!” one of the four kids, Bob, the youngest at only four years old, was bouncing up and down his airplane seat while looking out the small oval-shaped windows to see the alluring dusk of a San Franciscan night escape, the stars brighter than the sun in the day, the moon glowing faintly in comparison. The city buildings, with the artificial and eerie glow of the office building and shopping malls, were just like dead ghosts just floating there with no life or emotions left in them. The airplane then departed, and soon was in the sky, flying up above the moonlit clouds, but right below the universe above. Hours later, the turbulence woke up Camille, the 15 year-old twin of Casey, her brother. “OWWWW!” she screamed when she hit the seat in front of her on her head painfully. “Woah!” Lucie exclaimed, shocked by the shaking of the plane. “WAA!!!” Bob shrieked. But for his wailing, everyone was disturbed by. No one likes hearing cries of a little kid or baby awaken you when you just finally fell asleep after hours of trouble doing so. Casey remained asleep and just sat there with one of his Skullcandy earphones in an ear, and his neon green iPod Nano watch on his left wrist, the rest of the family just knew that Casey fell asleep to his favorite music. As the passengers each fell asleep, they all finally arrived safely to the Lihue Airport in Kauai. “Thank you for flying on Hawaiian Airlines. We hope you had a good flight experience,” the flight attendant announced into the speaker with a sweet and clear voice. The family then walked off the plane and into the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The family claimed their luggage and Mindy, then stepped into their rental car. It was a two year-old minivan that made a rumble noise every time the engine started. Ignoring the noise, Jack continued to drive to the Hyatt Hotel a couple 15 miles or so away from the Lihue Airport. The kids were all a little drowsy, but were all awake and amazed by the view on the road from Lihue to Hyatt. The majestic view of the tree tunnel and lush vegetation left Camille in awe, inspiring her for her next for-sure-to-be masterpiece. ”Perfect, the sunlight shines just through the tree tunnel and the light reflects off the dewdrops of the just showered leaves, creating several rainbows in each goblet of water,” she wrote down in her neat and flowing script into her most treasured orchid-colored velvet covered diary. Mindy just stuck her head out of the car window and left her tongue drooping down during the entire car ride. Arriving at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Resort, the family rested in the deluxe room, so happy to have a chance to sleep, until the next morning at 5:30 in the morning when an annoyance woke them up. “BRINGGGGG!” the annoying and ear-shrieking alarm clock rang for the family to eat breakfast and start their journey to the new island Professor Alison found. Casey and Lucille groaning, they unwillingly dragged their bodies out of bed and got ready for their busy day on Abamclaju Island. The island was named from the first letter of the family member’s names: A for Alison is repeated many times, B is for Bob, M is for Mindy, C is for Camille and Casey, L is for Lucie, and J is for Jack. After a large breakfast of a stuffed up omelet and orange juice, they headed out to the car and were almost ready to go. All the equipment was loaded into the car’s back trunk. Then Alison drove to the beach to rent a canoe. “That will be $20 for the canoe rental. But, if it is not returned by 5:00 tonight, you will have to pay a fee of $10 more per each hour late.” the clerk at the canoe rental shop warned Alison and Jack. The canoe was then loaded and put into the water. The billowing sea-green waves crashed onto the shore and swayed the canoe a little. As quick as lightning, the family was already at Abaclaju, right next to Mount Kilauea. Mindy was on the canoe, too, and was too excited to go for a swim at the island. Little do they know, that I, Jackie, am watching their every move on the island. Abamclaju “Kids, remember that we are next to an active volcano. Mount Kilauea may erupt when we are here, so if you smell something, hear something, or see something, come back here so we know you are safe,” Alison instructed to all of her four children. “Yes, mom!” Bob replied as he ran off to the waters to play flying disk with Mindy. Casey walked around to find some life on Abamclaju, while Lucie went up a hill to find some minerals to add to her collection. Camille pulled out her sketchbook and a 2B pencil and 5B pencil to start drawing the landscapes. A waterfall was rushing down from cliff of stones, while some frogs were on the side jumping into the pool of water below the fall. Some bent cattails and tulle were overgrown on the edges of the water, the sunlight glistening on the rim of the water. Bob made a hammock and slept in it, while Alison was testing the soil and air with chemicals. Everyone was just minding their own business when suddenly, “BOOM!” the volcano was oozing out an orange- yellow lava from the top, when suddenly another vent opened up from the top. The ground was rumbling! The side was bulging out and a vent broke out from the side. A 30 feet tall fountain of lava sprayed up into the sky! The temperature rose. The lava was everywhere! I looked over to the volcano again. It was glowing a reddish orange color, looking as if it were on fire. A stench of sulfur filled the air. YES! I knew it! The volcano is going to erupt on them! Alison, too bad! You are not getting the money for finding this island, I am! And there is nothing you can do about it, because you are going to die with your family. This is the perfect time to go capture some kids! I just grabbed Bob right before Mindy could see him get snatched. I had to put him in the canoe, as I had no other chance to put him anywhere. Oh no! He is crawling out of the canoe! I need another way to keep him in it! Wait, that’s it! I will untie the canoe from the docking post! “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Bob screamed while crying on the canoe as he just sitting there...she made a very bad choice. MWAH HAHAHAHA!!! “Boo!” I screamed into Camille’s face. She pulled the sketchbook slowly away from her face and suddenly.. .”AHHHH, OMG, who are you?” she screamed while grabbing her supplies and running as fast as she can. Running down a hill she came upon a cliff. “You’re trapped now!” I told her, but she kept backing up. “Watch out!” I warned her. But she didn’t listen to me and fell down the cliff. “No!” I cried down at her, she was one of the family that I didn’t want to die. After all, she was exactly who I wanted to be. Her good looks, her talent with music, she clothes, her family, basically everything! She looked like a younger version of her mom, except that Camille had blonde streaks on part of her bangs. “Help! Please!” Camille wailed, dangling from a thin and sleek tree branch that was stuck in between two of the stones making the waterfall. When Alison finally realized that the volcano was erupting, she sprinted to their meeting stop to find that only Lucie, Casey, and Jack was there! “Who is crying?” Casey asked, hearing a faint crying noise coming from the water. Everyone ran towards the noise until Casey heard another sound. “ARF! ARF!” Mindy barked trying to tell the family that Camille was down the cliff hanging. The two other siblings ran to Mindy’s barking, while Professor Alison and Jack ran to catch the canoe with Bob in it. Rescuing Bob was no problem; all there was to do was to swim to the canoe and pull it in. However, pulling Camille up was harder. “WOOF! WOOF! ARF! ARF!” Mindy’s barks were becoming closer and clearer. “Good job, Mindy,” Lucie praised Mindy, but quickly raced to Casey who was grabbing Camille right when the branch snapped. I was watching them, sort of, more on Casey...but that’s not important. Camille may die, and it would be Casey’s fault for letting go. But, of course, he would never do such a thing to anyone. Another rumble and shake hit the dirt ground. “Woah!” I tumbled out and panicked. “Huh? Who’s there?” Lucie screamed. Casey’s hand got sweaty. He looked tired and afraid. If he let go, he would lose a sister. Another noise was detected. It was Mindy growling at me. “SHH!” I shushed Mindy, but she ignored me and kept barking at me. “Lucie! NO! DON’T GO RIGHT NOW!” Casey yelled at Lucie when she ran to find Mindy. So, that little girl wants me to trap my favorite two siblings in the family? Ok! I’ll do it, and make Camille do my hair, and Casey make me food...and wait......I need to capture them first. “Well, Camille, I see that you aren’t doing so well down there,” I told Camille stepping down hard on Casey’s right arm, which was holding Camille’s hand so she won’t fall. Casey looked like he was in pain, which made plenty of sense knowing that my shoes had spikes on it. “Ugh..Can’t. Hold. On. Any. Longer. Camille. Don’t. Let. Me. Let. You. Go. Please.” Casey told her trying to not let go despite all the pain he felt. “Casey, don’t! Please, I won’t let go! Just don’t make me do it. You’re my brother; you just can’t let me die right now.” Camille wailed looking up into her brother’s suddenly unfamiliar face. “Camille, you’re wrong.”Casey cried down. One of his tears hit Camille’s head. “Of course you are, Casey. We’re twins!” Camille was confused but scared. “No, I’m not. I was an orphan. Mom and Dad took me in as a hostage...” Casey continued to cry and was then interrupted. “I don’t care! You are still my brother. I don’t want to never see you again.” she interrupted. “I don’t want you to die either!” he yelled. Then I kicked him. Just like that. I took a knife out. And threw it. The handle jabbed his spine and he fell to the ground. After all, he didn’t want to see Camille die. Now he doesn’t need to see at all. And just like that, Camille fell down into the bottomless pit of stone. Casey just laid looking lifeless on the ground. “Camille...”he whispered, as his life just flashed before his eyes. “I’m. Sorry.” he whispered. Almost to his death, Alison ran to him and couldn’t believe her mind. “Casey. No!!!! Camille. My angels!” Alison sobbed while trying to keep her oldest son alive. She performed a long unit of CPR. Everyone rowed to Kauai back from Abamcaju. “Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey? Please. Say something. Please.” Lucie cried on Casey’s hospital bed. His heart monitor showed a slow steady heart rate. “Beep........................., beep..........................., beep.............................,” the monitor beeped out a heartbeat. Suddenly, the beat picked up faster, and faster, and faster, until... “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,” the monitor beeped quickly. “CAMILLE!” Casey screamed out, bouncing out of his hospital bed and out the room. He bolted through the halls and into the emergency room. “No! This can’t be right!” he screamed after finding a middle-aged woman in a gurney being rushed into the emergency room. He was looking for Camille. Casey knew the truth, but was in the denial part of death admittance. Camille was indeed not there anymore. But that was only one of the few surprises the family finds... Happily Ever After? It has been years since the “Camille Incident”, but the whole family is almost through with their recovering. It has been especially hard for Casey, for whenever he walks past their old house, tears flood back and the incident flashes by again. During one of the trips to the shrine, a depressed movie director saw Alison, Jack, Casey, Lucie, Bob, and Mindy kneeling in front of the stone mournfully. The movie director couldn’t find actors and actresses for his new movie. “It’s them?” he wondered while staring at the family. The family of six and now five were featured on the news and all around the world, people wanted to know more about their loss and their life afterward. The movie director found exactly what he was looking for: people who could play roles of a volcano exploration. The family was now bankrupt, too. “Miss, are you Professor Alison?” he asked her after tapping her on the shoulder, “We are looking for actors and actresses in a movie production. Would you and your family mind to join us? You will be paid $1000 for every hour on the set. This applies per person.” “Well, the money offer is a great deal, but we would like to have a little more time to put the past behind us first.” Alison answered, carefully choosing her words. She was disappointed, but knew that her family would recover soon enough. Days later, when Professor Alison needed more money, she just called the director and confirmed the job. She had now other idea on how to raise money to support the family. Later, the family of five began their new life as movie stars. “Perfect acting! And...CUT! Beautiful... and that’s a wrap!” the director directed, happy to finish his newest masterpiece. The family was about to go viral!!! But there in the shadows I lurked, waiting for the moment to pounce...like a cat. “Why?” you may ask, but the answer is indeed, for the money. After all, its even more money than the stinking island anyways. So, if one day, you decide to get a job and earn loads of money, remember one thing: I’m watching you... THE END! Publication Date: April 5th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-cherryscript

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-kaylyn-gregory-love-murder/

Kaylyn Gregory Love Murder The characters are Jake, me, and Jacob its a love drama story What's the point Chapter 1: What's The Point   Growing up I always thought to myself whats the point in love. My parents always talked about it. At first it seemed like their marige was good untill my mom told my dad she didn't love him and wanted a devorse. When they first split I was broken its been a long hard jerny trying to fix myself. I was 5 when all this started I'm now 13. I have alot of friends that help me but sometimes it's really hard.  I like to think to myself what's the point in all this liveing a life that seems like you dead already. Most of my days I spend in my room on my phone texting friends. I've relized that life isn't easy just hard and you don't always get what you want. It seems like life will only get harder but that's ok because I know that there is some good to it.  Lets forget all the bull shit and move into what this story is about. Him Chapter 2: Him   I was only 9 when I first met him but I was 12 when we started dating. You're maybe wondering who the hell is this him guy. Well his name was Jacob. Ya ya I'll admit it I loved him. I was blinde and stupid. He was about 6 foot tall, he had black hair that use to cover the right side of his face until he cut it all off. He loved to play video games manly Call Of Duty. No one could ever beat him beside the time when I played with him but I think he let me win. When we started to date he broke up with me for a mounth. I was so depresed I even took a knife to my wrist. I never cut but I would wear a rubber band so I could snap it on my wrist. It gave me the same pain as if I were to cut.  We got back together after that one mouth of being apart. Something about him changed though he seemed different. At some points I felt like he was just messing with my emotions. We dated again for probably another 4 mounths or so I couldn't tell because it all went by so fast. I was blinded by the love but no matter what I still felt dead inside. Like we were still broken up even knowing we were dating. All my friends were telling me to breake up with him. I finaly did but when I did he told me that he was cheating. I put all the fucking puzzle peaces together and it all made fucking sence now. at that point I cut just once it didn't feel the dark hole that I felt. It didn't feel the empty voied that was inside me. So I went back to the rubber band thing. That one cut has hiled it didn't take long though.  The life I was now liveing was my death. I was able to move on though it felt better to move on and finde better people for me. Most of them wheren't right for me so I gave up I said "fuck this shit I'm done". Life wasn't getting any better for me what so ever. Yes I did have my friend but sometime it felt like I wasn't there. Like I was nothing like a dust of wind that meant nothing. Jacob and I still talked we were friends he kept telling me he was sorry. He would tell me everyday I still loved you I fucked up big time. He would ask if I would take him back. I told him to go fuck himself and that I moved on. He still trys to talk to me I wan't to be friend's but even than I feel like he would just fuck around with me. Like he did before when we were dating. I wanted to die but I didn't because even than I knew it would all get better for me in the end. This life was hard but I wasn't going to let it get any harder for me.  I was just a normal girl that loved to watch Netflix and YouTube. My favorite show's where The Walking Dead, American Horror Story and all animes and horror movies. Sometimes I get so bored I talk to myself about what I'm watching on tv. You probably think that I'm crazy but I'm really not I'm just alone in this life.  New Guy   Chapter 3: New Guy   Its been a while since me and Jacob broke up. Life has been getting better for me because I found someone way better than Jacob. Only bad thing is his name is Jake. Other than that I love him he makes me happy. Jake doesn't live close to me what so ever. Jacob was 16 so 4 years Jake on the other hand is 14 so not to much of an age difference. Jake is 6 foot, has blond hair, blue eyes, and a british accent. To me Jake is so cute and adorable. Okay know I'm getting out of control just thinking and talking about Jake. Now you maybe thinking that I'm stupid and carzy, but I'm not its just what my zodiac is. Now I have you wondering what my zodiac is my zodiac is a Pisces. For those of you who know what that means it means that I will be more than glad to talk all good things about my boyfriend and how badly I need him. It also means that I need to be protected and cared for. Kinda makes sence to me oh well Ireally don't care.  Now back to Jake. Jake asked me out a week after we stated talking and I said sure. Jake says I'm changing his life and making it better. We share alot in common but not to much. It's been a week since me and Jake stated dating and things are starting to look better for me. Jake and I have skyped everyday since we started to date. Until he got told on by his brother so now we can't skype. We can only talk on kikk like we always do when we'er done with skype. Everyday he sends a pic of himself and tells me how much he loves me. Ulike what Jacob would do. Everyday Jake talks to me and listens to me Jacob would never do that he would just ignore me.  Boring   Chapter 4: Boring    This is getting a little boring for me talking about things like my love life. You guys reading this story can't posibly be enjoying this story are you? if you have any ideas about what I should wright next or if I should continue this story  tell me in the comets below. TeeHee XD                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Publication Date: April 13th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-ph35bf26d19ce45

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-leah-grace-the-beast-inside/

Leah Grace The Beast Inside This book is dedicated to all of you. Love you ♥ Chapter 1 VOLIET'S P.O.V. Today, is not like any other day. I know this because I'm a demon. I'm not a normal human. I'm from hell or at least I was. I'm a supernatural creature formed into a human. Everyone at school likes me or loves me. I've tried to tell them i'm a demon but all they do is say "Yeah, What a joke". Then they laugh so I laugh with them. In the end I get laughed at no matter what.   I yelled to my mom "Are you driving me too school?". She yelled "No, Your brother is taking you to school sweet heart". My brother was wating for me like always. I walked down the stairs doing the happy/cheery look. Me, my little sister and my big brother headed out the door. We all got into the car. My brother put the keys in the car. Then he looked back to see if there was any cars or people coming. He pulled out of the driveway.  Text: Leah Images: Google Images Editing: Leah Translation: Bookrix All rights reserved. Publication Date: November 23rd 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-uf7f800f9a30545

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-anne-lynch-married-by-the-deal/

anne lynch Married By the Deal Part of the Dealing Game series I wanna dedicate this book to my mom I love her she is such an inspiration I would be nothing without her thank u mommy :) MARRIED BY THE DEAL   MARRIED BY THE DEAL By Anne Lynch       INTRODUCTION     I looked down at my daughter who lay asleep in my arms.I blinked several times to make the tears go away. “ We have some news regarding your daughter Mrs. Cohen. A group of doctors ran tests and we still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with your daughter’s development,” the nurse said. “ Can you do anything?” I asked tears falling down my cheeks. “ No she only has a few days left, I’m sorry,”My heart squeezed the more I thought about it was like a knife had pierced my heart. The nurse quietly left the room.   I squeezed my only daughter in my arms crying so hard.The hospital room door quietly opened.I looked up to see the most famous pediatrician, Dr.Callister. “ Doctor Callister you have to help me!” I yelled squeezing his arm.” I’ll do anything just say it and I’ll do it!” I sobbed.” Let me take her.I’ll see what I can do rerun the test and come back, but to save your daughter we need a deal,” “Anything just help her!” I begged.He calmly took the baby from my hands. 30 minutes later he came back with her.“Here you go healthy as ever,” he said.I was smiling so hard. My daughter was alive and well.Dr. Callister cleared his throat I looked up at him. “Now for our deal,” 16 YEARS LATER   “Umm Nicole… can you come here please?” My joined my mom in her room. “ What’s up?” I asked sitting down on the cotton bed. “ Well… how do I say this? You were born very weak than other newborns. You didn’t have as much strength as them. You were underweight and not breathing right.” I nodded my head. “There was only one doctor who could save you,and he said I had to do a deal to save you, and ……...that deal was you had to marry his son,” I jumped up from the bed. “ You have got to be kidding me!” I yelled. I stormed out of her room. “Honey I’m sorry it was the only way to save you!” “ I’d rather be dead then marry a total stranger I don’t even know!” I yelled. “ I wasn’t gonna let you go like that!” she screamed walking down the hall.   I went to my room to see a tall old guy in a suit , and short old lady in a black dress, and a young boy in khaki pants, sperrys, and a white polo shirt. My mouth was open wide. Cause the people in my room were my fiance, father in law,and mother in law. My mom met up with me in my door frame. “ Honey I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier,” I shook my head. My eyes were stinging cause I had tears wanting to fall.The young boy looked annoyed.   “ Nicole, I think you might know who we are,” the lady said. I nodded and smiled. “ We are very glad to have you in our family,” she said. “ For now call me Nancy,” she came up and hugged me. The guy in the suit was all smiles. Which I found to lighten the mood. “ I’m the doctor who saved you, and my have you grown Nicole!” I smiled.   “ Thank you,” I replied. “ Call me Charles,” he shook my hand. The boy looked at me glaring. I did too cause I wasn’t going to marry a total jerk at the altar. He had dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and he looked like he had come out of Sharp magazine and he looked so hot! He looked at me hard, glaring, got up and left. My mom spoke up, “ That’s Derrick your fiance,” I nodded calmly, but on the inside I knew wasn’t gonna like him.   “ Well Nicole the limo will be here to pick you up at 6:00 am to take you to the airport,” Charles told me. “ See you then dear,” Nancy said hugging me. After they left mom and I talked about what had happened when I was born.She had met Derrick five times. Twice when he was a kid and three times during a dinner. He didn’t sound so bad but the way he presented himself today he sounded like a different person. I cried because I realized I was leaving my mom.She comforted me and said she would visit even though Miami and Potomac were really far from each other.We ate dinner, went to the mall, and watched a movie together.Making me forget about tomorrow.         I woke up feeling refreshed. I looked around. I was on a plane. I was on a PLANE! Derrick was sitting across from me.Smirking. I was in my PJ’s. “ What am doing here!” I shouted. He laughed. “ Flying with me to your new home,” “How did I get on here?” I asked. “ I carried you to the limo and onto the plane…..bridal style,” I laughed a phony laugh. “ Well after yesterday I don’t think I want to marry a ignorant, stupid,ass, bratty, jerk like you,” I said. He just smiled. “ None taken, I was having a bad day,” I smiled slightly. “ So let’s get to know each other, I’m Derrick. I am very popular, I am the football captain, my favorite color is blue,I love all animals, and I live for Chipotle,” I laughed and he did to. “I’m Nicole I love purple, Starbucks,pandas,electronics,I am a soccer player and yeah, that’s me,”   He looked interested in my life which made me laugh again. “Well you should go change, flight is almost over and we are getting breakfast in the town,” I got up he handed me a bag of clothes. I accepted and walked to the bathroom. I showered, brushed my teeth, did my hair, applied make up, and got dressed I wore a white lace sweater, ripped blue shorts, sandles , my Michael Kors bag, and hoop earrings. I stepped out. The plane had landed and I didn’t even notice.The I thought about Derrick he might have been with a bunch of girls and is using me. I warned myself.   Derrick and I went to place in D.C. called the Corner Bakery. I got a coffee and muffin.Derrick got a latte and croissant. It was good. We did some sightseeing at the White House, Jefferson Memorial, African American History Museum,and the Washington Monument. We went shopping.Derrick had given me a diamond ring which I gladly accepted   We got back in the car at 5. “ Did my dad tell you about the wolf pack meeting tonight,” “ What! No!” He looked shocked. “Ok so my family and I are werewolves, tonight is a full moon and we hunt it’s a ritual we also look for our mates,” I was now the one shocked and angry cause werewolves weren’t real. “ You liar! You expect me to believe a lie like that! You know I was right all along you a jerk a….. Bastard.. You expect every girl to believe what you say!” The limo had stooped.   I opened the door and ran tears burning my eyes. He had lied to me! That sneak. Derrick ran behind me calling out my name. I ran faster than I ever did in my life.I threw the ring to the ground. I suddenly found myself in the woods,in the deep,dark,woods. I stopped. I was panting, hard.I suddenly heard voice. I turned around to see who was there. I then saw quick dark shadows. Then a tall, pale, hot figure with sharp teeth was in front of me. “ Well,well,well looks like we have a small scared human here,” “ Leave me alone jerk,” I shouted. “ I just want something,” he had grabbed my arm.I slapped him. When he got up he looked and I mean really angry.I felt him grab my neck choking me. “ You little deadbeet girl,” He slammed me into and opposite tree. At that point my head was bleeding a lot. “ time to finish you off,”I saw someone take out the person trying to kill me and then everything went black   I woke up on a hospital bed.I tried to look around turning my head. It really hurt. I decided to lie back down. I managed to take a look though.I saw the curtain light blue ones, two chairs,a beepy thing machine,on my arm was a needle in my veins that connected to a machine, a glass of water, get well cards,balloon,flowers and a box of chocolate. Then somebody walked in.   It was Dr.Callister. “Well hello Nicole! Good to see you up,” I smiled. “ What happened to me?” I asked, curiously. “ You were strangled,and you had a concussion and your head was bleeding a lot,” he said sitting down with a clipboard in his hands. “Will I get to come back to your place?” “Yes you are leaving in 30 minutes with Mrs.Callister, she’ll take you out to eat, shop, meet someone new,” I thought about it. and Mrs Callister and I really didn’t have much of a relationship, but she seemed nice really nice.   I nodded. A nurse came into my room helping me walk cause I had been in the hospital for two whole months. I showered, brushed my teeth, and dressed. I wore nice blue jeans,sandals, and a little loose green shirt. I looked fine. Really me. When I came out of the bathroom Mrs.Callister was there. She hugged me. I hugged back. “ Sweetie I’m glad you are all right,” I smiled brightly. “ Well I hope you are ready for today cause we are going to have fun,” Then Dr.Callister re- entered the room. He look sternly at his wife. “ Did you tell her?” he asked. “ I was getting there,” I was really confused.   Then he faced me all serious like. “ Nicole we need to tell you about the whole incident,” we all took seats. “ Nicole you’re a werewolf,” she said. I opened my mouth. Wide!That’s what Derrick had told me that before I left the car running. I still wasn’t sold. “ Nicole ummm the person you got attacked by was a vampire,” That’s why he looked pale and had sharp teeth! “And we can read other wolves minds,” said Dr. Callister smiling. “ Whoa! So you can know what I’m saying anytime?!” I asked shocked I stood up suddenly from my chair. “ Yes, but don’t worry only when you don’t lock your ,” Mrs. Callister replied.   “ I also gave you the power pills when you were young at birth, so you have the strength of a werewolf,” Dr.Callister said . My jaw dropped. I was shocked,curious,a little bit mad,and thankful. Mrs. Callister put her hand on my leg,gently. “ You should’ve know before this. Take these pills they are the wolf strength,” I took the tablet of eight white pills.We talked a little bit more. Then Dr.Callister had to treat another patient,so Mrs.Callister and I left. I thought about me being a werewolf,me being wrong about the werewolf thing,me apologizing to Derrick. Derrick!       We were in the limo, I had sooooo many questions about the werewolf thing, so I asked Nancy; Mrs. Callister. “ Mrs. Callister how will I turn to werewolf form?” She looked intrigued. “ Well… you’ll feel a tiny pinch than hair will grow all over you, your body will change its form, and your muscles will tense,” “ Ok, I guess it’s not all bad,” I shrugged smiling. She beamed at me. The limo stopped. We were in front of store called ZARA. It looked like where Kim Kardashian would shop. We entered the store; music blasted on the speakers. Clerks wore black attire and looked preppy,chic,and sophisticated all in one look. “ Thalia dear I hope you have in new trends, and attire,” said Nancy. A lady with a tight bun, black sweater,black pants, and black heels appeared.She and Nancy air kissed. “ Hello Nancy.Who is this you have with you today?” She spoke with a thick French accent. “ My son’s fiance,” “ Hello darling. Big day coming up. Yes?” I nodded and smiled. “ Well darling let’s shop till we drop!” she said.   I found a inter-galatic dress,a pink cheetah scarf,a flower dress,knee velvet boots, black sweater rose gold long dress,cream color Uggs,a gray LA shirt,patriotic shorts,ankle boots,a black ‘n’ white romper,a bomber, platform sneakers, a cute sundress, Marvel’s super hero shirt,a DC legends Harley Quinn tights,a cute beach hat,mom jeans, and cat earrings. “ Honey please help me pick out clothes I’m a wreck,” Nancy laughed. “ Well first you do have looks very good ones so your an empire/rebel in fashion,” I beamed. Nancy laughed. I looked around on a woman’s rack and found a deep blue dress. “ Try this on,” I held it up to her. “ I will never ever ever wear something like that,” she said shocked. I giggled.   For a mother-in-law she really wasn’t that bad. I begged,” For me?” I said giving a puppy dog face. She snatched the dress from me glared smiling and went to the dressing room. Me on the other hand got some sunglasses,a teal skirt,polka-dot wallet,a flannel pollo,and a cute white dress that looked like formal shirt but wasn’t. I looked towards Nancy’s dressing room and saw her looking amazing in the dress. “ You have to get it!” I cried. “ I don’t know I think it shows too much,” she said blushing. “ No you look like a model that came to life out of a magizzenne ,” “ I’ll get it. I helped Nancy to get a blouse, jumpsuit, and handbag. Me? I got three handbags. We left the mall feeling like celebs. “ So where to next?” I asked very curious. “We’ll let’s stop by Olive Garden for lunch and go to DASH and maybe Bvlgari,” “ Sounds like fun...mom” We both were now smiling.     Lunch was great I had ordered pasta and meatballs Nancy ordered the chicken alfredo. At Dash I got a very deep blue jewel necklace like the one from the movie “Titanic”,a diamond ring,diamond earrings,and a diamond choker. At Bvlgari sunglasses,make up,purse,and a perfume. Nancy might have spended 3,000 dollars already. We were now in the limo heading to the airport to pick up a surprise guest.   “ Nancy, thank you so much for today really thank you so much,” She smiled. “ Your welcome sweetheart,” the limo stopped. “ Ok now Nicole you are going to love our surprise guests,” I was caught off guard Charles had me told it was only one guest. At that moment the door was opened and a slim girl, with curly brown hair,a floral dress,and heels came and a tall guy with dirty blond hair,silver eyes,blue pollo ,and cream pants. He looked just like Derrick.   They smiled and approached Nancy. “ Hello Karen and Logan! So good to see you guys. How was Milan?” She hugged and kissed them. “ It was fantastic! The food,resort,people,clothes,art,and history was amazing mother.” said the guy with the silver eyes. “ It was enjoyable and when the trip was over I was so sad to leave,” said the girl. I stood there like a complete stranger. Nancy must have noticed cause then she then introduced me. “Logan,Karen I want you to meet Nicole. Derrick’s fiance,” “ Nicole this Karen and Logan. Karen is Logan’s wife also Logan is your brother-in-law,” I smiled and nodded. “ Hi nice to meet you,” I said. “ Hey Nicole,” he said.   “Hi Nicole,” Karen commented. Nancy beamed. “Nicole you will have 1 room with Karen and 1 with Derrick. So you can know Karen and know Derrick at the same time.” Karen smiled at me. She looked a little bit older than me which I didn’t mind. She seemed nice,intelligent,and pretty,too. I looked at the sky it was pink,red,orange,blue,and purple.Sundown. “ Well you three it’s time we head on back.” We all piled into the limo.   Karen and I struck a conversation . We both liked the color purple,lived for our favorite singers ,were Hasley and the Chainsmokers, we prefered horror movies over comedy, kit kats were amazing,drawing anime, pasta is delicious,doing Diys, gymnastics,cooking, and puppies. Logan was really sweet. He said our conversation was boring and he’d rather jump off a cliff.Karen slugged him in the arm. I just laughed.   I forgot all about Derrick when we reached the house. He was in the backyard with his friends. Two girls and three boys. The air smelt like something was burning. A tent was set up with chairs,lights,a table,food,drink,and water guns. “ Oh I forgot to tell you. We are having a barbecue. The butler will put your objects in your rooms. Go have fun!” Logan took Karen’s hand. They were a perfect couple. I wish Derrick and I were like that.We walked our way over there.   Karen was all smiles. “ Wanna sit with me,Mia,and Jackie?” “ Who are they?” “My best friends, of course.” “They are really sweet and caring. You’ll like them.” “ Ok I’ll sit with you guys.” We both beamed. I was super nervous. When Derrick saw me walking towards the tent he just looked at me in “I don’t know you ,”look. I just got so angry I steamed up.I walked faster.   One girl had on a green jumpsuit and leather jacket.Another was wearing ripped up shorts and yellow blouse without sleeves.Karen introduced me. “ Hi chicas!” They smiled and squealed. “ Girls I want to introduce Nicole. My future sister in-law. She’s super nice.” I smiled. That’s Mia,” I shook the girl’s hand in the yellow blouse. She had blonde hair which was in a high ponytail. “ And that’s Jackie. The girl with the leather jacket had red hair. Mia said, “ OMG your so lucky to be marrying Derrick.He’s a sweet guy.” “ Mia! Back off her man. We need to respect that.”said Jackie.I laughed and so did Karen.I mumbled so they wouldn’t hear “ Not that lucky.”   Kabobs, salad, soda,and cheesecake were amazing.I learned Jackie was a vegetarian and Mia was allergic to cats,dogs,hamsters,and bunnies.We were hanging in the tent which was more of a cabana.Then Derrick appeared in front of us. He had on a pink dress shirt and khaki pants. “ Hi girls! Is it ok if I borrow Nicole for 1 second?” I rolled my eyes. “ Sure,” said Karen. I looked at her like she was crazy. I had already told them about the whole issue. I sighed really loud. I only did it because I didn’t want to make a scene. We walked past the garden,patio,farm,and pool. We came to the vineyard. His place was HUGE! “Sooo… you feeling better?” I scowled. “ Why would you care?” He had a look of sadness in his eyes. “ Cause when that vampire took you down I thought you were gone,” I looked up at him.   “Thank you for saving me, and I’m sorry for acting like a twit,” I whispered. He smiled crookedly. “I’m sorry for not caring and coming sooner to the hospital.” We heard screams in the distance. “ They are playing with the water guns wanna go join them?” “Sure.” I answered. “Oh Nicole,” I looked at his hand. The ring! He kneeled on one knee like he was proposing. I was smiling. I took the ring and we walked our way back to the group. By that time a lot more people had showed up.   I sided with Karen Mia and Xavier.Derrick’s friend.Each team had 10 water guns.So what if was childish.Our team won.Derrick picked me up and swing me over his shoulder.I begged for release he gave it to me we both were laughing.Then Nancy called everyone to the tent.There must have been over 80 people. Karen,Mia,and Jackie grabbed my hand. “ OMG this is it! Wolfpack meeting.And Chris is here!” said Jackie.   “ Who’s Chris Jackie? Is he your boo boo bear?” I smiled acting romantic and gushy. She pushed me. “ He is. He and Jackie have know each other since they were kids. They fight all the time.” said Mia “ I hate him! He’s rude annoying a pig, snobby,and cold! You just don’t want to meet him, trust me.” I laughed. *glass clinking* “May I have your attention?” I want to thank you all for coming tonight. This is a very special night for some of you the first full moon hunt other you have done this many times. I want to give a toast to our tribe and for the long long long centuries we have to live. May we hunt best and live long.” said Charles. “ We have 20 seconds till transformation I would like the new wolves to go on one side and major wolves on the other.” I walked to where the rookies were. They looked really scared. I couldn’t blame them I was anxious myself.   “ Aroooo ar ar aroooo,” the kids around me looked really really worried.Their eyes turned either gold bronze or silver.I looked out at Derrick.He was fledging.Soon I fledged to.     I looked down at myself. I had gray fur it tingled,but I didn’t care. I saw the other wolves howling,chasing after their tails, leaping, and running into the forest. Soon every wolf was running into the forest.I attained a really high speed,but the other wolves ran really fast to. I decided to run another way. Being elusive I ran from the group. The trees grew taller with leaves and twigs on the ground. The wind was really cold, but thanks to the fur I kept tepid. I heard noise and then a crack behind me. I whipped around. I saw a kid my age in ripped blue jeans and a gray shirt. He had brown hair and a dark sun kissed skin. At that point I was so shaken my wolf form disappeared and was on my knees in my sport bra shorts. He looked at me. I stood up. I could tell I looked bad. “ You have sticks in your hair.” “ I know” I replied. He walked towards me and pulled out a muddy stick. “ I’m Justin.” “I’m Mia.” “ So you’re a wolf. I nodded. “ I’m a vampire.” My mouth was a huge o. “ Your bastard friends put me in the hospital.” I looked at him with fierce eyes. “ It’s not my fault they did that!” “ Well you’re a vampire I can’t trust you!” “Don’t judge a book by its cover Mia.” He smirked. “Well this is a free country…. So let me judge.” “Ok rebel.” He smiled. I felt weird inside. “ You need clothes.” My cheeks were sooo red.I looked down at my body.   Thank God I was a soccer player.Need to stay fit. “Come with me,”he said I followed. “Here is my shirt and some jeans.” I put on his clothes. They smelled of Pine Sol. I liked it. “ Your welcome Mia.” “Thanks.” “So do you and your people have like a village for just you beings or do you live in public undercover?” I asked. He smiled, “We live in a town square.It’s spread out though, lots of trees and waterfalls. It sounds depressing, I know.” I laughed no it seems pretty cool.” The sun started to rise.It brought red,pink, purple. “ You can see it sometime, till the next full moon.”I smiled. “ See you later,” I said as he started to run. His running was swift,fast,and graceful. It started slow then fast.     I walked back to the house. Which was a long walk. About 56 minutes. When i came through the back door Derrick, Nancy,Karen, and Logan were eating breakfast. “ Nicole, where have you been?” “I ran into the woods and then the sun came up and I decided to walk back.” Nancy laughed, “ I was like you leaving the pack and sprinting off.” I smiled slightly. “ Do you want breakfast?”Karen asked. “ I’m fine, just a muffin.” I grabbed a banana muffin. “ I need to sleep,” “ Oh ok well let Derrick show you your room,” said Nancy. Derrick was wearing a blue shirt and matching blue shorts for pj’s. I didn’t notice the place. Chandeliers on the ceiling, maroon carpeting, and many famous old paintings. “ Nice place,” “ Thanks don’t forget it’s yours to.” He smiled. Even with his messy hair he was cute. “ This is your place,” The room had huge windows giving a view of the place, the walls were blue navy, there was a chandelier overhead, the bed had Egyptian cotton. I had a huge walk in closet, the bathroom had a shower,jacuzzi, closet, in front of the the bed was a glass screen there was fish behind it,there was alot to the room.A LOT.   “ You like it?” “Love it,” He wrapped his arms around my waist. “Mmmmmhhhh,” I smiled. We looked at each other.He kissed me pasionately i did to. “So you finally warm up to me,” he smirked. I rolled my eyes in jest. “ Do you want marry me or not?” I joked He smiled . “ Well have a nice sleep Sleeping Beauty,” he walked out of the room.I decided to have a look around my room. Entering my huge closet, with stairs! I had all these designer clothes. Kate and Spade, Hollister, Ugg,Gucci,Adidas,Louis Vuitton,Chanel, Versace,Boss, Tommy Hilfiger,Nike,Zara, Levi’s,Converse, Nine West,and Prada. These people were REALLY RICH. I decided to take a bath. There was granite walls. A huge bowl in the center which was the bathtub,there was a glass shower with such elegance,a tv, candles,2 sinks, a fireplace, and a huge view of the yard. The bathroom smelled of roses. I couldn’t believe this enourmos place.   I then remembered to text Kylie. I never texted her! I pulled out my Iphone 8in a flash and texted her   KYLIE :)   Me: hey boo K:OMG K: why haven’t u answered my call or txts Me: sry but some crazy and looney stuff happened K: well u better talk Me: kylie i'm a werewolf K: lol lol lmao Me: i’m serious!! :I K: give me proof me:( image of the pills, closet, room, and derrick) K: OMG UR NOT PULLING MY LEG Me: told ya K: wait so are you gonna visit have you called her is she coming to The wedding???? Me: idk i have to call her   I dialed my mom’s number M; hello Me; hi mom M; hey sweetie how is it Me; awesome M; great i am glad you are having a good time Me; mom i miss you M; (sniff) i miss you to baby Me; im gonna buy you a plane ticket to come M; honey i have so much work and to take care bills the house and mr. num nums Me;laugh i love his name anyway bet your realtor friends are having a lot of clients M; yes so many anyway sweetie i gotta go i love you Me; love ya mom bye   I was gonna text back Kylie when Nancy ran into the room, screaming “ Your late!” “ For what!” “ BOARDING SCHOOL AT PREP VALLEY,’MAIDS!” 8 young ladies in knee length black dresses,and white collared buttoned down shirt. They all looked pretty tired.I couldn’t blame them. “ Ok ladies 3 pack her bags 1 set out her uniforms and the rest of the 4 go clean her up.” Next I was in the big bowl. “ Hi Im Patrice.” said the lady giving out directions. She had black hair pulled into a french braid and she had crystal blue eyes. ‘ That’s Molly, Rose,and Jillian.” “ She has soft delicate skin.” Said Jillian. ‘ Sweetie what color for your fingernails?” “ Burgundy please” “ Thank you Rose.” She smiled at me.I liked these maids. “ Her bags are packed!” Make her breakfast and get her schoolbooks!” hollered Patrice. They poured lavender body wash on me, shampooed my hair and gave me a facial. “Will it be like this everyday?”   Molly laughed “ Heavens no!” “ No painting your nails everyday.” “ Everything else is everyday.” she giggled. And I laughed. They dried me off and blow dried my hair, applied makeup and perfume to me, they straightened my hair in 5 minutes. They were fast. “ We did everything just grab your versace bag 2 suitcases backpack and put on your uniform and heels.” Molly panted. She left the room.My uniform had a red jacket, red and black plaid skirt,white blouse,red and black plaid tie, black heels,and white knee high socks. I looked in the mirror.I was more than Nicole I was pretty. “NICOLE!” “ coming” I grabbed my bags and raced downstairs. Derrick was waiting for me with his suitcases and car keys. I walked towards him. He pulled me towards his chest and planted a kiss on top of my forehead.   “ You look beautiful.” “Thank you.” i smiled. “Oh my goodness you two look beautiful.”Nancy had on a white collared blouse, black pants, and black heels. “ Mom we need to go,” complained Derrick. “ One picture,” A photographer had a huge flashy black camera. “ Thank you Pierre,” “Okay go to school,” “ See you in March.” Derrick and I walked to the limo. Logan and Karen were in the car as well. A butler took our bags and put them in the trunk. The drive wasn’t to our school it was to our private airplane.   “ Hello Shelia,” said Logan. I laughed. “ You name your private jets?” asked Karen giggling. “ Oh yes that’s how rich we act.” said Derrick I came to Karen’s side and said and douchey.” Karen laughed. Karen and I sat next to each other. “ I’m not ready.” ‘Of course you are,” “ no i’m not new school,marriage, BOARDING SCHOOL,werewolf,! Karen how are you so chill about this?” “ Well Logan and I have 50/50 percent in our love.” See if you and Derrick’s love is 40/60 60 on your part it won’t work.” I nodded. A lady appeared in a blue navy airline outfit. “ Hi ladies would you like to eat something?” “ “Yes please 2 plates of cinnamon pancakes, a plate of sausage and scrambled eggs, and can we get two cups of orange juice? Thank you.” I said . The lady nodded and walked away. “ Hungry much?” Karen laughed. “ Hell yeah that muffin wasn’t enough.” “Your a fat ass pig,” We both laughed. The food came. The cinnamon pancakes were sooo good and the sausage. The eggs were shitty. But I managed to swallow. As I finished my juice Logan appeared. “ Hey plane is gonna land soon.” “wait logan where is our school?” “ It’s in North Carolina. Prep Valley, look at the brochure”   I looked at the brochure, the school had horseback riding,swimming,tennis,hockey,ballet,football, canoeing, and soccer. They had a cafe in the lunchroom. They even had a library which is tech based with charge pod,ipads,macbooks , and get this returning book drones. The dorms had 1 bathroom, a kitchen,and 2 seperate rooms with a closet. We had a curfew classes start at 7:30 and school ends at 3 from there after school clubs run from 3;15 to 4; and the rest of the hour from 4 to 10 is all our freetime. We get 3 meals which are provided by the cook. And the basketball court library and cafe are always open.     The plane landed after a while. Which followed by another limo ride this one was longer. “You nervous?” Derrick asked. “How could I not be!?” i laughed. “ Well I am not gonna be with you in the dorm, some girl named Kylie.” I thought for a minute. My Kylie. I decided to call her   K: hey bestie hows hunky werewolf guy Me: fine lol Me: hey umm what school do you go to now K:look out your window Me: wha…   I looked out my window and saw Kylie in the prep valley uniform. I jumped out the limo feeling ecstatic “ KYLIE!!!” “NICOLE!” we hugged each other laughing. “ Why didn’t you tell me that you were going to prep valley?” “ you never asked” i laughed. Derrick appeared next to us. “ Surprise!” I beamed. “ Guess what we have 4 classes together and P.E and I.C.T and Sat prep.” “ They have all that?” “ This is Prep Valley! A school for white snobby rich kids they have everything.” “ Heard that,” Logan commented.   Kylie and I giggled. I intorduced Karen to Kylie and they hit it off. Derrick came up behind and lifted me off the ground.Acting like the hulk. "There's a party tonight at our dorm, you should come. I'll let you and Kylie in just bring bathing suits and snacks or drinks." He kisse  my cheek and walked away. " later babe," I called after him. He just winked. ( This boyyyyy :) )  " Cmon nic we are gonna miss orientation! HURRY YOUR ASS UP!" Kylie ran to the main building i just followed after her. The main building was HUGE! They had paintings of the co founders on the    Publication Date: November 5th 2018 https://www.bookrix.com/-yr2b882a1994c85

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-kaylyn-gregory-monsters-die/

Kaylyn Gregory Monsters Die Will the girl find the one her mom was talking about or will she suffer from the pain her dad causes? The Start Chapter 1: The Start          I was very young child when something snaped in me. Growing up I was an only child because my dad killed my mom and got away with it when I was only 4 years old. My fater was an very abusive father I don't know how he got away with all the bad crimes he did but he managed. Sometimes I even wonder how my mom loved him enough to marry and have a kid with him. My mom was asweet caring woman if she was still alive she would have taken me fare away from him to find a better father/husband. I only know this because thats what their last fight was about that was before my dad killed her.  I remember exactly every word and every little sound even the weather outside what I was wear and whet my looked like after it happen. All she could do was stand tall and tell him "She means the world to me and I will die for her safty I won't let you hurt her as long as I live. I packed her things with mine and I'm leaving tonight!" Thats when he pulled the knife holding it to her neck she didn't yell or fight back at all she just stude there. I fell to my knees in front of her and began to cry my father yeled saying "Shut up you little bitch or your next!" I stoped yelling and cring but tears still rolled down my check. He slit her neck and she fell to the floor. I cwaled over and grabed her holding her in my arms. Last thing she said to me was "stay strong my wonderful daughter you are pretty and someday you will find someone that will love you enough to take you away from this awful man." Thats when she died in my arms her body ran cold as she bled out. Thats when my dad pulled me away from her. he put her dead body in a garbage he tied it off and draged it to the garage putting her in the back. I got in the back to hold her in my arms as we drove deep into the woods. I watched as my dad baried her. That night he sat me down giving me a long lecture on how I could never tell anyone. A week later he started leving me home alone as he went out and got drunk he would come back with one or two girls a night. I could hear them through the walls as I tried to sleep. I would go to school and when I came back he would asked me if I said anything to anyone. When I did't answer because I was to scared to say a word he would pick me up by the collar of my shirt and shake me until I told him and after I told him he would drop me and say "Good you better not tell anyone or I will kill you like I did your pathetic mother." I would run to the corner of my room. I would pull my knees up holding them as I bary my face and would cry quitly.  I was never allowed to have any friends growing up. I never saw any of my family because my dad told them that we moved to Japan. I would call them sometimes without saying anything about it to my dad. I tried to stay quiet but my dad would find. when he found out he would come in and when he did I would yelled hoping my famliy on the phone would do something. All they did was call back so my dad would changed the number for every phone in thte house.        Life Chapter 2: Life         At school I would be known as the quit emo girl. People would pick on me and I would tell my dad hoping he would do soemthing but he never did he would just yell at me saying "Stop being a lttle pussy either beat them up or don't say anything!" When I was 14 and going into highschool I saw a group of emo kids. They tried talking to me but I didn't talk back. Until the day they helped me with a group of popular kids that messed with me. When they did one of the boys in the emo group picked me up and ran. When he stoped running he put me down thats when I yelled at him saying "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DON'T EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!" When he caught his breth he said "Join our group you will fit in with us and we will protect you from anyone that messes with you because we stick together like a pack of wolves. Also I'm sorry for running off with you like that it was apart of our plan." I stod quit thinking about it and the next thing that came out of my mouth was "If I join will you be able to protect me from my dad?" He looked at me the look he gave me was a puzzled look that was when he said "What do you mean?"  I said "Never mind forget I said anything." I tried to walk away but he grabed my arm and said "Yes we can but tell me why do we need to protect you from your dad shouldn't your mom do that?" I had a hard time trying to say what was on my mind but it finaly came out as "You have to promise not to tell anyone about this but my dad killed my mom when I was 4 and he told my whole family that we moved to Japan. He abuses me everyday for no reason he's a monster!" He huged me tightly as I began to tear up and he told me "I promise not to tell anyone and I promise I will do everything I can to protect you from him." The other emo kids ran up and when they came to a stop the first thing out of their mouths was "Did she agree to join?" He looked down at me and I looked back up at him saying "Yes I agree to join and be part of your pack." He stoped huging me as he said "My name is Jhonny and these are the emo kids that make up our pack" He pointed to a girl with black and pink hair and a septum saying "This is Stacy." He pointed to a boy with spiky blue and black hair and snake bits saying "This is James." than he pointed to two more boys one with white hair and the other with black saying "these are the twins the one with black hair is Liam and the one with white hair is Bran. Whats your name?" I looked at Jhonny "My name is Kaylyn it sucks I know don't remind me." The twins got down to my sizes as they both put one of their hands on both of my shoulder and said "Kaylyn listen her that is a wonderful and lovely name unlike Stacy." The both laughed and Stacy said "Hey!" and slaped them both than looked at them saying "Don't listen to them Kylyn because half the time they don't know what there talking about. But you do have a wonderful lovely name. Now can we go to the den?" "Ya sure comeon Kaylyn" Jhonny said as he he got down. I asked "What are you doing?" he looked back at me and said "Get on my back and I give you a ride." I got on his back and he stud up and started to walk. We got to the place they call the den and it was just the basment of Jhonny's house. Everyone else left and went home but I stayed and talked to Jhonny but I ended up crashing. When I woke up Jhonny was staring at me I jumped and said "what are you looking at?!?" He looked at me and said "Your so adorable when your sleeping I just couldn't help but star at you." I got up out of the bed and grabed my things "Well thats not the point my dads going to kill me when I get home!" Jhonny grabed me by the shoulders turned me around and staerd into my eyes as he says "I'll never let that happen I'll talk to him if you want me too?"  Jhonny walked me home that morning. When we got there my dad was sitting on the front step waiting. When we got closer he stud up and I hid behind Jhonny for safty. "Where the hell have you been Kaylyn?!?" my dad said. Than Jhonny told him "I''m sorry sir but she was at my place hanging out with our friends and she crashed it was an honest mistake." My dad said "I don't fucking care now can you step away so I can see her." I clinched Jhonny's shirt he looked at my dad and said "I'm sorry sir but I can't do that she's holding onto my shirt." My dad walked around to Jhonny's side and looked at me to say "Kaylyn you better let go of this mans shirt and come in. Now you have a chosie you can go in on your own or I can drag you into the house." I let go and walked to my dad "I don't wanna go in side." My dad slaped me and Jhonny yelled "THERE WAS NO NEED FOR THAT YOU ASSHOLE WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?" My dad pulledme into the house and said "I'm her father and I never wanna see you around here ever again!" and slamed the door. Love him   Chapter 3: Love him             When he slamed the door he turned to me and said "If I ever see that boy again I'm killing him and you too." I ran to my room at sat in the cornor with the lights off and the window covered. I didn't cry much my eyes teared up but when they did I said to myself "Be strong one day he will die you must not cry."  The next day I got up and went to school when I left my dad was still asleep. When I got to school Jhonny asked me what happen so I said to him "My dad said that if he ever sees you again he's going to kill you and me both." Thats when Jhonny pulled me over to the side and told me "If that bastered ever lays a single finger on you I'll kill him in his sleep." "NO!" I yelled "I wanna be the one who kills him he killed my mother before she took me away. So we could be safe from him and not worry for our lives."  Publication Date: January 19th 2016 https://www.bookrix.com/-ph35bf26d19ce45

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-dawn-leagers-story-of-my-life/

Dawn Leagers Story Of My Life The Real Me Have you noticed that life is unfair? Well I have. I am only fifteen and this is my story. I have been beaten by my grandpa and my mother. I have been in and out of foster care for five years. I have taken care of babies to toddlers to old people. I even turned to a life of crime. I was in and out of juvie because I couldn't stop getting in trouble. I have stolen two cars and been rapped five times. I am back home but trust me my life isn't any better. Still in a abusive relationship with my mother. But I think its about time to stand up and speak for yourself. Tell your story and don't back down. Lets make this generations better then the next not worst. CHAPTER ONE: The Early Life “BANG!!!!” I wake up to a loud noise and my grandpa yelling. I slowly find my way out of bed and to my bedroom door. I put my ear the the door and quietly listen to hear whats going on. “I CAME TO GET MY KIDS!” I hear my mom yell from the dinning room. “Whats going on?” I hear a voice coming from behind me. I turn around to see my little sister sitting up on the bed rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I don’t know. I think I hear mom arguing with grandpa” I saying in a quiet voice so the adults don’t hear me. “Why is mom here?” she said still rubbing her eyes. “Shhhh be quiet. We don’t want grandpa to know we are awake. He’ll get mad.” “Why is mom here?” she repeated but in a lower tone. “I don’t know. Thats what i am trying to find out” I push my ear back to the door while Tessa crawled out of bed and joined me. “GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!” I heard my mom yell. “GIRLS!! GIRLS GET OUT HERE! WE ARE LEAVING!” My sister and I looked at each other with fear in our eyes, not sure if we want to risk getting in trouble with our grandpa. “IF YOU GIRLS COME OUT OF THAT BEDROOM YOUR GROUNDED!” My grandpa yelled after. “I don’t want to be grounded but I want to go with mom” I whispered. “Me too” she replied. “Okay get your shoes on, we’re leaving.” We both walked to our closet and started to dig for our shoes in the dark. “Why don’t we turn on the light so we can see?” Tessa suggested. “I don’t want papa to know we are leaving. He might try and stop us” I answered and she nodded in agreement. “Found them” she announced proudly. “I found my shoes before you did haha” and then I found a pair of my shoes wile she was mocking me. “brat” I said quietly while slowly put my ear to the door to see if i can hear anything. “Anything?” Tessa asked in a questioning whisper. “I cant hear anything” I replied a little worried but didn’t let it show because I wanted to keep my sister as calm as possible. I slowly opened the door enough to let a stream of the dinning room light shine in and held my hand to my lips gesturing for my sister to stay quite.  mother said in a smooth voice trying to keep my sister and me calm. “Look what you’re doing dad, your scaring my daughters. Now move out of our way.” he didn’t say anything but stand there blocking the door with his eyes locked on my mom. “Fine dad if you want to be that way ill put them back to bed and come back with the police” she said while turning around and walking us back through the hall way but didn’t go to our room. S he picked us up and ran through the laundry room and out the back door. When we were a block away she put us down and told us to keep running. “SMACK!” A loud noise came through the wall and my mom comes around the corner with tears in her eyes and holding her cheek. She saw that I was awake and pushed the door further open to see if my sister is awake and sure enough Tessa was standing behind me in her pink night gown that matched mine. She looks down at our feet to see if we had our shoes on and she smiled.  “So you guys are gonna come with me huh?” she asked while kneeling down so we are face to face. I looked back at Tessa and she looked at me. “Yeah” I replied answering for the both of us. “Okay girls. Lets go and hurry” my mom said while taking both of our hands and leading us out of our rooms and through the hall and into the dinning room. “You are not going anywhere with my grandchildren” my grandpa said in a growling voice. Tessa ran up behind me and wrapped her arms around me in fear. “They are my children and I will do whatever I want with them now move!” my "Where are we running to?" I asked mom. "I don't know yet." We ran for another half block and we stopped and started to walk. "Okay girls, listen up. If the cops pull us over and ask us whats going on just say that I came over to see you and I was planning to stay the night and grandpa got mad and slapped me and chocked me okay?" I looked over at Tessa and she nodded her head in agreement and so did I but lucky no cops showed up. CHAPTER TWO: Where Am I?  I woke up in a new room, in a new bed with different blankets laying on top of me. "Where am I" I thought to myself. I turned over to see if my sister and mom was in the room with me. I only saw one little lump under the blanket so that meant that Tessa was only with me. "This isn't the house I fell asleep in last night. I fell asleep on a couch in a one bedroom house." I was about to scream for my mom but my mouth started to water and my sniffer was telling me that there is eggs being cooked somewhere in this house.  I slowly and quietly slid to the side of the mattress that was laying flat on the carpet floor and flung my legs off the side of it. I looked back to see if I woke my sister but she was still sound asleep. "I wonder when she fell asleep. I know I passed out before her" I thought to myself. I lifted myself off of the mattress and tiptoed to the door and slowly cracked it. I opened it far enough that I could hardly slip out. I looked down the long hallway not sure which way to go. I took a left and followed the wonderful smell of the cooking eggs.  I walked into the kitchen to see my mom standing over the stove singing and dancing to some music. "MOMMY!" I screamed louder then the music. She jumped a little because I startled her. She walked over to the radio and turned down the music. "Good-morning sleeping beauty" she sung in a cheery voice. "Im hungry mommy" i whined. "Well lucky for you I am making a yummy breakfast. Go wake your sister and tell her its time to eat" she said waving me out of the kitchen.  I walked back down the hall and slowly opened the second door to the right. I poked my head in and saw my sister still asleep on the mattress. I opened the door all the way and ran to the bed to hoped on top of her. “Time to wake up Tessa! Mom’s making food!” I hollered close to her ear. She didn’t even move a inch so I took her by her feet and started to pull her off the bed. “STOP!” she yelled in a tired voice. “Mom told me to wake you up so if you aren’t in the kitchen in five minutes mom is going to come in here herself” I warned her.  I walked back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “Where is your sister?” my mother asked not taking her eyes off the food. “I woke her up and told her to come eat but I don’t know if——“ I said but got cut off by my sister walking into the kitchen while rubbing her sleepy eyes. “Hey baby. Hungry?” Mom asked to Tessa while giving her a hug. Tessa just nodded her head and took the seat that was across the table from me. After a few minutes of sitting there and listening to the radio my mom finally gave us our food. I slowly ate my food and went to go take a shower. After I got out of the shower my mom picked out some cloths for me and sat them on the mattress. I got dressed and laid back down to take a nap. I dozed off when my head hit the pillow. What seemed like a few minutes was actually a few hours. My mom came barging into the room and told me to get my shoes on and run out to the car. She looked scared so I freaked out and picked up my shoes and ran to the car. I didn’t even bother to put them on. A few minutes passed and my mom, and her boy friend and I where in the car waiting for my sister. She finally walked out the house and slowly walked to the car. “Hurry your ass up” my mom hollered at her. When she hopped in the car next to me mom sped off. “Why are you driving fast ma?” I asked with fear in my eyes. “I’ll explain everything when we get there Amber okay?” “What’s going on mom?” I asked again. “Amber not right now” she said sternly. I didn’t ask her anymore questions after that. Maybe a hour passed and we were at the hospital and that’s when my mom turned around in her seat and told me the horrifying incident that changed my life forever literally. “Your grandpa had a stroke and they don’t know if he’ll ever be able to walk or talk again” she said to me and my sister. Tears stings the back of my eyes and my vision became blurry with in seconds. After a few minutes of everyone crying we pulled ourself together and walked into the hospital. When we got up to his room he was laying there with his eyes closed, not able to move a muscle or make a single sound. I went over to my mom and pulled her by her shirt gesturing for her to bend down so I can tell her something and that’s just what she did. “Do you think he can hear us” I whispered to my mom making sure I was quiet enough that nobody else could hear me. “Yes sweetie, he can hear us” she replied. Than she went up to my grandpas bed and held his hand and kissed him on the forehead. “Hi daddy. I hope your awake so know that I am here with you” she said. Tessa walked up next to her and starred at our grandpa while I went to the other side of the bed to hold his other hand. “Hi papa” I said because I wasn’t sure what was appropriate to say. I moved over so my brother, who was already at the hospital, can hold his hand too. I look up at my brother to see that there was tears filling his eyes. I was surprised because I have never seen my brother cry. I touched his arm to try to comfort him but I can tell that it isn’t helping so I moved my hand from his arm and sat down in the chair that was in the corner of the room. A few minutes passed and everyone is crying including me and than my mom got a phone call, it was my Uncle Robert. She went out into the call the take the call and didn’t come back in for what seemed like forever. She walked up to me and my sister who is now sitting beside me on the chair and bent down to speak to us. “You guys have school in the morning so you are gonna go stay the night with you grandmother tonight while your brother, John, and I stay here with grandpa tonight” she said. “No. I want to stay with papa tonight. That’s not fair that John gets to stay and we don’t” I protested. “You are not going to miss school Amber but right after school I will pick you up and bring you back here to see him okay?” she asked trying to reason with me. “Okay” I agreed even though I know she won’t go through with it because she is flaky. After Tessa and I said our good byes, we left the hospital and headed to my grandmothers house. When we got there our mom didn’t even bother to take us up to  front door. She just dropped us off in her drive way and waved and said “I love you girls” and sped off. We didn’t bother to say it back because she wouldn’t hear us anyways so we just waved back. When she was out of sight we walked into our grandmothers house. When I opened the front door my grandma and her mom was sitting at the big round dinning table. “Hey grandma” I said while giving her a big head and a kiss on her cheek. “Hey sweetie” she said and I sat down on her lap while Tessa did the same. “Do you girls want a muffin?” She asked while lifting me and Tessa off her lap and standing up.  “Oh yes” I said while Tessa just nodded her head. “What kind do you want?” She asked both of us while going over to the cabinet and taking out the small box of different kind of muffins. “Banana” my sister said in a excitement, with a big smile upon her face. My grandma just nodded her head and turned her attention towards me and pulled out the kind that I always have. “Chocolate chips with double chocolate?” she ask and I nodded. She handed us our muffins and told us to go to the living room to watch some T.V and we did as she said. When we got to the living room I hoped on my couch while Tessa hoped on her’s. “I’m bored” Tessa announced. “I am to” I said. “Wanna go outside and see if we can find any snakes?” She asked exactly. “Sure” I answered with bored ness in my voice. “Yay. I’ll go ask Grandma” she said while jumping off the couch and running down the hall and into the dinning room. Within seconds she came running back and ran outside, so I followed after her. We walked around in the tall grass that looks like it hasn’t been mowed in months. “Found one!” she hollered while reaching for a stick to poke it. “Don’t touch it. You’ll make it mad” I yelled at her while running over to take the stick out of her hand but I was to late. She was ready poking it and sure enough it got pissed and started to hiss at her. “It’s going to bite you” I warned her while putting my hands on my hips in a sassy way. “No it won’t. I won’t let it” she said back in a confident voice. “Whatever” I said while rolling my eyes. I took a few steps toward her to look at the snake. It was green so which meant it was a garden snake so I walked closer to it. “It’s going to bite you” Tessa said in a mocking tone. “Shut up” I said while giving her a bitch stare. “You aren’t aloud to say that” she said while running back inside to tell on me but “I didn’t care” I hollered loud enough that she could heat me but I actually cared a lot more then what I led her to believe. After taking another glance at the snake I walked back inside because I was bored and it was hot outside. When I walked through the door Tessa came running down the hall and grandma was right behind her. Oh boy I thought. “Amanda did you tell your sister to shut up?” She asked with her arms crossed. “Yes…” I answered. “Amanda ray you know better. Now go stand in the corner” she demanded. I walked over to the corner but before I put my nose to the wall I turned around and said “I only told Tessa to shut up because she was poking at a snake.” “TESSA! How many times have I told you to not mess with snakes!” My grandma yelled at her and Tessa didn’t say anything. She just looked down at the floor. “Didn’t I tell you right before you went outside to not touch any wild animals?” Grandma questioned her. “Well yes….but…” Tessa started to say but grandma was already taking her by the arms and showering her to a corner to. “Amanda you have five minutes” she said. “And you” she said to Tessa while pointing at her “you have fifteen minutes for not listening” she said and than walked off. When she was out of the room Tessa said in a whisper “Tattle tail.” “You tattled first” I said back in a whisper. After that we were silent. Five minutes passed and I heard “Amanda your time is up.” I smiled a big smile at Tessa and walked away. I sat on the couch and turned on some cartoon. When Tessa heard the T.V she tried to peak to watch too. “No looking at the T.V. You’re in trouble” I remind her. Tessa then turned back around and a few seconds later she tried to peak again so I ran down the hall and told on her. “TESSA, GET YOUR ASS IN HERE NOW” our grandma yelled from the dinning room. Tessa turned around and sticked her tongue out at me. “GRANDMA SHE STUCK HER TOUNGE OUT AT ME!!” I hollered down the hall. “TESSA” grandma yelled in a pissed off voice. Tessa walked into the dinning room and after she turned the corner, I started to walk down the hall so I can hear what kind of punishment grandma was about to give her. “You are going to stand in that corner for thirty minutes. You are not going to be hatful” grandma said in a stern voice. I heard Tessa starting to cry and I started to laugh. I put my hand to my mouth because I didn’t want grandma to know that I was spying on them. “Amanda” grandma said. “Are you spying again?” I walked around the corner and nodded my head. “Go to the corner for another five minutes” she said while pointing to the corner that she wanted me to go to. I hate you I thought to myself but I wouldn’t dare say it out loud. I walked over to the corner and stood there for five minutes. “Okay you can go now Amanda but behave yourself” grandma said in a stern tone. “Okay” I answered. I walked back down the hall and into the living room to watch more T.V. I laid my head down and sleep consumed me.   (TO BE CONTINUED)   CHAPTER THREE: Sleep Over I woke up to my grandma waking me up for school. I got up and slowly found my way to the bathroom. I was still 95% asleep so I wasn’t sure what I was doing at my grandma’s house. After a few seconds of dwelling on it, it finally hit me. My grandpa had a stroke and he’s at the hospital. All the memorized of him laying in the hospital bed hopeless brought tears to my eyes and I fell to the grounded and hugged my knees and started to rock back and forth. Knock-knock. “Sweetie are you okay?” my grandma asked while slowly opening the door. She saw me sitting on the ground and immediately cuddled next to me. My sister walked into the bathroom to see what all the noise was about and when she poked her head in she had tears rolling down her face. She came to join  us in the hug and we sat like that for what seemed like hours. “I don’t think you guys should be going to school like this” my grandma announced. My sister didn’t say anything we just nodded our heads in agreement. “Go back and try to get more rest while I call the school and explain everything to them” grandma told us. Tessa and I stood up and walked back to our couches and laid down while we enjoyed watching T.V. After a few minutes of just laying there I started to miss my grandpa and tears stung the back of my eyes. I closed my eyes to try to keep them from coming but that seemed to make it worst and tears rolled down my face. Tessa heard me crying and she moved over to were I was laying to comfort me. She laid behind me and put her arm around my waste while I continued to cry. After a few minutes of crying sleep consumed me. When I woke up the sun was peering through the blinds and into my eyes. I looked over to my sister cuddling up next to me while sleeping. I turned my attention to the cartoons on T.V and waited till mom came to pick us up to go see out grandpa like she promised she would. Don’t get your hopes up I told myself. After a few hours of just laying there Tessa woke up and went to her own couch. “I’m hungry” I announced. “Me too” Tessa agreed. I stood up to go to the dinning room to get some food and Tessa did the same. I took off down the hall way and sat down in my seat and Tessa sat down in her seat that was next to me. “Hungry?” my grandma said while lifting herself up from her chair and walking to the kitchen to fix us some cereal. We both said yes at the same time.   Publication Date: September 27th 2017 https://www.bookrix.com/-dta5d3c3a1b1c95

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-lucy-patel-all-my-friends-are-cooler-then-me/

Lucy Patel All my friends are cooler then me pusheen I is sad. friends so cooler then me. must kill. pusheen  They dead.me happy. now i has no valentine. Text: fwcdghw Images: adhjbdsgwh Editing: edgvjedhmwgvcme All rights reserved. Publication Date: January 19th 2018 https://www.bookrix.com/-fp8005239f255a5

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-heya123456-when-everything-changed/

heya123456 When Everything Changed Publication Date: March 10th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-heya123456

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sabrina-hodges-wat-happend-to-my-friend/

sabrina hodges wat happend to my friend death to my mom and dad and family and the sick kids FEILDS OF DEATH chapter 1 when you die you never get to do wat you want to do before yoi go bit my fruend never got to tell me that she was a healer. it all started when he moved here in nashville tennese.when i went to school that day i was sad because my friend just pased away.all my friends have all died. so when i saw that boy i got happy and went over to him. when i got over to him he was alone and i sat down next to him and saw he was crying so i said"r you ok did your mum or dad die or a relitive or....."i started to cry "or"sniffle"a friend?" "well ya i just lost a cosin her name is hannah"i gasped"wat is her last name"i asked"its vantrellie" "o my god frekin god that was my half sister we were like bff we were like sisters" "really that makes me so happy that nows wat im going through" i now more of what your going through everytime i find a new friend and i give them a hug they die but,hannah she was diffrent she never died or got sick like she could blok it but today when she died she told me shes giving up and shes gonna stop fight my hugs then,she told me to hug her and i did i felt her polce and it was gone i culdnt stop crying until her parents said that you were there" i said then he said the only reson that she was fight was the drugs she had cancer" wat she never told me that!" chapter 2 i was at gym when i heard the news that piliph(hannahs cosin)and i were supposed to go to hannahs house together and go to her funarel and memoral service and speak together. when me and pilliph got to her house i went to her room and started to cry when i saw blood stains on her bed frame and u saw nife spots on her bed sheets like she was murderd. when i got downstaries everybody was gone but pilliph and the coffin was gone to "pilliph weres the coffin and weres everybody else its not time for the barring yet is it? he said"the police asked questions about how she died and they found out she was murdured then they were looking for you and i lied because they thought the killer was you and i lied and said you went home and........"he didnt say anything more because i kissed him and leaned back and he said"and i love you" "you love me you love me nobodys ever loved me like that like hannah did i..i...i love you to" chapter 3 that night pilliph was at my house and he kissed me and kissed me i told him i loved him so many times i got sick of saying that. when he left i told hannah she could come out now."hannah i know your a ghost but i never told you this but,i...i...i...i can see ghost the day you died i came to your house and tell you but when i got in your room you were died so i told you when you were there because you could here me and you cant keep being like this you have to tell me who killed you" then all of a sudin a ghost came out of the wall and said"why didnt you tell me before i would of loved to hear about it but all you can do now is help me now i cant tell you who my killer is because pilliph already nows and if he tells he will be killed to.dont let that happen i now you love him but you got to leave him alone because theres more things to your life then you now it and only me and pilliph now about it i will tell you about my death i a little while just stay away from pilliph tell him you dont love him he cant now anything dont tell him anything please."those were the last words she said and she dissaperd. the next day at school i saw pilliph and my lokers next to his and i went to my loker and pilliph said hey and i didnt ansewr,next he tried yelling but i didnt anserw.finnaly i said"i cant love you you now to much about hannahs death and i can be killed if you tell me anything or you could i knew you were there when she died because we have monetrs in each others room so we now when to wake up so when i saw the moniter i saw everything but the killer doesnt now me so im going im getting to change schools toa prep school." i never talked to him scine that night i saw pilliph in hannahs room with somebody with him it was the killer he was tall and i have seen him the same birth mark thats my brother.and pilliph told the killer were i lived and the next thing i now the killer was at my window and with pilliph and they climbed up the tree and the killer at my window he told pilliph to wait there and the killer broke my window. the next thing i new was that the killer was in my room he came up to me with the nife and was ready to stab me when he saw my birth mark and stabed my arm then he waited and said"safire sage feather its really you and you remember me right sis" "im called emily now joseph back off thanks to pilliph im in trouble the people down stairs r pilliphs parents im his co..."pilliph came in and said"wat i loved you and we kissed and wat" "im not realeted to you they took me in and after joseph killed my parents because he thought that they were both having an afiar but they were really together he killed them together and killed hannah because she new to much and..." "hey look at your arm its better oh ya your a healer and a vampire and a ,..... lets stop talking about it." chapter 4 the next night i saw hannah she said that the killer was pilliph . the next day i found every thing that had his prints on it and i saw the nife that he killed her with and when pilliph came in he saw me and i killed my self so i can spen eturnity haunting him. THE END Publication Date: August 16th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-shodges31548

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-skylar997-runaway-2/

Skylar997 Runaway Horrible Intentions Why me? My eyes watered, but Sky wiped them from my eyes. She patted me on the back and said,"don't worry, you will find your rainbow soon". My dad had a black van, so every time i saw one i started to cry, they kind of traumatized me. I hugged her and cried on her shoulder. She sang to me, she had a beautiful voice, but only sang around me. I had a scrapbook i took from his house, it had pictures of me and him when i was a baby, before my mom died. He seemed happy, maybe he just is sad. Yet, i can not excuse him for what he did. I got his picture and talked to it,"You are just an act, you acted liked you loved me so you would impress my mom. If my mom was here she would chew you out. Why did you abuse me, why do you hate me". A tear dropped on the picture. I ripped it and threw it into the trash. I looked at it and ran into the house crying. My friend tried to stop me but i ran into my room and locked the door. She unlocked it with a spare key. I put a pillow over my head. She took it off and said,"whats wrong Ava. Other then the thing". I cried and murmured,"I can't explain, i don't know why but i feel sorry for my dad". She looked at me in surprise and said kind of loud,"You are better then him, he has beat you and manipulated you to feel sorry for him. Im sorry but, you shouldn't be sorry for him, he has no feelings for you. All he is, is a jerk. He wants you because he has power over you. Now that you have the power your going to give it away? You don't deserve this. Your just going a rough spot in your life. I can promise you one thing, your rainbow will come, im not just saying this as your bff im saying this as your sister. A tear dropped on her shoulder as i hugged her. My new mom comforted me by hugging me. I felt stupid, like a five year old. Yet, your never too old for love. She let sky and i stay up past midnight, it was a school night. They all made me feel better but i knew things would be worse at school. It was a short night, which i hated. When i walked up the steps to the school Brooklyn was waiting for me with two jocks. She looked at me and smirked,"Hey orphan,your lucky that looser bought you. Otherwise you would end up with lowlife looser parents like you". The jocks laughed like the jerks they are. She looked at me and pushed me. I feel off the stairs hitting my head on them, they were cement stairs. My head started to bleed. The jocks stared in shock. They were about to come to help, but she pushed them back. They pushed her gently off of them and ran to my rescue. One stayed and tried to stop the bleeding, the other went to go get a teacher. She wiped the blood off of her hands and poured water gently down her face, it looked like she was crying. When the teacher came, i smiled in relief. It was one of the only teachers who knew that Brook hated me. Brooklyn acted like she was crying and said,"She-she fell down th-the steps, i tried to help but if i got this outfit dirty, i would have to pay extra for blood stains". She looked at her and when Brook saw who the teacher was her pitiful faker look turned into shock. The teacher ran down and called an ambulance. I started to panic, with my dad out of jail he could show up and do the same thing he did last time. There is only one way to find out, but i didn't want to. Skylar made sure there were guards by my hospital door. She gave pictures of the ones who were close to me. I was happy, but i wouldn't be for long. Publication Date: June 25th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-skylar997

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-yo-yo-lara-i-can-039-t-take-it-no-longer-incomplete/

Yo_Yo Lara I can't take it NO LONGER (Incomplete) Book Two WHY?!? "WHAT?!? WHY?!?" , I shouted, "Why are you leaving me and kicking me out of the gang? I need..." "Gina, you must understand that things happen and anyways your making lose money so bye." Michael said. "I hate you now, SO STAY AWAY FROM ME YOU BITCH!!!!" *SOBBING* "You must go." Michael said, "But, at least give me some money to go to school." I sobbed in reply, "SCHOOL?!? Heh, no wonder you barely sold any drug to others because school work. "Shut Up." I repelied, "I'm going to school now," So I went to my home to change to my school uniform, and just before the bell rang, and the school day began... So A Normal Uh...Day  I went to school in my school uniform which is a dark gray top with a gray and white mini skirt, well the same as Japan and I have to say it looks pretty good on me even if I'm not a skirt person. When I arrived, the hallways were almost as empty as a Ghost Town, but at least I didn'get tardy which is a good thing because I could miss something important like a project and plus my Homeroom teacher is the strictest in the whole school! That women gets pissed extremley fast like inhumanly. No Kidding. I walked in and the teacher looked a me with a killer look like it was saying, Imma Kill you. For Real "Gina," She said with a growl. "Yes?!?" I responded annoyingly  Text: Don't Copy any of MY BOOKS!!! KK? Images: Yo_Yo Lara Editing: BookRix Translation: Yo_Yo Lara All rights reserved. Publication Date: September 28th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-chda2c000e12d45

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-part-4/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Surprise part 4 The rivalry of love begins  Kazuto had awoken in his bed as he'd look around "wooh im finally left alone" he said with a smiles but then Gal woke up and move from under the blanket next to him as she hugged him "kazuto!" she said with a smile as asuna woke up and moved from out of under the blanket as well "What did i tell you, you darn little girl" she said with a crazed face and fiery eyes. kazuto tried to stand up but they pushed him back down "so kazuto you havent answered out question yet, who do you love more. Gal and asuna look at echouther and got angry "Er he's mine you short stuff" asuna yelled at her "no he's mine and he will always be mine" kazuto's aunt walked into the room " you two are at it again, come down and eat breakfast all of you, school was cancelled today". Gal scream with excitement as she let go of kazuto and ran down the stairs as asuna looked at her "shes childish isnt she kazuto" she stood up and walked to the door and put her hand out for him to come, Kazuto stood up nd walked over to her as asuna kissed him on the lips and he kissed her back but right as he did he felt something hug on to him."how dare you sneak one while i went to go eat" gal said with a gleam look on her face "well lets go eat" kazuto said with a tired look, when they all finished eating kazuto's aunt ordered Asuna, gal, and kazuto to go get showered and ready for they were going shopping with her later since the day was saturday tomarrow and she wanted to take them all to the beach, after they all got showered and ready they went shopping for swim suits but asuna and gal had different motives as they dragged him into choose there bikinis but he refused and ran into the boys restroom to hide " darn them trying to make me watch that and then they'd want me to choose who looks better in what".  After they all got done shopping they went home and gal still clingged to kazuto and asuna argued with her the whole way for her to stop it but the day for tomarrow they will have a fun time at the beach. Publication Date: October 9th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-narutolover11

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-k-l-the-stolen-child/

K.L. The Stolen Child Hands are clasped. Entwined. He truly is beautiful. And kind. And sweet. Emily glances at the man beside her, and squeezes tighter. She finds herself at the opening. Her mind is yet cloudy. Bodies passing seem black shadows and images flash before her. A child she is. Her face face against the floor, a man panting atop of her. Screams. Every moment, with every moment comes screams. As the image begins to climax the mind blackens. A whirlwind of emotions flood this child now grown. Her love nears. His hand finds rest atop her shoulders, cupping her. With a quickened heart beat all is numb. The feeling. A touch. "Get off me." Her voice slightly raised, as her head is angled away. Tears brimming. "What's the matter?" A look of concern and vexation. He is caught off guard. Her back is hunched now. Hands are clasped and sweaty, rubbing them together in nervousness. Her eyes turn to his beggingly. "Get away from me." "Please." His eyes narrow in concern. "What's the matter?" He releases his hold as he faces her. Emily. Emily. Your pain! "I can't see you anymore! I can't!"Grasping her head she moves further away. This isn't the first time she has distanced herself. He broaches the clandestine topic. "Did you have another flashback?" Frustration and an inescapable wish to be true with him, she vents. "I don't know what's wrong with me. One minute I'm fine looking at the artwork and then my mind out of no where flashes to... to these images." "Let's leave, yeah?" The streets are cold. The bridge their backdrop the water front her distraction. As they stop to gaze at the wanning moon Emily's entire disposition calms to one od almost complete peace. However, in this change her love notices dull eyes and a feeble stance. "Don't do that Em's."She turns to him clearing her cheek of that last tear. "What do you mean? And when did we leave the art opening? Isn't it your big night?" His eyes are drawn down, his brows furrow. Emily. Poor Emily . He cannot speak. He cups her cheek. "Lets go home, huh?" With a smile and an easy air, Emily takes her loves hand and follows. Outside her steps. "Good night Emily." A kiss. A hug. A few steps and he turns. "You know, you do remember why we left don't you?" Her eyes fall a little. "I do." He steps up, level to her nose. "Should you see someone? Would that help?" Averted eyes meet and fall. "I can't. What would I say Niles? Nothings really wrong is it?" Stepping up to face her. "Just try to talk to someone, please. I'll come if you like. Unless the problem is me. THen I suppose I would have to be told." She smiles. So sweet. My Niles. "Ok I'll try." A queeze of the hand, a kiss upon the forehead, and a smile goodbye. Her place is quiet. Warm colors, comfy textures and patches of white blankets and pillows. The fishes swim by the plant her and Niles bought. He named the fighter fish Wibbles and she named the other Whispers. A fond memory. Though an odd one. **** "Whispers? We can't name her Whispers." Placing his glasses aside Niles accentuates his dislike of the name. "Why not? Wibbles isn't exactly a name for a fighter fish." Walking over to the fish tank Niles smirks, "Mr. Wibbles you don't fancy a name change do you?" Emily smiles. She's all smiles. With dough covered hands she walks over to her love and hugs him from behind. Face to face. A kiss upon the nose. "Whispers is a lovely name." Her head rests agains his chest. A heart beat can be heard, a tighter embrace she gives. The dumplings dry, the curry simmers, and the aroma fills the air. **** Looking at the tank she remembers this espisode. "He must think I'm crazy." A tear followed by many run down her face. With randomness of thoughts she stares out her window. Eyelids become heavy and she finds rest upon her pillows. Thinking of Niles. Text: This short story was written and edited by Kimberly Ledgister. All rights reserved. Publication Date: July 31st 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-ilvjah

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-princessci-the-robbery/

princessci The Robbery Chapter 1 My name is Cacey Sparks, I am a 15 going 16 years old female, growing up in South London. Everyone calls me "Sparks" because of my Sir name. I am very much a Tomboy and so are some of my mates. Let me introduce you to both of my best mates. First is Samantha, she's a real hard nut (not as much as me though) Samantha is known as "Tight Eyes", she is always giving people dirty looks. Her real name is Tasha, but she is known as "Mini.T" because she is short. Tasha is not one who usually conforms to a usual clichéd female, but she's not as much a tomboy either. All three of us are known as the local trouble makers when we're together. Now that I have told you about my mates and me, I can tell you what happened, what really happened... It was just a regular Friday afternoon at school; I was chilling out with Tight Eyes and Mini.T, and a couple of other mates. We were all minding our own business, and then I see Paige Burton walking towards us. Her face looked angry as always. She always wants to act like the big girl in school. As she was walking down towards us, she was screwing me also she was shouting and raining curses at me. I couldn't believe my ears. So I and my girls walked towards her. There we were all of us, just standing calmly waiting for Paige's next big move. Instead, there she was looking up at me, and pushing up her flat chest to me, cursing. Then she finally had the guts to give me a punch, (which to me felt more like a little pat). With all my strength I pushed that little Paige Burton to the ground, by this time, there was a huge crowd gathered around us chanting like a pack of hyenas. I didn’t mean it but I gave her a punch in her stomach. I didn't want to hurt her too much because she is no competition to me, moreover, she’s fragile. So after that I left her. Most of the little year 7 and 8's were recording it on their phones. After school, there was a rumour going around that Paige Burton, phoned some people to get me, Mini.T and Tight Eyes. So us three were heading towards the school gate, until we saw about five much larger girls hanging outside the school … they saw us too. One of them asked Tight Eyes if she knew a girl called Paige. But Tight Eyes shook her head, these girls were waiting for Paige, so she could point out who we were. So we just carried on our way home. Chapter 2 That evening I couldn't stop thinking about that Paige Burton and how she tried to set us up. All I kept thinking about was stabbing her profusely until the blood sputtered out from her very neck until she no longer breathed… I don't know why it just aroused in my thoughts.I phoned Tight Eyes, she would know what to do with Paige she always does. She thought of a great idea - to get Mini.T to phone Paige's cousin - Dorothy, Mini.T always gets things out of her. What Dorothy told us was that Paige and her family are going away for the weekend, and won't be back until Sunday evening. But we told Dorothy not to utter any words about our “little” conversation with her, so Dorothy didn't know anything about us planning to break into Paige's house that night. Walking calmly on the streets, on my way to meet Mini.T and Tight Eyes at 11:30pm at the top of Paige's road a few nerves were running astray from my innate self. I saw them both and we were all starting to prepare ourselves for what was to happen. Wearing black warm soft clenching gloves; matching hats; coats; bottoms; trainers and even black socks, we were wearing clothes which will not stand out in the blackening scenery. The robbery was about to begin. We waited for a couple of moments, making sure that no one was watching us or if anyone was about, anyway it was a sinister and gloomy sight, fortunately that was a good thing for us. As we stood outside the front door , the sharp wind slices through my pale skin, so the thought of getting in the house kept riding in our teenage minds, we have to be careful, precise, no noise, no sound just perfect silence. Mini.T got out a weird looking, sharp object from her pocket, it was definitely not a key, but whatever it was, got the front door open. Finally we were inside, Tight Eyes headed straight to the fridge, which I knew she would, me and Mini.T walked up the stairs trying to be as quiet as possible. I opened the door, I couldn't see much but there was some moon light shining in from a little gap in the curtains, so I walked over and closed them properly. The place looked tidy and very posh; there was a dressing table with boxes and perfumes on it. I flicked my torch on, and walked over to a jewellery box, opened it and took a hand full of shining, gold jewellery and put it all in my bag. I wasn’t feeling guilty at this point; I made sure I didn’t miss a few. Chapter 3 Nearly falling over because of a loud bang! Coming from out in the landing, I rushed to see what was going on. I saw Tight Eyes standing there and Mini.T. Looking down at Tight Eyes feet, I saw that her bag was full of money. I was shocked but at the same time very happy, we were all happy. I showed them both the jewellery I found. We were fully satisfied with the objects that we had taken. Now just before we left we had to do one more thing... Wreck the whole house. We broke electronics, left the taps running, broke chains, smashed pictures, tore up clothes, splattered food everywhere and vandalised all over the walls, we left that house looking like a bomb had exploded in there! We wanted to give them a surprise but I wasn’t fully satisfies with the extents that we went to. I had to do more, she deserves this. So I went to the room that looks like it would belong to her, I went in carefully inhaling the atmosphere of the room around me. I went straight to her TV and smashed it. I looked at the ruins that lay before me and thought for a second…revenge is sweet. Eventually, we left the house through the back door. Tight eyes ran out first but just before she did, I jumped on her and wrestled her to the ground. She started shouting but I shut her up. We lay on the grass as I pointed the neighbour looking out of the window. We lay there for a few seconds until the neighbour went back in. we got up and ran. It was a close shave. We arrived at my place by 2am, we were shattered. No one was at home because my mum works late and I don't live with my dad, so it was just me and the girls. Sunday morning came; we didn't wake up until 12pm. Well, Mini.T was awake and made us all some food, she also told me that my mum went out shopping, and will be back soon. I thought about the events of last night and the risks we put ourselves through. It seemed worth it as I looked at the things we stole. We spent the day at home feeling proud, thinking about the shock Paige and her family are going to get, and also feeling worried, just because of the fact that we actually robbed and broke into their house. However, the question of whether she deserved this rushed through my mind all day. I mean we beat her up… wasn’t that enough for her already. Did she really deserve this? Tight Eyes and Mini.T were staying round mine again. At exactly 11:02pm, the doorbell rang while we, my Mum and the girls were watching a scary film. So I hopped up to get the door with a bowl of sweet popcorn in my hands. My eyes froze, the bowl of popcorn smashed to pieces on the floor, my whole body shaking and filled with panic, (this all happened in the space of 1 second), as I saw the police at my door, all the events of the robbery flashed through my head. I opened the door in defeat knowing that there was nothing to lose and we had no hope of defeat. So, that’s what happened, and that is why I am here, all alone, sitting in a cold, damp cell, crying my eyes out, and I never thought I would in my whole life. I’m sitting here wondering where Mini.T and Tight Eyes are and thinking about how my life is going to change from now. Publication Date: January 17th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-princessci

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-ella-g-chances/

Ella G Chances ♔Alice♔ OF COURSE, YESTERDAY WAS FUN, WEIRD, AND CRAZY.     I mean, we went to the forest and explored stuff, I guess. I mean, I'm not usually close to nature; but with Kat, it felt like I was there all the time. I was pretty surprised when Kat asked me to express my feelings toward her.  It was weird, but I was relieved, too. I liked her a lot. Great music taste, beautiful hair, nice, I could keep going on and on about her. But, the shadow-ghost pissed her off, so it did pretty much take my time to calm her down.   Today, me and Kat are going to the forest again, but near the lake. It was silent there, and we could've rambled on, just the two of us. It felt like a date, and inside of me, I could've felt my heart skipping a beat. I played music, and listened to "Caraphernelia" by Pierce the Veil. After a while, I got a text from Kat.   Hey, wanna go to the lake again? My parents left me a note that they're at Arizona with my sibs. I'm bored.   Yeah. I'll go. And why didn't you go? That's very Un-Kat-like o3o ;]   Pshh. I didn't want to go.  Anyways, who'd you talk to anyway in a month? xD I'll meet you at the forest in 5. <3 ;]]   I laughed, and quickly got ready. I looked outside, and it was just flurries. I wore my Goth-like creepers, red and black diamond leggings, my jacket, and a Pierce the Veil shirt this time. When Jeremy McKinnon sang " WHAT IF I CAN'T FORGET YOU?",  I would instantly get the Feels, something people that get too indulged in music get when it hits a memory...       ☾Kat☽ I WAS SO BORED. AS ALWAYS.     I already had my black jeans, my Asking Alexandria shirt, and my socks on, so I grabbed my black windbreaker and wore my creepers, and headed out the door with my phone. The sky was still in it's gray and lavender hue, and it seemed pretty. I tilted my head back, and when a snowflake touched my nose, I heard a camera shutter.     I opened my eyes, and saw Alice looking at her phone smiling, and she said, "Well, I'm keeping that photo as my wallpaper. It's Kat-like." I laughed, and we headed into the forest. "Ya sure you aren't cold?" I asked her. She nodded, and kept walking over the leaves, looking down at the ground, and saying words to herself. I nudged her arm, and she took one of her headphone's buds out. "Whatcha saying?" I asked. And then suddenly, she sang "Caraphernelia", and motioned me to join in.   I laughed and joined in. "WHAT IF I CAN'T FORGET YOU...I'LL BURN YOUR NAME INTO MY THROAT, I'LL BE THE FIRE THAT'LL CATCH YOU, AND WHAT'S SO GOOD ABOUT PICKING UP THE PIECES, NONE OF THE COLORS EVER LIGHT UP ANYMORE IN THIS HOLE, JUST GIVE HER BACK TO ME, YOU KNOW I CAN'T AFFORD THE MEDICINE THAT FEEDS WHAT I NEED...," we sang at the top of our lungs, and the ravens and robins flew away. And at that moment, I realized me and Alice had a lot more common than music. ♔Alice♔ AS ME AND KAT SANG " CARAPHERNELIA" ,  I LOOKED AROUND THE BLUE FOREST.     Kat was kicking the leaves away with her toes, and she'd sometimes look behind her. "What're you looking for?" I asked. She shrugged, then answered, "That bastard." I laughed, and she gently punched my arm. Our throats were a bit hoarse, but we still talked. Sometimes we'd see geese fly overhead in a perfect arrow-like formation, and we'd go under a tree to avoid  their little 'surprises'.    I held Kat's hand, and she smiled, almost to herself. I bit my lip, and as soon the geese passed,  we went to walk along the way where the lake was. After a while, I saw it and and we started talking random things, like the weather, sometimes music of course, and  even though we don't know, we could tell there are little bits and pieces about each other in each sentence. Sometimes you have to listen really closely to figure out what they're REALLY saying, and then you'll know what their fake and real smiles, and their truths and lies. And that was exactly what I was doing. Listening for bits and pieces.   When we arrived, I climbed up on the railing while Kat put her back against the railing, and playing with her band bracelets. I stared at the horizon, and the sun's orange rays bouncing off the lake's frozen surface. The flurries started slowing down, coming down lazily now, and then I heard a camera shutter. "Aha. I'm keeping this, so ha." Kat announced, and I smiled at her. She was looking at her phone smiling, and then she put a filter on it, and saved the two pictures, one with a filter, and the other normal. "You're weird." I told her. "And you're peculiar." "Don't they mean the same thing?" I asked. "Maybe." She said slyly.  I grabbed her hand, and she put her head back on the railing, closed her eyes, and sighed. I laughed, and I stared at the horizon again, still holding her hand. ☾Kat☽ IT FELT NORMAL, AND IT FELT LIKE WE'VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR MORE THAN A YEAR.     But, we've known each other for two weeks now, and we found out more things about each other. I turned around, making sure Alice's hand wouldn't twist, and leaned against the railing. The ravens were silenced, and all that made noise was some of the geese that were flying.  My hand was almost frozen cold, and her hand was a bit neutral. It was unusual, but who cares? It was just a moment I would've waited for. I looked at the sun setting, and it was beautiful. The sky revealed some of the hidden stars, and the moon's crescent shape arrived, almost next to the sun, and Alice sighed. "Guess we should go?" I nodded, and she leaped off the railing, and walked with my hand still in hers.   I bit my lip from smiling, because, well, it's weird, right? Awkwardness? Oh, who cares. I don't think you had a moment like this...I think.  But, oh well. We quickly ran across the forest, hand in hand, and laughed along the way.  Alice's black hood fell down, and it revealed her head of white blonde hair. Of course, we'd stop to catch up with our breaths, and then we'd giggle again, and run. A gentle winter breeze came, and the leaves flew almost into the air, but lifted off the ground in an inch.   Alice let go off my hand, and fell backward, and said, "Look up," I got down onto my back next to her, and the sun's last rays made a bright orange, slowly fading. The moon was getting a bit more opaque, and Alice got out her phone, and I got mine, and we lifted it up on the air, and took a picture of each other. "Keepsake!" We shouted at each other after we took the picture, and laughed again. When I got up, I offered Alice my hand, and she took it, and we walked to Alice's house this time. It turned out my parents were in Arizona with my siblings, and Alice's parents were at Colorado with her older brother at their grandparents' for a month. Call it a coincidence, but I don't care.  At least we had company, which was each other.    ♔Alice♔ I ALWAYS WANTED A MOMENT LIKE THIS. I REMEMBERED WHEN I WAS STILL LONELY, BEFORE KAT.     As Kat and I walked slowly to my house, the sky turned into a light orange hue, and the flurries started getting even lazier. Every ten seconds, a snowflake would drop onto my head or Kat's. When we arrived to my doorstep, I opened the door with my key, and we headed in. Sometimes we'd see a cars on the snow covered road driving slowly, with no drivers. I pursed my lips, and we took off our shoes. "Do you have Netflix, or nah," Kat asked, "'cause I was wondering if you and I could watch  "Rat Race". "  She wiggled her eyebrows up and down, and I said, "Why not?", and we ended up watching the movie. Until we shifted into another world.   "KAT!" I remembered screaming her name. I remembered breathing heavily....and I remembered waking up alone. "KAT!!" I screamed again into the dark, teal-black sky. Leafless trees were everywhere with black and green grass. I looked around frantically, and found her. I ran. I ran as fast as I could all the way to her. She was staring at a white-grey moon that seemed to catch our attention. "Kat!" I yelled, and when she turned around, I hugged her, and she was holding me tight. "We're going to find a way out. We're going to find a way out, okay? Oh, that BASTARD!" She yelled. I held her hand tight, almost making her hand blue tinted and bloodless, but she didn't seem to mind. She was cursing in so many words that I was wondering if I talked to her, she'd cuss at me too.   After an hour or two, Kat calmed down, and she was telling me all about what she'd do if that ghost came. "Oh, I'd punch the SHIT out of it! UGH! She stomped down to the navy lake, and threw rocks at it, making noises of aggrivation and frustration. I sighed, and sat down on a boulder. Another hour passed, and she came back, her face a bit red, and one of her hands into a white knuckled fist. "Whoa...chill, Kat. i'm here. Anyways, what if it was ourselves? What if it wasn't the shadow?" I was already convinced myself, but Kat groaned, and replied, "Whatever, let's just find a way out."  I nodded in response, and we walked to any corner, hoping to find a way out.   ☾Kat☽ I WAS REALLY PISSED OFF.     It was annoying. That shadow thing, GOD! Why the hell did it send us here, though?! Alice convinced me halfway, and gave me time to think.  First, I hated this place. Second, I'm mad at that bastard shadow. And third...I love Alice. It's just that...we have been hanging out a lot, I guess, and I just realized that. Judge me, I don't care.  I just realized that I loved her. Alice was looking around now, desperate for a way out. She frantically ran side to side, and I crossed my arms, and yelled out to her, "ALICE, THERE'S NO WAY OUT! WE HAVE TO WAIT!" Alice sighed, and I could make out the words she was saying almost to herself. "I know.." She walked slowly back, sat down on the boulder, and put her head on my shoulder. "We'll find a way out." I assured her. She looked up at me with her brown eyes. "Promise?" I hesitated, sighed, and said, "Promise."   Three hours passed, and there was no way out yet. But then, a bright flash of light appeared, and a puff of black smoke, and there stood a thin shadow. I balled up my fists, ready to cuss at it and try to punch it, until a girl appeared. She had hair as black as a raven's, and eyes that were sky blue. She had pink Converse sneakers on, a short sleeved white tee, light washed high waisted jeans, and a coffee colored jacket. "Hey. I'm Seyne and I could help you." Her voice was a bit British and Southern.  Alice was staring at the ground, her head still on my shoulder. "Are you a shadow bastard, too?" I asked. She said, "Nah," "Good, now help us." I said. She looked behind me, and said "There." When Alice and I looked behind us, there was a square white portal. "And aye, I'll see you sometime. And the shadow is a bastard. Just be lucky he dint get THAT angry." She walked toward us, and stepped through the portal.    Alice gripped my hand tight, and ran into the portal. My face felt like it was being pulled off, and my hands felt like they were being pinched. Seyne appeared in front of us, laughing and smiling in Alice's house. "You weren't supposed to run!" Alice's face looked like she drank something unpleasant. "I could help you get rid of your disease." Seyne looked straight into my eyes, and got serious. Alice was staring at me like a toddler. "Tell. Me. Now." I told her. "It's a bit dangerous, though." "We'll do it!" Alice said, her voice full of hope. I noticed Seyne never looked at Alice, until she looked at her and spoke. "I'll show you." And with that comment, the bastard appeared near Alice's staircase.   Publication Date: May 30th 2020 https://www.bookrix.com/-sedfc4e6728a225

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-emmi-j-howder-this-year/

Emmi J. Howder This Year The Dream lucy bee had a dream of 2012. she dreamed there would be an earthquake and a flood. then giant horeses mixed with a man and a lion. she dreamed that everyone else went to heaven and she was left. the after christ came and told her to deny Christ and she would live so she did (wrong discition) she got the tatoo the proved she denied Christ and she could then get food. but if they saw her prey or anything that has to do with Christ they would kill her. they gave her a small amount of food. definatly not enough to live.the skies fell black. the where 3 days of darkness. she new what she had done. she had made a deal with the devil. it was the wrong thing. then her dream came true. Publication Date: April 15th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-amazing.love.17

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-morgan-waters-the-betrayal/

MORGAN WATERS THE BETRAYAL WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF ME. ALL ME. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS BUT ME. MY NAME IS MARIAH. I AM A DANCER. SO CAN YOU HELP ME. I HAVE THIS PROBLEM. SO MY BOYFRIEND MATT IS CHEATING ON ME. HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT I KNOW.WHAT SHOULD I DO? TO OPHRA FROM MARIAH MARIAH WAS A STINGY BLOND GIRL THAT WAS CRAZY. SHE CARED ABOUT NOTHING MORE THAN HERSELF. I DONT EVEN LIKE HER SHES SOMETHING ELSE. NOT A GIRL. MORE LIKE A DOG. MY NAME IS OPHRA.MARIAH YOU HAVE TO TELL MATT THAT YOU ARE THROUGH WITH HIM, YOU FOUNDV OUT THAT HE WAS CHEATING ON YOU. YOU ARE A BRAVE GIRL. DONT BE SCARED OF HIM. YOU ARE MUCH STRONGER AND WISER THAN HIM. SO MARIAH TOOK OPHRAS ADVICE. SHE DID WHAT SHE HAD TO DO THEN IT WAS OVER. SHE HAD WON. SHE WAS SO HAPPY. Publication Date: August 4th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-mkia99

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-p-a-bees-triumph/

P.A.Bees Triumph Three Stories with Umph The Falsity of Time Was it the moment I looked away, trying to live my life before it was stale? Is that when he became a man? Where once the boy had stood, (and I remember a young man too), I see a father. Maybe not as sure as he would like to be; maybe not so settled yet playing at house. One set of dreams dulled a little; hope rising with his child. He is not yet at the point where months and years are lost. He sees each day. Except the days that I now live and they are lost to him. The Basket Weaver Fingers sore from splints of wet wood, she weaves with expert hands. Bandaged, taped, and raw, still she plies her trade. Each basket with flat bottom and trimmed leather handles speaks to finishing what she starts. The monotony leaves her time. She wonders if each finished vessel took some of her away with it. Sold to unknown keepers, she lives in kitchens, family rooms, and dens. She holds yarn, peaches, and picnics. Someday she will gather them all and set them ablaze with her heart’s fire. The ashes will fertilize the ground that grows the trees that make more baskets. Tracy of My Heart We had no idea how precious time was and that there would be an end to it. She was gone so swiftly, without a chance for goodbyes, without a chance for hugs, our eyes cried. A tight, burning sensation overwhelms still, nearly a year later. This was not atonement for parent’s sins. It was not the fault of carelessness or ill regard. “Move on.” They say. When every spy of pink is a sword to my heart and a happy memory like a deep paper cut, burning and raw. Is it masochistic to want to feel? Move on? I’ll stay. Publication Date: August 25th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-pannwriter

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-suprise-finale/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Suprise Finale The wedding Kazuto woke up with a smirk as gal was hugging onto him as she woke up and smiled at him "hey love" she said with a smile. "it's time to get ready and to invite everyone" kazuto said with a huge smirk on his face as he got up and jumped in to the bath and got ready for the wedding as Gal did the same ,"so kazuto you know you cant see gal until the wedding starts right so i can not allow you to see her" silica said with a smirk and made him walk to the back where the chairs and everything were set up as he stood next to the pedistal as gal came walking out in her wedding dress looking super beautiful and smiling as klien and kazuto were staying "she looks perfect" klien whispered into his ear as he smiled at him and she got next to kazuto and stood infront of the pedistal next to him as she smiled at him the preist started the ceremony of love as he made them say there vowls "do you kazuto take this young woman to be you're lawfully wedded wife in health and sickness" the preist said with a smile "i do" he said with a smile as the preist asked gal the same "i do" she said with a smile "omg this is so cute" silica started to cry and so did elisbeth. "you may kiss the bride" the preist said as kazuto kissed her for a very long time and klien grabbed elisbeth by the hand and got on one knee "will you marry me" he asked with confidence as elisbeth smiled and hugged him "yes, yes i will" as kazuto and gal smiled and just looked "i love you kazuto" Gal said with a tear coming down her face "i love you to Gal" he said as he faced her and kissed her" (i will always be here for you at all times and i wont let anyone get between us) The end Publication Date: October 14th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-dnf10382a424525

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-part-7/

RWBY lover, Asuna yuuki Kirito's Surprise part 7 The jealousy gets stronger! Gal wokeup yawning noticing that kazuto and her were the only ones there "she quickly got up and walked up to him" then tapping him on the shoulder "kazuto turned around" e..eh Gal goodmorning" good morning bro 'she said smirking then grabbing ahold of his arm" h..hey Gal im doing something could you wait?" is it more important than me or my feelings?  .. well uh n..no but" they then heard a knock at the door which was yuuki coming back holding bags "kazuto got aloose from Gal,s grip she then ran up to him moving his arm away from the doorknobs reach" as she kissed him and kazuto started to kiss back as the door swung open and it was yuuki and silica standing there looking at them " your doing that again to my bf" she said while walking into the house putting the stuff away, silica stood there speechles and all of a suddened she just screamed and ran out of the house dropping the bags totally forgetting she was helping yuuki, "huh i wonder what that was about" gal said with a slight nudge of kazuto as elizbeth walked into the house "whyd silica run off" she said while grabbing the bags off the floor, "i dont know maybe because she saw Gal and Kazuto kissing" asuna said with an angry look on her face "What she was kissing my man" elizbeth said with a slight hesitation, Gal just looked at her with a smirk on her face, elisbeth hugs kazuto ad kisses him as silica walked into the house and saw as she passed out, "huh what happened to silica" kazuto said grabbing her picking her up in his arms putting her in his bed and sits by her but she woke up looking at him and since he was the only one in the room as she blushed and turned around, "kazuto why am i in your room" she asked with a tear in her eye, "well you passed out so i thought id put you in my bed until you get better" he said with a smile and silica jumped up and huged him, " thank you for caring about me but im fine now" she said with a wink and she walk out of her room as she walked to the restroom and she locked the door behind her as she broke down in tears thinking of what she saw when Gal and elisbeth did to kazuto since she was in love with him, "Silica are you ok!" kazuto screamed from the other side of the door, "go away leave me alone!" she said with a trembling face, she got up and opened the door looking at him with tears in her eyes as she ran out of the house. Publication Date: October 9th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-narutolover11

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-shailz-its-not-what-you-think/

Shailz Its not what you think! Well, most stories that people like to read are always to do with romance. Right? A girl and a boy fall in love and they have troubles in the middle and finally near the end they live happily ever after. Haah! All I want to say is this book has none of it so people if you want to find a story like that then go onto searching another book because this isn’t for your eyes. This novel truly and remarkably is different to all those that you have heard. This story is about the life of two different people living in the world of the 21st century going through life simply on their laptops and desktops! Yep that’s right. I know right that your parents tell you not to talk to those people on your MSN’s or IMs that you don’t know because it’s all bad blaah de blaah. This story shows the world of a girl that was foolish enough to do so. Selena was hanging around with her friends; they were always talking about the people that they were talking to MSN and what happened in the conversations and all. It was all to do with people that they didn’t actually know but were willing to take the risk in doing so. Layla, was Selena’s best friend who is a mastermind at playing straight pool online and chatting up the guys who she faced were always flattered by the way she played her way of shooting balls. Publication Date: July 28th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-shailz

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-tag-cavello-desdemona/

Tag Cavello Desdemona For all the ones we’ve lost, and all the ones we have, and will have, with love in every world. Desdemona Desdemona Tag Cavello Copyright 2018 by Tag Cavello   “’By now you will, of course, have understood how little of the truth they see who claim that every love is, in itself, a good;   for though love’s substance always will appear to be a good, not every impress made, even in finest wax, is good and clear.’”   Dante, The Purgatorio, as translated by John Ciardi   For all the ones we’ve lost, and all the ones we have, and will have, with love in every world DESDEMONA   SOMMARIO ∞   CHAPTER ONE… … …DANTE     CHAPTER TWO… … …HORATIO     CHAPTER THREE… … …SUNNY     CHAPTER FOUR… … …NASCOSTO VILLAGIO     CHAPTER FIVE… … …LOCKER SIXTEEN     CHAPTER SIX… … …MERMAID PIZZA     CHAPTER SEVEN… … …MARIS     CHAPTER EIGHT… … …THE GLASS BLOCK     CHAPTER NINE… … …A DRIVE NORTH     CHAPTER TEN… … …GIRL TO GORILLA     CHAPTER ELEVEN… … …DINNER AND A PHONE CALL     CHAPTER TWELVE… … …SELF-LOATHING     CHAPTER THIRTEEN… … …LOVE RHYMES CHAPTER FOURTEEN… … …HOSPITAL VISIT     CHAPTER FIFTEEN… … …HAPPY NEW YEAR     CHAPTER SIXTEEN… … …FOR DUKEY     CHAPTER SEVENTEEN… … …I THINK A MAN SHOULD BE STRONG…     CHAPTER EIGHTEEN… … …THE GIRL DOWNSTAIRS     CHAPTER NINETEEN… … …DEPLOYMENT CHAPTER TWENTY… … …SUNNY COMES TO DINNER CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE… … …THE IDES OF MARCH CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO… … …DOGS ON ICE CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE… … …SUNNY AND MARIS CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR… … …WIN ON THE ROAD CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE… … …CONVALESCENCE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX… … …IN MEMORIAM ∞ CHAPTER ONE: Dante Norwalk, Ohio is strange. Or so the boy, whose name was Dante Torn, had in his thoughts always arranged.   Especially in the early dawn light. Every summer he delivered newspapers for a local publisher, which obliged him to wake before sunrise and tie his bundles with rubber bands, stuff them in a bag, and take to the quiet streets. Though the bag was heavy, he was able to ride his bike during the week, his tall, wiry frame accepting the load with little complaint. Helping with this task was the fresh smell of flowers from neighboring lawns, and the twittering of birds from high in the ancient trees that lined Norwalk’s streets. Of course during the week it was already a little bit light out when he left the house. He would step off the front porch of the fine, federal style brick mansion at 54 West Main Street where he lived, with the sun already peeking over the eastern hills between here and Cleveland, a cheerful eye. Also, the papers were light, especially on Mondays. What news came on Mondays, the day after everyone was supposed to rest? “We pray on Sunday,” Dante’s father once said, “so there will be no news on Monday.” He’d spoken it on a Monday morning whilst watching his son bundle papers full of meaningless fluff. School lunch menus. Artists with bad paintings and no one to come to their shows. Museum pieces. Dante supposed it was one prayer to which God always acquiesced. If only humankind would take up its habit for supplication to invisible deities on Saturday as well. Then Dante might not have to get up before dawn on Sunday mornings to tie papers three times as large as the weeklies. Then he might not have to carry them in a wagon instead of a bag. Then he might not have to be unnerved by streets that were sometimes a little too quiet, even for a small town. For it wasn’t just heavy papers that made Dante dread the Sunday edition. He’d seen things along the dark streets. Caught between wakefulness and dreaming, the town would every so often lose face. The Civil War mansions of Main, State, and Newton Street no longer looked like friendly old men, their doorways smiling, their gabled roofs fancy hats in want of a hand for tipping. Oh no. In the humid August shadows their doors rather seemed to gape, as if in awe for his temerity to disturb the stillness. And the roofs resembled furled, hairy brows over angry black eyes. They were faces, all, that would lunge at Dante—if they could—to swallow him whole. Sometimes they tried. Halfway down Newton Street was a railroad crossing where he’d once seen a squirrel fall out of a tree. It lay still after hitting the sidewalk. Concerned for its well-being, Dante had approached it with caution. He knew these beasts carried rabies. And yet something about its mass of black fur made him curious. Closer and closer he had pulled his wagon of papers, until he was nearly on top of the thing. Then the fur had rolled to reveal a woman’s tortured, screaming face with accusing red eyes. Her long black hair coated the sidewalk like ink. With a gasp of terror Dante had leaped back. That was when the face, or whatever it was, disappeared, leaving him alone in befuddlement. Another occasion found him on Manahan Avenue with his route nearly finished. Six papers remained in the wagon. Dante was glad, not because this morning had been particularly frightening, but because the thunder, which had begun half an hour ago, was getting louder. The sun had not arrived on schedule that day. Charcoal clouds, shot with lightning, roiled low in the sky. Dante was glad because he still had a chance to make it home without getting wet. Hoping the rain would hold off, he heaved one of the papers. It landed hard on Mr. Jergenson’s porch. Dante winced. No tip for you this week if you woke him up, he thought. An abandoned Magnavox, left on the curb for disposal, regarded him with its blank screen. Dante paused for only a moment to look at the broken knobs protruding from a cracked wooden frame. The console looked old and heavy. Left over from a forgotten time. When the screen began to flicker he assumed it was a reflection of lightning. He glanced skyward. Nothing there but more gray. Deeper now. Ever threatening. Clenching hold the handle of his wagon, the boy began to move on… Except there was a face on the TV screen now. A misshapen visage of dark eyes and horned forehead. Scowling with its sharp teeth, it snarled a message through the console’s broken speaker: Carpe noctem! Next moment, the face had gone, and the skies were raining so hard Dante could hardly see. ∞ Those things had happened a year ago, in 1991, when he was eleven. This summer had been much more quiet. In June he’d been frightened. Every Sunday morning was a minefield of weirdness he and his wagon traversed like soldiers of the mundane. When nothing happened in June his confidence increased. Rather than the pup’s face he’d had on since school let out, he faced July with something more regal, leaving the house each Sunday with a determined tug on the wagon, his chin high, his eyes keen. It all worked, or at least seemed to. Because nothing happened in July either. Now here he was in August, two weeks before the start of school. “You’re in love!” a girl said presently, as Dante made his way down West Main. “No I’m not!” another insisted. “I just really like him. A lot.” The two girls—teens—stepped around Dante’s wagon, not looking at him. But their giggles rose through the branches of the maple trees, and when Dante turned back, they both wore smiles like the sun, which had risen directly on time this morning. Neither of the girls, Dante noticed, had red hair. Too bad. For even if they liked him, he knew he could not like them back. At least not in that way. Do either of you know Sunny Desdemona? he almost asked, like an idiot. They might have laughed harder at this. Or maybe they would have grown curious. Made inquiries. Though only twelve, Dante was already developing into a handsome brown-haired boy, his frame tall and lean. Carrying newspapers all summer worked wonders for his muscles as well. If these two girls liked him, shouldn’t they know more about the competition? We don’t know her but who is she? they might have wondered. Come on! Tell us! “Nah,” Dante said under his breath. “Wishful thinking.” Less than a minute later the girls were just two distant figures on the sidewalk. They were headed downtown, though for what Dante had no idea. Most of Norwalk’s shops had relocated north to Sandusky. North to where the action was. Cedar Point, Perkins Mall. Marblehead Peninsula and Kelly’s Island. And of course Put-In Bay, the hottest little island on Lake Erie. These days Norwalk was just a town you drove through on your way to better places. A town of closed shops with soapy windows that read closed or going out of business. Dante turned to look at the girls again. They’d reached the Methodist church and were crossing the street. This puzzled him even further. Not only were the teens out early, but they had ventured to a side of the street where nothing but jewelry shops (all closed on Sundays) and banks stood. “Hey kid!” Dante jumped. A man at number ninety-nine glared at him from a tarred circular driveway. His house, like so many others on West Main, was huge. A Grecian beast with white pillars and green shutters. “How ‘bout a newspaper to go with my coffee?” he asked. “Sure,” Dante said. He remembered the man’s name as being Ken or Keith. Ken or Keith did not expect to have to walk to the end of his driveway to get his paper. He expected the “kid” to bring it to him. This was clear by the way he put his hands on his hips. To Dante he looked like an umpire listening to Mike Hargrove gripe about a questionable call. Whatever. He pulled his wagon onto the driveway. The tar looked immaculate. Deep and rich. Would he sink if he stood still for too long? “Hand it over,” Ken or Keith said. Like Dante, he was tall and lean. A pair of rimless glasses decorated his face. Dante handed him his paper. “Kenny Lofton has never agreed with a called strike in his life,” he then couldn’t help but let spill. It utterly confused the other. “What was that?” he asked. “Baseball,” Dante told him. Now the man sneered. “I don’t watch baseball. ” “Sorry. Enjoy your paper.” The boy turned to go. He got halfway to a row of hedges near the sidewalk when Ken or Keith called, “No tip for you on Thursday!” You mean no tip for me ever, Dante thought, because never once had this customer laid extra coin in his palm. Not looking back, he kept pulling his wagon. “Sunny Desdemona!” Ken or Keith yelled. Dante froze. Slowly, he turned to look at the prim, privileged man standing beside his stately manor. And in a quivering voice he said: “I’m sorry?” “Money says I owe ya,” the other repeated. “But a smile says I’m your friend. Try one on sometime.” “Of course,” Dante nodded, without smiling. “Of course. I will. Good morning.” “And good morning to you, young man.” The wagon trundled along behind him, a dog on a leash. Tiny bumps on the sidewalk made it jounce. At the corner of Main and Pleasant stood a dentists’ office slash residence. It too was large and quite old. Dante tossed a paper onto its wooden porch. WHAP! No one came out to retrieve it. The dentist, whom Dante knew was female, was probably still asleep in her basement coffin. You’re in love, he heard the teen girl say again. Only this time the girl was referring to him. No, Dante thought, no. I don’t want to be in love. Why not? he asked himself. Because she won’t love me back. It’s all wishful thinking. All good things start with a wish, Dante. All good things. Now who had ever told him that? Someone wise. Or maybe someone foolish. His uncle maybe. Kind but foolish. A drinker, a gambler. A man who got philosophical with his beer instead of angry. Had he once waxed poetic to Dante during some holiday eve party? Please please please… No, that wasn’t his uncle. That was The Smiths. Morrissey wishing on some star that wasn’t really a star at all, but a rock burning through Earth’s atmosphere. Wishful thinking. All good things… “Shut up,” Dante said aloud. He turned left on South Pleasant. Here the houses got a little smaller but still looked nice enough. One after the next, he delivered his papers. Dogs barked from back yards. Birds twittered. It was a lovely morning to be out for a walk. Sunny Desdemona was a lovely girl. The prettiest Dante had ever seen. Last year, attending sixth grade at Norwalk Middle School, he had fallen in love with the back of her head. That was in room 105, Applied Math. The first day of classes. The kids had been restless from summer break, fidgeting in their seats. Pencils and notebooks, all brand new, shined under fresh tubes of fluorescent lighting. Sitting near the back row, Dante had looked up to get a bead on some rookie female teacher just out of college. He got something else instead. Fire. A blazing calligraphy of red-orange that capered on narrow shoulders. Within he could see a jewel, a glimmer of gold, shining like forbidden treasure lost to magmatic depths. It was, Dante realized, an ear-ring, and quite a beautiful one at that. Its shape resembled a trident. WHAP! Another paper, another porch. The wagon’s load continued to diminish, so by the time he reached the valley of Pleasant Street he had no trouble pulling it down. Here the houses backed away to provide room for a park. Breezy trees stood watch over a playground, a picnic shelter. Water gurgled on one side. Norwalk Creek, carried off by a culvert under the street. Normally Dante avoided the park on Sundays. Woodland bordered it on two sides. Or rather, encroached it. For Dante the dark trees seemed to lean a little too close to its tennis courts, its flower beds. Once, back in 1978, a rash of Sasquatch sightings had broken out between Norwalk and Monroeville. One such sighting was said to have taken place right near the tennis courts, where a trail led behind West Main to the old Baltimore and Ohio rail line. But today the valley looked fairly inviting. Dante decided to cut through the park on his way up to Elm Street. He left the sidewalk. Dewey grass got the wagon wheels all wet. Near the shelter, he stopped to pick up some trash. Teenagers were always messing the place up on Saturday nights. Even the picnic tables had been violated. Their normally militant rows were now crooked. Twisted askew by crazy kids with stolen beer and garish girlfriends. Dante set about straightening them, then sat down at one for a breather. Crude carvings in the wood provided a harsh welcome. Ridiculous thoughts laid down by untalented hands. Some were pornographic, others comedic. Why? one wanted to know. The word had been written in weak felt, faded but legible. Beneath lay a piece unlike all the rest. A paragraph, composed with the same marker, its words dim, its message anything but. Why? Why did you leave me? I’m sitting here watching our children play. Eve is on the swing, Aaron the monkey bars. They’re having fun, while all I can do is pretend. I thought our marriage was good. I thought you loved me. I was wrong. Now you’re with her somewhere. You’re with a better woman I guess. Someone prettier than me maybe, someone smarter. Eve and Aaron sometimes ask where their daddy is. I always tell a lie. But I am running out of lies to tell myself. I thought we were happy, Jacob. Why did you leave me? Why? Dante stood. Grabbing his wagon, he struck off towards the creek. A quaint little wooden bridge crossed it. He looked down at the water, saw his face looking back. Sunny Desdemona’s face had not disappointed. He had waited all through that first day of class just to see it, not paying attention to the lesson. When the bell went off, he’d leaped from his seat, bumping his knee on the desk, so it was with a slight limp he saw her eyes for the first time. They were green. The shimmering green of Aurora Borealis in an oxygen storm. Cinnamon freckles dotted her nose and cheeks like dragons at play on a pristine snowscape. Beneath that snowscape, a cutting-blade ridge of blood—her lips, to breathe, to kiss. And yes, to ultimately wound. Dante did not think these things when he saw her. He felt them. And when the girl (he had not known yet that her name was Sunny) sneered at him for staring, he felt that too. Like her lips, it wanted to cut. This girl is not going to be easy, he thought. Then: I’m going to have her anyway. The girl—Sunny—had turned away from him. Dismissed him. Two other girls left the classroom with her. Dante noticed how they seemed to reach for her, though she was not the tallest in their group. They smiled as they talked, but not Sunny. Sunny only listened. A bee flew over the wagon. Dante watched it buzz towards Hogan’s Hill, where kids liked to go sledding in the winter. Once, Dante’s toboggan had crossed the field at the bottom too fast and crashed, sending him head first into a frozen Norwalk Creek. The other kids had run to get a look, some concerned, others laughing. Good times. Crazy, frostbitten fun. He pulled his wagon to the top of the hill. Here he met a younger boy—Michael Roberts. Dante knew Michael because the Roberts’ house was on his route. “Hey Mike,” Dante said. “Here’s your paper.” Michael took it. He was only seven. The paper looked very large in his hands, like a trout caught for breakfast. “Thanks,” he said. “How’s that new swimming pool?” “Good.” “Haven’t peed in it yet, have you?” The boy’s eyes grew wide. “No!” “I’m just kidding,” Dante laughed. “I know you wouldn’t do that. Tell your mom I said hello.” “Okay!” The boy ran to the porch of his house, leaving a toy truck on the sidewalk. Dante waited. He didn’t want to see Michael’s truck get kicked or stolen. Ten minutes later he was done with Elm Street. Only four papers remained. All of them went to houses further down West Main. Dante passed Michael again on his way back, waving hello. This time he did not cut through the park. He went to the culvert where Elm ended and Pleasant began. The creek flowed beneath him. If you followed it deeper into the woods you would come across an old stone bridge with an iron rail. Dante had learned this himself while playing guns with his friends years ago. The bridge had looked very strange and out of place, just sitting amidst the trees. It seemed to have no purpose other than to help wanton children cross the creek for further adventure. His love for the red-haired girl had seemed purposeless as well, at least at the outset. He had even made fun of himself that first morning. A dozen Peanuts strip references played across his mind. He thought about asking his mom to buy him a yellow sweater. He thought about joining a little league team, going out for pitcher. Maybe one of the other kids would hit a line drive and knock off all his clothes. By lunchtime, however, none of it was funny. Dante thought about her all through English class, and then all through World History. He had gone to lunch that day with his head somewhere between heaven and hell. Standing in line for Salisbury steak, he saw her sitting at a table with five other girls. The five other girls were talking to her. Talking, talking. The red-haired girl would only nod occasionally. “That’s Sunny,” someone standing next to Dante said. He turned to see a dark-haired boy with glasses and a cagey smile. “Who’s Sunny?” he asked, doing his best to sound innocent. The dark-haired boy hadn’t been fooled. “The girl with the red hair you keep staring at. I saw you staring at her in Applied Math too.” “Really?” “Yeah, really. You want me to tell her you like her?” The boy’s smile flashed. Under the duel assault of it and his glasses, Dante thought he might go blind any moment. Also, he wasn’t sure he could answer his question, so he countered it with one of his own. “What’s her last name?” “Desdemona,” the boy answered, as if he had known the girl for a long time. Turned out he had. “She was in my class last year. Pretty much every boy had a crush, but she never let any of us so much as buy her a milkshake.” His eyes had wandered as he spoke, to where Sunny was sitting, and his voice had gone dreamy. “You had a crush too?” Dante asked. Or he might have stated it, so aloof was the boy’s tone. “I did,” the other replied. Then he’d blinked as if coming awake, and looked at Dante pugnaciously. “So what? You won’t get anywhere with her, either.” “She doesn’t like boys?” “I don’t care what she likes or doesn’t like. Not anymore.” “I’ll leave her alone,” Dante told him, just for something to say. Hearing this, the boy’s cagey smile had clicked right back into place. “No you won’t, you liar. But you’re going to get bitten, you’d better believe it. You’re going to get bitten.” Thus far his prediction had not been accurate. Dante had gone through the rest of sixth grade without being bitten. Curiously, the boy with the glasses had disappeared. Gone off on Christmas break with his family and never returned. Timothy, his name had been. Timothy…something. Dante couldn’t remember what. Anyway, he had not been bitten. Then again he was not holding Sunny Desdemona’s hand today, either. He had yet to even come close. ∞ Three of the final four papers in the wagon went quietly, without incident. Dante’s last stop was number 114. This was an old, old mansion that looked like a Greek temple. It stood on the opposite side of West Main, at the corner of Pleasant. Its huge windows and old, cracked pillars towered over unkempt grass (the man who lived here rarely strayed outdoors). Dante supposed it looked haunted, though he normally paid it little mind. Nearly done with another day’s work, he approached it now with cavalier deportment. The unmown lawn encroached its front walk. Some of the windows lacked shutters; all were badly in need of fresh paint. Dante took a step closer. A set of broken steps led to a set of double front doors. He tossed the paper… And for whatever reason the shot went too hard. Maybe it was baseball. Steve Olin’s submarine had been smoking that year. Or maybe his lack of progress with Sunny contributed an element of frustration to his delivery. Whichever the case, Dante’s throw was aggressive, and when it struck number 114’s twin doors, one of the windows shattered. Jagged glass fell on the steps, disrupting the morning stillness. The sound frightened a murder of crows from a nearby tree; they rose, cawing, like black balloons from its branches. Dante couldn’t believe his eyes. He looked at the shards of glass. Glittering, they lay on the mossy stone. In on piece Dante could see his face, his own guilty face, sickened by what had happened. The customer who lived here—a tall, rotund man who tipped light and never talked—was not going to like this. Oh no, not remotely. Sometimes on collection day Dante thought he detected a trace of irritability in the large man’s bulbous eyes, a trace of impatience, as if he felt the boy wasn’t meeting his standards. He always plunked his two dollars into Dante’s hand without a single word, or even the slightest hint of a smile. Wait, Dante thought, that’s not true. He DID speak to you once. Earlier this summer. And what did he say? Could Dante remember? Of course he could: “Be careful how you throw those papers, son, or you’ll break a window.” The man had not sounded nice when he said it. If anything, he’d actually growled the words, and his face looked tired and mean. This after Dante had tossed one of the weekdays onto his step just as neatly as anyone could please. Now he’d gone and spit in the eye of that warning; he’d gone and broken a damned window. Soon the rotund man would burst out, his face red with rage, his hair on fire. He would scream at Dante, call him names. Maybe even shake him by the shoulders. Look what you did, boy! LOOK WHAT YOU DID! Dante looked. The glass on the other door had a scripted B engraved into it. That could only mean the broken piece had been scripted, too. Marvelous. So not only was it destroyed, it was expensive. A one of a kind signature article. Dante approached the door. Like it or not, he had to knock. He had to get the customer out here and confess his guilt. His stomach was in revolt. Eating itself from the inside. His hands were sweaty. Run away. Just grab the paper and run away. No one will know. Yes they would. Who else but the stupid paper boy could have come along at six-thirty in the morning and broken a window? And anyway, this house had neighbors. Others like it—huge and old—stood all along West Main. At least some of their owners had to be awake, had to have heard the crash. Dante mounted the steps. Glass crunched. Feeling more like an idiot than ever, he kicked a few shards. Then he knocked on the other door—the one still intact. He knocked good and hard. Because hey, this incident needed to put to bed as soon as possible. Lord did it ever— “Ow!” he cried. A sharp pain from his ankle. Looking down, Dante saw it was bleeding. One of the shards had somehow gotten under the edge of his shoe. Now his sock was turning red. He was about to kneel for further assessment of the damage when the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door’s opposite side. Oh man, Dante thought, oh man, here we go. “Who is it?” the large man called, sounding like he’d not had his coffee yet. “Who… Good Lord! ” He had yet to open the door, but the cause for his exclamation hardly needed detective work to comprehend. He was looking at broken glass on the other side. No doubt it decorated the floor of his anteroom quite prettily in the morning sun. “Has somebody lost their mind? ” Dante heard him cry. The words carried a slightly warbled, somewhat coiled accent, as if bent to fit their speaker’s tongue. “Perche? Perche?” What in the world does “perche” mean? Dante had time to wonder. And then the door was flying open. And the large, round man was there, over six feet in height, his hair hanging in black curls around a face sculpted by angry hands: eyes thumbed deep and dark, nose blotted and smoothed crudely about the edges, lips stretched too far towards ears squeezed and molded with hasty, impatient need. The man’s eyes fell directly upon their target. Dante watched him bare his teeth. They were surprisingly white considering their house of residence, surprisingly straight. The man scowled for a moment longer. The scowl dropped. Then, to Dante’s complete amazement, it became a smile. “Now what did I tell you,” he said, “about throwing those papers too hard?” And that was how he met Horatio Donati. CHAPTER TWO: Horatio A new friend brings many stories to tell, especially one who has travelled well.   The man introduced himself as Mr. Donati. Horatio to his friends. He told Dante this as he swept glass off the step, occasionally pausing to hoist the pants of his blue pajamas. The glass fell into a broken dustpan that made Dante wince. In less than one second it had gone from timeless to trash. “How old was the window?” Dante then asked, bracing himself for the worst. He got all of it and then some. “1830, I believe,” said Mr. Donati after a moment. “Oh no.” “Oh no indeed. But then nothing lasts forever, boy. Not even the stars.” “I’m really sorry. My name is Dante, by the way.” Mr. Donati set the dustpan aside. “I remember. I also know you are sorry. You were very brave to knock on the door. Other boys would have simply run away.” “I—“ “The window, however, is irreplaceable. I am sad that after so many years it came to its demise under my care.” “Are you going to sue me?” Dante spluttered. Over the past few minutes the sun had grown very hot. He could feel it on his neck, trying to set the nape on fire. But Mr. Donati only laughed at the question. “Sue you? Good heavens, no! What could I achieve by suing my paperboy, other than a comic write-up in the very paper he delivers?” “You mean you’re not angry at all?” Dante looked at the other window. It looked every bit as old as the man in blue pajamas had told him. The gold letter B was scripted in such a way he somehow knew hadn’t been used for many years. It looked quite regal and masculine. “What was the other letter?” he asked, before Mr. Donati could answer his first question. “I must go inside now,” the man said by way of reply. He had stopped laughing, and his heavy shoulders were slumped. Dante caught his eye wander again to the broken door. He was taking things well, but he was still hurt, that much was clear. “I come from Sicily,” he continued, “where we sometimes eat ice cream for breakfast. Brioche , it’s called. And it will melt if I don’t eat it soon.” Dante nodded. He felt awful all over again, as if he too would melt, and very soon indeed. ∞ They did not speak again until the start of the school year. It was the last Sunday of August, and as always, Dante had saved the final paper on his route for number 114. Rather than throw it, however, he walked it carefully to the door, as if it were a girl at the end of a date. He placed the paper on the porch, taking in the fact that the glass had not yet been replaced. The doorframe was still empty. Through it he could see Mr. Donati’s anteroom. Coats and hats. An umbrella cane. “Good morning.” The man himself appeared from round side of the house, looking cheerful. No pajamas adorned him today. He wore a pair of faded blue jeans with boots and a yellow t-shirt. A garden spade hung from one hand. The other clutched a twisted mass recently murdered weeds. “Good morning, Mr. Donati,” Dante said. “Is that my paper?” “Yes sir.” “Good lad. And to judge by the empty wagon, your route is done, yes?” “Yes sir,” Dante repeated. “Done for the whole year. School starts on Tuesday.” “So I have read,” Donati told him. “Which leaves me perhaps another month to do my gardening. Perhaps two. The weather in Ohio is so volubile. ” “Volu…what?” Donati smiled. “That is an Italian word. It means ever changing.” “Oh.” “Nothing at all like this house, mind you. This house is costante. ” He gestured the upper windows with his spade. “Built in 1827 and still standing, just as strong as you please.” Dante’s eye went to the windows, but only for a moment. The house’s huge pillars drew his gaze upward towards an ornate pediment that could have once been part of Siculus’ ancient wonders. “It’s Greek, right?” he said, neck still craned. “You mean the style?” he heard Donati reply. “Indeed it is. Greek architecture was quite popular in 19th century America. This house was originally a seminary for young girls. A boarding school.” Now Dante looked at the man. Here was something he certainly hadn’t known about 114. “This house used to be a school? ” “A long time ago,” Donati nodded. “And if you don’t believe me, I can show you one of the old chalkboards. It’s still in place on the wall.” “Will you? That sounds really cool!” Donati winked. “If you promise not to throw my newspaper at it, I will.” ∞ It occupied one of 114’s two living rooms off the main hallway. A crooked black slate, cracked in places, took up most of a dirty, peeling wall of dismal beige. The whole thing looked to Dante like a very old man holding in his last breath of life. Seeing it instantly made him feel that Donati was telling the truth. The dark texture looked almost liquid, ready to ooze off the wall at any moment. To lay chalk to it would no doubt make it fall apart on the floor. The rest of the house, Dante soon discovered, quartered similar issues. Cracked paint and faded wallpaper—all beige—surrounded not only the chalkboard, but everything else as well. Crooked pictures, their frames caked with dust, hung despairingly from rusty nails. Fireplaces with cold, forlorn hearths stood in both living rooms. What little furniture Donati had chosen to decorate with did not look antique so much as merely old. Old and cheap. Still, he showed Dante the ground floor without the slightest trace of shame, explaining that there had once been a wall to separate the two living rooms. “So there could be two classrooms?” the boy asked. “Two classrooms,” Donati answered. “I purchased this house for a song, due to its dilapidated condition. In fact my words are almost literal, for I was once an opera singer. Can I get you some cappuccino?” He showed Dante into the kitchen. It was a tight, narrow room behind the chalkboard. Seeing it nearly caused the boy to gasp in horror. By far it was the worst-looking room on the ground floor (who knew what ruin lay above?). Strips of paint hung from a sagging ceiling like jungle vines. Stained counters, all crooked, lay atop droopy cabinets of rotting wood. The floor had once been white but was now stained so deeply that Dante thought it would never come clean. “Cappuccino!” Donati said again. Near the stove stood a silver, clumsy-looking contraption. Smiling, he poured a cup from it, then another for himself. “I could never drink too much cappuccino. In my mind it would be ridiculous for one to say ‘I have had too much cappuccino.’ It’s like saying you have too much money, or too much love.” Dante nodded. In truth he knew nothing about cappuccino. The stuff was almost as alien to him as Jack Daniels. He took a sip. It was thick and warm—not at all hot. “Good?” Donati asked, looking hopeful. Dante found it surprisingly sweet but still good, and told him so. Then he asked: “Were you really an opera singer?” They went back to the living room to sit by one of the cold fireplaces. Here Donati explained that he had once travelled the world, performing on the small stage (his voice was good but not, by his own admission, exceptional). He claimed to have played almost all the popular operas, from Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade to Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. “Albeit L’Olimpiade became awkward at times, for my troupe lacked money for set pieces. We played almost all of our operas on an empty stage, to small audiences in candlelit backwater theaters. Set pieces were usually trivial, provided the singers were good. And many of us were damned good. Marie Comfit. Louise St. Claire. Alfred Puissance. They could sing. Oh my, could they ever.” The older man seemed to have forgotten his drink. His eyes had filled with the mist of years gone by. “Nor did the time of day matter much,” he continued. “To us or our audience. Parents would bring their children to see Pinocchio at two in the morning.” “Didn’t your singing disturb people who wanted to sleep?” Dante asked. “Not at all. The theaters we used were always well off the larger streets. Hidden venues in back alleys. Paris is rife with them. As are cities like London and Madrid. Even Manila.” Dante put his cup down. “Manila? Where’s that?” The question brought a not unkind smile to Donati’s lips. “That is in the Philippines,” he said. “A hot city. So very hot. Now you tell me, boy,” he went on, before Dante could ask anything else, “how old are you, and what grade are you in this year?” “I’ll be thirteen in October,” Dante said. “I’m in seventh grade.” To this he watched the opera singer’s expression very closely. Experience had made him bitter. His dad’s friends—golf players and yacht owners—were a most condescending bunch, and became even more so when it came to his age. They liked to ruffle his hair, using names like “tiger” and “chief” and “big guy” rather than his real name. Then they would tee off, or duck down into their boat for another cold drink. They never gave drinks to Dante. Ever. Once, on a Lake Erie weekend, Janet Jones had ordered pizza. She had given a slice to her Great Dane. But none to Dante. Those were his dad’s friends. To his great relief Donati showed no signs of being like them at all. The opera singer looked him in the eye as he spoke, nodding, with full attention trained upon his response. Nor did his gaze seem penetrating or disquieting. Rather, it was simply interested. Quite respectful. For the first time Dante began to feel comfortable around the man. And comfortable, indeed, with number 114, though he’d yet to see the upstairs. Despite its run-down state—and despite its huge rooms with high ceilings—the house did not feel like a scary place. Like its owner, it looked old but friendly. And willing, perhaps, to lend an ear of its own. Donati’s next words made him feel even better. “I never liked school,” he uttered. “But then I was not your typical student. I found it difficult to absorb material from a textbook. Children like me wanted education through doing. What is it boy?” Dante had begun to smile. “You didn’t like school, so here you are, living in a school.” “Ah. A fine ironia indeed.” His head tilted with sudden thought. “Perhaps I bought this house in effort to overcome the old disliking. Eh?” “Perhaps,” Dante said. “But no. It is not true. Love is what brought me to Norwalk. The love for an opera singer, like myself.” The man hesitated. “Wait. Not like myself. Better. Beautiful and better. Georgina Esposito. Have you heard of her?” Dante answered that he had not, but his voice lacked strength, and his eyes were restless. Donati’s confession of love for a woman had made him immediately think of Sunny. He glanced out the window— And just for a moment, saw her. A girl in green, with long red hair all ablaze ‘neath the morning sun. She was looking at Dante intently, as if to say: How dare you give your heart to me? “She lived a long time ago,” Donati told him. “I loved her voice. I still do. In 1896 she came to Norwalk—“ Dante forced his attention away from the window. Now he looked back. The patch of grass where he’d seen Sunny was empty again. And the patch, of course, was green. Next door he could just make out the hood of a parked red car. So that was it. That was all it had been. “—to sing at the Methodist Church. On Church Street,” he added, “where it used to be. Not this larger cathedral on West Main. I came to Norwalk five years ago to see where Miss Esposito had once performed, only to find the building gone, and an insurance company standing in its place.” “You mean Nationwide?” Dante put forth. “I do not remember its name. I was so surprised at what I saw—so stupito. I came for a church and found what looked like a gas station instead, then the gas station turned out to be an insurance peddler. Non potrei credre ai miei occhi. ” “What does that mean?” “I thought my eyes must be lying.” Dante knew Church Street well enough. It wasn’t part of his route, but you couldn’t ride downtown without seeing it. Not that there was anything to see. Two parking lots, one for a furniture company and the other for the Universalist Church, were all it had to boast. “I never knew the Methodist Church used to be there,” he told Donati. “Just the other one, which is empty as far as I know.” The other nodded. “The Universalist Church. It’s empty. Though a young couple recently purchased it. They mean to turn it into a restaurant.” This was news to Dante’s ears. The old man’s tone, however, was of a man speaking the grim truth. “You don’t sound happy about it,” the boy delved. “It will never happen,” replied Donati. “I’ve seen the inside of that church. It’s too far gone to restore. And the couple…” His eyes dropped to his cup before returning to Dante with a sad smile. “They’re very sweet but very young. Immature dreamers.” “You’ve met them?” “Ted and Martha Billings. They’re going to lose a fortune.” “I’m…going to lose something, too,” Dante suddenly told him. “In fact I think I already have.” The old man’s smile faded. Yet he was still listening, and quite intently. For his eyes had not changed. They had returned from the cup with an air of sadness. Now they looked inquisitive as well, to form a third milky potion between them. “And what might that be?” he asked. Dante swallowed hard before answering. “I’m in love with a girl from my school.” ∞ He told Donati everything he knew about Sunny Desdemona, which admittedly wasn’t much. She stood maybe four feet, seven inches tall to Dante’s five three. She had long red hair, with freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were a green, like swimming grottos on a stormy island. She had lots of friends—or at least knew a lot of girls who liked her. And of course, she was poison mean. “Does she like you ?” Donati asked. He had refilled their cappuccinos whilst hearing the story. Dante seized his mug, eager to hide his blushing face. Why had he felt compelled to spill his guts to this relative stranger anyway? Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? To his surprise, the opera singer came forward with an answer. “You are in love,” he said, “that is why you speak the way you do. You have the heart of a poet, which is lovely—except chances are you will never be a rich man.” He leaned back in his chair. “Now tell me. Does she?” Placing his cup on the table, Dante said, “I don’t think so.” His so-called poet’s heart sank with the confession. “When she catches me staring she always makes a face. Like, you’re stupid, kid, go away. ” “I see,” the older man replied. “Well then, answer me this: Do you think you can win her, if you put your mind to the task?” “Maybe my heart.” “No, boy. It must be your mind. A fisherman’s palate becomes moist when he his hungry, but he must catch the meal with his mind.” Dante thought about it. Could he win Sunny? Was there a way to make her look at him with interest rather than scorn? “Your love will inspire you,” Donati went on. “That is where the heart comes in. But you must be wily as well.” And from here he told Dante a little story of his own. Once, he said, in 1830, a boy from Norwalk fell in love with a girl who attended school right here at number 114. She was a very beautiful girl (of course), with tumbling black hair like tornado clouds, and eyes blue as a lightning-struck sea. Her name was Louisa. The boy’s name became lost over time, but so powerful did his love burn for Louisa—whom he’d met eating strawberries at a street fair—that on many nights he would creep through the countless mighty elms that had once grown around 114, and climb their branches to reach the school’s huge pediment, and slip inside to the attic bedroom where she lay. Here he would present her with myriad tokens of his affection—flowers, fruits, kisses. Louisa loved them all. She also loved the boy. His face was handsome, his heart brave. Every time he visited, she thought of heroes. Climbing the trees took strength and courage. Traversing the attic at 114 took even more. Here Mr. Donati explained that to reach the attic bedrooms from outside, you first had to cross a vast section of framework. A place where huge wooden beams floated in darkness like the hull of a sunken galleon. If you could manage this feat without losing your nerve, you might then be able to find a sliding wood panel that let on the attic stairs. None of the girls who lived in the attic would open this panel. The gigantic beams were simply too disturbing to look at, let alone walk on. The boy, however, used them every week to reach his Louisa. He used them at night, when the moon hung at just the proper place to light the way across. For a full year his luck and skill with the beams held firm. But in August of 1831 it all came to an end. One night near the end of the month the boy came calling as usual. Though a cool wind had gotten up, and the sky was anxious with clouds, he climbed his favorite elm with ease. Minutes later, he was slipping through number 114’s tympanum oxeye window to place his foot on one of its frightful joists. By this time the wind had grown stronger, the clouds heavier. The school’s huge frame had come alive, dashing in and out of silvery light each time a cloud blocked the moon. Impatient as the boy was to see his love, he attempted to cross anyway, until the clouds grew too thick for the moon to escape, and he was utterly blinded. “You must know what happened next,” Donati said. Dante was pretty sure he did. “He fell.” “Indeed. Straight down through the ceiling of the second floor. His body landed in the teacher’s quarters, where it became impaled on her bedpost.” From here the old crooner seemed unable to move on. He stared at Dante for several seconds before rising from his chair to return, on bones seemed made of glass, to the kitchen. Dante thought it best to remain seated. From the kitchen came a rattling of dishware—plates and cups and who knew what else. What could Donati be doing? he wondered. Whipping up a soufflé? The thought proved not terribly far off. Dante stared at 114’s cold living room fireplace for another ten minutes. His mind had gotten back to the boy—the poor, love-struck boy—and rather morbidly, whether the room in this house still bore evidence of the tragedy. Then Donati returned with a breakfast tray. It wobbled in his arms. Toast, jam, some re-heated muffins. He placed the tray on the table and invited Dante to eat. “Not precisely Italian,” the singer said, a trifle apologetic, “but then we are in America. Are we not?” Dante took a piece of toast. A rather silly question had occurred to him, but it felt like he had to know. “Was…was the teacher asleep in that bed when…when the boy fell?” “She was rather rudely awakened by the event,” Donati admitted. “Miss McKinney, her name was. The crash made her scream, and when she lit the lamp, her bed was soaked in blood. It took a long time for the whole story to come out,” he went on, crunching a piece of toast. “Miss McKinney did not hear much of it, for her nerves were so damaged by the event she was unable to return to teaching. But an envelope was found with the boy’s jacket. An envelope with Louisa’s name on it. From there the love story became exposed.” “What was in the envelope?” Dante asked. “Ah!” And before Dante could stop him, the old man was on his feet again. This time he went to the hallway. His steps echoed on the high ceilings. Dante heard him go up the stairs, rummage about somewhere for a minute or two, then come back down. As before, he had retrieved something. Not more breakfast treats though. Donati sat. He placed an old, brown envelope on the table. Dark splotches stained its surface. It looked every bit as ancient and fragile as the chalkboard. Across the front, written in staggered cursive, was one word: LOUISA. “No,” Dante said, awe-struck. “I don’t believe it.” “You do. It’s just an old envelope.” The opera singer smiled. “No doubt you’ve seen stranger things.” “I have. It’s just that—“ “Open the envelope, boy. We must have your question answered.” Dante reached for it. He feared it might fall apart in his hands, delicate as the fibre had become. Its texture was soft, almost powdery, as if at any moment it would crumble. Gingerly as he knew how, he extracted a parchment from within. This too proved a challenge to unravel. With great care Dante pulled one corner back, and then another. “It’s already torn in many places, as you can see,” he heard Donati say, “but the poem is still perfectly legible.” Indeed it was. And it looked to be written by the same hand as what had marked the envelope. Faded letters waltzed across the page, their orientation slightly crooked, their words all but hemorrhaging with desire.   My shadow falls upon the porch, Of the temple where you lie. My shadow fades upon the torch, Of the beauty I draw nigh.   Each night I walk the pediment, To soothe an aching need. I long for your disarmament, I kiss you and I’m freed.   A giant’s bones are not enough To keep my heart at bay; A giant’s bones my own rebuff— My love for you holds sway.   Always will I come for you; Wait for me and see. I love you, sweetest Louisa, true, My darling, my dear, marry me!   “This was written by the boy?” Dante asked. “To his Louisa on the night that he died. The story comes from the realtor who sold me this house. Where she got it” Donati shrugged “who knows? Does it even matter? The poem eventually found its way to Louisa’s hands. She kept it for the rest of her life. Never married.” “That’s…” Dante began. But he couldn’t think what to say. Dumbfounded, he shook his head. “I don’t know what that is.” But Donati did know. “That is love, boy. Romantic love. And when it’s real, there is no stopping it. A boy and girl will always come together. The author of the poem used his mind to make sure it happened for him and Louisa. But the spark derived from love.” He leaned closer. “If you truly love this Sunny Desdemona, you will think of a way to win her.” “I love her,” Dante said, more sure of himself this time. “Then what are you waiting for? Get to plotting, boy, get to plotting.” CHAPTER THREE: Sunny Many days passed before he saw Donati again. But the opera singer’s words no distraction would rescind.   On the first day of school Dante dressed in clothes he thought would be suitable for catching Sunny’s eye: black boots, dark jeans, a red dress shirt. To complete the ensemble he added a leather jacket, though the early autumn weather remained warm. Would he even see Sunny this year? That was another issue he wondered about. What if she’d moved away over the summer, or transferred to a different school? Like maybe a juvenile detention center, a cruel thought whispered as he walked down Benedict Avenue. It almost made him trip on the railroad tracks. But no, Sunny wouldn’t be in juvie, not at her age. The academic pundits of Norwalk’s school board might recommend her for home education, but they wouldn’t stick her in juvie. Leaving the tracks behind, Dante walked uphill to Norwood Avenue. Further down it intersected Christie, the avenue of Norwalk Middle School. A double-laned drive—crowded with cars already—led to its single story facade. Groups of noisy kids gathered around the bike racks. Others stood in the parking lot, saying goodbye to their parents. Dante knew from last year that Sunny’s parents drove her to school in a slick Jaguar sedan. He looked for that sedan now, slowing his gait, but could find nothing remotely close. Nor was anything like it turning at the drive. She’s gone; you know she’s gone. Ignoring the thought, Dante approached the main doors of Norwalk Middle School. To him its impression was that of a federal prison, with its low rectangular windows set within beige bricks. High hedges protected the glass, giving the whole building a wall of sorts to peek over like a cat on the hunt. Dante did not care about cats on the hunt. This school couldn’t scare him—not anymore. That was last year. Last year he’d been too afraid to even walk on the first day; he’d asked his dad to drive him instead. Last year was sixth grade, the first year of middle school. New building, new teachers, new rules. This year he walked right to the main door and yanked it wide. Kids, most of them shorter than he, scurried everywhere. Their voices were like snow on a television screen—blah blah blah, zabba zabba zabba. The buzz of crazed insects. Danta walked through them as best he could, trying not to step on any toes. He already knew his homeroom number—204. It waited at the end of the hall, an open door, a tall, smiling teacher wearing a beard. Dante remembered the teacher’s name as Mr. Wolfe. Or Wolfton or Wolfley, something along those lines. He was watching the kids at their lockers, his round, furry face a selling point: I’m friendly, I’m helpful, you can trust me. The lockers popped open, slammed closed. A smell of pine cleaner and new books hovered everywhere. Mr. Wolfe spied Dante, said hello. Dante said hello right back. “Your locker is number sixteen,” the teacher said. “Thank you, Sir.” Where is she where is she where is she? Dante went to his locker. A few more familiar faces from last year said hello. None of them had red hair. None of them were even girls. Now he was stopped in front of his locker. A black combination dial regarded him blandly. Dante looked back at it. Of course, he had forgotten to get the combination from Mr. Wolfe. ∞ Things did not get any better at 7:30, when homeroom began. Hoping to rub elbows with various members of Sunny’s trouble-making clan, Dante took a seat in back of the room. An empty green chalkboard hung at his shoulder. A row of sleeping Amiga computers, their faces also blank, kept it company. There came the squeak of chairs, the slapping open of notebooks, a few coughs. Students were settling in. Mentally preparing themselves for day one at NMS. Looking from one seat to the next, Dante felt his heart sink lower, lower, lower. None of the girls he saw looked like Sunny. Nope. Sunny just wasn’t here. “Okay then,” said Mr. Wolfe from in front of the class, “welcome back to anther year.” Moans and groans greeted this. It made Wolfe laugh. “Yes, I know how excited you all are. I am Mr. Wolfe, the seventh grade English teacher. Some of you will see me later today. Those of you who won’t have presumably been assigned to Mrs. Durkey.” More moaning and groaning, some laughter. Mrs. Durkey’s rather unfortunate married name meant that a lot students called her Mrs. Turkey behind her back. Last year, Sunny had called it right to her face. “Now let’s do the roll call,” Wolfe went on, “shall we?” Over the next seven minutes he called everyone’s name neatly, soberly, alphabetically. His bearded smile never wavered. Dante’s lip tightened when he got to the D section, but Sunny Desdemona’s name was not cast. A hot, unreasonable anger toward Mr. Wolfe rose in Dante’s gut. For whatever reason, he was sure that Sunny’s name was on the English teacher’s roll card, but just to be mean, he skipped over it. Somehow, he knew Dante wanted her here, needed her here, so he skipped her. Stupid, the whispering thought said. And yes, Dante knew it was exactly that, but he couldn’t help wondering. She’s not even here! Do you see her here? Someone knocked at the door. Mr. Wolfe went to it, stepped into the hall. Somebody else—another adult—had summoned him, but Dante couldn’t see who it was. The doorframe blocked his view. He tried to listen to their voices, make out what they were saying. There was laughter, something about cafeteria lunches. Then Mr. Wolfe returned to the room. “Sorry about that,” he told everyone. Dante noticed that now his smile looked awkward, slanted, a little off. “We have a slight change in attendance.” The slanted smile faced the door. “Sunny?” And in walked the girl of Dante’s dreams. She wore black. Her skirt and blouse were like midnight struck upon an open blaze, her jewelry the stars, the green of her eyes a furious shimmer set above the chiseled cold features of her face. Her boots, gold-buckled, clicked daintily across the tiles, until Mr. Wolfe’s desk arrested her progress. “Where would you like me to sit?” she asked, as if the teacher were stupid. Mr. Wolfe either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Just find an empty desk,” he answered pleasantly. Turning on her heel, Sunny approached the class. Dante wondered if anyone else noticed her sneer, or the way her nails, lacquered red, fanned at the belt of her skirt like bloodied claws. Click…click…click the buckled boots went on the floor, coming closer and closer to Dante’s desk. The heels must have been an inch high, yet Sunny was still short. A slender sprite with red hair. A deviant pixie. The girls moved sideways a little to let her pass; the boys turned their eyes away. No one, it seemed, had the courage to look at those icy green eyes. Except Dante. Perhaps that was why Sunny chose the desk right next to his. In one delicate move, she placed her bottom on the seat, crossed her bare legs, and flashed Dante the deadliest smile he had ever seen. “Okay if I sit here?” she asked. Dante could only nod. Her perfume smelled of baked cinnamon, and the sound of her breath felt good enough to drink. ∞ That first week took a long time to get through—much longer than five days. A number of issues contributed to the drag. Unseasonably hot weather, piles of homework, boring teachers. On Wednesday Dante stopped at his locker just before lunch, only to find that its combination no longer worked. Over and over he dialed the correct numbers; over and over, when he pulled the release lever, nothing happened. Hungry and thirsty (especially thirsty—the temperature outside had struck ninety degrees by then), Dante began to despair. If it really wouldn’t open, he would need to go to the office and report the problem. It really wouldn’t open. Dante went to the office. First the principal’s secretary didn’t believe him, then the principal didn’t believe him. Then the school janitor was called, and everyone went to locker sixteen. The janitor dialed the same numbers Dante had been using for two days now. He pulled the latch. The locker popped right open. Thursday came and it happened again. Dante twisted the dial to the left, the right, the left, just as he had all week. He pulled the latch. Nothing happened. “No way,” he moaned. The hallway was empty. Everyone else had gone to lunch. Dante tried the combination again. When it didn’t work, he punched a dent in the door. “Having trouble, handsome?” Sunny Desdemona asked from somewhere. Dante could not have turned faster without swirling his cranial fluid into parfait cream. A quiet row of neighboring lockers met his gaze; a broken pencil lay on the floor. There was nobody and nothing else to see. “If this happens again,” the principal told him ten minutes later, “I’ll have to issue a demerit.” “But sir, it never opens when—“ “Stop it, Dante. No more tricks.” Here the principal smiled to show they could still be friends. “Okay?” “Yes, sir.” “How did that dent get in the door?” “I don’t know, sir.” The locker behaved itself on Friday. Over the weekend Dante went to see the Indians with his dad. It was the team’s penultimate year at old Municipal Stadium. From a pair of box seats behind home plate, they watched the Indians beat the Mariners 5-4. Dante bought a hot dog in the fifth inning. A woman vendor with red hair and green eyes sold it to him. Then Carlos Baerga came to bat. With the count at 3-2, Dante heard a voice from many rows off call his name. He turned—and there stood the vendor at the mouth of an exit tunnel. Her hair blew in a wind that wasn’t there, her teeth shined. And even though the tunnel was dark, her green eyes blazed like the Great Lakes sun. ∞ His locker door got stuck again on Monday. Rather than further distress the school principal about it, Dante decided to go straight to lunch. This was a mistake, though not one he could blame on the locker. The hot weather made sleeping difficult, and he had not been able to crawl out of bed soon enough this morning to brown bag a lunch. Now he faced a long line in the cafeteria listening to nerds talk about computer games. And there they were: a sweaty row of bespectacled kids standing like section eight soldiers along the east wall. Short kids with bad skin and weird hair, grinning, batting titles like Super Mario Kart and Wolfenstein 3D back and forth. Dante listened to them without much interest, though some reminded him of Timothy, the boy he’d met in this very line last year, and who had not returned from Christmas break. He spotted Sunny eating with a group of girls and hoped to get a seat decent enough to see her legs under the table. “What are ya eatin’ today, kid?” a fat kitchen woman asked, knocking him from his reverie. Dante went with the usual slop: coleslaw, greasy chicken, stale peas. Two minutes later he was sitting directly across from Sunny. The view it gave suggested intervention on a divine scale. She wore a red skirt with a black belt. Her bare legs were crossed. Dante could see the freckles on her knees. He tried to take a bite of coleslaw and missed, splatting it on his shirt. At that moment Sunny stopped talking to her friends. She looked directly at Dante. A smile tugged the corner of her razor-blade lips. He was about to feign ignorance—to pretend to clean the coleslaw—when he saw the girl’s legs come uncrossed and part just slightly enough to give a brief, innocent glance of black underpants. What little appetite Dante had for food immediately died a disgraceful death. His eyes dropped to his plate. When they found the courage to look at Sunny again, he saw that her attention had gone back to her friends as if nothing at all were unusual. Calling himself two hundred kinds of idiot, he stood up. With luck there would be just enough time to clean his shirt before classes started again. Except he didn’t want to use the main bathroom next to the cafeteria—there would surely be too many kids in there who would laugh and call him coleslaw boy or slaw shirt for the rest of the year. No need for that, thank you very much. He checked to see if any teachers were looking, then snuck away from the cafeteria. A short hallway led to another longer, much darker corridor. At the far end lay the girls’ detention room. Trying to look casual, Dante proceeded towards it. With every step the light became dimmer. Painted walls surrendered their cheerfulness, bleeding into beige and brown. NMS’s worst behaved girls—Sunny included—spent a great deal of their time down here. While on detention they were forbidden to leave the wing, even to use the restroom. So of course this wing had a restroom of its own. It stood at the very end of the hall, where the shadows were darkest, and a dead-end trophy case—empty—hung from cobwebbed masonry like a looted coffin. Dante’s footsteps slowed as he approached it. For some reason he felt it necessary to observe silence. The darkness perhaps commanded it. He looked left into an empty room with chairs put on desks. No girls were on time-out today. There wasn’t even a teacher nearby pretending to work. Only Dante haunted the hall. To the right was a pitch-black passageway. Here was where he needed to go. It led to the bathroom, where there were sinks for washing. Feeling around for a light switch, Dante stepped inside. But it was hard to see. Every light in the wing had been turned off, as if the school had decided to abandon it for demolition. Suddenly Dante imagined a huge explosion, and the black face of a wrecking ball crashing through the concrete. His death would be quick but severe. A screaming chaos. You’re being stupid again, he thought. Yes, but… The face of the wrecking ball would be blank but angry somehow. Determined. And oh, the deafening sound it would make. His fingers found the switch, clicked it. A weak fluorescent bulb reluctantly came to life. It didn’t take long for Dante to wish it had stayed dead. Rather than push away his demons, it brought them closer. A long mirror that barely looked real hovered in the gloom. It showed him toilet stalls with crooked doors he did not have the courage to open. A row of sinks with rusty pipes. Strange graffiti. He went to the sinks. There was no soap. He splashed some cold water on his shirt, then tore a towel from a broken dispenser. The stain persisted though. Even in the dark he could see it. His face was a different matter. Here the mirror seemed reluctant to give a clear picture. Subtly, as if old, deft fingers had mistaken his face for a lump of clay, his reflection kept changing. Here came a sickly old man with one foot in the grave, his eyes like sinkholes. Now a boy with hypertrichosis appeared, staring through hair thick as a dog’s. The boy seemed to want out of the mirror. He seemed at any moment ready to change places with Dante. “Bloody Mary,” Dante said. An old, grade-school memory flooded his mind. The girls at Pleasant Elementary used to tell stories about a witch who lived in one of the bathroom mirrors. To see her you first had to be alone with the lights off. Then you stood in front of the glass and chanted Bloody Mary five times. “Bloody Mary,” he said again. On the fifth chant, the witch would appear…and you would disappear. Or so the story went. Fourth grade girls in 1989 loved to tell it. One girl, Cloris Fanning, was even said to have dared the challenge, and died. “Bloody Mary.” The boy in the mirror looked back. He was no longer hairy. Just a boy. Just Dante Torn, twelve years old, a kid in the seventh grade. “Bloody Mary.” The bathroom light flickered. Something—a cockroach maybe—made a noise in one of the stalls. A cockroach, yes. Or perhaps the snicker of an old, old woman. Dante closed his eyes. “Bloody Mary.” And when he opened them, a girl stood in the mirror. Her eyes were glowing and her face dripped with blood. “BOO!” she screamed. It was enough to make Dante scream back. Then he nearly fainted against the sinks. The cold tiles turned to ice beneath his feet. He slipped, seizing wildly for something to break his fall. His hand hit the mirror and broke a chip from it. Now the girl began to laugh. And laugh, and laugh, and laugh some more. The music of her insanity filled the bathroom, getting louder with every step she took towards Dante. Now he noticed her hair—wild tufts of it sticking every which way. And her eyes, which shined like bullets left over from a murder. And now her face. Of course he could now see her face. She was so close—only one step away, in fact. And still laughing. At last Dante began to laugh too. “You got me good,” he said. “Sincerely.” “Yeah!” the girl managed. It seemed she would never get herself under control. Not that it mattered any more to Dante. He kept right on laughing with her, and had a teacher not finally heard them and arrived to investigate, he and Sunny Desdemona might have gone on laughing through every end of lunch school bell in the known universe. CHAPTER FOUR: Nascosto Villagio A man tells a story of how he began, of places he knew from which he ran.   Horatio Donati smiled over a cup of recently quaffed cappuccino. “That,” he said, “does not sound like plotting. It sounds more like plodding.” Dante had to agree. It was the Sunday after the bathroom scare, and while pretending to go for a morning bike ride down West Main, he’d chanced upon the old opera singer drying the last of that summer’s tomatoes on his doorstep. Immediately Dante found himself being invited back to 114’s tired living room—as he’d hoped he would—for cappuccino, and the coleslaw story had spun out like yarn from the spool of a March kite. “But you did meet her,” the singer went on, “so all is well.” His brow went up. “Or is it?” Dante raised a pair of crossed fingers. “So far so good. She didn’t seem too upset about my walking her back to class anyway.” “Was that the first time you’ve escorted a girl?” “Yes.” Donati’s smile grew warmer. “Exquisite, yes? Alterando il cuore. Meaning, it changes the heart. There’s nothing like walking a pretty girl to a safe place.” Dante thought of the way Sunny had walked after telling a slick lie to the teacher who’d caught them in the bathroom. Pleased and energetic were the clicking sounds of her boots on the tiles. Insatiable was the bounce of her hair, burning red enough to drive back the dark. At the end of the hall Dante held the door for her. The scent of perfume adorned her wake, wild-blossoms on midnight winds, soprano gasps into pink desperate lungs. No, there had been nothing like escorting Sunny in the whole world. “And what will happen now?” Donati wanted to know. “What comes next for the romance of Dante and Sunny?” “It isn’t a romance just yet,” Dante said, blushing. “I just walked her back to class.” “That is fine, so long as you don’t rest on it for too long. Chi dorme non piglia pesci. Or rather, cosa c’`e da guadagnare senza rischi?” Dante did not respond. He didn’t need to. The opera singer’s Italian was lost on him; the gentle glow in his tone was not. Nevertheless, Donati went on to tell a story about the village where he’d been born and raised. It stood in the southeastern area of Sicily. The locals called it Nascosto Villagio— or, the hidden village, as it was very small, its spires sheltered behind a series of picturesque hills. “Imagine a flower,” Donati said, “picked on some long ago windy morning, and pressed by a lover within a tome of ancient poetry. That is Nascosto Villagio , or how I remember it. Such a pretty, pretty place. Its little cobblestone streets smelled of bread and brewed coffee. Happy children ran home from school with neighbor’s puppies nipping their heels. Cool Ionian breezes ruffled the loveliest shop awnings you’ve ever seen embroidered. All the buildings were close-knit. Cozy. One day my mother sent me to the market to buy tomatoes. We lived on a street that sloped to a fountain circle. The fountain was long broken, cracked in many places around its once fine bowl, but on this day, as my young boy’s body sped forth, a cool breeze sped from the other direction, ringing doorstep chimes, and when I reached the circle a number of gathered leaves were disturbed skyward, so for just a few precious seconds it looked as if the fountain were spewing autumn. That is the clearest memory I have of the village. It was a beautiful place, but not without fault, oh no. “Our mayor was a timid, skittish man. He had a bald head that used to gleam like cold water on a cloudy day. His mustache was always neatly trimmed, and his eyes were pedantic. The man knew so much yet so little. His love of peace and order had gotten him elected, though many years later I realized it wasn’t a love for peace, but a dread fear of violence. Not long previous the nearby city of Catania had been destroyed during its reclaiming from Mussolini. The aftermath absolutely terrified our poor mayor. Upon election his first act was to ban any and all firearms from Nascosto Villagio .” Here Donati paused to send Dante an appreciative nod. “Very wise, very wise. And it went well. No one in the village wanted anything to do with hurting another. Three months of utter peace followed. But then one warm July night a traveler to Misterbianco paused in our village for dinner and a sleepover. He never made it to bed. He ordered his meal at Luchi’s Tavern, finished it, and then decided to have a beer. One beer became two. Two became three. You understand the idea, I think.” “He got drunk,” Dante put in. “He did indeed. And then he picked a fight with one of our locals. And then he stabbed the local to death with a rusty pocket-knife.” “Holy moly.” “There was nothing holy about it. The man he killed happened to be a friend of my family. A carpenter, like my father. They should have been in competition, but instead became friends, perhaps because their love for the craft was stronger than money. At any rate, once the friend had died, our family’s income doubled, as did its workload. I have no brothers or sisters, so there was only me to help with the extra chores. No more time could be given for school, so I left classes. All play with my friends ceased. I spent nearly every waking hour in my father’s shop. It stood as part of our house on Via Cavello , the same street where a church choir used to practice three nights a week. I learned to cut wood and craft furniture. And as it happened, I learned to sing.” “Because of the choir?” Dante asked. “Because of the choir. One day we lost power in the village. I do not remember the reason. But I was forced to work late by gaslight in order to meet a deadline the following morning. So there I stood cutting in a mist of sawdust, my arms tired, my perspiration dense. And then I heard it: singing. Not for the first time, mind you. As I said, the choir practiced often on that street, using their little church which stood at the bend. But this night I noticed it more acutely, for I was exhausted, and the music seemed to soothe my aching bones.” “What were they singing?” “Ah!” Donati replied, raising his brow. “A very good question. Simple. Direct. And it has an answer: Alleluia Nativitas. An ancient song about the birth of Jesus. Hearing it, I put down my saw and walked to the church. Some of our neighbors had paused work as well. Their silhouettes hovered in candlelit windows. Passing by one house I heard the laughter of a baby.” Donati stopped. He reached for his cup, found it was empty, put it back down. “From here I will cut this part of the story short,” he said, “for it’s already gone too long, and it bears no connection to our poor, delusional mayor. The choir took me in. It’s hard to say why, for I arrived at the nave looking shabby. My legs barely possessed the strength to stand. Yet they invited me to sing, which I accepted, and my voice must have sounded pleasant to them. Pleasant enough anyway. From that chance night my career in opera took wing.” From here Donati’s story regained its initial course. He spoke of the village’s horror at what had happened in Luchi’s Tavern, horror which soon turned to outrage and disgust. A funeral for the victim took place. The victim’s obituary was written on a back alley wall, along with a drawing of his face. This practice, Donati explained, made up a dear piece of Sicilian tradition. “You will be a better person,” he told a wondering Dante, “if you think about death.” “Yes, sir,” Dante replied. It was the first time he called the opera singer by that title. A rather paradoxical consequence ensued. Donati rose to fetch Dante a second cappuccino, which he then insisted be consumed the Sicilian way—which was to say, quaffed. Dante could only do his best, which seemed to satisfy his host. From here the singer described what took place immediately after the funeral. Nascosto Villagio’s mayor made an official declaration: all knives and stabbing weapons small enough to hide were henceforth prohibited by law. Any resident or visitor who did not comply would be arrested. It was simple as that. “You may imagine the public’s response,” Donati said gravely. Dante thought he could. “They laughed. Then they went right on using their knives. Properly,” he added, seeing Donati’s eyes grow wide. But the villagers hadn’t laughed—not right away. They made every effort to uphold the new law, abandoning steak knives for butter knives, and other such measures. Then one night Donati’s father broke his thumb pounding a nail for a birdhouse. The local doctor set and taped it. That doctor also served as village barber, and it was just bad luck the mayor happened to be getting a trim (with hedge-clippers, since scissors were banned) when the elder Donati arrived for emergency treatment. One look at the bloodied mass of his thumb sent the mayor into hysterics. Screaming, he jumped from the doctor’s chair and demanded the name of Donati’s assailant. The carpenter began to explain in as patient a manner he could. It only made things worse. By the end of the month all hammers were banned from the village, forcing Donati and son to make do with less than suitable substitutes. Presently the opera singer grew sad. Dante watched his fat cheeks turn pale, and his eyebrows flood together like two pools of spilt ink. “The quality of our work suffered, as I was forced many times to pound nails with broken blocks of concrete, or sometimes a stale loaf of my mother’s bread. Customers complained when their tables squeaked, or their chairs came apart, dumping them onto the floor. Nothing could be done about it. My father and I, we…” he tapered off, closing his eyes in effort to make peace with the dusty memories. “We did the best we could,” was what came next. “We did…the best…we could.” “And then?” Dante broke in. Donati shrugged. “I stayed for another two years. By that time a number of other crimes and accidents had occurred, for which the mayor had no tolerance. He had banned mops, dogs, cats, frying pans, floor cleaner, bar soap, and even ladies’ hairpins, this last because the local poetess managed to repel an attacker by stabbing his eye out with one of the things.” Now the singer’s face was red with fury. “I tell you that man was insane. I needed to heal my family’s sudden financial ailment, so I accepted an offer to travel to Rome and sing before Pope Pius XII. He listened to our choir perform the rendition of Alleluia Nativitas we’d been working on for months. It was a success. I’ve been singing professionally ever since. Would you care for another brioche? ” Dante looked at his empty plate. The lemon-flavored treat he’d eaten for breakfast had been delicious, but he didn’t want to impose on Donati’s already overflowing kindness. After politely declining the offer, he asked what eventually became of Nascosto Villagio . “By the end of the mayor’s term,” Donati answered, “he had no one left to govern. The people had grown fed up and left. The houses were all empty, the streets, once filled with laughter and music, barren. Even the church fell into disrepair. What priest can preach to an empty nave? No. It was gone. Everyone gone.” “Your family?” “Moved to Naples, once funds were efficient. But the sadness of that once beautiful village remains heavy in my heart. Many years later I returned to Sicily. Nascosto Villagio is still deserted. And in utter ruin. All due to the foolishness of one man. Remember,” he continued, leaning closer to Dante, “ cosa c’`e da guadagnare senza rischi? What risks we take by not taking risks. Eh?” Dante felt his warm hand give a playful tap to his shoulder. But what would happen if he continued his pursuit of Sunny Desdemona? He thought again of holding the door for her. She had stopped and waited for him to do that very thing. With green eyes all but burning through his skull, she had stopped and waited. “There used to be a boy who lived across the street from me,” Dante said, “in a house even bigger than my dad’s. It’s Greek revival, like this one, only the columns are curved around a huge porch you had to walk across to get to the front door. Inside there are all these dark, spooky rooms. Great for little kids to explore and make up stories about. This friend of mine, he used to think a witch lived in that house before him. A real witch. He said the realtor told his mom about it.” “I very much doubt a realtor would say such a thing,” Donati answered, “but the idea is interesting nonetheless. Did thinking of Sunny remind you of this witch?” “It did,” Dante admitted. “And about taking chances, like you said. We played in that house almost every day. It had a library, a music room, two fireplaces. The staircase was grand, but we hardly ever used it. We preferred the servant’s stairs. They were hidden behind a doorway off the kitchen, which we thought was cool. Hidden stairs. We used them all the time to get up to the attic, which was full of toys. Hundreds of toys. There were two Japanese pinball machines up there. A whole city of action figures. Trucks and airplanes. Crazy costumes left over from about a dozen Halloweens. And that’s just the tip of it. I tell you, Mr. Donati, this kid had more than he knew what to do with.” “How lucky he was,” Donati said, smiling, “to have a friend like you help him play with it all.” “You’re more right than you know. I think I was his only friend. Without me those toys would have gathered dust. Because without me he would have had to go up there alone to play, which…” Dante paused to shake his head. “No. No way would he have done that.” “The witch frightened him.” “She wasn’t supposed to be real. She was just a fun story. Until one day this friend and I went to the attic to play the pinball machines. They had this slot in back where you dropped marbles. I was doing that—dropping marbles into the slot—while he worked the piston. And way over by the stairs there was this antique folding frame, the kind that ladies used to use for changing clothes. Do you know what I mean?” “Shoji screens,” Donati said. “That is the Japanese term for them anyway.” Dante nodded. “This had to be a shoji screen then. It had oriental decorations on it. Anyway, we were right in the middle of playing when the screen started to shake. I mean really shake. Violently. It was like someone had hold of it and wanted to tear it apart.” “That must have given the two of you quite a scare.” “Not at first. My friend has an older sister, and we thought she was playing games. Trying to freak us out. We went to the screen, telling her to knock it off, we weren’t scared.” “And when you looked behind the screen?” Donati said in a beckoning voice. “Nobody was there. Nobody.” “What do you think it was, son?” A few moments passed before Dante could answer. “It could have been a rat,” he finally allowed. “Or maybe a stray cat jumped down from the roof. But we never saw anything else move in that corner. Just the screen.” Though it’d been years since he’d set foot in his friend’s house, he remembered every room clearly. They had been immaculate—the wood polished, the floors waxed, the windows clear. An antithesis of the mansion he sat in today. Yet of the two homes, the prosperous one scared him more, while the picturesque ruin of number 114 felt like wisdom and peace. “Do you believe in ghosts?” Donati asked. And Dante had to admit he wasn’t certain. “Even when I saw the witch,” he continued, noticing how Donati’s eyes widened. “ Saw her. I still wasn’t—am not—certain.” “Good Heavens, boy. How did you see her?” “One day we were shooting baskets in his driveway. And for just a moment I looked up at the servants’ stair window. The curtain twitched…and there she was. A woman in black. Her nose was long, just like a witch’s. She had green skin. But her eyes were gigantic—big and yellow as the moon. She had a bald head with little strands of dark hair sticking out. When she saw me looking at her she punched the window. It shook the glass hard enough for my friend to hear. He turned around, but by then she’d disappeared. He never saw her.” “That is a very clear memory,” Donati said. “Does your uncertainty sprout from fear that it might have been real?” This time Dante’s answer was instant. “Yes.” “And did she frighten you the way Sunny Desdemona frightens you?” “Not quite. I think I might be in love with Sunny. The witch disgusted me.” “But they are both female. And both, quite possibly” Donati paused to allow himself a small smile “witches. Tell me…what did you do after you saw that witch in your friend’s window?” “I went right back into the house. Again and again until my friend moved away.” Donati leaned back in his chair. His posture resembled that of a very satisfied man. “Of course you did, boy,” he said. “Of course you did.” CHAPTER FIVE: Locker Sixteen It isn’t a romance just yet, Dante had told his new friend. But the rest of that week gave cause to let.   Monday morning he arrived at school to find Sunny seated pertly on his desk, green eyes dancing, bare legs swinging. Sunny’s own desk was occupied by another girl. She sat in the chair, so while speaking to Sunny she had to look up. She seemed to be in the middle of some piece of gossip or other. Her mouth moved a hundred miles a minute; her hands waved. Yet whatever story she was telling interested Sunny only just. So it appeared to Dante. As before when he’d caught her with her friends, she was smiling, nodding, but not talking. That changed when she noticed Dante. As he approached the desk she whirled on him with a shark grin, cutting her friend off mid-sentence, and sang: “What a perfectly beautiful morning!” Dante smiled. He couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. She introduced him to the friend the way a buyer might talk about being interested in a new car. “Dante this is Stacey. Stacey, Dante. He’s tall and might be strong enough. I’ll keep you posted.” A girl with hair black as Sunny’s was red told Dante hello. She looked highly amused. Charmed even. “He does look much tougher than last year’s catch.” “I can’t imagine him being weaker. Go sit down now. I’ll see you at lunch.” And as a stray cat gets chased from capricious doors, Stacey scurried off. Dante had time to notice that her smile had fallen, and lay shattered under the desk. “What about you?” Sunny asked Dante, slipping to her feet. “Am I going to see you at lunch?” Mr. Wolfe had come into the room. His arms were crossed in a severe way that meant it was almost time to get quiet. “Yes,” Dante replied. Sunny frowned. It didn’t seem to be enough for her. “Uh-huh. And where am I sitting?” Her posture was that of a sassy brat: one knee bent slightly, hands on hips, face tilted. “Well…you can sit with me if you like.” Silence. Dante noticed her freckles beginning to flare. “Class?” Mister Wolfe called. “Please be seated.” It was as if Sunny hadn’t heard. Her green eyes never left Dante. “If I like? ” her lips writhed. “Am I sitting with you or not?” “Yes,” Dante coughed, “please.” “Don’t ask me, Dante. Tell me.” “Sit down everyone,” came Mister Wolfe’s voice again. And again Sunny ignored him. Dante glanced over her to see that most of the other kids hadn’t. Chairs squeaked with the myriad placement of butts. Loud talking softened to low muttering. The day was about to begin. “ Look at me, Mister,” Sunny commanded. Dante did. “Good boy. Now. Tell me. Where am I eating lunch today?” ∞ “And did you tell her?” Donati asked, days later after Dante recounted this scene. “Not in a forceful enough way, I don’t think,” Dante answered. “So she didn’t eat lunch with you?” “No. Not on that day.” “I see. But she provided another opportunity.” “She did. I messed that up, too.” ∞ The week passed slowly. It was a most miserable time for Dante. On Tuesday morning he smiled and greeted Sunny hello. She would not smile back, or even acknowledge his presence. Bare legs crossed beneath her desk, she flipped through a history book, pretending to care about homework. Yesterday she blew off lunch with him, though he’d told her to be there. Well… almost. His command (for want of a better word) had been something more forceful than a question, at least. Yet she decided to eat with her friends anyway. From his table across the cafeteria he’d recognized Stacey, who also wouldn’t look at him. Dante imagined Sunny had commanded (properly) her friends not to pay the slightest bit of attention him. The rest of that Tuesday went the same way—no lunch date, no words. Nothing. Not even a moment of eye contact. This too on Wednesday. In fact on Wednesday morning she raised her hand and asked Mr. Wolfe for a change of seats. “This weird boy keeps bothering me,” she said, nodding toward Dante. “Is that a fact?” the homeroom teacher asked, after everyone had stopped laughing. Beet red, Dante began to bluster silly denials, which were cut off by Sunny. “Yes he does, Mr. Wolfe. He keeps whispering that he wants to kiss me.” At this the whole class went up like a Roman candle. Anyone not laughing hard enough to fall out of their chair was forced to help those who had. Even Mr. Wolfe thought it funny. Grinning, he chose to let the Bedlam die down its own, which took several minutes, all of which felt like sheer torture to Dante. Never in his life had he been the object of such spectacle, of such humiliating fixation. News of the incident soon spread throughout the entire school, so by Friday he was a minor celebrity, perhaps even a major one. On Thursday kids began addressing him as “Kiss Me” instead of Dante, and the name stuck. Hi, Kiss Me! they sang as he fought with his locker door, which had begun to jam again worse than ever. Kiss Me! they called at lunch, while Dante stared miserably at his egg salad sandwich. Seeya tomorrow, Kiss Me! they shouted at the end of the day. It was horrible, quite horrible. Or it might have been, except that on Friday afternoon, Sunny decided to talk to him again, this time in a decidedly more amiable fashion. Classes were over. The weekend beckoned with open arms. Amidst a clamorous fury of eager seventh graders, Dante trudged to his locker. He talked to no one, saw no one. His eyes were on his shoes, so all he saw were those and what seemed like a million pairs of others, swarming to get outside. “Kiss Me!” he heard someone cry. “Hey, Kiss Me! Seeya Monday!” another yelled. Dante did his best to tune them out. His mind went to the homework pile on tap for the weekend. Thirty long division problems for math. A reading assignment for English ( Contents Of A Dead Man’s Pocket). There was even a health task for the boys, doled out by their gym coach: fifty push-ups. Twenty for the girls. “Kiss Me! Look everybody, there’s Kiss Me!” Go away, Dante thought. At last he came to his locker. His hand dialed the combination. And of course, it would not open. Groaning inwardly at the thought of yet another fracas with faulty property, Dante tried it again. It did no good. The locker was jammed. Again. “Hello, Kiss Me,” someone behind him sang. Dante froze. His heart skipped a beat. The voice was familiar—high-pitched, pretty, yet cool and fiendish all the same. A pink knife with painted flower on the handle. He turned around and there stood Sunny, her brow arched, her grin predatory. She was dressed in her usual style: black boots, pink knee-length skirt, blue classic blouse with short sleeves. “H-Hello, Sunny,” Dante forced himself to say. “Having fun with that locker?” the girl asked. Dante glanced at the black dial. “Well, it’s…it’s stuck.” “Sure it is.” Sunny tilted her head. “Hey, aren’t you mad at me?” “No.” “Stop lying.” “I’m not mad at you.” Dante watched the girl’s eyes suddenly narrow into slits. “Well I’m mad at you. Not telling me to sit with you for lunch. Do you like me or not?” And before Dante’s astonished gaze she twirled around on one leg, fanning the pink skirt out like a ballerina’s. “I do,” he said. “Then you’re going to need to be stronger, Dante. A lot stronger. I have standards.” Just then one of the other students noticed them talking. A short, stocky boy with blond hair. “Woo-hoo!” the boy chimed from across the hall. “Hey everyone, it looks like Kiss Me still wants to be with Sunny!” Sunny turned to look at him. But before she did, Dante noticed her face flood to near poisonous levels of hatred. The boy must have seen it too, for the grin melted from his face almost instantly. “What?” he said, trying to sound tough. “We’re having a conversation here,” Sunny told him. “Do you mind?” By this time some of the other students had stopped to watch the confrontation—boys and girls of different shapes and sizes. Dante felt himself flush with embarrassment…until it became apparent none of the onlookers looked amused. No one looked ready to laugh. Instead, Dante noticed, they were rather like the boy who now stood in Sunny’s crosshairs: afraid. “Well, well, well,” the boy managed to say, sounding weaker by the moment. “Sunny likes Kiss Me, too. How nice.” “Yeah,” Sunny said. “Maybe she does.” A large black spider crawled out of the boy’s bag. It bit him on the hand, making him scream. All of the girls who saw it screamed too, while the boys yelped and gaped. Sunny watched the antics for only a moment before losing her temper completely. “Break it up!” she shrieked. “Go home, all of you!” No one needed to be told twice. Dante watched the kids scatter as if the spider—which disappeared suddenly as it had appeared—might soon crawl onto one of them. The stocky blond boy was clutching his hand. Tears drenched his puffy cheeks. “What did you do!” he yelled at Sunny. “ What did you do!” “I didn’t do anything, idiot, it was a spider. You might want to have nurse Renson look at that hand.” Leaving his bag on the floor, the stocky boy ran off. Now it was literally just Dante and Sunny in the hall. They had the entire wing to themselves. “Where were we?” Sunny asked, not sounding as if she had the patience for any more games. Dante didn’t know what words he might speak to defuse the ticking time bomb standing before him. The silence of the hall felt thick and creeping ever closer. He looked at Sunny’s freckles. Her green eyes. Her red hair. She was fierce and frightening and really quite beautiful. “My locker,” he said. “But it’s okay. I can just tell the principal—“ “You can open it right now ,” Sunny snapped. “But you need motivation, that’s obvious.” Her face relaxed—a little—to let a devious smile curl the corners of her lips. “Imagine a girl trapped inside, Dante. She’s trapped inside and has to hold her breath, because the locker is full of water. Could you get it open then?” This bizarre spillage of words confused him utterly. Blinking, Dante said: “I—I would certainly hope so.” “Me too. I like swimming, Dante, but every so often I need to come up for air. All girls do.” “Of course. Of course.” “If I were trapped in here”—she tapped the locker with a tiny fist—“holding my breath, could you get me out? Tell me ,” she demanded, before he could splutter something absurd. And with all the courage he could manage, Dante somehow told her: “Yes.” Sunny took a step closer. Her voice lowered to a near whisper as she said: “I’m going to get a niccce, deeeep breath for you, Dante. Deepest I can. Then I’m going to wait.” “Uh…” “While I’m waiting I want you to open that locker. Don’t let me run out of air.” “All right.” “You’d better be more confident than you sound,” she told him. She was now standing close enough to share the smell of a girl: perfume, shampoo, baby powder. He could hear her high, sweet, pretty breath as she gasped in and out, getting her lungs ready. Her eye went to the locker. “How stuck is it today?” “I’ve already tried it twice. It’s being stubborn.” Sunny breathed in again— hahhhhhhh! Her slim chest rose high. Then she let the breath out— phew! “All right,” she said, “next one’s it. Put your hand on the dial.” Dante did. “Your hand is shaking,” she observed. “Relax, Dante. Be a man.” She then tilted her head back. “Ready?” she said at the ceiling. “Ready,” Dante, still shaking, replied. “ HAAAUUUUHHH!” Sunny gasped. When her chest was quite full, she looked at Dante and smiled. Immediately he set to work. He cranked the dial right, left, then right again, making certain to stop on all the correct numbers. His hand fumbled to the latch, pulled. The locker stayed shut. Taking a deep breath of his own, Dante tried again. Right, left, right. Now the latch. Come on , latch, he thought, how about a break? But no. Once more the latch simply would not move. Next to him, Sunny let out a tiny moan. She was getting uncomfortable. Starting to feel some tightness, some pressure. Dante looked and saw that her lips were pursed. Arching a brow, she pointed to the locker. Get back to work, mister. In the middle of the third try she let out a longer moan. “Mmmnnnn!” It caused Dante to lose his concentration and start over with the dial. Even so, the latch remained stubborn. A desperate hand tapped his arm. Sunny’s eyes were wide. Her freckled cheeks were puffed. Frantically, she pointed to her chest. The lungs inside were just about spent. “ Nn! Gnn!” Dante’s fifth try didn’t even come close. He was yet to even finish dialing the combination when Sunny drowned. Out of breath and still far from the surface, she drowned. A hard, heavy gasp signaled her defeat—or rather, Dante’s. “ PHEW! WHEW!” she heaved. Needing support, she grabbed his shoulder. “You did that…on purpose!” “No!” Dante said, appalled. “No way!” “You just had to let the damsel perish in a watery grave!” “Never!” Sunny looked up…and smiled. “Shame on you. That really hurt.” “I’m sorry!” “I should have told you my personal best is only about thirty seconds. After that”—she snapped her fingers—“hey, the girl’s gotta have air. Phew!” Dante edged closer so she could lean on him some more. “Are you all right?” Then he kicked the locker— BAM! “Stupid thing.” “Yeah!” Sunny cheered. “Beat that hunk of metal!” “Seriously, Sunny, are you all right?” “Phew! Of course I’m all right! I wasn’t…you know…underwater for real. Thankfully,” he heard her mutter as an afterthought. Dante looked at his locker. “I guess the school needs to replace this thing.” “Nah,” Sunny said. “I bet now because you kicked it, it’ll open. Try it.” Shrugging, Dante dialed his combination. No way did he think it would open. Nor did it matter, considering the girl inside was already dead. Still, when he pulled the handle, the door popped and swung wide, revealing his coat, his books. His gym bag. A dirty mirror. A pack of Black Jack chewing gum. Sunny gave him a pat on the back. “See? It just took a little toughness. I knew it was in you.” “Monday it’ll get stuck again,” Dante said. Her response was adamant. “No it won’t. You showed it who’s boss.” In the next moment she was standing on tip-toe to kiss his cheek. “You also found out how long the totally great, totally awesome Sunset Desdemona can hold her breath. Don’t tell anyone else.” Dante couldn’t respond. The kiss had set his heart into hysterics. A fireworks show lit the firmament of his brain, rendering blindness upon all rational thought. “It’ll be just our secret, okay?” she whispered. “Yes. Yes. No problem.” “I gotta go. My dad’s probably waiting outside. But maybe next week I’ll let you walk me home.” She grinned. “If you’re a good boy. Bye!” With that, she skipped off, leaving him as last actor of the stage. Not wishing to abandon the privilege too soon, Dante remained, placing his books down slowly on purpose, straightening his hair in the mirror. Then he closed the locker door. An utterly silent hallway, devoid of expression, regarded him. All of the classroom doors were shut and locked. Weird. Shouldn’t there be some teachers doing gradework yet? Apparently not. He stood for another minute, enjoying the quiet. “Time to go,” he told himself. “Time to go.” And still thinking of Sunny, he went home. CHAPTER SIX: Mermaid Pizza Money changes hands surreptitious, leaving those in command most suspicious.   Dante lived just a quarter mile down the street from Horatio Donati, in a federal style home built in 1832. Its plain brick walls rose austerely over the street, undaunted by Norwalk’s downtown district, which seemed to creep closer to their mortar every year. From any of number 54 West Main Street’s nine commandingly large front windows one could stare forth and perhaps be unnerved by the city’s progress. It stood to reason. A fine, two-story colonial style home had once occupied the lot directly east, but no more. It had been demolished to make way for a bank. Up until recently, the lot due north bore the weight of a huge Queen Anne. Only just last year it had been torn down. Dante watched it happen from his bedroom window. City bulldozers and backhoes made quick work of the Queen’s tall corner towers and deep-shadowed entrances. Her death cries, the sound of shattering brick, echoed for half a mile in all directions. But number 54 remained. Dante would have been glad to know his house was safe, and not simply because he happened to live there. He loved number 54. Like Donati’s home, it boasted a number of ornate fireplaces, all in far better condition. Its wide upper story windows afforded wonderful views past the purple maples that lined West Main. Often times in the summer he would sit in his room with the window open to allow the warm wind, and listen to the chickadees sing from their boughs. And at night there were fireflies among the leaves, sparkling like stars. But what he liked most about the house was its staircase. There were no others like it in Norwalk. So Dante’s father liked to boast. Its beauty was one of the few things they agreed upon. It stood on the east side of the living room, a serpent of American cherry which began its ascent facing downtown, but soon curled immediately opposite without the use of a half-landing, so that the user, regardless of which level he began his journey, always set out east and ended west. The curve was tight, severe, immaculate. Meticulously beautiful amidst flowered stronghold high and pretty as Dolomites mezereon. It was almost sickening to watch his father’s friends, Joseph and Janet Jones, taint it this weekend with their Gucci loafers. Yet taint it they did (or at least it seemed to Dante) on the Saturday night following Sunny Desdemona’s extraordinary little breath-hold. Not that their visit should have been surprising. Every other weekend they came to play cards in the basement and drink brandy. And while it was true they hardly ever went upstairs, Dante still hated to see them round the curve. It portrayed, he imagined, yet one more beautiful thing to which the condescending couple were granted access. “Well hey there, tiger!” Janet’s dimpled face said when he opened the door. “Is your daddy home?” “Sure,” Dante said, letting the couple in, “he’s in the kitchen.” “Yo, slugger!” A towering man—Joseph—bellowed through his heavy mustache. His feet pounded the floor, shaking some of the home’s delicate Chinaware. “You’re gettin’ tall enough to pose for GQ!” And he gave Dante’s hair a ruffle. “Thanks.” “Yeah! Heck yeah! Mind if I go upstairs and use your bathroom?” “There’s one down here actually.” Joseph laughed, making his ugly chest hairs bounce like picket signs beneath the collar of his Land’s End dress shirt. “I know that, but come on, I’m a big guy, and that bathroom’s small! ” “Okay,” Dante told him. “Sure.” “Thanks, buddy!” And off Joseph pounded, all but attacking the stairs with his monstrous gait. “Dante,” Janet scolded, “you know Joseph likes the big bathroom more.” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones. Please make yourself comfortable. My dad’s almost ready.” The woman’s volcanic features loosened—a little. “Okay then. We can let it go this time.” He fetched her a plate of cheese. It had to be him, for his mother was out of town that night, eating cheese at some other card party. Cribbage, no doubt, which she preferred to poker. Poker is for philistines, Dante sometimes heard her say to his dad, to which he always replied, So is the Mazda Miata, before gazing out the window at her little red roadster. “This cheese,” Janet told him presently, “is a bit stale.” She was seated on the couch, her face lost in an essence of confusion as to what she might be chewing. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones,” Dante said for a second time. “Oh no, no. It isn’t bad. It’s just…stale. A little.” Now Joseph came pounding back down. Dante saw a Homer Laughlin about to fall from its stand and rushed to catch it. “You know what I like least about this house?” the big man said to no one in particular. “These stairs! They’re too steep and the curve always makes me feel like I’m being stirred in a damned tea-cup! Dante! ” He jumped, almost dropping the plate. “Yes, sir?” “What’s takin’ your dad so long, boy? He kissin’ his money goodbye already?” “No, sir. I’ll go check.” Half an hour later all three of them were in the basement. The cards were on the table. So was the money. So was a rapidly waning bottle of brandy. Periodically, one of them would call Dante down with a request— Dante, the ash trays need emptied; Hey big guy, how ‘bout some water; Dante, another plate of cheese if you please. He ran up and down number 54’s narrower, cruder stairs without complaint, careful not to drop anything or let his face flash signs of the least dissent. Janet made mention once more of the stale cheese. She also asked him to please bring down ice with the water from now on. Around ten o’clock they decided to order pizza. It came on time, though Dante’s father refused to tip because he insisted the driver was ten minutes late. By Dante’s watch (it was he who had called the order) this was simply not true. “Late,” his dad said flatly, handing him a ten from is wallet. “But Dad!” “No tip. Now bring us down the pizza.” “Do as you father says, little boy,” Janet, who was now showing signs of inebriety, drawled. I’m actually taller than you, Dante thought, not that tipping the pizza guy happens to be any of your business. “Go, Dante,” his dad commanded. Dejected, Dante went. The Pizza Brothers driver waited at the front door. He was fat. Huge, actually, with round, red cheeks that looked like Donati’s. His smile was like the opera singer’s too—wide, warm, friendly. Dante took the pizza. The bill came to nine dollars and ninety-five cents. A nickel came back, which Dante then pocketed. “Seeya later, buddy!” the driver said, in a cheery tone nothing at all like the superior one Joseph used when he called Dante buddy or big guy. “Wait!” Dante called as the driver turned to go. Janet’s purse was on the table where she’d eaten her cheese. She’d either forgotten it or had no worries for its safety. Whichever, she’d made a mistake, for now Dante, with a heat under his skin that burned like pre-fever, rummaged into it, found her wallet, and fished out a ten dollar bill. “Here you go,” he told the driver, proffering it. “You’re a good man.” The driver’s smile stayed friendly. It did not flicker to greed or hunger, or any other like sin. He took the money and asked: “How do you know?” “It doesn’t matter,” Dante said. “It really doesn’t matter.” “Thanks, fella. Enjoy your pizza.” “Oh, I will.” And the driver exited into the September night (followed by an approving wind that played through the trees), and Dante took the pizza downstairs, and the card game kept right on going. ∞ “You…stole money from your father’s friend’s purse?” Donati asked wonderingly, after slurping down a cappuccino. “I did,” Dante admitted with pride. “And how did that feel?” “Oh I was terrified. I thought Janet would come upstairs and catch me.” “But you committed the deed anyway.” “Yes. And she never found out.” Donati grunted. His chair creaked as he leaned back. “ Never is a long time, young man. You did a wrong thing to support a right thing. You got something out of it—a little revenge, a little justice. The delivery driver certainly got something out of it. But this Janet person…” “She’s nasty anyway,” Dante said. “Perhaps,” Donati replied. “But for a scant minute or two, you descended to the level of your bête noir .” Now he came forward again. “Tell me, Dante, if one night a cockroach crept under your bed, what would you do to chase it out? Kneel to the floor or lift up the bed?” Dante frowned. The old singer’s reproachful tone hurt. But how could he know the way he, Dante, felt last night? Where was his song of empathy? Or of defending common decency? “Sunny would have taken the money, too,” Dante said. The excuse was weak but better than none at all. Donati smiled. “I suspect that Sunny’s arms,” he said, “are not as strong as yours. Though of course, after hearing this story of how she held her breath for you, I also suspect that’s what you like about her.” It was another Sunday morning at number 114. And despite the current discomfiting breakfast table illusion, Dante felt even more at home today than he had last week. And last week, of course, he had felt even more at home than the week before. Sunlight burst through the living room’s cheap, thin curtains, illuminating the chalkboard as if in effort to coax old wisdom to its surface. Both fireplaces, dark, regarded man and boy like amused elders watching children at play. A clocked ticked from the hall. Spooning up the last of his brioche , Dante was reminded of the picturesque ruins of Athens’ Acropolis, as well as the last of the Temple of Zeus. He had read about both during history class last year. Now here he sat in a near dilapidated home inspired by those very places. Can it be the destiny of everything and everyone, he wondered, to surrender what lay in their past to the sun? “She shared with you a very intimate secret,” Donati spoke, “thus I will not have you betray it by asking how long her lungs endured. But I am put in mind of a story I once heard while on a stop to perform in Kalamata, Greece. It’s about a young girl who wanted to become a mermaid. This because she so much enjoyed swimming in that city’s Messiniakos Bay, which is deep and clear and beautiful, if not a bit cold. “Her name was Alekto, which in ancient Greek translates to unceasing. The name fit her well, for even though she was only twelve years old, she possessed a will stubborn as the castle overlooking Homer’s lost Pharai. She was also quite beautiful, with long, golden hair and blue eyes. Each morning she would walk to the bay for a swim in its sun-streamed waters. There was a place among rocks which only she knew, which freed her to undress without being seen. And of course no one ever saw her, yet her body, it is said, was both fragile and slender, nary disturbing the film of the water’s surface when it passed through to visit the depths. A pretty girl underwater is lovely to behold; no doubt this is why her story is told. Some like to talk of her billowing hair, others of her eyes upon lost, sunken lairs. But ‘tis her bare, dainty chest most pretend recall best, holding a breath in lungs sturdy though slight, as even within spark of death comes alight.” Here Dante raised his hand, entreating Donati to pause. “Is that some kind of a poem?” he asked. “Indeed,” came the singer’s reply. “A snatch of what I remember.” He sighed, as if in knowing the pleasure of memory longs for escape. “The original story was told in poetic form. There is a song, however, Alekto used to sing before she dove, translated to English by a professor at one of the Greek colleges. In it she longs to be a mermaid, so she could stay underwater indefinitely, for the sea fascinated her. She loved its cool depths, its blue beauty. She loved the glow of the sun on the fish and the rocks. Above all, she loved the feel of the bay on her naked body. She wanted to marry it, like it was a man. And in her mind the only way to do that was to become part fish.” “Not all fish?” Dante wondered. “Alekto had read many stories about mermaids. She became convinced that to be a mermaid was to be married to the sea.” “But mermaids aren’t real.” “Tell that to a twelve year-old girl,” Donati said with a smile. “Anyway, I have memorized the song. It goes as such.” Dante listened as, with a deep breath, his new friend began to sing in a surprisingly thunderous voice, done further justice by the house’s high ceilings and many wooden beams. It rushed through the halls, exploring every room. It rushed up the stairs, entwining the rail like bougainvillea. The word handsome came to Dante’s mind. Donati’s voice was fine oak. Old library books on a leather chair. Wood smoke from the chimney of a forest cottage.   Maid of the deep, Hear the song that I weep, Hear the song that I weep, Oh maid of the deep!   Swim unto me, With your scales of Pisces, With your scales of Pisces, Oh swim unto me!   Snapping creature of the moon, At the heel of Hercules, During your romantic hour, A bride come to the seas.   Like Anatolia ships, Hard storms dashed upon the rocks, I brave a devious wish, I brave from balmy docks.   Maid of the deep, Hear the song that I weep, Hear the song that I weep, Oh maid of the deep!   Swim unto me, With your scales of Pisces, With your scales of Pisces, Oh swim unto me!   Come Hera’s Persian bird, Paint with feathers morning mist, Thus two animals of feeling, Bring a third upon our tryst.   And shall depart one with the third, Many fathoms, far below, Trailing thanks to the others, Deep as amphorae cargo.   “None of the villagers,” Donati went on to say after a short rest, “took Alekto’s wish seriously, though she spoke of it often. She even claimed a mermaid came to visit her. It happened one morning just after she finished her song. Alekto’s breath had just set free its final note when a girl’s head broke the water’s surface. She looked to be about Alekto’s age. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. And her tail, Alekto claimed, shone with cyan and gold. ‘My name is Ciara,’ the girl said. ‘Your singing is high as the hills ‘round Ephyra.’ “She then said that Alekto could become a mermaid only when a suitable girl appeared to take her place on dry land. ‘The girl must mimic you perfectly from each day’s dawn,’ Ciara explained, ‘so that no one will know when Alekto has gone.’ “‘That sounds impossible,’ Alekto replied sadly. “‘Indeed,’ Ciara told her. ‘No girl of the earth becomes one of the sea. Nevertheless, I offer you this: Should you find a replacement of the kind I require, sing again from these rocks and your wish shall transpire.’ “On that promise, Ciara’s head disappeared beneath the waves. Alekto went home feeling hopeless. Her hair hung in her eyes. Her feet dragged. By midday her mother asked what was the matter. When Alekto answered, she of course did not believe a word. Nor did Alekto’s father when news of his daughter’s sadness reached him. “Over the coming days the girl went about her chores more slowly than usual, and without a smile. She ate less. The normal abundance of happy words from her mouth fell to a faithless stop. The days became weeks, the weeks, months. “By this time friends and family were deeply concerned. A physician was called. “‘Her spirit has flown,’ said her mother. ‘She moves through the day as if weighed by a stone.’ “Replied the doctor: ‘I have studied these symptoms within that are pent, yet upon the girl’s brow I can find no ailment.’ “The girl’s despair continued for another week. Then one morning, all without caution, she was well. It happened so quickly. Alekto returned from her usual swim among the secret rocks wearing a smile her mother had not seen for so long it was a wonder she recognized her daughter at all. Her hair shone like garden flowers on a windy day. Her eyes twinkled the blue of Saturn seen through misty clouds. “‘I’m hungry,” she said. ‘What food might I find in this household’s pantry?’ “Being so delighted to once more have her daughter thus, the mother prepared breakfast straight away. Alekto ate with fervor before dashing straight off to her chores, which she finished before noon, possessed of an energy she’d not demonstrated for almost year. This behavior continued the next day, and the next, and the next. Both mother and father were greatly relieved. It seemed their daughter was well. “Well but no longer quite the same. As the days passed a number of subtle differences in Alekto’s demeanor began to surface. The mother was first to take notice. One morning Alekto came into the kitchen wearing a yellow dress she had sewn all by herself. Taken aback, her mother exclaimed: ‘Never have I seen you adorned as the sun; it blends poorly with hair on the shoulders it runs.’ “To which the younger replied: ‘This is the color I choose as my best, though I shall sometimes wear others kept dark with the rest.’ “That was the beginning. Alekto’s favorite color had changed from blue to yellow. Then came her favorite foods. She stopped preferring figs over teganites. She asked for her soup to be mashed instead of boiled. Suddenly snobbish towards Lesbos wine, she began to request Cretan. The mother grew more and more puzzled, but did her best with these tilts in her daughter’s behavior. “Then one day Alekto lost interest in swimming. Never again did she go to the rocky grotto. She grew up to be a seamstress and married a carpenter. And all throughout she was happy. No one saw her cry or get sick ever again. “So!” Donati said, his expression satisfied. “Did the girl merely grow up, or is she even to this day swimming with fishy friends? Eh?” Dante laughed a little. “I think she probably just decided to grow up.” “Perhaps,” the other replied. “And one day this Sunny Desdemona may grow up. In fact it’s quite likely indeed. But there is also a chance,” he went on, tilting his head, “that she will choose the sea. To swim with her dreams. Where would that leave you, my dear boy?” Dante thought for a moment before saying: “I would follow her.” “Down to darkest depths?” Now he nodded. “I think so.” Donati began to gather dishes from the table. They clanked and rattled gently in the window’s dawn light. “May the need never come to make such a choice,” he said with a soft tone. “May the need never come.” CHAPTER SEVEN: Maris October arrived on a Thursday. The weather remained warm, tempting town thrushes for further stay.   Walking to and from school Dante noticed many of these birds. He did not think they were fooled. Their wings were restless, their eyes adrift. They could live in the cold but would choose not to remain. Dante could only wonder what would happen before their return. Since the spider incident at locker sixteen, news of his and Sunny’s relationship had become the chief topic of student gossip. Nor did the drama of that scene provide the only fuel for its combustion. Sunny ranked among the most popular girls of the school; she was also, undisputedly, the most feared. A new boyfriend for her was news. Dante arrived at school the Monday after Donati’s mermaid story to find he had become a celebrity. It started at the bike rack, where a number of boys stared as he walked past to find Sunny waiting for him near the front door. Hey handsome, she’d greeted, to the myriad giggles of her entourage. Girls, this is the boy who gets to carry my books from now on. His name’s Dante. Be nice to him. And nice to him they were, though they always kept a respectful distance, especially when their queen was present. The seventh grade boys were even more respectful. There were no shy, knowing smiles from them in the halls. They did not laugh, or whisper behind their hands. They only stared, with eyes like toddlers through the gates of a forbidden palace. He had become an enigma to them. Someone to admire without movement of the feet in eagerness to approach. Also on that Monday, Sunny had asked him, with perfect innocence in her green eyes, whether it would be okay for him to eat lunch at her table, rather than the other way around. “That’s fine,” Dante had replied (knowing the weight of her obeisance upon his conceit), “no problem.” Her eyebrow had shot up. “Sure?” “Yes.” “It would just be kind of hectic to have all the girls who eat with me move to a different table.” “Understood,” Dante said, deepening his voice, and taking care not to drop his eyes. “Thank you, baby,” she’d smiled. Then, after a quick check to make sure no one was looking, she’d stood on tip-toe to give him a kiss. “Seeya at lunch!” He’d been eating at her table ever since. The first time had been awkward. A hundred blushing smiles from the entourage. Evaluating eyes. But by the second day he was more comfortable. Willing to adapt to their scrutiny. Sunny helped by eating with her hip lightly pressed against his own, or leaning on his shoulder when one of the other girls talked. Her touch was her requisition. Talk, it allowed, but talk carefully. The morning of October first began in the new normal way. Sunny waited for him by the front door, peering through the darkening foliage of a tulip tree. Her red hair resembled the truant autumn, her black clothing the sober regard of that fourth season which often begins with a gentle push of its arrow before unleashing the deluge of an honest freeze. She asked Dante to carry her bags. Again, fresh routine. Then she began to chatter about her previous afternoon, scarcely pausing for breath, as they walked the crowded halls. Several girls waved to Sunny. “Thirty problems of long division,” she said, after nodding towards one of their blurred faces. “What a drag! I couldn’t focus on anything! Did Krieger give that one to your class, too?” “Of course,” Dante said. “I must have wasted five sheets of paper on it.” “Five sheets of paper and now I’ve got tendinitis in my wrist!” “Sunny!” a dark-haired girl called. “Hello!” “Hello, Stacey. See you in science.” They came to her locker. She opened it on the first try. A mirror with a pink frame hung on the door. A bottle of Adagio perfume stood on the shelf. Lady Speed-Stick. Maybelline cosmetics. Sunny took the bags from Dante, placed them next to a pair of gym shoes. She unzipped the zipper. Here Dante assumed she would reach for some necessary tool for class—a pencil, an eraser. But no. Her hand popped out of the bag with a small red and white box. Quickly, the hand went to Dante’s coat pocket. He felt it being shoved down deep. When it re-emerged, the box was gone. “What was that?” he asked Sunny’s pair of devious, unblinking green eyes. “Later,” she said. “Don’t touch it now. Just follow me.” And without hesitation she struck off. Dante followed her up a ramp to the eighth grade wing. Three classrooms—Health, English, Science—stood amidst a flurry of students preparing for their day. Most of the students, though older, were shorter than Dante. Sunny cut through them with ease, bringing them to a foyer decorated for Halloween. From one corner a scarecrow gazed with burlap bag eyes. In another was a cutout of a green-skinned witch. Growing more curious by the moment, Dante followed Sunny into the cafeteria, and then outside, where grassy smells from the football field tantalized many boys into contact play. Sunny marched towards it without once looking back to check if Dante were there. A few other girls saw her and waved. She did not wave back. She rounded the corner of the building, and for one crazy moment Dante really did think the football field was her destination. She wants me to try out for the team, oh great. The football field was not her destination. Instead, she stopped rather abruptly midway down the wall, her boots stamping the grass. Dante joined her. “Sunny, we only have about ten minutes to get the homeroom—“ “Look,” she commanded. Her eyes were on the tennis courts. Following them, Dante could find nothing of merit. There were kids hanging out at the gate. A few of them carried racket bags. Dante reached into his pocket, touched the little box Sunny had given him. It felt like cardboard wrapped in cellophane. “What is this?” he asked her again, not quite daring to bring it out. “See that girl with the blonde hair? Gold blouse, white skirt. The one who looks perfect.” “Um…” Sunny’s tone became impatient. “Dante she’s standing like twenty yards off.” “I see her.” He did indeed see her. The blonde tumble of her hair was hard to miss. She stood near a single white lily. Two other girls stood with her. They were talking and laughing. This went on for about a minute before one of the girls pointed to the building. The other two nodded. Then they all walked off together. Dante looked at Sunny. She was watching the trio with eyes narrow as that goddess of warfare who burst from her father’s head. He looked at the trio again, until they reached the building’s corner and disappeared. “I believe her name’s Maris,” he spoke. The narrow eyes seized him. “Do you? And where did you come by that information?” “She’s in my gym class,” Dante said innocently. “Old man Hogan always ogles the poor girl. He’s a weirdo.” “Poor girl, huh? Straight A student and every teacher’s pet. She’s more popular than me. She’s prettier than me. I hate her.” Sunny’s face had become nearly red as her hair. Her teeth gnashed. Dante reached to take her hand, only to find both closed into tiny, wrathful fists. “Stop that,” he said. “I don’t know about the pet and popularity stuff, but to say she’s prettier is nonsense.” His fingers closed over one of the fists. “Sunny? Are you hearing me?” She wasn’t. Her gaze found the corner where Maris had disappeared, as if to see a mocking ghost of that girl still there. “Take the package out of your coat,” she said tonelessly. “Not all the way. The teachers will see it.” More than a little displeased with what that implied, Dante once again reached into his coat, found the box Sunny had given him, and took a peek. It was cigarettes. A packet of Marlboro Reds, freshly sealed. “Got it?” Sunny asked, still transfixed by the corner. “I’ve got it,” Dante said weakly. “But what the hell, Sunny? These will get us both kicked out of school.” At last she deigned to look at him. An evil smile stretched the sides of her mouth. “No, Dante. They’re going to get Maris kicked out of school.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Do you follow? Understand? Get the picture?” “Not quite.” “Then listen further. I want you to slip that little present into her bag—“ “Sunny—“ “I don’t care how. Figure it out. Then figure out how to draw a teacher’s attention to that bag. Not Hogan’s. You’re right, I think he has a weird crush on her.” “Sunny.” “Or if you don’t want to use her bag, try something else. Maybe her coat. So long as she gets busted, I don’t care.” “Sunny, you have absolutely no reason to hate Maris Dubois. She’s—“ Sunny made a snarl, silencing his talk. A look of pure rage fumed at him like volcanic fire. “Maris who? Who? ” “Mr. Hogan does a roll call every day. The students hear each others’ names.” “Super,” she hissed. “So tell me, Dante, the names of all the other kids in that class.” “That’s thirty kids, Sunny.” “ Do it!” Dante swallowed. He was in deep water here. Perhaps too deep. “Well,” he began, “there’s Robert Roach—“ “Not that dork! Everybody knows him!” “Casey Lyons. Sam Bean.” A smeary blur of faces stained his thought. Furiously, Dante tried to sort them out, to get them straight. He tried even harder to make sure none of them were girls. “Jackson Gray. Theodore Zucker. Uh…” Sunny rolled her eyes. “Okay, shut up. Just shut up. Her last name is Dubois. I knew that, but then I hear gossip from girls all day long. You knew it because I guess you”—she pulled a disgusted face—“ remembered. Nice.” Chancing to take a step nearer, Dante said in the most compassionate tone he had: “I promise to forget it from this day forth.” “Don’t bother,” she pouted, refusing to look at him. “Just make sure those cigarettes do their dirty work for us.” “Okay,” he said. “I will.” “Good.” ∞ Dante spent the rest of that day in a kind of fever, plotting his girlfriend’s devious attack. The possibility for success was not strong. He could see only two chances to do her bidding—the gym class basement locker room, after everyone changed and went upstairs, or lunchtime, when Maris often hung her coat on a row off hooks just off the girls’ bathroom. He decided on the former, reasoning that with the locker room empty he would stand less chance of getting burned. Friday morning he sat in homeroom with the cigarettes in the pocket of his leather jacket. Sunny had remained pouty all day yesterday, but now seemed returned to her usual self. She kept close to Dante in the hall, leaning her head on his shoulder while Stacey complimented her ear-rings. She then asked Dante if they could go to the girls’ room for one final touch-up before classes. He told them yes. But as homeroom came to a close his confidence slipped. Gym was third period—just ninety minutes away. In ninety minutes he would be sneaking into the girls’ changing area to plant cigarettes in Maris Dubois’ bag. And even if you’re able to pull that off, Wonder Boy, how are you going to make sure she gets caught with the stupid things? “Dante?” Sunny said. Homeroom was over. They were off to first period—study hall for her, math for him. “Everything okay?” The familiar sneer was back on her face, twisted as snakes that once turned foolish heroes to stone. “It’s going to be today, right?” she went on, before he could answer the first question. “Today,” he said. The sneer writhed. “You don’t sound too sure of yourself.” “ Today,” he repeated, locking on with her eyes. “Good boy.” She patted his back. “Go to it.” The long division assignment she had already groaned about was due today. Rather than collect it though, Mr. Krieger decided to have his class grade it out loud. It killed time and gave him an excuse not to work. Dante scored a 26 out of 30, good for 87%. He wondered what Sunny would score later that day. By then, of course, he would either be her champion, or locked in detention hall with the usual band of delinquent gorillas who spent time there. Dangerous kids like Casey Didion and Lamar Taylor, who wouldn’t just beat you up if they decided not to like you, they would put you in the hospital. After Krieger’s class he went directly to science, where that teacher, a tufty-haired man named Mr. Sitz, gave a lecture on the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. “On May 18, 1980,” he intoned, “all hell broke loose in Washington State. It did not happen without warning. Two months earlier, volcanologists speculated that magma had begun to move beneath the mountain. A magnitude 4.2 earthquake indicated as much. Somewhere deep under all that rock, pressure was building. One hundred and twenty-five years of dormancy had come to a close.” Mr. Sitz raised his eyebrows. “What does that tell us about nature? Anyone?” A few tentative hands went up. Mr. Sitz called on a tall, thin girl named Jennifer. “It’s unpredictable,” she said. Then: “At least until…you know, certain indicators appear. And by then it’s almost always too late.” “Almost,” the science teacher agreed. “But it does leave us time—usually—to get out of the way. If we so choose. Not all of us do. Not all of us have a choice, for love typically fails to provide one. Love of the land, or of the work.” He paused. “Or of the very thing that threatens to destroy you. In the case of one Harry Randall Truman, that thing was the mountain, at the foot of which he lived for fifty-two years. He loved Saint Helens and refused to leave her, even after it became clear she was by no means stable. She was beautiful and he loved her. And in the end that love killed him.” The end of period bell sounded off. Everyone jumped from their seats. Or nearly so. Dante did not jump. He rose to his feet like a sick elephant. His science book fell to the floor— flop! He stooped, grabbed it, rose again. In the process of doing so the package of cigarettes fell out of his jacket. They were now next to his boot. “Dante!” called Mr. Sitz, approaching his desk. “Your essay on the Challenger disaster was pretty good. Of course you know that already. I put a B plus on it.” “Yes sir.” Mr. Sitz took a step closer. Dante swallowed hard and, surreptitiously as he knew how, placed his boot over top of the cigarettes. “Now you’ve got me looking forward to your oral report next spring,” Sitz said. “Thank you, sir.” The science teacher’s nostrils twitched. “Say, what’s that smell? Something burning?” “I hope not, sir,” Dante replied, pretending to look around the room. “I hope not either. My word, the last thing we need in a school building is…” Sitz’s words trailed off. His eyes had dropped to the floor. “What…on earth…are those? ” Now Dante had to look down, too. Not that he wished to do so. His mind began to flicker with a million different pictures. Him sitting in the principal’s office, him sitting in detention hall, him sitting alone at home. In all he was shame-faced. Humiliated. Laid low. Slowly, Mr. Sitz bent down. “Move your foot, please,” he said. Dante moved his foot—the other foot. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then the science teacher was standing again. In his hand he held, of all things, three dead black beetles. “Gross,” he said, grinning. “Left over from somebody’s biology assignment. Sorry you had to sit next to them today. You should have spoken up.” “I…didn’t notice them, sir.” “I’m surprised none of the girls screamed,” the other moaned. “Oh well.” He shrugged and walked to the trash can, where he pitched the bugs away. While his back was turned, Dante quickly knelt, grabbed the cigarettes, and pocketed them. “Better get on to your next class,” Sitz said with a wink. “Can’t keep dear old Mr. Hogan waiting with his badminton racquets.” Shaky and sweaty, Dante left the science room. A large number of kids were still in the hall, snatching books from their lockers, talking about basketball, talking about cheerleading. Jokes were swapped, bubble-gum popped. The girls giggled and the boys haw-hawed. Dante walked past his own locker, not needing any books for gym. He was getting close to the foyer ramp when a hand fell on his shoulder. “ Boo!” He spun around so fast his jacket fanned like a skirt. Two girls—Sunny and Stacey—were smiling up at him. Sunny’s smile, however, weakened at the sight of his skittishness. “What are you so jumpy about?” she demanded to know. Summoning all of his strength, Dante said: “Oh, you just caught me in a daydream. Where are you ladies headed?” “Back to Mr. Wolfe’s room for English.” Sunny’s green eyes began to glitter shrewdly. “And you’re going to see Mr. Hogan. Right?” “That’s right. Badminton day.” “Let me know how it turns out,” Sunny told him. The shrewdness had found its way to her smile, and into her voice. “I’ll be waiting, Dante.” ∞ “Okayyyyy,” Mr. Hogan told the boys. His voice oozed through the locker room like cold pancake syrup. He wore a blue tracksuit every day, though Dante was quite certain he was too old (most kids put him in the late fifties) to do any running. A whistle hung around his neck. “Okayyyy. Todayyyy we’ll be playyyyying badminton. Please be careful with the equipment. And go easy on the girls.” With that, he left the room so the boys could get changed. Dante hung his jacket in a locker whose number identified with the ancient Christian belief of leisure for witches. He put on his track pants. Then, when no one was looking, he slipped the cigarettes into the pocket of the pants and hung back, waiting to be the last one out. One by one the boys went upstairs. Dante pretended to tie his shoes. He adjusted the string on his track pants. The locker room grew quieter, quieter. Soon he was all alone. Knowing he had at best two minutes to plant the evidence before Mr. Hogan noticed him missing, Dante moved quickly. He left the boys’ locker room, checked the stairs to make sure no one was watching, then slipped across to the arch-way marked GIRLS . Here he found a hard left that dumped him into an alien room the male body had absolutely no right to trespass. Like the boys’ room, it was dark, though far brighter clothing hung in the lockers. A flowery scent of perfume beckoned. Odysseus to its Siren call, Dante followed. With every step he felt more and more strange, as well as more certain he was about to be caught. His eyes fluttered across the lockers. The blouse Maris had on earlier did not seem present. He took six more steps into the room. Basement shadows loomed closer. A torn poster on one wall read: WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? Beneath was a picture of a girl, deep in thought, staring a package of cigarettes. SMOKING IS A DIRTY HABIT! the poster went on to inform. There’s somebody in here, Dante’s mind gibbered, somebody can see you, you’re going to get caught! He was about to run when he saw it. Maris’ blouse. It hung in locker 33, gold as the peaceful flame of the goddess by that name. By this time, however, he would be missed upstairs. Doubtless Mr. Hogan was already taking roll call. Had he come to Dante’s name yet on his little white sheet of notepaper? Deciding to risk it, Dante walked quickly to the blouse. Beneath it was a pink book-bag. Again, Maris’. All he needed to do now was unzip it and stuff the cigarettes inside. He reached into his pocket; his hand closed around the box. Three seconds was all would take. One…two…three. Then he could get out of here. “Okayyyyy!” came Mr. Hogan’s voice from upstairs. “Where’s Dantayyyyy? Can someone go downstairs and check on him please?” With trembling hands Dante pulled the cigarettes free and dropped them onto Maris’ bag. No good. She would be caught with them, certainly, but no one would believe they were actually hers. At best he could later brag to Sunny that he’d messed up five minutes of the perfect princess’ day. Not good enough—not nearly good enough. “Okayyyyy!” Mr. Hogan croaked again. “Shut up already!” Dante hissed. He picked up the cigarettes and ran. His foot caught on a bench. He flew through the air like a shot bird, hitting the floor hard enough to cut his elbow open on a chipped tile. Blood splattered the bench, the other lockers. Some of the girls’ clothes were stained. Oh no! Oh no, oh no, oh no! He sat up slowly, assessing the damage. The cigarettes were gone. At some point they had escaped his fingers and disappeared. Meanwhile his blood continued to drip. The cut was sizeable—maybe an inch long. A red mess pooled on the floor, growing larger every second. “What the HELL are you doing in the girls’ locker room?” Wide-eyed, Dante looked up to see an incredulous Mr. Hogan gaping with utter disgust. Clearly his eyes could not believe what they were seeing, because they couldn’t open any wider, lest they fall out as marbles would from an old saddle bag. “It was a rat,” Dante gibbered, desperate to grasp any branch available from this humiliating quicksand. “Get up, boy.” “A rat!” “I said get up .” As he spoke Mr. Hogan seized Dante’s arm and pulled. The wound opened wider, spilling more blood. “You are despicable, young man. Despicable. Shame on you.” The gym teacher’s hateful face looked ready to spit fire. Blood dripped onto his tracksuit but he didn’t seem to care, or even notice. His grip tightened on Dante’s arm. “The only rat in here,” he said, “is the one going to the principal’s office. From there you’ll probably be expelled. You need discipline, boy. Hard, heavy discipline.” Mr. Hogan might gone on with this litany, except that in the very next moment he was bitten by a rat. Dante had no idea at first. The gym teacher’s mouth fell open again. He let go Dante’s arm and began to scream like a woman. “ EEEEEE! EEEEEE! EEEEEE!” “Mr. Hogan? What’s wrong?” “ EEEEEE!” He started hopping on one foot. That was when Dante looked down to see a large, gray rat scuttling under the bench. He gasped. He looked again at Mr. Hogan’s foot. Disbelief flooded his senses. It couldn’t be real, it just couldn’t be. No way. It was real all right. Mr. Hogan took a seat on the bench. Breathing heavily, he looked at Dante, and then at the rat. It was half the length of a man’s arm. It stopped, turned, grinned at both of them for a moment. Then it ran to the wall and disappeared. “How in the world,” Mr. Hogan heaved, “did a rat get in here? Phew! We need traps. Lots of traps.” “Mr. Hogan—“ “And I need a doctor. I guess you do, too. Let’s tell the class what happened and get to the clinic.” *** Minutes later, while waiting in the nurse’s clinic to get his arm taped, Dante happened to look out the window. Standing near the bike racks was a girl with red hair. Sunny. This was odd because classes were still ongoing. And even though the racks were clear on the other side of the parking lot, Sunny’s eyes were fixed directly on him. Her hair danced in the wind, a bonfire. “Dante Torn?” the nurse called, distracting his gaze. “Please come in.” And when he looked out the window again Sunny had gone. CHAPTER EIGHT: The Glass Block “It happened in 1923,” Donati said, with the fireplace behind him alight. “An explosion so ruinous it awoke at noon the maid of midnight.”   It was Sunday again. Over breakfast Dante had described the events of the previous week while the opera singer quietly listened. Only once did Donati break in, this to ask whether the cigarette box was sealed or torn open. When Dante told him it was sealed he smiled and said: “Mistake. Who would believe this Maris had been smoking if the packet wasn’t even opened yet? Please continue.” At the end of his story the singer let several seconds pass without saying a word. Content to let the silence draw out, Dante waited. The living room of 114 looked picturesque as ever today, what with the fire’s glow upon the floor, and the light of gray clouds dampening its tired walls even more. In the hallway a grandfather clock ticked. From the doorstep the sound of wind chimes. “A rat,” Donati said, the way a man speaks when he tries to convince himself. “On school grounds. That will raise a ruckus with the board of health. Unless of course it can be swept under the rug.” “I swear I had no idea there was a real rat in the locker room,” Dante told him. “It was just something I reached for. The story I mean. It just popped into my mind.” “Coincidence is an evil thing,” Donati said. “I believe that with all of my heart. On Friday it wasn’t on your side. You just happened to catch the good of it, like a man who finds a sack of money after a bank robbery. With coincidence that’s all we can do—benefit while it’s busy doing Lucifer’s work elsewhere. Did you know,” he continued, “there was once a woman who died downtown, simply for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time? It happened in 1923…” ∞ Norwalk was a different town then. Not that I was here to see it—goodness no! But I have found several trips to our local library to be quite educational. There are history books with photographs and articles. My interest in such things began with Georgina Esposito. When I arrived here, the church in which she’d performed by gaslight so long ago was gone, with a bland insurance company risen in its place. I meant to return to Cleveland immediately, where I was staying with friends, but first wandered into the library, with hopes of discovering why Church Street no longer had a church on it. And I did indeed find out, though the story contains no romance, no drama. The old Methodist church was torn down so a larger one could be built nearby. This was done about 1895. The razing may have lacked romance, but the pictures of Norwalk taken during that era certainly did not. In the silent, leather-lined aisles of that library exist a virtual treasure-trove of moments lost. I encourage you, dear boy, to visit it and see for yourself. What you will notice right away is the traffic. For about fifty years—between 1850 and 1900—Norwalk did not sleep as it does today. Businesses boomed on East and West Main. Banks, bars, restaurants, cigar shops. Drug stores, general stores. Basement barbers and snake oil cafes. Just down the street is a house with an old strawberry patch in the backyard; the owner used it to make ice cream—strawberry, of course—which he would then sell at a parlor. There were also dressmakers, blacksmiths, pastry chefs. Doctors and dentists. Lawyers. Tanners, milliners. Things were busy, is what I mean to put forth. Norwalk was a very busy place. A trolley car once ran the length of Main Street to help lighten the horse traffic, but goodness, to see the pictures you wouldn’t think it helped very much. There were horses everywhere. And carriages. And barefoot boys helping ladies down folding steps. These boys would then receive a half-penny for their chivalry, or perhaps a penny if luck favored. The beginning of Norwalk’s decline is hard to pin down, but at a guess I would blame the closing of a large canal to the north, which once bore the largest merchant ships Lake Erie could float. Farmers would travel to the canal port, hoping to trade agricultural goods for money or equipment or whatever else might be needed for their fields. It all made for great business until about 1850, when the railroads came. Then, slowly, the wailing of horn-blowers was replaced by the whistle of trains. The once raucous canal became more and more silent. In 1858 a control dam failed, preventing large ships from entering the canal at all. This marked the absolute end of its use. The canal closed. It was over. Today you can walk the valley where it once functioned. Souvenirs for historians lie buried in the dirt. One windy spring morning a friend of mine found the top of an Elkington teapot, quite by accident, while cleaning his shoe on a rock. This actually happened. The canal’s death may have marked the beginning of death for Norwalk, but for a number of years there was still hope among the horses. The St. Charles Hotel continued to thrive, and about 1894 a rather large glass block department store opened. It was here the woman I mentioned earlier met her demise. How exactly did it happen? Oh my, but the story is grim. Two floors of the original glass block are all that stand today. If you’ve ever been to the video store at the corner of Main and Benedict, then you’ve been inside of it. But in 1894 it was five stories high. Majestic. Marvelous. None of the other business blocks could match it, or even come close. It faced northeast, as if to pay homage to this state’s great glass city, and in the mornings it glowed like a handsome, dignified man, while at night its many windows watched the moon in the way of poets in thought for a rhyme. Ah, Dante! I know it only from pictures, but how I wish my shoes could have pressured the clay walks of its living days. Hearing that may sound strange to you—a man from beauteous Italy fawning upon American architecture—but to find something so wondrous in a place so unlikely makes the thing even more wondrous still. Much of what department stores sell today could be found inside. These included clothing, cooking utensils, pet supplies, health and beauty aids, household cleaning items, dishware, timepieces. And sporting goods, of course. It is said that the father of America’s famous NFL coach, Paul Brown, once bought a football there. You’re nodding, Dante. You must have heard that story. Do you believe it is true? Yes, so do I. Getting back to the building. As I said, magnificent. Just down the road in Bellevue stood its twin. Both buildings were five stories high and both had a cupola on the roof where one could enjoy a no doubt breath-taking view of Ohio’s countryside. The Bellevue store’s fate is a mystery to me, but what happened to Norwalk’s will live in history books for all eternity. It was 1923. August 5th. A Sunday. This was rather fortunate, for had the accident occurred during the work week many more people would have perished. As it stood, the store was closed for the day. Empty but for two stationary engineers who were new to the job. The previous engineer had retired, and it should be noted he voiced grave doubts to the management concerning these fresh applicants’ abilities. They were in the basement when it happened. No doubt it was dark, lit only by that time period’s fitful flame. Did I also mention the basement was huge? It was. It had to be to provide foundation for such a tall building, as well as house the store’s massive Bigelow steam boiler. Ah! The expression on your face, Dante! It has changed considerably. Your soul’s windows burn with the fires of deduction. The destination of my story has become plain, yes? And you are quite right. Regardless, we shall travel on. Perhaps the sights along the way will interest you. The Bigelow ran the length of the basement’s east wall. It was black as the sixth hour of a water thief’s repose. To look at it one might have wondered why he could see no stars. To stand near it one might have felt a very disturbing and venomous regard—the gaze, if you will, of Friedrich Nietzsche’s well-remembered abyss. Tending a boiler is not difficult, but one does need to be extremely cognizant. Most can withstand steam pressure of three hundred pounds per square inch. That gives a tender plenty of time to adjust the necessary valves should anything go wrong. Something did indeed go wrong that day in the basement of The Glass Block. At approximately 10AM the Bigelow’s pressure gauge began to rise, very slowly but very steadily. To this day no one knows the reason. Perhaps the boiler was old and in need of repair. Perhaps its two doomed tenders were not properly trained to adjust its valves. I rather think it was the latter, for at 11:30 a young chimney sweep cleaning the basement at that time reported an ominous knock coming from inside the Bigelow’s tank. He had no idea how to read a pressure gauge, but left the building immediately after informing the two tenders. A wise lad he must have been, for at 12:05, the Bigelow exploded. Its ferocious cry of agony slaughtered the peacefulness of that Sunday noon. The new tenders were instantly killed, while every window of The Glass Block shattered and became as storming knives. Chunks of brick flew in all directions, some landing over a mile from the blast point. Flag poles fell over; sidewalks collapsed. No one knew what had happened—not at first. The fire department raced fast as they could towards an arm of black smoke. A curtain of dust veiled the sun, making things hard to see, but it soon became apparent The Glass Block was burning. Firemen later discovered the Bigelow boiler on the roof, six stories removed from its proper place. The side of its belly was torn open. Considerable damage had also been done to the rest of the building. As I’ve told you already, none of the windows survived. It was 6PM before the fire came under control. It burned until midnight, by which time the once magnificent store was completely gutted, a total loss. Her five stories still stood, but three of them were no longer safe and were eventually chopped off, like mold from a slice of bread. The Glass Block never reopened. For about thirty years the building operated as an umbrella factory, then that closed, too. When I arrived in Norwalk it was a realty. Now, as you well know, it’s the video store. But remember, Dante, that it was once great and powerful, and that only a lack of love for what helped it be strong brought about its demise. By the way, that woman I spoke of, the one who died by coincidence? She just happened to be standing right outside the block when it exploded. The sidewalk collapsed, pitching her into the basement, where her broken body burned to ash. Family members later recounted that she’d decided on a constitutional after that day’s church services. Alas, her health did not improve. Quite the opposite. As for coincidence… Bah! I hope a part of that evil thing died in the basement with her, truly and with all my heart. Poor, wretched girl. La tua anima `e libera. ∞ “What does that mean?” Dante asked. He did this almost every time he heard Donati speak Italian. Never once did the singer appear irritated; rather, he answered with a tone that sounded appreciative of Dante’s interest. “Your soul is free,” the singer replied. “Do you really believe that?” “Indeed I do. Upon death the soul is unleashed. Unleashed, that is, to return to its one true owner.” For the next half hour they spoke of other things, then Dante had to leave. His father expected him to rake the lawn before lunch. Hearing this, Donati carefully offered a sum of money to have the same done for his lawn, to which Dante agreed, promising to return later that day. By four o’clock all the leaves in front of 114 were in neat orange piles, ready for bagging. When he was finished Dante rang the front bell. Donati opened the door with ten dollars in his hand. “Is this enough?” he asked, with pure innocence. Dante told him that it was fine—more than fine. He then thanked the singer for his generosity. “You’re a good lad,” Donati told him. “A very good lad.” “Thank you, sir,” Dante said again. “Take this Sunny girl out on a Coke date. Or perhaps for an ice cream.” “That’s a good idea.” “But remember…” the other began, only to let his thoughts trail off on a chill afternoon breeze. “Yes?” Dante reached, hoping to bring them back. Donati took a deep breath before continuing. “Remember that she is dangerous. I know this from what you have already told me. She is dangerous, Dante. Take care to make adjustments when the pressure grows too high.” And on that piece of advice, he gently closed the door. CHAPTER NINE: A Drive North At the end of October came a festival. Always at this time of year the local amusement park held one, for to summer a final farewell.   The park, called Cedar Point, named it Hallow-weekends , as the festival only ran on those days. This was its third year and Dante had yet to go even once. He had always wanted to (Halloween was his favorite holiday) but could never think of a proper way to ask his parents. He knew from past visits—summertime visits—that amusement parks were not the cup of tea of his mom and dad. The huge roller coasters did not interest them (never once did they pause on the midway to gape at their enormous, gleaming skeletons). The junk food vendors did not please them. They found the smell of Sandusky Bay offensive (unless its odor approached from the hull of a yacht). Icky smells of candy and soda made them nauseous. The place was too noisy. The place was too crowded. All of these things and others Dante could ascertain just by looking at their faces, or listening to their voices when they told him—along with whomever friend had come along for the day—to be careful, and to be at such and such a place by lunchtime. Hallow-weekends won’t be so bad, Dante wanted to tell them, each and every year. Most of the rides are closed; the vendors sell apple cider; the bay won’t smell because the air is cooler. They would make good rebuttals for the elder Torns’ disapproving stares toward his request. Good, just not good enough. This year they had not taken him to Cedar Point at all. They might have had he asked, but more and more, their acquiescence for his follies seemed too awkward to endure. So Dante had decided upon silence last June. Now, in October, he did the same. But it wasn’t Dante’s parents who finally took him to see Hallow-weekends . It was Sunny’s. It happened this way: The Monday after his botched cigarette prank he went to school late. The blame lay totally with him. He’d forgotten to set his alarm clock; thus, both he and it overslept. At eight o’clock he stepped into the principal’s office with an excuse paper from his mother (its message dashed off hastily over coffee and a croissant). The secretary scowled from her desk. “What do you want?” she groaned. Dante gave her the paper. “Late for school.” “Again?” “I haven’t been late all year.” Now the woman snorted. “That’s what they all say, kiddo. And what do you want?” This last was directed over Dante’s shoulder. Her turned to find Sunny walking in the door. As always, she was dressed in black. Her crooked smile dodged around Dante to find the secretary. “Just a moment of your time,” Sunny obliged. She walked to the desk without looking at Dante, and from a small, neat bag she wore on a chain around her wrist, produced a slip of paper. “Another excuse paper?” the secretary asked, as if the death of her would soon come about from them. “Yes,” Sunny told her, “I’m afraid I overslept. Forgot to set the alarm.” “Shame on you.” “I know. I’m horrible. Luckily, Dante is here to walk me to class.” She raised her slender arm—the one with the bag on it—to Dante. “Shall we?” “Of course,” Dante said, in a rush of unexplainable confidence. “You look rather lovely this morning.” “Why thank you, kind sir!” “Let me get the door.” He held it open, and in a whiff of shampoo and perfume, Sunny went through. Dante then turned back to the secretary, whose impatient face had turned to something more like one placed in the audience of a frightful magic show, so large were her eyes. “A pleasant day to you, Miss,” Dante sang, pretending to raise an invisible hat, the way gentlemen once did in that city by the Thames whose etymology hides in ancient tablets. “Thank you,” the secretary got out timidly. When the door was shut, both Dante and Sunny began to laugh. “Well played,” Sunny said, “well played!” “Have you been reading deep literature of some sort over the weekend?” She shook her head. “No, no. It’s just when your dad drives you to school in a Jaguar every morning you sometimes feel baroque. It passes.” “Did you really forget to set your alarm?” “I really did, my dear. Why?” Dante shrugged. “Coincidence. I forgot mine, too.” His mind went back to the rat in the girls’ locker room. And then there was the biting spider in the blond boy’s bag. Coincidence. I hope a part of that evil thing died in the basement with her, truly and with all my heart. They walked slowly down the dormant hall. Sunny put her head on his shoulder. Her boots clicked. “Page 101,” a teacher behind one of the doors called. From more distant still came the rumble of thunder. A storm was coming. “Sorry about the cigarettes,” Dante said. Her eyes flicked upward. “We’ll have to do better next time, won’t we?” By we, of course, she meant you. Dante knew as much but held his tongue. “Doing anything this weekend?” she asked. “Nothing planned,” he answered. They had reached the new wing, top of the ramp. Bright fluorescent lights shined on posters and doors. Two other seventh grade girls passed by in the other direction; both said hello to Sunny. “Well,” Sunny said, after nodding to them, “why don’t you come with us to Cedar Point? They’re having a Halloween festival.” Dante’s heart stumbled. Never once had she called upon him outside of school. Now this sudden invitation to an event he’d been wanting to see for years. “By us,” he said, “you mean you and your parents?” “That’s right. My dad’s driving.” She added this final part as if it would make everything perfectly safe. And indeed, why shouldn’t it be? One reason seemed clear enough. “Do they know about us?” he put forth. “Do they know we’re like…a couple?” Sunny’s green eyes flashed again in that way that signaled danger. “We’re not like a couple, Dante. We are a couple. And yes, they know.” “How do they feel about it?” “It?” “Yes. The relationship.” They had passed through the foyer, with its myriad spooky decorations, and were now at the entrance to the cafeteria, where Sunny would go for period one study hall. She stopped. Her grip on his arm tightened. “Thank you for walking me, Dante. Now then. Would you like to come with us this weekend or…do you have someone better to buy pumpkin spice coffee for?” “Sunny.” The green in her eyes continued its vehemence. Such was its capering Dante could only think of imps before their stoning by sublimity. He knew he had only seconds to say the right thing, otherwise she would turn on her heel without a word and not speak to him until maybe Thanksgiving. “Sunny,” he told her, “I would love to come with you this weekend. What time should I be at your house?” The capering stopped; the flame went out. Crisis averted. Smiling, Sunny pulled him a little way down the hall, to a place where no one would see. Here she took a small slip of paper from her bag and wrote her address: 911 Wooden Tee Lane, Sycamore Hills. 4PM sharp! “Sharp,” Dante said after reading it. “That’s right,” she replied. Her eyes widened crazily. “Sharp as the stakes of Salem. Be there!” “I will,” he promised. It was always nice to see her so happy. “Thanks, Dante!” And before dashing off to study hall, she stood on tip-toe to give him the sweetest good-bye kiss, he might have mistaken it for a good and proper girl’s. ∞ The week passed happily enough. Dante walked to class with Sunny when he could (besides homeroom they only shared one other together). He ate lunch with her and her friends. In the afternoon they said goodbye at his locker, or sometimes her locker, always with that entourage of girlfriends standing close, their strange smiles hovering like Valentine’s Day balloons over a haunted dance floor. Every now and then between classes, Maris’ face would appear among the throng of migrating students. At these times the effect on Sunny’s confidence was passing but noticeable. Her chatter stopped; her grip on Dante’s arm tightened. Once, toward the end of the week, Maris drifted near their lunch table to talk with Mr. Wolfe. All of the girls with Sunny went quiet and bowed their heads. Sunny also went quiet. Her gaze, however, was defiant, locked with hatred on the girl she considered her enemy, whether by nature or bad fortune. Curious, Dante tried to get her attention. It was like she didn’t hear. She would not even look at Dante until at last Maris went away, at which point everything returned to normal. His father okayed the trip to Hallow-weekends. It happened on Wednesday night, after Dante knocked on the door of his study and was told to come in. This room was even more hushed than the rest of the house, with its thick brown carpet and heavy oak paneling. On one wall hung a painting of a tree, ripe with fruit. The opposite wall contained a fireplace, lit for the chill evening, where thumbprints of dead bricklayers could be seen in the mortar. “Hello, Dad.” “What is it, Dante?” The older Torn had turned in his seat. His face was like petrified wood, his dark hair neat as a doll’s. No emotion but vague annoyance at being disrupted (he was an accountant; six papers formed a triangle on his desk) tainted his eyes. “I was invited by a friend to go to Cedar Point this weekend. Is it all right?” Almost without hesitation, Mr. Torn said: “Yes, that’s fine.” A silence then burgeoned between them, wherein the only noise came from the fireplace. “Is that all?” Dante’s father wanted to know. “Yes. Thanks, Dad.” “Goodnight, Dante.” And without waiting for his son to leave, Mr. Torn returned to his work. He did not even ask on which day of the weekend the trip would fall, or at what time, or for how long. “Goodnight,” Dante said. But Mr. Torn was no longer listening. ∞ On Saturday, as the sun neared its unwarming meridian, Dante left number 54 in a black leather jacket. A long walk to Sycamore Hills came next, yet being a summertime paperboy he scarcely minded. The autumn wind lent vigor to his bones. Dry leaves rushed on the sidewalk, trailing scents of sap and wood. Cardboard skeletons danced to jangling wind chimes. When he came to Mr. Donati’s house he saw the old opera singer on the front step, a broom in his hands, sweeping dirt from its threshold. Dante called and waved. The older man smiled and waved back. “Busy morning?” he asked. “Busy day. Spending it with Sunny by the lake.” At this Donati’s head tilted slightly, as if amused by Dante’s insisting proximity to things better left with space. “Sounds romantic.” “Perhaps.” The tilt straightened to allow a burst of good-natured laughter. “Perhaps, he says! Perhaps! Come back tomorrow and tell me about perhaps!” Fifteen minutes later Dante came to the entrance of Sycamore Hills. A pair of wide drives—an entrance and an exit—plunged into a realm of neat, expensive one-level ranch style houses that overlooked a golf course. Keeping to the right side of the entrance lane, Dante entered. Sycamore Hills had only been around since the fifties; thus, none of the homes looked remotely old as his own. Their lawns were large and green and lovingly mowed. BMWs snoozed in many of their driveways, but Dante also noticed Subarus, Saabs, and even the occasional Porsche. Saplings lined the walks; behind the houses, however, loomed larger trees planted for protection against dimpled spheres. At every intersection he read the signs for Wooden Tee Lane, though he already knew from Sunny that it was further back. Here was Fairway Lane, which led to a parking lot near the clubhouse. Here was Pin Drive, which became a cul-de-sac. Dante walked all the way to a row of elms overlooking the ninth green. The row also provided afternoon shade for Wooden Tee Lane, which Dante now entered, checking the house numbers for 911. He needn’t have bothered. A girl—Sunny—waved to him from the porch of a blue house with yellow shutters. “ Ciao, Dante!” From the way she stood at the rail the house might have been a ship approaching port. In fact she was not at the rail but on it, the toes of her boots pointing through the lower plank of wood. Excited to see her after such a long walk, Dante waved back. The wind played with her hair, raising it like a serpent on a pungi’s song. He approached the house at a swift gait while she in turn ran to the top step of the porch, where she did a twirl, fanning the hem of her purple dress. “Handsome jacket,” she said, feasting her eyes. Then: “Come inside! My mom and dad want to meet you!” Her hand reached out and fairly dragged him up the steps. Seconds later they were entering a dark, austere living room with hardwood floors and leather furniture. The smell of pipe tobacco greeted him. Wood smoke. Old library books. On a coffee table rested a bowl of fruit. “Take one, Dante,” Sunny offered. “Go on. They’re delicious.” “Really?” “Of course! Daddy! ” she shouted towards a flight of stairs. “He’s here!” The sound of footsteps crossed the ceiling. They reached the stairs, started down. A pair of legs in black trousers appeared at the railing, and then long arms in a blue silk shirt. Dante put on what he hoped was his best smile for the occasion—friendly but not too wide, pleasant but respectful. He felt Sunny’s hand slide around his waist. Her own smile was much brighter. She stood on tip-toe for a moment, dropped back down. Clearly this introduction had been on her mind for a long time. “Daddy?” she said to the tall, lithe man who was now at the bottom of the stairs. “ This is Dante. Dante? Daddy.” His thick black hair seemed to glow in the dim light, like the space around bodies celestial. Two deep-set eyes regarded him from a pale, smooth face that might have been chiseled from marble. He took a quiet, distinguished step towards Dante, and then another, and another still. His shoes made no sound despite the firmness of the floor. And when he spoke his voice, though lacking a cheerful arc through which to exit, was like that of a fine friend. “Ah!” he sang, extending a hand. “Dante Torn. I’m very happy to finally meet you. My name is Brenton. My wife will be down in a minute.” Brenton’s fingers were long and cool as a vampire’s. They slithered through Dante’s own, squeezed, and retreated. “Hello, sir,” Dante said. “Thank you for having me today.” The tall man’s eyes widened for a moment. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. We’re glad you could make it. Sunny talks about you all the time.” “Daddy!” Sunny interjected. “All the time,” Brenton went on. “You should hear her. Dante this, Dante that, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” “Okay!” Sunny cut in for a second time. “Thank you, Daddy, for making our guest feel at home.” “Sunny’s a very special girl,” Dante said, to which she gave a growl of exasperation. But her dad only laughed. “Oh, don’t I know it. She’s been my daughter for twelve years. Can I get you a drink? We have soda. Juice. Beer.” “ Daddy!” “Okay I’m just kidding about the beer. We have a fully stocked kitchen though—“ “I’ll fix him something,” Sunny said. “If I let you do it you’d probably burn the house down.” “Good point,” Brenton said. “I’ll go back upstairs and see if your mother needs anything. Dante?” The long-fingered hand patted his shoulder. “Make yourself at home in the meantime. It shouldn’t be more than half an hour before we leave.” “That’s fine, sir. Thank you again.” The older man turned to go, then stopped to give Dante another look. “You’re a well-mannered lad,” he said appreciatively. “Sunny might actually know what she’s doing this time.” And on that strange observation, he glided back upstairs. ∞ The kitchen was shiny and clean, with everything—pots, pans, dishes—properly arranged. Sunny bade him sit at the table, then fussily set about fixing him a light snack. “I’m so sorry about my dad,” she all but gushed as she arranged some grapes on a plate. “He’s been sort of worried about boys starting to chase me around. I’m twelve now, getting to be that age, blah blah. And I’m like, Daddy relax, there’s nobody I’m interested in. This was before I met you of course.” “He seems very nice to me,” Dante said, with more sincerity than he had felt in a long time. Sunny put a plate of grapes and sliced cheese in front of him. She then took one of the grapes, held it to his lips. “Eat,” she purred. He opened his mouth to apprehend the fruit from her fingers, yet in jesting reluctance she would not let go, so that his tongue brushed the softness of her skin, his lips the lacquered nail. Smiling now, Dante reached forth to cup her wrist, as one might cup a match to steady the flame. Here Sunny finally let go, only to seize another grape and duplicate the procedure. When two grapes were in his mouth she reached for a cube of cheese. “One more,” she said, her tone that of a nurse giving medicine to a child. “Come on. I promise it won’t kill you.” “Promises, promises,” he said around the grapes. “That’s right. Now eat.” He took the cheese into his mouth, using special care to let all three flavors—grapes, cheese, and girl—entwine themselves upon the canvas of his palate. Sunny smiled. Her green eyes narrowed. “Good?” “Very good. Thank you.” From the other room came the sound of down-going footsteps. Still smiling, Sunny glanced in their direction. She pulled the plate away, went to the refrigerator, stowed it. Then Brenton entered the kitchen. “We’re ready,” he said. “Great,” Sunny told him. “So are we.” ∞ Dawn Desdemona was a short, quiet woman who looked like her daughter. Her hair was red, her eyes green, her skin creamy white. Her smiles were pleasant, her words welcoming. The only, slightly odd thing that Dante could see lay in her dress, which was black like something for a funeral, and her white lace gloves that seemed approximately one hundred years late for a completely different occasion. Nor was Dante the only one who took notice. Upon seeing her, Sunny told everyone to wait while she raced upstairs (her own dress was purple, the cut modern enough) to rummage about for a number of seconds. There came the sound of drawers opening and closing, the shuffling of clothes hangers. “What are you looking for, dear?” Dawn called. Then Sunny’s voice, muffled, slightly irritated: “My choker!” “Top drawer, right side, plastic case!” “Thank you!” She came down with her neck wrapped in black lace. Pinned to the middle was what looked to be a tiny silver moth. “It is a moth,” Sunny said, when Dante asked. “The nocturnal butterfly, that’s me.” “Shall we go?” Brenton spoke. The amusement park was about thirty minutes north of Norwalk. Brenton and Dawn made pleasant, desultory chatter with Dante at first, but soon began to ask him a number of innocent, unprying questions. It made sense considering the tilt he had brought upon their daughter’s life. Where did he live? What did his parents do for a living? Did he like school? Who were his favorite teachers? “Sunny doesn’t like school,” Brenton revealed after Dante answered this last. “Can’t say I blame her. Most teachers know nothing about kids. They’re burned out, bored, irritated. We wanted to home school her—“ “And I said no ,” Sunny cut in. She was snuggled close to Dante, holding his hand. “Home schooling is anti-social.” “You just like making mischief with your friends,” Dawn said. “It is fun. Right, Dante?” She looked at him with an evil grin. The Jaguar crossed the Milan Canal, which brought back Donati’s story from the previous week. On the spot Dante decided to give the Desdemona family a brief history lesson. Did they know, he asked, that this huge valley full of trees was once flooded with water? Sunny peered out the window. “How deep was the water?” “Deep enough,” Brenton suddenly said, “to anchor good little girls to the bottom and let them drown!” All three Desdemonas laughed. Dante, stunned, could only blink. “Well that leaves me out!” Sunny told them “Beyond all doubt,” Dawn reassured with a mock roll of her eyes. “Beyond all doubt.” A short drive through open country followed. Dante knew the route well. Pretty white farmhouses dotted forlorn crops of swaying wheat, their porch lights aglow in a day given over to that nymph of the golden ram, so they looked like fires upon a distant gray shore. The tourist city of Perkins came next. Empty hotels pined for summer along a parkway which would not awake for some thirty days, at which time those celebrants of the Holy Son’s birth planned to stampede with green givings. They passed restaurants, malls, car lots, cycle shops. At one stoplight Dante saw a book with a broken spine lying dead on the curb. Not far down from there stood a new store. Its theme appeared to be adult fulfillment. Candy colored lights glowed in a window set with deviations meant to tempt and tease. A pair of red lips glistened on a pink sign. “Wow!” Sunny said, in a surprising tone of admiration. “When did this place open up?” “Maybe a month ago,” Brenton told her. “I read about it somewhere.” He glanced for a moment into the back seat. “Why? Does it interest you?” If Sunny’s excitement was out of place, her dad’s grin at the headrest was downright perverse. Curious to get the mother’s reaction, Dante looked at Dawn, only to find that her lip, too, had become a crooked whirl, beneath eyes like those of a feline watching her young make a virgin kill. “It’s cool all right!” Sunny chirruped, spinning in her seat to prolong the moment. When the view became further obstructed, she bounced across Dante’s lap to touch her nose to the glass. “We gotta come back!” Come back? Dante thought. He shook his head. The Desdemonas were teasing him, that was all. Breaking in the new guy with silly jokes. Sunny’s weight shifted in his lap. Soft purple fabric brushed his arm. Her eyes were still at the window, though the shop had fallen far back. Suddenly he noticed Dawn again. She had turned to look straight at him, that strange smile still in place, and because Sunny resembled her so much it was as if, at that moment, the perfect adult version of the tween in his lap had stolen his attention for hostage in a wave of red, a flash of green. And then she turned away to pretend like nothing untoward had happened. CHAPTER TEN: Girl to Gorilla A finger of land pointed north toward clean snows. On it a park had been built of six boroughs.   Or seven if one counted the huge parking lot, which was mostly empty on this late October afternoon. Brenton parked the Jaguar close to the gate and everybody piled out. Shockingly cold wind off the lake swept Dante’s hair. Immediately he took off his jacket and gave it to Sunny, who had begun to shiver. With a grateful smile she slipped her arms through its sleeves. The garment hung far too large on her tiny frame. Her chest had doubled in width; her hands had disappeared. “How do I look?” she asked. Only the truth would suffice. “Beautiful as ever,” Dante said. Arm in arm, they followed her parents to the gate. Brown cornhusks were set up around the turnstiles. Jack-o-lanterns. Paper ghosts. In the ticket booth stood a tall girl wearing zombie make-up. Dante thought she’d done a rather decent job with the shading. Green skin faded to black eyes and bloody, drooling lips. She sold Brenton four orange tickets with cackling witches on them. He gave one to Sunny and one to Dante. “Hooray!” Sunny yelled. One at a time they went through the turnstiles—Sunny first, then Dawn, then Dante, then Brenton. A wide, gray midway met them on the other side, lined with shops colored for the season. Orange and black streamers fluttered from a number of small trees. Green witches grinned in yellow windows. Sunny gave a laugh. She was pointing at a maple grove to the left, where a large mannequin had been hanged by a noose from one of the branches. Its painted face gagged for air, which the teenaged couple posing next to it thought, to judge by their laughter, hilarious. “Smile!” came the photographer’s muffled voice on the wind. Immediately Sunny demanded that she and Dante copy their antics. Kicking through leaves, they entered the grove. The dummy swung and hit Dante on the shoulder. He pushed it back, which caused its head to loll and look straight at him. A spider crawled up his spine. The dummy’s face seemed familiar—crude, but familiar. Hairs from a messy brown wig hung across wide eyes framed with glasses. Fake, crooked teeth protruded from a frightened grimace. Frightened, or was it just being cagey? “Say hello to Timothy Grass,” the photographer—a woman dressed like the bride of Frankenstein—said. “Then smile and hold still.” “Got it!” Sunny said. “Hello Timothy!” She stood on one side of the dummy, Dante the other. A Polaroid Instamatic picture was taken: Click! Bzzzz! The woman took the picture out, shook it, handed it to Dante. “One dollar,” she said. He paid with three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. Then he evaluated the picture. It had come out reasonably well despite the dark day. He and Sunny were smiling, Sunny with her arm around Timothy’s waist. The dummy was not smiling, but its eyes had somehow managed to find the camera. Perhaps the wind shifted its body while Dante wasn’t looking. This could also be the explanation for its teeth, which had fallen partway out of its mouth to resemble a pair of vampire fangs. Seeing them called forth an odd memory from last year: You’re going to get bitten, you’d better believe it. You’re going to get bitten. “Dante?” Sunny said. “Everything okay?” He turned to her. “Yeah,” he replied, though he wasn’t entirely sure. “Yeah. The dummy’s just creepy, that’s all.” The remark earned him an elbow to the ribs. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Sunny told him. “No, sir.” ∞ He initially assumed she meant the park, and indeed, that assumption gained weight the further along the midway they walked. Nor could all of this be credited to the decorations. For one thing, the wind was getting stronger, swirling leaves high over the deserted fun-rides. Dante saw a number of parents herding their children into cafes for hot chocolate and began to wish he could have one, too. For another the day, though it wasn’t yet three o’clock, had turned dark enough to make most side streets off the midway look haunted. Cobblestones painted to look old beckoned from narrow, dreary passages. A few patrons, coaxed by their call, whispered from quaint marble doorsteps. Some smoked cigarettes. Others had transistor radios. From one alley a girl in a ripped skirt—a girl Sunny’s age—looked at Dante, and he could swear her eyes glowed green. Then they were past her. Never minding the wind, the Desdemonas guided him leisurely through a smattering of less lively autumn displays—dry, dormant fountains; closed ice cream parlors—until they came to a puppet show set near the foot of Cedar Point’s giant Ferris wheel. Here two puppets, a girl and a man, were playing a scene with a mock Ferris wheel designed to look like the giant one. The girl, shaking in terror, kept looking at the ride and telling the man she didn’t want to get on. “Don’t be silly!” the man said. “When’s the last time you saw a Ferris wheel fall over?” “I dreamed about it!” came the girl’s squeaky reply. “You shouldn’t put stock in dreams! They mean nothing!” The man’s plastic foot stamped on the stage. “ Nothing I tell you! Now get on!” “No!” “Little lady!” Suddenly the Ferris wheel began to shake. Children in the audience began to point and laugh. “It’s falling!” the girl screamed. And the man: “Run! Run!” Over the course of one second his opinion on Ferris wheels had done a total one-eighty. “Oh no! ” the girl screamed again in a far more sarcastic tone of voice. “No, Rudolph! Ferris wheels don’t fall over! Let’s have a picnic on the grass!” “Are you crazy, girl! Run! ” Everyone in the audience was laughing now. Dante could feel Sunny trying to control herself but losing the battle. The Ferris wheel shook once more, slid over to where Rudolph was standing, and fell flat on top of him— SPLAT! “ YAY!” the children yelled. Instantly appreciative of this, the girl puppet did a number of curtseys, pausing only to wave and say Thank you! Thank you! You’re all beautiful! “Encore!” Sunny shouted. “Throw him off the Millennium Force!” Rudolph heard. He crawled from under the Ferris wheel and shook his fist at Sunny. Ever the deviant juvenile, Sunny stuck out her tongue, to which Rudolph responded by turning around to shake his bottom at her. This put the audience into absolute hysterics. Wild laughter flew about in all directions. Even Sunny thought it hilarious. Tears flowing, she grabbed Dante’s shoulder for support. He laughed right along with her. Brenton and Dawn did too. Everyone was laughing like never before until Rudolph suddenly stopped shaking his butt and fell down for the second time. Dante noticed it first. Rudolph wasn’t moving anymore. He looked, indeed, as dead as the wood that formed his essence. Gradually the laughter died down. Bemused adults blinked at the stage; children went back to their lollipops. Meanwhile Rudolph continued to be dead. Assuming the show had ended, people began to wander away. Then the girl puppet also fell over, and from behind the booth a lady began to scream: “Gary! Gary! Oh my god! ” “What’s going on?” somebody next to Dante asked. He opened his mouth to say he didn’t know, at which moment Brenton cut in: “I think the puppeteer had a seizure. From my angle I could see him fall down and start…you know, shaking.” “Jesus,” the somebody said. “A seizure?” Dante said. “Seriously?” Brenton shrugged as if he couldn’t be less interested. “That’s what it looked like. How about we walk over to the freak shows? Those are always a hoot.” Dante looked again towards the puppet booth. Two paramedics were now on the scene. One of them had kneeled to talk to the puppeteer. The puppeteer’s eyes were open, and he was nodding at the paramedic. “He’ll be all right,” Sunny’s voice said at his ear. “If it’s really epilepsy then he shouldn’t have gotten everyone laughing so hard. Harsh noise can trigger seizures almost as easily as blinking lights.” “But it was funny,” Dante told her. Sunny’s head tilted. “Was it really?” “Well…” “Hey you two!” Dawn called, and Dante was surprised to see that both parents were already fifty feet down the next lane, which was sprinkled with wood chips. “We’re going to Frontier Town! Coming with us?” “Of course we are!” Sunny cheered. She grabbed Dante’s wrist. “Come on, you. Show’s over here.” About that he couldn’t argue. The area in front of the puppet booth looked forlorn. The audience had dispersed, leaving its used candy wrappers to dance in the wind. Not wishing to be counted among the abandoned, Dante let Sunny guide him away. ∞ Frontier Town greeted them with the smell of wood smoke. Its source lay somewhere along a dirt road made up to resemble an old west mining town. There was a saloon, a general store, a blacksmith, a tailor. Of all the boroughs at Cedar Point, this remained Dante’s favorite. Character-wise it couldn’t be beaten. From the saloon’s crooked wooden porch, littered with broken peanut shells, to the steamer from parts north that whistled in a pinewood depot, the terrain might have been authentic enough for an Eastwood picture. As if he could read Dante’s thoughts, Brenton asked if anyone was hungry, and if so, maybe they could grab a bite in the saloon. They went inside to find a tavern filled with chatter and piano music. More peanut shells littered the floor. Brenton ushered everyone into a candlelit booth with ripped leather seats. Then he snapped his fingers at a pretty young waitress, who froze as if bitten by an insect. “Four ham and cheese sandwiches,” Brenton said when she got to the table. “And to drink?” the waitress asked. Brenton tipped her a wink. “Pitcher of beer for me and the missus. Two Cokes for the kids. Oh and bring glasses for those Cokes, please.” The waitress wrote it all down, clicked her pen, and disappeared. “That,” Brenton said to Dante, “is how you do help.” He was no longer smiling. His eyes, in fact, had turned deadly serious. “Keep it friendly but don’t let them forget you mean business.” “Yes, sir,” Dante replied. “Too much patience,” the other continued, leaning forward, “and you stumble, and you fall to their level. You become content with failure, because hey”—now he leaned back, spreading his arms, smiling—“everyone likes you! What else do you need? Is that what you want, Dante? To be an amicable failure?” “No, sir.” The arms dropped. “Good lad. Good lad. Anyway, my Sunny’s sweet enough for the both of you. Isn’t that right, dearest?” “Right as rain, Dad,” she said. From under the table Dante felt her hand take his knee. She kept it there until the drinks arrived, at which point Brenton poured out, ordering him and Sunny to open the Cokes but leave their glasses alone. “It’s dark in here,” he said, lifting the pitcher of beer. “No one’s going to notice. Or care.” And with that, he filled Dante’s glass to the brim with foaming gold brew. Sunny’s came next, then Dawn’s, then his own. “ See them tumblin’ down!” the piano player began to sing. “Pledgin’ their love to the ground! Lonely but free I’ll be found! Driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds!” “Dante?” He looked at Brenton, who was looking back steadily. “Drink up.” “But the waitress,” he stammered. “What about her?” “She’ll be coming back any minute with the sandwiches!” “Then empty your glass quickly, before she arrives.” “Go ahead, Dante,” Sunny said. In the candlelight her smile seemed to glow like a fire bolt struck through the heart of a lamb. “What’s wrong? Never had beer before?” “ I’ll know when night has gone! That a new world’s born at dawn! I’ll keep rollin’ along! Deep in my heart is a song!” “Boo!” one of the patrons shouted. “Shut up!” yelled somebody else. “ Driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds!” Dante looked at his mug of beer. It was full to the brim—nothing like the little sips his dad would give him at parties from time to time. “Time to earn your man card, Dante,” Brenton’s shadowy figure spoke. He raised his mug, Dawn hers, Sunny hers. “To young love,” the father said in a thoughtful voice. “May it be quick and keen as death’s arrow spearing. May it burn hot as the inhumed sea. And may the two of you, Dante and Sunny, be ever toward it endearing.” Dante picked up his mug. He clinked it with the others (Sunny’s tiny arm trembled slightly with the weight of hers, making him wonder if she could really quaff such a large helping). Then he began to drink. The first gulp refreshed him. The second was bitter. The third burned his throat. Sunny couldn’t finish. Her mug hit the table half empty. Brenton’s mug—completely drained—followed. Then came Dawn’s, also empty. “Come on, kiddo!” Brenton cheered. “You can do it!” Dante took two more swallows. His head had begun to swim. The entire saloon now felt as if it were floating gently on Lake Erie. Over the glass he could see Brenton’s eyes twinkling like stars upon full masts. He took two more swallows. Sunny put her hand on his shoulder. “Do it, baby,” she whispered. Determined not to disappoint her, he tilted the mug back farther. Farther. The beer trickled away. Almost gone. Almost gone. Ah! Now there was only foam! Victorious, Dante drank that too, then slammed the mug down hard enough to make the candle jump. “ Whoo-hoo!” Sunny screamed, throwing her arms round his neck. “Well done!” Brenton pronounced. “I’m very pleased!” For a moment Dante felt he might pass out on the floor. Sunny rescued him with a kiss on the cheek, which boosted his vigor. Dawn began to clap. “You’ve got a man all right,” she told her daughter. In his drunken state Dante tried hard to deduce the amount of sarcasm in her tone. Yet she seemed quite sincere, and her face, like the others’, was radiant with pride. “It’s about time!” ∞ It was six o’clock by the time they reached the freak tents. Night had fallen, to which end the park became fully alive. Ghouls and ghosts capered in the streets. Some of them gave candy to the kids. Others tried to scare the teens and tweens. Sunny fell victim to this last, all but jumping into Dante’s arms when a green zombie lunged from behind the general store. Still feeling heroic, he pulled her close, shielding her body from the undead creature’s terrible maw. “ ARRRGHHH!” the zombie snarled. “Arrgh yourself!” Dante told it. “ Would you like me to eat your braiiinnns?” “No, thank you. I still use them from time to time.” Cowering behind his shoulder, Sunny had gone from screaming to laughing. “Atta boy, Dante!” she said. “You ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” The tents were not typically an attraction for Cedar Point—or at least, Dante couldn’t remember seeing them before. About ten stood at the edge of Frontier Town, each with a crier to tempt passers-by through their dark doors. “See the Amazing Bertha!” one yelled. “Fattest woman in the history of humankind! Seven-hundred pounds of pure, sickening blubber! You’ll be shocked! Appalled! Disgusted!” How politically correct, Dante thought dryly, his eyes on a picture of what looked to be a whale in a flower print dress. “Ladies and gentlemen!” came the scream of another from across the street. “Ladies and gentlemen, inside this tent is an atrocity so stunning, so terrifying, you won’t believe your own eyes! Come and behold… the two-headed man! ” The crier stepped aside to reveal a cartoon drawing of a two-headed man. One of the heads wore an evil, twisted sneer, the other looked stupid enough to poop its own pants. Brenton and Dawn paid it zero attention. They did, however, pause in front of another tent, where a giant picture of a snarling gorilla towered over the midway. “Halo!” the crier sang, smelling fresh blood. He wore a checkered suit complete with cane and tweed top hat. To Dante, he looked perfectly ridiculous. “So you want to see the gorilla? Of course you do!” “Of course we do,” Brenton said, nudging at Dawn’s rib. “Ah!” the crier spieled on. “But the gorilla can only manifest itself through the body of a beautiful young girl! A young girl…like this one!” His white-gloved hand pointed directly at Sunny, who blinked but could not form a reply. “You mean Sunny?” Brenton asked. “Is that her name? Lovely! Perhaps she would be willing to take the stage! And then undergo a truly fascinating transformation!” It was Dawn who spoke next. “You want to turn my daughter into a gorilla?” she said. “Oh it won’t be me , madam! Instead, why don’t we make it her very own father!” Brenton’s eyes grew wide. “Now see here, young man,” he blustered, “you can’t possibly think that I would ever—“ “Do such a thing!” the crier finished. As he spoke he raised his voice even higher, so that passers-by on the street could take notice. “Oh no! How could I ask a father to turn his sweet baby girl into a full grown gorilla? A beast! A monster! Well the answer is simple!” “Tell me,” Brenton demanded. A crowd of people were now gathering around the entrance to the tent. Sunny’s face wore an expression of one highly amused. She looked from one patron to the next, before finally settling her eyes on Dante. “Girl to gorilla,” she said. “I doubt it,” he told her. “Wait and see.” “Because I see by your face that you think it’s impossible!” came the crier’s answer. The crowd was getting larger by the moment. Elbows bumped Dante’s ribs. Voices, most of them male, began to egg Brenton on. “Well, sir,” the crier said overtop them, “if it’s so impossible, then why not give it a try!” “Yeah!” somebody shouted. “Go on! Change her into a monkey!” “ Gorilla!” corrected the man in the checkered suit. “Whatever! Come on! I’ve got five bucks says it can’t be done!” “And I’ve got ten,” Brenton said, grinning at the crier. Then, to Sunny: “What do you think? Wanna try?” “Sure!” the girl replied. Her answer didn’t surprise Dante. She would of course love the attention. Devour it like Hercules’ Nemean lion would a finger. To a round of delighted applause, Brenton and Sunny walked into the tent. Dante and Dawn went next (as friends of the act, they didn’t need a ticket). Dim light welcomed them. Weak bulbs flickered on massive support posts. The floor consisted of odiferous yellow grass sprinkled with old popcorn. In front was a stage made of plywood. It smelled of spruce and glue. Sunny followed her father behind it, looking back at Dante once to blow him a kiss. “Front row seats,” Dawn said to him. “That’s nice.” There were no seats, of course. Everyone wishing to see the show had to stand. This fact in no way deterred the curious. Within minutes a hundred people occupied the tent. Once more Dante felt elbows getting too close. Heard puffs of hot breath. They talked in low tones—almost whispers—in regard to some undocumented respect for darkened rooms. Dante did his best not to pay attention. It wasn’t hard. A large purple curtain, the color of Sunny’s dress, hung over the stage. Along its hem he could see movement. Shuffling feet. People were working on the other side. Trying to set up whatever it was that needed setting up. “What’s taking so long?” somebody wanted to know, though it hadn’t really been all that long. Five minutes at most. Yet the arrow of the complaint must have struck its target, for at that moment a jittery, creepy music piece began to play. High piano notes in staccato accompanied by guttural bass lines. Dawn informed him it was called The Witch by Tchaikovsky. When it was over the crier from outside took the stage. Smiling in the gloom, he raised his hands for silence. Everyone, including the complainer, obliged. “Thank you!” the crier spoke. “Thank you all! The show—the most horrific show ever in the history of midway spectacles—is about to begin. Our subject is a sweet young girl, twelve years old, who will soon change, before your very eyes, into a savage gorilla!” “ YAYYY!” the crowd cheered. “ SAVAGE!” repeated the crier, to even more cheers. “Huge and bloodthirsty! Utterly insane! A monster to give you nightmares!” “Really,” Dante heard Dawn say. “My Sunny isn’t a monster!” “ Are you ready?” the crier’s voice shrieked. And the crowd: “YES!” “ Are you READY?” “ YES!” Dante covered his ears. He didn’t know how good the crier’s act would be, nor did it seem to matter either way. To judge by the noise his audience was already well pleased. “One more thing!” the crier sang out, raising his index finger. “One more thing! It should be noted here that I have instructed the girl’s very own father in how to change her!” “ NO! NO WAY!” “Yes way! And to prove it, ladies and gentlemen let me introduce you to the kindly, the elegant, the distinguished, Mister Brenton Desdemona!” Everyone applauded like lunatics as the curtain flew back to reveal Brenton, standing stage left, and Sunny, tiny and dainty, locked inside of an iron cage. “Hello, Mr. Desdemona, hello!” said the crier. “You have a very lovely daughter!” He then held his microphone to Brenton’s lips. “Thank you,” Brenton replied. “It’s a pleasure to be here.” “Oh!” came the crier’s mock expression of surprise. “We have a gentleman in our midst! And tell me, Mr. Desdemona, do you feel you can incant the proper words to transform this beautiful girl into the hideous beast we saw on the poster outside?” Brenton smiled. To Dante he looked perfectly at ease with his position. “Absolutely,” he told everyone. “It will be…very easy.” At this the audience began to cheer again. A few of the men even threw their hats. It had no effect on Brenton. His face remained sober, his smile serene. He looked down at Dante and winked. “Come on!” the crier said, all disbelief. “Easy?” “My daughter,” Brenton said, never once taking his eyes from Dante, “always does whatever I tell her to do.” “ YAYYY!” erupted the crowd. “You heard him, everyone!” yelled the crier. “Anything he wants done, gets done! So without further ado, let’s have our show!” The tent continued in the way of old Bedlam for another minute, until finally Brenton raised his arms. Instantly his canvassed audience fell silent. Thanking them for their subordination, he turned to Sunny, who had waited through everything with a smile more crooked than the Cuyahoga, and eyes shining green in the peaked light. The crier handed him his mic. Brenton nodded, raised it to his lips. “How are you feeling?” he asked Sunny. “Pretty good!” she spoke into the mic. “A bit cramped but good.” Titters from the crowd. A few coughs. “Cramped?” Brenton said. “Well once you’re a gorilla it’s going to be a lot more cramped.” “I know!” “Think you can handle this?” “Oh yes! No problem!” “Then let’s begin. Take a deep, deep breath.” “ AHHHHHH!” Sunny gasped, filling her small, thin chest to its utmost capacity. “Good girl! Now let it out slow.” “ Phewwwww!” “Marvelous. Now then. Close your eyes. Clear your mind. Relax your muscles.” Dante watched her take another deep breath, wait five seconds, and release it. He tried to see behind her, to the back of the cage, where doubtless a double in a gorilla suit was waiting for his cue to step forth. But no. The show’s collaborators had everything locked down water tight. Dante could find nothing in the gloom save for the eagerness of his own imagination to conjure terror. This, of course, was precisely what the act intended. Its religion was a sham, its promises hollow. Its wrapping paper, however, could not have been more enticing were it moist with the waters of Tartarus which ebbed and flowed in that place far underfoot. Thus Dante watched, transfixed. He could not move or even think to move. The act had him in its clutches. “Gorilla,” Brenton said softly into the cage. “Think of a gorilla. Large. Muscular. Bestial.” Submerged in darkness, Sunny stood, eyes closed, breathing slowly. Her hair was frozen fire. Her face glowed pale, the face of a girl long dead, painted on a locket with loving hand, forgotten, discovered, forgotten again. A girl in the attic, defying time. “Gorilla, gorilla, gorilla,” Brenton said. And then it began to happen. Sunny’s breath caught. Several members of the audience gasped with her as, from what Dante could tell, patches of black hair grew on her neck, her hands. Squinting, he once more cast his doubt forth in attempt to penetrate the ruse, to see beneath its mask. Once more it resisted. Its game was elaborate. Hair now sprouted over Sunny’s arms and face. Dante watched, horrified, as her lips oozed forward, became large, misshapen. Primal. “Good girl,” Brenton told the now half-beast. “Keep your mind on the gorilla. Nothing else matters. There is only gorilla.” Sounds of ripping fabric came from the cage. Sunny’s dress was tearing. The body within had grown far too large for its seams. “Gorilla!” More black hair, bursting from skin turned dry as barren rock left to the flames of Betelgeuse for many millions of years. “ Gorilla!” Sunny grunted. Growled. Her eyes, feverish yellow, regarded the audience with hungry contempt. She was six feet tall. Maybe more. “Gorilla.” Dante could even smell her. It was the smell of animals in cages, to which she had exactly become. Sneering at the audience, she stepped forward. Loped forward. Primeval. A creature from another time. Rudimentary. Crude. “Sunny?” Brenton called. “Sunny, are you in there?” Her bulging, neanderthalic head turned, looked at him. Dante could hardly breathe. He felt all alone in the tent. The crowd had ceased to exist. “It’s me. Your father.” A slow growl rolled from the beast’s wiry neck. Its lips pulled back, revealing huge, blocky teeth. “Do you recognize me?” Brenton went on. “Sunny?” She didn’t. Or if she did, she was too agitated by her confinement to care. Snarling, she seized hold the bars of the cage. “Sunny, no!” People in the front row began to move back. Dante and Dawn followed. Worried voices rose toward the canvas roof, growing hotter, more intense, with every moment. “Sunny!” What’s going on what’s she doing? I don’t know! Move back! Move back! Sunny’s huge arms shook the bars, which clanged and rattled but did not give. Some of the women started to scream, clawing their way toward the exit. “Please!” Brenton told them. “It’s okay! She can’t get out!” The beast’s arms bulged as it shook the bars harder. Harder. Harder. The entire cage began to slide sideways. Dante saw it threaten to tip, then he saw something else. A padlock in front of the cage had broken. It lay on the floor, murdered, its hasp a broken neck. “Dante!” Dawn yelled. “I think we should leave!” “Oh my word!” came Brenton’s voice, horrified. “The lock! It’s broken! Be quiet everybody! I need to change her back!” His command produced the exact opposite effect. Rather than shut up, everyone shrieked and bolted. Bags of popcorn hit the grass. Lollipops. Ice cream cones. Dante turned to run and almost tripped over a little red-haired girl no more than five years old. Tears streamed down her bawling face. Her hands shook with terror. “ Daddddyyyyyy!” “Whoa!” Dante said. He knelt and put his arms around her. “It’s okay, little girl, we’ll find your daddy.” “ I’m scared!” “Nothing’s gonna hurt you, I promise.” A tremendous crash exploded from the stage. Dante turned to see the gorilla had gotten free. It kicked the door of the cage, which flew and nearly struck Brenton a killing blow, missing his head by scant feet. Dante scooped the girl up. His idea now was to run fast as he could to the exit. Most of the audience had already done that very thing. The way was clear, or relatively clear. He could see Dawn, calling for him to move, move! Behind her was a short, skinny man who had lost his hat. He bent, picked it up— And then someone—something—picked Dante up. He let go the girl an instant before he was spun around to face what it was. The gorilla had him! Bulbous yellow eyes, buried in a black mop of tangled hair, burned inches from his own. Hot breath puffed onto his face. Its mouth scowled, drew in air, and bellowed a furious roar load enough to shake the lights. “ Daddy!” the girl behind him continued to scream. “Dadddddyyyyy!” “ DADDY!” the monster barked at Dante, mocking her. “DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!” Then it dug its claws deeper into his arms. “I’M GONNA EAT YOU LITTLE BOY! EAT YOU, EAT YOU, EAT YOU!” “ Dadddyyyyy!” Dante could do nothing but stare in horror at the beast’s terrible face. Its maw opened to reveal teeth strong enough to break bones. And so they would. “ TIME TO BITE OFF YOUR HEAD!” “ Dadddyyyy!” Roaring again, the beast brought Dante’s face to its jaws. “Daddy? Daddy. Helloooo, Daddy.” “Hello, sweetheart,” Brenton said pleasantly from over the beast’s shoulder. “Everything okay?” “Oh, sure,” the little girl behind Dante replied. “But I think the show’s over.” The beast spoke next. “Yeah,” it agreed, putting its victim down. “We’re good.” As soon as his feet touched the ground Dante whirled to find that the little red-haired girl had aged approximately seven years. Through some trickery he had yet to understand, or even question, Sunny Desdemona now occupied the place of the bawling child. Her glimmering face appeared quite calm. She smiled at Dante. “How?” he plumed, for want of anything better. “I…I don’t get it.” “You got it all right,” Sunny told him. “Got it good!” People were now filing back into the tent. Some of them pointed. Others laughed. Dante turned around to see that the beast had removed its mask. Beneath shined the grinning face of the crier. “My apologies,” he said. Furious, Dante was about to tell him where he could stick his apology, when it suddenly became clear that the crier was asking forgiveness from somebody else. Namely, the man behind him. Brenton. “We’re not lost yet,” Sunny’s father assured. Still looking at Dante, the crier asked: “No?” “Not at all. You can go get dressed. We’re through here.” Without another word the costumed man turned and disappeared behind the stage, leaving Dante as he’d entered this place, with Brenton, Dawn, and Sunny. “Why is he mad?” Dante wanted to know. “I’m the one who should be mad. I am mad.” Brenton raised a brow. “Are you?” In truth Dante wasn’t sure, which probably made the answer no. Flustered, yes. Confused, absolutely. “Just tell me why he apologized,” he demanded. “Did the act fail? It sure felt scary enough to me.” “No,” Brenton replied, icy calm in the unvigorous light. “Not scary enough. You hesitated. Revealed empathy.” “What’s wrong with doing that?” “Ah.” Sunny put her arm around his waist. “It’s okay, Dante,” her soft voice purred. “You’re coming along fine.” But rather than provide comfort, the remark puzzled him even further. “Coming along to what , Sunny?” A new voice broke in before she could answer. It belonged to Dawn. “Didn’t you know,” she asked, “that the little girl was actually our Sunny? Isn’t that why you stopped to save her?” “I didn’t—“ Dante began. He got no further. “Think before you answer!” the mother warned, her green eyes shimmering. Then she seemed to relax a little. Her shoulders dropped. A warm smile opened on her face. “Think. Carefully. You knew the girl was Sunny. Right?” “Well,” he tried again, following the woman’s instructions whilst hardly knowing why. “Maybe. Maybe I did. She had red hair like Sunny’s.” “Yeah!” Sunny said. “She did! And even if you thought she was somebody else, the hair made you think of me! So you became…” Her eyes leaped to Brenton. “What’s the word, Daddy?” “ Chivalrous is what I believe you’re searching for,” the man replied. “That’s the one!” Brenton nodded. “Of course it is. So perhaps tonight was not a total failure after all.” He smiled at Dante. “My wife and daughter often remind me that even in setback there are…possibilities to seize upon, and hold dear.” “And one day,” Dawn said, “you will remember that without us.” Sunny laughed. “No,” she insisted, “not Daddy. Never.” Brenton could only shake his head. His hand reached out and came to rest on Dante’s shoulder. “Women. Delectable, aren’t they?” Dante did his best to agree that they were. His mind spun in a whirlwind of questions quite likely too dangerous to ask, at least for the time being. Better to watch, and wait. Perhaps later he could persuade Sunny to share more information. Had the entire act been planned, orchestrated, as some sort of suitor’s test? If so, why? And what exactly had he done wrong by protecting the girl—the girl who had somehow transformed into Sunny Desdemona while a jester in a costume distracted him with grunts and growls? “Good show,” an audience member told Brenton. “Worth every penny.” “Thank you,” the other said. More people soon appeared to compliment the family performance, so it took nearly ten minutes to reach the midway, which was still busy with customers and criers. Half an hour later the Desdemonas, along with Dante, strolled through this section of the park again, this time on their way home. All of the freak tents were still going strong. All except the Girl To Gorilla tent, which had closed. The flap was sealed, the poster removed. “One show only,” Dante muttered as they passed. He hadn’t intended the remark to be heard, but Brenton caught it. “Oh no,” he said. “There’s more to come. Much more.” “Wait and see,” Sunny told him, for the second time tonight near this very spot. And then a third: “Just you wait and see.” CHAPTER ELEVEN: Dinner and a Phone Call He did not see Donati the following day. Breakfast time words proved unmovable clay.   “I got an interesting phone call last night,” Dante’s father said over toast and coffee, “from Janet Jones. Seems she recently lost ten dollars from her purse.” Dante swallowed a mouthful of Corn Flakes. Both parents were looking across the table. As always their appearances nearly matched, like mannequins in a window. But for a low simmer of accusation, man and woman were posed expressionless. Dark hair framed carved faces, one of glory on the battlefield, the other of freedom. “Sorry,” he told them. “Sorry for what, exactly?” asked his father. “I’m sorry that…you know, she lost the money.” He finished eating in silence, not looking up from his bowl. Minutes later he was heading out the door to visit Donati. His father stopped him. “Dante! I need you to grab a rake and take care of the lawn.” He froze, his hand on the latch. “Right now?” “Yes, right now.” “But I’m on my way to Mr. Donati’s. He needs help with reading his newspaper.” This was a lie—one of them anyway—he’d manufactured to help justify his visitations with the old man. Never once had his father questioned it. Until today. “You raked his lawn last week? Or was it the week before?” “Dad—“ “Now it’s time to rake yours. Get to it.” After the lawn his mother asked him to wash the breakfast dishes, which she had inexplicably left to harden in the sink. After this, she sent him on an errand to buy postage stamps. Postage stamps on a Sunday. “Who are you writing to?” Dante asked. To whom are you writing? Mr. Wolfe corrected in his mind. “Nobody,” his mom shrugged. “Then why—“ “Just go. ” Dante went. Once home, it was time to tidy the basement. He cleaned the card table, dusted the stereo. A small trash bucket in the corner needed changing. He did that, too. Then a creak on the steps announced the presence of his father. The older man looked at Dante stonily as he had at breakfast. A pipe simmered in his mouth. “Why don’t you tell me,” he began, without coming to the bottom step, “where you put that ten dollars? Then this nonsense can come to an end.” “I don’t have ten dollars,” replied Dante. This was the truth; thus, it came out as such. His father didn’t care. “Young man,” he said, “I grow weary.” “I don’t see why you think I would steal ten dollars. I have everything I need here.” “Indeed,” the father puffed, now beginning to look a bit like Sherlock Holmes. “Right now only you know the answer to that question, Dante. I’ll strike you a bargain.” “A bargain.” “Yes. Call Janet. Apologize to her. She won’t accept it, but no matter. Your mother and I will be satisfied. Do this and we let you continue the regular life of Dante Torn. If not, why…” A puff of smoke floated in front of his face. “Who knows? Perhaps you and Mr. Donati will need to become postage friends instead of breakfast buddies. Maybe that’s why your mother sent you out for those stamps. How does that sound?” A sudden fury swelled in Dante’s chest. The smug, satisfied music of his father’s words made him want to smash something to pieces. The stereo, maybe. Or perhaps the card table could do with flipping over. A chair against the wall. He looked at the garbage bucket. It was just the right size for kicking across the room. “I await your answer, dear boy.” “Can’t I think about it for awhile?” Dante finally managed. His father struck a match, relit the pipe. “And why,” he asked, an eyebrow raised over the flame, “must you do that?” “Because I’m quite innocent and don’t wish to proclaim otherwise to a person such as Janet,” Dante said, mimicking—savagely—the other’s style and tone. “You’re not helping our situation,” said his father. “I didn’t take her money.” And the father: “You’re a lying fool. It shames me.” He didn’t wait for Dante’s reply. Instead he turned on his heel (the step creaked again) and disappeared through the top door. How can he know? Dante wondered. How can he know I took the money? He didn’t have a shred of proof. Not one tiny little scrap. And yet… Joe and Janet are his friends. They’ve known each other since way before you were born. “Whatever,” Dante said to the empty basement. His eye went to the card table. The grown-ups were calling his bluff, betting more chips. Fine. But Dante would not show his eights and aces until he absolutely had to. From the top of the stairs his mother told him to get ready for church. An hour later he was in the pews, wondering if today’s sermon would involve some mysticism about the dishonor of thievery or obeisance to thy father and they mother. Nothing of the sort arrived. The priest instead settled into the second epistle of Paul, intoning the benefits of belief in what one could not see. “ We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed,” he read. “We are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed…” Once back at number 54 Dante was sent straight to his room for the rest of the day. Here there was little to do except nap and brood at the window. The latter got boring very quickly. His room overlooked State Street. Beat up cars, broken sidewalks. Kids playing catch with a Nerf football. The former brought with it a dream. Okay, Sunny said, peering at him over a card table. What do you ya got? Dante looked at his hand. An ace of diamonds, a two of hearts, a four of spades. One king, one queen. A jack faded yellow, as if time had taken special issue with its glossy features. I don’t think I can use any of these, Dante told her. Sunny’s hair caught fire. She howled and sprang over the table. Barking like a demon from deep within the earth, she ripped at Dante’s throat. In utter terror Dante groped for a pitcher of water, tipped it over… Then he went downstairs to dinner, where no one spoke to him, even when he asked his mother to pass the mushroom soup, please. Plates clanged. Utensils dinged. Yet words, like the steps of those two poets within the city of Dis , proceeded with great hesitancy. The ground was uncertain. Treacherous. Deciding it best to leave things that way for a little while longer, Dante finished eating, went upstairs, and washed for bed. The card table dream still flickered in his mind. He guessed it wouldn’t for much longer though. The wax of its wick had nearly been spent. Its light was but an ember on the dish. And why not? He had never put much stock in dreams. He put his toothbrush away and went back to his room. Dark had fallen. Pegasus’ great square glowed high in the south of a sky with no moon. Dante lay down. A book of poetry peeked from under the covers. He read for awhile. Then he fell asleep. Hours later he awoke to the howling of heavy wind. His bedside clock showed 12:42. Curious, Dante rose and went to the window, to find that State Street had become a chaos of swirling leaves caught up in a rainy storm. The breath of Aeolus cradled their boughs. Rain drops spattered the window, rushed away, then spattered again. He watched the storm for a number of minutes before deciding to go downstairs for a midnight snack. The hall outside of his room was quiet. Not wishing to wake his parents, Dante tip-toed down the stairs. This was rather unnecessary, as number 54’s mighty curved case did not creak, but habit for lairs of serenity had hold of him. He came to the ground floor. Darkness. A ticking clock. Furniture snoozing in deep shadows. The window pane shook as a particularly hard gust of wind struck it. Dante walked to the kitchen, where a purring refrigerator greeted his arrival. He went to the door and was just about to open it when the living room phone rang. Say what? he thought, his hand frozen on the handle. The phone rang again. Dante looked at the stove clock. Straight up 1AM. Now who in the world…? For a third time the phone’s bell brrrrring! ’d from the living room. Dante walked to it with a head full of possibilities, none of them happy. Happy calls didn’t come in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night they rang only for emergencies. “Hello?” he said, switching on a lamp. “It’s one o’clock in the morning,” a young female voice chanted. The air of amusement in its tone gave it away on the spot. “Sunny?” Dante said. “I speak to you with words imploring, darkness rife with imps ashoring…” “Sunny?” She laughed. “Yes, dear, it’s me. I can’t remember the entire poem, sorry.” “You’re up awfully late on a school night.” “Those are my sentiments, Mister. But then I knew you’d be up.” Another short, brutal laugh puffed through the line. “Skulker.” Smiling now, Dante said: “So what’s on your mind?” “Pizza. I’ve got a slice. Wish you were here to share it.” “Me too. But I think I’ll need to make do with Corn Flakes this time around.” “Got Milk?” “Of course,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Now quit watching lame commercials on TV.” When Sunny next spoke her tone was more serious. “There’s a storm outside, Dante,” she said. “I hear it. It sounds like ghosts in the trees.” “Maybe that’s true. What do you say we join them for awhile?” “Together? How?” The line began to hiss with static, faint at first, but intensifying as Sunny said: “Oh, that’s easy. Just keep listening to me, Dante. Dante?” Her request was rapidly becoming difficult to follow. He could barely hear her at all. “ Dante. Dante.” Sunny’s voice, fading, fading. The hiss became a rush of turbulent water. Frothing madness over jagged rocks. Tilting the receiver away from his ear, Dante called Sunny’s name. Whether she answered he never found out, for at that instant the rushing stopped cold, as if frozen on that antediluvian gale which killed the great mammoths even as they dined. Complete silence followed. Then, surprising him even further, another voice he knew spoke on the line. It belonged to Joseph Jones, and it was not happy. “Boy!” he shouted, making Dante jump. “Boy, you’d better start talking to me right now!” “Who is this?” Dante snapped, irritated to have Sunny snatched from the cup of his ear by this bellowing brute. But it was evident immediately that Joseph was in no mood for demands. “Get your father on the phone right now, boy! This is the last time I’m telling you!” And Dante, growling: “Well that’s a relief. Let me go wake him up.” “ I don’t like your attitude—“ He dropped the receiver and went upstairs. Neither of his parents were heavy sleepers; getting them out of bed was no great chore. In five minutes his father, rumpled and ruffled, was seated on the couch, listening to Joseph. Dante waited while his mom brewed coffee. Of course the news would be grim. “Oh no,” his father kept saying, the receiver pressed to his ear. “Oh no. Oh no.” His mother put a mug of coffee on the table. Her face looked anxious. “Joe, I’m sorry,” the father said. “My God. Is there anything you need?” “Honey?” his mother asked, brimming with dread. “What is it?” She had taken a seat next to her husband. Dante was in the chair opposite. The elder Torn spent a few more minutes talking with his friend, until at last he said goodbye and hung up the phone. He looked at his wife. Then at Dante. “ Honey,” the mom asked again. Practically begged. “Tell me what’s going on!” “Yeah,” Dante listened to his father say. “Yeah. Okay.” But he wouldn’t speak. Whatever had happened needed time for its messenger to arrange. To formulate into words. Indeed, when at last he did open his mouth, he could only manage one. “Janet,” he said. Dante’s mother gasped. “Oh God!” she said. “Is she okay?” “No. She had a stroke. She’s…she’s dead.” For a long time his father couldn’t say anything else. Number 54’s front windows shook with more heavy gales. Dead leaves swirled on the porch. Dante heard these things clearly, along with something else. A girl’s voice, echoing in his own mind. Pizza. I’ve got a slice… “Dead,” his father said. He sounded drugged. “I can’t believe it. I just talked to her yesterday.” Dante looked at his mother. She had begun to cry in the early morning gloom. Wish you were here to share it. No tip, his father’s voice echoed, now bring us down the pizza. And Janet, half-drunk: Do as your father says, little boy… Call Janet. Apologize to her. But it seemed the need for apologies to Janet had come to an end. Nor would she continue to accuse Mr. Torn’s thirteen year-old son of theft. “How old was she?” Dante asked rather stupidly. And his father answered. By dawn he’d forgotten it, though. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d obviously been old enough. Dante sat at the breakfast table eating Corn Flakes all by himself. Both parents had risen early and gone to Joseph’s. Consolation and commiseration. Thinking about what words of comfort they might be using, he poured more cereal into his bowl. “Goodbye, Janet!” he called to the empty kitchen. “Oh and…thank you for the tip!” CHAPTER TWELVE: Self-loathing Two holidays passed beneath unclear skies, followed by remembrance of a boy with weak eyes.   Dante’s interim report card for the first week of December read as follows:   Math – U (unsatisfactory) Science – S (satisfactory) Gym – S (satisfactory) American History – U (unsatisfactory) English – S (satisfactory)   Too embarrassed to show Sunny yet curious about her own grades, he stood in the school lunch line wondering how to bring the subject up without tripping on any wires that would lead to exposure of his meager academic attainments. She was currently on his arm, chattering away about—of all things—a trip her parents had planned to a nearby town called Howling. “It’s only my dad who has a business trip there,” she said, “but they both want to go.” She stood on tiptoe to speak more quietly into his ear. “And I’m trying to convince them to let me stay home alone.” Dante watched a mischievous grin spread over her features. “Totally alone?” he asked. “Of course,” came the girl’s far from sincere reply. “I’ll be thirteen in March. That’s plenty old enough. Don’t you agree?” “It’s old enough but I would still worry.” “We could talk on the phone.” Sunny’s closest girlfriend Stacey was in line behind them. She was smiling, and her face had gone red as Sunny’s hair. But Dante knew she wouldn’t laugh—wouldn’t even speak—unless Sunny gave her permission. “Well?” Sunny asked. And on her face waited an expression Dante could read like a book: You’d better not be okay with just the phone, Mister. Dante wasn’t. “I’m still not comfortable with your being alone. When is this business trip supposed to happen?” Instead of answering, Sunny smiled and put her head on his shoulder. “You don’t remember,” he continued, sliding his arm around her leather jacket, “or you don’t want to tell me?” Just then a girl with mousy hair and glasses passed by. Dante thought she looked familiar—then it hit him. “Timothy,” he said aloud. Sunny looked at him. “Who?” By now the mousy-haired girl had reached the far end of the cafeteria. Dante watched as she disappeared around a corner and said: “Oh I was just reminded of this goofy kid I met here last year. His name was Timothy. I might have thought of him at Cedar Point, too.” “You mean the Timothy who vanished last Christmas?” “That’s the one.” Dante looked down at Sunny, whose green eyes had wandered to the lunch counter. A smell of lasagna hovered close. Garlic. Hot bread. “Did anyone ever find out where he went?” he ventured casually. Her answer was flummoxing to the extreme. “Skiing I think,” she said. “ Skiing?” “Yeah, you know.” Her arms began to move in a pantomime of one surrendered to powdery cold slopes. “Swish! Swish! Alberto Tomba. Calgary.” “You’re telling me he went on a skiing trip for a whole year?” “No, no, no.” She made as if to grab Dante’s nose and twist it. “His family moved north. Probably to Canada.” “How do you know all this?” “Timothy tried to date me last year. I turned him down flat.” “Why?” Sunny looked up. Like Timothy, her smile had vanished. Disappeared within cold and unforgiving features. “I suppose,” she nearly hissed, “he wasn’t good enough. Not for me anyway.” “And I am?” “All right, kids,” one of the cafeteria ladies said. “What’s it gonna be?” “Two lasagnas and two chocolate milks,” Dante told her. The lady’s round face was expressionless. “Five bucks,” she said. “ What?” She pointed to a sign on the wall. SCHOOL LUNCHES HAVE UNDERGONE A RATE HIKE DUE TO INCREASED LABOR COST OF OUR SUPPLIERS. MERRY CHRISTMAS! “Wow,” Dante said, reaching for his wallet. “Tough ole world, little guy,” the lady said. “I guess so.” ∞ As usual he was the only male among Sunny’s lunchtime entourage. They were king and queen of the court. Dante waited for his queen to sit, then placed himself beside her. From here the table fell into a clean, shallow pool of trivial banter. Silverware clanged over talk of teachers and grades, friendships and families. Dante again wondered about Sunny’s grades. Should he ask her straight out? Likely she’d be offended if he didn’t. Wonder about whether he cared enough to know. “How did you do on your report card?” he said gingerly. To his utter relief, she perked up in her seat. “Wanna see?” “Of course.” She pulled the card out of her bag and handed it to him without even bothering to unfold it. Dante opened it himself. Then his jaw dropped. All Os for outstanding. Straight down. “Okay,” he said to her, “I’m gonna bite. How did you do this? I mean you’ve got an O here in gym. I’ve seen you in gym, Sunny dear, and you’re no athlete.” She looked worried. “Are you mad at me?” “No! I’m happy for you.” “Because I could flunk everything if you want.” “Don’t do that.” “See that kid over there?” Sunny asked. Her head was turned towards the lunch counter. Dante tried to draw a bead on who it was she had it mind, but all the chatter and clanging dishes made the cafeteria noisy as the forge of Hephaestus. He tried again, found nothing, and gave up. “Which one?” he asked back. Without turning her head, Sunny replied: “Dorky. Pimply. Glasses.” Based on this information Dante was able to spot him easily enough. At the end of the table sat a skinny kid wearing oversized black glasses. He was dressed in what Dante considered hand-me-down clothing—striped polo, tan slacks, brown loafers. Nobody else sat with him. He ate slowly, keeping his head down. Dante felt pretty sure he didn’t want to be noticed. If wishes were horses, kid, he thought. “I see him,” he said to Sunny. “What about him?” She fetched a deep sigh as if the question were stupid. “His name’s Shaya Blum. Stupid name if I’ve ever heard one. He comes from a poor family. Has no friends. Bad skin. Terrible skin,” she corrected. “His grades are blah. ” “Blah?” Dante asked. “Average, my dear. Very average. He can’t run, throw, or catch. He sneezes in class all the time. His nose is runny. He farts.” “ What?” “I’ve heard it. The teachers pick on him. The bullies chase him after school.” She stopped and smiled at Dante. “Get the picture?” “He’s pathetic.” “Bingo. And you know what we’re gonna do about it?” Dante smiled back. “I shudder to think. But I also see those green eyes shining.” A new voice broke into the chat. Until that point Sunny’s entourage had been talking quietly, keeping one eye on their queen yet mostly relaxed. Now, however, Stacey became inclined to raise her head. “It involves Maris,” she said. The entourage fell silent. Sunny looked at her for a long time without speaking. Her brows were raised. Her lips were pursed. “Do you want to tell him?” she asked calmly. Stacey shook her head. “No. Sorry.” “Go ahead. We’re listening.” “Sunny, it’s okay—“ Sunny’s voice remained polite, but Dante knew (and doubtless Stacey did too) where the real words were coming from. Their source, as always, was really quite green. “I know it’s okay, dear, that’s why I’m telling you to go ahead.” Stacey swallowed. She took a drink of water. Nobody at the table seemed especially impatient for her to speak. They all waited. Sunny was holding Dante’s hand, smiling at the other girl. Whether Stacey liked it or not the stage belonged to her. “Sunny wants to write a fake love letter to Maris,” she began, fumbling her words. “You know. With Shaya’s name on it. You know. And then…you know…like…get the whole school in on it. Like what’s going on…” Sunny’s nails began to scratch at Dante’s skin. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Quite the reverse. She let Stacey go on with a few more you knows and likes before finally drawing the hook to pull her off. “What my dear friend means to say,” she all but oozed with foulest sarcasm, “is that I mean to humiliate Maris beyond the realms of reckless Phaethon.” It was Dante’s turn for a drink. He finished his milk, put it down. Would that something stronger had been in the carton. “You want to get the whole school laughing at Maris because some doofus kid with anxiety issues wants to kiss her under the mistletoe.” “That’s what I have in mind.” “How will you copy his handwriting?” “I’ve already stolen samples off his desk. He got an F on his book report for Moby Dick because he didn’t turn it in. Said he lost it. He didn’t lose it.” Dante shook his head. “Evil, girl.” “He has very sloppy handwriting. Just like any boy. I can’t copy it. Guess what that means?” “Huh boy.” “It’s all yours.” Sunny raised her fork. Daintily, she put her last bite of lasagna into Dante’s mouth. “But let me compose the letter, okay?” So when I use it I’ll be copying two people at once, Dante thought. Stacey raised her hand. Dante guessed that speaking out of turn once had been plenty enough for her. “Yes?” Sunny asked. “How will we let everyone know that Shaya wrote her a love letter?” “I haven’t worked that part out yet. But Dante was right about the mistletoe. I want to implement this whole thing right before Christmas break.” “No,” Dante cut in. “Bad idea.” Sunny blinked. “Why?” “If we humiliate Maris in front of the school, then everybody goes away for Christmas and New Year’s, they’ll have forgotten it all by the time they come back. It’ll be like it never happened.” “Oooh. Good point.” “Second week of January is better I think,” Dante said. His eyes had gone to the window, through which he could almost see the ensuing chaos. “Kids’ll be bored. Eager for the next big thing. And this will be big all right. If it works.” “It’ll work,” Sunny said, cozying herself even closer to Dante’s side. Clearly pleased by his wisdom, she was smiling from ear to ear. “So!” she told the rest of the girls. “This is what we have for now: The village dork writes a love letter to a pretty pink princess; the entire kingdom gets wind of it and laughs at them both. It’s social murder. Any questions?” They looked blank. Dante took that as a no. “Great!” Sunny said. Then, to Dante: “Finish your pineapple, dear. Vitamin C.” ∞ “Are you happy with yourself, Dante?” the old opera singer asked. Dante listened to the clock tick in the hall of number 114 for a very long time before answering. It was Sunday morning again. At last his father had allowed him to come and visit the old man. With Janet dead what did that ten dollars mean, anyway? What was the lie all about? It had deteriorated. Turned to straw in their hands. “I don’t really know,” he said. “Then the answer is no,” came the other’s reply. “Whenever a man says he doesn’t know, he knows.” “Truly I don’t.” “You’ve just told me some interesting new stories about this girl Sunny. The trip to Cedar Point where she seemingly turned into a gorilla. A midnight phone call from her that hissed into the death of a family friend. And now, of course, you plan to help her humiliate a popular girl at school.” Dante lowered his head. On the table were the remains of his brioche . It had not tasted good today, though the reason had little to do with Donati’s cooking. “What does Sunny mean to you?” the singer went on. Dante was still thinking of how to answer that when his friend started in with another of his stories. This one concerned a boy his own age who was living in rural England during the early 1980s. He was small and sickly and received poor grades at school. He had no friends. “I am not exaggerating that last,” Donati said, looking sad. “He had no friends. Even his parents disliked him.” Dante shrugged. “My parents don’t especially like me,” he let on. “Not true. At least it doesn’t sound true, based on our earlier talks. Mr. and Mrs. Torn may be somewhat cold, somewhat distant, but they like you. Was your father not upset when you showed him this month’s school report card?” He had been. Not violently so—rarely if ever did the yachtsman allow his anger to get physical, perhaps because, as Dante often suspected, he would never last long in a boxing ring. Instead his face, upon seeing the report card, became like a flag bereft of its breeze. Fallen on the pole, unable to bare its pride. Without a word he’d sent Dante to his room for the rest of the day. Hearing all of this made Donati nod as if he’d expected no less. “Do they ever beat you?” he asked. “Call you nasty names?” “Oh no,” Dante said. “Never even once.” “Well then.” “But that doesn’t mean they like me,” he felt forced to add. A tiny spoon gleamed in Donati’s hand. With it he pushed a puddle of melted ice cream across his plate before saying: “Perhaps not. They do care about you, though. They want to see you do well. The same cannot be said for that poor boy in the English farmhouse. Oh no. Oh no indeed.” “His dad never paid attention to him at all?” “He paid the boy plenty of mind. To scold him. The whip him. To call him a useless waste of stardust.” “Why?” The opera singer looked at Dante the way one looks at an idiot. “Because he was ugly, that’s why. Ugly and stupid. Sick all the time.” “That’s no reason—“ “Isn’t it?” Donati cut him off. “Your girlfriend seems to think it’s plenty of reason.” Dante got the point and closed his mouth. “It continued for years,” the other said. “The beating. The name calling. Meager meals from his mother. Classmates poking fun at him, beating him up. Then one morning when he was twelve he suffered a grand mal seizure.” “What’s that?” Dante asked. “The worst manifestation of what’s probably the worst disease a living being can get. Electrical impulses from the brain become blocked, rendering the body’s limbs without proper command from their control center. Everything begins to twitch violently. Or, as in the case with grand mal , the victim may actually pitch himself back and forth across a room, banging his head against walls, falling down stairs. He literally has no control of his body until the seizure stops.” Dante knew what seizures were. Two years ago a boy in his fifth grade class had suffered one during lunch hour, falling backward out of his seat to crack his head on the cafeteria floor. It had looked and sounded horrible. No animal cooked alive on a spit could have appeared more grotesque, or with its breaking skull ‘neath the hammer of a cruel master created worse music. “So his brain was damaged?” he asked Donati. The opera singer’s answer surprised him. “Not physically,” he said. “After three more attacks, the boy’s terrible father finally took him to a hospital, where doctors could find nothing wrong. And indeed, even the boy did not think he was sick. He was convinced an entity from another realm wished him harm. A tall, angry man with an unkempt black beard.” Lost in utter confusion by these words, Dante shook his head. “I don’t get it.” “A ghost, dear boy, a ghost. The boy told anyone who would listen, including his doctors, that he was being attacked by a ghost.” “So he was insane.” Donati laughed. “Oh, Dante. How like a common man you can stumble to be. How like a non-believer.” “I bet his doctors thought the same thing. The dad too.” “As a matter of fact they did. But the attacks continued, always in the middle of the night, rousing the poor boy from sleep, never during the day. This confounded the doctors even more, for seizures do not pick and choose by the moon. Before long the boy began describing his attacker in more detail. He was a tall, wide man with black hair and a black beard. He always wore a red and black checkered shirt with blue jeans and heavy black boots. And often, as he beat on the boy, he would speak.” As if to contradict this latter fact, Donati stopped talking. His eyes dropped to the gooey ice cream, which must have maintained its appeal, for in the next moment he retrieved a spoonful and lifted it to his mouth. All Dante could do was wait. He wanted to know what the ghost said, what fury it vocalized from the other side. Was it the secret of death? Or a portrait perhaps, painted with fierce syllables, of God himself? Donati looked up and smiled. “Emronoh,” he said. This confused Dante even further. “I’m sorry?” “You wish to know what the entity said. Or rather what it shrieked as it beat the boy in his own bedroom. I can see it plainly in your eyes. It said emronoh. Over and over. Emronoh, emronoh.” “I have never heard that word before in my life.” “Nor had the boy. But the entity would bellow it in a rage, its eyes on fire, the blackness of its beard thick and wild, as if grown out by something from deep in the woods. The boy repeated the word to his father. By then the man wanted to hear no more. He thought his son was playing tricks to get out of his chores. He made the boy work anyway, beating him like always. And yes, his mother continued to serve him gruel. Foul slops with dirty water. That was his family. That was his life. Hounded by day, haunted by night.” Dante found he could picture with terrible ease everything the opera singer said. It hurt his heart. “Why, Mr. Donati?” he pleaded. “Why?” The other stared over the table with wide eyes. “But my dear boy, I’ve already told you. He was ugly and stupid. Useless.” “I don’t believe that.” “Ah.” “Where is this boy today? Is he still alive?” The laugh these questions brought forth was sarcastic. More like the snort of a pig. “Still alive, yes. Surprising eh? Though certainly no longer a boy. He eventually grew into a tall man with a black beard, who often dresses in heavy checkered shirts and blue denim pants.” “How do you know how he dresses? You’ve met him?” “Never.” “So what,” Dante asked, carefully as he could, “is the significance of his clothes?” It seemed to irritate his friend. The spoon clanged as Donati dropped it to the plate. The opera singer rose, cleared the table, and carried everything to the kitchen. “Perhaps,” he called over a flow of water from the sink, “there is no significance. Perhaps I added it for my own amusement. What do you think, boy?” “I think it has significance. But then I already said as much.” Another clang, this one louder, though Donati was further away. “You’re being clever and foolish at the same time,” he called. “Is this yet another trait derived from trysts with that strange girl?” “I don’t know,” Dante admitted. “Maybe.” “What does Sunny mean to you, Dante? Can you tell me that?” The water stopped. More clanging—lighter, musical—floated into the room. Donati was putting the dishes away. “Strange isn’t how I would describe her,” Dante said, peering into the fire. “She’s more like a knife. A very sharp knife with no one to hold the handle.” He shrugged. “Well. Now there’s me.” Donati came back into the room and sat down. Dante looked over the table at a man concerned as one might be for his own son. “Are you truly willing to do that?” the singer wanted to know. “Take the handle, and cut?” “Tell me why you mentioned the boy’s clothes. Please.” “Had you been listening more intently you would already know. His clothes, as a man, often match the ones worn by his childhood attacker. The ghost with the beard—the beard that looked remarkably like the one this man wears today.” “Are you saying they are the same being? The ghost and the boy?” But if Dante hadn’t been listening intently before, it was Donati who seemed detached now. “In his middle teens the boy decided to shrug off the hatred,” he said. “All of it. From outside and in. No matter how cruelly the world treated him, he decided never to be cruel with himself ever again. It was wise. Almost immediately the ghost stopped coming. The attacks stopped. The boy let go his fear of the dark, his fear of sleep. He rose every morning, did his chores, and went to school. He spoke softly and patiently to everyone he met. He made sure to exhibit kindness, thoughtfulness. He was helpful of others. Truthful. Trustworthy. This was inevitable. Respect for himself radiated. Shined like heat from the sun, warming all it touched. During that year his grades at school went up. His father stopped beating him. His mother began serving him proper meals. Everything changed.” “Change,” Dante intoned, “is always change for the worse.” “Stop that,” the other huffed, scowling. “It isn’t true. Change is sometimes necessary. It certainly was in the boy’s case. He grew into a strong, productive man. A farmer like his father.” “It sounds to me like he lay down and let the world walk on him, Mr. Donati. And hey…everyone loves a doormat.” “He recognized,” Donati said patiently, “that a mess on the table cannot be cleaned by a foul rag. Would you care to know what the word meant? The one the ghost kept screaming in the dead of night?” “Yes,” Dante nodded. “Please.” “In his late teens the boy was playing guitar with a little folk band he’d put together. He remembered the word, emronoh , and thought to make it the title of a song. His band-mate heard the song and liked it. Then one night, just for fun, they played it backward. A lot of gibberish blared from the speakers of course, until it came to the title, when emronoh came out as honor me. ” CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Love Rhymes False words of love from perspective disabled must snap the wrong way off one’s crooked table.   Dante had no idea what to buy Sunny for Christmas. He spent early December walking the streets of downtown Norwalk with hope in his heart that something—anything—in the lit windows of cotton snow and sparkle frost would catch his eye. No such luck. Main Street commerce was dying a slow, cruel death at the hands of several new department stores which had recently opened in Sandusky. Hair whipping in a stiff breeze, Dante stopped in front of a clothing outlet. The garments on display looked scruffy, outdated. A Santa Claus with crooked eyes leaned drunkenly on the glass. Dante crossed the street and doubled back the way he came. He crossed Benedict Avenue (where a paper bell decoration, flying on the wind, nearly took off his head). The Glass Block Building, site of the famous boiler explosion Donati had once told him about, stood on the corner. Passing it with nary a glance, Dante ducked inside of a flower shop. His fingers were crossed. Perhaps here he would find help. Salvation. “Get out,” a short, fat woman said from behind the counter. “We don’t allow kids in here.” Dante took out his wallet and showed her three twenty-dollar bills. “Too bad,” he said. “Guess I’ll go to Henry’s Flowers instead.” But he didn’t go to Henry’s, which was two blocks away to the northeast. Any flowers he bought for Sunny would likely be dead by Christmas anyway. He needed something else. Something simple and eloquent that defined her. “Something out of town,” Dante said to himself, fetching a deep sigh. Later that week he asked his mother for a ride to Sandusky Mall. Doubtless needing to get a little elf work done herself, she agreed. They left Norwalk at nine-thirty and arrived at ten to a mass of other early birds waiting for the main doors to open. Dante’s eyes jumped from face to face. Most were female but not all. No one looked especially drunk on holiday cheer. “Hey Mom,” he said, “if you were a twelve year-old girl, what would you want for Christmas?” “I don’t know,” came her uninterested reply. She looked at her watch, then the doors, then her watch again. “I’m kind of stuck for an idea.” “Oh. Yeah, okay.” “Thanks for caring, Mom.” “Anytime, sweetheart.” The doors were unlocked at 10:06. Dante and his mother moved forward with the rest of the herd. They passed a video arcade, a restaurant, and a bingo parlor before reaching the mall’s main midway, where the drowned wishes of a three-tiered water fountain dampened his spirits even further. After instructing him to meet her back at the fountain at noon, his mother went left, vanishing behind a Timex kiosk. Dante took a seat on the basin. Wandering about from store to store had already proven a bad idea. He needed to think. Formulate. Perhaps even pray. Two giggling girls, both about Sunny’s age, approached the fountain and turned right. Slim, stylish bags hung on their shoulders. Dante wondered if there were credit cards in them. Perhaps you should find out, a reasoning thought told him. He followed them (casually, keeping a safe distance) to a pink and red cosmetics store that looked nothing at all like a place Sunny would shop. Paper hearts were taped in the window. Teddy bears hung from the ceiling. No, Sunny would never shop here. Maris, definitely, but never Sunny. Sunny would strut right past the entrance without even turning her head. Dante went inside. He browsed the aisles, which didn’t take long. It was a small, cozy store. A saleslady smiled at him but didn’t quite dare ask if he needed help. Buy her a Teddy bear, a desperate thought ventured. Oh yeah, came the reasoning one’s response, good idea. She’ll probably slaughter it with a butcher knife in her basement. “Shut up, both of you,” Dante muttered. Then he saw the nail polish rack. It was one of those narrow plastic towers that rotated. Suddenly inspired, he crossed to it and gave its bearings a spin. More bright red appeared. More pink. Then came a small troupe of different, less popular shades. Black, blue, green, silver. “Black,” he muttered again. “It’s gotta be black for her.” He reached for one of the bottles, but froze when his eye caught another shade. It was dark red. Dark as blood. Dante picked up the bottle. OPI Transylvania Cocktail , it read. The name pleased him. Quite relieved to have this difficult treasure hunt finally end, he went to the counter. A plastic register waited to eat his money. No one stood at its keys, however. A box of charm bracelets rested on an otherwise empty counter. Dante looked over his shoulder in time to see the giggling girls leave. The saleslady who’d smiled earlier was nowhere to be seen. “Hello!” he called. “Anyone here?” Morrissey answered from speakers hidden in the ceiling. His girlfriend was in coma; he knew, he knew, it was serious. But aren’t you gay? Dante thought. Still no saleslady. He went to each aisle and peered down. Female accessories glimmered everywhere—hair scarves, fishnet gloves, bangle bracelets. All were devoid of human occupation. No matter, the reasoning voice assured. You can wait. You have time. Dante, Sunny answered, freckles flaring, my personal best is only about thirty seconds, remember? “I do,” he said aloud. “And this time, girl, I’m going to take care of you.” There were two CCTV cameras in the store. Minding them, Dante went back to the nail polish rack. The maneuver was a ruse. He pretended to put the Transylvania Cocktail back, then palmed it instead. When both cameras were turned the other way he dropped the bottle into his pocket and walked out. Mission accomplished. That was stupid, came the reasoning voice’s disgusted response. I’m ashamed of you. “Get over it,” Dante said. “Or…don’t. See if I care.” He visited a few other shops before noon. The mall remained sleepy. Things around here never really picked up until after lunch. Dante went to a toy store, a gift store, a candy kiosk. In none of them did he buy—or steal. He had what he wanted. On his way back to the fountain he passed a music store that sold CDs and cassette singles. It made him realize something about that reasoning voice, the voice which had, over the past couple hours, fallen utterly silent. It belonged to Donati. ∞ The day seemed one for killing birds. Once home Dante went directly to his room, sat down, and knocked off the phony love letter to Maris. Only it wasn’t a letter. It was a poem instead. This because, at the last moment, Dante decided the project needed structure and romance. A piercing tip to slay the heart of its target. It came out far more easily than he ever would have dreamed. He’d expected it to take days, weeks even. Instead he got the bones of the thing set up in less than an hour. An hour after that, he had it polished as close to perfection as a young man could hope. All that remained was to run it past Sunny. Next morning before homeroom he did that very thing. “Missed you in school yesterday,” she said, slamming her locker door a little too hard. “I had some shopping to do with my mom.” “You could have called to tell me that. The girls kept asking me where you were. Like an idiot I had to tell them I didn’t know.” “Sorry. There was something else that kept me busy,” he added with a smirk before showing her the poem. She asked what it was at first, then froze, raising her hand to halt all replies. And like the memory of a bad dream which fades at dawn, the anger in her face retreated. Her green eyes widened for a moment; a gasp of air filled her chest. Was that what it looked like? she wanted to know. Was that the letter? “It’s a poem,” Dante said. “Slight change of plans.” She gave a whoop and leaped into his arms, bending her knees to let him take all of her weight, which he did with great eagerness, twirling her around before the red faces of a dozen other students. A million thank-yous followed, all between a million kisses on the cheek. These kisses were soft, breathy, and smelled like cinnamon. Dante accepted them with a willingness for a million more. “I am really sorry I got mad at you just now,” Sunny gushed after he put her down. “I was just worried. I didn’t know what happened.” “If I miss school again I won’t be so boneheaded. I’ll call you.” “Yes! Please, Dante, please. ” She plucked the paper from his hand. “My gosh! So this is it!” “That’s it. Don’t get too excited yet, honey. I need you to proofread.” “I’m excited! I know it’ll be awesome! You didn’t have to do this, Dante. I said I would write the letter.” “I actually couldn’t remember which one of us had that job. Just keep in mind when you read it that every word is actually how I feel about you. Otherwise I’d have been totally stumped.” “Ooh,” she purred. “So this is going to get me excited tonight?” He took a step closer, closing what little space was left between them. “You’re going to discover a few things, little girl.” “In that case I won’t read it until I’m in my bedroom.” “Cross your heart?” She made as if to follow through, raising the sharp-nailed index finger of her right hand. At that moment Mr. Wolfe poked his head into the hallway. It was time for class, he told everyone, all chatter needed to cease, all locker doors needed to be closed. Sunny put the poem into her bag, with a second promise not to touch it until after dinner. She also told him not to worry about how they would engage the school. He’d done enough, she said, or almost enough. There was still the issue of copying the poem in Shaya’s handwriting. At lunchtime they watched him—Shaya—eat alone again. He sat in his usual spot near the kitchen, hair unkempt, clothes shabby. His glasses were crooked. His torn blue sneakers were stained. No one talked to him, or even seemed to notice he was alive. “Pathetic,” Sunny said, face shriveled with disgust. “I can’t wait to see the look on Maris’ face when we pull this thing off. I really can’t.” She looked at Dante. Her hands fluttered to the collar of his shirt, straightened it. She gave each of his sleeves a tug and a pat. “Where’s your jacket, honey? The leather one?” “It’s in my locker,” Dante said. “You should wear it. It’s cool.” “Okay.” She grinned. “Or let me wear it. Would that be okay?” “Absolutely,” Dante said, liking the idea. “You can even take it home with you later if you want.” “Oh, I want,” Sunny said, putting a French fry into his mouth. “I really, really want.” ∞ He sat up that night, unfocused on a book report coming due for Mr. Wolfe’s English class. The book he’d chosen was a mistake. The plot was bland, its characters weak. No one in the pages seemed to care about what Mr. Wolfe called The Main Idea. They hardly recognized its existence at all. Instead, the author sketched a colorless, tuneless narrative about family life with a precocious two year-old boy. The boy liked to throw food. He liked to scream and yell. There were no surprises, no twists. Even Dante’s phone, when it rang, couldn’t rouse him from the torpor the pages induced. Rather than answer it he waited for someone downstairs to do so. Then he flipped to the last chapter, frowned, and dumped the book into the wastebasket. Minutes later his father came to the door. “Isn’t that a library book?” he asked, eyeing the discarded corpse. At this hour of the night Mr. Torn was scarcely more than a silhouette, dark and lean. Dante could tell he didn’t really care about the book. Something in his posture (hands in pockets, shoulder to the frame) indicated an air of one feinting towards happenstance. If that were true he had missed, and badly. Dante knew his father never did things without a reason. “Yes,” he told the silhouette, after a garbage pail glance. “You’re right. I forgot.” “It’s not proper to throw literature away. Even if you think you’re doing the world a favor.” Dante frowned. Here was a new opinion, and one he never would have expected from the no nonsense yachtsman. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I know I’m right,” the other pressed. “Someone else might actually enjoy that book. Someone else might even learn to read from that book.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t apologize to me.” Wilted, Dante fished the book from the trash, put it on his desk. The cover art no longer looked mischievous, but reproachful. “I’ll return it tomorrow,” he said. Mr. Torn’s posture continued to lean. What he had actually come here to say couldn’t be far off. “That was the hospital on the phone,” he said, keeping his voice level. “Your friend is sick. The old man who lives down the street.” This piece of news caused Dante’s mouth to fall open. “What?” he stammered. “Mr. Donati?” “That’s the one. Don’t worry. The nurse said he’s comfortable and fully alert.” “What happened?” “All I could get from the nurse was minor cardiac episode.” Mr. Torn moved off the frame. Message delivered, he could stand on his own again. “She also said that Mr. Donati would like you to visit him tomorrow. It’s Saturday so you won’t miss school.” “I’ll go in the morning.” “Good idea. You can return the book on your way.” On that chiding note, Mr. Torn disappeared, leaving Dante to worry over the opera singer’s condition. Minor cardiac episode? So it was a heart attack then. He’d fallen ill with chest pains during the day. Had he called for an ambulance? Dante tried to remember hearing sirens at school. He couldn’t. But of course that didn’t mean anything. Stop it. You’re being stupid. Knowing he’d never get any work done now, Dante pushed the book report aside. He turned out the light and got in bed. It was a cold night. A layer of frost chilled the window, which shook with occasional gusts of northern wind. Between these came muffled chatter from his mom and dad in the next room. By midnight both—breezes and banter—fell silent. Dante continued to blink at the ceiling. He was at last beginning to drowse when the phone rang again. Instantly his thoughts leaped to Donati. In one swift motion he was off the bed and snatching at the receiver. “Hello!” he fairly gushed. Silence from the other end. Then a smooth, soft, female voice said: “Dante. Sweetheart.” Dante felt the tightness in his chest shift from anxiety to delight. “Sunny! Hi! You’re up late.” “Oh I’m always up late, dear. And tonight I have some interesting literature on hand.” Dante glanced at the library book. “Wish I could say the same here.” “You’ll be okay. Just give a plot outline, then state your opinion. Your civil opinion.” “How do you do that?” “Do what?” “Know what I mean before I can even tell you.” She laughed. “Female intuition, Dante. Once you kiss a girl she can look right through you.” “So I’m yours?” “I’m afraid so. That’s okay I hope. It better be,” she added with a mischievous twist. “It’s more than okay,” Dante said. He carried the phone to the bed, dragging its line. “Have you read my little missive yet?” “That was the interesting literature I referred to.” “Remember I wrote it about you, not Maris.” “I remember,” Sunny purred. “I liked it, Dante. It’s going to work just fine for what we have in mind. Lie down in bed for me,” she told him next, with a gasp of quickened breath. Then: “Are you all alone there?” “I think so,” Dante replied, stretching out on the mattress. “My mom and dad are quiet. Usually means they’re asleep.” “Mine too. And my door is locked. I’m under the covers with all my clothes off.” Dante tried to picture this as best he could. Imagination didn’t normally frustrate him, but tonight it did. He wanted more than just thoughts of the red-headed deviant lying naked before him. He wanted sight. He wanted touch. Scents and sounds. Defeated, he decided to tell her these things, to which she responded that of course she knew of his desires already, and that she wanted nothing more than to be with him, too. It would happen, she promised. They would find time to be together—to be alone together—no matter what the cost. From here Sunny’s voice took on a chiding tone. Had he already forgotten about her parents’ trip to Howling? And if not, why wasn’t he excited about it? The opportunity was perfect. They could have lots of fun. Maybe even too much fun. “When is that trip?” Dante asked again. She had dodged the question at lunch. Now perhaps, corning her with it again, he could get an answer. Instead the line clicked and went dead. Dante pressed the carriage switch. “Sunny? Hello?” There was another click in his ear, then a dial tone. He was about to call Sunny’s number in Sycamore Hills when a powerful gust of night wind struck the window. Twigs scratched the glass. The light flickered. “Dante?” a female voice rang from the hall. “Dante?” Sitting up in bed, Dante studied his bedroom doorway. Was his mother awake? The voice hadn’t sounded like hers. It had sounded higher, younger. “Yes!” he called back, getting to his feet. Only the wind answered, howling up State Street and onto Main like a woman fleeing murder. Dante peered into the hall. No one peered back. A single weak light—a night light—glowed from a console his mother had picked up last year at an Amish furniture store. That was it. Needing to be further convinced, Dante walked to the end of the hall, where a window overlooked Norwalk’s huge Methodist church. This close to midnight it was nothing more than a sleeping giant. Amongst its dark, brooding stones Dante could make out very little. And anyway, the female voice hadn’t come from over there. He decided to chance knocking on his parents’ door, lightly at first, then with more force when no one answered. Yet still nothing stirred on the other side. Dante took hold of the knob. His next action would be borderline anathema as far as the Torns were concerned. Under no circumstances did either parent allow their son into their bedroom. Undiscovered repercussions awaited. Sticky ends. Dante turned the knob. Or rather, he tried. The door was locked. “Dante?” He jumped, nearly tripping over his own feet. The voice, faint and feminine, now seemed to be calling from his bedroom. Looking in that direction he could see the doorway. Light flooded the hall carpet. Had he turned it back on at some point? It was hard to know for certain. Slowly he walked to the door. Halfway there the downtown clock tower chimed midnight. Dante got to the pool of light, leaned and peered into his room. There was his bed, his desk. Both were empty. His telephone, which he’d left on the covers, was also there. No sooner did he see it, it began to ring, over and over, stubborn for an answer though Dante hesitated a long time before at last finding courage enough to cross the room and pick up the receiver. “Hello?” he asked. “Dante!” Sunny’s voice replied cheerfully. “What happened?” He looked back at the hall, almost expecting the mystery voice to say his name again. “I’m not sure. The line went dead.” “Ah. Well for a few minutes there I thought it was you who’d died.” “I was about to call you back actually, but then the house sort of got weird. I heard a voice call my name.” “You’re just spooked over the wind.” “Maybe that’s it,” Dante said, lacking conviction. “But it sure sounded real.” When Sunny next spoke her voice was that of a Hollywood comedienne. “Maybe it’s haunted ,” she moaned, elongating the word for drama. Her tomfoolery forced a smile to his lips. “Then we have a late ghost. I’ve lived here all my life.” Sunny didn’t answer, though this time he knew she was still there. Her presence tightened the line. “Sunny?” Dante said. “ BOO!” she screamed, loud as she could into his ear. At that instant every light in the house went black. Lightning flashed outside; thunder boomed. A hundred public service announcements had taught Dante never to hold a telephone during a storm. He put it on the bed, rose, and tried to feel his way to the desk, where he kept a penlight. Halfway there the lights flickered back on. For an instant Dante thought he saw a reflection in the window—a reflection of something tall and oddly formed that leaped from view once the lights came on. His eyes went back to the door. It was still open, inviting him into the hall for a look. No way, he thought, crossing the room with an intent to close and lock it. A second flash of lightning lit the world outside, followed by more thunder. Dante had his hand on the door and was about to shut it when he noticed two deep, curved marks in the hallway carpeting. They were set far apart, with pointed tips turned slightly inward. They resembled, Dante thought, a pair of cloven hooves. Rain began to pelt the window, lightly at first but soon with the commotion of hailstones. He closed the door, twisted the lock handle. With luck that would do to hinder unwanted visitors. Without luck… “Who am I kidding?” Dante muttered. Leaving the light on, he went to the bed and lay down. After five minutes he could resist temptation no more. He dialed Sunny’s number. She answered, giggling, on the second ring. “What’s so funny?” Dante asked. “I knew you’d call me once the lights came back on. I got so scared when my room went dark I screamed.” “You screamed the word boo. ” More laughter, fading from the receiver as if its owner had fallen backward in bed. “I think that was it,” she said, regaining control. “First thing I thought of in the dark was ghosts.” “Me too,” Dante said. “Are you okay now?” “Oh I’m good. Everything’s fine here. How about you?” “Power’s back on for now.” They talked for another hour, never minding the storm or those public service announcements. Dante had forgotten all about monsters and ghosts when someone knocked on the door. Hesitant but not wishing to show weakness with his girlfriend listening in, Dante answered it. “Go to bed,” his father commanded. “It’s one o’clock in the morning.” “Aw,” Sunny pouted into his ear. “Sure, Dad,” Dante said. “I’m out.” Mr. Torn looked at the phone. “Who the heck are you talking to?” “Girlfriend.” “Is that so? Hooray for you. But please tell her goodnight and go to sleep.” “Sunny?” Dante said into the phone. He smiled at his dad and made an O with his thumb and index finger. “Yes, darling?” “Goodnight and go to sleep.” “Oh, very amusing,” Mr. Torn said, turning back to his own bedroom. “Goodnight, Dante.” “Goodnight, Dad. Goodnight, Sunny.” She was still laughing at his lame joke. “Goodnight, Dante. See you Monday morning.” After she hung up Dante looked at the floor. Two vague scuff marks where Mr. Torn had stood marked the carpet. But as for the hoofprints… “Gone,” Dante said. “Weird.” “Dante?” Sunny called from the dark at the bottom of the stairs, freezing his bones. “I love you. Sweet dreams.” There came a giggle, followed by fading footsteps. Then silence. Slowly, Dante closed his door and locked it. CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Hospital Visit The hospital floor shined with wax, as clean linen does of the finest flax.   Dante’s first thought, upon entering a brightly lit waiting area, was not to slip and fall down. He walked gingerly between several rows of plastic chairs. There was a TV on the wall, unplugged. Stacks of magazines lay fanned on a glass table. An old woman with a cane looked at him through heroic spectacles. “No smoking!” she barked, squeezing the cane with blue knuckles. “My husband has emphysema!” Ignoring her, Dante made his way to the service desk and inquired as to where he might find Mr. Horatio Donati. The nurse was a woman not much younger than the one behind him. She frowned at Dante, sizing him up with a pair of stormy gray eyes that perfectly matched the curls of hair poking from beneath her cap. “We don’t have anyone here by that name,” she said. “Try looking first,” Dante told her. “Excuse me?” “You’re excused. Now I’m looking for Horatio Donati. He got sick yesterday—mild cardiac episode—and they brought him here.” The nurse’s jaw hung open. “My goodness, you’re a rude boy, aren’t you?” “I didn’t come in that way.” “You’re going to leave or I’m going to have you removed.” “Hello!” a youngish-looking gentleman with black hair cut in. “Can I be of help?” Dante repeated his request, to which the gentleman responded by looking at the nurse’s computer. After a few keystrokes Donati’s name popped right up. “Room 112,” the gentleman said. “You can go right down. I’m Doctor Slater, by the way.” “Thank you, Doctor,” Dante said, and without sparing the nurse another glance, left the desk. 112 was at the end of a hall lined with healthy plants whose stems drooped from their pots. To Dante they looked ready to get up and walk. Several Christmas decorations hung on the walls—stockings, silver bells, Santa Clauses—as well as the door to Donati’s room, which was covered in green crepe paper. He raised his fist to knock, then decided that unless Donati had a nurse in the room he wouldn’t be able to answer. Dante turned the knob instead. The door opened on a quiet, brightly lit room. Quiet for two reasons: The TV, like the one outside, was switched off, and the bed was empty. This second detail took Dante by surprise at first, until he noticed a wheelchair at the window, along with its occupant: Horatio Donati. Despite his surroundings he didn’t look ready to present his ticket at Saint Peter’s gate just yet. His round face, Dante saw, was still ruddy with life, the curls of his black hair still rich. To judge by his belly he hadn’t been skipping out on the brioche . And most important of all his eyes, which had thus far not noticed they had a visitor, looked bright and aware. They were set on the window—or rather, what lay beyond. It couldn’t have been much. Dante knew the hospital was built in a circle around a plain green lawn, and that Donati’s window looked out upon that lawn. Still, the opera singer appeared as the nurse who’d spoken to Dante’s father had promised: comfortable and fully alert. “Hello,” Dante said, stepping forward. Donati’s head turned, and when their eyes met, his face broke into a wide smile. “Dante!” he called, raising his arms. “My boy! Mi sei mancato! ” What he wanted with those raised arms could not have been more plain. Smiling, Dante crossed the room and hugged his friend hard. “ `E bello vederti, ” he whispered. The remark surprised even more alertness into Donati’s already shining eyes. “He’s been studying! Eh?” “I looked that one up this morning,” Dante admitted. “I wanted to say it to you, because it’s true.” “You’re a fine boy, Dante,” the opera singer said, tightening his grip. “A fine boy.” “Don’t be too quick to judge.” “Not at all.” Donati let go his hug and looked at him. “So long as you don’t forget what that other, slightly more well known Dante wrote in his Paradiso. ” “Tell me.” “’ The pious man may fall, and the thief may rise.’” “Ouch. If that’s true then what does it mean to be good?” He was thinking of Sunny as he spoke, who always acted as if she already knew the answer was nothing. But Donati held a different view. “It means that you care,” he said, “even if others do not. Even if”—he took a moment to cross himself—“God does not.” “Don’t go losing your faith on me, Mr. Donati. One of us needs to be strong.” “Never say that last part to a man in a wheelchair.” “Sorry. I lost my head.” Rather than let the comment lead them into his strange goings on of late, Dante decided to change the subject. For help he looked out the window. The view, however, was pitiful as he’d imagined. Brown grass and drab, dead trees. “You need a walk in the park,” he told Donati, frowning at the pre-Christmas dreary. The other laughed. “My doctor said the same thing.” Ah, now here was something they could talk about—something so obvious, in fact, that Dante nearly missed it. “What happened?” he asked. Donati shrugged as if the story were too boring to tell. “My chest was hurting,” he said. “I thought it was indigestion, until it got so bad I could barely walk. So I called an ambulance.” “And what did the doctors find?” “Atherosclerosis. Hopefully mild. I don’t want to be cut open.” “Does it hurt now?” “Not at all; in fact I’m getting hungry. When do they serve lunch in this mausoleum?” “That’s a heck of a word to use—“ At that moment the door clicked, and a nurse came in with a tray of food. Donati rolled directly to it, running over Dante’s foot in the progress. “Whoa!” the nurse—a young lady—exclaimed. “You must be hungry today!” “Indeed I am, Miss,” Donati replied. “And what do we have?” He made a face at the tray. “Fish and fruit. Bah.” “Now now,” the nurse chided, “look where your western diet has gotten you.” “But I need my cappuccino! I need my brioche !” Dante watched from the window, amused by this miniature drama. The nurse told Donati that he would see nothing of sugared coffee or ice cream in bread whilst a patient at her particular hospital, to which the opera singer went on to proclaim misunderstanding, mistreatment, and—dare he need use the word—cruelty. “Everything on this plate will make you strong,” the nurse promised. She left without hearing anything more. Feeling safer now the battle was over, Dante strolled to the bed. The fish didn’t look so bad; it smelled even better. When he told Donati as much the old man grunted, then proceeded to wolf the entire meal like the glutton he’d been at number 114. “Good boy!” Dante cheered. “Yes Father, but where’s my ice cream?” There was a remote control on the bed-stand. Dante picked it up, only to have Donati immediately wave him off. “Oh no, no,” he said. “No television, please. I’m already grouchy.” “Did you hear that storm last night?” Once the words were out he regretted saying them. Here lay a path that would stray back to Sunny, whom Dante, though he didn’t know why, felt hesitant to discuss this morning. “Slept,” Donati grumbled. “Slept and dreamed.” “About what?” “A girl. Lovely creature. Tall and skinny. Short black hair.” The opera singer paused to knock back the last of a glass of chocolate milk. When he put the glass down his eyes wandered to the bed as if the girl in question might be found beneath its sheets, beckoning for company. Dante put the remote down. “Real or total fantasy?” he asked. And Donati, still eyeing the bed: “Oh, real. Very real. I gave her singing lessons last spring. A very windy, stormy April that was. Perhaps the storm you mentioned took my mind back.” The wheelchair creaked as suddenly he began to rise. Dante made a move to help but once more was waved off. The opera singer climbed into bed and lay back with a sigh towards the ceiling. It wasn’t a sad sigh. To Dante it sounded rather happy—the expelled breath of one recalling better times. Memories that scratched behind the ear. Dante found a chair and dragged it to the bed. From here he wasn’t certain how to proceed. Would Donati tell him more about the girl? Would it be wise to listen, considering the possibility he might blurt something about Sunny? “Keefer was her name,” Donati said, without provocation. “Trixie Keefer. A perky, pretty, sunny girl. Blue eyes. Big smile. Full of life.” “Sunny,” Dante said, then slapped a hand over his mouth. The opera singer didn’t notice. He went on speaking, his eyes on the blank TV, his mind in the recent past. “We met at a little restaurant on West Main. She was waitressing tables. I’m not sure how she found out about my singing, but when she did, she asked for lessons.” “When was that?” “It must have been February,” Donati sighed. “I remember it was snowing outside. Big, white flakes, like the kind that falls on the Furka Pass. She asked, and I said yes without even quoting a price. That spooky old house of mine needed some sunshine, and Miss Keefer had plenty.” He looked at Dante. “She did pay me, of course. Just not in coin. A waitress doesn’t have coins to dole out for singing lessons. No. She cleaned the house. Did my laundry. Cooked. Chased solicitors away from the door.” To Dante that sounded like a wife. He said this out loud to Donati, who nodded and replied: “She was my wife. For three months. In fact she’d only been gone a few days when I first met you. She was a good student. A good singer. A good housekeeper.” Here the singer hesitated and turned his head away. Sensing he had more to say, Dante waited. “And a good lover,” Donati told the wall. “You might think any girl would be a good lover for a man my age, but I haven’t always been old, or fat, and I have traveled the world.” Sighing, he turned his gaze back to Dante. “Anyway, you’re too young to hear about lovers, good or bad.” “I’m thirteen.” A look of surprise took hold the other’s face. “Already?” “July thirteenth,” Dante said. “ Mamma Mia!” Laughing now, Dante countered the generic expression with one of his own: “That’s-a spicy meatball!” “It is indeed! Still, thirteen is too young for…you know. This sort of talk.” “My girlfriend is twelve and she acts like she’s raring to rip.” “Girls mature faster than boys. They walk balance beams where we fall. Their compass needles point to poles we cannot explore. When is her birthday, by the way?” With an inner wince (he had tripped up and mentioned Sunny, just as he’d feared) Dante told him it was March fifteenth. “Going to marry her?” Donati asked with a grin. “I thought you said I’m too young for this sort of talk.” “I’m sick in a hospital bed. My mind is foggy.” “You’ll get strong again.” “Yes,” the singer agreed. “For awhile at least. But there’s an adage that goes we’re only young once. That once is long gone for me whether I get well again or not.” Watching Donati’s sad eyes, Dante tried to get his mind around how his friend felt. It was tricky business. Like a man at dawn imagines what it might be like to harvest at dusk, so being old felt to Dante. The very idea was little more than a dream, remote and surreal. A city in the skies of a foggy sea. From the deck of his freshly launched vessel he could only nod with puzzled expression, which Donati, though a bit dreamy himself, somehow noticed and, to reassure the mirage was anything but, repeated: “One time only, Dante. From that viewpoint young love is not at all perverse. Rather, it is almost necessary, lest we miss out on beauty, on vigor. But keep in mind when the storms come, you’ll have a more difficult time staying afloat on the water. Or,” he added, as if in response to unheard objection, “perhaps the strength of youth will make it easier. What do I know?” “Did you have these thoughts when you were with your student?” Dante put forth. “No, no,” the other said with an impatient sniff. “I merely enjoyed her company.” “That may be all you needed to do.” “Maybe.” He looked at Dante. “In any case, my enjoyment with Miss Keefer ended when she graduated high school. Her family is currently vacationing in Key Biscayne.” “They’ll come back,” Dante said. “In time for her college courses to resume, yes.” “You’ll still get to see her.” “I’m not certain that’s wise. She told me a frightening story one night about a girlfriend of hers who disappeared. Left school one spring and went wandering. In late August she came home with a boyfriend. She was pregnant.” “It sounds like she eloped,” Dante said. “I’ve heard of girls doing that before.” Donati gave a nod. “She later told Trixie that she did indeed elope. To a far away place where someone she loved was murdered.” Dante’s eyes widened. Here was a twist he would never have guessed in a million years. “I’m not sure I follow,” he said to Donati. “Apparently a wild animal attacked the friend’s mother and…killed her. Murdered , I suppose, wasn’t quite the word to use. But when the friend came home with the father of her child, someone else followed. That someone broke into their home. He attacked all three.” “Why on Earth did he do that?” “Miss Keefer doesn’t know for certain. But her friend—Ingrid, her name was—intimated a revenge connection having to do with a family squabble. Two families squabbling, I should say. At any rate, the attack was brutal and bloody. This interloper punched Ingrid’s boyfriend in the chest so hard that his hand went through and pulverized the heart.” “Don’t be silly,” Dante cut in. “No one could do that. This Keefer girl must have been having fun with you.” “She gave me the address of the home where it happened. And when. October, 1990.” “And did you check up on it?” Dante had to ask, though he felt he knew the answer already. “Yes,” Donati replied softly. “The address is in Sandusky. Two years ago a young man was murdered there. Police responding to an anonymous phone call—presumably from Ingrid—found his bloody body in the kitchen. His breastbone had been smashed. His heart crushed.” “But Ingrid made it out okay?” “The police eventually detained her. She answered a lot of questions. They must have been good answers, because she wasn’t arrested. With a little more time she may have been, but…” Here Donati’s voice trailed off. As before, Dante decided to wait rather than prod for more information. Seconds later the gambit once again paid off. “She disappeared,” the singer finished. “Vanished. Nobody could find her. Not even Trixie.” “And she’s still gone?” “As far as I know.” Dante sat quietly by the bed. He could think of nothing to say. If the story were true this was the first he’d ever heard of it. That meant nothing, of course. In 1990 he’d only been eleven years old. Rarely had he paid much attention to the news. Even today he sometimes struggled to keep up. “Ingrid and her boyfriend were a strange couple,” Donati said. “So Trixie told me. One was an introverted artist, the other an unconfident, gauche everyman. Trixie and I were also strange. Were we ever. She was eighteen and me fifty-two.” “Yep,” Dante had to agree on the second count. “That’s out there all right.” But the singer hadn’t finished yet. There was one more couple he wanted stirred into the fray. “You and this Sunny,” he said, smiling from the hospital pillows. “Improbable. Most improbable.” “How so?” And as cold water enfeebles the colors on a fresh painted canvas, so did the thought of Sunny weaken Donati’s smile. “I encouraged your relationship at first, but she seems…cruel,” he said. “A girl given over to the infliction of pain.” His eyes flicked from the ceiling to Dante. “Why would you love such a creature?” “I don’t love her,” Dante said, or tried to say. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “You said once that you did. And it’s true. It’s in your eyes when you speak her name. And your voice.” Here Donati let his smile return full force. “Your voice becomes music.” “Stop it.” “You’re blushing.” “It’s the heat. They’ve got it cranked too high.” “Do you still plan to write that letter she asked you to write? The one you told me about after Thanksgiving?” “Yes. In fact I’ve already written it. It’s a poem.” “And the deed is done?” “What deed?” “You wanted to humiliate two innocent children,” Donati said patiently. Then, just as patiently: “Or did you?” “It’s just a little prank,” Dante said. “But no. That hasn’t happened. Yet.” “Second thoughts?” “Orchestration. Timing.” “Don’t do it, boy. It won’t be funny. At best it will be awkward; the school will blink in confusion and move on with the year, forgetting it all. At worst…” Dante leaned forward. “Yes?” he asked, genuinely curious about the older man’s eyes, which to his utter surprise appeared ready to weep. “At worst, souls will be destroyed. The girl’s. The boy’s. The boy’s in particular. He stands before a tsunami. And yours, Dante,” the singer added. “We mustn’t forget yours. Pain can be like light, and its target a mirror.” “Unless the mirror breaks,” Dante said. “Then I won’t have to worry.” “Is that what you want? Good Heavens, boy.” “No. No, of course not. I was thinking of Sunny.” “If those are the thoughts she puts in your head,” Donati told him with furled brow, “consider another for the flowers you buy. Girls like Sunny don’t destroy souls, Dante.” “No?” Dante said, perking up at this bit of optimism. Donati, however, hadn’t veered down any gilded paths, as his next words proved. “No,” he said. “They eat them.” CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Happy New Year Dante spent Christmas alone in his room. His presents were few, given not with love, but memories of love, set too deep to exhume.   Things were certainly different with Sunny. On the day before school let out—Tuesday—he’d given her the nail polish. Their surroundings had been secret. No one ever went behind the giant Christmas tree in the foyer. Knowing this, Dante had led her there by the hand. They’d hunkered down behind a number of large, empty boxes decorated to look like presents, and here, Dante gave her his own present. Sunny’s response could not have been better. Gushing with thanks, she’d thrown her arms round his neck, punctuating each word of gratitude with a kiss. The color was perfect, she’d squealed, totally what she would have chosen had she been in the shop with him. “I’m glad you like it,” Dante told her, leaning on a Styrofoam snowman. And Sunny, with her head on his chest: “Oh, I love it dear. In fact why don’t we just stay here all through fifth period?” “I have a better idea,” Dante had then said. “Why don’t we just go home early? Sneak away to Stoutenburg Park, swing on the swings?” “In twenty-five degree weather?” “Sure. I’ll keep you warm.” And so they’d gone, giggling, down one empty hall and up another, peeking around lockers like a couple of Santa’s helpers hoping not to get caught with the milk and cookies. They’d slipped out the front door, ducked behind the bicycle racks. None of it frightened Dante. Somehow he’d known they wouldn’t be caught. He’d been right. Fifteen minutes after leaving the school, on the cold, empty playground of Stoutenburg Park, Sunny had given Dante his present. It was a book. The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. “Don’t open it here,” she’d said, snuggling him on one of the picnic tables. “Wait ‘til you’re alone.” “Thank you for this,” Dante said before putting the book inside his coat. “My family doesn’t celebrate the holiday. But how could I not let you know what you mean?” “So the book has a message?” “Not according to Silverstein. Read the inside cover though. You may find something.” Later that night he did exactly that, pulling the book’s handsome cover back slowly in a ploy to savor the moment. There was a note inside, written in loops and swirls of red ink.   Dante, Sunny had written.   Chances are you’ve already read this book a hundred times. Its author insists there is no message, but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his. It goes as follows: Sometimes—most of the time—being good just doesn’t matter. The universe is going to take from you. You are the giving tree; it is the old man. Stop. I’ll help you. I’ll show you how. Love, Sunny   He had indeed read the book more than once, but since he always found it so enjoyable he read it again right there at his desk. Then he read Sunny’s note again. And again, and again. … but as I told you on the picnic table, the message is mine not his. Over the school year she had executed a number of disturbing maneuvers upon his psyche, to the point where they should have, by this time, been nearly commonplace. All the same, his heart went cold at these words. How on Earth had she possessed the foresight to write them? There was simply no way Sunny could have known his intention to steal her away to the park. Right up until the moment it happened, Dante hadn’t even known himself. On impulse he decided to open the book again, flipping the pages carefully to see if she’d written anything else. There was nothing until the very back, where on the opposite side of the cover he found:   I know everything… About the boy I fell in love with. You, Dante. You.   Had this strange statement, written in the same red ink, and in Sunny’s hand, been there all along? Dante couldn’t be sure. He put the book on the desk, stood up, and went to the window. The scene beyond—light snow, a large church, an empty street—was certainly familiar enough. Comforting even. But the darkness he sensed did not come from outside. Rather, it was right here in the room with him. “Sunny?” he called aloud, still staring at the church. “Tell me something. How long were you able to hold your breath that day in front of my locker?” He waited a few seconds, then crossed to the desk. The book lay there, just as he’d left it. But had it perhaps changed just a little bit? He opened the cover gingerly, as if at any moment it might snap and take his fingers off. Sunny’s note was still on the inside, word for word as she’d written it. Dante flipped to the back. There was the other, shorter note. It too read exactly the same as before. “You’re an idiot,” Dante said to himself, closing the book. He didn’t get it all the way closed. Somehow one of the pages curled over too far. Yanking the cover back so as not to damage it, Dante’s hand slipped. The book slid to the edge of the desk and fell off. It thudded on the floor with its cover wide open. Dante bent, picked it up… And saw that it had fallen to page thirty. ∞ New Year’s Day arrived. 1993. Like always, it was a quiet one in Norwalk. It brought no drinking or dancing. Nobody honked their car horns, or sang Auld Lang Syne in drunken, warbled notes. In Ohio fireworks were illegal for civilians to launch; thus, the skies at midnight of January the 1st remained dark and cold. Indeed, for one in Norwalk to look from skies to streets retained the potential for brief confusion, as they both, at a glance, pretended to be each other. But for the courthouse clock that chimed the hour, nothing among the old downtown buildings made a sound. This year Dante didn’t care. He wasn’t in town for the holiday. He’d gone with his mother and father to stay at a hotel in Cleveland, where a yacht-owners convention had been booked. The idea excited him at first, not due to the company they would surely keep (tall, suave, self-important—and of course, male), but the premises in which they’d be kept. The Hotel Consorcia on Euclid Avenue was lavish—or so his father promised the week leading up to the event. It boasted three hundred rooms throughout fifteen floors. A swimming pool, a gymnasium; a Jacuzzi, a sauna. There was also a video arcade (again, promised by his father before Dante saw any actual proof), a candy store, and an ice cream parlor. Of all these fanciful amenities, only the latter two turned out to be bogus. They arrived on the afternoon of December 31st. A valet parked their car. Luggage boys carried their bags through a revolving gold door. Beyond lay a whisper quiet, dim lobby painted wine and gold. Huge pieces of cedar wood furniture snoozed beneath the glow of pleasant lamps. At a long counter, also of cedar wood, his father spoke to a girl who procured a room for them on the ninth floor. They went up in an elevator silent as the lobby. The car’s door was mirrored. Seeing himself reflected made Dante, as always, immediately self-conscious. He set about straightening his hair and collar while his parents stood statuesque. It didn’t seem to help much. His jeans looked baggy, his shirt wrinkled. Irritated, he took a deep breath and decided to hold it until the doors opened, which they did in plenty of time, dumping them all into yet more dimness, this time a hallway, lushly carpeted and set with fake plants that cast long, vaguely unsettling shadows. A cart with their bags on it sat outside room 909. Dante’s father opened the door with a mag-card, then asked Dante to roll the cart into a room that smelled of fresh laundry. One of the bags—a red duffle—belonged to him. He put it on the bed closest to the window, hoping his parents wouldn’t ask him to switch. Then he went to the glass and looked out. Craning his head, he could see Euclid Avenue’s wet sidewalks stretching to the Huntington and PNC buildings. Nearer by was the State Theatre on Playhouse Square. Everything was rain and concrete gray. Not unpleasant. A day for coffee by candlelight, or a good book in an easy chair. This was the departure of 1992. Its final few steps would be from a city by the lake. “Dante?” his father called. Dante closed the curtain. “Yes?” “Your mother and I are going to wash up for the convention. Once we’re gone you’ll be on your own…probably for the rest of the night.” “Okay.” “They’re having a little party after all the boring slide-shows,” Mr. Torn went on to explain. “I guess to ring in 1993.” He spoke this last as if the holiday were normally too trivial to muck about with. For the most part that was true. Dante thought his parents might stay out late tonight, but they wouldn’t dance or get drunk. That kind of behavior simply didn’t fit their reasoned, sensible style. Some of their friends, on the other hand… “Is Joe going to be there?” Dante asked. Immediately he regretted bringing that particular friend into the conversation. Too many bad memories—bad and not so distant memories—involved Joseph Jones. And since Dante never liked the big blowhard anyway, why had he even bothered think of him? “No,” his father said, with a drop in temperature Dante could easily feel. “Joe doesn’t leave his house much these days. But don’t worry,” he added after a moment, “I’ll leave some money for you on the bed-stand.” Ouch, Dante thought. His father stared at him with eyes like the headlights of a police car. “Will there be anything else?” he said. “No,” Dante told him. “Thanks.” “Good boy. Happy New Year, Dante.” “Thanks,” Dante said again. “Happy New Year, Dad.” ∞ In less than an hour he was all by himself in the room. By then it was near six o’clock and almost full dark. Euclid Avenue had come alight, though very few Clevelanders wished to brave the damp weather. Looking out the window Dante could see a good many traffic lights serving a futile purpose. He counted their cycles—red, green, yellow, red—half a dozen times before seeing a single car. Not that the cold was solely to blame. Because of the holiday very few shops along the strip were even open. Of those that were, Dante guessed, none would welcome patrons with open arms. Yes, there were people who still had to show up for jobs over the holidays, but they didn’t expect to work. Yawning, Dante left the window. What lay beyond mattered little. He was prisoner of the hotel. Indeed, it appeared as if he might open 1993 right here in room 909, watching movies on cable television. Hoping this wouldn’t be the case but feeling powerless to avoid it, he lay back in bed with the Consorcia’s remote control and began to surf channels. What sprang up was not encouraging. First came a black and white sitcom from the fifties; next, a basketball report from two nights previous—Cavaliers 114, Hawks 96—then a Schwarzenegger movie on HBO; then snow; then a beer commercial; then another black and white, this one a movie featuring Cary Grant and Joan Fonaine. “Hello, Monkey-face!” Cary Grant sang. Dante clicked the TV off. He put the controller on the table, right next to what his father had left him for dinner tonight: fifty dollars. Not bad, he thought. I can do a lot with fifty bucks. Then he remembered he was in the Consorcia . With luck he might be able to afford a burger, fries, and a Coke at the bar. If they even let kids into the bar. If not, he would have to call room service. There was a menu next to the phone. Dante skimmed it. The meals were pricey all right, all printed in flouncy curly-cues he could barely read. In fact only the kiddy meal would leave him with change enough to tip the delivery boy. He was not going to order the kiddy meal. Tossing the menu aside, Dante reached for his shoes. He put them on, grabbed a key and the money, and left room 909. If the Hotel Consorcia couldn’t feed him on fifty dollars, he would find a deli down the street. As it turned out, there was a buffet lounge off the lobby that sold reasonably priced meals. Dante ate Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes in a quiet corner which, through an arched wooden doorway, gave him a view of the bar, where bald-headed old men drank whiskey in the dark, their glasses clinking. None of them spoke, or even smiled. They’d grown tired of the future, Dante guessed. For them New Year’s Eve had long ago lost its ability to enchant. They’d brushed the fairy dust of hope away, knowing it no longer sparkled with the power to give wings to its receiver. Instead, it brought sneezes and coughs. Dante watched one of the men put down his drink and light a cigar. Smoke clouded his face. The smoke of anguish yet to come. ∞ After dinner he found the video arcade, a by no means easy task in this particular hotel. It began with a decision not to ride the elevator back upstairs, but stroll past their shiny doors to the end of the hallway. Here an unusually dark T intersection offered two options: turn left to the convention hall (where the yachtsmen were no doubt discussing old Christopher Cross hits and whether or not Dacron was stronger than Spectra), or turn right into an even darker corridor possessed of undisclosed destinations. Dante chose right, leaving the glow of the convention to caress his shoulders. That glow quickly faded while the hallway seemed to get more narrow with every step. He passed a janitor’s closet, then an empty room with a black sink counter and a coffee pot. Steam billowed from the pot. Beside it was a white mug, its rim chipped. Dante was almost past the room when he noticed a poster on the back wall. Hesitating, he afforded it a closer look. It was an oddity. Never before had he seen anything like it, and for the life of him, he couldn’t see its purpose in a luxury hotel. It showed a flight of black stairs, beneath which floated a pair of tilted, angry green eyes. Beware All Lairs Beneath Old Stairs, a message beneath the picture read. What it was supposed to mean, besides the obvious (and ludicrous), Dante held no power to fathom. More than likely an employee had hung it there for a joke. Unsettled regardless, Dante walked to the end of the hall. Here a flight of concrete steps, uncarpeted, curved down to what he at first guessed was a parking garage. Expecting to be deposited onto a tier of chrome grills and bumpers, he rounded the curve, only to be surprised by a dim, carpeted room of blinking, blipping screens. Another poster, this one far more friendly, hovered on the wall to the right. It showed a powered-up Pac-Man gobbling colored ghosts, while on the bottom a caption proclaimed: We’ve Got To Stop Eating Like This. Delighted by his find, Dante entered the room. Huge, black video consoles—all of them lit—formed a corridor of electronic bliss. Better still, there was no one else in the room, so he had his pick of the games. He started with Ms. Pac-Man and worked his way towards the back, dropping quarters into other games like Galaga and Space Invaders and Street Fighter. Screen lives went reasonably quick, as he wasn’t an especially skilled player. This fact scarcely bothered him. The fact that the room was dark didn’t bother him either, nor that he was alone, until an hour later when he noticed a small, round table with a white card taped to it. On the card was a series of black words. Dante glanced at it once before finishing his round of Tempest. Only then did he afford it another look. In an instant all merriment came to a halt. The card’s message was not a happy one. Far from it. Closure Of This Retro-Arcade Shall Be Permanent And Absolute, it read, All Games To Be Left On For The Beguilement Of That Which Our Young Patrons Have Feared, And Spoken Of In Awkward Forums. Entrance To This Room Is FORBIDDEN Without Express Permission Of Hotel Management. Thank You. Suddenly unable to move his legs, Dante looked back along the row of consoles. He now stood at the room’s opposite end, far from the curved steps. He took a deep breath. No doubt the sign, like the poster in the coffee room, was meant to be a joke. Otherwise, why wouldn’t it be hanging at the doorway, rather than all the way back here? Still, Dante felt unnerved, and no longer wished to feed coins to the blinking machines. Letting the breath out, he took a step forward. That was when a pinball machine on his right, Gorgar , kicked a free ball to its piston, and began make sounds like a heartbeat, as if it had somehow come alive. Beat Me! a voice through its hidden speakers challenged. It was the voice of a demon, which was appropriate, considering the picture on the machine’s backboard that depicted one of the beasts. It grinned at Dante with long teeth and green eyes. Boom-Boom! thumped the heartbeat effect. Boom-Boom! Boom-Boom! Dante looked at the card again. --For The Beguilement Of That Which Our Young Patrons Have Feared— Spine tingling, he left the room at a hurried pace, not daring to look over his shoulder as he moved. He reached the top of the stairs and passed the coffee room without a glance. ∞ Back at the elevators, he asked a bellhop for directions to the swimming pool, hoping that time in a festive, public area would help calm his nerves. The bellhop obliged with a smile, along with a neat, crisp hand covered with white glove. Dante put a quarter in the hand, then made his way through the dark lobby, keeping his mind focused on the route he’d been told to use. Through the lobby, to the left, and down a long, wide hallway that led to an enormous glass dome. The young man’s instructions proved accurate. In less than two minutes Dante was at the edge of a large, rectangular swimming pool. It ran the length of an open foyer that echoed the sound of footsteps, along with that of lapping water. Above spanned the dome, black and starless, as the time was now past eight o’clock. A cloak of darkness also hovered along the far wall, where a row of plain, numbered doors slept, awaiting tenants. Few were here at the moment. Indeed, Dante could see only one—a slender lady with long red hair, swimming laps in the pool. She wore a green, two-piece bathing suit with ties that streamed elegantly, like tiny kite strings, from her body. Each kick of her legs threw up light, dainty droplets of water. “ Phew!” she breathed, her arms moving. “Phew! Whew!” Not wishing to disturb her exercise, Dante found a seat at one of the tables. From here he watched, by a series of furtive glances, as the red-haired woman swam from one end of the pool to the other, and back again. She looked quite graceful. Her slender body made scarcely a ripple upon the surface, and the music of her labored lungs was high and pretty. A couple of times she caught Dante watching, but didn’t seem to mind. She even smiled at him once. That was when he noticed her eyes, like her bikini, were green. Smiling at him again, she drew a deep breath— AHHHH!— and dove down. Dante counted to ten before she broke the surface, filling her small chest with what sounded like much needed air. “OH!” she cried, as water sprayed her twinkling eyes. “Goodness!” “Are you all right?” Dante forced himself to ask. “Yes!” the woman answered, breasts heaving. “But I should have rested a little first! Whew! Got a bit too confident with my mermaid skills!” Dante cleared his throat and nodded. He could think of no suitable response to her statement, though one seemed required, as the woman kept staring at him, her smile thin yet knowing. Knowing of what Dante couldn’t be sure, as they had only just met. Or had he perhaps seen her before? When she next spoke, it was to say that she was a relative Sunny’s, and that she knew the family of her boyfriend—of whom she spoke often, with elated fondness—was staying at the hotel for a yacht convention. “Sunny has shown me your picture many times,” the woman said, swimming to the edge of the pool to grab hold. “You can only be Dante.” At that moment her smile widened, and her eyes narrowed, so that Dante almost felt he was seeing a shark in the water. “Is my intuition correct? It normally is. My memory too.” “I’m Dante,” he told her, trying to smile back. “My name is Hadria,” the woman said. “I’m Sunny’s cousin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” With that, Hadria got out of the pool, dripping water all over the tiles. Dante put her height to be just over five feet, and guessed her weight to be not much more than a hundred pounds. She fetched a towel from a nearby table, dried herself, then took a seat next to Dante. Over the next few minutes they exchanged a smattering of simple pleasantries, with Hadria doing most of the talking while Dante punctuated her musings with tiny, awkward crumbs of information about himself. “Sunny talks about you all the time,” Hadria said again, with a friendly tap on Dante’s arm. “Being in love makes her very excited. Very happy. Of course it does. Everyone loves to be in love.” Dante noticed that every time she spoke the word love , her green eyes fluttered, and her brow wrinkled, as if she were suffering some minor discomfort. He began to wonder if perhaps this woman had once been in love, and been hurt by it. If so he didn’t care to imagine what kind of man would have inflicted the pain, for Hadria’s beauty was such that it seemed fresh with each anxious glance he sent in her direction. Her red hair, now dry, lay like a curtain of fire over shoulders delicate and narrow. Light freckles sprinkled her cheeks, which were otherwise clear, arcing back to dully pointed ears, each pierced with a small, milky-white stone. “Moonstone,” Hadria said, when she caught Dante looking. The shark smile had come back to her lips. “The stone of desire. It radiates female energy and stimulates a man’s appetite for love. I’ll loan them to Sunny for you. If you like.” Mention of his girlfriend caused Dante to blurt out what had been on his mind for several minutes now. “You look like her. Like an adult version of her.” Hadria tilted her head. The motion must have captured a ray of light reflecting off the pool water, for her green eyes then began to twinkle like stars seen on a clear, cold night. “Does that mean I interest you?” she asked in a slithering voice. Here Dante, feeling ridiculous, began to splutter explanations and apologies in equal measure. Yes, he found her to be an interesting woman, but not like that, or not like how she seemed to ascertain; not that she wasn’t interesting in that way, not at all, but he loved Sunny, he belonged to Sunny, he would never— Hadria cut him off with a laugh. “It’s all right, Dante. I know precisely what you’re trying to say.” “Thank you,” Dante gushed. “That makes one of us, at least.” At this the small woman laughed some more, glancing in opposite directions, perhaps as a way to reassure herself that no one was looking. Once she saw that they were still alone, she looked at Dante and asked: “Would you like to time how long I can hold my breath underwater? I’ve been trying to reach one minute but haven’t quite been able to.” “Sure,” Dante said. “No problem.” “I have a watch in my bag. Let me get it.” Hadria rose and walked, pixie-like, to the next table, where she rummaged briefly through a large bag and came up with a pink wrist-watch. After pressing a few of its beeping buttons, she handed the watch to Dante. Its green display showed a row of zeroes. Next to them was a button marked START. Hadria walked to the edge of the pool. After a brief glance into its depths, she dove in. Dante admired how her reedy frame barely disturbed the water. Seconds later she surfaced by the ladder, refreshing her lungs. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but I’d like to try this without a top.” Dante’s eyes widened as Hadria reached behind herself, untied the top of her bathing suit, and lay it on the tiles. “I’ll get a much deeper breath this way,” she then explained, “and also be more relaxed while holding it in.” She didn’t wait for Dante to offer an opinion on the matter. Instead, her chest began to rise with a number of heavy practice breaths. “ Ahhhhhh! Phew!” Hadria plumed, over and over. “Ahhhhh! Phew!” Unable to help himself, Dante peered through the water. It wasn’t rippling quite enough to conceal Hadria’s small, tight breasts. Her nipples, sharp with cold moisture, were like tiny white beads. Beneath them Dante could make out the bones of Hadria’s ribcage. For the time being at least, they were perky with moving air. Yet listening to the woman breathe, Dante could tell her lung capacity was small. Try as she might, Hadria’s chest just didn’t hold very much of what one needed to last long underwater. “Ready?” she asked, and in a moment Dante realized she wasn’t talking to him, but to herself. “Ready,” she answered. Her eyes jumped to Dante. Raising the watch to show that he, too, was ready, Dante gave her a nod. Then Hadria drew a final, deep breath, and slipped below the surface. ∞ When it was over, she asked if Dante wouldn’t mind carrying the large bag back to her room. He obliged readily, seeing how the woman’s chest still heaved from its prior exertion. Thanking him, Hadria put on a robe and they walked to the elevators. Her room was on the sixth floor, in the middle of a dark hallway with carpeting so brown and thick Dante thought he could almost mistake it for a river of sludge. Certainly that couldn’t be the analogy guests of the Consorcia were meant to make, but here it was. They went into Hadria’s room. She clicked on the light. Red carpeting decorated with yellow flowers sprang into view. The air smelled of lemon, as if the flowers might be real. From the wall jutted a double bed. Next to that, a desk and phone. In front of the bed stood a large entertainment table, complete with television and radio. All in all it was, Dante thought, a basic hotel room. Basic, that was, but for its occupant. “You can put the bag on the bed,” Hadria told him, “then come into the bathroom with me.” This last caused Dante’s eyes to widen. He looked at her, awaiting further explanation. She’d none to give. She draped her robe over a chair and disappeared into the bathroom without a word. Dante put her bag on the mattress. The bathroom door hung wide open. Golden light spilled from inside. Briefly, Dante considered simply leaving—of running out to the muddy hallway and away from Hadria forever. But then her voice came into the room, shocking him further with its words. “You know Sunny’s a virgin, yes?” Hadria called. “She’s frightened. You know…of being with a boy.” “I guess she would be,” Dante did his very best to reply. His feet remained stuck at the foot of the bed. Indeed, even if he could get them to move, he wasn’t sure at the moment where he wanted to go. “But then she met you,” continued Hadria, “and felt perfectly at ease. You were like a friend she once knew a long time ago, come back from a hidden grave in the wood.” Dante thought those words strange indeed. Hearing them brought a chill to his spine. He watched a shadow move across the bathroom light, nearly eclipsing it in full. This too was odd, as he’d noticed earlier the light mounted on the ceiling, and Hadria’s stature was small. But then the shadow was gone, and Hadria began talking again. “It’s so natural,” she said. “Never once have you made Sunny feel skittish or hesitant. She’s already told me she wouldn’t mind being married to you. Isn’t that beautiful?” Dante’s befuddlement at the older woman’s mannerisms continued. She didn’t call him out on it, or let his awkwardness fester. Instead she invited him, quite politely, to join her in the shower, so that she might wash with an extra pair of hands on her back. Still frightened but far too curious now for flight, Dante approached the doorway. From inside came the squeak of a handle turning, followed by the sound of flowing water. When he peered round the frame he saw Hadria in the shower, fully naked. Her back was to him, yet still, when she arched her neck to let the water flow down her chest, he was able to see the shape of her ribcage, which hadn’t held quite enough air to maintain a sixty second breath-hold underwater. The urge to touch it—to touch her—became nearly overpowering. As cool air from the sea fans a spark to a flame, luring it to rage before Selene’s tide, so the woman excited Dante, and it was all he could do not to enter the room. Only the thought of hurting Sunny held him in check. “I know you’re there,” Hadria said, not bothering to look over her shoulder. “Come inside. I could use your help. Sunny too.” “Sunny?” Dante managed. Now Hadria did look. “She’s a virgin, Dante, but she doesn’t want both of you to be. Not for her first time. She wants you confident and in control. That’s why you’re here tonight. To learn confidence and control.” “Did she tell you that?” “She most certainly did. Now get undressed. I’ll show you exactly what you need to do. We’ll go nice and slow.” With that, Hadria went back to washing herself. It was as if she knew Dante would eventually do as he was told. And less than a minute later, he did. “Good,” Hadria said, as Dante stepped into the shower. “Very good. Now I want you to just…do what comes natural. Okay? Do what comes natural.” “But you said you would show me—“ “Shhh. I will. I will.” ∞ At midnight came the explosion of pyrotechnics. Flowers of fire, large as a football stadium, burst over the lakefront, throwing fitful light upon Cleveland’s many knifelike towers, forlorn steel bridges, and grotesque offerings of abstract park art. Dante and Hadria watched from her window. Each of them drank a glass of wine. “Happy New Year,” she said, smiling up from his shoulder. “Happy New Year, Hadria,” Dante said. He felt ever so much more comfortable now in her proximity, a fact which stood to reason. He didn’t even mind that they were both still quite naked, though she’d pulled the curtain wide for the show. They watched until the fireworks ended. At the fading of the final rocket, Hadria’s room fell into a blackness almost pitch. All Dante could see, by the faint glow of downtown, were her eyes, which suddenly looked too green and too bright. They blinked at him in a cat-like, predatory way. Uneasiness began to creep back into his chest, until Hadria spoke with a voice gentle and warm as any he’d heard from the kindest of giving souls. “Take what you’ve learned tonight back to Sunny,” she said. “She’ll be so relieved by your ability to take charge. When she’s ready, of course.” Not long after, Dante dressed and left the room to return to his own on the ninth floor. Upon unlocking the door, he found it empty, the curtains closed, the beds unused. By then it was nearing one in the morning, but his father had already warned that he would probably have the whole night to himself. Not that it mattered. Dante had rung in 1993 in the best possible way any man could. The only thing left to do now was sleep. He brushed his teeth, put on a pair of pajamas, and lay down on the bed. Blinking blearily at the ceiling, he tried to imagine doing with Sunny what he’d done with Hadria. It took very little effort. Tired though his body was, his mind still seemed eager for play, so it was to Sunny’s high, devious laughter that he finally fell asleep, and dreamed of iridescent fire in black skies cold with a coming storm. CHAPTER SIXTEEN: For Dukey Happiness came from an unlikely source, breaking the groove of an elder’s course.   The farmer, who’d introduced himself as John Huntley, stood with his hands in the pockets of his overalls. He was every bit as tall as Dante’s father, but much wider, with huge brown boots on his feet, a blue bandana in his back pocket, and a red face that Dante thought looked well accustomed to smiling. All three men were in a barn on the east end of Monroeville, which was a very small town three miles west of Norwalk. In a million years Dante would never have pictured his father in such a place, but here he was. His reason lay on the floor, bundled beneath a pile of blankets. As John Huntley talked, Dante kept looking from the bundle to his father and back again, trying hard to get his mind around what he was seeing. He couldn’t do it. His father was a lot like the skyline of Cleveland—cool, pragmatic, rigid—but here, on a cold day in a cold barn, the ice had cracked. From beneath emerged a very different man. One who had not known the sun for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and looked all the more happy to feel its long overdue radiance upon his face. Dante watched as Mr. Torn knelt and, gently pulling the blankets away from their contents, began to laugh. Laugh! Mr. Torn was laughing! At this Dante almost wanted to run to the nearest phone, where he would then dial 911 and beg for assistance. “Dad?” he brought out instead. “Look at them, Dante! Just look at them!” “Yeah,” Dante said, smiling, “I’m looking.” The puppies—a litter of four shih-tzus—yipped and yapped about the teats of their mother. They were brown and black bundles of fur, with tiny, wriggling noses that poked at Dante’s hand when he tried to pet them. All looked friendly, full of energy. Ready to play for the next hundred years. “They’re not really farm dogs,” John Huntley explained as the elder Torn, to Dante’s absolute shock, picked one up and began to cuddle it. “So I figured it best to sell the pups. We’re looking to get a briard for the sheep.” “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting one of these,” Mr. Torn cooed into the baby shih-tzu’s nose. The shih-tzu licked him back. “What time is it? Huh? Huh?” “It’s almost noon,” John Huntley answered. “Is it time to go outside?” Mr. Torn went on, talking to the puppy. “Huh? Who wants to go for a walk?” John Huntley laughed. “That one’s male. And he’s yours for a hundred dollars of you’re interested.” As if he could understand this, the puppy began wagging his tail furiously. His tongue licked Mr. Torn on the nose. Instant friendship, Dante thought, dizzied by the whole scene. At that moment a warm breeze swept into the barn, kicking up a number of dried leaves gathered along a row of horse stalls. It was still January, but a false summer was upon the region, thawing John Huntley’s frozen fields into mucks of heady, wet earth smells. Dante couldn’t say he was happy to have the snow gone (no snow meant no sledding), but did enjoy the balmy winds, which had been blowing wildly all week. “Sold,” Mr. Torn said. And the puppy yipped, and continued to lick his face. ∞ “Uh…Dad?” Dante chanced, as they cruised back to Norwalk. “Are you all right?” “Of course I’m all right!” the other practically giggled. “Look at this guy!” The puppy was in his lap, with two of his paws on the steering wheel. Ready, Dante thought, to beep the horn. His father must have been thinking this same thing, because he laughed again and placed the puppy’s paw over the little BMW logo on the wheel. Then the horn went off—once, twice, three times. “Good boy!” Mr. Torn sang. “You tell that truck to move! You tell it to move right now. ” “Dad, do you want me to drive?” His father blinked for a moment. “Drive? What are you talking about? You’re thirteen years old!” And the puppy, still smiling from within all that black and brown fur, barked his assent. “Dukey,” Mr. Torn said. “You’re name is Dukey. How does that sound? Hmm?” Dukey’s tail wagged furiously, dusting Mr. Torn’s camel hair coat. Mr. Torn scratched him behind the ears. Then, to Dante’s utter horror, he emitted a series of baby sounds—coos and other silly gibberish—before leaning in to kiss Dukey spot on the nose. “Dad!” “Oh, hell,” the older Torn said, grinning like a drunkard. “He’s a puppy, Dante! Look at him!” “I’m looking, I’m looking.” “Don’t you think he’s cute?” “He’s adorable.” It’s you I can’t figure out right now, Dad, he wanted to add, but couldn’t. As the velvet petals of a baccara rose will bloom only with enough heat, so his father now bloomed. As a falcon will only fly for its master when properly motivated, so his father’s spirit—seemingly born without wings—now flew. “What do you think your mom will say?” he asked, giving Dante a little wink. Dante reached over to pet Dukey, whose pink tongue panted on a delirious smile of tiny white fangs. “She’s going to love him, Dad.” The other looked relieved. “Really?” “Really, Dad. Don’t worry.” ∞ “ Really!” Mrs. Torn shrieked. “You got a puppy! Oh my God!” She came tearing into the garage with arms wide and snatched Dukey from her husband’s arms. “Isn’t he great?” Mr. Torn asked, with perhaps a hint of trepidation. “He’s beautiful! Just beautiful!” “I thought so, too. We went out to John Huntley’s farm to see about a boat trailer and found this little guy instead.” Mrs. Torn cuddled the puppy’s nose and asked if he had a name yet. Then they both got back in the car. Dukey needed puppy food. Of course he did. And chew toys. And snacks. And a collar. And a bed. They forced a promise from Dante not to let anything bad happen to the puppy while they were gone. He assured them—repeatedly—that Dukey would be in safe hands, and they could take as much time shopping as they needed. Satisfied, they drove off, but not before a few words of encouragement from his father. “Get to know him, Dante,” he pressed. “Play with him. Have fun.” Dante waved as the Bimmer backed of the driveway. Mr. Torn turned too soon and bumped into the trash can, knocking it over. Rather than curse his clumsiness (which he did whenever it reared its audacious head), he laughed, pointed to his temple, and made a twirling gesture. “I’ll get it, Dad, don’t worry!” Dante shouted. “Be cool, Dante!” his dad shouted back. “Wow,” Dante said to himself as the Bimmer purred off. “’Be cool.’ My dad actually said that. I must be out of my head.” He picked up the trash can before going back inside to entertain the family’s new member. A smell of pee struck him straight away. It was in the kitchen—a small puddle of it, gleaming on the linoleum. It took a few minutes to get the mop out of the closet, fill the bucket with soapy water, and clean the mess. During that time Dante took no notice of anything wrong. Whistling, he rinsed out the bucket in the bathroom, then slid it back into the closet. Mission accomplished. “Dukey!” he called, washing his hands at the sink. No answer. Dante went back to the kitchen—the scene of the crime. The refrigerator purred in its cozy little corner. A burble came from the water dispenser. “Dukey!” Dante called again, peeking at a forest of dog-less chair legs under the table. He checked the living room next, where a clean carpet for once meant bad news. He looked under the sofa and behind the stairs. He even took a moment to peer inside the fireplace. Still no dog. Now he whistled before calling Dukey again. When no answer came, Dante went to the garage. Perhaps the dog had slipped out while Mr. Torn was fumbling with his keys, though this was unlikely. Yes, Dukey had enjoyed riding in the car, but he had been in the kitchen when the parents went out, Dante felt sure of that. Anyway, Dante’s father didn’t fumble keys. Dante’s father didn’t fumble anything. A cold wind rattled the garage door. After a quick look around Dante knew he wouldn’t find the little shi-tzu. There was a rake, a workbench, a lawn mower. But no shi-tzu. He went back inside, locked the door, and tried to think of where else Dukey might be. Not upstairs, certainly. Eight week old puppies didn’t climb stairs. The loose pretzel twist of fear that had been in his stomach since this weird search started now felt tighter. More painful. Pretty soon he was going to need some sea salt and cheese dip. “Dukey!” he yelled, suddenly angry. “Get your butt out here!” When that didn’t work, he sat down at the table for a few deep breaths. “Okay,” he said to himself, “okay. Think, Dante. You’re a new puppy in a big house. Where would you go?” He rose, went to the living room again, checked behind the piano. No soap. He returned to the kitchen and opened the cupboards under the sink. A couple of things presented themselves here, none of them good. A spilled bottle of Mr. Clean oozed yellow liquid over a tundra of mouse poop. The poop led to a Victor trap, sprung, with dead perpetrator inside. A lifeless eye gleamed at Dante. Bones from a broken neck. “Great,” Dante said, “another mess.” He was back outside in the garage, depositing the mouse in its new trash can hotel, when the phone rang. Dusting his hands, he went to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver. “Dante!” Mr. Torn boomed. Dante had to rub his ear a moment before answering. “Yeah, Dad.” “How’s Dukey?” “Oh…not bad.” Immediately his father’s voice became suspicious. “Not bad? What is he, an old geezer who just got home from a doctor’s appointment? Tell me how he is.” “Sorry. He’s good. Sincerely.” “Put him on the phone.” “Put him on the phone? How can I do that?” Mr. Torn raised his voice. “Put him on the phone.” “All right, all right. Hold on.” Moving the receiver away from his lips, Dante called: “Dukey! Here, boy!” “Oh my God!” he heard his father say. “Is he responding to commands already? What a good dog!” “ Reow! Reow! Reow!” Dante went, doing his best puppy imitation. “Arf! Arf!” “You sweet little baby!” came Mr. Torn’s gushing response. “Your papa loves you! Yes he does! Yes he does!” Dante looked at the receiver as if it had suddenly grown antlers. “Can you put Dante back on the phone? Huh? Huh?” “I’m here, Dad,” Dante said. “We’re coming home. We’ve got all the stuff we need. Tell Dukey we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” “Um…okay. Dukey! Fifteen more minutes.” The line clicked. Mr. Torn had hung up. “Dammit!” Dante hissed at the empty kitchen. “What am I going to do?” That was when his eye fell on the basement door. It was open a crack. “Oh no,” he said. “No. It can’t be.” He crossed the linoleum, put his hand on the door, pushed. It creaked open on a flight of dark, wooden stairs. At the bottom was blackness. His hand felt along the wall and found the light switch. The dreaded light switch that, once flipped, would illuminate a puppy’s stiff body on the basement floor. Yes. Surely that’s what had happened. Mr. Torn’s new puppy had fallen down the steps like someone’s grandmother with a laundry basket. Now he was gone. Bracing himself for the worst, Dante flipped the switch. A concrete floor, thirteen steps down, leaped into view. Much to his relief, nothing soiled it. It was, in fact, quite clean. Perfectly swept. A person could eat off that floor. It was that beautiful. Whistling for Dukey, Dante went down. Once at the bottom he looked under the steps to see if Dukey might have fallen through halfway down. But no. There was only an old ping-pong table, folded, along with a torn instruction book on kung-fu. The washing area was also innocent. A mouse-trap, this one unsprung, lay behind the clothes dryer. Next to it were someone’s pressed initials from when this floor was set, over a century ago: V.L.F. “Ten minutes,” Dante said to himself, “I have ten minutes to find that dog.” He spent five of those minutes walking around the basement, whistling. Then he ran back upstairs. His mother’s mantle clock ticked from the fireplace mantle. Beyond that, nothing in the house moved. Then came the sound of a car engine. Dante ran to the window and looked. His chest loosened. The car wasn’t a Bimmer—not even close. It was a Dodge Aspen from 1974. How is it those things are even still running? Dante wondered. And that was when Dukey whimpered from somewhere close by. With less than two minutes to go, Dante began to search with fresh gusto, clapping his hands, calling Dukey’s name. Through the kitchen window he caught sight of another car, this one unmistakably his father’s, approaching the drive. Dukey whimpered again. Wherever he’d gotten lost, it wasn’t in the kitchen. His call for help had come from the hallway, where Dante now ran. The Bimmer pulled into the garage. Dante heard the electric door open, the car slide in, the engine cut. Two car doors opened, slammed closed. Keys jingled. “Dukey!” Dante screamed, desperate. “Come on, boy! Where are you?” “Dante?” his father called from the garage. “Why are you yelling at Dukey?” “We’re just playing, Dad!” He heard his father’s key in the back door lock. The lock began to turn. Dante ran back to the basement door and tripped over a basket of clothes his mother had left there. The clothes—and Dante—spilled down the hall. Slacks. Socks and underwear. Rubbing his knee, Dante sat up. His parents stepped into the hallway. “What happened?” Mrs. Torn asked. “Dante, why are you on the floor?” “Dukey!” Mr. Torn yelled. Dante blinked at him. “What?” “Dukey, you sweet little schi-tzu! Come here! Aww!” Dante looked at the overturned basket. Two beady eyes, a tiny black nose, and a big smile shined from beneath a blue blouse. Mr. Torn put down the bags he was carrying, knelt and scooped up the puppy. The puppy gave him a big, furry kiss on the cheek. “Aww!” Mr. Torn cooed. “Aww! Is Daddy’s puppy okay? Is he? Huh?” Dukey barked to show that he was okay. “You’re just a sweet little guy, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Yes you are!” “I think your father’s in love,” Dante’s mother said to him. Clearly she liked the idea. The smile on her face gave it all away. “Did you trip over the basket?” “Yeah,” Dante told her. “My bad. Me and Dukey were playing.” “Silly. But just to make sure you don’t fall again, think you can take the basket downstairs for me?” “Sure, Mom.” His father heard nothing of this exchange. He was still cooing and petting and kissing Dukey. Dante put the spilled clothes back into the basket while his parents took Dukey to the kitchen to show him his toys. He carried the basket down to the basement. Sounds of a squeaky toy soon followed, along with a thousand or so happy yips and barks. “You go get your ball!” His dad’s voice. Laughter from his mom. “Go on! Go on!” I don’t get this, Dante thought. Who are you people and what have you done with my parents? Deciding that it didn’t really matter, he ran up the steps to play with Dukey. He didn’t get what was going on with his mom and dad, but he thought he could get to like it just fine. Just fine indeed. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: I Think A Man Should Be Strong… Whenever it seemed like things were fine came the flash and the tremble from a distant storm line.   Dante received a D on his book report from Mr. Wolfe. It surprised him, not because the report wasn’t especially bad (it was), but because Mr. Wolfe, normally mild and highly forgiving of his students, had scratched a nasty criticism across the top of Dante’s title page: BORING! Dante looked up from his desk. Mr. Wolfe sat before a blank chalkboard, scribbling in a grade book. His face looked set. Expressionless. Down to business. His desk, Dante noticed, seemed a bit off, a bit strange. A brown, half-eaten apple lay on its side. Untidily stacked papers drooped over the waste-basket like melting ice. Stacey was Dante’s seatmate in English. Now he turned to her and asked: “Is he okay?” She looked at him. “Who?” “Mr. Wolfe. He’s acting a little off lately.” “Oh! Oh, yes.” Her eye went to the English teacher, who still wasn’t addressing the class, though the bell had sounded five minutes ago. “You haven’t been told? Word’s going around the halls.” “No,” Dante said. “What’s wrong?” Mr. Wolfe’s head snapped up. “Are you people talking?” he demanded bitterly to know. No one answered. “All right then,” he went on, “if you can manage to stay shut up for a few more minutes we’ll begin.” Dante gaped in astonishment. He turned to Stacey and saw that she was doing the same thing. “Wow,” she whispered. “It’s worse than I thought.” “What’s going on?” Dante whispered back, cupping a hand round his mouth. “It’s his wife,” Sunny’s friend replied. “She left him over Christmas. They’re getting a divorce.” Mr. Wolfe scowled again. His eyes were red, as if he hadn’t slept in a week. He warned the class that if he heard one more word—just one more—he would keep everyone behind this afternoon for detention. How did that sound? Did it sound good? Because he meant it. Oh yes. Anyone who thought otherwise was welcome to test him. No one did. ∞ At lunch Sunny kissed him and told him to eat his green peas. She smoothed the wrinkles on his shirt, brushed a lock of hair from his eyes. She didn’t seem to know about his encounter with Hadria over the holidays—or if she did, then her cousin had been telling the absolute truth, and this was how Sunny wanted things to be. Not that Dante would ever dare speak to her about that night at the Hotel Consorcia. Rather, he paid extra close attention to her mannerisms throughout January, in case she let a clue slip that his secret was not really a secret at all. Dante didn’t think it was. But if her mannerisms were the same today, her attire certainly wasn’t. Perhaps as a means of countering the dreary skies and bitter cold that had crushed the region’s false summer like a sudden illness, she’d come to school in bright colors. A yellow blouse floated on her chest; a stonewashed denim skirt clung to her pelvis. Pink ear-rings swung from her lobes as she listened to the other girls. What those girls were saying marked another slightly unusual difference for this particular lunch hour. Their chatter, which normally consisted of clothes, music, and TV shows, had taken a turn into more serious territory. A dark-skinned girl named Rajani was telling the table how she’d just lost her grandmother. It had happened at church, she said with eyes wet, up near Port Clinton. A heart attack. Total collapse in the pews. A ambulance was called. Priests and nuns had tried to assist her in the meantime, which only seemed to make matters worse. She’d wailed, Rajani said, pushing her lunch away as a lost cause. She’d begged them to get away and leave her alone. “Maybe she was afraid of being read Last Rites,” Dante said. “I’ve read about that. Church-goers not wanting to see priests when they’re sick.” “My grandmother didn’t go to church,” Rajani said. “Ever.” Dante blinked. “Somebody took her,” the other went on to explain. “Somebody pulled her in. Then she died.” Now Dante felt a hand on his knee. It was Sunny’s. “Who took her?” she asked Rajani. “Do you know?” Rajani shook her head. “Can you find out?” The head shake became a weak nod. “Maybe.” “Do it. Then I’ll have my dad handle the rest. Speaking of which”—she smiled at Dante—“that little business trip of his I told you about? It’s happening on my birthday. March fifteenth.” “Wow,” Dante said. “And you’ll be alone in the house?” “No. My dad says I’m not allowed to be alone.” “Okay—“ “You’re going to be there, Mister.” Sunny’s green eyes sparkled. “Right?” The entourage began to giggle mischievously. Even Rajani looked better. Holding court as the queen bee, Sunny gave everyone a nod. Her hand found Dante’s under the table, slipped inside. It was soft and dainty, the nails sharp. Dangerous yet delicate. Dante stroked her fingers. He gave them a light, careful squeeze. “So it should be interesting,” Sunny said to the table, as if all of the girls were going to be there on March fifteenth. “But between now and then we have some business to take care of.” The girls leaned forward. None of them were smiling now. Their eyes were wide and unblinking. Plates were pushed aside, straws bent down. Rajani had wiped her tears. “As everyone already knows,” Sunny began, lowering her voice, “we have a plan of pain set in motion for the little Girl Scout known as Maris Dubois.” She shot Dante a look after saying this last. “Is that what her surname is?” Dante asked innocently. “In order for the plan to work,” she continued, “we had to involve someone else. A boy named Shaya Blum. He usually eats lunch right down there.” She indicated an empty seat clear down by the lunch counter. “He seems to be absent today, but who cares as long as he doesn’t die on us.” The girls all tittered. Dante felt along Sunny’s fingers, investigating the sharpness of her nails. Were they volatile at the moment? Did they still wish to cut him over that whole fiasco about remembering Maris’ last name? It seemed not. Indeed, her hand felt more like a sleeping kitten. Relaxed and content. As for the rest of her… “Quiet, please,” she ordered. Everyone shut up. “Good. Now what we’re going to do is humiliate Maris in front of the whole school. Destroy her popularity. I figured the best way to do that is to go political. So I made Dante write a mock love letter. Or rather a poem. The poem is addressed to Maris and looks like it comes from Shaya. Again, all of you know this already; this is just for review. Questions so far?” Stacey’s hand went up. “How will you make the handwriting look like Shaya’s?” she asked. “I think I’ve pretty much nailed that,” Sunny told the group. “I’ve been practicing with some stolen samples. In fact I stole one of his notebooks. His handwriting is crap. I had to use my right hand to make the letters stagger all over the page.” More laughter from the girls. This time Dante joined in. “Remember I offered to do the copying,” he reminded. “You adamantly refused.” “I adamantly refused,” Sunny repeated. “I didn’t want you to feel like you were doing everything.” “Not at all.” “Anyway,” she went on, “it should be convincing enough for Maris. Have any of you ladies ever gotten a love poem?” They looked at each other. To judge by their clueless expressions, Dante guessed none of them even knew what a love poem was. “Me either,” Sunny said, with a hint of accusation. Dante blushed. “Oh God, you’re right—“ At that moment a fat fly, the biggest he had ever seen, fell onto Sunny’s plate and began to squirm for life in the pasta sauce. Sunny gave it a scowl. She did not look appalled or even the tiniest bit grossed-out. Rather, Dante thought, she wanted to smash the creature with her fist. But she didn’t smash it. Her eyes went back to the group. “When you get a love letter you don’t go analyzing the handwriting,” she said. “Assuming of course the boy is brave enough already to put his name on it. And lucky us, Shaya has guts he never knew about.” “But how will we expose it to the whole school?” Stacey blurted, then slapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry!” she said into her palm. Sunny looked at her steadily. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a fair question. It was also the biggest challenge of this whole sting. I was stuck on it for a long time.” “Was?” Dante asked. “That’s right,” she said, smiling theatrically. “Because it’s solved. It took me a long time because I tried too hard. I made the whole problem bigger than it actually was.” Sunny leaned forward, gesturing for everyone else to do the same. Her green eyes were as the gecko of gold day dust, disport with predatory gleam. Her grin was the grin of a shadowed gargoyle high above a rainy street. “I’m going to have a hundred copies made,” her tongue slithered. “Then we—all of us—are going to hang them up in the halls.” “Wow!” Stacey said. She sounded too full of delight this time to care about mindful ordinance. Sunny kept talking. “Put them on lockers. Put them on chalkboards and bathroom mirrors. In library books. Stairwells. Tack them to bulletin boards. Put one on Mr. Hogan’s butt if you think it’ll help.” “Ew,” Rajani grimaced. “Just make certain they’re seen. By a lot of people. The more the manier.” “Merrier,” Dante said. “Exactly. Does everyone understand?” The girls all nodded. Dante put a hand on Sunny’s knee and squeezed. “You will each get a measured amount of copies,” she went on gravely. “Don’t lose them. And don’t hide any back. I shall know if you do.” Her voice was cold as dirt thrown over a grave. The girls all nodded again, but this time nodding didn’t cut it. “Everyone say: Yes, Sunny, I understand. Right now.” To which the girls immediately complied. Sunny looked at Dante. She didn’t expect him to comply; rather, she was asking for his approval. He gave it. “Very good,” he said to the girls. “Wait for your copies to come. Sunny and I will take care of them.” He looked at Sunny. “How does Valentine’s Day sound for activation of our devious little plot?” “It sounds good, Sir,” Sunny replied, before again addressing the table: “Everyone hear that? Valentine’s Day. Let me hear a yes, Dante and Sunny this time.” “ Yes, Dante and Sunny,” the girls responded, almost robotically. “Then we’re finished for now. At ease, ladies.” There came a high, musical sound—the breeze of winter through black thorns—as several pairs of female lungs let out a breath. Then, as if on cue, the lunch bell rang, and everyone adjourned. ∞ At the end of the day Dante went to Sunny’s locker. Not that it was a long trip—only straight across the hall from his own—but he met her there often to carry her bag and walk her outside. Today Sunny’s locker was closed. She’d either already been here or hadn’t arrived yet. It didn’t alarm him at first. She’d told him earlier that her dad had gotten off work early and would be here to pick them both up. Perhaps she was already waiting outside. He turned to go and bumped into Stacey. Her books hit the floor, the pages splattering open. “I’m sorry!” she gushed, kneeling to pick up the mess. “Omigosh!” Dante knelt with her, grabbing the books. “Don’t be silly. It was my fault. Listen, have you seen Sunny?” “Yeah, she went to the girls’ room. The one beside the science lab.” Dante picked up the last book— Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison—and handed it to her. “Thank you. Take care getting home.” He went to the science lab still thinking Sunny was okay. Other students gave half-hearted waves as he passed, but things were thinning out now, getting quiet. A boy wearing a denim jacket stopped to get a drink, then went outside. Another followed him from the library. After that Dante was alone. He waited by the girls’ room for a minute before someone came out—a mouse with brown hair and glasses. Dante asked her if Sunny was inside. The girl claimed not to know Sunny, but said she was quite sure she’d been alone in the bathroom. Dante thanked her. He was beginning to worry now, to feel an instinct old and natural as fire swell in his chest. Hoping she had indeed gone outside after all, he took a step towards the exit— And stopped as a sound of breaking glass came from the lab. Dante went to the door. It should have been locked but wasn’t. The knob turned in his hand. Another noise came. Springy. Metal on tile. The sound of a chair being dropped. Dante opened the door to find Sunny pinned at the back of the room by a short, muscular boy with blond hair. The boy held her wrists against the wall. Sunny’s face was twisted with pain. Tears wet her cheeks. “Are you gonna say you’re sorry?” the boy asked. He squeezed Sunny’s hand, making her wince. And slowly, silently, Dante came up behind him. “Come on. Say it. I’m sorry, Billy. ” Dante got directly at his back and stopped. “Hello, Billy,” he said. Billy let go of Sunny. He spun around. Though short, he had powerful-looking arms and a wide chest. Dante thought he recognized him as being on the JV wrestling team. He also recognized him from somewhere else, though for the moment it didn’t matter. Nor did Billy’s muscles, or the sneer on his face. Right now only one thing mattered. Only one. Smiling, Dante said: “I’m sorry, Billy.” He picked Billy up and threw him over one of the desks. The desk fell over, spilling broken pencils. Billy hit his head on a chair. Snarling, he leaped to his feet. He cocked a fist at Dante. Dante punched him in the eye. Billy screamed and flew backward over another desk. “I’m sorry,” Dante said again, “that I’m gonna beat you so badly you’re gonna need an ambulance.” He hesitated. “Oh wait. No I’m not.” And then he proceeded to beat Billy very, very badly, slamming his head on the tiles, the chairs. He punched Billy in the nose and felt it break. Blood flew. Crimson droplets of life. Some of it splattered Mr. Sitz’s desk. Dante didn’t care. He slammed Billy against the chalkboard, cracking its slate wide. A huge piece fell on the floor. Then he punched him under the chin so hard it knocked him cold. The sound of crying made him stop. Chest heaving, Dante turned to see his girlfriend still standing at the back wall. Her knees were buckled; her hair was a mess. Make-up streaked her face. But she was smiling at Dante like a shark. “That,” she told him, “was so, so awesome. Really, Dante. Wow.” He went to her, jumping over toppled furniture, so she could fall into his arms. “Baby?” he whispered, holding her close. “Sweetheart? Are you all right?” “I’m fine,” she sobbed. “I’m okay.” But her whole body was shaking. Dante thought if he let her go she might fall. “Easy,” he told her. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. It’s all right.” “Did you kill him?” she asked. “I don’t know.” “Could you, please? Never mind,” she added quickly. “We’re at school. I’ll have Daddy do it.” Dante wanted to laugh, except he wasn’t quite certain just how funny Sunny was trying to be. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Do you want me to carry you?” “I sure do, but I think it would attract too much attention. Let’s just walk.” Dante’s eye went to the mess. Toppled furniture, broken chalkboard, blood. Knocked out jerk on the floor. “I think,” he began clumsily, “I’ll be going to juvenile home. The one on Benedict Avenue most likely—“ “No one will know about this,” Sunny said into his ear. “Daddy will handle it. All of it.” “I hope that’s true,” he said, not really believing it was. How could anyone cover up chaos like this? “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Sunny said with a little laugh. “It’s all right. And thank you.” She kissed his ear, and then his cheek. And then on the lips. “Very.” Kiss. “Very.” Kiss. “ Very much.” Dante let his arms tighten around her. Despite what had happened, the assault she’d experienced, the pain, the fear, he was smiling. This probably wasn’t the best time to tell her he loved her. They stood on a bloody battlefield, the enemy conquered. It probably wasn’t the best time—it was probably better than that. It was probably perfect. “I love you, Sunny,” he said. And if her green eyes were to suddenly catch fire and burn him to death for that statement, so be it. Instead they shined, like two planets set beneath the moon on a wintery night, where ice hung from the eaves of abandoned places, and bare trees trembled along unkempt boundaries of snowy fields. “I know you do, Dante,” she whispered. “I know. Just like I’ve always known you were the one.” She kissed him again. “Let’s go, before somebody comes in.” Dante gave Billy one last look. He was beginning to stir. His eyes blinked. Saliva drooled from his chin. “Isn’t this the kid we saw at the lockers last year?” Dante asked. “The one who got bitten by the spider?” And Sunny, gently tugging him towards the door: “Yes. Come on, Dante. My dad’ll be outside.” Billy blinked some more and looked around blearily. Dante wanted to kick the brute one last time for good measure, but couldn’t. Sunny was right. They had to get gone. They slipped into the hall, where no one saw them, and outside to the January sun, which burned in a sky so blue it was a wonder fish weren’t swimming in it. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: The Girl Downstairs Donati came home from the clinic still sick, though cotton continued to burn from his wick.   It had long since been unnecessary for Dante to knock at number 114 on his Sunday visits. The opera singer had given him a key, kept supple by an oiled pouch, which he now used in the home’s ancient lock. It was ten in the morning. The smell of fresh cappuccino should have greeted him in the anteroom. Donati should have been up and about, fiddling with breakfast, smiling, beckoning Dante inside. This morning the hall was quiet, the stairs empty. Peering into the classrooms-turned-living rooms, Dante could see two cold fireplaces. The table where they ate brioche was clean and bare. He went to the kitchen already knowing what he would find. And sure enough, it too was empty. None of this surprised him. Donati had not been home from the hospital long. Along with heart medication, his doctors were prescribing extra rest, and more vegetables in his diet. Dante went to the stairs half wondering if he should go up and check on the old man. Deciding not to, he turned to go, and that was when Donati called from one of the upper rooms. “Is that you, Dante?” his cracked voice asked. “It’s me,” Dante said. “How are you this morning, Mr. Donati?” Shuffling footsteps across the hall. Slippers on wood. Donati appeared at the top of the stairs. “A storm rumbles on the horizon, young man,” he said as he started carefully down, “but it has yet to reach the happy streets.” “You look well,” Dante lied. The singer looked rather more like Ebenezer Scrooge. He’d lost weight, and now his bathrobe, rather than bulge around his once formidable belly, hung like a beaten battle flag on a bent pole. Clinging to the rail, Donati took the steps as the child he once was, using his right foot to come down, hesitating, bringing the left, then moving again with his right. Help him, dummy, called a voice from some great distance in Dante’s mind. He helped the singer into the living room and got him sat down in his usual chair. Donati thanked him. He tightened the belt of his robe. Then he asked for brioche . “I think your doctor would prefer strawberries and chamomile tea,” Dante told him. “And if he were here he could have some,” Donati said with a smile. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant—“ “I know, dear boy, I know.” He tilted his head. “Do you know how to make toast?” “Of course.” “And wrap it around ice cream?” “I think I can manage. If you truly insist.” “The truth is typically an unhappy thing,” Donati said. “And food makes me happy. So let’s eat brioche and call it a lie.” ∞ They took breakfast without speech, clinging forks on the plates, slurping from coffee mugs. The only other sound was that of the fire, which Dante had taken time light, and the constant aging of the house. Sighs from peeling paint, groans from warped wood. The creak of subsidence in some far off empty room. When Donati’s plate was clean he asked Dante about school. How were his grades? Going up or going down? Dante told him they had leveled off, but were still low. Cs and Ds mostly. The singer became appalled. He asked what was wrong. Was it concentration? Self-confidence? Or something else? “A girlfriend,” he ventured. “ The girlfriend.” Dante waved the allusion off. “No, no. Sunny’s cool.” “I see. And what of that despicable letter? Has it been deployed to its intended target?” It took Dante a moment to gather what Donati was talking about. “The poem you mean,” he replied flatly. “Not yet. But we’ve set a date.” “Is there no way I can change your mind about sending it at all?” “I…don’t think so,” Dante admitted. The other shook his head. “Sad.” His fork found a bit of brioche left on the plate, lifted it to his mouth. “Sad,” he repeated, “but here I am, still happy to be your friend. I am ipocrita. A hypocrite.” “Don’t beat yourself up,” Dante told him. “But I must. At times the only teacher we can listen to is ourselves. Indeed, that voice that speaks in our brains, the voice of Virgil, the voice of reason , is always the strongest. It knows what’s best.” “What is it telling you now?” Donati looked at him with a dab of ice cream hanging on his chin. “You’re a good boy who has been mislead by beauty. Fleur de feu. That is French. It means flower of fire. It happened to me once, a long time ago. Would you care to hear?” “Please,” Dante said, in all sincerity. “Then perhaps you should boil more water for cappuccino.” ∞ It happened somewhere between 1958 and 1960. Our choir from Nascosto Villagio had not been out of Rome for long. The Pope enjoyed our singing, but of course there were other choirs that deserved a chance to be heard, and indeed other Catholic places on the planet that deserved a chance to hear us. One of those places was the Philippine Islands. We flew to its capital to perform at a beautiful church in the village of Intramuros—a Latin worded meaning within the walls— which is even today considered the heart of Manila, and at the age of five hundred, is its very oldest section. I arrived at San Agustin Cathedral on a sweltering hot day. It must have been the end of April. High summer in the Philippines. At that time of year the planet is tilted in just such a way to bring the full effect of the sun directly upon the islands. We were ants under a magnifying glass. It tell you, boy, it burned. Sweat dripped from your body. The air felt weighty and reluctant to nourish your lungs. It was like being trapped inside of a stove. And no matter where you went that sun found a way to reach you. It gouged at my eyes. It cooked my arms brown. During my time in the tropics I came to despise anything having to do with hydrogen and helium. It hasn’t gone away. You may have noticed by now that I almost always prefer to stay indoors. We stayed at the church on that first day, and when evening fell, we did our show. It went well despite the heat. Manila in those days was a clean city filled with respectful, decent citizens. And of course any church-goer is urbane. The priest was also very kind. He enjoyed our singing and asked us to hold over for more shows. That was a lucky break, for while we all relished the idea of flight to cooler venues, none of us were keen on more road travel, especially having just arrived from Italy. We slept that night in the church’s stony basement, deep beneath the streets. My chamber in particular was quite set apart from the others, and possessed of a cool draft which immediately earned my gratitude, though I could never locate its source. The candle at my bedside flickered throughout the night, as did a number of pages from an open Bible, their fluttering disturbing my sleep to the extent that I was forced to rise and close the cover. In the morning we ate a delightful breakfast with the bishop. He, too, had been impressed with our performance. It would very much please him, he went on, to have such a talented group of singers continue to display their abilities for the Catholics of Intramuros. We rehearsed after lunch, then performed that very evening for anyone who wanted to come and hear. The nave was huge, and because of the heat the church’s massive doors were kept open, allowing passers by to see the gold of candlelight through the arches, and become entranced. Later that night I returned to my chamber. The draft was waiting. That it hadn’t decided to leave made me happy. I lay awake until midnight with a book, drowsing over the pages until at last sleep carried me off. Hours later I awoke in pure darkness. Remember we were deep in the basement, near the crypts. The rooms had no windows. But that strange draft had found a way to put out my candle. And from across the room I could hear it: the pages of the Bible, fluttering. This was odd, since I knew I hadn’t myself opened it. I lit the candle, rose, and once more closed its cover. Then I went back to sleep. We sang at the church for perhaps two months, drawing decent crowds even on days when there were no sermons. When not singing, I was strolling the streets of Intramuros, getting acquainted with its ancient stone walls. The sidewalks were clean, and for a time swept with a spectacular pink show of Dona Luz petals from a number of blossoming trees. I shopped in several bookstores and drank coffee at lovely cafes, many of which served brioche . In one such café I met a barista who told me about an apartment for rent off nearby Dewey Boulevard. It had to have been June by this time, for the choir’s run at San Agustin was nearing its end. Indeed, the choir itself would soon be no more. Two of our tenors had found work at a theater in the Ukraine and were leaving soon. Two other female singers had just gotten engaged. The group’s time together was winding down. We had at best two weeks’ worth of shows left. Soon to be in need of a place to lay my head at night, I visited the address off Dewey. Mind you I never would have bothered to do this at all, except that I, too, had been lured from the choir by a singing offer from Manila’s Lyric Theater, which often held operas. A troupe there was in need of a baritone voice, and I was in need of broader vistas upon which to let my interests frolic. As luck would have it, the cab driver who took me from Intramuros was not familiar with the address; thus, we were forced to tool around a number of quiet, shaded barangays that looked as alien to me as the blood eye of Zeus upon a midnight desert landscape. Making things stranger still were the heavily clouded skies, rumbling with violent dreams that would soon become reality. Summer was over and the rains were near. The cabbie warned me about this in English that I found surprisingly good, when I asked to be let off so I might find the address on my own. He would have none of it. Setting his meter to pause, he said that to step out now would mean certain drenching from the deluge poised over our heads. I peered out my window to see that the skies were even darker than they’d been five minutes ago, and a wind had gotten up, bending the branches of myriad flowered trees along the residential lane. And yet the rains held off, even as the kindly driver—a middle-aged man who introduced himself as Milo—at last located the address. It was a three-storied white house with an unkempt lawn cut through by a broken sidewalk. Dead leaves swirled on its dusty concrete porch, and its windows were all black. It didn’t look to me as if anyone were home, so I thanked Milo for the ride, then asked if he might wait a few extra minutes should my appeal at the doorbell prove fruitless. He agreed, and not wishing to waste more of his time than necessary, I hurried across the lawn and up a short flight of crooked steps. The bell was an antique—the kind with a handle you had to twist to make ring. I did so. To my great surprise the door was pulled open after only a few moments. A very small, very old woman peered at me through enormous square glasses. Using my best Tagalog, I began to inquire about the apartment. She nodded, saying that yes, there was indeed a unit available for rent at this address, but no, she could not give me a proper showing today, as she was just on her way to a dentist appointment. I remember that her name was Mrs. Dominguez. Might I be available to return tomorrow at this same time? she asked. She spoke mostly in English, which enabled us to retreat from my own linguistic ineptitude. I thanked her and said that of course I could come back. She then gave me a quick look at the apartment, which seemed adequate. This after I informed Milo I would only be another five minutes. I returned next day at the exact same time and under very similar weather conditions. Such is the season from June to September in the Philippines. Afternoon storms flood the streets; at midnight they flood them again. In between lie the churning, tumultuous skies which I already mentioned, at hopeless war with Apollo, yet clinging in paradox to that language of his poetry which speaks through the voice of other deities: the wind and rain, the sigh of cooled trees; fallen foliage at play down the street; garden flower scents swept away to far off places. The landlady did not answer. Instead the door opened on a girl of perhaps twenty, small and slender, wearing a plain but rather pretty white dress that complimented her delicate curves. I stammered a bit, taken aback by her beauty, before regaining the course of my thoughts to give my name, along with the purpose of my visit. Mrs. Dominguez was out for the day, the girl informed, but that was all right, for she’d been told to expect me. “My name is Princess,” she said, pulling the door wide. “Come inside and let’s look at the apartment.” I was startled by her invitation, for yesterday we had not gone through the Dominguez apartment, but to a separate door—the vacancy’s main door—at the house’s far end. Still, the environment beyond Princess’ shoulder looked harmless enough; thus, I left my shoes on the wind-swept porch and followed her inside. Her beauty continued to distract me. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and forced to make a guess, I would have put her weight at around one hundred pounds. Her feet, tiny and bare, made no sound as we passed through a clean, quiet living room decorated with wood furniture, then into a shiny kitchen where hovered the faint scent of coffee and dish cleaner. Princess opened another door which let on a long balcony connecting the two apartments. It overlooked a lawn of flowered trees, pink and red, that were just now beginning to sway with the winds of a coming storm. The door of the vacant apartment opened onto another kitchen—one I had already seen, if briefly. Only today the floors were swept, the counters polished. A window was open to invite the flowery breeze, which lifted Princess’ hair as if in attempt to lure her out to the boughs for a dance with the petals. I checked under the sink for leaky pipes. All seemed dry. Next I looked for rotted wood along the cabinetry. Again I was satisfied. Princess then led me into the living room. She turned on a light that cast an orange glow over the cloudy-day shadows. A spacious, clean room presented itself. The ceiling was high, the floor sturdy. One thing I hadn’t noticed the day before was a flight of stairs at the archway, going down. “Where do these go?” I asked Princess. She smiled. “To the basement apartment, where I live. I’m a student at Mary Cause Of Our Joy College.” “Ah!” I answered. “What do you study there?” “Hotel management. Showing this apartment for you is actually giving me a nice little dry run in the business.” “I can see how it would. And you’re doing a lovely job,” I added, hoping not to sound absurd. “Thank you, Mr. Donati.” She smiled again and, to my utter astonishment, performed a lovely little curtsey. “Most Filipinas my age still live at home with family, but both of my parents are dead. I’m able to afford the apartment and school with money they left me.” At this I had no idea how to react. I did my best to convey sympathy through tilted brows and downturned mouth, along with offering one of those tiny nods one reserves for occasions when words simply will not do. We looked at the bedroom next. I had no complaints, and told Princess I would be happy to accept the apartment if Mrs. Dominguez would have me. The show of modesty made her laugh. “Of course she’ll have you,” she said. “She goes to the church where you sing.” “Oh,” I said. “She didn’t tell me.” “Come back tomorrow. Mrs. Dominguez will be here, and chances are she’ll let you move right in.” At that exact moment a crash of thunder—the loudest I had ever heard—went off like a bomb outside, shaking the entire building. I jumped, but if Princess reacted I didn’t see. When I turned from the window, ready to laugh at my skittishness, she was already gliding down the basement steps, her black hair entwined with the shadows, and fading from view. I caught a cab back to San Agustin and packed what few belongings I carried from venue to venue. Because of the stormy weather, the draft in my chamber no longer felt like a respite from insane heat, but chilly. I shivered in the candle-lit gloom whilst folding my shirts. As always, shadows played on the walls; the Bible fluttered. Suddenly there came a knock at the door. I opened it to find our conductor, Simone, standing at the threshold. Immediately it took me aback, for the look upon his normally thoughtful, slightly flustered face (the face of a Tuscan poet, if I may be so bold as to add, fiercely in love, searching the hills of his homeland on a sunny day for that one line, that one magical string of words proper enough in harmony and complexity to convey the burning of his heart) had become stern and calculating. He did not move. His tall, lean frame seemed to give off waves of coolness, in chorus with the draft. I bade him come in. He refused, then imparted upon me this piece of unpleasant news: I was to leave San Agustin at once. Something I had said or done had caused the bishop to become unhappy with me. Simone would not tell me what that something was, though I, in reeling astonishment, all but begged to know. Whatever it was, Simone seemed to believe it, too. Throughout his short visit he continued to look at me in a way that suggested a longing to raise his boot and step, with disgusted ferocity, upon the face to which he’d been forced to speak. “Simone, really,” I began afresh, having retreated and regrouped my senses best as I knew how. “I’m certain we have a simple misunderstanding, nothing more—“ “I’m afraid not, Horatio,” the other rejoined. “The bishop is quite adamant about having you gone. And the choir, though together for only three more shows, shall have none of you either.” “ Smettila!” I nearly barked, my own anger beginning to boil. “Questo non ha senso!” But the conductor’s own demeanor did not change. He looked at me, cool and insistent, for several seconds before allowing himself to gaze past my shoulder, where no doubt he discovered the bags I’d been packing. “It would seem that you’re well aware of the circumstances already,” he remarked with perhaps a nip of sarcasm. “Not at all,” I replied. “I planned to stay at San Agustin for the remainder of our run.” Simone shook his head slowly. He still had not entered the room. “So I’m to leave right now?” I felt compelled to ask. “Correct.” And at this point Simone at last began to display some flurry of sympathy. Looking rather sad, he dropped his head and told me the bishop would have come down with the news himself, except that he felt too embarrassed for me to conduct a formal presentation. Confused as much as I’d ever been in my life, I once more beseeched Simone to impart his knowledge of whatever crime I supposedly committed. Again he shook his head, clearly unconvinced of my ignorance. “ Amor, tosse e fumo, malemente si nascondono,” he whispered, then turned and walked away, leaving me agape. He had quoted an old Italian proverb which means: Love, smoke, and cough are hard to hide. Pertaining to me, I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. I spent that night on the streets of Intramuros, bags in hand, newly alone in an alien world. After dinner I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked several in a long, dark passageway under the fortress walls. During this interlude I came to the conclusion that whatever it was I had done to upset the bishop scarcely mattered amidst the immediate timeframe of things, as these were to be the final days of the choir anyway, and we shan’t be seeing each other ever again. Faces floated in my mind—friends I’d made on the road. We’d shared happy times, drinking toasts in obscure corner bars, celebrating holidays on the roofs of fancy hotels, swapping stories of the girls we’d loved, the games we’d played, the tears we’d shed. No more would we laugh together, or help one another through troubled times. The old friends were gone. It was time to make new ones. As I thought these things it began to rain. At the end of the tunnel I could see it—a curtain of silver upon the empty street, whispering its arrival to the trees, smudging wares in the window of an old shop, long since closed for the night. Streams formed along the curb, carrying off that day’s dust. “So be it,” I whispered to myself, there in the gloomy passage. I was sorry the Lord no longer wished to hear me sing for Him. Perhaps one day I would have another chance. But for now I was on my own, far from the mystic rose of that long dead poet, with its thrones set at great distances to which one could always see, as I felt I could still see, though I stood far from the light of angels. The next day found me at Mrs. Dominguez’s door, deposit in hand. An odd look surfaced on her face, yet she relinquished the apartment key. From there I retired to my new abode and unpacked. Whilst doing so I shouted a greeting to Princess. No reply traveled back from the basement stairs. Indeed, I didn’t see nor hear from her for the next several days, by which time I had begun my gig at the Lyric Theater, singing in conventional operas such as The Magic Flute and Carmen . I bought some furniture for the apartment. Not much, mind you, but I needed a place to drink my coffee and read my books. For the bedroom I put a mattress on the floor, and a fan in the window. That window overlooked the street where, I discovered, children often played after dark, their laughter mingling with the evening air as the lyrics of pretty song do its music. And as the days became weeks, I wondered more about Princess. Several times over that June and July I ventured downstairs to knock on her door. Never once did she respond. I watched the front walk from my window. The postman left packages. Occasionally a boy would come to trim the lawn, or tend to Mrs. Dominguez’s sampaguita shrub. But of Princess I saw nothing. She had either moved away from the building at some point, or had found my company too awkward to pursue. Whichever, I began to let the memory of her slip away, focusing fully on my performances at the Lyric, and paying the rent on time. Then at the beginning of August a typhoon warning came over the radio. I had just settled for the evening in my sparsely decorated living-room, a book in hand, ready to while off an hour or two with music and prose. You Butterfly by Andy Williams, one of my favorite tunes, began to play, then was cut off by a weather bulletin. It informed that a rather powerful storm was approaching the Philippines. It would arrive in Manila before midnight. All residents were to prepare themselves appropriately. Having never been through a typhoon before, I had no idea how to conduct myself, but my powers of improvisation were quick, and my mind sharp and keen as a cutting blade… ∞   “I hid myself in the closet,” Donati said. Dante tilted his head. “Excuse me?” “Just kidding, my boy, just kidding.” ∞ I battened down the apartment as best I knew how. I also went to check on the well-being of Mrs. Dominguez. She invited me in for dinner with her family, which I accepted, and we made pleasant chatter over rice and sinigang as the wind outside grew stronger. At some point or other I mentioned Princess. It must have been toward the end of the meal. It was full dark by then. Twigs were blowing across the porch, scratching at the door like phantom fingers. The trees had begun to howl. “Will we lose the electricity?” I asked. “If so I should fetch Princess. She’ll be frightened all by herself in the basement.” The cup of coffee Mrs. Dominguez had been about to drink from froze halfway to her lips. She blinked at me for a moment, then began to laugh. “Of course,” she said, “of course. I’ll be sure to check on her as well.” I stayed for a short while longer, drinking coffee and telling stories of my travels. It must have been close to eight o’clock when I at last bid my gracious hosts goodnight. A gale met me on the porch, ruffling my clothes. Leaves scurried over the lawn. Street-lamps flickered. I went to my apartment and made sure a number of candles were readily at hand. I secured the back door. Then I went downstairs to look in on Princess. Not in the least expectant of an answer to my knock, I became quite surprised when her voice suddenly floated forth. “Mr. Donati? Is that you?” “Yes, it’s me,” I answered. “Is everything all right in there?” Only it was hard to know where to send my voice, for her reply did not seem to come from behind the door, but rather, somewhere upstairs. “Mr. Donati? Mr. Donati?” Now I felt compelled to go back up. The steps creaked under my weight. Halfway to the top she called my name again. Her voice was very faint—the voice of a girl on a faulty telephone line. Reaching the top step I had no idea whether to turn left or right. I went left, into the kitchen. Not finding her there, I next opened the door to the back balcony. A gust of angry wind tore it from my grasp. It banged against the counter, rattling a number of cheap saucers and plates. I could already see the balcony was empty, but stepped outside anyway to marvel the coming storm. My hair whipped in all directions. The back lawn howled in a chaos of twigs and flower petals. Certain the power would go out at any moment, I rushed back inside to set up candles around the apartment. Halfway through the chore it happened. The lights flickered once, twice, and then were gone. I stood motionless. Rain began to spatter the window. I went to the curtains to make sure all was secure— And the chair behind me creaked. It was a Louis XV copy I had purchased cheap from a lady in the village who told me her grandmother had died in it years ago. Her story meant little to me at the time. The day had been sunny, the winds calm. Again the chair made a noise. I turned— And there in the flickering gloom sat the body of a wrinkled, withered corpse. A woman, old at the time of her death, with thin white hair, sunken eyes, and gaping jaw. She used to sleep in this chair all the time, I remembered the lady telling me, all the time. And then one night she just didn’t wake up. Someone knocked on the window, fast and desperate. Screaming, I whirled round. The curtains were closed, blocking all view to the porch. For a moment the knocking stopped, then started again, even more harshly then before. Somehow I built up the courage to go to the window. I drew back the curtains to see the horrified face of Princess, screaming to be let in. “Mr. Donati!” Five more quick knocks struck the glass. “Mr. Donati! Open the door!” I obeyed her command without hesitation. My mind reeled. She’d been trapped in the storm! Caught outside without protection! I found the door lock, twisted it, and pulled on the handle. The door flew open on rain-swept floorboards. I could see no one, yet felt something cold—colder even than the storm—rush inside. Turning in effort to track its progress, I could see that the chair had at some point relinquished its ghost. Then a noise came from the basement steps. Then the door to Princess’ apartment opened and was slammed shut. The voice of reason spoke next. It implored that I remain put—that I light more candles and wait out the storm as best as my nerves would allow. Yet I could not pursue its logic. Somewhere nearby was a frightened girl who needed comfort. I locked the front door, seized hold of a candle, and descended the stairs. With but one flaming wick as guide, the passage seemed narrow as the inside of a coffin. Shadows danced in time with my light’s fitful glow. I reached the landing on unsteady legs. A low-watt bulb, useless now, hung from the ceiling. Ducking past it, I found Princess’ door unlocked. It creaked as I pushed it open and called the girl’s name. “Please,” I said when she didn’t answer. “It’s only me. Horatio.” Her apartment was pitch dark. Standing at the entrance, I could see only a ghostly outline of the open door, along with a few faded tiles at my feet. Once more ignoring that voice of reason, I stepped inside, raising my candle high. A dry, musty smell invaded my nostrils. To the right was a window near the ceiling. It afforded some light—enough to discern I stood in a narrow, unfurnished room with filthy floors. Then I noticed it. A trail of water led from the door to the back of the long room, where I could faintly make out the shape of another door hanging wide. “Princess,” I called forth again. “Come upstairs with me.” I stepped forward. My shoe crunched the chitin of a dead roach. The door loomed closer, closer. All was black inside. Yet I became certain Princess was there. With each step the floor grew more moist, the water like broken glass, reflecting my candle at myriad angles. As I reached the entrance to whatever room this was, the wind gave a demonesque howl. Boney fingers scratched at the window. They were, I knew, the boughs of a rosebush, though knowing did little to comfort my nerves. I raised my candle once more. The room held only a single piece of furniture: an old rocking chair, moving slightly with the weight of its occupant. “Princess?” I said to the figure in the chair. She looked at me. Strands of black hair fell over her face, giving off the appearance of a girl in a death veil. Her eyes glimmered in the candlelight. “Mr. Donati,” she said in a voice bereft of all music. “Thank you so much for coming. The rain has made a mess of my hair. Could you please brush it out smooth?” “Of course,” I told her. “Put your candle on the floor.” I did as she asked. Her smile chilled me. It was the smile of a woman long buried, painted upon canvas to forever haunt the minds of passing admirers. I was one such admirer, and knew I would never forget Princess. She sat quite still after handing me a brush. I stepped behind her. My left hand plunged into a curtain of black hair cold as flowing ice water. It spilled over my skin, wrapping itself about my wrist and fingers. My right hand squeezed the brush. Slowly, I stroked downward through the curtain, careful not to pull too hard where the bristles caught. “That’s it,” Princess said. Only her mouth moved. The rest of her body was like stone. “Brush out where it catches and snags. Oh! How these ragged rats infuriate me!” I gave her hair another stroke, and then another. Goosebumps rose on my arms. So cold were the inky black snakes of her hair I felt compelled to ask if she’d taken refuge from the storm in a shoveled hole. Yet with time the brush encountered less resistance. The follicles became smooth if not clean. And I brushed, and I brushed, there by the fitful fire, much like de Maupassant’s hero in that old ghost story of his. And at last Princess’ hair turned soft and smooth, an old black curtain in the window of a parlor where hymns are sung, and prayers uttered. Her head snapped round to look at me. On her face remained that smile of the dead, captured by oil. “Thank you!” she breathed in a pretty little gush, then leaped from the chair. Her bare feet were delicate on the floor, her step dainty as a kitten’s. Lightening flashed from somewhere; thunder boomed. And with one final look in my direction, Princess disappeared through the door. ∞ Donati quaffed the second cup of cappuccino prepared for him by Dante while this story unfolded. “A lily bends on currents strong,” he said, “and sometimes you catch it, and sometimes it’s gone.” “What does that mean?” Dante asked. “It means I never saw Princess again. And with good reason. She was dead.” “Stop it,” Dante spoke with a huff. “No. I’m afraid it’s true. The very next day I went to Mrs. Dominguez’s apartment and told her this same story. She said it was impossible. That a girl named Princess had indeed lived in the basement apartment the previous year, but had hanged herself in the stairwell. She’d been engaged to a young man whom she loved dearly. The young man broke off their engagement to marry another.” Dante turned incredulous. “How could a girl let something like that drive her to suicide?” “It was love.” “It was ridiculous!” The old singer gave a tired, cagey smile. “What about Sunny? Don’t you love her?” “Of course I love her. But—“ “And what if she left you tomorrow for another boy? What would you do?” “She would never do that.” “You’re dodging the question. If she left you, what would you do? Confront the possibility, and then your feelings.” Dante closed his eyes. He tried to picture Sunny breaking off their relationship. She stood in his imagination, wearing that devious smile she owned. A widow’s peak of red hair burned over her brow. Dante? I’ve met another boy. A better boy than you. How did that make him feel? Rage swelled in his chest. An urge to find the better boy and kill him took hold. Following that he would need to punish Sunny. His eyes flew open. Donati was still at the table, awaiting an answer. “You look angry,” he said. “I’m infuriated,” Dante agreed. “This concerns me. You are not the sweet, apologetic boy I knew last summer.” “Everyone changes, Mr. Donati.” “But we try not to do that for the worse. This no matter what the bald authors tend to write. Love, ” he pushed on, before Dante could reply, “is a wondrous fire. Or a cool breeze adorned in garments of sweet rain. Or many other things that make us happy to be alive, in our wasting prigione of flesh and bone.” “Mr. Donati—“ “But when it’s perverted it is no longer love. The fire goes rogue. It burns fields and homes. The breeze becomes a storm, knocking down trees. Do you love her, Dante? When you think of her, do all impure temptations flee your heart? Or does she instill an urge to consume, to conquer?” Dante thought of Billy then. Punching him, pounding his face into the floor, had been vengeance. Vengeance taken from its selfish owner in the name of manhood. “I would do anything to protect her,” he said to the opera singer. “Anything at all.” “Very good, young man,” Donati said, in a spiritless tone that suggested he didn’t mean a single word. “Very good.” CHAPTER NINETEEN: Deployment Light from angels uncorrupt repurpose eyes downcast abrupt.   February fourteenth—Valentine’s Day—did not arrive during the school week; thus, it was actually on the fifteenth that Sunny’s plan backfired with utterly disastrous results. Not that the execution lacked brilliance. All of Sunny’s girls did their jobs, possessed of manners both discreet and tactful. It took only half a day to dot the school with crisp copies of the mock love poem they’d been given. Nor did their presence seem overabundant, like holiday decorations (of which there streamed many in pink and red, candy-coating the halls); rather, the poetry tended to blend with those hearts and arrows, so the adult portion of the school scarcely noticed at first. One copy fluttered on a locker door, lifted by an icy breeze which had crept through an untended exit. Another protruded from two oft-read books at the library. Others popped up in restrooms (Dante had planted one inside a stall door of the boys’) and on bulletin boards. All were hidden just well enough, or made pleasant, happy company with the other decorations. Of those in the former group students continued to find copies perhaps too well hidden for the rest of that year. One in particular confused Dante. The story reached his ears long after the coming chaos had died down. In late June two boys were playing football on the back field. A pass thrown too hard had gotten stuck in a tree. One of the boys climbed the tree. Near the football was an abandoned bird’s nest—and in the nest, incorporated with leaves and straw, hung one of the copies. Hint number one about something strange going on came at lunchtime. The cafeteria buzzed at a different pitch than normal. Giggles from the girls had lost their whimsical innocence to laughter more mischievous. Their boys were no longer smiling, but sneering and nodding, chewing with mouths open. Repeated glances were cast towards Shaya Blum who, oblivious to the spell cast upon him, sat alone as always, his taped glasses hanging askew, his dirty brown hair in tangles. “So far, so good,” Sunny murmured at one point. Dante gave her hand a light squeeze. He liked the way her freckles burned when she was happy. They were doing that now. But perhaps not for long. Maris Dubois always sat behind them, at the opposite end of the cafeteria. This arrangement typically put her almost directly behind Shaya. Dull theatre, considering the girl had never once—to Dante’s knowledge at least—so much as lifted her eyes to take notice of the other. Like Sunny, she spent lunch talking with friends. But not today. Several times already Dante had turned his head to gauge what reaction this morning’s chicanery was having on Maris. And indeed, she looked quite the changed girl. Every time Dante looked at her she was doing the same thing. Her eyes hovered at the nape of Shaya’s neck, pensive yet somehow detached, as if cast into a sea of dreams. Occasionally one of her friends would tap her shoulder and laugh. Those sitting with their backs to Shaya would often turn to smile at him. These smiles looked not the faintest bit derogatory, or sardonic. Rather, they were the smiles of girls happy for a friend. No, Dante kept telling himself. Stop it already. “What’s the matter?” Sunny asked. He jerked in his seat. “Nothing.” “Yes there is. You were looking at Maris.” “Yeah,” he admitted. Caught in the act, what else could he do? “I’m waiting for the fireworks.” Now Sunny turned her head. Her eyes found Maris’ bright splash of blonde hair and narrowed to slits. “There won’t be fireworks today,” she said. “No?” “No. Not all of these…giggles and whispers”—the words oozed with contempt, which was strange, for ruckus ordinarily pleased her—“are about Shaya, you know. Some of it’s about Billy.” “Still? The kid hasn’t been to school for weeks. Sunny whirled on him, snarling. “It’s about Billy, okay?” “If you say so,” he told her, unwilted. “But I’ve never heard of a dead person making everyone so cheerful.” “I never told you he was dead.” “He is though, right?” “Maybe.” Talk at the table fell quiet. Sunny’s entourage stared at their plates. Stacey took a hesitant bite of her dessert; Rajani pretended to clean her glasses. That something bad had happened to Billy at the end of January was common knowledge throughout the school. One day he had come to class with a black eye and bruises; the next day, he went missing. No one had seen him since, and according to a number of newspaper articles written about the event, the police had no leads. “Relax,” Dante said to Sunny, raising her hand to kiss it. “It’s all right. I know you took care of him.” For it was imperative, he knew, not to diminish the queen in front of her court. Though I could if I wanted, he thought. Absolutely. “Let’s see what happens for the rest of the week. I think we’ll be fine.” “Dante,” he heard her whisper, “she doesn’t look hurt at all. She looks happy. ” Sparing another glance over his shoulder, Dante could see that his girlfriend was right. Maris did look happy. Or rather, even happier than usual. ∞ The next day, Shaya Blum ate lunch with Maris and her friends. Jubilant laughter echoed from the table. Shaya’s back was straight, his chest thrust forth. As a knight holds his stature when nourished by nobility, so did Shaya hold his stature today. No longer did he appear a hopeless, hapless boy, lacking beauty in a forest which demanded nothing but. He had changed. The light of love was on him now. “What have we done?” Sunny said with tearful eyes. “What have we done?” Under the table, Dante could see that Maris and Shaya were holding hands. ∞ Sunny was grouchy for the rest of the week. Knowing her pain, Dante made what he felt were the necessary adjustments, such as carrying her books between classes, and complimenting with extra fervor the boots she wore on Wednesday. Also, her birthday was getting near. She would turn thirteen in less than a month. His mind spun over what gift to buy. As Brenton kept his daughter’s materialistic welfare richly cultivated, choices were limited to things rare, strange, colorful, meaningful, reflective, or some fortunate combination of the five, to which Dante, for the time being at least, could only hope to find clues. On Thursday morning he asked her straight out if there was anything she wanted. “Surprise me,” she told him, slamming her locker closed. Later that day he went to Stacey. Her answer made his jaw drop. “Cigarettes,” she said. “Buy her cigarettes. Virginia Slims. And maybe a cigarette holder.” “Cigarette holder?” “Yeah, you know, like the one Audrey Hepburn used in that old movie.” “Get out of town,” Dante said. He honestly felt his ears were playing tricks. But Stacey was adamant. “Sunny loves that kind of stuff. Classy ladies from the past.” “She never told me that.” Stacey gave him a light, playful punch on the shoulder. “We don’t tell our boyfriends everything, Dante. We expect them to do some detective work.” “But how do I buy cigarettes?” “How did you buy them for that prank you pulled on Maris?” He shook his head. “That wasn’t me. Sunny got those.” “Well, maybe just a holder then,” Stacey allowed. “Check the antique stores. Or those fancy glass kiosks at the mall.” But Dante knew that no shopkeeper would sell such an item to a kid. At dinner that night he asked his mother what a thirteen year-old girl might want for her birthday. She perked up from her salad. “When is it?” she asked. “March fifteenth.” “Dukey, that’s a good puppy! Yes you are! Yes you are!” Dante’s father had the puppy in his lap and was feeding him bits of chicken. He hadn’t noticed his son’s question at all. “Plenty of time yet,” his mother said, relaxing. Her face turned thoughtful. “Let’s see… You could get her a leather jacket. Didn’t you once say she had kind of a spicy element to her?” “That’s right. But she already has one of those.” “When do we get to meet this girl anyway?” Dante felt his chest tighten. Here was a question he’d been hoping to avoid, and until Dukey came along to brush with soft fur and a cold nose the mossy stones of number 54’s disposition, the task had been easy enough. “Well?” his mother pressed. And was that the curl of a mischievous smile on her face? “I’m curious.” “Gootchy-gootchy-goo!” Mr. Torn said, tickling Dukey’s tummy. “I’ll talk to her,” Dante said. “Maybe she can have dinner with us.” Mrs. Torn dropped her fork. “That’s brilliant! I’ll call her mom and we can arrange it!” “We don’t have to do it right away—“ This Dante blurted as, in horror, he watched his mother rise from the table to make a dart at the phone. “Of course we do!” she fairly gushed. “I’m dying to meet this girl!” Yeah? Three weeks ago you could hardly care. Dante looked at Dukey. The schi-tzu was still sitting in his master’s lap, a fluffy little ball of brown and black. “Hi!” Dante said, unable to feel anything but joy at the puppy’s bright smile. Dukey barked and took another bite of chicken. “Dante?” Mrs. Torn said. “What’s Sunny’s number?” With great trepidation, Dante prattled off the Desdemona home’s ten digit number. What harm can it do? he kept telling himself. His mother picked up the receiver from her kitchen’s white wall phone and dialed. The usual pause followed while she waited for someone on the other end to pick up. Then someone finally did, which caused Mrs. Torn to jump with a tiny yelp— Ah! Dante gave her a look, but by then she’d begun to speak, in stammers at first, with a number of uncertain finger strokes through her hair. In less than a minute, however, things seemed fine. His mother smiled. Some pleasant chit-chat followed, during which Dante was able to surmise that Sunny’s mom had been the one to answer the phone. Then Mrs. Torn asked if all three Desdemonas might come over for dinner on Sunday. Dante spit a great gob of chewed chicken onto his plate. All three? Had the woman lost her mind? “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Torn went on. “What about just Sunny then? Yes, we’d love to have her. You should hear how Dante talks.” She turned to offer him a knowing wink. “Mom,” he scowled. Tinnily, he could hear Mrs. Desdemona saying something through the receiver. “That sounds perfect,” Dante’s mom said. “Five-thirty. On the button. Ha-ha!” Wow, Mom, now you’re quoting lame idioms. Dukey stretched across the table and stole a piece of chicken from the serving plate. “Now now,” Mr. Torn chided. “That’s got bones in it!” The puppy looked up with the chicken still in his mouth. Dante’s mother said thank you into the phone. Suddenly her face turned red. Her eyes fluttered. “Dante? Sunny says to tell you she loves you.” His hand jerked, knocking over a glass of Coke. “Uh…really?” “ Yes,” she told him, in a tone that implied he’d best reciprocate, lest she be forced to unleash a painful and enduring wrath. “I love you too, Sunny!” Dante sang out. “Oh wow!” Mrs. Torn gushed into the phone. “Aren’t kids just the most precious things?” More tinny talk on the line. Mrs. Torn nodded, nodded some more. The conversation ended not five minutes later. Dante’s mom took a seat at the table, proclaiming that on Sunday night they would have a guest for dinner. “Cool,” Dante said. “I’m glad. Do we pick her up?” “Aw, did you just give Daddy a kiss? Did you?” Dante’s eyes shifted to his father. “Dad? Maybe you should see a doctor.” “Dukey is my doctor,” Mr. Torn said. It was hard to argue with that. Dante asked his mom again about picking Sunny up and she said yes. “In Dad’s Bimmer?” “Of course,” she replied, buttering a piece of bread. “Or did you want to rent a Dodge Aspen from Hertz ?” “Yuck, yuck, Mom. Pass the gravy, please.” ∞ Sunny’s locker slammed closed with as much fervor on Friday as it had all week. Dante was so used to it by now he didn’t even flinch. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” he asked. “Because I don’t like to lose.” Her clothes were traditional this morning—tight, dark, risky. Black stockings rose from black boots along slender curves to the hem of a jeweled skirt. Over this she wore a red, sleeveless kitty blouse with black buttons undone past the dainty twig of her clavicle. But of course it was her eyes—flaring green as always—that commanded most of Dante’s attention. He gazed into them now, a little afraid of how to proceed. “You haven’t lost,” was all he could think to say. “What have I done then, Dante?” “Um…” She might have slapped him for this show of stupidity, except that something past Dante’s shoulder had suddenly caught her attention. Turning to find out what, Dante came almost face to face with Norwalk Middle School’s newest, hottest couple, Maris and Shaya. They walked hand in hand down the hall, orbited by a smattering of friends. Maris wore a long white skirt with purple top; Shaya wore pressed blue jeans and a green dress shirt. Dante spared an extra few moments to consider the boy. How did he look today as compared to before he’d met Maris? His spirit seemed as the timeline of Egypt, written backward to that era before the warble of the world’s axis shifted, and the temples were verdant, and streams of clear water gurgled along the streets of that ancient, unknown city written of by Manetho. No longer did Shaya need dream of what might have been, or once was. His eyes were bright and clear. His gait was confident. He stood as tall as Dante, yet seemingly bereft of that misty ghost which idled in the halls of Dante’s own mind, the whisper of remorse, and of further difficulties yet to come. Hence in a way he was taller, though when Sunny’s poisonous question caused him to stop, their eyes were level. “What do you think you’re doing?” Sunny hissed. She wasn’t looking at Shaya, but Maris. And her green eyes demanded a response. Maris stopped. “Hello, Sunny,” she said. “We’re just on our way to homeroom.” “And did you have to pass by my locker?” “I’m afraid so,” the other replied. Then, with an innocent smile: “Did you want us to pay a toll?” Some of the other kids laughed. Shaya looked at Dante. To judge by his somewhat confused expression, Dante guessed he was still a trifle lost in the woods with what lay between these two girls. And who could blame him? Dante didn’t always feel certain of the terrain either. Sunny took a step towards Maris. It shushed the hall in an instant. Dante took a step forward as well, but was careful to remain behind Sunny, lest he intervene with the females, who had somehow developed, over the past few moments, a boundary around them. “I think what you should do,” Sunny told her, “is use the outside entrance from now on, rather than glide through here on your perfect little wings of divine joy.” “Really?” Maris said. She had not backed away. Quite the reverse. The two girls stood almost nose to nose in the wheel of their shocked, silent friends. “Perhaps you’re right, Sunny. Perhaps your locker isn’t the best thing to see at the start of a new day.” “And I could do without your blinding blonde hair and fluttery blue eyes starting mine off like crap.” “But you forget that this is a public school, Miss. And even if it weren’t, I can still use any hallway I like to get to class.” At Maris’ usage of the word Miss , Sunny began to show her teeth. Not only had the tone of its delivery been sarcastic, but Dante thought the appellation itself irritated Sunny. How much longer would that symbol of singularity rest before her name? Narrowing her eyes, she spoke to Maris: “You are all the colors of the rainbow, girly. How nice. A pretty weapon laid down to declare peace from above. But you see, the war isn’t over.” “No,” Maris agreed. “It goes on. Within you. And you know what the saddest part is?” “Tell me.” Maris looked at Dante, at Stacey, at Rajani. “You’re striking iron for all of these children. Children who might still be saved. And saved they will be. Because Sunny—“ “Shut up!” “You’re not in charge. No matter what they think of you, you’re not in charge.” “Get out of here!” “Okay,” Maris said. “Shaya?” Her hand reached out. Shaya took it. “Don’t worry,” she told Sunny as they began to walk. “We won’t come back this way again. If you don’t want.” “Good.” Dante watched them all go—Maris and her friends. Their gaits were steady and calm. And despite the acquiescence to Sunny’s demand, no one looked defeated. Sunny did. Her eyes had fallen to her boots; her shoulders were slumped. Knowing these things would never do, Dante put his arm around her. He put his hand under her chin and lifted it gently. “Hey,” he said. “You all right?” “Peachy,” she said. “You look ready to burn the whole world.” “Always, Dante. Always.” The homeroom bell went off. Kids began to scatter in different directions, juggling their books. Dante and Sunny remained put. Sunny looked down the hall where Maris had disappeared until the ruckus died down, and they were alone. “Walk me to the girls’ room,” she said, still looking—looking, as if she could somehow see her adversary, glowing down at the bend. Dante walked her. He expected to be left waiting while she fixed herself up, but instead she bade him come in. A slightly different version of the bathroom he normally used came into view. The lights were brighter. The stalls were pink instead of green. There were no urinals. Boxes of tissue paper, also pink, bordered the mirror. Sunny gave him only a moment to notice these, for in the next, she had fallen into his arms, face streaming with tears. “Hey,” Dante whispered, gathering her close. “She’s right, Dante,” her voice sobbed. “She’s right.” “No she’s not.” Tears spilled onto his shoulder. Dante let them. When a woman cries you have to let her. It isn’t the same as with a man. She’s not being weak, but strong. She’s purging feelings. It was one of the few pieces of wisdom he’d gotten from his father over the years. Doubtless he’d been drunk at the time, but Dante called it up now, pulling Sunny in even closer, careful not to let her fall. “I can’t do anything. I don’t have power at all.” “Don’t say that.” “She’s better than me. She’s perfect.” “Sunny.” “Why, Dante? Why is it like that?” “Sunny?” She looked up at him. Her make-up was a mess. Strands of twisted red hair hung over her eyes. The freckles on her cheeks looked ready to catch fire. She was the most beautiful, fascinating girl Dante had ever known. “Do you know why that poem I wrote worked so well?” “No.” “Because it’s not about Maris. It’s about you. Every word I wrote, I was thinking of you. I thought that would make a fool out of Shaya, letting you sign his name beneath my feelings. But I’m the fool here, Sunny. I should have known love is nothing to be embarrassed about.” “I’m not even sure I know what love is, Dante. I use the word all the time, but in my family it’s different. Physical pleasure is what drives us. We choose our partners like…plucking fruit from a tree.” This last was spoken as if she herself couldn’t believe it was real. But it was. Looking into her eyes, Dante found evidence everywhere. “Is that how you feel about me?” Her answer was immediate. “Yes. But I have to be careful. We’re still evaluating you.” “We?” “Me. My mom. My dad. Because once you’re in, Dante, you’re in. You become my lord and master forever.” Dante blinked. Here was an odd piece of information. “You mean you become mine ? Like property?” “That’s right.” He looked at her for a long time, there in the bright bathroom light. The idea of claiming Sunny excited him. Hitherto this moment he’d never thought of their relationship that way. Now, suddenly, that was exactly the way he wanted it. “Interesting,” he told her at last, giving her body a yet tighter squeeze. Sunny gave a little mmn sound with the extra effort it now took to draw breath. “But it isn’t love, Dante. You can call it that, and it’s nice. But that isn’t what it is.” “Okay.” “Say you love me whenever you like.” “But you won’t believe it when I do?” Her head gave a tiny, reluctant shake. “I wouldn’t know how.” He kissed her. “Don’t worry. I’ll go on loving you anyway. And hey,” he added, “if you don’t know what love is, then how do you know what it isn’t?” That made her laugh. “Point taken, dear. May I clean up a little at the sink?” “You may,” Dante said, releasing his hug. He watched her wash and fix her make-up. Occasionally she would look at him through the mirror to grin, or stick out her tongue. “You’re feeling better,” Dante observed, before sticking his own tongue out. “I am. One hundred percent.” “Thank you, Sunny. Now I feel better, too.” CHAPTER TWENTY: Sunny Comes To Dinner On the thirtieth floor of a tower stone cold, Dante fought to his spirit withhold.   It was midnight. The power was out. Back-up generators provided dim orange lighting in the halls and some of the meeting rooms. Otherwise, shadows prevailed. Blackness hovered at either end of the room Dante occupied. Before him stood a long table of imitation wood. It gleamed by candlelight. Empty swivel chairs, some of them pulled out as if recently vacated, circled its top. “There’s something looking for you,” a voice whispered. Dante squinted to make out its owner. A tall, masculine shape stood on the other side of the table. Clues to its identity lay hidden in its posture, as well as the roundness of its belly. “Mr. Donati?” The opera singer stepped into the candlelight. His face looked calm. A vague smile turned the corners of his lips. Yet this was not a face of happy tidings. Bad trouble lurked nearby. “Remain calm,” Donati said. “Where am I? What’s going on?” “We’re on the thirtieth floor—“ He was interrupted by a long, high-pitched shriek from below. The shriek sounded female, though not necessarily human. Dante looked at the floor. “What was that?” “Echidna,” Donati replied. “Who?” “A very large, powerful creature that wants to eat you. She’s on the twenty-seventh floor. This is the thirtieth. Dante—“ Another shriek, this time from directly beneath their feet. “Leave the building, Dante. Go straight down. Don’t stop anywhere.” “Does the elevator still work?” Dante glanced at the door. It stood open. Beyond he could make out—just barely—dim glare on glass walls, a polished floor, a drinking fountain. He turned back to Donati. But the opera singer had gone. Vanished. Dante was alone. Leave the building… He went into hallway on trembling knees. The harsh orange eye of an emergency light glared from the ceiling. To his right lay an exit—the stairs. In the other direction were doors to an elevator. He chose the elevator. To his relief, the down arrow came on when he pressed it. A motor whirred somewhere. Cables spun. Then the doors whispered open on an empty car lit weakly by a dying bulb. Dante stepped inside. His finger searched duel columns of numbered buttons. He pressed the letter G. And like curtains over a stage, the doors hushed closed. Except the show hadn’t ended. Was, in fact, only beginning. The car descended. A red digital read-out near the ceiling moved from 30 to 29. From 29 to 28. Dante held his breath. His lungs were far stronger than Sunny’s. Once he had lasted for two minutes underwater. 28…28…28… …27. The car jerked to a stop. Letting out his breath, Dante watched in horror as the doors slid open. The hallway beyond, silent as a buried coffin and nearly as black, seemed to reach toward him, chilling his heart. Visible though the gloom lay a trash can, tipped on its side. Garbage littered the floor in a spray. Something had hit the can hard. From down the hall, faintly, came a slithery bump. Glass shattered. Dante pressed the G button again. The doors vibrated on their tracks and slid closed. But the car would not move. Looking up at the display, Dante willed it with all his might. It did no good. The red number 27 refused to change. Instead, the doors slowly moved back open. Now the can was gone. A body, female, lay in its place. Had that been what it was all along? The head was severed. Dead, horrified eyes shimmered through a thick veil of black hair. Once more Dante pressed the G button— And Echidna, wailing, swept into the car, seizing Dante’s throat with thorny claws. He didn’t have time to see much. A pair of yellow eyes, a hissing head of snaky hair, drooling venom. Hungry screams deafened him. Snapping teeth tore him to bits. Dante’s eyes flew open. He was in his bedroom. Early morning. Light from State Street’s arc-sodium lamps touched the bed, the desk. His watch read 3:27. “Sunday,” he said to the ceiling, between deep breaths to slow the race of his pulse. Dinner day with Sunny. Try as he might, Dante still couldn’t get his mind around how things were going to go with her at the table, munching away on bread and pasta with his parents. No poisonous snakes, please. His head settled on the pillow. No snakes—that didn’t seem like a tall request. But with a girl like Sunny, he had to consider whether it might already be too late to ask. ∞ Everything went fine until about half-way through the meal. They picked Sunny up at 5:30 on the button. She was waiting on the porch, dressed in a yellow cotton skirt and soft blue sweater. A leather jacket, open, hung on her shoulders. Tiny jewels rimmed its pockets. “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Torn!” she sang, springing down the stairs in her traditional black boots. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!” She and Dante held hands in the back seat while Mr. Torn navigated the car between large, puffy flakes of gently falling snow. From the passenger side Mrs. Torn, cradling Dukey in her lap, smiled over and over at Sunny, until Dante felt the rear-view mirror must soon arc into a smile too. “Dante told me you were beautiful…oh, probably a hundred times. I never doubted him, of course, but he does have a tendency to exaggerate—“ “Mom!” Dante shouted. “Not this time, though. You really are very beautiful.” “Thank you, Mrs. Torn.” “Mom.” Once home Sunny insisted on helping in the kitchen. This pleased Dante’s mother even more. Dante watched her cut garlic bread. Her tiny arms—bare now that her jacket was off, and the sweater sleeveless—moved with dainty, feminine confidence. Each cut looked precisely like the last. Not a crumb touched the plate. Nor, for that matter, did the blade of the knife, as it did so often when he or his father cut, protesting their clumsiness with glassy, jagged barks. With this same confidence she sliced onions and brushed them into the sauce. Then she helped set the table, arranging the silverware just how Mrs. Torn liked it, though she’d never been told. “Perfect,” she said, standing back to admire her work. Mrs. Torn had to agree. “It is, Sunny. Wow, do I love having you in the kitchen. I wish you could come over every night. Dante? You lose this girl and I’ll chuck you out your dad’s rover at full speed!” “Speaking of Dad, where is he?” “Where do you think? In the living room with the dog.” A dinner of quiet, thoughtful conversation followed. Dante and Sunny sat across from one another, exchanging diagnostic glances. Occasionally the toe of her boot would give his leg a flirty brush. “Have you lived in Norwalk all your life?” Mrs. Torn asked. “No,” Sunny replied. “I was actually born in Ravenna. Portage County. But my dad moved us here when I was very young.” “What does Mr. Desdemona do for a living?” Dante’s eyebrows perked up at this. All year he’d never once asked Sunny about Brenton’s occupation. What did he do, anyway? “He’s president of a company that services very old boilers,” Sunny said. “New boilers, too, but it’s the old ones that bring in the money. Parts for those are so hard to find. Hardly anyone makes them anymore.” “And no wonder,” said Mrs. Torn. “Aren’t those things dangerous?” “The old ones? Absolutely. You never want to get near one with low PSI tolerance.” Smiling, Sunny put down her fork and made a sweeping gesture with her hands. “Boom! You know?” “Not intimately, thank goodness. But I can imagine well enough.” “Mrs. Torn I’d just like to say that this pasta is delicious. It tastes just like my own mom’s. I love it.” “Why thank you!” The boot touched Dante’s leg again. How am I doing? her face asked over the table. Dante reached down to give her bare knee a gentle stroke. There were freckles on that knee, he knew. Cute ones. They would drive him crazy if he let them. “Dante tells me your grades at school are very good,” said Mr. Torn. “Yeah,” Sunny told him. “I keep my head above water.” “You do better than that according to him. Straight As.” “Reading interests me. Non-fiction. My dad says fiction is a waste of time.” “He’s right,” came Mr. Torn’s assertive reply. “Very, very right. I’m always trying to get Dante away from his comic books.” “I don’t read comic books, Dad,” Dante protested. Mr. Torn grinned. “How sheepish your face suddenly looks. Would you care to show Miss Desdemona some of the posters in your room?” “Yeah, Dante,” Sunny came in, voice purring. “Show me your room.” Then the flare in her eyes dimmed a little. “I’d love to see your posters.” “Wasn’t there some excitement at your school last month?” Mrs. Torn asked. “A student disappeared?” Sunny took a sip of Diet Coke before answering. “That’s true,” she said. “Billy Large. Funny name for a kid so short.” “Did you know him?” “A little. Dante knew him, too.” The green eyes flared again. “Didn’t you, dear?” “I sure did—“ But his mother’s face had burst into joy before he could finish. “Oh my goodness, Sunny, are you calling him dear, like he’s your husband? That is so, so cute!” Dante dropped his fork. “Mom! We’re only thirteen!” “Sunset Desdemona Torn,” Sunny said, nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah. It sounds nice!” “It sounds beautiful! ” Mrs. Torn gushed. “Yes, Dante,” Mr. Torn arrived with his two cents. “Perhaps Captain America can be your best man at the wedding. The Fantastic Four can cater.” Sunny began to giggle. “The ice is getting thin, people,” Dante warned, though he too had begun to laugh. “Time for my good deed for the day. I’ll fetch dessert.” His mother rose to help. Dirty plates were cleared away. Clean, small plates took their place. Sunny offered to put on coffee. Mrs. Torn sniffed and said she would have none of that from a guest who had been so pleasant to spend an evening with. Sunny’s response was somewhat cryptic, and cast a strangeness over the table that would not lift until, an hour later, she went back home. “But I can’t leave Dante to be punished all alone for his good deed,” she said. “Who said he’s going to be punished?” Mrs. Torn asked, filling a decanter with water. “All good deeds get punished, Mrs. Torn. I think they do anyway.” “Oh, pish-posh!” But Sunny was insistent. As the smell of coffee permeated the room, and ice cream was scooped into pretty little parfait glasses, she told a story about two brothers who loved each other dearly. They lived long ago, in a time of peace between two great wars, in a city of corruption. Whilst growing up their parents taught them to care for one another, and to never betray the family, nor honesty, nor valor and courage. It was a lesson easily learned, as each brother seemed to naturally love the other. Favors passed between them like flower petals between two gardens, caught up in the trees with their lovely scents of lilac and primrose and sweet alyssum. They loaned each other money. They helped with choosing gifts for their ladies. One brother proved quite adept at repairing automobiles, and would always make certain his sibling’s Jordan ran smooth. The other was a gifted painter whose works sold well. He did many pieces for his brother, never once charging him a single cent. Things went on this way until the end of that wondrous, lost decade, or close to it, for the stock market had not yet crashed when one brother, the auto mechanic, decided to open a small café in a district of the city lacking such. He asked his brother the painter for a loan, and you can just guess what that brother said. The café opened not a year later. It served coffee, cake, pie, tea. A little pasta, a little ice cream. Tomato soup with delicious sprinkles of oregano. But it didn’t last. Oh, no no no. Most business go under five years or less after opening day. For the auto mechanic brother it was less. One evening, six months after the café’s ribbon cutting ceremony, a robber came through the door. He pointed a gun at the brother and demanded he empty the cash register. The brother complied. It did not matter. The robber smiled and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. News of this incident absolutely crushed the painter brother. The blame was his. All of it. Had he not given that loan to open the business, you see… Well, tragedy would have been averted. Both brothers would have lived full, happy lives. Instead, the painter began to drink, which was really too bad, since all of this happened during an era of prohibition. Alcoholic beverages were not only hard to come by, but quite illegal. The brother was eventually caught and arrested. Wracked with guilt, sick from withdrawal, he died miserable in prison. One good deed was all it took. The perfection of love gleamed perfect no more. Or rather love, it seemed, had died by its own hand. “Suicide,” Dante said, thoughtfully poking a spoon into his ice cream. “That’s how it played out,” Sunny agreed. “And then there’s the story of Breezy, the little fairy who tried to steal back her friend’s pearl from the bottom of a giant’s fish aquarium. Things did not end well for her. Oh no.” “Tell it,” Mr. Torn said. “I’d like to hear.” And Mrs. Torn: “I thought you said you didn’t like fiction.” “I don’t,” replied Sunny. “But what happened to Breezy isn’t fiction at all. My father insists it happened for real.” “To a fairy?” Mrs. Torn asked. She was smiling. Maintaining her politeness. But if Sunny noticed such condescension, she didn’t let on. “To a fairy,” she said. “Breezy Woods was her name. She lived near a farm just up the road from here, a long, long time ago…” ∞ Spring swept through the trees in bright petals of pink and yellow. This because a garden near the edge of the wood was in bloom, as the warm winds of May had arrived, and the flowers were spreading their joy. And if one were to follow these petals into the woods, leaving footsteps in the moist, rich dirt from last night’s rain, he or she would most assuredly never find, even after hours of brooding, patient pursuit, amongst the squirrels and the chickadees, a tiny, winged creature, such is so often described by that gifted Scottish author who once told of little lost boys, and iron bars which closed out dreams. No, never. Never once would one come across a fairy. But of course they exist. And yes, most of the things you’ve heard about them are true. For instance, they are quite mischievous. They love to play tricks on humans, some of which are indeed nasty. I once knew a female fairy who managed to sprinkle a rather sweet-smelling and delicious detergent in with a farmer’s cat food. The cat became poisoned and died horribly, while that fairy’s friends all laughed. Female fairies are generally smarter than the males, but also much smaller, as well as considerably weaker. They cannot fly as fast, nor lift heavy stones. However their leadership skills, as you may imagine, are superb. They love to plan out projects, then put the males to work, bossing them all over the grove. Nor do the males ever mind. Most of them are in love, even to this day, for female fairies are like those petals that sweep in the spring, colorful and dainty and ever so pretty. And when a female fairy gets an idea in her head… Oh! Oh, they are even more so! Her eyes become as slivers of snow, all alight in a blizzard caught up in the rage of that great thunder god. And her cheeks flush with the glow of our fifth planet’s red storm, and her tiny, devious mouth curves into a smile that speaks tomes about plots conceived at midnight, where candles burn in basement rooms, and whispered words slither from oak beamed shadows. These things happened to one particular female fairy quite often. Her name was Breezy Woods. She was, of course, small and pretty. She had short, brown hair with locks that sliced through the air, especially when she flew. She wore a pink top and skirt, stolen from the cloth of a child’s nightgown one night, whilst the child slept in that very same gown, to wake up next morning with holes along the hem, which her mother took to be the work of bed beetles. Breezy had brown eyes the color of moist acorn. The freckles on her cheeks were like sprinkles of warm cinnamon. And please let us not forget her wings, which were slightly longer than most, and more slender, and when in the light captured similar hues to that great bow laid down in peace long ago by the god of Israel. She was gorgeous, is what I’m trying to say. A lovely, lovely little lass. And her pretty head was so full of ideas on how to improve the grove where she lived. And she implemented them often. And what’s more, she didn’t like to lose. “Breezy! What are you thinking of now?” These words came from her friend, Taxi, who liked to fly into childrens’ rooms at night to steal the tiny stuffed toys they sometimes collected. Breezy smiled. It was a pretty smile, yes, but also rather serpentine. “I’ve made up my mind,” she said. “Not again?” Breezy had been sent to the square to fetch water from the well. Not looking at her friend, she lowered the bucket until a faint splash echoed from below. As I recall, that morning was quite lovely. Fairies walked in droves along the streets of their little wooden village, enjoying the sun. Birds twittered from on high. And happiness, at least for the time being, seemed to glow from every obscure place that happened to catch the sun’s rays. “Again and again and again,” Breezy sang. “At which it stays until I change it. But not this time. Goodness, no.” “What are you on about?” Taxi demanded to know. She was somewhat taller than her friend. More gangly. Breezy loved her because many times, whilst trying for those stuffed toys, she got caught, and came home with the wildest stories to tell. Breezy began to crank the bucket back up. Weighed down with water, it strained her puny arms, and she grunted as she spoke. “I’m on about the pearl. Mmph! The pearl at the edge of the forest, where the giant— gn!— lives.” “Oh, that ,” replied Taxi. Gritting her teeth, Breezy gave another pull on the handle. This time it wouldn’t budge. Her muscles were utterly spent. “Get a boy,” she groaned. “Now.” Her friend dutifully fetched one of the passing males, who had no trouble pulling the bucket up. Afterward, Breezy’s eyes flared. “Yes, that! ” she gushed. “The pearl of the southern sea! The one stolen from our great-great-grandparents by his great-great-grandparents!” “Breezy, we’ve been daring each other for years to steal it back. We both know it’s too dangerous.” “Too dangerous,” huffed the haughty sprite, “for some. As in, girls who tend to bump their hips against dirty dishes, or trip over piled carpet.” “Ladies?” the male fairy cut in. “Am I done?” “No, you’re not!” Breezy snapped. “Carry the bucket to Gossamer Gwendolyn’s house! She’s the one needs water!” “Yes, ma’am.” When he’d gone, Taxi repeated her fear about stealing the pearl. “It’s at the bottom of his fish aquarium, you know,” she warned. Breezy folded her arms over her chest and nodded. “And how long can the great Breezy Woods hold her breath underwater?” “Almost half a minute,” she said proudly. Actually, it was more like twenty seconds, with some kicking and squirming thrown in. “And besides,” Breezy went on, “if I run out of air I can just swim to the top.” “He keeps two black convicts in that tank. They’ll eat you.” “Not if they’re busy eating something else.” “Breezy…” But Breezy’s cheeks were red. Her eyes looked cold and cutting. In a word, she was determined. “When are you going?” Taxi asked. “Tonight.” “Take one of the men with you.” Breezy stamped the ground with one of her little brown boots. “No. The men are clumsy and noisy. They’ll wake up the giant.” “What if he wakes up anyway?” “Now I’m offended. I’ve never woken up anybody. You know that.” “Sorry. Can I see the pearl when you come home?” “Everyone will see it, my dear,” replied Breezy, standing on tip-toe to hug her friend. “Everyone.” ∞ She used a crevice in the attic window to get inside, careful of spider-webs, and rats, and roach traps and stray cats. Wings sparkling in the moonlight, Breezy next flew down a flight of old wooden steps. A dark hallway led past the giant’s bedroom, which she easily avoided, to an open door at the far end. Inside that door was a den. And inside that den… Dainty as a butterfly, Breezy alighted atop the aquarium. It was long and rectangular. The shape of a coffin. Moonlight glowed in its deep waters. This pleased Breezy a little bit. She would be able to see while she dove. It also upset her. Deep waters they were indeed. For the first time Breezy began to seriously wonder about the capacity of her lungs. Stop wondering and find out! her thoughts chided. But first the fish. From a small petal-pouch around her waist, Breezy removed several slices of fresh minnow meat. She tossed them into the water. Instantly, the convicts swam up to gobble them whole. Ah, yes! This was going to work! She took off all her clothes before going on that final, dreadful, deadly swim. And let me just pause here to mention how pretty she looked, standing naked before the water, her slim, soft body all aglow in the moon, her wings like the blades of polished swords, her pointed ears listening, listening oh so intently, for any sound down by the giant’s door. But they just couldn’t hear anything, you know? Not that they were bad ears, but that the giant was so very quiet, and of course he knew where to step so the floor-boards didn’t creak, and could hold his breath for a long time, much longer than a female fairy, so that Breezy just…didn’t…hear him at all. Her bare, boney chest filled with a practice breath. And another, and another. And when her lungs felt good and ready to go, Breezy tossed some more minnow meat into the water. The convicts attacked. Good for them. They were probably both male. Noisy and stupid. Breezy took another deep breath, and this one she held before diving into the water, making nary a splash with her glass-shard frame. Down, down, down to the bottom she swam, kicking her legs. The pearl rested on a mound of stones between two large rocks. It looked like a moon itself. Its pale glow made Breezy’s heart skip a beat. Happy thus far with her adventure, she swam up for air. “ HAHH!” she gasped, breaking the surface. A shadow fell over the water. Breezy screamed. The shadow belonged to the giant. Now his face loomed above her, grinning. “And whom do we have here?” he inquired. “A pretty little insect. I thought I heard wings outside my door.” Screaming some more, Breezy made to climb from the tank. But her wings were all wet. She couldn’t fly. “A late night book is just the tool,” said the giant, “to catch a fairy in your pool! Reading keeps me awake!” With his thumb and index finger he plucked Breezy from the tank. Now for a human to touch a fairy—especially a female fairy—is absolutely and utterly beyond all question anathema. Imagine how much more delicious it was for the giant to seize one who wore no clothes! “I can feel your teensy, tiny little heart,” the giant said, raising her before his eyes. “Fast as a humming bird’s.” Breezy kicked and squirmed to get free. Her small breasts heaved. When a fairy is out of breath her lungs sing like steam escaping from the world’s tiniest tea pot. Breezy was very out of breath indeed. “ Help me!” she screamed. “Somebody help me!” Nobody came to help her. Instead the giant began to stroke one of her wings in a thoughtful way, no doubt admiring its shape, its texture. If asked, he would probably count it among the most beautiful fairy wings he had ever seen. “Now this will only hurt for a moment,” he promised. And with a quick jerk of his wrist, he pulled Breezy’s wing right out of her back. “ EEEEEEE!” Breezy shrieked. “My wing! My wing!” The giant held the severed wing before her disbelieving eyes. “So it is,” he said. “Yes. But it looks as if my convicts are still hungry.” He dropped the wing into the water, where it was devoured instantly. Then he tore off Breezy’s other wing and did the same. “ NO!” the little fairy kept shrieking. “NO! NO!” Tears gushed torrents down her cheeks. Even if she were to somehow survive this horrific encounter, she would never fly again. The giant’s thumb moved to her throat. There it began to stroke, ever so gently, Breezy’s delicate skin. “I’m dreadfully sorry,” he said, “but you really must pull off a fairy’s wings before you eat her. They taste awful to humans. And the pieces tend to get caught in our teeth.” Breezy’s eyes bulged in terror. She drew a breath to say something. I don’t know what it could have been. Nor does it matter today in the least. She couldn’t get a word out before the giant popped her whole into his mouth. Female fairies taste just like sugar cubes. That’s what I’m told. You can eat them raw, or you can boil them in water and serve them with your holiday ham. I have a fairy cookbook somewhere in my bedroom. Perhaps one day I can show it to you. Anyway, the giant preferred them raw. His tongue licked her a number of times, enjoying the softness of her skin, and of course the taste, and most of all, he loved how she squirmed to get free. Occasionally he would pull her out of his mouth, her body all covered in spit, to lick her like a lollipop. The whole sordid ordeal took several minutes, I think. Perhaps even longer. But sadly, it did have to end. It was late at night and the giant needed his sleep. So with a sigh of regret, he put the screaming little girl back into his mouth, and bit down hard, crunching her delightful, delectable little bones. ∞ “Good Heavens, Sunny!” Dante’s mother gasped. “What would the moral of a story like that be?” Sunny looked at her. The coffee was long gone. Rims of empty mugs shined. There was a bit of lip-stick on Sunny’s, and of course Mrs. Torn’s. “Always,” she said soberly, “make sure you have a strong man to protect you.” Now her eyes moved to Dante. “Always.” “And has our Dante been protecting you well so far, Sunny?” Mr. Torn asked. His face looked straight as the horizon of an obsessionist’s landscape, and his voice was deadly serious. As was Sunny’s voice, when she replied, with green gaze still on the boy in question: “He takes wonderful care of me. Wonderful care. I always feel safe when we’re together.” Mr. Torn smiled. “Good lad,” he said to Dante. And Dante thought later that was the first time he ever sounded proud of his son. “But Sunny, really,” Mrs. Torn put in. “I must repeat what I said earlier about your not liking fiction. That it’s a waste of time.” “So it is,” the girl said. “So what was Breezy’s story then, if not fiction?” “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Torn. Allow me to repeat: Breezy’s story is true.” “Preposterous!” “Not at all. You see…my father was the giant. And he still has that fish aquarium.” “And the pearl?” Dante asked. “Still at the bottom,” Sunny said with an evil wink. “Safe and sound.” CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Ides of March There are among boys no one virgin. A virgin is a girl, until as such she gives it to her man, a token of something strong, be it love, or lust, or the heartfelt wish of a woman inside, impatient to burgeon.   Sunny’s birthday fell on a Monday. As promised, Dante would of course spend it with her, only it would be at school. By no means did this create a deterrence for what happened over the following weekend—or more specifically, on Saturday night, while Brenton was away on business. Brenton only, for Sunny’s mom had decided last minute to stay home with her daughter. This made not the slightest difference either. Dante’s father drove him to Sunny’s house. He, Dante, was to stay the night there. The pretense existed in form of the birthday party, which, Dawn Desdemona informed Mrs. Torn, could run late, as Sunny was now an official teenager. Would it be an issue for Dante to sleep over in the guest bedroom? Dante overheard this telephone exchange at the kitchen table Saturday morning, fully aware of its content. He had planned it all week with Sunny and her parents. Watching his mother nod, he took a bite of toast. The butter had melted into the bread just right. Just perfectly right. Sunny’s porch greeted him with a cold March wind. Dead foliage swept his legs, enticing him to the door. Dante knocked. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, purple dress shirt, and black pants. Half a dozen terra-cotta roses rested in one hand. In the other, a small white box. The door clicked and was pulled wide. A slightly taller version of Sunny smiled in the form of Mrs. Desdemona. Gushing welcomes, she led Dante into the living room. The lighting was dim but pleasant. He remembered its sweet odor of pipe tobacco. It greeted him now. The books were also still here. Shelves of ancient-looking volumes, bound in brown and red. One title in particular stood out: Tuet Enormity Among The Stars. “Dante?” Mrs. Torn said. “Could you make a fire? I forgot to have Brenton do it before he left.” “Of course, Mrs. Desdemona. No problem at all.” Her eyes, every bit green as Sunny’s, shimmered. “Thank you. I just love having a man in the house. Sunny too. She’s upstairs, by the way. Give her just a few more minutes.” She looked at the flowers. “Are those for her?” “Three of them are,” Dante said, before executing a tricky maneuver to get three others free. “These are for you.” Mrs. Desdemona took them with chest heaving for air. “I’m overwhelmed! Thank you very much!” “My pleasure.” “Let me put these in water and check dinner!” She disappeared into the kitchen. Dante could now smell cooking food in delicate association with the cherry tobacco. Putting Sunny’s gifts down, he set to work on the fireplace, getting a healthy flame alight just as the sound of clicking heels approached from behind. “Guess who?” a girly voice purred. “Hello, beautiful,” Dante said, without turning around. The flames seemed to grow higher for a moment. A curtain of heat brushed Dante’s face. He stood to his full height, then turned to find Sunny shining in the darkness. She wore a green, sleeveless kitty blouse with a short but serious black skirt. A silver-studded belt hung from the skirt. Her shoes—high-heeled, open-toed—were sleek and sexy. She thanked Dante for coming. Ever so slightly, her head tilted as she spoke, capturing the blaze in her emerald eyes, setting them in turn alight, so that they shimmered with the playful iridescence of her jewelry, bracelets and ear-rings, rendering her as a star that sparkled in solitude, adrift from any galaxy, bereft of satellites, alone until this night, upon which Dante knew her vacant system would become binary. “You’re as lovely as I’ve ever seen you,” was all he could think to say. “Thank you, Dante. I know you mean that.” Her flowers were on the coffee table. Dante picked them up. “Happy thirteenth, Sunny. This is yours, too,” he added, reaching for the little white box. The box was decorated with a blood-red bow. “Would you like to open it now?” The flowers sighed their fragrance as she kissed the corner of his mouth. “Later. Upstairs.” “Almost time to eat,” came Mrs. Desdemona’s voice from the kitchen door. She leaned on the frame, wearing a smile that knew everything. “I’ll just borrow Sunny for a few minutes, Dante, if that’s all right.” “Certainly,” Dante said. And Sunny, arching a brow: “We’re having oysters tonight, Dante. Do you like oysters?” “I’ve never tried them.” “Oh,” she replied, in the voice of a detective who has just discovered a clue. “So it’s a night of firsts for both of us.” They ate by candlelight, speaking softly of things mundane, such as work and school. Dante mentioned an approaching biology test, which made both ladies laugh. Like the rest of the house, the dining room was dim, adorned in silence. Barely visible paintings idled in cedar wood shadows. Dante was able to recognize one as a Bosch. Others were portraits. Dead relatives, perhaps. One had a face covered in thick hair. Its two eyes, more canine than human, regarded Dante from the depths of thousands of fine brown strands. “Stephan Desdemona,” Sunny’s mother said, noticing Dante’s scrutiny. “Sunny’s great-grandfather. He suffered from a rather aggressive form of hypertrichosis.” “Ah,” Dante said with genuine interest. “Is there a gene in the family?” “Indeed there is. It tends to skip over the females, lucky for Sunny.” She hesitated. “But one of her children may be born with it, you know. Perhaps even more than one.” “She isn’t serious,” Sunny put in. “But of course I’m serious, dear.” “Mom.” “It’s perfectly all right,” Dante told them. “I read about hypertrichosis in one of my dad’s encyclopedias. The wild hair doesn’t at all reflect what’s beneath it. Many sufferers were quite well educated and articulate.” “Not Stephan,” Sunny’s mom said. She looked at the painting. Her voice changed to one of admiration. “He used to eat his meat raw. Sometimes he would walk around on all fours. And his voice was so like an animal’s, you’d insist—“ “That’s enough, Mom,” Sunny warned. The other woman seemed to agree. Dismissing the painting, she smiled and asked if anyone would like more wine. Sunny nodded. “We’ll take the bottle upstairs to my room, Mom.” “That’s fine,” Mrs. Desdemona said. “I’ll rechill it for you.” She rose and went to the kitchen. There came the sound of ice clattering into a bowl. “Are you nervous?” Sunny asked, peering around one of the candles. “No,” Dante told her. “Not at all.” “Good. Because I am. A little.” “It’ll be all right, Sunny. I promise.” Mrs. Desdemona reappeared with a silver bucket full of ice. The wine bottle lay in it like a wrecked galleon upon Antarctic seas. “All right, children,” she said, placing the bucket on the table, “I believe it’s time. Sunny?” “Yes, Mom?” “Do you remember everything we talked about?” “Yes, Mom.” “Good. Dante?” “Yes, Ma’am?” She looked at him for a moment before speaking. Her green eyes were level, serene. Twin fields on a calm night. “Give her what she needs. She’ll tell you what that is, don’t worry.” “I just need to find out first,” Sunny put in with a giggle. “Don’t be nervous,” her mother told her. “Just…follow your appetite. Think of how you feel when you look at Dante, and indulge. Be gluttonous. Take what pleases you.” Dante listened to this exchange, deeply charmed to be spoken of like he were a drink of particularly satisfying vintage. Eventually Mrs. Desdemona finished with her last minute pep-talk. She gave Dante permission to stand. He did so, picking up the wine. Sunny stood next. Mrs. Desdemona hesitated one final time before letting them leave. Her eyes moved from one to the other, making certain, perhaps, that nothing remained to be said. At last she smiled. She nodded at her daughter, then at Dante. “Go upstairs,” she said. “Have fun.” ∞ The door to Sunny’s bedroom was red. It had a gold knob on it. The knob gave a graceful click under Sunny’s hand. Once the door was open, Sunny led Dante inside. Her shoes clicked on hardwood flooring. She switched on the light, revealing a surprisingly conventional girl’s bedroom. Red, pink, and white were its main colors. An arrangement of stuffed toys lay on a neatly made canvas bed. Next to the bed was a small bookshelf lined with curly-cued titles. A vanity mirror, scattered with make-up, stood near a white dresser with crystal handles. Sunny went to the window, pulled the curtains closed. She invited Dante to put the wine on the vanity table. He did so, then reached into the pocket of his coat. He’d put her gift there on the way upstairs. Now he proffered it again. “And what is it?” Sunny asked with an arched brow. “Something I hope is a good reflection of you.” She pulled the ribbon off the box. Her fingers took hold the lid. Here Dante noticed for the first time how long her nails were tonight. Long and perfectly manicured. Sunny lifted the lid. She looked in the box…and gasped. “Oh wow. Oh my goodness, Dante. Is this bloodstone?” “It is indeed,” he said. Another gasp filled her chest. Lifting the ring from the box, she said: “This is the coolest thing I have ever seen.” “It should fit. I had to be very sneaky about finding your size.” “Oh, you have to be the one to put it on for me, Dante. Please.” He slipped it onto her finger, where it fit perfectly. The gold band shined. The stone glowed. It looked so alive Dante thought at any moment it might blink. “I can’t wait to show my mom,” Sunny said, turning her hand to admire the ring from all angles. “Is this really how it is in your family?” Dante asked. “When girls turn thirteen?” “Not for every girl, no. Just the ones who are very serious about a boy she’s found. Hold out your hand.” Dante raised his hand. Sunny placed her ringed one into it. Soft and tiny, it became enveloped on the instant. Dante closed his fingers around the palm, taking care not to cause her pain. He heard Sunny’s breath catch. “Did you meet my cousin?” she asked. “At the hotel?” He laughed a little. “Yes. Is that another Desdemona clan ritual?” “Sometimes. If the girl is nervous, like me. I need you in control, Dante. Confident. Because I’m not.” But Dante had to wonder about this. In total paradox to her confession, Sunny took a step backward and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. It came open on a dainty, fragile-looking chest, lightly freckled about the ribs. More freckles sprinkled her narrow shoulders, which came into view when Sunny let the blouse fall. A black brassiere cradled her budding breasts. Taking a breath, Sunny reached behind herself. There came a tiny click of a clasp letting go. Her straps went loose. “Sit down on the bed,” she purred. Dante stepped backward and put himself on the mattress. Sunny gave him a playful smile. The brassiere dropped. Dante took the view in, enjoying the gentle, almost undetectable curve of her young breasts, the sharpness of her nipples. From here Sunny opened her skirt. The zipper revealed a pair of black panties pressed tightly over the arcs and crevices of a girl’s most sacred places. Carefully, Sunny slipped the skirt over her waist and let it fall to her shoes. “Good,” Dante told her. “Very good.” She swallowed. “Do I get undressed all the way? I mean like right here?” “Leave your shoes on. The rest I want to see.” “Can’t I take my panties off under the covers?” “No. Take them off now.” Letting out a breath, Sunny hooked her thumbs under the band of her panties. Slowly then, she began to pull. Lower, lower. Her vagina appeared as a short, dark slit sketched lightly with new grown hairs. It looked tight and fresh as a shut flower. The panties slipped to Sunny’s knees, and then her ankles. Her shoes clicked as she stepped out of them. “Very pretty,” Dante said, drinking the view of her nakedness in. “Very pretty.” “Thank you,” she said. “Can I get a pretty smile to match?” Tossing her hair, Sunny flashed him a playful, girly smile. “There it is,” he said in appreciation. “Gorgeous. Now turn around.” The smile faltered. “Turn around?” “Yes.” Her green eyes fluttered for a moment. “Uh…why?” But of course Dante knew she was only loving the game. Narrowing his gaze, he told her again, more forcefully: “Sunny, turn around. ” She gave a quick nod, then followed his command, revealing the flow of her hair down her narrow back, and the small, shallow crevice of her butt, dotted lightly with freckles on either side. “Dante?” she asked in a worried tone. “Relax, honey. You’re doing fine.” “Thank you.” “And whose little girl are you?” “Yours. I’m yours, Dante.” “I am your Lord and Master.” “Yes, Dante.” She swallowed. “Sir.” “Turn around.” His command was followed on the instant. The smile Sunny wore was that of a mischievous imp whose eye had caught some particularly satisfying fruit. “Sir?” she asked, arching a brow. “Yes, Sunny?” “May I take you now? My mother…she told me to be gluttonous.” “I know she did. And I want you to be. I want you to have everything.” “Thank you, Sir.” He smiled. “Come over here, baby.” And she did take him, though from underneath, in the missionary position, locking her legs round his body, scratching him with her nails, biting his shoulder. And he in turn stabbed the breath from her lungs, until her air was in such short supply she was forced to arch her back, bringing forth the bones of her chest as if to signal for reprieve, which Dante, enjoying every desperate gasp she drew, did not give, even as those gasps became higher and more jagged, the gasps of a drowning girl; though instead of fainting, she dared him pull her deeper, dared him with words he had never before heard her use: words from back alleys at midnight, littered with trash, where no winds blew; words from the wharf, vomited at torn sails and cracked masts; words from the circles below, written of in a time long lost, where winged beasts made foul each breath of the eternally damned. And when it was over she lay in his arms, rational again. She talked about the girls at school—her minions. All of them, she told Dante, knew about their weekend together, and were dying for news. She couldn’t wait to show them her ring. She even wanted Maris to see it. Her even more than the others. Let Shaya try to find a gift remotely as good. It would never happen. Never. Maris would turn green and grit her teeth every time they passed in the hall. “And I’ll just laugh when she does,” Sunny said under the covers. “By the way, I’m going to cook breakfast for you in the morning. How do you like your coffee?” He smiled and told her with cream only. “Got it. No problem. Are pancakes and sausage okay?” “That sounds perfect,” he said. She giggled. “I feel like a wife. It’s so cool! I mean, yeah, I said my family doesn’t do traditional marriage, but it feels like it now, you know?” “I do, Sunny,” Dante said, and meant it. Seeing the ring on her finger made him feel like a husband. “And at school, it’s like…I’m in charge of everybody. I’m the queen. And you’re in charge of me.” “King,” Dante said. “Exactly, exactly.” They lay together in silence for a few more minutes. As always, Dante enjoyed the sound of Sunny’s breathing, which was steady now, fully caught up. He lifted the cover to find her wearing that same smile from before—the one of the mischievous imp. “Let’s do it again, Dante,” she whispered. “Please.” Dante smiled back. The fruit was hers. So of course, he let her take, and eat. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Dogs On Ice Caves in the cold beckon wandering souls. But where do they lead, and to what bell that tolls?   On the way home from Sunny’s, Dante asked to be dropped off at number 114. His father nodded and said that was fine. He congratulated his son on being a good friend. This made Dante cringe a bit. In truth, he hadn’t been over to see Donati in quite some time. To make his father’s praise even more ludicrous, he found he wasn’t missing the old man much. After all, Sunny was doing more than a splendid job watching after his companionship needs. She and her clique of friends had given him a sense of self-worth he’d never known obtainable. There stood another reason for his recent reluctance to visit the old man. Dante knew that the longer he stayed away, the more chores Donati would ask him to do around the house. It didn’t please him in the least to imagine how much dust had gathered on the furniture by now, or how many soiled dishes—caked with dry brioche—had piled in the sink. Dante frowned. Perhaps he should cancel his visit. Tell his father to keep driving. No, no. That wouldn’t do. Number 114 was already falling apart around the opera singer’s bulbous ears. He needed a caretaker. Correction: The house needed a caretaker. Thinking of it that way made Dante’s frown deepen. Did Donati even deserve to live in such a fine old place? Bah! It was Greek Revival, and he Italian. How ludicrous was that? Their mythologies were criss-crossed. Meshed together in awkward, senseless fashion. A painting of mixed styles, portraying a dedication to nothing save chaos. Nor could the house be blamed for such sacrilege. It was Donati’s fault. He’d been the one to pick up his roots. He’d come to Norwalk, purchased one of its finest pieces of history, and cast it to sorrows of decay. Shame on you, old man, Dante thought, suddenly angry. It was the final straw. He turned to tell his father never mind about the visit. But by then it was too late. “Here we are,” Mr. Torn said, pulling the car to the curb. “Thanks, Dad.” “No sweat. I’d come say hi to your friend, but I need to get home and walk Dukey.” Dante laughed. “He’s a good dog, Dad.” “He’s a wonderful dog.” As a numbing gel snuffs the pain of a sore tooth, so did the thought of Dukey extinguish Dante’s anger. He stepped from the car and waved goodbye to his dad. March punished him for his arrogance. A cold, brutal wind swept round Donati’s house. Dante staggered. Dead leaves, exhumed from February snows, rattled up the walk. Following them, Dante went to the door and knocked. No one answered, which did not surprise him. Chances were the old man’s hearing wasn’t all that great. Worse in wind like this. He knocked again. This time his effort was rewarded. A voice—Donati’s—called from inside the house. “ Dante? Is that you?” However bad his hearing might be, the opera singer’s vocal chords worked just fine. “It’s me!” Dante called to the upper windows of the house, from where it seemed Donati had called. “ Help me, boy! I need help!” “Where are you?” “ I’m upstairs! I’m in trouble!” With mounting concern Dante tried the door. It was of course locked. “You need to open the door, Mr. Donati! I don’t have my key!” “ There’s an old flower pot on the step! Dump it over!” Dante looked down. The pot had already toppled, courtesy of March. When Dante flipped it upside-down a key fell out. He picked it up, used it, and in a flash took to the stairs, calling Donati’s name. The opera singer stood at the end of a long hall lined with doors. Behind him lay another flight of steps, smaller and cruder than the main flight. “Ah!” he said, tightening the belt of his robe. “You’re here!” “What’s wrong?” Dante demanded. The old man gestured toward the stairs. “I need you to take some pictures of the attic bedrooms. For an article I’m writing,” he explained, when Dante became incredulous, “about the house.” “Is that all?” “Yes. Were you hoping for more?” He disappeared inside one of the hall’s many doors and came back with a Polaroid Instamatic camera. “Why didn’t you just come down and let me in?” Dante then asked. The old man affected to look pained. “I cooked pasta,” he said. His reply made no sense whatsoever. “That’s nice,” Dante told him. “What happened? Did it come to life and pigeon-hole you?” “That,” the other said with a smile, “is closer to the truth than it sounds.” Rolling his eyes, Dante took the camera. The attic stairs went to a half-landing, then up to a short hallway with a small, wooden door at each end. Each door, Dante found, let on a tiny bedroom, neither of which looked to have been slept in for years. “Try to get maybe five pictures in each room!” Donati called up. The silence of time overrode him. The silence of a lost era, which now, suddenly, had crept forth to whisper in Dante’s ears. Stepping into one of the rooms, he felt like he should hold his breath. Gray light shined dimly through a crooked window. A tiny fireplace, unlit for perhaps decades, slept soundly in one corner. In another lay the remains of an old sewing loom. The walls were made of simple wooden planks. Someone had carved a heart into one. Another bore a name: Louisa. Dante tried to picture girls sleeping up here after a day at school. The leap proved difficult at first. Over a hundred years had passed since they’d giggled under their wool blankets at midnight. But through exposure he managed to succeed. The giggles became syllables, the syllables, words. Whispered secrets near a winter candle, let loose in the room to swirl on a rogue draft, and be gone up the chimney. And with the scene came a nameless poem Dante had once, years ago, read under his own blankets.   Set flame to the wick of some memory, Idle in this room for a century, And share with me a secret story, Told by a girl in her youthful glory, A girl now a ghost in a garden of stone, A girl now a ghost, but no longer alone.   “ Louisa! Louisa! Do you think he’ll come tonight?” And from another bed in the room comes the smile of a girl with mischievous blue eyes. “Of course he’ll come! We’re in love!” “ But it’s cold and windy. Suppose he gets hurt?” “ Never!” Giggling from Louisa’s friend. Her freckled face glows by candle-light. “You’re so lucky! Has he kissed you yet?” “ Oh Darci! He kisses me every time we meet!” “ So you’re his? You belong to him?” “ Forever, Darci. Forever.” Darci brushes a lock of red hair from her face. The wind blows stronger. A draft slips through loose window panes, agitating the candle. Shadows dance on the wall. Both girls gasp, then laugh, then giggle some more… Dante took pictures in both bedrooms. He went downstairs and gave the photos to Donati, who shuffled through them. Pretending, Dante surmised, to be analytical. He paused over one, shrugged, then smiled at Dante. “These will do fine,” he said. “Thank you. Would you care for some breakfast?” “Already had it,” Dante said. “Cappuccino then.” “Sure.” The old man’s slippers dragged on the floor as he went to the stairs, then down. Following him to the kitchen, Dante saw about what he expected: dirty dishes, unwiped counters. The microwave door was ajar. Dante pulled it wide. Pasta, still moist from whatever disaster had occurred here recently, gooped its innards. “You need a wife, mister,” Dante said before he could check himself. “Bah!” Donati replied. He fired up the cappuccino machine, forcing Dante to speak louder. “Does that mean you don’t want one or you’re frustrated I speak the truth?” “It means mind your own business!” “Second one, then,” Dante muttered. They took their cups to the living room. Leaving the kitchen pleased Dante no end, though he knew he’d need to clean it later, else nobody would. Donati sat down heavily in his chair. His cup hit the table. “I want brioche,” he said grouchily. “But since you’re not having any I won’t bother.” Dante gaped. “That’s ridiculous. Have some.” “Oh no, no,” the other insisted. “It’s bad for my health.” “So is leaving linguine to turn green in your microwave. And speaking of that, what sort of a real Italian nukes his pasta?” “The sort who gets gas from cheap olive oil.” Donati peered over the table with narrow eyes. “Have you ever farted under your covers at night? Accidental suicides have happened that way. I once knew a man who pooped himself in a dream. Cacca te stesso. And when he woke up—“ Dante began to laugh. He could no longer help himself. “And when he woke up, my dear boy, there was a log between his legs, and not of the kind homosexuals describe over bagels and chocolate mocha.” He took a moment to stare at Dante, who was now laughing too hard to respond. “This,” he went on seriously, “was a tragedy. A catastrophe. The man leaped from his bed and ran away screaming. Only he shouldn’t have panicked. Jumping off the mattress caused it to spring. The poop sailed into the air—“ “No!” Dante yelled, choking on his cappuccino. “Yes, I’m afraid. It sailed into the air and landed on his head. It’s not funny!” “But it is , Mr. Donati, it is!” “Good. Now you won’t be so grumpy about cleaning the house.” “So you detected that?” “It was coming off you in waves. As for that poor, unfortunate man…” Dante leaned closer. He had to hear the rest. “He’d been despondent about going bald. But never again. And whenever he looked in the mirror, he called himself poophead. Now then!” Donati drained his cappuccino in one gulp. On the mug were the words Italian Girls Love Long Piedi. “Another story. Eh? One that involves me, and is far more recent. Just last night in fact.” “I’m game,” Dante said. “Excellent. You know I was once a dog lover?” Dante’s hand had been reaching for his own mug. Now it froze. “Um…” The old man’s features shriveled. “Not physically. Good heavens, boy.” “No! I know you didn’t mean it like that.” “I meant I enjoyed their company as friends and companions,” Donati went on, relaxing. “Over my lifetime I must have owned…oh, eight. Perhaps ten. Starting with my boyhood in Nascosto. But two in particular stand out. They weren’t only friends. They were my best friends. My heart let them in. The heart is a very choosy, very selfish muscle, Dante. Its doorstep is a place of instant judgment. When one meets another, they each put the other up. They are cold and severe as the most impeccable butler. Their ties are straight. Their tails are pressed sharp. An eyebrow may arch; a nostril may sniff. A gloved hand may reach for the door, prepared to close it and turn the lock. Oh yes, boy! We are hard markers all! In…or out. The heart chooses. The head copes. And should that butler decide to close the door—ah! But the one rejected is in for a fight, assuming of course he still wants to come in. It could take months, or even years, to change another’s heart. But when the butler lets you in, why…you’re in. And you may never leave, even beyond death. A most comfortable room awaits you upstairs. The bed is soft, with counterpane thick and cool. And there is tea in the breakfast room, and whiskey in the library. Knowledge. Laughter. Pain. Memories. They are all there for the one who passes judgment, as that one holds them all for you. Even beyond death. “Freddy and J.D. were let into my heart. One was a border collie, the other a briard. Both are gone now. In the physical world they are gone. But of course”—smiling, Donati tapped his chest—“in here they remain.” Dante nodded. It was a silly way to respond after such a long speech, but he had no words of his own. He could only think of Dukey. Dukey had gotten into his father’s heart. And there he would stay forever. “I dreamed of them last night,” the man sitting opposite continued. His eyes had roved to the living room archway, as if both dogs had somehow appeared and were wagging their tails. “Strange. One I owned as a boy, the other as a man. Yet there they were, romping together like old friends. I was in a house I never knew, sitting on someone’s couch. Behind me was a window. It was open. Across from me was a girl with long brown hair, and we were talking about paintings. Different styles. She was defending realism, while I remained headstrong toward abstract. Suddenly there came the sound of paws on the frame. I turned, startled. Then the paws—eight of them—were in my lap. Happy barking flooded my ears. Overjoyed, I hugged both dogs. Each died in terrible pain, yet here they were again, young and vibrant as puppies. You can’t think how amazing it was to see them thus. Distemper took Freddy in the prime of his life. He died in my arms, wracked by convulsions. J.D. went old. A degenerative hip took him. He lay in his bed for a month, weeping with pain. Finally I could bear it no more. I took him to the vet and had him euthanized.” Here the old man paused to blink away a tear. “More cappuccino?” he asked, in a surprisingly level voice. Without waiting for a reply he took both mugs, rose, and went to the kitchen. Seconds later the machine whirred to life. Over its din the singer asked if Dante owned a dog. “A puppy, yes,” Dante called. Donati shuffled back into the room. Their mugs were now on a tray. Alarmed at how precariously they rattled, Dante helped him place the tray on the table. “Thank you, my boy,” the singer told him. “One day I’ll teach you how to make good cappuccino. Then you’ll be the one to fetch it.” He winked at Dante, putting his butt back in its seat. “I know how to make a fire,” Dante said, nodding at the room’s cold hearth. “Most kind,” Donati said. “But I believe this story calls for a bit of a chill.” He lifted his mug, quaffed its contents. A long belch followed, which made him shake his head in disgust. “Damn!” he said. “Your baking company here in America, Nestle. They think their milk disappears quickly because it tastes so good. Let them try my cappuccino! How that chocolate bunny’s ears would droop in shame!” “I believe you,” Dante said with a laugh. “But enough about bunnies. I was speaking of dogs. My very own, dear and dead, back from their graves, if only in a dream. They each licked my face about a dozen times, then jumped back out the window and disappeared. My heart wailed the injustice of it. Having thought them gone forever, they’d come back, only to whistle off down the lane once more, leaving me alone with this final, friendly memory. I wanted more. Selfish! Bah! I know. But I’ve already described to you the chambers of our hearts.” “Did you chase after them?” Dante asked. “Indeed I did. Right through the window I went. My feet landed on an oil-stained driveway. I slipped and fell on my culo. That’s my ass, boy. It slowed me only for a moment. Then I was on my feet. I ran to a street lined with maple trees, much like the one we live on. A red convertible car was parked at the curb. I had never seen its like. Sleek and stylish. Slumped at the wheel was a man who took no notice of me. He looked dead. Perhaps he was. I might have stopped to check, but one of the dogs—I think it was J.D.—barked my name.” Dante blinked. “Your name?” “In his own dog way,” Donati said. “I looked toward the sound, and saw that both animals had run to a small bridge with an ornate railing. Barking with joy, they leaped over the railing like rabbits.” He laughed. “Oh goodness. Here we are back to rabbits. Do you know I once saw an amazing magician named Bloomcraft who owned an impeccably trained rabbit. Salto!” he said, jumping a little in his seat. “I remember the rabbit’s name was Salto. But now I’m just trailing off, aren’t I?” “Not at all,” Dante said. “Ha! Don’t be polite with me. Where was I in the story?” “The dogs jumped off the bridge.” “Yes. Yes they did indeed. So I went to the bridge and peered over the railing. And do you know what I saw? Both dogs grinning up at me from a field of tall grass. Wind blew over the field, making the grass undulate. I could see J.D.’s fur ruffling, and Freddy’s collar—his collar!—shining in the sun. How I wished to join them! But they were out of reach. A hundred feet down from where I stood. Then an even more terrible thing happened. The dogs turned and ran away. I watched from the iron bars of the bridge their bodies—romping in the grass—become smaller and smaller. Tears flooded my cheeks. I screamed their names. And wonder of wonders, somebody heard. A ramp of dirt appeared just over the rail. It led gently down to the field. Wasting no time, I leaped from the bridge and continued my pursuit.” A loud crash from deep in the house made Dante jump and knock over his mug. The mug was empty, but by instinct Dante snatched at it. He missed. It fell to the hardwood floor, where its handle struck and shattered. Bits of glass flew in all directions, “Please tell me,” Dante said, humiliated, “that mug wasn’t worth anything.” The sad look on Donati’s face was not reassuring. “It was, actually,” he sighed. “A family heirloom. My—my father made it for me. Oh, Dante!” To Dante’s absolute horror, the old man covered his face and began to weep. His shoulders shook with sobs. “Mr. Donati I’m so sorry!” “Don’t be,” the other moaned. “What’s gone is gone.” “Mr. Donati!” The old man lowered his hands to reveal a devious, devilish grin. “Actually, boy, my father knew nothing of ceramics. I think he tried pottery once.” Donati raised his index finger. “ Once. ” Clutching his chest, Dante slumped in his seat. “Oh my goodness,” he panted. “Why would you do that, Mr. Donati? Why?” “To prove to myself I can still perform,” Donati said. “That’s ten years off my life I’ll never get back. What made that big crash?” “Undoubtedly the mourning room door. The knob is broken and sometimes I forget to slide the latch.” Donati once again rose from his chair. Dante followed him to an empty room in back of the house. Here the old man’s suspicion was confirmed. A door that let on the back yard hung open. The jamb looked beaten and bruised. Dante went to it. He caught the door as it swung on another gust of wind. “Brr!” Donati said from behind him. “One day that door is going to fly off its hinges and blow away. That will be my fault. I’m too old to fix it and too forgetful with the latch.” “I’ll fix it,” Dante said. “All it needs is a new knob.” “Too old and too forgetful,” Donati repeated, as if he hadn’t heard. “You’re beating yourself up over a broken door.” “This house doesn’t deserve me.” Dante opened his mouth to accuse the old man of being ridiculous. The words would not come. How could he refute such a claim when, stepping from his father’s car an hour ago, he’d been in full support of it? His eye went to the walls. Like in other rooms of the house, they were peeling. Holes from nails pounded and pulled dotted their uneven surface. Overhead was an empty light socket, charred black. Its screws were missing. Someone—possibly Donati—had duct taped it to the ceiling. It looked ugly and crooked. “Anyway,” the old man said with a sigh, “forget the dream. Who cares? They were just a couple of dumb dogs.” He turned to go. Dante let him get a few steps before giving chase. He told Donati to stop, to come back and finish the story. But the other would have none of it. He opened a second door off the hallway and descended a flight of wooden stairs. The stairs led to a cobwebbed basement for which Dante, hesitating at the top, didn’t quite have the nerve. “Come down,” Donati said from the bottom. His hand beckoned. “Come.” “No thank you.” “Why not? Scared?” “A little,” Dante admitted. Donati regarded the cobwebs. They hung in snarls from ancient beams of wood. Their spinsters, as well as their spinsters’ spinsters, were long dead. Dried up on the dusty floor. “What happened in the dream?” Dante asked. “Same thing that’s happening to you right now, boy. I got scared. The dogs led me into a cave of ice that closed in hard after a few steps. It was dark and cold. I could see my breath. My fingertips grew numb. The passage became more and more narrow. Soon its icy walls were all but crushing me. Nevertheless I could still hear my friends up ahead, barking. Just a little further, those barks seemed to say. Just a little further. Then I did a most foolish thing. I looked over my shoulder. The poet Virgil told a student of his never to do that. Why? Because we must leave our sins behind us, boy. We must endure the pain of cleansing. Of becoming pure.” But Dante still would not come down the stairs. “I don’t understand,” he said. “When I looked back I saw Princess, standing in a ray of sunlight. She was naked. Naked and inviting. She held out her arms to me. At once I forgot about the dogs. Mindful of the ice, I moved toward her. But as I exited the cave she disappeared, and moments later I was awake in my bed. Tears welled in my eyes. I knew I’d been given a chance, and missed it.” “A chance to be with Princess?” The old man bared his teeth. “NO, boy. For God’s sake, can’t you reason anything out on your own? Somewhere on the other side of that ice are my friends. They wanted me to come and run with them again, as I had in my youth. We were healthy and strong.” Donati’s head lowered in shame. “But I couldn’t go. I was frightened. I was tempted. I couldn’t go.” “It was only a dream, Mr. Donati.” “You think so?” “Yes. And I don’t put stock in dreams. When we go to sleep the mind gets bored and babbles whatever memory it happens upon. Those memories form a huge stockpile, ripe for sifting. Except everything in it is useless. Now come out of that basement.” They went back to the living room without further exchange. Donati dropped heavily into his chair as if he’d come to the end of a long journey and his strength was spent. “I have faith,” he said, without lifting his eyes from the table, “that those dogs are still there. Do you know what faith is, Dante?” “It’s the belief in something you can’t see.” “Yes. Very succinct. Do you have it?” “What? Faith?” “Yes, boy.” Dante’s answer was immediate, self-satisfying, and cold as the wind on the windows. “No, sir. Not remotely.” It seemed to weaken Donati even further. His eyes rose desperately from the depths of his empty mug. “But Dante—“ “If I can’t see it, it isn’t there. Period.” A long silence followed. Dante waited patiently for the other to break it. After all, the hammer and chisel of his own speech had done their work. He had nothing further to add. Finally the other seemed to realize as much. He asked if Dante would please tidy up his kitchen, and perhaps do some dusting around the downstairs fireplaces. “You see the mess, yes?” he added with a tiny smile. “Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.” “Thank you, boy. Thank you.” CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Sunny and Maris “I may never do you right, but will always do you proud. My heart knows no sun, and your own it shall enshroud.”   Sunny had whispered this promise in bed, sometime after midnight, as she and Dante were drifting off to sleep. He’d thought it strange, not because it rhymed, but because he knew full well that her heart had already done the deed it spoke of. The knowledge pleased him. Nor was it an exaggeration on her part. The temple of Sunset Desdemona was dark, its chambers countless, its corridors labyrinthine. And as the years passed it would grow even larger, confounding its resident—Dante—with even more doors that opened on doors, windows in the floor, and spiral staircases that stopped at the ceiling. But on the Friday following his less than pleasant visit to Donati’s home—a day that would end with Maris stealing Sunny’s bloodstone ring—she seemed innocent enough. Almost harmless. “Hey Dante!” she sang as he opened the door of her dad’s car. Holding her hand, he escorted her from the back seat. Her red hair caught the sun and for a moment seemed to flash. “Mr. Torn,” Brenton purred. “Good morning.” “Good morning, Sir.” “Is my daughter being a good girl at school?” This was a question he’d been asking at random intervals throughout the year. Today Dante had a response ready and waiting. “Only when the teachers are looking, Sir.” “Ha! Now that’s how it’s done!” Brenton’s shrewd eyes went to Sunny. “See you after school, young lady.” “Bye, Daddy!” Dante closed the door. He took Sunny’s bag. Then he walked her to the school entrance with her on the inside, away from the sidewalk edge. Several of Sunny’s girlfriends waved hello. Sunny waved back. She was dressed in her typical short black skirt with buckled boots. Beneath her trademark leather jacket Dante could see flares of a yellow blouse. “I have a surprise for you,” she said, as he pulled open the door for her. Dante raised his brow. “I know, I know,” she went on, “you hate surprises.” “Well, usually,” he had to admit. “But this one I couldn’t resist.” She got no further before Stacey appeared, swooping in from the crowd of students like a small, black bird. “Sunny!” she sang. “What are you doing this weekend?” Sunny put her head on Dante’s shoulder. “Spending it with my Mister here,” she said. “What about you?” “I don’t know yet, but”—Stacey raised her thumb and pinky—“call me tonight? Saturday night too?” “Sure,” Sunny grinned. She looked up at Dante. “That is if we’re not busy.” “Wow! See you guys at lunch!” And Stacey disappeared even quicker than she’d shown up. “Heck,” Dante said, staring into the crowd, “call her even if we are busy. That’ll really flip her wheels.” “Not a chance.” “Sunny? Baby? Beautiful? Sweetheart?” “Yes, darling?” “How many of your friends know about what we did last Saturday?” She looked appalled. “Are you kidding? That was the best night of my life. I told them all!” “Well…thank you. Thank you.” Doubt flickered on her face. “You didn’t tell your friends, right?” “No.” “Whew!” she gushed. “Thank you. Girls are allowed to talk, Dante, but boys”—she shook her head—“no. No way.” He laughed. “Understood.” “Look at you blush! It’s so cute!” They walked to her locker, navigating the traffic with practiced ease. Dante wondered if Sunny knew he didn’t have any friends to tell. Associates maybe, but no real friends. She dialed the combination with her breath held. It was a carrot she occasionally dangled ever since Dante’s own locker had jammed last year, forcing her lungs past their limit. Smiling, she now pulled the latch, opened the door, and let the breath out. “Good girl!” he said. Then: “Weren’t you going to tell me something about a surprise?” “Oh yeah! I almost forgot! My home economics class is having a baking contest this morning.” Her expression turned bitter. “Me and Maris are going head to head. And you, ” she went on, poking a finger at his chest, “are going to be one of the judges.” Dante’s mouth fell open in shock. “Yeah,” Sunny said, “that’s good. You’re going to be eating, so your mouth needs to be open.” “Sunny, I’m not sure I’m qualified to judge a baking contest,” he managed to say. This was a lie. In fact, Dante knew he wasn’t qualified. He’d never judged a contest in his life. Judging one with his own girlfriend as a contestant was no way to break into the field. He was suddenly terrified. What if he chose wrong? What if he picked Maris’ dish? Hope flooded his chest. “Wait,” he said. “Will the dishes be tagged with your names?” “Nope. It’s a blind test.” Ack! cried Dante’s hope, as it died horribly. “And what are the dishes?” he asked. Sunny raised her hands in mock revelation. “Chocolate. Chip. Cookiiieeees,” she intoned. “My mom’s recipe, which I know by heart, shall put Shaya’s little girl scout to shame.” “Shall, Shaya, shame,” Dante said, trying his best to keep cool. “Yesshh, my dear. Come to the home ec room after second period. Tell Mr. Hogan to kiss your butt if he gives you any trouble.” “I can’t. He might take me up on the offer.” “Good point.” She put a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth. “He’ll give you a pass, don’t worry. The teachers have it all arranged.” “Sunny, are you sure you want me to do this?” “Children?” Mr. Wolfe called from his classroom door. “Plan on loitering in the halls all day?” “No, sir,” Dante and Sunny said together. “Then get in here, both of you.” His eyes narrowed. Dante noticed he hadn’t been shaving well of late. His beard looked gray and scraggly, as if a skunk had decided to take up residence on his chin. “You two are a couple, right?” “Yes, sir,” Dante told him. “Aww,” he let out sarcastically. “How sweet. At least for about five years. Then she’ll leave you, probably on Christmas day. You’ll get drunk under the tree, staring at the presents she never opened.” Sunny laughed. “Oh sure,” Wolfe said, “you think it’s funny now. Floating on your little pink cloud way up in the sky. But that cloud is going to dissolve , children. And when it does”—he whistled, curving his hand to look like a plummeting jet—“prepare for impact!” Holding hands, Dante and Sunny walked past him. Both concealed their smiles by keeping their eyes fixed on the floor. “Merry Christmas, Wolfe!” Dante heard the teacher say. “I’m leaving you for a garbage man! A garbage man! She always insisted on taking out the trash and I could never understand it. That’s a man’s job, I told her. ‘Oh no, no, honey, I got it.’ She got it all right.” “Don’t get mad, Mr. Wolfe,” Dante said under his breath, “get Glad.” “Torn!” Wolfe bellowed, while Sunny burst out laughing. “Yes, sir?” “Detention! This afternoon!” ∞ Sunny’s home economics room was in the old wing of the school. Dante knew it well, as he also took Shop here. Not that this fact held anything to do with its special place in his heart. No, no. It was the dark, disused bathroom at the end of the wing he would always remember with fondness. Last year he’d gone into that room with a stain on his shirt. Minutes later Sunny had followed. That made her the first ever pretty girl to be curious about what he was doing. Her presence had given him a surprise that day. Today her absence did the same. Dante opened the home ec door to find about ten girls—none of them Sunny or Maris—seated at long black tables on either side of the room. In between the tables were two empty desks facing the kitchen area. But the stoves were vacant, as were the sinks. “Hello,” Dante said to the girls. He noticed that one of them was Rajani. “Am I in the right place?” “You are!” came a voice from his left. A tall, bespectacled woman had swept in from a side door. She was thin, with brown hair wrapped tightly in a pony tail. Dante thought she looked like a trailer park refugee from 1978. “I’m Miss Cross, the Home Economics teacher,” she said. “Are you Dante?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Right this way.” She led him to yet another side door, this one closer to the front of the room. “In here,” she said. “Put on a mask and a white robe. Try to cover as much of yourself as you can. That way none of the girls will know who you are.” “Why all the secrecy?” Dante asked. Miss Cross’s excitement amused him. She was fairly bustling him into the room, the way a mistress might do in effort to hide one of her suitors from the family. “Bias, Dante!” she explained. “Bias! None of the girls can know you any more than you can know them! Now shoo! Shoo!” Dante had more questions but couldn’t ask them before he was pushed into a long, narrow closet. He turned, opened his mouth to speak, and Miss Cross slammed the door in his face. “Hello,” a friendly, cultured voice chimed from the softly lit recesses of cookware and cook’s whites. Dante spun around. A boy his own age stood in the room with him. He wore a straight smile, crooked glasses, and a messy mop of brown hair. It was, of course, Shaya Blum. “So you’re judging, too,” Dante said. A coil of beautiful contempt, iridescent, like that of a poison asp, stirred in his belly. “I am indeed,” the other boy answered. From here he proceeded with a most loathsome act: He held out his hand. Dante had no choice but to shake it, which he did, but with prickly coolness. “May the best lady win,” Shaya said. “Right.” A rack of white coats stood nearby. Dante chose the longest one on it. It was by no means long enough. The lower half of his denim pants was fully exposed. “Shoes,” Shaya said, nodding toward Dante’s boots. “You must take them off. Please,” he added, when Dante scowled. “That way Sunny won’t recognize you. See?” He pointed to his own feet, which were clad only in socks. So Dante took off his shoes and laid them aside. “Ask me to take off my pants and I’ll punch you.” “Understood.” Now both boys turned their attention toward the masks. Five identical faces of powder white plastic hung on the wall. Five pairs of bulbous lips, hurriedly smeared with red paint, grinned without sustenance for their joy, as if over a great many years spent in this dim closet they had quietly gone insane. Dante chose one and held it by a cheap rubber band stapled to its sides. Seconds later a light knock hit the door. It was Miss Cross. She asked them to please make sure their masks and robes were in place. “Here we go,” Shaya said, taking off his glasses. Both boys put on their masks. “Ready?” Miss Cross said from outside. “Ready,” Shaya and Dante said together. The door swung open. Miss Cross looked at them both for a moment only, then beckoned for Shaya to come forward. She told Dante to wait. “Wait?” Dante asked. Miss Cross shushed him violently. “No speaking! Yes, please wait here.” And once again she closed the door, this time to leave him by himself. Dante lifted the mask. Its lunatic expression could in no way be compared to his befuddlement. How exactly was this contest being judged? Putting his ear to the door’s keyhole, he listened for clues. The room beyond was hushed, or nearly so. Softly spoken words, too delicate for interpretation, flitted to and fro. One of the girls giggled. Another sighed. Several more minutes passed, by which time Dante had given up wondering and was seated on a box in back of the closet when Miss Cross knocked again. He leaped to his feet. “Are you wearing your mask?” the teacher called. Dante put it on and whispered it was okay to open the door. She did so. Still wearing his own mask, Shaya stepped inside. His robe billowed. He looked to Dante like a priest on his way to a sermon. “Come this way,” Miss Cross said. “And remember: No speaking.” The audience of young girls regarded him. Some frowned, others smiled. Two other girls—Maris and Sunny—stood in front of the room, at opposite ends of the kitchen. Sunny looked stern. Expressionless as a Greek statue from early classical days. On Maris’ face hovered the tiniest hint of a smile. Miss Cross motioned for him to take a seat at the desk on the right. Dante looked intently at his girlfriend, conveying with his eyes—or hoping to—that this was him , Dante. Only she refused to return his stare. She had glanced at him only once when he’d stepped from the closet. Now her eyes were fixed on Miss Cross. “You will be given two plates,” the teacher said, “each with a large cookie on it, cut into four pieces. You will also be given a glass of water. You will eat one piece from one cookie, drink from the glass, then eat a piece from the other. Please nod—and only nod—if you understand.” Dante nodded. “Each girl,” Miss Cross continued, “begins the contest with forty points. The first piece you eat from each cookie is free, but after that, each piece you eat costs the girl who baked that cookie ten points. Therefore, the sooner you choose the winner, the more points that girl’s cookie will have. Please nod if you understand.” Dante nodded. “The cookie you choose as the winner will receive ten extra points. Our other judge has already made his decision, and the score has been tallied. I will act as a tie-breaker should the need arise. Please nod if you understand.” For the third time, Dante nodded. Never once did his eyes leave Sunny. “Very well,” Miss Cross said. She left the room and returned with two plates, each with a chocolate chip cookie on it, cut into four equal pieces. They were indeed big. Each quarter looked to be slightly larger than Dante’s palm. Miss Cross put a glass of water in between the two plates. “You may begin,” she said. Dante looked at the cookie on the right, reached for it, then chose the left one. It felt warm and moist. His fingers sank delicately into the crust. Lifting his mask, he put the piece into his mouth. Its taste worried him. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it. The chocolate chips, lightly melted, were bathed in warm, sweet dough. The whole mouthful practically dissolved on his tongue. What if the other cookie tasted just as good? How would he decide? “Water,” Miss Cross told him. Dante drank, rinsing the last residue of perfection away. He reached for a piece on his right. Its texture did not respond quite as willingly as the first. Moving his thumb and index finger, Dante could feel small, tantalizing flecks of crust trace the grooves of his skin. He raised the piece to his lips, hesitated, and ate. It was crunchy, but only just so. The flecks broke willingly between his teeth like minute pieces of candy, while the chocolate chips melted just as perfectly as the first. Dante nodded at Miss Cross, then drank some water. Now each girl’s plate had three quarters left. “Do you wish to taste?” Miss Cross asked. Dante nodded. “From which plate?” Here the first real dilemma of the game presented itself. The cookie Dante chose would cost the girl who baked it ten points. Of course he could always eat again from the other plate, costing that girl ten points… Which would only delay the inevitable. Helplessly cornered, Dante chose left. He chewed, swallowed. Everything melted like hot butter. The cookie was delicious. Perhaps, he thought, I should eat all from both plates. But later on Sunny would doubtless chide him for being inept. For escaping danger through an easy passage. “Do you wish to taste?” Miss Cross asked yet again. Dante set the water glass down and nodded. “From which plate?” This time he went directly to the right. The crunchy little flecks tempted him all over again, melting into the chocolate with soft little sighs of sweet surrender. The cookie was delicious. Almost reluctantly, Dante followed it with a drink of water. And of course, from Miss Cross: “Do you wish to taste?” Dante looked at both plates. He had made up his mind. Yet one final decision remained: Should he eat one more bite from the losing cookie? “Do you wish to taste?” Miss Cross repeated. Grinning beneath his mask, Dante nodded, chose the losing plate, and tasted. When Miss Cross asked her question again, he shook his head. “Very well,” the home ec teacher said. “Please point to the winning cookie.” Dante did. He felt almost certain he had chosen Sunny’s. “Very well.” A look of disappointment fell over Miss Cross’ face. Frowning, she led Dante back to the closet, where he waited with Shaya until the end of the period. He—Shaya—asked Dante about the cookies. Were they hard to judge? Didn’t he find both perfect? Dante refused to answer. He stood as close to the door as he could, waiting for the school bell to ring. They were allowed to leave only when all the other girls had gone. But Sunny was waiting in the hall. She gave Dante a hug, kissed him on the cheek. Later that day he found out two things: That the winner of the contest would not be announced until Monday. That Shaya had taken only one bite from each cookie. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Win On The Road A chase through history, a final duel, snatches the breath from a lover cruel.   The end of the day found Dante dumping books in his locker, his arms the shovel of a truck, the books, trash. Wearing a demonic scowl, he took a moment to regard them before slamming the door. They lay in a heap—math, science, history, health. All had homework assignments due on Monday. Dante refused their entreaties. He had different plans for the weekend. Someone grabbed his shoulder just as the door slammed shut. “What is it?” Dante asked, noticing the rigid look on Sunny’s face. “Trouble,” she said. “Follow me.” She led him down the hall, ignoring a number knowing grins from various female imps. They went to the front walk, where Mr. Desdemona’s Jaguar sat purring with a very similar grin. Sunny opened the door and leaned inside. “Hi Daddy!” Dante heard her say. “I’m staying after school today. Detention.” “What did you do this time?” Brenton asked. “Spiked Mr. Hogan’s coffee with estrogen. I think he’s gay now.” “Bad girl!” “I’ll have Dante walk me home. Bye!” The Jaguar purred off. Dante watched it go without knowing what to think. Once it was out of the parking lot Sunny took him to the bike racks. Here she revealed, briefly and without ceremony, the true source of her trouble. “My ring,” she said. “What about it?” Her hand shot into the air. The fingers were empty. “Stolen,” she explained, before Dante could react. “By Maris.” “No,” Dante said. “That’s crazy. How?” Sunny’s freckles disappeared under a flare of red. “Never you mind how, Mister. She has it and I’m going to get it back.” “So she just pulled it off your finger?” he asked, daring the coals of her rage. She wouldn’t answer. Clutching Dante’s hand, she pulled him up a wide gravel path. Other students, sensing her determination, cleared the way. The path led through a line of tall, naked trees, and then to a series of backstreets. More students, all on their way home, walked here. Clean, modest houses with short driveways seemed to smile cheerfully as they passed. Dante’s eye jumped from one student’s back to the next. He could pick out no one as Shaya, or Maris. “How do you know she stole your ring?” he asked Sunny. Her own gaze was fixed on the end of the street, where Dante could see a handful of other kids turning left toward Stoutenburg Park on Norwood Avenue. None of them looked familiar. Dante stopped. His hand tightened around Sunny’s. It was an easy business to make her stop too. As music is scratched from a vinyl surface by inelegant fingers, so the rhythm of Sunny’s walk became broken. Her head snapped round, green eyes flaring. “Answer me right now,” Dante said. The eyes cooled slightly. Nevertheless she tried to yank herself free from Dante’s grip. When that failed, she took hold Dante’s hand with her other arm and doubled down. Still it wasn’t enough. Not even close. “Let go!” she cried. “Tell me why you think Maris has your ring.” Sunny replied by balling her fist and beating Dante’s hand as hard as she could. He barely felt it, but did notice her nails, which would likely cut well if she decided to scratch. “ Please, Dante! We’re going to lose them!” By now a number of other kids had noticed their antics. Curious stares came from every direction. Dante didn’t care. “So tell me,” he said, maintaining his grip. The beating stopped. Blinking away tears, Sunny said: “I saw her in the restroom. At the sinks.” Her whimpering rose to an infuriated scream. “I took off my ring for five seconds to wash my hands! And she snatched it, Dante! She snatched it and ran!” Dante let her go. Though still not convinced, he’d heard enough for the time being. He followed Sunny to the end of the street. Here a large park they both knew well enough opened all the way to a much wider, much busier Norwood Avenue. Norwood would eventually lead them to Benedict Avenue, and Benedict Avenue to downtown Norwalk. Toddlers, with parents hovering close by, played on the swings and slides. This in spite of the gray March weather. Dante remembered once wrecking his bicycle here. His elbow had been torn open. Gushing blood, he’d cried all the way home. “I still don’t see her,” he told Sunny, who had gone back to leading him by the hand. “I do,” she replied, without turning her head. “They’re down by West Elm.” “You’ve got some sharp eyes.” “Yeah. But Maris also shines really bright.” She dropped this last comment like a burdensome bag of bricks. Dante could almost see it spilling on the park grass, polluting it, making it ugly. Stepping over them, he let Sunny soldier him on. West Elm Street was about half way to Benedict. Here Sunny turned left. The street was wide and newly tarred. Elm trees towered over homes older and larger than the ones behind Stoutenburg. At the end of the street was a harsh curve that bent left onto South Pleasant Street. South Pleasant dipped into a valley where another park appeared. At the bottom of the valley the street bent right, then up the hill to West Main. Dante caught a glimpse of Donati’s mansion before they reached it. Then they were in the valley. “They’re at the top of the hill,” Sunny said. “If you say so,” Dante told her. “I still don’t see them.” She looked left into a wooded area that divided Pleasant Street from Norwood. “There’s a path back there. It leads to the school.” “I know. I’ve used it.” “Too dirty for Mr. and Mrs. Blue Sky Baby.” “Probably.” They went up the hill. An elementary school stood at the top. Beyond that, at the corner of West Main, was number 114. Dante glanced at it, wondering if he’d see the old man in one of the windows. His eyes were stopped short by a sign on the front walk. It swung from its post on a light, chill breeze.   FOR SALE   “What’s the matter?” Sunny asked, when Dante’s stride hesitated. He couldn’t answer right away. The sign was from a local, well-known realtor. It looked weathered, as if years had passed since its pounding. The hooks were rusted. Now they began to squeak, as if in acknowledgment of Dante’s presence. “Nothing,” he said at last. “Then let’s go.” And as she led Dante off he didn’t see the old man in any of the windows. There weren’t even curtains. About a quarter mile down West Main they arrived at a humongous church. Methodist. By this time Dante had spotted Maris and Shaya. Her coat was white, his black. Upon seeing them Dante had offered to go and get the ring. Sunny refused. They were being baited, she told him. Strung along. To where exactly? She didn’t know yet. But she wanted to. She wanted to show Maris that she could play any of her silly games and win them all. So they continued their pursuit from a distance. Maris and Shaya didn’t go into the church, but turned left on State Street (right next to Dante’s own house), where nothing happened for another quarter mile. Then they came to second church, this one Catholic. Like the one they’d just passed, it was old and huge. Its mighty steeple acted as a lightning rod in bad weather. This happened about once every other year, blasting roof shingles onto the street below. A wide, ornate entrance of marble and oak wood beckoned worshippers inside. Maris and Shaya went to it and stopped. Sunny motioned for Dante to move behind a tree. He saw Maris point to the church, then back up State Street. Shaya nodded. They went up a flight of curved stairs. At the top was the entrance. Shaya held the door for Maris. They stepped inside and were gone. “Right,” Sunny said, frowning. “I can’t go into the nave.” “Why not?” Dante asked. “We’ll go around back instead. They won’t be expecting that.” The skies had been gray throughout their entire journey. Now a light rain began to fall, pattering the streets. Dante followed Sunny to the back of the church, where it became an elementary school. Crayon-colored drawings decorated clean windows all aglow with warm, sheltered lives. With them came a different kind of problem. Classes had just let out, and there were kids on the playground. Nuns called for them to come inside out of the rain. They listened, but only just. Screams and laughter filled the air. Sunny took one look at all of it, shook her head, and led Dante to the end of the school building, where it met the church. A door with a metal push bar told them to go away. Ignoring it, Sunny pushed the bar. Next moment they were in a dark, silent hallway, very long. The door clicked shut. Smells of cedar wood and incense descended upon them. Other doors, all closed, brooded in deep shadows. At the far end of the hall Dante could see a candle flickering. “Let’s keep moving,” Sunny whispered. She didn’t sound quite so determined anymore. “What’s the matter?” Dante asked. “Scared.” “Of what?” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Upward-going souls, Dante. But I’m all right. Let’s just do this.” They started toward the candle. Sunny’s boot heels clicked on bare wood. Closer, closer. Though soft lights in the ceiling provided some glow, it was the candle Dante stayed fixed upon, as if its light were the only light, and somehow Sunny’s ring would appear next to it. They came to a T intersection. The candle rested on a plain wooden table too small to use for anything else. On the wall above it hung a crucifix that made Sunny recoil. “I’ll go this way,” she said, stepping backward. “Alone?” Dante asked. She glanced fearfully at the crucifix. Then: “I would like to be alone when I find Maris, yes.” “Sunny, what are you going to do to her?” “Nothing,” she insisted. “I just want my ring back.” “That will happen faster if I’m with you.” “It’ll happen faster when I make her regret ever stealing from me.” “Don’t hurt her, Sunny. Like you said—just get the ring back.” Sunny’s green eyes did not shine in the candle glow. They were like lamps that had been put out. But her teeth gnashed as she asked whether or not that was an order. Dante told her it was. “Don’t worry then,” the girl replied in mock deadpan. “She’ll be perfectly safe.” “What if I find her first?” “You won’t. May I go now?” “Yes. Good luck.” Sunny stepped backward, until her body seemed to dematerialize in the gloom. Dante went the other way. There were fewer doors in this direction. He supposed that would make his job, whatever it was, easier. On the left a long window gave him a view of the nave. It was all but utterly black. He could see ghostly outlines of wooden benches. A lectern. A huge golden crucifix. The crucifix was lit so the weeping, suffering figure of Jesus, ten feet tall, could more conveniently shame his congregation. Dante shook his head. This was no place to heal the sick, or have prayers answered. Were a sick baby to be carried to the lectern by Pope John Paul himself, that baby would eventually die. Prayers did nothing. Hope. Faith. Nothing. The phone to Heaven was a toy. Had to be, because Heaven didn’t exist. And even if it did, why, God would test one’s faith in Him by killing someone he loves. So His followers seemed to believe. Oh, the Lord made my little boy die of cancer to test my faith in Him. I believe, I believe. Praise Jesus, I believe. Dante didn’t get it. If God resided in all beating hearts, why were tests necessary? “Tell your dad,” Dante said softly to the crucifix, “to just go ahead and give me an F. ” “Wisdom,” a voice responded near his shoulder, making him jump, “does not come from test scores.” Shaya smiled peacefully in the gentle light. His eyeglasses twinkled like stars. “If indeed that’s what you meant by F. ” “And where did you come from?” Dante was compelled to ask. “I’ve been waiting around for you. And Maris for Sunny.” “She’d like her ring back.” Shaya nodded. “I know. She’ll get it.” “Since when have followers of Christ thought it okay to steal?” “Since the motivation for it is someone’s soul. Wouldn’t you break a car window to save a suffocating child?” “Sunny isn’t suffocating.” “She will be. She can’t breathe in the nave.” Shaya took a step forward. Dante, though by no means on his home turf, stood his ground. “Is that where Maris is?” he demanded. “The nave?” “That’s where everything is, Dante. And that’s where it’s all going to end for Sunny.” “What are you talking about, you brain-washed, fanatical loon?” Unscathed by this insult, Shaya continued to smile. “Saving a soul,” he replied. “Sunny doesn’t need saving.” “I know she doesn’t, Dante. I know.” It was time to leave, Dante knew. To go get Sunny and quit this place, ring or no ring. But first he had to punch Shaya in the jaw. He balled his fist, swung it— Shaya blocked it. His arm was like concrete. Pain shrieked through Dante’s bones. “Don’t make me hit back,” the peace-loving boy said, sickeningly docile. “Please. Just wait here until it’s finished.” Dante swung again. This time Shaya ducked. And when he came back up, a punch of his own caught Dante under the chin, laying him low. “Sorry,” he heard Shaya say, as the church shadows grew darker. “Sorry.” ∞ Sunny watched her boyfriend disappear down the hall. Her end was not so dark as his. Not that it mattered. Her eyes worked perfectly well in low light. She walked pertly to the end of the hall, ready to snap Maris’ neck if need be. A window on her right let on the church nave. It was dark, but Sunny saw everything—benches, a lectern, Maris—just fine. Maris! She stood near the lectern, holding up Sunny’s ring. Behind her was a huge golden crucifix. Its light glowed in Maris’ blonde locks, setting it afire like the mane of a holy mare at the chariot of Elijah. Not unsettled in the least, Sunny went to the end of the hall, where a wooden door opened onto the nave. Her hand reached for the latch— And froze. To enter the nave, she knew, would automatically put her on borrowed time. The power of God and Christ would act as poison in her lungs, killing her within minutes. Go back then, she told herself. Get Dante. He’ll take care of this. Yes, he probably would, and Sunny was sorely tempted. But what she’d implied to him earlier was true: This wasn’t his fight. This was Sunny versus Maris. Darkness versus light. Truth versus lies. Yes, but…how long can you hold your breath again, girl? Thirty seconds? Make that twenty-five if you’re moving around. Sunny took several quick, deep breaths, getting her lungs ready for a workout. She looked back through the window. Maris was still in the nave, still waiting. All right then, Sunny thought, here I come. She returned to the door and inhaled the deepest breath she could— AHHHHHHH! Then she pulled the latch. The door clicked open. Knowing she didn’t have time to waste, Sunny went inside. The pressure was immediate. A gentle squeeze from a cool blue hand. It bore down on Sunny’s chest, teasing away her air. She moved swiftly towards her adversary, who by now had noticed her presence and offered a welcoming smile. Sunny got halfway up the aisle when the door closed and locked. Stunned, she whirled on her heel. A young priest stood at latch. In his hand was a small gold key. On his face, unflinching severity. Like so many drowning victims, Sunny realized the depth of her dilemma just as she began to run out of air. Her eyes scrambled over the empty benches for another door, another way out. All were too far off. Her small chest was hurting bad. She needed air. “Don’t fight it,” Maris said, stepping gracefully from the lectern. “Just lie down. Lie down and let go.” Sunny’s hands clasped over her lips. It was all the defense she had against breathing in. Her diaphragm buckled. She fell to her knees. “That’s it,” said the other girl in a whisper. Now completely out of air, Sunny was forced to inhale. Daggers rushed through her lungs. Tiny pieces of broken glass that made her scream in agony. “This is a church,” the young priest said, from what sounded like a million miles away. “My apologies for the noise,” Maris replied. “But really, once we begin, it won’t take long.” Crumpled on the floor, unable to move, Sunny shrieked Dante’s name. She could see the priest’s black shoes. He had come to her side. Something wet splashed the back of her neck. The pain it caused was unspeakable. Screeching fire in a high wind. Gnawing teeth of a rabid bat. Unflinching sunlight on shadows centuries old. “All Holy Saints of God,” the priest incanted. “Intercede for us,” Maris said. Sunny’s arms closed over her head. Her whole body shook with cold, as if walls of ice were closing round her, bending her bones. And the priest: “Be merciful.” And Maris: “Spare us, O Lord.” “ Dante! Dante please help!” “Be merciful.” “Graciously hear us, O Lord.” “ I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” “Then stop trying, Sunny,” Maris said, kneeling next to her. “Let go.” “From evil, deliver us, O Lord,” the priest continued. Sunny turned her eyes to Maris. She was smiling affectionately, and her eyes were full of light as the cell of Peter in that time when his chains were loosed. And her words were the same as that one who loosed them. “Follow me,” she whispered, “follow me.” And Sunny turned her eyes back to the floor of the church, beneath which her true father dwelled, pragmatic and just, unbound by complexity, impassioned, imprisoned. A creature who, observed without fear, took flight from his low tier, wings afire with that excessive purpose no one being should call his own, or tether in a cage for to acolytes be shown. And Sunny called forth his name, and he heard, for the window of the nave was suddenly smashed to pieces, and there came the sound of its explosion, and darkness from the other side, and the darkness arrived, reaching for its mistress, gathering her in its embrace, while her screams stopped and moved to other throats less accustomed to what faith could not do, and what sometimes came to undo it. ∞ Dante awoke on the hall floor. There was blood in a pool around his lips. Shaya’s punch had knocked out a tooth. He raised his head, hoping to get a sense of how long he’d been out. The feat was scarcely possible, though his surroundings told a lie. He lay alone in the hall, as if an entire year had passed. There were no sounds, no movements. Even the candle flame was steady. Spitting blood, Dante got to his feet. He called Sunny’s name. Her answer came in the form of a scream. “ Dante! Dante please help!” His eyes flew open. Dante’s purpose came to life. His sluggishness disappeared. He ran to the other end of the hall, saw the nave entrance, and went back. Somehow he knew that entrance would be locked. No problem. The nave had a window, and Dante, a bludgeon. He yanked the table from underneath the candle in one swift move. The candle flew off like a rocket. Holding the table by its legs, he went back to the window, lifted, and smashed. Glass flew in a piercing spray. It covered the floor, the benches, its chaotic music echoing off illusionistic vaults high above. A blonde girl whom Dante took to be Maris screamed. A priest leaped backward from a crumpled shape at his feet. One look told Dante everything he needed to know. Dropping the table, he ran towards the shape. The priest intercepted him. “ Deliver us!” he screamed. “Deliver us from the snares of the devil!” Dante gave him a hard shove. The priest stumbled backward over a bench. His Bible struck the floor on its spine, flopping open to who alone knew what page. It mattered not at all to Dante. Calling Sunny’s name, he knelt beside her. She didn’t answer. Her breath came in short, wheezing strokes. “It’s all right, baby,” he told her, “I’m here, I’m here.” He scooped her from the floor. From here there were two ways out—front door or back. Wanting Sunny clear of the church as soon as possible, he chose the front. But first… “I believe you have something that belongs my lady,” he snarled at Maris. “Hand it over. Now.” The blonde girl, clearly frightened by his appearance, trembled. She took a step backward. Glass crunched under her foot. No. That wasn’t right. It hadn’t come from Maris’ foot. There was someone standing behind him. “Why don’t the two of you stay awhile longer?” the pleasant, peaceful voice of Shaya Blume inquired. He moved towards them from the back door, toeing aside debris. “We don’t have to tell anybody about this mess. I’ll even clean it for you.” “I need to get Sunny out of here,” Dante said, “or so help me, kid, you would need an army to protect you.” “I have an army, Dante. And so do you.” “What are you talking about?” Shaya’s head shook slowly, as does a teacher’s with a pupil too dim for his lessons. “Put that girl down.” Dante turned to go. He simply didn’t have time to fight Shaya—not with Sunny dying in his arms. But then if Shaya decided to chase him, he would put Sunny down and hurt the kid bad. Get every nickel of his money’s worth. Shaya didn’t chase him. Dante made it to the other side of the nave. Here the church’s front door stood open a crack. Through it he could see a torrential spring rain pelting the steps. “One last chance, Dante,” Shaya called. “Come back to us. Cross God’s garden. There are still plenty of empty seats.” He was still at the far end of the nave, an arm around Maris’ waist. Their faces beckoned. “Please,” Shaya said, outstretching his hand. “Please.” A tremendous crack from the lectern made everyone jump. It sounded as if something huge had broken, or come loose. This was precisely the case. Dante noticed that the crucifix, straight and firm mere moments ago, had taken on a terrible forward list. Even as he watched it moved again, creaking like the mightiest gate known to man. “Hurry Dante,” came Shaya’s final, begging plea. “Hurry.” But Dante would not hurry, nor even move. With a deafening smash the crucifix fell between him and Shaya. A hundred congregational benches were pulverized on the instant. Pieces of wood sprinkled Dante’s hair. Others dashed the walls, the windows. A cloud of dust rose from the crash site, revealing the tragic countenance of Christ, now turned on its side. Tears had been lovingly painted on his face by some meticulous, talented hand. They were fake. The tears on Shaya’s face were not. As Dante turned to take Sunny outside, he noticed, all too clearly, that the boy was crying. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Convalescence He watched over her that night, as she slept in downy respite.   A lamp on Sunny’s dresser gave soft golden glow. It wasn’t much to read by, but Dante remained content, paging through one of her books with little regard for the words. His chair was next to Sunny’s bed. She was asleep, and seemed at peace. Her muscles were relaxed, her breathing steady and clear. Still, Dante would not leave her side, nor even sleep until he was certain the blinding light which had almost killed her was set, gone once more beyond the horizon of their ideals. Brenton had of course been furious over what happened. He’d picked them up from a nearby grocery store (after the phone booth Dante used to call him almost didn’t accept the lonely, beaten quarter he dug from his jeans) in fierce incredulity. How could they be so stupid? he kept wondering aloud. What made them both think that a church was a safe place to go? He ran a stop sign, then almost hit a pedestrian. After that he went right back to it. Especially with Sunny. Stupid, stupid girl, he called her. Spit at her in the rear-view mirror. What was next? Cave diving without an oxygen tank? Nude calisthenics with Tilikum the crazed killer whale? He’d calmed down eventually, with Dawn’s help. They arrived at Sycamore Hills to find Sunny’s mom pacing the kitchen. She swooped on her daughter, not with anger but compassion, asking a dozen questions about what had happened, and why. Then Dante carried her upstairs (though Sunny protested this, he feared for her balance on the steps). She took dinner in bed, sending both mother and father on fetch-quests for wine, fruit, and a number of other delectable amenities. By nightfall she was asleep. Dante held her hand as she drifted off. He asked once more if everything was okay. She insisted in the affirmative while at the same time making clear he was not to budge from that seat. Dante promised to remain put come rain, sleet, or crazed killer whales. That made her laugh. And of course no killer whales did come, and here he still sat, as the clock on her bookshelf crept past 10PM. At 10:15 Dawn Desdemona came in with a tray of food. There was bread, soup. Mashed potatoes. Cooked carrots. A glass of wine. “Dinner,” she whispered to Dante. “How is Sunny?” “She seems all right,” Dante told her. “Sleeping like a kitten.” “I don’t think Brenton will ever let her walk home from school again.” “Understood. I promise to be more careful with her from now on.” The older version of Sunny smiled. It looked nothing like her daughter’s deviant sneer, but warm and kind. “I’m sure this wasn’t your fault. She’s a handful, this girl. Even we have trouble controlling her. You have your work cut out for you, I’m afraid.” “It’s nice work,” Dante assured. “Yes. I know.” It was near midnight when Sunny woke up. Dante was standing at her window, which overlooked the fairway of a golf course. At this hour the bunkers were empty, the pine trees dark. How would I play this hole? Dante wondered. It was a par five. Dogleg fairway. He would swing hard from the tee, get his drive over the elbow. Doubtless other golfers had tried as much, only to die for their ambition in an unkempt graveyard of hungry pines. “Hey you,” Sunny whispered. He was at her bed in an instant. “Sunny! How are you, sweetheart? Anything hurt?” “No,” she said, after a light kiss on his mouth. “I’m okay. What about you?” “Everything’s here but your ring. Which I will get back.” “Don’t worry about that right now. You look tired, dear. Get into bed with me.” She moved over to make room, then lay on top of him, lips ready with a million kisses. “Thanks for getting me out of that place, Dante. Really. I thought I was going to die.” “It seems that’s what Maris and Shaya wanted. You dead and me converted.” “Oh yes. It was a trap.” Her kisses had edged down to his chest, and weren’t done with their journey. “Sweetheart?” she whispered. “Is the door locked?” “No, it isn’t.” “Aww. Guess we’ll just have to take our chances.” Dante caught a glimpse of green eyes burning brighter than ever before she sank beneath the covers. No one came in. When it was over Sunny lay quietly in his arms. Content with the whole world—at least for now—Dante stroked her hair. His mind wandered back to the church. What exactly had happened there, and what did it mean? “I don’t understand,” he said to the ceiling. “If Maris and Shaya are so good, how could they commit murder?” He didn’t expect Sunny to hear the question. But she was still awake, and had opinions to share. “I’m not human to them. I’m a demon. A daughter of darkness.” “Is that true?” “Yes,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “But that doesn’t mean they understand me. Or even have a grasp on my intentions.” “And what are your intentions?” Dante felt almost forced to ask. The answer frightened him. His fears, however, were proved groundless when Sunny said: “To be your wife. Forever. I hope you’re ready for that.” Dante assured her that he was, though at thirteen the idea of marriage was little more than a range of distant, snowy peaks on the horizon of their trail way. Or a vision of God Himself, or the devil. “Daughter of darkness,” he said, chasing down the lane of this last thought. “So you’re like…the daughter of Satan?” She laughed. “No, no. Satan is an apprentice to Lucifer, a word that means son of the dawn. I have trouble trusting deities, great and small, as do my parents, and my grandparents, and so on.” “Your family,” Dante said. “Has it renounced God?” A deep sigh came from beneath the covers. At first Dante feared he may have distressed or offended her, but Sunny’s next words sounded far from both. “A long, long time ago,” she said, with profundity beyond her years. “In The Gospel Of Judas we read that God isn’t a person at all, but a magnificent cloud of light, peace, and knowledge. The cloud demands no pain from man, no sacrifice. But there are lesser gods that the cloud created. Angels too. And they demand suffering. And blood. Death. It pleases them. These are the gods we renounced.” “I don’t understand,” Dante said. “Of course you don’t. It’s a lot to take in.” “ The Gospel of Judas ? That isn’t in the Bible. None of the ones I’ve read anyway.” “Not anymore it isn’t. It was cut. Removed. By priests long dead who felt a traditional story of good versus evil would far better suit the palates of Christian and Catholic readers.” “But Sunny…” He lifted the cover to find her green eyes shining right where he’d left them. “Yes?” she said. “I think it’s somewhere in Deuteronomy that nothing is to be added or taken away. No commandment.” “Commandments,” Sunny told him. “But not stories. Stories were most definitely taken away.” “More than one?” “More than one. Jesus was also said to question the motives of the lesser gods. But none of his disciples would budge on the idea that lesser gods were in fact angels of the one true Lord. None but one disciple, who was Judas.” “Who gave Christ over to the Romans for sacrifice.” “Yes, Dante. He did. But on Christ’s command. ‘…for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.’ Jesus is said to have spoken those words to Judas.” “But why would Jesus want that?” “I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe he felt his own sacrifice would be so ultimate that the lesser gods would have no choice but to lay down all other demands. That’s speculation. I can tell you that Judas understood, through the teachings of Jesus, that God is a cloud of light. A realm to be entered and dwelled upon. Jesus is there now. I think Judas is too. As for those lesser gods…” She trailed off. After a moment Dante peeked under the covers to find a girl biting her lip in deep thought. Eager to know where these thoughts would land, he waited, until at last she said: “They’re still out there. And still asking for sacrifice. Pain. Sickness. They see a two year-old toddler with a brain tumor and do nothing. Puppies dying of distemper. You can pray to them if you want, but they won’t answer. They don’t care. They’re lost, and spiteful, and they’ve guided man into the woods, and now man is lost too.” She went back to sleep without saying anything else. Having much to think about, Dante nodded off as well. He woke up once more that night, at around 3:30, a time when, according to one man who liked to write about the future, and who died an untimely death, our minds are most in tune with the stars, along with what messages may be passing between them. Turning his head to look at the time, he noticed a sheet of paper folded beneath the clock. Dante pulled it free, opened it. It turned out to be the poem he’d written for Maris. The prank poem, meant to embarrass Shaya, but instead had drawn him from his cave, like dawn over the trees, or perhaps a midnight star that shined brighter than the rest, and led the way.   When I see you at school I cannot read, Be it Twain or London or Sewell; My mind rather goes with the gentle lead, Of my heart when I see you at school.   When I see you at noon I cannot eat, For these feelings profusely strewn, I gather resigned become replete, In my heart when I see you at noon.   Leave me awake; leave me asleep; For what is a dream without you? Test letters in red—go bend, go break! What more can a dreamer do?   When I see you at home I cannot find, Such meaningful lines for a poem, May with my love become entwined, In my heart when I see you at home.   And when I see you at night I am freed, And by countless stars softness light, I redress the pain and confess the need, Of my heart when I see you at night.   He went to school the following Monday after telling a number of lies to his parents over the weekend. A dentist appointment was made for his broken tooth. Meaning to ask Maris about Sunny’s ring, he looked for her in the halls. That turned out not to be necessary, for she found him. During lunch with Sunny’s girls (the queen herself was absent, at the insistence of her parents), Maris wordlessly passed by the table. Her hand reached out, dropped the ring next to Dante’s plate, and was gone. ∞ Things were quiet over the following days. Sunny returned to school. Her minions had questions, but they were few, and almost painfully tactful. In the middle of the week Dante made a discreet visit to Miss Cross’s home ec room. He asked her who won the baking contest. “Maris,” she said, in a rather self-satisfied tone. Dante cursed at her, and just like that, got himself suspended. He used the free time to check up on Donati. He walked to number 114 on a windy, rainy morning, while all the other kids were at school. Spring was in the air. Scents of flowers in bloom swirled through the sky, happy for the coming warmer days. FOR SALE the sign told Dante again, once he’d reached the house. Ignoring it, he went to the door, knocked as hard as he could. When no one answered he thought about breaking inside, but common sense, having failed him once during the week already, this time came to the rescue, and he decided to call the number on the realtor’s sign instead. Number 114’s agent had the voice of an old woman. Wrinkled yet pleasant. Eager to sell. Having no idea Dante was only thirteen, she invited him for a meet-up at the house. Dante thanked her and said that he was really only interested in the home’s previous owner, Horatio Donati. Here the woman’s tone became confused. She told him no man by that name had ever owned the house or, as far as she knew, ever lived there at all. From here she returned to her sales pitch. The Wooster-Boalt house, as it was known, had actually been unoccupied for five years, and though the interior could be described as something close to dilapidated, its foundation was solid. Restoration would require work, and time, and money, but it was all worth it. Absolutely worth it. Would Dante please pause to reconsider a meet-up? Dante thanked her again, and promised to talk things over with his dad. Then he went to the public library, which was but a stone’s throw from his house. He delved through several books on opera singers and their careers. On occasion the name Horatio would pop up, but none with the last name of Donati. Furthermore, upon studying a shelf of books about Italy, he could find no mention of a Nascosto Villagio , past or present. Frustrated, he walked back to number 114. This time, after knocking on the door again, he peeked through the lower windows. No one peeked back. Every room he could see looked empty. Buried under years of dust. Or in other words, exactly as they had always looked to Dante. The one real difference was this: The table where he’d often breakfasted with Donati was gone. That night, after a cold, quiet dinner with his parents (both had been deeply puzzled by his outburst at school, to the point were they weren’t certain how to discipline him), he sat with Dukey in the kitchen. The little schi-tzu was smiling. He had a squeaky toy in his mouth. “Well come here!” Dante said playfully. The puppy jumped into his lap. He barked, licked Dante’s face, barked some more. “Are you a good puppy? Huh? Are you?” Dukey barked that he was indeed a good puppy. Maybe the best puppy in the whole wide world. “You are,” Dante told him. “You are.” He put some ice in Dukey’s water dish, and then filled the dish with clean water. The schi-tzu drank. “See you in the morning, little guy,” Dante said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here.” CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: In Memoriam He is but a memory, and the road behind covered with leaves, and his shine is faint, through far away trees.   Many years later Dante went on a business trip to Florence, Italy. Among his peers he was envied, for the business in question took only half a day, and his booking at one of that city’s finest hotels lasted a week. He returned to the hotel when his work was done. Here his wife eagerly stripped him of his suit and tie and, upon adorning him in more casual attire, dragged him back to the cobbled streets. They ate lunch at one café, drank coffee at another. Both of these stood in Florence’s Oltrarno District, a place of many narrow, secret streets where craftsmen lived behind recessed doors, peddling their creations. Dante and his wife strolled these streets with no particular destination in mind. Signs swayed on an afternoon breeze. An old woman swept dry leaves from her doorstep. She smiled. “ Ciao,” Dante and Sunny told her. “ Buon pomeriggio,” she replied. A smell of cut flowers hovered at the next corner. Dante bought a bouquet for Sunny, while behind them a group of girls played Strega Ghiaccio . The girls all had scabbed knees and scraped elbows. Delirious smiles. Piano music lilted from an upper window. Someone—a man—was singing. At the end of the street came an unexpected courtyard. It seemed hidden. Tucked away in a rain of flower petals. The petals gathered at an old stone fountain. Dante led his wife to the fountain’s ledge. They sat for awhile, holding hands. Across the way was a wall with writing on it. Graffiti. It looked arranged, however. Structured in lines like a book. Curious, he asked Sunny to join him for a closer inspection. The wall was high—about twenty feet—and old. Ancient even. Its huge, flat stones were cracked and faded, as were the words written upon them. Dante’s Italian was rough, but it was an easy job to see the words were, in fact, obituaries. Names, some carved, others simply written in chalk, sprawled over the stones. Beneath them were years. Numbers signifying a birth and a death. Some of the names had poems written next to them. Others were decorated with hearts and professions of love. Here Dante also discovered where all the petals were coming from. Flowers lay strewn at their feet. Old and dry, new and fresh. Dante searched them in hope of finding something to write with. An old piece of stone would do. At first there was nothing of the sort. A few melted candles snoozed on charred saucers, but Dante didn’t feel he could get any of them lit for long enough to burn his own message into the wall. He asked Sunny for some lipstick. She looked at him, puzzled. When he explained she told him there was no way she would allow him to dirty up her cosmetics in such fashion. And besides, it wouldn’t work. Both the wall and her lipstick were dark. He needed something lighter, like chalk. Deciding that she was right, he went back to searching the flowers. As he was about to give up something caught his eye—a shard of rock, painted white. Doubtless it had come loose from a corner and been kicked, or perhaps delivered here by current one rainy night. At any rate, it looked perfect. Pushing a flower aside, Dante retrieved it. He put its broken point to a blank space on the wall. Then he tried to write. Horatio Donati. “Well what do you know?” he said to Sunny. “It works.” “What made you think of him after all these years?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Being in Italy I guess. Seeing those happy kids. Hearing that man sing.” “Anything else you want to write?” “Indeed.” Using his best guess, Dante wrote the year of Donati’s birth, along with that of his death. He needed the local language for what came next. Three words. Cantare. Ridere. Amore. Carefully then, he placed the stone back in its previous place. Sunny put her head on his shoulder. A lock of her red hair blew in front of his eyes, fell, came back again. “Everything okay?” she asked “Oh yes,” Dante told her after a moment. “I’m happy. Very happy.” “Me too, Dante,” Sunny said, with deepest affection in her tone. “Me too.”   August 2017-October 2018   Fine   Thank you for reading. Please leave a review of this book at your place of download. You can’t think what it does for an author to know that people care.   Tag Cavello was born in Norwalk, Ohio in 1971. Today he lives in Manila, Philippines with his wife and two daughters. (Photo courtesy of Tronix Imaging Center, Festival SuperMall, Manila, Philippines) Here are some other places you can find this author:   Twitter: TagCavello   Blog: coffeewithzombies.wordpress.com   Instagram: tagcavello   DeviantArt: TagCavello   Other books by this author include:   Double Dutch and Other Stories   Regions Of Passion   Crystal Grader   Splattered   Secluded Worlds: 24 Short Poems by Tag Cavello   All works are available at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/dammyl1971               Desdemona by Tag Cavello (1971--) This book is a work of fiction. All events that occur within come from the author’s imagination. Any non-fictional relation to characters or events within, living or dead, is purely coincidental.   Cover art by Tag Cavello Publication Date: October 9th 2018 https://www.bookrix.com/-vbf3bfc4f217c65

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-brandonsgirl9951-the-girl-who-hated-her-dad/

brandonsgirl9951 the girl who hated her dad this is a true story about me. to any one who could not trust their dad or could not stand them this is for you all. Text: I was only one when my dad left and i dident get to see him until i was twelve. When i started going to my grandpals house were he lived it was not by choice it was by force. I grew up without a dad so i decided i dident need one. My mom always made me go i hated him so much. I found out he beat my mom and sisters and starved them. He always gave me used things, but my mom threw them out and got me new stuff. I always will hate him he is a perv and he checks me and my aunts which are his sisters out. Ever since my grandpal died i never had to go back exept for the other five deaths i had six in a row. Well now i am happy i dont have to go back but i really miss all the animals well the end. All rights reserved. Publication Date: September 29th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-brandonsgirl9951

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-david-belasco-the-return-of-peter-grimm/

David Belasco The Return of Peter Grimm [The Editor wishes to thank Mr. David Belasco for his courtesy in granting permission to include "The Return of Peter Grimm" in the present Collection. All its rights are fully secured, and proceedings will immediately be taken against any one attempting to infringe them.] ACT I. _The scene shows a comfortable living-room in an old house. The furniture was brought to America by _PETER GRIMM'S_ ancestors. The _GRIMMS_ were, for the most part, frugal people, but two or three fine paintings have been inherited by _PETER_. _A small, old-fashioned piano stands near the open window, a few comfortable chairs, a desk with a hanging lamp above it, and an arm-chair in front of it, a quaint old fireplace, a Dutch wall clock with weights, a sofa, a hat-rack, and mahogany flower-pot holders, are set about the room; but the most treasured possession is a large family Bible lying on a table. A door leads to a small office occupied by _PETER'S_ secretary._ _Stairs lead to the sleeping-rooms above. Through the window, hothouses, beds of tulips, and other flowers, shrubs and trees are seen. "Peter Grimm's Botanic Gardens" supply seeds, plants, shrubbery and trees to the wholesale, as well as retail trade, and the view suggests the importance of the industry. An old Dutch windmill, erected by a Colonial ancestor, gives a quaint touch, to the picture. Although _PETER GRIMM_ is a very wealthy man, he lives as simply as his ancestors._ _As the curtain is raised, the room is empty; but _CATHERINE_ is heard singing in the dining-room. _JAMES HARTMAN, PETER'S_ secretary, opens his door to listen, a small bundle of letters in his hand. He is a well set up young man, rather blunt in his manner, and a trifle careless in his dress. After a pause, he goes back into the office, leaving the door ajar. Presently _CATHERINE_ enters. In spite of her youth and girlish appearance, she is a good, thrifty housekeeper. She wears a simple summer gown, and carries a bunch of gay tulips and an old silver pitcher, from which she presently pours water into the Harlequin Delft vase on _PETER GRIMM'S_ desk. She peeps into the office, retreating, with a smile on her lips, as _JAMES_ appears._ CATHERINE. Did I disturb you, James? JAMES. [_On the threshold._] No indeed. CATHERINE. Do you like your new work? JAMES. Anything to get back to the gardens, Catherine. I've always done outside work and I prefer it; but I would shovel dirt rather than work for any one else. CATHERINE. [_Amused._] James! JAMES. It's true. When the train reached the Junction, and a boy presented the passengers with the usual flower and the "compliments of Peter Grimm"--it took me back to the time when that was my job; and when I saw the old sign, "Grimm's Botanic Gardens and Nurseries"--I wanted to jump off the train and run through the grounds. It seemed as though every tulip called "hello" to me. CATHERINE. Too bad you left college! You had only one more year. JAMES. Poor father! He's very much disappointed. Father has worked in the dirt in overalls--a gardener--all his life; and, of course, he over-estimates an education. He's far more intelligent than most of our college professors. CATHERINE. I understand why you came back. You simply must live where things grow, mustn't you, James? So must I. Have you seen our orchids? JAMES. Orchids are pretty; but they're doing wonderful things with potatoes these days. I'd rather improve the breed of a squash than to have an orchid named after me. Wonderful discovery of Luther Burbank's-- creating an edible cactus. Sometimes I feel bitter thinking what I might have done with vegetables, when I was wasting time studying Greek. CATHERINE. [_Changing suddenly._] James: why don't you try to please Uncle Peter Grimm? JAMES. I do; but he is always asking my opinion, and when I give it, he blows up. CATHERINE. [_Coaxingly._] Don't be quite so blunt. Try to be like one of the family. JAMES. I'm afraid I shall never be like one of _this_ family. CATHERINE. Why not? I'm no relation at all; and yet-- JAMES. [_Making a resolution._] I'll do my best to agree with him. [_Offering his hand._] It's a promise. [_They shake hands._ CATHERINE. Thank you, James. JAMES. [_Still holding her hand._] It's good to be back, Catherine. It's good to see you again. _He is still holding her hand when _FREDERIK GRIMM_ enters. He is the son of _PETER'S_ dead sister, and has been educated by_ PETER _to carry on his work. He is a graduate of Amsterdam College, Holland, and, in appearance and manner, suggests the foreign student. He has managed to pull through college creditably, making a specialty of botany._ PETER _has given him the usual trip through Europe, and_ FREDERIK _has come to his rich uncle to settle down and learn his business. He has been an inmate of the household for a few months. He poses as a most industrious young man, but is, at heart, a shirker._ FREDERIK. Where's Uncle? JAMES. Good-morning, Frederik. Your uncle's watching father spray the plum trees. The black knot's after them again. FREDERIK. I can hardly keep my eyes open. Uncle wakes me up every morning at five--creaking down the old stairs. [_Eyeing_ CATHERINE _admiringly._] You're looking uncommonly pretty this morning, Kitty. [CATHERINE _edges away and runs upstairs to her room._ FREDERIK. Hartman! JAMES. Yes? FREDERIK. Miss Catherine and you and I are no longer children--our positions are altered--please remember that. I'm no longer a student home for the holidays from Amsterdam College. I'm here to learn the business which I am expected to carry on. Miss Catherine is a young lady now, and my uncle looks upon her as his daughter. You are here as my uncle's secretary. That's how we three stand in this house. Don't call me "Frederik," and hereafter be good enough to say, "Miss Grimm." JAMES. [_Amiably._] Very well. FREDERIK. James: there's a good opportunity for a young man like you in our Florida house. I think that if I spoke for you-- JAMES. Why do you wish to ship me off to Florida? FREDERIK. I don't understand you, Hartman. I don't wish to ship you off. I am merely thinking of your future. You seem to have changed since-- JAMES. We've all grown up, as you just said. [JAMES _has laid some mail on the desk, and is about to leave the room, when_ FREDERIK _speaks again, but in a more friendly manner._ FREDERIK. The old man's aging; do you notice it? JAMES. Your uncle's mellowing, yes; but that's only to be expected. He's changing foliage with the years. FREDERIK. He's growing as old-fashioned as his hats. In my opinion, this would be the time to sell. JAMES. [_Astonished._] Sell? Sell a business that has been in his family for--why, it's his religion! FREDERIK. It's at the height of its prosperity. It would sell like that! [_Snapping his fingers._] What was the last offer the old man refused from Hicks, of Rochester, Jim? JAMES. [_Noticing the sudden friendliness--looking at_ FREDERIK, _half-amused, half-disgusted._] Can't repeat correspondence, Mr. Grimm. [_Amazed._] Good heavens! You surprise me! Would you sell your great, great grandfather? I learned to read by studying his obituary out in the peach orchard: "Johann Grimm, of Holland, an upright settler." There isn't a day your uncle doesn't tell me that you are to carry on the work. FREDERIK. So I am, but it's not _my_ religion. [_Sarcastically._.] Every man can't be blessed like you with the soul of a market gardener--a peddler of turnips. JAMES. [_Thinking--ignoring_ FREDERIK.] He's a great old man--your uncle. It's a big name--Grimm--Peter Grimm. The old man knows his business--he certainly knows his business. [_Changing._] God! It's an awful thought that a man must die and carry all that knowledge of orchids to the grave! I wonder if it doesn't all count somewhere.... I must attend to the mail. PETER GRIMM _enters from the gardens. He is a well-preserved man of sixty, very simple and plain in his ways. He has not changed his style of dress in the past thirty years. His clothing, collar, tie, hat and shoes are all old-fashioned. He is an estimable man, scrupulously honest, gentle and sympathetic; but occasionally he shows a flash of Dutch stubbornness._ FREDERIK. I ran over from the office, Uncle Peter, to make a suggestion. PETER. Yes? FREDERIK. I suggest that we insert a full-page cut of your new tulip in our mid-summer floral almanac. PETER. [_Who has hung up his hat on his own particular peg, affably assenting._] A good idea! FREDERIK. The public is expecting it. PETER. You think so, my boy? FREDERIK. Why, Uncle, you've no idea of the stir this tulip has created. People stop me in the street to speak of it. PETER. Well, well, you surprise me. I didn't think it so extraordinary. FREDERIK. I've had a busy morning, sir, in the packing house. PETER. That's good. I'm glad to see you taking hold of things, Fritz. [_Humourously, touching_ FREDERIK _affectionately on the shoulder._] We mustn't waste time; for that's the stuff life's made of. [_Seriously._] It's a great comfort to me, Frederik, to know that when I'm in my little private room with James, or when I've slipped out to the hothouses,--you are representing me in the offices--_young_ Mr. Grimm.... James, are you ready for me? JAMES. Yes, sir. PETER. I'll attend to the mail in a moment. [_Missing_ CATHERINE, _he calls according to the household signal._] Ou--oo! [_He is answered by_ CATHERINE, _who immediately appears from her room, and comes running downstairs._] Catherine, I have news for you. I've named the new rose after you: "Katie--a hardy bloomer." It's as red as the ribbon in your hair. CATHERINE. Thank you, Uncle Peter, thank you very much. And now you must have your cup of coffee. PETER. What a fine little housewife! A busy girl about the house, eh, Fritz? Is there anything you need to-day, Katie? CATHERINE. No, Uncle Peter, I have everything I need, thank you. PETER. Not everything,--not everything, my dear. [_Smiling at_ FREDERIK. JAMES, _ignored, is standing in the background._] Wait! Wait till I give you a husband. I have my plans. [_Looking from_ FREDERIK _to_ CATHERINE.] People don't always know what I'm doing, but I'm a great man for planning. Come, Katie, tell me, on this fine spring morning, what sort of husband would you prefer? CATHERINE. [_Annoyed,--with girlish impatience._] You're always speaking of weddings, Uncle Peter. I don't know what's come over you of late. PETER. It's nesting time, ... spring weddings are in the air; besides, my grandmother's linen-chest upstairs must be used again for you [_Impulsively drawing_ CATHERINE _to him._], my house fairy. [_Kisses her._] There, I mustn't tease her. But I leave it to Fritz if I don't owe her a fine husband--this girl of mine. Look what she has done for _me!_ CATHERINE. Done for you? I do you the great favour to let _you_ do everything for _me_. PETER. Ah, but who lays out my linen? Who puts flowers on my desk every day? Who gets up at dawn to eat breakfast with me? Who sees that I have my second cup of coffee? But better than all that--who brings youth into my old house? CATHERINE. That's not much--youth. PETER. No? We'll leave it to Fritz. [FREDERIK, _amused, listens in silence._] What should I be now--a rough old fellow--a bachelor--without youth in my house, eh? God knows! Katie has softened me towards all the ladies--er--mellowed me as time has mellowed my old pictures. [_Points to pictures._] And I was growing hard--hard and fussy. CATHERINE. [_Laughing._] Ah, Uncle Peter, have I made you take a liking to all the rest of the ladies? PETER. Yes. It's just as it is when you have a pet: you like all that breed. You can only see _your_ kind of kitten. JAMES. [_Coming down a step, impressed by_ PETER'S _remark--speaking earnestly._] That's so, sir. [_The others are surprised._] I hadn't thought of it in that way, but it's true. You study a girl for the first time, and presently you notice the same little traits in every one of them. It makes you feel differently towards all the rest. PETER. [_Amused._] Why, James, what do you know about girls? "Bachelor" is stamped all over you--you're positively labelled. JAMES. [_Good-naturedly._] Perhaps. [_Goes back to the office._ PETER. Poor James! What a life before him! When a bachelor wants to order a three-rib roast, who's to eat it? I never had a proper roast until Katie and Frederik came to make up my family; [_Rubbing his hands._] but the roasts are not big enough. [_Giving_ FREDERIK _a knowing look._] We must find a husband. CATHERINE. You promised not to-- PETER. I want to see a long, long table with plenty of young people. CATHERINE. I'll leave the room, Uncle. PETER. With myself at the head, carving, carving, carving, watching the plates come back, and back, and back. [_As she is about to go._] There, there, not another word of this to-day. _The 'phone rings._ JAMES _re-enters and answers it._ JAMES. Hello! [_Turns._] Rochester asks for Mr. Peter Grimm to the 'phone. Another message from Hicks' greenhouses. PETER. Ask them to excuse me. JAMES. [_Bluntly._] You'll have to excuse him. [_Listens._] No, no, the gardens are not in the market. You're only wasting your time. PETER. Tc! Tc! James! Can't you say it politely? [JAMES _listens at 'phone._ FREDERIK. [_Aside to_ PETER.] James is so painfully blunt. [_Then changing._] Is it--er--a good offer? Is Hicks willing to make it worth while? [_Catching his uncle's astonished eye--apologetically._] Of course, I know you wouldn't think of-- CATHERINE. I should say not! My home? An offer? _Our_ gardens? I should say not! FREDERIK. Mere curiosity on my part, that's all. PETER. Of course, I understand. Sell out? No indeed. We are thinking of the next generation. FREDERIK. Certainly, sir. PETER. We're the last of the family. The business--that's Peter Grimm. It will soon be Frederik Grimm. The love for the old gardens is in our blood. FREDERIK. It is, sir. [_Lays a fond hand on_ PETER'S _shoulder._ PETER. [_Struck._] I have an idea. We'll print the family history in our new floral almanac. FREDERIK. [_Suppressing a yawn._] Yes, yes, a very good idea. PETER. Katie, read it to us and let us hear how it sounds. CATHERINE. [_Reads._] "In the spring of 1709 there settled on Quassick Creek, New York State, Johann Grimm, aged twenty-two, husbandman and vine-dresser, also Johanna, his wife." PETER. Very interesting. FREDERIK. Very interesting, indeed. CATHERINE. "To him Queen Anne furnished one square, one rule, one compass, two whipping saws and several small pieces. To him was born--" PETER. [_Interrupting._] You left out two augurs. CATHERINE. [_Reads._] Oh, yes--"and two augurs. To him was born a son--" PETER. [_Who knows the history by heart, has listened, his eyes almost suffused--repeating each word to himself, as she reads. He has lived over each generation down to the present and nods in approval as she reaches this point._] The foundation of our house. And here we are prosperous and flourishing--after seven generations. We'll print it, eh, Fritz? FREDERIK. Certainly, sir. By all means let us print it. PETER. And now we are depending upon you, Frederik, for the next line in the book. [_To_ CATHERINE _--slyly--as she closes the book._] If my sister could see Frederik, what a proud mother she would be! JAMES. [_Turning from the 'phone to_ PETER.] Old man Hicks himself has come to the 'phone. Says he _must_ speak to Mr. Peter Grimm. FREDERIK. I'd make short work of him, Uncle. PETER. [_At the 'phone._] How are you, my old friend?... How are your plum trees? [_Listens._] Bad, eh? Well, we can only pray and use Bordeaux Mixture.... No.... Nonsense! This business has been in my family for seven generations. Why sell? I'll see that it stays in the family seven generations longer! [_Echoing._] Do I propose to live that long? N--no; but my plans will. [_Looks towards_ FREDERIK _and_ CATHERINE.] How? Never mind. Good-morning. [_Hangs up the receiver._ JAMES. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but some of these letters are-- FREDERIK. I'm off. PETER. [_Who has lifted a pot of tulips to set it in the sun--standing with the pot in his hands._] And remember the saying: [_A twinkle in his upraised eyes._] "Thou, O God, sellest all good things at the price of labour." [_Smells the tulips and sets them down._ FREDERIK. [_Goes briskly towards the door._] That's true, sir. I want to speak to you later, Uncle--[_Turning, looking at_ JAMES.] on a private matter. [_He goes off looking at his watch, as though he had a hard day's work before him._ PETER. [_Looking after_ FREDERIK.] Very capable young fellow, Frederik. I was a happy man, James, when I heard that he had won the prize for botany at Amsterdam College. I had to find out the little I know by experience. JAMES. [_Impulsively._] Yes, and I'll wager you've forgotten more than-- [_Catching a warning glance from_ CATHERINE, _he pauses._ PETER. What? JAMES. Nothing, sir. I-- CATHERINE. [_Tugging at_ PETER'S _coat--speaking to him apart, as_ JAMES _busies himself at the desk._] Uncle Peter, I think you're unfair to James. We used to have him to dinner very often before he went away. Now that he's back, you treat him like a stranger. PETER. [_Surprised._] Eh? I didn't know that I--[_Petting_ CATHERINE.] A good, unselfish girl. She thinks of everybody. [_Aloud._] James, will you have dinner with us to-day? JAMES. [_Pleased and surprised._] Thank you, sir--yes, sir. PETER. It's a roast goose--cooked sweet, James. [_Smacks his lips._] Fresh green herbs in the dressing and a Figaro pudding. Marta brought over that pudding receipt from Holland. MARTA, _an old family servant, has entered with the air of having forgotten to wind the clock. She smiles happily at_ PETER'S _allusion to her puddings, attends to the old clock, and passes of with_ CATHERINE. PETER _sits at the desk, glancing over the mail._ PETER. Katie's blossoming like a rose. Have you noticed how she's coming out lately, James? JAMES. Yes, sir. PETER. You've noticed it, too? [_Picks up another letter, looking over it._ JAMES. Yes, sir. PETER. [_Pausing, taking off his eye-glasses and holding them on his thumb. Philosophically._] How prettily Nature accomplishes her will-- making a girl doubly beautiful that a young man may yield his freedom the more easily. Wonderful! [_During the following, he glances over letters._] A young girl is like a violet sheltered under a bush, James; and that is as it should be, isn't it? JAMES. No, sir, I don't think so. PETER. [_Surprised._] What? JAMES. I believe people should think for themselves--not be.... PETER. Go on. JAMES. --er-- PETER. Well? JAMES. [_Remembering his promise to_ CATHERINE.] Nothing. PETER. Go on, James. JAMES. I mean swallowed up. PETER. Swallowed up? Explain yourself, James. JAMES. I shouldn't have mentioned it. PETER. Certainly, certainly. Don't be afraid to express an honest opinion. JAMES. I only meant that you can't shape another's life. We are all free beings and-- PETER. Free? Of course Katie's free--to a certain extent. Do you mean to tell me that any young girl should be freer? Nonsense! She should be happy that _I_ am here to think for her--_I_! _We_ must think for people who can't think for themselves; and a young girl can't. [_Signing an answer to a letter after hastily glancing over it._] You have extraordinary ideas, James. JAMES. Excuse me, sir; you asked my opinion. I only meant that we can't think for others--any more than we can eat or sleep for them. PETER. [_As though accepting the explanation._] Oh ... I see what you mean. JAMES. Of course, every happy being is bound by its nature to lead its own life--that it may be a free being. Evidently I didn't make my meaning clear. [_Giving_ PETER _another letter to sign._ PETER. Free? Happy? James, you talk like an anarchist! You surprise me, sir. Where do you get these extraordinary ideas? JAMES. By reading modern books and magazines, sir, and of course-- PETER. I thought so. [_Pointing to his books._] Read Heine. Cultivate sentiment. [_Signing the letter._] Happy? Has it ever occurred to you that Katie is not happy? JAMES. No, sir, I can't truthfully say that it has. PETER. I imagine not. These are the happiest hours of her life. Young ... in love ... soon to be married. JAMES. [_After a long pause._] Is it settled, sir? PETER. No, but I'll soon settle it. Anyone can see how she feels towards Frederik. JAMES. [_After a shorter pause._] Isn't she very young to marry, sir? PETER. Not when she marries into the family; not when _I_ am in the house--[_Touching his chest._] to guard her--to watch over her. Leave it to _me_. [_Enthusiastically._] Sit here, James. Take one of Frederik's cigars. [JAMES _politely thanks him, but doesn't take one._] It's a pleasure to talk to some one who's interested; and you _are_ interested, James? JAMES. Yes, sir, I'm much more interested than you might think. PETER. Good. We'll take up the mail in a minute. Now, in order to carry out my plans-- CATHERINE. [_Sticking her head in the door._] Ready for coffee? PETER. Er--a little later. Close the door, dear. [_She disappears, closing the door._] In order to carry out my plans, I have had to use great diplomacy. I made up my mind to keep Katie in the family; being a rich man--everybody knows it--I've had to guard against fortune-hunters. However, I think I've done away with them, for the whole town understands that Katie hasn't a penny--doesn't it, James? JAMES. Yes, sir. PETER. Yes, I think I've made that very clear. My dream was to bring Catherine up to keep her in the family, and it has been fulfilled. My plans have turned out beautifully, for she is satisfied and happy. JAMES. But did you want her to be happy simply because _you_ are happy, sir? Don't you want her to be happy because _she_ is happy? PETER. If she's happy, why should I care? [_Picks up the last letter._ JAMES. _If_ she's happy. PETER. [_Losing his temper._] What do you mean? That's the second time you've said that. Why do you harp on-- JAMES. [_Rising._] Excuse me, sir. PETER. [_Angrily._] Sit down. What do you know? JAMES. Nothing, sir.... PETER. You must know something to speak in this manner. JAMES. No, I don't. You're a great expert in your line, Mr. Grimm, and I have the greatest respect for your opinion; but you can't mate people as you'd graft tulips. And more than once, I've--I've caught her crying and I've thought perhaps ... PETER. [_Pooh-poohing._] Crying? Of course! Was there ever a girl who didn't cry?... You amuse me ... with your ideas of life.... Ha! Haven't I asked her why she was crying,--and hasn't she always said: "I don't know why--it's nothing." They love to cry. [_Signs the last letter._] But that's what they all cry over--nothing. James, do you know how I happened to meet Katie? She was prescribed for me by Doctor MacPherson. JAMES. [_Taking the letter._] Prescribed? PETER. As an antidote. I was growing to be a fussy bachelor, with queer notions. You are young, but see that you don't need the Doctor, James. Do you know how I was cured? I'll tell you. One day, when I had business in the city, the Doctor went with me, and before I knew what he was at--he had marched me into a home for babies.... Katie was nearest the door--the first one. Pinned over her crib was her name: "Catherine Staats, aged three months." She held out her little arms ... so friendless--so pitiful--so alone--and I was done for. We brought her back home, the Doctor, a nurse and I. The first time I carried her up those stairs--all my fine bachelor's ideas went out of my head. I knew then that my theories were all humbug. I had missed the child in the house who was to teach me everything. I had missed many children in my house. From that day, I watched over her life. [_Rising, pointing towards the head of the stairs._] James, I was born in this house--in the little room where I sleep; and her children shall one day play in the room in which I was born.... That's very pretty, eh? [_Wipes his eyes, sentimentally._] I've always seen it that way. JAMES. [_Coolly._] Yes; it's _very_ pretty if it turns out well. PETER. How can it turn out otherwise? JAMES. To me, sir, it's not a question of sentiment--of where her children shall play, so long as they play happily. PETER. What? Her children can play anywhere--in China if they want to! Are you in your senses? A fine reward for giving a child all your affection-- to live to see her children playing in China. No, sir! I propose to keep my household together, by your leave. [_Banging his clenched fist on the desk._] It's my plan. [_Cleans his pipe, looking at_ JAMES _from time to time._ JAMES _posts the letters in a mail-box outside the door._ PETER _goes to the window, calling off._] Otto! Run to the office and tell Mr. Frederik he may come in now. [_The voice of a gruff Dutchman: "Het is pastoor's dag."_ (It is the pastor's day.)] Ah, yes; I had forgotten. It's William's day to take flowers to the Pastor. [_A knock is heard and, as_ PETER _calls "Come in,"_ WILLIAM, _a delicate child of eight, stands timidly in the doorway of the dining-room, hat in hand._] How are you to-day, William? [_Pats_ WILLIAM _on the shoulder._ WILLIAM. The Doctor says I'm well now. PETER. Good! Then you shall take flowers to the church. [_Calls off._] A big armful, Otto! MARTA _has entered with a neatly folded, clean handkerchief which she tucks into_ WILLIAM'S _breast pocket._ PETER. [_In a low voice, to_ JAMES.] There's your example of freedom! William's mother, old Marta's spoiled child, was free. You remember Annamarie, James?--let to come and go as she pleased. God knows where she is now ... and here is William with the poor old grandmother.... Run along with the flowers, William. [_Gives_ WILLIAM _some pennies as he goes._] How he shoots up, eh, Marta? MARTA. [_With the hopeless sorrow of the old, as she passes off._] Poor child ... poor child. PETER. Give Katie more freedom, eh? Oh, no! I shall guard her as I would guard my own, for she is as dear to me as though she were mine, and, by marriage, please God, she shall be a Grimm in _name_. JAMES. Mr. Grimm, I--I wish you would transfer me to your branch house in Florida. PETER. What? You who were so glad to come back! James, you need a holiday. Close your desk. Go out and busy yourself with those pet vegetables of yours. Change your ideas; then come back sane and sensible, and attend to your work. [_Giving a last shot at_ JAMES _as he passes into the office and_ FREDERIK _re-enters._] You don't know what you want! FREDERIK. [_Looking after_ JAMES.] Uncle Peter, when I came in this morning, I made up my mind to speak to you of James. PETER. James? FREDERIK. Yes, I've wondered lately if ... it seems to me that James is interested in Catherine. PETER. James? Impossible. FREDERIK. I'm not so sure. PETER. [_Good-naturedly._] James? James Hartman? FREDERIK. When I look back and remember him as a barefoot boy living in a shack behind our hot-houses--and see him now--in here with you-- PETER. All the more credit, Frederik. FREDERIK. Yes; but these are the sort of fellows who dream of getting into the firm. And there are more ways than one. PETER. Do you mean to say--He wouldn't presume to think of such a thing. FREDERIK. Oh, wouldn't he! The class to which he belongs presumes to think of anything. I believe he has been making love to Catherine. PETER. [_After a slight pause, goes to the dining-room door and calls._] Katie! Katie! FREDERIK. [_Hastily._] Don't say that I mentioned it. [CATHERINE _enters._ PETER. Katie, I wish to ask you a question. I--[_He laughs._] Oh, it's absurd. No, no, never mind. CATHERINE. What is it? PETER. I can't ask you. It's really too absurd. CATHERINE. [_Her curiosity aroused._] What is it, Uncle?... Tell me ... tell me.... PETER. Has James ever-- CATHERINE. [_Taken back and rather frightened--quickly._] No.... PETER. What?... How did you know what I ... [FREDERIK _gives her a shrewd glance; but_ PETER, _suspecting nothing, continues._] I meant ... has James shown any special interest in you? CATHERINE. [_As though accepting the explanation._] Oh ... [_Flurried._] Why, Uncle Peter!... Uncle Peter!... whatever put this notion into your head? PETER. It's all nonsense, of course, but-- CATHERINE. I've always known James.... We went to school together.... James has shown no interest he ought not to have shown, Uncle Peter,--if that's what you mean. He has always been very respectful in a perfectly friendly way. PETER. [_Convinced._] Respectful in a perfectly friendly way. [_To_ FREDERIK.] You can't ask more than that. Thank you, dear, that's all I wanted. Run along. [_Glad to escape,_ CATHERINE _leaves the room._] He was only respectful in a perfectly friendly way. [_Slaps_ FREDERIK _on the back._] You're satisfied now, I hope? FREDERIK. No, I am not. If _she_ hasn't noticed what he has in mind, _I_ have. When I came into this room a few moments ago,--it was as plain as day. He's trying to make love to her under our very eyes. I saw him. I wish you would ask him to stay in his office and attend to his own business. [JAMES _now re-enters on his way to the gardens._] PETER. James, it has just occurred to me--that--[_James pauses._] What was your reason for wanting to give up your position? Had it anything to do with my little girl? JAMES. Yes, sir. PETER. You mean that--you--you love her? JAMES. [_In a low voice._] Yes, sir. PETER. O-ho! [FREDERIK _gives_ PETER _a glance as though to say, "Now, do you believe it?"_ JAMES. But she doesn't know it, of course; she never would have known it. I never meant to say a word to her. I understand, sir. PETER. James! Come here ... here!... [_Bringing_ JAMES _up before him at the desk._] Get your money at the office. You may have that position in Florida. Good-bye, James. JAMES. I'm very sorry that ... Good-bye, sir. FREDERIK. You are not to tell her that you're going. You're not to bid her good-bye. PETER. [_To_ FREDERIK.] Sh! Let me attend to-- JAMES. [_Ignoring_ FREDERIK.] I'm sorry, Mr. Grimm, that-- [_His voice falters._ PETER. [_Rising._] James, I'm sorry, too. You've grown up here and--Tc! Tc! Good fortune to you--James. Get this notion out of your head, and perhaps one day you'll come back to us. We shall see. [_Shakes hands with_ JAMES, _who leaves the room too much overcome to speak._ DR. MACPHERSON. [_Who has entered, saying carelessly to_ JAMES _as he passes him._] Hy're you, Jim? Glad Jim's back. One of the finest lads I ever brought into this world. _The_ DOCTOR _is a man of about_ PETER'S _age, but more powerfully built. He has the bent shoulders of the student and his face is exceedingly intellectual. He is the rare type of doctor who forgets to make out his bills. He has a grizzled grey beard, and his hair is touched with grey. He wears silver-rimmed spectacles. His substantial but unpressed clothing is made by the village tailor._ PETER. Good-morning, Andrew. FREDERIK. Good-morning, Doctor. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Casts a quick, professional glance at_ PETER.] Peter, I've come over to have a serious word with you. Been on my mind all night. [_Brings down a chair and sits opposite_ PETER.] I--er--Frederik ... [FREDERIK, _who is not a favourite of the_ DOCTOR'S, _takes the hint and leaves the room_.] Peter, have you provided for everybody in this house? PETER. What? Have I-- DR. MACPHERSON. You're a terrible man for planning, Peter; but what have you done? [_Casually_.] Were you to die,--say to-morrow,--how would it be with--[_Making a gesture to include the household_.]--the rest of them? PETER. What do you mean? If I were to die to-morrow ... DR. MACPHERSON. You won't. Don't worry. Good for a long time yet, but every one must come to it--sooner or later. I mean--what would Katie's position be in this house? I know you've set your heart upon her marrying Frederik, and all that sort of nonsense, but will it work? I've always thought 'twas a pity Frederik wasn't James and James wasn't Frederik. PETER. What! DR. MACPHERSON. Oh, it's all very well if she wants Frederik, but supposing she does not. Peter, if you mean to do something for her--do it _now_. PETER. Now? You mean that I--You mean that I might ... die? DR. MACPHERSON. All can and do. PETER. [_Studying the_ DOCTOR'S _face_.] You think ... DR. MACPHERSON. The machinery is wearing out, Peter. Thought I should tell you. No cause for apprehension, but-- PETER. Then why tell me? DR. MACPHERSON. When I cured you of that cold--wet flowerbeds--two days ago, I made a discovery. [_Seeing_ CATHERINE _enter, he pauses. She is followed by_ MARTA, _carrying a tray containing coffee and a plate of waffles_.] Coffee! I told you not to touch coffee, Peter. It's rank poison. CATHERINE. Wouldn't you like a cup, Doctor? PETER. Yes he'll take a cup. He won't prescribe it, but he'll drink it. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Horrified_.] And hot waffles between meals! PETER. Yes, he'll take hot waffles, too. [MARTA _goes to get another plate and more waffles, and_ CATHERINE _follows her_.] Now, Andrew, you can't tell me that I'm sick. I won't have it. Every day we hear of some old boy one hundred years of age who was given up by the doctors at twenty. No, sir! I'm going to live to see children in my house,--Katie's babies creeping on my old floor; playing with my old watch-dog, Toby. I've promised myself a long line of rosy Grimms. DR. MACPHERSON. My God, Peter! That dog is fifteen years old now. Do you expect nothing to change in your house? Man, you're a home worshipper. However, I--I see no reason why--[_Lying_.]you shouldn't reach a ripe old age. [_Markedly, though feigning to treat the subject lightly_.] Er-- Peter, I should like to make a compact with you ... that whoever _does_ go first--and you're quite likely to outlive me,--is to come back and let the other fellow know ... and settle the question. Splendid test between old neighbours--real contribution to science. PETER. Make a compact to--stuff and nonsense! DR. MACPHERSON. Don't be too sure of that. PETER. No, Andrew, no, positively, no. I refuse. Don't count upon me for any assistance in your spook tests. DR. MACPHERSON. And how many times do you think _you've_ been a spook yourself? You can't tell me that man is perfect; that he doesn't live more than one life; that the soul doesn't go on and on. Pshaw! The persistent personal energy must continue, or what _is_ God? [CATHERINE _has re-entered with another cup, saucer and plate which she sets on the table, and pours out the coffee._ CATHERINE. [_Interested_.] Were you speaking of--of ghosts, Doctor? PETER. Yes, he has begun again. [_To_ CATHERINE.] You're just in time to hear it. [_To_ DR. MACPHERSON.] Andrew, I'll stay behind, contented in _this_ life; knowing what I have here on earth, and you shall die and return with your--ha!--persistent personal whatever-it-is, and keep the spook compact. Every time a knock sounds, or a chair squeaks, or the door bangs, I shall say, "Sh! There's the Doctor!" CATHERINE. [_Noticing a book which the_ DOCTOR _has taken from his pocket, and reading the title_.] "Are the Dead Alive?" DR. MACPHERSON. I'm in earnest, Peter. _I'll_ promise and I want you to promise, too. Understand that I am not a so-called spiritist. I am merely a seeker after truth. [_Puts more sugar in his coffee_. PETER. That's what they _all_ are--seekers after truth. Rubbish! Do you really believe such stuff? DR. MACPHERSON. I know that the dead are alive. They're here--here--near us--close at hand. [PETER, _in derision, lifts the table-cloth and peeps under the table--then, taking the lid off the sugar-bowl, peers into it_.] Some of the great scientists of the day are of the same opinion. PETER. Bah! Dreamers! They accomplish nothing in the world. They waste their lives dreaming of the world to come. DR. MACPHERSON. You can't call Sir Charles Crookes, the inventor of Crookes Tubes,--a waster? Nor Sir Oliver Lodge, the great biologist; nor Curie, the discoverer of radium; nor Doctor Lombroso, the founder of Science of Criminology; nor Doctors Maxwell, deVesme, Richet, Professor James, of Harvard, and our own Professor Hyslop. Instead of laughing at ghosts, the scientific men of to-day are trying to lay hold of them. The frauds and cheats are being crowded from the field. Science is only just peeping through the half-opened door which was shut until a few years ago. PETER. If ever I see a ghost, I shall lay violent hands upon it and take it to the police station. That's the proper place for frauds. DR. MACPHERSON. I'm sorry, Peter, very sorry, to see that you, like too many others, make a jest of the most important thing in life. Hyslop is right: man will spend millions to discover the North Pole, but not a penny to discover his immortal destiny. PETER. [_Stubbornly_.] I don't believe in spook mediums and never shall believe in them. DR. MACPHERSON. Probably most professional mediums cheat--perhaps every one of them; but some of them are capable of real demonstrations at times. PETER. Once a swindler, always a swindler. Besides, why can't my old friends come straight back to me and say, "Peter Grimm, here I am!" When they do--if they do--I shall be the first man to take off my hat to them and hold out my hand in welcome. DR. MACPHERSON. You ask me why? Why can't a telegram travel on a fence instead of on a wire? Your friends could come back to you if you could put yourself in a receptive condition; but if you cannot, you must depend upon a medium--a sensitive. PETER. A what? [_To_ CATHERINE.] Something new, eh? He has all the names for them. Yesterday it was "apports"--flowers that fell down from nowhere and hit you on the nose. He talks like a medium's parrot. He has only to close his eyes and along comes the parade. Spooks! Spooky spooks! And now he wants me to settle my worldly affairs and join in the procession. CATHERINE. [_Puzzled_.] Settle your worldly affairs? What do you mean, Uncle Peter? PETER. [_Evasively_.] Just some more of his nonsense. Doctor, you've seen a good many cross to the other world; tell me--did you ever see one of them come back--one? DR. MACPHERSON. No. PETER. [_Sipping his coffee_.] Never have, eh? And never will. Take another cup of poison, Andrew. _The_ DOCTOR _gives his cup to_ CATHERINE, _who fills it_. PETER _passes the waffles to the_ DOCTOR, _at the same time winking at_ CATHERINE _as the_ DOCTOR _takes another_. DR. MACPHERSON. There was not perhaps the intimate bond between doctor and patients to bring them back. But in my own family, I have known of a case. PETER. [_Apart to_ CATHERINE.] He's off again. CATHERINE. [_Eager to listen_.] Please don't interrupt, Uncle. I love to hear him tell of-- DR. MACPHERSON. I have known of a return such as you mention. A distant cousin died in London and she was seen almost instantly in New York. PETER. She must have travelled on a biplane, Andrew. DR. MACPHERSON. If my voice can be heard from San Francisco over the telephone, why cannot a soul with a God-given force behind it dart over the entire universe? Is Thomas Edison greater than God? CATHERINE. [_Shocked_.] Doctor! DR. MACPHERSON. And they can't tuck it _all_ on telepathy. Telepathy cannot explain the case of a spirit-message giving the contents of a sealed letter known only to the person that died. Here's another interesting case. PETER. This is better than "Puss in Boots," isn't it, Katie? More--er-- flibbertigibberty. Katie always loved fairy stories. CATHERINE. [_Listening eagerly_.] Uncle, please. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Ignoring_ PETER, _speaking directly to_ CATHERINE, _who is all attention_.] An officer on the Polar vessel, the _Jeannette_, sent to the Artic regions by the New York _Herald_, appeared at his wife's bedside. _She_ was in Brooklyn--_he_ was on the Polar sea. He said to her, "Count." She distinctly heard a ship's bell and the word "Count" again. She had counted six when her husband's voice said, "Six bells--and the _Jeanette_ is lost." The ship was really lost at the time she saw the vision. PETER. A bad dream. "Six bells and the"--Ha! Ha! Spirit messages! Suet pudding has brought me messages from the North Pole, and I receive messages from Kingdom Come after I've eaten a piece of mince pie. DR. MACPHERSON. There have been seventeen thousand other cases found to be worth investigation by the London Society of Psychical Research. PETER. [_Changing_.] Supposing, Andrew, that I did "cross over"--I believe that's what you call dying,--that I _did_ want to come back to see how you and the little Katie and Frederik were getting on, how do you think I could manage to do it? DR. MACPHERSON. When we hypnotize subjects, Peter, our thoughts take possession of them. As we enter their bodies, we take the place of a something that leaves them--a shadow-self. This self can be sent out of the room--even to a long distance. This self leaves us entirely after death on the first, second or third day, or so I believe. This is the force which you would employ to come back to earth--the astral envelope. PETER. Yes, but what proof have you, Doctor, that I've got an--an astral envelope. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Easily_.] De Rochas has actually photographed it by radio-photography. PETER. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! DR. MACPHERSON. Mind you--they couldn't _see_ it when they photographed it. PETER. I imagine not. See it? Ho! Ho! DR. MACPHERSON. It stood a few feet away from the sleeper, and was located by striking at the air and watching for the corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to recoil. By pricking a certain part of this shadow-self with a pin, the cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. The camera was focussed on this part of the shadow-self for fifteen minutes. The result was the profile of a head. PETER. [_After a pause_.] ... You believe that? DR. MACPHERSON. The experiment has been repeated again and again. Nobody acquainted with the subject denies it now. PETER. Spook pictures taken by professional mediums! [_Turning away from the table as though he had heard enough._ DR. MACPHERSON. De Rochas, who took the pictures of which I speak, is a lawyer of standing; and the room was full of scientists who saw the pictures taken. PETER. Hypnotized--all of them. Humbug, Andrew! DR. MACPHERSON. Under these conditions, it is quite impossible to hypnotize a room full of people. Perhaps you think the camera was hypnotized? In similar circumstances, says Lombroso, an unnatural current of cold air went through the room and lowered the thermometer several degrees. Can you hypnotize a thermometer? CATHERINE. [_Impressed_.] That's wonderful, Doctor! PETER. Yes, it's a very pretty fairy story; but it would sound better set to shivery music. [_Sings_.] Tol! Dol! Dol! Dol! [_Rising to get his pipe and tobacco_.] No, sir! I refuse to agree to your compact. You cannot pick the lock of heaven's gate. We don't come back. God did enough for us when he gave us life and strength to work and the work to do. He owes us no explanations. I believe in the old-fashioned paradise with a locked gate. [_He fills his pipe and lights it_.] No bogies for me. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Rising_.] Peter, I console myself with the thought that men have scoffed at the laws of gravitation, at vaccination, magnetism, daguerreotypes, steamboats, cars, telephones, wireless telegraphy and lighting by gas. [_Showing feeling_.] I'm very much disappointed that you refuse my request. PETER. [_Laying down his pipe on the table_.] Since you take it so seriously--here--[_Offers his hand_.] I'll agree. I know you're an old fool--and I'm another. Now then--[_Shakes hands._] it's settled. Whichever one shall go first--[_He bursts into laughter--then controlling himself_.] If I do come back, I'll apologize, Andrew. DR. MACPHERSON. Do you mean it? PETER. I'll apologize. Wait [_Taking the keys from the sideboard_.], let us seal the compact in a glass of my famous plum brandy. DR. MACPHERSON. Good! PETER. [_As he passes off_.] We'll drink to spooks. CATHERINE. You really do believe, Doctor, that the dead can come back, don't you? DR. MACPHERSON. Of course I do, and why not? CATHERINE. Do you believe that you could come back here into this room and I could see you? DR. MACPHERSON. You might not see me; but I could come back to this room. CATHERINE. Could you talk to me? DR. MACPHERSON. Yes. CATHERINE. And could I hear you? DR. MACPHERSON. I believe so. That's what we're trying to make possible. [CATHERINE, _still wondering, passes off with the tray. From the cellar,_ PETER _can be heard singing lustily._ PETER. "If you want a bite that's good to eat, (Tra, la, ritte, ra, la, la, la!) Try out a goose that's fat and sweet, (Tra, la, ritte, ra, la, la, la!") _During the song,_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _has given a quick tap on the door and entered. She is about forty years of age. Her faded brown hair is streaked with grey. She wears a plain black alpaca costume._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Agitated_.] Good-morning, Doctor. Fortunate that I found you alone. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Dryly_.] Hy're you, Mrs. Batholommey? _The_ REV. HENRY BATHOLOMMEY _now enters. He is a man of about forty-five, wearing the frock coat, high waistcoat and square topped hat of a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Hy're, Henry? _The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _bows._ WILLIAM _has returned from his errand and entered the room,--a picture-book under his arm. He sits up by the window, absorbed in the pictures--unnoticed by the others._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Closing the door left open by_ PETER, _shutting out the sound of his voice_.] Well, Doctor ... [_She pauses for a moment to catch her breath and wipe her eyes_.] I suppose you've told him he's got to die. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Eyeing_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _with disfavour_.] Who's got to die? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Why, Mr. Grimm, of course. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Amazed_.] Does the whole damned town know it? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Oh! REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Easy, Doctor. You consulted Mr. Grimm's lawyer and _his_ wife told _my_ wife. DR. MACPHERSON. He gabbed, eh? Hang the professional man who tells things to his wife. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Doctor! REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_With solicitude_.] I greatly grieve to hear that Mr. Grimm has an incurable malady. His heart, I understand. [_Shakes his head._ DR. MACPHERSON. He's not to be told. Is that clear? He may die in twenty minutes--may outlive us all--probably will. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Pointing to_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY.] It seems to me, Doctor, that if _you_ can't do any more, it's _his_ turn. It's a wonder you Doctors don't baptize the babies. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Rose! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. At the last minute, he'll want to make a will--and you know he hasn't made one. He'll want to remember the church and his charities and his friends; and if he dies before he can carry out his intentions, the minister will be blamed as usual. It's not fair. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Sh! Sh! My dear! These private matters-- DR. MACPHERSON. I'll trouble you, Mistress Batholommey, to attend to your own affairs. Did you never hear the story of the lady who flattened her nose--sticking it into other people's business? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Doctor! Doctor! I can't have that! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Let him talk, Henry. No one in this town pays any attention to Dr. MacPherson since he took up with spiritualism. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Rose! [_He motions to her to be silent, as_ PETER, _coming up the stairs from the cellar, is heard singing_. PETER. "Drop in the fat some apples red, (Tra, la, ritte, ra, la, la, la!) Then spread it on a piece of bread, (Tra, la, ritte, ra, la, la, la!)" [_He opens the door, carrying a big bottle in his hand; hailing the_ BATHOLOMMEYS _cheerfully_.] Good-morning, good people. [_He puts the jug on the sideboard and hangs up the key. The_ BATHOLOMMEYS _look sadly at_ PETER. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _in the fore-ground tries to smile pleasantly, but can only assume the peculiarly pained expression of a person about to break terrible news._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Rising to the occasion--warmly grasping_ PETER'S _hand_.] Ah, my dear friend! Many thanks for the flowers William brought us, and the noble cheque you sent me. We're still enjoying the vegetables you generously provided. I _did_ relish the squash. PETER. [_Catching a glimpse of_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY'S _gloomy expression_.] Anything distressing you this morning, Mrs. Batholommey? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. No, no.... I hope _you're_ feeling well--er--I don't mean that--I-- REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Cheerily_.] Of course, she does; and why not, why not, dear friend? PETER. Will you have a glass of my plum brandy? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Stiffly_.] No, thank you. As you know, I belong to the W.C.T.U. PETER. Pastor? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Tolerantly_.] No, thank you. I am also opposed to er-- PETER. We're going to drink to spooks--the Doctor and I. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_With a startled cry_.] Oh! [_Lifts her handkerchief to her eyes_.] How can you! And at a time like this. The very idea--you of all people! PETER. [_Coming down with two glasses--handing one to the_ DOCTOR.] You seem greatly upset, Mrs. Batholommey. Something must have happened. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Nothing, nothing, I assure you. My wife is a trifle nervous to-day. We must all keep up our spirits, Mr. Grimm. PETER. Of course. Why not? [_Looking at_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY--_struck_.] I know why you're crying. You've been to a church wedding. [_To the_ DOCTOR, _lifting his glass_.] To astral envelopes, Andrew. [_They drink._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_With sad resignation_.] You were always kind to us, dear Mr. Grimm. There never was a kinder, better, sweeter man than you were. PETER. Than I _was_? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Rose, my dear! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. What _will_ become of William? [_Weeps_. PETER. William? Why should you worry over William? I am looking after him. I don't understand-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Seeing that she has gone too far_.] I only meant--it's too bad he had such an M-- PETER. An M--? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_In pantomime--mouthing the word so that_ WILLIAM _cannot hear_.] Mother ... Annamarie. PETER. Oh! ... MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. She ought to have told you or Mr. Batholommey who the F-- was. PETER. F--? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_In pantomime--as before_.] Father. PETER. Oh... [_Spelling out the word_.] S-c-o-u-n-d-r-e-l--whoever he is! [_Calls_.] William. [WILLIAM _looks up from his book_.] You're very contented here with me, are you not? WILLIAM. Yes, sir. PETER. And you want to stay here? WILLIAM. Yes, sir. [_At that moment, a country circus band--playing a typical parade march--blares out as it comes up some distant street_.] There's a circus in town. PETER. A circus? WILLIAM. Yes, sir. The parade has started. [_Opens the window and looks out towards left_.] Here it comes-- PETER. [_Hurrying to the door_.] Where? Where? WILLIAM. [_Pointing_.] There! PETER. [_As delighted as_ WILLIAM.] You're right. It's coming this way! Here come the chariots. [_Gestures to the_ BATHOLOMMEYS _to join him at the window. The music comes nearer and nearer--the parade is supposed to be passing._ WILLIAM _gives a cry of delight as a clown appears at the window with handbills under his arm._ THE CLOWN. [_As he throws the handbills into the room_.] Billy Miller's big show and monster circus is in town this afternoon. Only one ring. No confusion. [_Seeing_ WILLIAM.] Circus day comes but once a year, little sir. Come early and see the wild animals and hear the lions roar-r-r! Mind! [_Holding up his finger to_ WILLIAM.] I shall expect to see you. Wonderful troupe of trained mice in the side show. [_Sings_.] "Uncle Rat has gone to town, Ha! H'm! Uncle Rat has gone to town To buy Miss Mouse a--" [_Ends the song abruptly_.] Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! [_The_ CLOWN _disappears, repeating "Billy Miller's Big Show," &c., until his voice is lost and the voices of shouting children are heard as they run after him._ PETER. [_Putting his hand in his pocket_.] We'll go. You may buy the tickets, William--two front seats. [FREDERIK _re-enters with a floral catalogue._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Apart to_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY--_looking at_ PETER.] Somebody ought to tell him. WILLIAM. [_Getting the money from_ PETER.] I'm going! I'm going! [_Dances_.] Oh, Mr. Grimm, there ain't anyone else like you in the world. When the other boys laugh at your funny old hat, _I_ never do. [_Pointing to_ PETER'S _hat on the peg._ PETER. My hat? They laugh at my hat? WILLIAM. We'll have such a good time at the circus. It's too bad you've got to die, Mr. Grimm. _There is a pause._ PETER _stops short, looking at_ WILLIAM. _The others are startled, but stand motionless, watching the effect of_ WILLIAM'S _revelation._ FREDERIK _doesn't know what to make of it. There is an ominous silence in the room. Then_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY, _whose smile has been frozen on her face, takes_ WILLIAM'S _hand and is about to draw him away, when_ PETER _lays his hand on_ WILLIAM'S _shoulder_. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _steps back._ PETER. [_Kindly_.] Yes, William, most people have to. ... What made you think of it just then? WILLIAM. [_Points to the_ DOCTOR.] He said so. Perhaps in twenty minutes. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Quietly but very sternly_.] William! [WILLIAM _now understands that he should not have repeated what he heard._ PETER. Don't frighten the boy. Only children tell the truth. Tell me, William--you heard the Doctor say that? [WILLIAM _is silent. He keeps his eyes on the_ CLERGYMAN _who is looking at him warningly. The tears run down his cheeks--he puts his fingers to his lips--afraid to speak_.] Don't be frightened. You heard the Doctor say that? WILLIAM. [_His voice trembling_.] Y--es, sir. PETER. [_Looks round the room--beginning to understand_.] ... What did you mean, Andrew? DR. MACPHERSON. I'll tell you, Peter, when we're alone. PETER. But ... [MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _shakes her finger threateningly at_ WILLIAM _who whimpers_.] Never mind. It popped out; didn't it, William? Get the circus tickets and we'll have a fine time just the same. [WILLIAM _goes for the tickets._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. I--er--good-morning, dear friend. [_Takes_ PETER'S _hand_.] Any time you 'phone for me--day or night--I'll run over instantly. God bless you, sir. I've never come to you for any worthy charity and been turned away--never. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Suddenly overcome_] Good-bye, Mr. Grimm. [_In tears, she follows her husband. The_ DOCTOR _and_ PETER _look at each other_. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Cigar in mouth--very abruptly_] It's cardiac valvular--a little valve--[_Tapping heart_]--here. [_Slaps_ PETER _on the shoulder_] There's my 'phone, [_As a bell is heard faintly but persistently ringing across the street_] I'll be back. [_Catches up his hat to hasten off._ PETER. Just a minute. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Turning_] Don't fret yourself, Peter. You're not to imagine you're worse than you are. [_Angrily_.] Don't funk! PETER. [_Calmly_] That wasn't my reason for detaining you, Andrew. [_With a twinkle in his eye_] I merely wanted to say-- DR. MACPHERSON. Yes? PETER. That if there is anything in that ghost business of yours, I won't forget to come back and apologize for my want of faith. [_The_ DOCTOR _goes home_. FREDERIK _stands looking at his_ UNCLE. _There is a long pause._ PETER _throws up both hands_] Rubbish! Doctors are very often wrong. It's all guess work, eh, Fritz? FREDERIK. [_Thinking of his future in case of_ PETER'S _death_] Yes, sir. PETER. However, to be on the safe side, I'll take that nip of plum brandy. [_Then thinking aloud_.] Not yet ... Not yet ... I'm not ready to die yet. I have so much to live for. ... When I'm older ... When I'm a little old leaf ready to curl up, eh, Fritz? [_He drains the glass. Goes up to the peg, takes dawn his hat, looks at it as though remembering_ WILLIAM'S _words, then puts it back on the peg. He shows no sign of taking_ DR. MACPHERSON'S _verdict to heart--in fact, he doesn't believe it_.] Frederik, get me some small change for the circus--enough for William and me. FREDERIK. Are you going ... after all? ... And with that child? PETER. Why not? FREDERIK. [_Suddenly showing feeling_.] That little tattler? A child that listens to everything and just told you ... He shouldn't be allowed in this part of the house. He should be sent away. PETER. [_Astonished_.] Why do you dislike him, Frederik? He's a fine little fellow. You surprise me, my boy ... [CATHERINE _enters and goes to the piano, running her hands softly over the keys--playing no melody in particular._ PETER _sits in his big chair at the table and picks up his pipe._ FREDERIK, _with an inscrutable face, now strikes a match and holds it to his uncle's pipe_. PETER _thoughtfully takes one or two puffs; then speaking so as not to be heard by_ CATHERINE.] Frederik, I want to think that after I'm gone, everything will be the same here ... just as it is now. FREDERIK. Yes, sir. [_Sitting near_ PETER. PETER. Just as it is ... [FREDERIK _nods assent_. PETER _smokes. The room is very cheerful. The bright midday sunshine creeps through the windows,-- almost causing a haze in the room--and resting on the pots and vases and bright flowers on the tables._ CATHERINE. [_Singing_.] "The bird so free in the heavens"-- PETER. [_Looking up--still in thought--seeming not to hear the song_.] And my charities attended to. [FREDERIK _nods assent_. CATHERINE. "Is but the slave of the nest; For all must toil as God wills it,-- Must laugh and toil and rest." PETER. [_Who has been thinking_.] Just as though I were here. CATHERINE. "The rose must blow in the garden"-- PETER. William, too. Don't forget _him_, Frederik. FREDERIK. No, Uncle. CATHERINE. "The bee must gather its store; The cat must watch the mouse-hole; The dog must guard the door." PETER. [_As though he had a weight off his mind_.] We won't speak of this again. It's understood. [_Smokes, listening with pleasure as_ CATHERINE _finishes the song_. CATHERINE. [_Repeats the chorus_.] "The cat must watch the mouse-hole; The dog must guard the door. La la, La la," &c. _At the close of the song,_ PETER _puts down his pipe and beckons to_ CATHERINE. PETER. Give me the Book. [CATHERINE _brings the Bible to_ PETER _as the garden bell rings outside_. FREDERIK. Noon. PETER. [_Opening the Book at the history of the family--points to the closely written page_.] Under my name I want to see this written: "Married: Catherine and Frederik." I want to see you settled, Katie-- [_Smiling_] settled happily for life. [_He takes her hand and draws_ FREDERIK _towards his chair_. CATHERINE, _embarrassed, plays with a rose in her belt_.] Will you?... CATHERINE. I ... I don't know.... PETER. [_Taking the rose and her hand in his own_] I know for you, my dear. Make me happy. CATHERINE. There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy, Uncle, but-- FREDERIK. You know that I love you, Kitty. PETER. Yes, yes, yes. _That's_ all understood. He has always loved you. Everybody knows it. CATHERINE. Uncle... PETER. Make it a June wedding. We have ten days yet. [_Slipping her hand in_ FREDERIK'S, _taking the rose, and tapping their clasped hands with the flower as he speaks._ FREDERIK. Say yes, Kitty. CATHERINE. [_Nervously_] I couldn't in ten days.... FREDERIK. But-- PETER. [_To_ FREDERIK.] Who is arranging the marriage, you or I? Say a month, then, Katie.... Promise me. CATHERINE. [_Her lips set._] If you have set your heart on it, I will, Uncle Peter ... I will ... I promise. PETER. [_Takes a ring of his hand._] The wedding ring--my dear mother's. [_Gives it to_ CATHERINE.] You've made me very happy, my dear. [_He kisses_ CATHERINE. _Then, releasing her, he nods to_ FREDERIK _to follow his example._ PETER _turns his back on the young people and smokes._ FREDERIK. Catherine ... [_Dreading his embrace, she retreats towards_ PETER _and, as she touches him, his pipe falls to the floor. She looks at him, startled._ FREDERIK, _struck, looking intently at_ PETER _who sits motionless._ CATHERINE. Uncle Peter ... Uncle! What is it? What's the matter? [_Runs to the door--calling across the street._] Doctor! There he is--just going out. [_Calls._] Come back. Come back, Doctor. [_To_ FREDERIK.] I felt it. I felt something strange a minute ago. I felt it. FREDERIK. [_Taking_ PETER'S _hand._] Uncle Peter! CATHERINE. [_Coming back to_ PETER _and looking at him transfixed._] Uncle Peter! Answer me! ... It's Katie! _The_ DOCTOR _enters hurriedly._ DR. MACPHERSON. Is it ... Peter? [_He goes quickly to_ PETER _and listens to his heart._ CATHERINE _and_ FREDERIK _on either side of him. The_ DOCTOR _with tender sympathy takes_ CATHERINE _in his arms._ WILLIAM. [_Rushes in with two tickets in his hand, leaving the door open. The circus music is faintly heard._] Mr. Grimm! DR. MACPHERSON. Sh! [_A pause as though breaking the news to them all._] He's gone. FREDERIK. [_Questioningly--dazed._] Dead? [CATHERINE _is overcome._ WILLIAM. [_At_ PETER'S _side--holding up the circus ticket._] He can't be dead ... I've got his ticket to the circus. CURTAIN. ACT II. SCENE. _The second act takes place ten days later, towards the close of a rainy afternoon. A fire is burning in the grate and a basket of hickory wood stands beside the hearth._ PETER'S _hat is no longer on the peg. His pipes and jar of tobacco are missing. A number of wedding presents are set on a table, some unopened. The interior of the room, with its snapping fire, forms a pleasant contrast to the gloomy exterior. The day is fading into dusk._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _is at the piano, playing the wedding march from "Lohengrin." Four little girls are grouped about her, singing the words to the air._ _"Faithful and true: We lead ye forth, Where love triumphant Shall lighten the way."_ _"Bright star of love, Flower of the earth, Shine on ye both On Love's perfect day."_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. That's better. Children, remember that this is to be a very _quiet_ wedding. You're to be here at noon to-morrow. You're not to speak as you enter the room and take your places near the piano. Miss Staats will come down from her room,--at least I suppose she will--and will stand ... [_Thinks._] I don't know where--but you're to stop when _I_ look at you. Watch me as though I were about to be married. [_She takes her place at the foot of the stairs and the children repeat the song until she has marched across the room and stationed herself in some appropriate corner. As_ FREDERIK _appears from the hall, where he leaves his raincoat and umbrella,_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _motions the children to silence._] That will do, dears, thank you. Hurry home between showers. [_The children go as she explains to_ FREDERIK.] My Sunday-school scholars.... I thought your dear uncle would like a song at the wedding. I know how bright and cheery he would have been--poor man. Dear, noble, charitable soul! FREDERIK. [_In a low voice._] Where's Catherine? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Taking up her fancy work, seating herself._] Upstairs. FREDERIK. With that sick child? Tc! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Catherine finds it a pleasure to sit beside the little fellow. William is very much better. FREDERIK. [_Taking a telegram from his pocket-book._] Well, we shall soon be off to Europe. I've just had a telegram to say a cabin has been reserved for me on the _Imperator_. To-morrow, thank God, we shall take the afternoon train to New York. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I must confess that I'm very glad. Of course, I'm happy to stay and chaperone Catherine; but poor Mr. Batholommey has been alone at the parsonage for ten days ... ever since your dear uncle ... [_Pauses, unwinding yarn, then unburdening her mind._] I didn't think at first that Catherine could persuade herself to marry you. FREDERIK. [_Sharply._] I don't understand you, Mrs. Batholommey. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I mean she seemed so averse to--to an immediate marriage; but of course it was your uncle's last request, and that influenced her more than anything else. So it's to be a June wedding, after all; he has his wish. You'll be married in ten days from the time he left us. [_Remembering._] Some more letters marked personal came for him while you were out. I put them in the drawer--[_Points to desk._] with the rest. It seems odd to think the postman brings your uncle's letters regularly, yet _he_ is not here. FREDERIK. [_Looking towards the door of the office._] Did Hartman come? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Yes. He seemed rather surprised that you'd sent for him. FREDERIK. Did you--er--tell him that we intend to leave to-morrow? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I spoke of your wedding trip,--yes. FREDERIK. Did he seem inclined to stay? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. He didn't say. He seemed very much agitated. [MARTA _enters, carrying a night lamp._] We'll pack Miss Catherine's things to-night, Marta. [_She notices the lamp._] The night lamp for William? [_Looks up towards the door of his room._] Go in very quietly. He's asleep, I think. [MARTA _goes up the stairs and into_ WILLIAM'S _room._] By the way, Mr. Batholommey was very much excited when he heard that your uncle had left a personal memorandum concerning us. We're anxious to hear it read. [FREDERIK, _paying no attention to her words, is glancing at the wedding presents._] We're anxious to hear it read. JAMES. [_Entering._] Did you wish to see me? FREDERIK. [_Offering his hand to_ JAMES.] How do you do, Hartman? I'm very glad you consented to come back. My uncle never went into his office again after you left. There is some private correspondence concerning matters of which I know nothing; it lies on your old desk.... I'm anxious to settle everything to-night. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _leaves the room._ JAMES. Very well. I have no doubt but that I can get through with it by midnight. FREDERIK. If you care to remain longer with the firm, I--er-- JAMES. No, thank you. FREDERIK. I appreciate the fact that you came on my uncle's account. I have no ill-feeling against you, Hartman. JAMES. I'm not refusing to stay because of any ill-feeling. I'm going because I know that you'll sell out before your uncle's cold in his grave. I don't care to stay to see the old place change hands. FREDERIK. I? Sell out? My intention is to carry out every wish of my dear old uncle's. JAMES. I hope so. I haven't forgotten that you wanted him to sell out to Hicks of Rochester on the very day he died. [_Exit into the office._ CATHERINE _comes from_ WILLIAM'S _room, simply dressed in white--no touch of mourning._ FREDERIK _goes to the foot of the stairs and calls softly._ FREDERIK. Kitty! Here is our marriage license. I have the cabin on the _Imperator_. Everything is arranged. CATHERINE. [_Coming downstairs._] Yes. ... I meant to speak to you--again. FREDERIK. To-morrow's the day, dear. CATHERINE. [_Very subdued._] Yes.... FREDERIK. A June wedding--just as Uncle Peter wished. CATHERINE. [_As before_.] Yes.... Just as he wished. Everything is just as he.... [_With a change of manner--earnestly--looking at_ FREDERIK.] Frederik, I don't want to go away. I don't want to go to Europe. If only I could stay quietly here in--[_Tears in her voice as she looks round the room._]--in my dear home. FREDERIK. Why do you want to stay in this old cottage--with its candles and lamps and shadows? It's very gloomy, very depressing. CATHERINE. I don't want to leave this house.... I don't want any home but this. [_Panic-stricken._] Don't take me away Frederik. I know you've never really liked it at Grimm's Manor. Are you sure you'll want to come back to live here? FREDERIK. [_As though speaking to a child._] Of course. I'll do anything you ask. CATHERINE. I--I've always wanted to please ... [_After a slight pause, finding it difficult to speak his name._] Uncle Peter.... I felt that I owed everything to him.... If he had lived ... if I could see _his_ happiness at our marriage--it would make _me_ happy; [_Pathetically._] but he's gone ... and ... I'm afraid we're making a mistake. I don't feel towards you as I ought, Frederik. I've told you again and again; but I want to tell you once more: I'm willing to marry you ... but I don't love you--I never shall. FREDERIK. How do you know? CATHERINE. I know ... I know.... It seems so disloyal to speak like this after I promised _him_; but-- FREDERIK. Yes, you _did_ promise Uncle Peter you'd marry me, didn't you? CATHERINE. Yes. FREDERIK. And he died believing you? CATHERINE. Yes. FREDERIK. Then it all comes to this: are you going to live up to your promise? CATHERINE. That's it. That's what makes me try to live up to it. [_Wiping her eyes._] But you know how I feel.... You understand.... FREDERIK. Perfectly; you don't quite know your own mind.... Very few young girls do, I suppose. I love you and in time you'll grow to care for me. [MARTA _re-enters from_ WILLIAM'S _room and closing the door comes down the stairs and passes off._] What _are_ we to do with that child? CATHERINE. He's to stay here, of course. FREDERIK. The child should be sent to some institution. What claim has he on you--on any of us? CATHERINE. Why do you dislike him? FREDERIK. I don't, but-- CATHERINE. Yes, you do. I can't understand it. I remember how angry you were when you came back from college and found him living here. You never mention his mother's name, yet you played together as children. When Uncle tried to find Annamarie and bring her back, you were the only one opposed to it. FREDERIK. William is an uncomfortable child to have in the house. He has a way of staring at people as though he had a perpetual question on his lips. It's most annoying. CATHERINE. What question? FREDERIK. As for his mother--I've never seen her since she left this house and I don't care to hear her name on your lips. Her reputation is--[_The rain starts pattering on the shingled roof._] Tc! More rain ... the third day of it.... [_Going to the window--calling._] Otto! [_Angrily._] Otto! See what the wind has done--those trellises. [_Bangs the window shut._] That old gardener should have been laid off years ago.... By the way, his son James is here for a few hours--to straighten matters out. I must see how he's getting on. [_Taking her hand, drawing her towards the table with a change of manner._] Have you seen all the wedding presents, Kitty? I'll be back in a few minutes. [_Pats her cheek and exits._ CATHERINE _stands over her wedding presents just as he left her--not looking at them--her eyes filled with tears. The door is suddenly opened and the_ DOCTOR _enters, a tweed shawl over his shoulders, wearing a tweed cap. He has a book under his arm._ DR. MACPHERSON. How's William? [CATHERINE _tries to hide her tears, but he sees through her. He tosses his cap, coat and book on the sofa._] What's the matter? CATHERINE. Nothing.... I was only thinking.... I was hoping that those we love ... and lose ... _can't_ see us here. I'm beginning to believe there's not much happiness in _this_ world. DR. MACPHERSON. Why, you little snip. I've a notion to spank you. Talking like that with life before you! Read this book, child; [_Gesturing towards the book on the sofa._] it proves that the dead do see us; they do come back. [_Walks to the foot of the stairs--turns._] Catherine, I understand that you've not a penny to your name--unless you marry Frederik; that he has inherited you along with the orchids and tulips. Don't let that influence you. If Peter's plans bind you--and you look as though they did--my door's open. Think it over. It's not too late. [_Goes half-way up the stairs--then pauses._] Don't let the neighbours' opinions and a few silver spoons--[_Pointing to the wedding presents_ stand in the way of your future. [_Exit into_ WILLIAM'S _room. The rain increases. The sky grows blacker--the room darker._ CATHERINE _gives a cry and stretches out her arms, not looking up._ CATHERINE. Uncle Peter! Uncle Peter! Why did you do it? Why did you ask it? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! If you could see me now. [_She stands rigid--her arms outstretched._ MARTA, _who has silently entered from the dining-room with fresh candles, goes to_ CATHERINE. CATHERINE _suddenly buries her face on_ MARTA'S _broad breast, breaking into sobs; then recovering, wipes her eyes._] There, there ... I mustn't cry ... others have troubles, too, haven't they? MARTA. Others have troubles, too. CATHERINE. I had hoped, Marta, that Annamarie would have heard of Uncle's loss and come back to us at this time.... MARTA. If it had only brought us all together once more; but no message ... nothing ... I cannot understand. CATHERINE. She knows that our door is open.... _The rain beats against the windows. A sharp double knock is heard at the door._ CATHERINE _starts as though suddenly brought to herself, hastily goes into the next room, taking the_ DOCTOR'S _book with her._ MARTA _has hurried towards the front door, when the_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _and_ COLONEL LAWTON _appear in the hall as though they had entered quickly, to escape the storm._ MARTA, _greeting them, passes of to tell_ FREDERIK _of their presence. The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _wears a long, black cloth, rain-proof coat._ COLONEL LAWTON _wears a rubber poncho._ COLONEL LAWTON _is a tall man with a thin brown beard and moustache, about forty-eight. He is dressed in a Prince Albert coat, unpressed trousers, and a negligee shirt. He wears spectacles and has a way of throwing back his head and peering at people before answering them. The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _sets his umbrella in the hall and the_ COLONEL _hangs his broad-brimmed hat on the handle--as though to let it drip._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Brr! I believe it's raining icicles. COLONEL LAWTON. [_Taking off his overshoes._] Gee Whillikins! What a day! Good thing the old windmill out yonder is tied up. Great weather for baptisms, Parson. [_There is a faint, far-away rumble of thunder._ FREDERIK _enters._] Well, here we are, Frederik, my boy--at the time you mentioned. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. How are you, Frederik? COLONEL LAWTON _crosses to the fire, followed by the_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. FREDERIK. [_Who has gone to the desk for a paper lying under a paper-weight._] I sent for you to hear a memorandum left by my uncle. I only came across it yesterday. [_There is a louder peal of thunder. A flash of lightning illuminates the room._ COLONEL LAWTON. I must have drawn up ten wills for the old gentleman, but he always tore 'em up. May I have a drink of his plum brandy, Frederik? FREDERIK. Help yourself. Pastor? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Er--er-- COLONEL LAWTON _goes to the sideboard and pours out two drinks from a decanter. A heavy roll of thunder now ends in a sharp thunderclap._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY, _who is entering the room, gives a cry and puts her hands over her face._ COLONEL LAWTON _bolts his whiskey. The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _takes a glass and stands with it in his hand._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Removing her hands in time to see the brandy._] Why, Henry! What are you doing? Are your feet wet? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. No, Rose; they're not. I want a drink and I'm going to take it. It's a bad night. [_Drinks._ COLONEL LAWTON. [_Throws a hickory log on the fire, which presently blazes up, making the room much lighter._] Go ahead, Frederik. [_Sits._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _has drawn up a chair for his wife, and now seats himself before the snapping hickory fire._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. I knew that your uncle would remember his friends and his charities. He was so liberal! One might say of him that he was the very soul of generosity. He gave in such a free-handed, princely fashion. FREDERIK. [_Reading in a businesslike manner._] For Mrs. Batholommey-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. The dear man--to think that he remembered me! I knew he'd remember the church and Mr. Batholommey, of course; but to think that he'd remember me! He knew that my income was very limited. He was so thoughtful! His purse was always open. FREDERIK. [_Eyes_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _for a second, then continues._] For Mr. Batholommey--[REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _nods solemnly._] and the Colonel. COLONEL LAWTON. [_Taking out a cigar._] He knew that I did the best I could for him ... [_His voice breaks._] the grand old man. [_Recovering._] What'd he leave me? Mrs. B.--er? [_Nods inquiringly at_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY, _who bows assent, and he lights his cigar._ FREDERIK. [_Glancing at the paper._] Mrs. Batholommey, he wished you to have his miniature--with his affectionate regards. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Dear old gentleman--and er--yes? FREDERIK. To Mr. Batholommey-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. But--er--you didn't finish with me. FREDERIK. You're finished. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I'm finished? FREDERIK. You may read it yourself if you like. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. No, no, no. She'll take your word for it. [_Firmly._] Rose! FREDERIK. [_Reads._] "To Mr. Batholommey, my antique watch fob--with my profound respects." [_Continues._] To Colonel Lawton-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. His watch fob? Is _that_ what he left to _Henry_? Is that all? [_As_ FREDERIK _nods._] Well! If he had no wish to make _your_ life easier, Henry, he should at least have left something for the church. Oh! Won't the congregation have a crow to pick with you! FREDERIK. [_Reading._] "To my life-long friend, Colonel Lawton, I leave my most cherished possession." [COLONEL LAWTON _has a look on his face as though he were saying, "Ah! I'll get something worth while."_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Angrily._] When the church members hear that-- COLONEL LAWTON. [_Chewing his cigar._] I don't know why he was called upon to leave anything to the church--he gave it thousands; and only last month, he put in chimes. As _I_ look at it, he wished to give you something he had _used_--something personal. Perhaps the miniature and the fob _ain't_ worth three whoops in Hell,--it's the sentiment of the thing that counts--[_Chewing the word with his cigar._] the sentiment. Drive on, Fred. FREDERIK. "To Colonel Lawton, my father's prayer-book." COLONEL LAWTON. [_Suddenly changing--dazed._] His prayer-book ... me? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Seeing_ FREDERIK _lay down the paper and rise._] Is that all? FREDERIK. That's all. COLONEL LAWTON. [_Still dazed._] A prayer-book.... Me? Well, I'll be-- [_Struck._] Here, Parson, let's swap. You take the prayer-book--I'll take the old fob. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Stiffly._] Thank you. I already _have_ a prayer-book. [_Goes to the window and looks out--his back turned to the others--trying to control his feelings._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Her voice trembling with vexation and disappointment._] Well, all that I can say is--I'm disappointed in your uncle. COLONEL LAWTON. Is it for this you hauled us out in the rain, Frederik? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Bitterly._] I see now ... he only gave to the church to show off. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Rose! ... I myself am disappointed, but-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. He did! Or why didn't he _continue_ his work? He was _not_ a generous man. He was a hard, uncharitable, selfish old man. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Horrified._] Rose, my dear! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. He was! If he were here, I'd say it to his face. The congregation sicked _you_ after him. Now that he's gone and you'll get nothing more, they'll call you slow--slow and pokey. You'll see! You'll see to-morrow. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Sh! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. As for the Colonel, who spent half his time with Mr. Grimm, what is his reward? A watch-fob! [_Prophetically._] Henry, mark my words--this will be the end of _you_. It's only a question of a few weeks. One of these new football playing ministers, just out of college, will take _your_ place. It's not what you _preach_ now that counts; it's what you coax out of the rich parishioners' pockets. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_In a low voice._] _Mrs._ Batholommey! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Religion doesn't stand where it did, Henry--there's no denying that. There was a time when people had to go to church--they weren't decent if they didn't. Now you have to wheedle 'em in. The church needs funds in these days when a college professor is openly saying that-- [_Her voice breaks._] the Star of Bethlehem was a comet. [_Weeps._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Control yourself. I must insist upon it, Mrs. Batholommey. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Breaking down--almost breathlessly._] Oh! If I said all the things I feel like saying about Peter Grimm--well--I shouldn't be fit to be a clergyman's wife. Not to leave his dear friends a-- COLONEL LAWTON. He _wasn't_ liberal; but, for God's sake, madam, pull yourself together and think what he ought to have done for me!--I've listened to his plans for twenty years. I've virtually given up my business for him, and what have I got out of it? Not a button! Not a button! A bible. Still _I'm_ not complaining. Hang that chimney, Frederik, it's smoking. [COLONEL LAWTON _stirs the fire--a log falls out and the flame goes down. The room has gradually grown darker as the night approaches._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Turning on_ COLONEL LAWTON.] Oh, you've feathered your nest, Colonel! You're a rich man. COLONEL LAWTON. [_Enraged, raising his voice._] What? I never came here that _you_ weren't begging. FREDERIK. [_Virtuously--laying down the paper._] Well, I'm disgusted! When I think how much more I should have if he hadn't continually doled out money to every one of you! COLONEL LAWTON. What? FREDERIK. He was putty in your hands. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Yes, you can afford to defend his memory--you've got the money. FREDERIK. I don't defend his memory. He was a gullible old fossil, and the whole town knew it. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. _You_ did at any rate. I've heard you flatter him by the hour. FREDERIK. Of course. He liked flattery and I gave him what he wanted. Why not? I gave him plenty. The rest of you were at the same thing; and I had the pleasure of watching him give you the money that belonged to me--to _me_--my money.... What business had he to be generous with my money? [_The_ COLONEL _strikes a match to light his cigar, and, as it flares up, the face of_ FREDERIK _is seen--distorted with anger._] I'll tell you this: had he lived much longer, there would have been nothing left for me. It's a fortunate thing for me that--[_He pauses, knowing that he has said too much. The room is now very dark. The rain has subsided. Everything is quiet outside. There is not a sound, save the ticking of the clock._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Solemnly--breaking the pause._] Young man, it might have been better had Mr. Grimm given his _all_ to charity--for he has left his money to an ingrate. FREDERIK. [_Laughing derisively._] Ha! Ha! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Sh! Someone's coming. _All is quiet. The clock ticks in the dark. The door opens._ FREDERIK. [_With a change of voice._] Come in. [_Nobody enters._] Where's a light? We've been sitting in the dark like owls. Come in. [_A pause. He strikes a match and holds it above his head. The light shows the open door. A wind, blowing through the doorway, causes the match to flicker, and_ FREDERIK _protects it with his hand._ COLONEL LAWTON. I'll see who's ... [_Looks out._] No one. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Someone _must_ be there. Who opened the door? [_The wind puts out the match in_ FREDERIK'S _hand. The room is once more in semi-darkness._] There ... it closed again ... [FREDERIK _strikes another match and holds it up. The door is seen to be closed._ COLONEL LAWTON. [_Who is nearest to the door._] I didn't touch it. FREDERIK. [_Blowing out the match._] I'll have the lamps brought in. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Curious ... REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. It was the wind--a draught. COLONEL LAWTON. [_Returning to his chair._] Must have been. CATHERINE. [_Entering with a lamp._] Did someone call me? _Without pausing, she sets the lamp on the table down right--opposite the group of characters. She turns up the wick and _PETER GRIMM _is seen standing in the room--half in shadow. He is as he was in life. The clothes he wears appear to be those he wore about his house in the first act. He carries his hat in his hand. He has the same kind smile, the same deferential manner, but his face is more spiritual and years younger. The lamp, which _CATHERINE_ has placed on the table, brightens the room._ PETER. [_Whose eyes never leave_ CATHERINE.] Yes ... I called you.... I've come back. FREDERIK. [_To_ CATHERINE.] No. PETER. Don't be frightened, Katie. It's the most natural thing in the world. You wanted me and I came. FREDERIK. Why? What made you think someone called you? CATHERINE. I'm so accustomed to hear Uncle Peter's voice in this room, that sometimes I forget he's not here ... I can't get over it! I was almost sure I heard him speak ... but, of course, as soon as I came in--I remembered.... But some one must have called me. FREDERIK. No. PETER _stands looking at them, perplexed; not being able to comprehend as yet that he is not seen._ CATHERINE. Isn't it curious ... to hear your name and turn and ... [_Unconsciously, she looks in_ PETER'S _face._] no one there? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Kindly._] Nerves ... imagination. FREDERIK. You need a complete change. [_Crossing to the door._] For heaven's sake, let's have more light or we shall all be hearing voices. PETER. Strange.... Nobody seems to see me.... It's--it's extraordinary! Katie! ... Katie! ... [_His eyes have followed_ CATHERINE _who is now at the door._ CATHERINE. [_Pausing._] Perhaps it was the book I was reading that made me think I heard.... The Doctor lent it to me. FREDERIK. [_Pooh-poohing._] Oh! CATHERINE. [_Half to herself._] If he _does_ know, if he _can_ see, he'll be comforted by the thought that I'm going to do everything he wanted. [_She passes out of the room._ PETER. [_Showing that he does not want her to carry out his wishes._] No, no, don't ... Frederik, I want to speak to you. [FREDERIK, _not glancing in_ PETER'S _direction, lights a cigarette._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Well, Frederik, I hope the old gentleman can see his mistake _now_. PETER. I can see several mistakes. [REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _rises and goes towards the door, pausing in front of_ PETER _to take out his watch._] ... Mr. Batholommey, I'm glad to see you in my house.... I'm very sorry that you can't see me. I wasn't pleased with my funeral sermon; it was very gloomy--very. I never was so depressed in my life. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_To_ FREDERIK.] Do you know what I should like to say to your uncle? PETER. I know. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. I hope at least you'll care for the parish poor as your uncle did--and keep on with _some_ of his charities. PETER. [_Putting his hand on_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY'S _shoulder._] That's all attended to. I arranged all that with Frederik. He must look after my charities. FREDERIK. I might as well tell you now--you needn't look to me. It's Uncle Peter's fault if your charities are cut off. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Half-doubtingly._] It doesn't seem possible that he made no arrangements to continue his good works. [FREDERIK _remains stolid._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _puts back his watch after glancing at it._] Just thirty minutes to make a call. [_Goes into the hall to put on his overshoes, coat, &c., leaving_ PETER'S _hand extended in the air._ COLONEL LAWTON. [_Rising._] I must be toddling. [_Pauses._] It's queer, Frederik, how things turn out in this world. [_He stands, thinking matters over--cigar in mouth, his hand on his chin._ PETER. [_Slipping his hand through_ COLONEL LAWTON'S _arm. They seem to look each other in the eye._] You were perfectly right about it, Thomas, I should have made a will ... I--suppose it _is_ a little too late, isn't it?... It would be--er--unusual to do it now, wouldn't it? COLONEL LAWTON, _who has heard nothing--seen nothing--moves away as though_ PETER _had never held his arm, and goes up into the hall for his cape and overshoes._ COLONEL LAWTON. [_Noticing an old gold-headed walking-stick in the hall._] Oh, er--what are you going to do with all the old man's family relics, Frederik? FREDERIK. The junk, you mean? I shall lay it on some scrap-heap, I suppose. It's not worth a penny. COLONEL LAWTON. I'm not so sure of that. They say there's a lot of money paid for this sort of trash. FREDERIK. Is that so? Not a bad idea to have a dealer in to look it over. PETER _stands listening, a faint smile on his face._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. If I could have the old clock--cheap, Frederik, I'd take it off your hands. FREDERIK. I'll find out how much it's worth. I shall have everything appraised. [_Sets his watch by the clock._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _gives him a look and joins her husband at the door._ COLONEL LAWTON. Good-night. [_Exit, closing the door._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_As_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _goes out--calling after him._] Henry, Catherine wants you to come back for supper. [MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _leaves the room too disgusted for words._ FREDERIK _goes into the office._ PETER. [_Now alone._] We live and learn ... and oh! what I have learned since I came back.... [_He goes to his own particular peg in the vestibule and hangs up his hat. He glances at the wedding presents. Presently he sees the flowers which_ CATHERINE _has placed on the desk. With a smile, he touches the flowers._ MARTA _enters with another lamp, which she places on a table. As_ PETER'S _eyes rest on_ MARTA, _he nods and smiles in recognition, waiting for a response._] Well, Marta?... Don't you know your old master?... No?... No?... [_She winds the clock and leaves the room._] I seem to be a stranger in my own house ... yet the watch-dog knew me and wagged his tail as I came in. [_He stands trying to comprehend it all._] Well! Well! FREDERIK. [_Looking at his watch, re-enters from the office and goes to the 'phone, which presently rings._ FREDERIK _instantly lifts the receiver as though not wishing to attract attention. In a low voice._] Yes ... I was waiting for you. How are you, Mr. Hicks? [_Listens._] I'm not anxious to sell--no. I prefer to carry out my dear old uncle's wishes. [PETER _eyes him--a faint smile on his lips._] If I got my price? Well ... of course in that case ... I might be tempted. To-morrow? No, I can't see you to-morrow. I'm going to be married to-morrow, and leave at once for New York. Thank you. [_Listens._] To-night? Very well, but I don't want it known. I'll sell, but it must be for more than the price my uncle refused. Make it ten thousand more and it's done. [_Listens._] You'll come to-night?... Yes, yes.... [_Listens at the 'phone._] The dear old man told you his plans never failed, eh? God rest his soul! [_Laughing indulgently._] Ha! Ha! Ha! PETER. Ha! Ha! Ha! FREDERIK. [_Echoing_ HICKS' _words._] What would he say if he knew? What could he say? Everything must change. _A far-away rumble of thunder is heard--the lightning flickers at the window and a flash is seen on the telephone which tinkles and responds as though from the electric shock. Exclaiming "Ugh,"_ FREDERIK _drops the receiver--which hangs down._ PETER. [_The storm passes as he speaks into the receiver without touching the telephone._] Good-evening, my friend. We shall soon meet--face to face. You won't be able to carry this matter through.... [_Looking into space as though he could see the future._] You're not well and you're going out to supper to-night; ... you will eat something that will cause you to pass over.... I shall see you to-morrow.... A happy crossing! FREDERIK. [_Picks up the receiver._] Hello?... You don't feel well, you say? [_Then echoing the purport of_ HICKS' _answer._] I see.... Your lawyer can attend to everything to-night without you. Very well. It's entirely a question of money, Mr. Hicks. Send your lawyer to the Grimm Manor Hotel. I'll arrange at once for a room. Good-bye. [_Hangs up the receiver._] That's off my mind. [_He lights a fresh cigarette--his face expressing the satisfaction he feels in the prospect of a perfectly idle future._ PETER _looks at him as though to say: "And that's the boy whom I loved and trusted!"_ FREDERIK _gets his hat, throws his coat over his arm, and hastens out._ PETER. [_Turns and faces the door leading into the next room, as though he could feel the presence of some one waiting there._] Yes ... I am still in the house. Come in ... come in ... [_He repeats the signal of the first act._] Ou--oo. [_The door opens slowly--and_ CATHERINE _enters as though at_ PETER'S _call. She looks about her, not understanding. He holds out his arms to her._ CATHERINE _walks slowly towards him. He takes her in his arms, but she does not respond. She does not know that she is being held._] There! There!... Don't worry.... It's all right.... We'll arrange things very differently. I've come back to change all my plans. [_She moves away a step--just out of his embrace. He tries to call her back._] Katie! ... Can't I make my presence known to _you_? Katie! Can't my love for you outlive _me_? Isn't it here in the home?... Don't cry. [_She moves about the room in thought. As_ PETER _watches her--she pauses near his desk._ CATHERINE. [_Suddenly._] Crying doesn't help matters. PETER. She hears me. She doesn't know it, but she hears me. She's cheering up. [_She inhales the flowers--a half smile on her lips._] That's right, you haven't smiled before since I died. [_Suddenly giving way to the realization of her loss_, CATHERINE _sighs._ PETER. [_Correcting himself._] I--I mean--since I learned that there was a happier place than the world I left.... I'm a trifle confused. I've not had time to adjust myself to these new conditions. [CATHERINE _smiles sadly--goes up to the window, and, leaning against the pane, looks out into the night._ PETER _continues comfortingly._] The dead have never really died, you know. We couldn't die if we tried. We're all about you.... Look at the gardens: they've died, haven't they? But there they are all the better for it. Death is the greatest thing in the world. It's really a--Ha!--delightful experience. What is it, after all? A nap from which we waken rested, refreshened ... a sleep from which we spring up like children tumbling out of bed--ready to frolic through another world. I was an old man a few days ago; now I'm a boy. I feel much younger than you--much younger. [_A conflict is going on in_ CATHERINE'S _mind. She walks to the chair by the fireplace and sits--her back to the audience. He approaches her and lays a tender hand on her shoulder._] I know what you're thinking.... Katie, I want you to break that very foolish promise I asked you to make. You're almost tempted to. Break it! Break it at once; then--[_Glancing smilingly towards the door through which he came--as though he wished to leave--like a child longing to go back to play._] then I could--take the journey back in peace.... I can't go until you do--and I ... I long to go.... Isn't my message any clearer to you? [_Reading her mind._] You have a feeling ... an impression of what I'm saying; but the words ... the words are not clear.... Mm ... let me see.... If you can't understand me--there's the Doctor, he'll know how to get the message-- he'll find the way.... Then I can hurry back ... home.... CATHERINE. [_Helplessly--changing her position like a tired child._] Oh, I'm so alone. PETER. [_Cheerily._] Not alone at all--not at all. I shall drop in very often ... and then, there's your mother. [_Suddenly remembering._] Oh, yes, I had almost forgotten. I have a message for you, Katie.... [_He seats himself in a chair which is almost in front of her._] I've met your mother. [_She sits in a reverie._ PETER _continues with the air of a returned traveller relating his experiences._] She heard that I had crossed over and there she was--waiting for me. You're thinking of it, aren't you? Wondering if we met.... Yes, that was the first interesting experience. She knew me at once. "You were Peter Grimm," she said, "before you knew better"--that's what _they_ call leaving _this_ world--"_to know better_." You call it "dying." [_Confidentially._] She's been here often, it seems, watching over you. I told her how much I loved you and said that you had a happy home. I spoke of your future--of my plans for you and Frederik. "Peter Grimm," she said, "you've over-looked the most important thing in the world--love. You haven't given her _her right_ to the choice of her lover--_her right_!" Then it came over me that I'd made a terrible mistake ... and at that minute, you called to me. [_Impressively._] In the darkness surrounding all I had left behind, there came a light ... a glimmer where you stood ... a clear call in the night.... It seemed as though I had not been away one second ... but in that second, you had suffered.... Now I am back to show you the way.... I am here to put my hand on your dear head and give you your mother's blessing; to say she will be with you in spirit until she holds you in her arms--you and your loved husband--[CATHERINE _turns in her chair and looks towards the door of the room in which_ JAMES _is working._ PETER _catches the thought._]-- yes, James, it's you.... And the message ended in this kiss. [_Prints a kiss on her cheek._] Can't you think I'm with you, dear child? Can't you _think_ I'm trying to help you? Can't you even hope? Oh, come, at least hope! Anybody can hope. CATHERINE _rises with an entire change of manner--takes a bright red blossom from the vase on_ PETER'S _desk--then deliberately walks to the door of the room in which_ JAMES _is working._ PETER _follows her action hopefully. She does not tap on the door, however, but turns and sits at the piano--in thought--not facing the piano. She puts_ PETER'S _flowers against her face. Then, laying the flowers on the piano, sings softly three or four bars of the song she sang in the first act--and stops abruptly._ CATHERINE. [_To herself._] That I should sit here singing--at a time like this! PETER. Sing! Sing! Why not? Lift up your voice like a bird! Your old uncle doesn't sleep out there in the dust. That's only the dream. He's here-- here--alive. All his age gone and youth glowing in his heart. If I could only tell you what lies before you--before us all! If people even _suspected_ what the next life really is, they wouldn't waste time here--I can tell you _that_. They'd do dreadful things to get away from this existence--make for the nearest pond or--[_Pausing abruptly._] Ah, here comes someone who'll know all about it! [_The_ DOCTOR _comes from_ WILLIAM'S _room._ PETER _greets him in a cordial but casual way, as though he had parted from him only an hour before._] Well, Andrew, I apologize. [_Bowing obsequiously._] You were right. I apologize. CATHERINE. How is he, Doctor? DR. MACPHERSON. William is better. Dropped off to sleep again. Can't quite understand him. PETER. I apologize. I said that if I could come back, I would; and here I am--apologizing. Andrew! Andrew! [_Trying to attract_ DR. MACPHERSON'S _attention._] I have a message, but I can't get it across. This is your chance. I want _you_ to take it. I don't wish Catherine to marry Frederik. DR. MACPHERSON. He's somewhat feverish yet. PETER. Can't _you_ understand one word? DR. MACPHERSON. It's a puzzling case.... PETER. What? Mine? DR. MACPHERSON. [_Getting a pad from his pocket--writing out a prescription with his fountain pen._] I'll leave this prescription at the druggist's-- PETER. I'm quite shut out.... They've closed the door and turned the key on me. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Suddenly noticing that_ CATHERINE _seems more cheerful._] What's happened? I left you in tears and here you are--all smiles. CATHERINE. Yes, I--I am happier--for some reason.... For the last few minutes I--I've had such a strange feeling. DR. MACPHERSON. That's odd: so have I! Been as restless as a hungry mouse. Something seemed to draw me down here--can't explain it. PETER. I'm beginning to be felt in this house. DR. MACPHERSON. Catherine, I have the firm conviction that, in a very short time, I shall hear from Peter. [_Sitting at the table._ PETER. I hope so. It's high time now. DR. MACPHERSON. What I want is some positive proof; some absolute test; some--er--[_Thinks._ CATHERINE _has seated herself at the table.--Unconsciously they both occupy the same seats as in the first act._ PETER. The trouble is with other people, not with us. You want us to give all sorts of proofs; and here we are just back for a little while--very poorly put together on the chance that you'll see us at all. DR. MACPHERSON. Poor old Peter--bless his heart! [_His elbow on the table as though he had been thinking over the matter._ CATHERINE _sits quietly listening._] If he kept that compact with me, and came back,--do you know what I'd ask him first? If our work goes on. PETER. Well, now, that's a regular sticker. It's bothered me considerably since I crossed over. CATHERINE. What do you mean, Doctor? DR. MACPHERSON. The question _every man wants the answer to_: what's to become of me--_me_--_my work_? Am I going to be a bone setter in the next life and he a tulip man?... I wonder. PETER. Andrew, I've asked everybody--Tom, Dick and Harry. One spirit told me that sometimes our work _does_ go on; but he was an awful liar--you knew we don't drop our earth habits at once. He said that a genius is simply a fellow who's been there before in some other world and knows his business. Now then: [_Confidentially preparing to open an argument-- sitting in his old seat at the table, as in the first act._] it stands to reason, Andrew, doesn't it? What chance has the beginner compared with a fellow who knew his business before he was born? DR. MACPHERSON. [_Unconsciously grasping the thought._] I believe it is possible to have more than one chance at our work. PETER. There ... you caught that.... Why can't you take my message to Catherine? DR. MACPHERSON. [_Rising to get his shawl--gruffly._] Thought over what I told you concerning this marriage? Not too late to back out. PETER. He's beginning to take the message. CATHERINE. Everything's arranged: I shall be married as Uncle Peter wished. I sha'n't change my mind. DR. MACPHERSON. H'm! [_Picks up his shawl._ PETER. [_Trying to detain the_ DOCTOR--_tugging at his shawl without seeming to pull it._] Don't give up! Don't give up! A girl can always change her mind--while there's life. Don't give up! [_The_ DOCTOR _turns, facing_ PETER, _looking directly at him as he puts his hand in his coat pocket._] You heard that, eh?... Didn't you? Yes? Did it cross over?... What?... It did?... You're looking me in the face, Andrew; can you see me? [_The_ DOCTOR _takes a pencil out of his pocket, writes a prescription, throws his shawl over his shoulder--turning his back towards_ PETER _and facing_ CATHERINE.] Tc! Tc! Tc! DR. MACPHERSON. Good-night. CATHERINE. Good-night. [CATHERINE _goes quietly to the fireplace, kneeling down, mends the fire, and remains there sitting on an ottoman._ PETER. [_Calling after the_ DOCTOR.] If I could only make some sign--to start you thinking; but I can't depend upon _you_, I see that.... [_Then changing--as though he had an idea._] Ah, yes! There _is_ another way. Now to work. [_With renewed activity, he taps in the direction of the office door, although he himself stands three feet away from it. The door opens promptly and_ JAMES _appears on the threshold--pen in hand--as though something had made him rise suddenly from his desk._ CATHERINE, _still seated, does not see_ JAMES, _who stands looking at her--remembering that she is to be married on the following day._ PETER _tempts_ JAMES.] Yes, she _is_ pretty, James ... young and lovely.... Look!... There are kisses tangled in her hair where it curls ... hundreds of them.... Are you going to let her go? Her lips are red with the red of youth. Every smile is an invocation to life. Who could resist her smiles? Can you, James? No, you will not let her go. And her hands, James.... Look! Hands made to clasp and cling to yours. Imagine her little feet trudging happily about _your_ home.... Look at her shoulders ... shaped for a resting-place for a little head.... You were right, James, we should ask nothing of our girls but to marry the men they love and be happy wives and happy mothers of happy children. You feel what I am saying.... You couldn't live without her, could you? No? Very well, then--[_Changing abruptly._] Now, it's your turn. JAMES _pauses a moment. There is silence. Then he comes forward a step and_ CATHERINE, _hearing him, turns and rises._ JAMES. [_Coldly--respectfully._] Miss Grimm ... CATHERINE. James ... JAMES. I felt that you were here and wished to speak to me. I--I don't know why ... PETER. Good for James. CATHERINE. [_Shaking hands with him._] I'm very glad to see you again, James. [_When_ PETER _sees that he has brought the two young people together, he stands in the background. The lovers are in the shadow, but_ PETER'S _figure is marked and clear._] Why did you go away? JAMES. Oh--er-- CATHERINE. And without saying a word. JAMES. Your uncle sent me away. I told him the truth again. CATHERINE. Oh ... JAMES. I am going in a few hours. CATHERINE. Where are you going? What do you intend to do? JAMES. [_Half-heartedly._] Father and I are going to try our luck together. We're going to start with a small fruit farm. It will give me a chance to experiment.... CATHERINE. It will seem very strange when I come back home.... Uncle gone ... and you, James. [_Her voice trembling._ JAMES. I hope you'll be happy, Catherine. CATHERINE. James, Uncle died smiling at me--thinking of me ... and just before he went, he gave me his mother's wedding ring and asked me to marry Frederik. I shall never forget how happy he was when I promised. That was all he wanted. His last smile was for me ... and there he sat--still smiling after he was gone ... the smile of a man leaving the world perfectly satisfied--at peace. It's like a hand on my heart--hurting it-- when I question anything he wanted. I couldn't meet him in the hereafter if I didn't do everything he wished; I couldn't say my prayers at night; I couldn't speak his name in them.... He trusted me; depended upon me; did everything for me; so I must do this for him.... I wanted you to know this, James, because ... JAMES. Why haven't you told Frederik the truth? CATHERINE. I have. JAMES. That you don't love him? [CATHERINE _doesn't answer, but_ JAMES _knows._] ... And he's willing to take you like that?--a little girl like you--in _that_ way.... God! He's rotten all the way through. He's even worse than I thought. Katie, I didn't mean to say a word of this to-day-- not a word; but a moment since--something made me change my mind--I don't know what!... [PETER _smiles._] I felt that I _must_ talk to you. You looked so young, so helpless, such a child. You've never had to think for yourself--you don't know what you're doing. You _couldn't_ live under it, Catherine. You're making the greatest mistake possible, if you marry where you don't love. Why should you carry out your uncle's plans? You're going to be wretched for life to please a dead man who doesn't know it; or, if he does know it, regrets it bitterly. PETER. I agree with you now, James. CATHERINE. You musn't say that, James. JAMES. But I will say it--I will speak my mind. I don't care how fond you were of your uncle or how much he did for you--it wasn't right to ask this of you. It wasn't fair. The whole thing is the mistake of a _very_ obstinate old man. CATHERINE. James! JAMES. I loved him, too; but he _was_ an obstinate old man. Sometimes I think it was the Dutch blood in his veins. PETER. A very frank, outspoken fellow. I like to hear him talk--now. JAMES. Do you know why I was sent away? Why I quarrelled with your uncle? I said that I loved you ... he asked me.... I didn't tell him because I had any hopes--I hadn't.... I haven't now.... [_Struck._] But in spite of what I'm saying ... I don't know what makes me think that I ... I could take you in my arms and you would let me ... but I do think it. CATHERINE. [_Retreats, backing towards_ PETER.] No!... Don't touch me, James--you mustn't! Don't!... Don't! PETER _pushes her into_ JAMES' _arms, without touching her. She exclaims_ "Oh, James!" _and fairly runs towards_ JAMES _as though violently propelled. In reality, she thinks that she is yielding to an impulse. As she reaches him, she exclaims_ "No," _and turns back, but_ JAMES, _with outstretched arms, catches her._ JAMES. You love me. [_Draws her to him._ CATHERINE. Don't make me say that, James. JAMES. I _will_ make you say it! You _do_ love me. CATHERINE. No matter if I do, that won't alter matters. JAMES. What? What? CATHERINE. No, no, don't say any more.... I won't hear it. [_She stands free of_ JAMES--_then turns and walks to the stairs._] Good-bye, Jim. JAMES. Do you mean it? Are you really going to sacrifice yourself because of--Am I really losing you?... Catherine! Catherine! CATHERINE. [_In tears--beseechingly._] Please don't.... Please don't.... FREDERIK _enters. Until the entrance of_ FREDERIK, PETER _has had hope in his face, but now he begins to feel apprehensive._ FREDERIK. [_Throwing his hat and coat on a chair._] I have some work to do--more of my uncle's unopened mail; then I'll join you, Hartman. We must--er--make haste. JAMES _looks at_ CATHERINE, _then at_ FREDERIK. CATHERINE _gives him an imploring glance--urging him not to speak._ FREDERIK _has gone to_ PETER'S _desk._ JAMES. I'll come back later. [_Goes towards the hall._ FREDERIK. Catherine, have you asked James to be present at the ceremony to-morrow? CATHERINE. No. FREDERIK. James, will you-- JAMES. I shall be leaving early in the morning. FREDERIK. Too bad! [_Exit_ JAMES. FREDERIK _lights the desk candles, takes the mail out of the drawer--opens two letters--tears them up after barely glancing at them--then sees_ CATHERINE _still standing at the foot of the stairs--her back to him. He lays the cigar on the desk, crosses, and, taking her in his arms, kisses her._ CATHERINE. [_With a revulsion of feeling._] No! No! No! [_She covers her face with her hands--trying to control herself._] Please!... Not now.... FREDERIK. Why not _now_? [_Suspiciously._] Has Hartman been talking to you? What has he been saying to you? [CATHERINE _starts slowly up the stairs._] Wait a moment, please.... [_As she retreats a step up the stairs, he follows her._] Do you really imagine you--you care for that fellow? CATHERINE. Don't--please. FREDERIK. I'm sorry to insist. Of course, I knew there was a sort of school-girl attachment on your part; ... that you'd known each other since childhood. I don't take it at all seriously. In three months, you'll forget him. I must insist, however, that you do _not_ speak to him again to-night. After to-morrow--after we are married--I'm quite sure that you will not forget you are my wife, Catherine--my wife. CATHERINE. I sha'n't forget. [_She escapes into her room._ FREDERIK _goes to his desk._ PETER. [_Confronting_ FREDERIK.] Now, sir, I have something to say to you, Frederik Grimm, my beloved nephew! I had to die to find you out; but I know you! [FREDERIK _is reading a letter._] You sit there opening a dead man's mail--with the heart of a stone--thinking: "He's gone! he's gone!-- so I'll break every promise!" But there is something you have forgotten-- something that always finds us out: the law of reward and punishment. Even now it is overtaking you. Your hour has struck. [FREDERIK _takes up another letter and begins to read it; then, as though disturbed by a passing thought, he puts it down. As though perplexed by the condition of his own mind, he ponders, his eyes resting unconsciously on_ PETER.] Your hour has struck. FREDERIK. [_To himself._] What in the world is the matter with me to-night? PETER. Read! FREDERIK. [_Has opened a long, narrow, blue envelope containing a letter on blue paper and a small photograph. He stares at the letter, aghast._] My God! Here's luck.... Here's luck! From that girl Annamarie to my uncle. Oh, if he had read it! PETER. [_Standing in front of_ FREDERIK _looks into space--as though reading the letter in the air._] "Dear Mr. Grimm: I have not written because I can't do anything to help William, and I am ashamed." FREDERIK. Wh! [_As though he had read the first part to himself, now reads aloud._] "Don't be too hard upon me.... I have gone hungry trying to save a few pennies for him, but I never could; and now I see that I cannot hope to have him back. William is far better off with you. I--" [_Hesitates._ PETER. [_Going back of the desk, standing behind_ FREDERIK'S _chair._] Go on.... FREDERIK. "I wish that I might see him once again. Perhaps I could come and go in the night." PETER. That's a terrible thing for a mother to write. FREDERIK. [_Who has been looking down at the letter--suddenly feeling_ PETER'S _presence._] Who's that? Who's in this room? [_Looks over his shoulder--then glances about._] I could have sworn somebody was looking over my shoulder ... or had come in at the door ... or ... [_But seeing no one--he continues._] "I met someone from home; ... if there is any truth in the rumour of Catherine's marriage--it mustn't be, Mr. Grimm--it mustn't be ... not to Frederik. For Frederik is my little boy's--" [FREDERIK _gives a furtive glance upstairs at the door of the child's room. Picks up the small picture which was in the envelope._] Her picture ... [_Turns it over--looks at the back--reads._] "For my boy, from Annamarie." [FREDERIK, _conscious-stricken for the time being, bows his head._ PETER. For the first time since I entered this house, you are yourself, Frederik Grimm. Once more a spark of manhood is alight in your soul. Courage! It's not too late to repent. Turn back, lad! Follow your impulse. Take the little boy in your arms. Go down on your knees and ask his mother's pardon. Turn over a fresh page, that I may leave this house in peace.... FREDERIK. [_Looks about uneasily, then glances towards the door leading into the hall._] Who is at the door? Curious ... I thought I heard someone at ... PETER. I am at the door--I, Peter Grimm! Annamarie is at the door--the little girl who is ashamed to come home; the old mother in the kitchen breaking her heart for some word. William is at the door--your own flesh and blood--nameless; Katie, sobbing her heart out--you can hear her; all-- we are all at the door--every soul in this house. We are all at the door of your conscience, Frederik.... Don't keep us waiting, my boy. It's very hard to kill the love I had for you. I long to love you again--to take you back to my heart--lies and all. [FREDERIK _rises--in deep thought._] Yes! Call her! Tell her the truth. Give her back her promise.... Give her back her home.... Close the door on a peaceful, happy, silent room and go. Think--think of that moment when you give her back her freedom! Think of her joy, her gratitude, her affection. It's worth living for, lad. Speak! Make haste and call her, Fritz. [FREDERIK _takes several steps--then turns back to the desk. He tears the letter in two, muttering to himself,_ "Damn the woman," _and sinks into his chair._] Frederik Grimm, stand up before me! [FREDERIK _starts to rise, but changes his mind._] Stand up! [FREDERIK _rises--not knowing why he has risen._ PETER _points an accusing finger at_ FREDERIK.] Liar to the dead! Cheat, thief, hypocrite! You sha'n't have my little girl. You only want her for a week, a day, an hour. I refuse. I have come back to take her from you and you cannot put me to rest.... I have come back.... You cannot drive me from your thoughts--I am there.... [_Tapping his forehead, without touching it._] I am looking over your shoulder ... in at the window ... under the door.... You are breathing me in the air.... I am looking at your heart. [_He brings his clenched fist down on the desk in answer to_ FREDERIK'S _gesture; but, despite the seeming violence of the blow, he makes no sound._] Hear me! You shall hear me! Hear me! [_Calling loudly._] Hear me! Hear me! Hear me! Will nobody hear me? Is there no one in this house to hear me? No one? Has my journey been in vain?... [_For the first time fully realizing the situation._] Oh, must we stand or fall by the mistakes we made here and the deed we did? Is there no second chance in this world? FREDERIK. [_With a sneer on his lips as though trying to banish his thoughts._] Psh! MARTA _enters with a tray, containing a pot of coffee and a plate of small cakes._ PETER, _who has watched her with appealing eyes, like a dog craving attention, glances from her to the desk and from the desk back to_ MARTA--_trying to tempt her to look at the torn letter._ FREDERIK, _deep in thought, does not notice her._ PETER _points to the desk as though to say, "Look!" After a pause, she picks up the picture and the letter-- holding them in one hand to clear a spot for the tray which she is about to set on the desk._ PETER. [_Speaking in a hushed voice._] Marta, see what you have in your hand ... that letter ... there ... read it.... Run to Catherine with it. Read it from the house-tops.... The letter ... Look! There you have the story of Annamarie.... It is the one way to know the truth in this house-- the only way.... There in your hand--the letter.... He will never speak.... The letter for Catherine. MARTA _sets down the picture and the letter; but something prompts her to look at them; however, before she can carry out her impulse,_ FREDERIK _starts up._ FREDERIK. My God! How you startled me! [MARTA _sets down the tray._] Oh! To be off and out of this old rat-trap. [_He wipes his forehead with his black-bordered handkerchief._] I mean--our loss comes home to us so keenly here where we are accustomed to see him. MARTA. A cup of coffee, sir? FREDERIK. No, no, no. MARTA. [_Pathetically._] I thought you wished to keep to your uncle's customs.... He always took it at this time. FREDERIK. [_Recovering._] Yes, yes, of course. MARTA. ... No word?... FREDERIK. [_Hesitates._] What do you mean? MARTA. No letter? FREDERIK. Letter?... [_Covering the letter with his hand._] From whom?... MARTA. From ... At a time like this, I thought ... I felt ... that Annamarie ... that there should be some message.... Every day I expect to hear ... FREDERIK. No. PETER _gestures to_ MARTA--_pointing to the picture and letter, now covered by_ FREDERIK'S _hand._ MARTA. [_Hesitating._] Are you certain? FREDERIK. Quite certain. [_She curtsies and leaves the room._ FREDERIK, _as though relieved to see her go, jumps to his feet, and, tearing the letter in smaller pieces, lights them in the candle, dropping the burning pieces on a tray. As the flame dies out,_ FREDERIK _brushes the blackened paper into the waste-basket._] There's an end to _that_! PETER _crouches near the basket--hovering over it, his hinds clasped helplessly. After a pause, he raises his hand, until it points to a bedroom above. An echo of the circus music is very faintly heard; not with the blaring of brasses, but with the sounds of elfin horns, conveying the impression of a phantom circus band. The door of_ WILLIAM'S _room opens, and he comes out as though to listen to the music. He wears a sleeping suit and is bare-footed. He has come down stairs before_ FREDERIK _sees him._ FREDERIK _quickly puts aside the photograph, laying it on the desk, covering it with his hand._ FREDERIK. [_Gruffly._] Why aren't you in bed? If you're ill, that's the proper place for you. WILLIAM. I came down to hear the circus music. FREDERIK. Circus music? WILLIAM. It woke me up. FREDERIK. The circus left town days ago. You must have been dreaming. WILLIAM. The band's playing now. Don't you hear it, sir? The procession's passing. [_He runs to the window and opens it. The music stops. A breeze sweeps through the room--bellies out the curtains and causes the lustres to jingle on the mantel. Surprised._] No. It's almost dark. There's no procession ... no shining horses.... [_Turning sadly away from the window._] I wonder what made me think the--I must have been dreaming. [_Rubbing his eyes._ FREDERIK. [_Goes to the window, closes it. The child looks at him and, in retreating from him, unconsciously backs towards_ PETER.] Are you feeling better? WILLIAM. Yes, sir, I feel better--and hungry. FREDERIK. Go back to bed. WILLIAM. Yes, sir. [FREDERIK _sits._ PETER. Where's your mother, William? WILLIAM. Do you know where Annamarie is? PETER. Ah! FREDERIK. Why do you ask me? What should I know of her? WILLIAM. Grandmother doesn't know; Miss Catherine doesn't know; nobody knows. FREDERIK. I don't know, either. [_Tears up the picture--turning so that_ WILLIAM _does not see what he is doing._ PETER, _who has been smiling at_ WILLIAM, _motions him to come nearer._ WILLIAM, _feeling_ PETER'S _presence, looks round the room._ WILLIAM. Mr. Frederik, where's _old_ Mr. Grimm? FREDERIK. Dead. WILLIAM. Are you sure he's dead? 'Cause--[_Puzzled--unable to explain himself, he hesitates._ FREDERIK. [_Annoyed._.] You'd better go to bed. WILLIAM. [_Pointing to a glass of water on a tray._] Can I have a drink of water, please? FREDERIK. Go to bed, sir, or you'll be punished. Water's not good for little boys with fever. WILLIAM. [_Going towards the stairs._] Wish I could find a cold brook and lie in it. [_Goes slowly up the stairs._ FREDERIK _would destroy the pieces of the picture; but_ PETER _faces him as though forbidding him to touch it, and, for the first time,_ FREDERIK _imagines he sees the apparition of his uncle._ FREDERIK. [_In a very low voice--almost inaudibly._] My God! I thought I saw ... [_Receding a step and yet another step as the vision of_ PETER _is still before him, he passes out of the room, wiping the beads of sweat from his forehead._ WILLIAM, _hearing the door close, comes down stairs and, running to the table at back, drinks a glass of water._ WILLIAM. Um! That's good! PETER. William! [WILLIAM _doesn't see_ PETER _yet, but he feels his influence._ WILLIAM. Wish it _had_ been the circus music. PETER. You shall hear it all again. [_Gestures towards the plate of cakes on the tray._] Come, William, here's something very nice. WILLIAM. [_Seeing the cakes._] Um! Cakes! [_He steals to the tray, looking over his shoulder in fear of being caught._ PETER. Don't be frightened. I'm here to protect you. Help yourself to the cakes. William, do you think you could deliver a message for me ... a very important message?... _The circus music is heard._ WILLIAM _sits at the tray and_ PETER _seats himself opposite as though he were the host doing the honours._ WILLIAM, _being unconsciously coaxed by_ PETER, _is prevailed upon to choose the biggest cake. He takes a bite, looking towards_ PETER. WILLIAM. [_To himself._] Ha!... Think I am dreaming. [_Rubbing his little stomach ecstatically._] Hope I won't wake up and find there wasn't any cake. PETER. Don't worry, you won't. [WILLIAM _has taken another piece of cake which he nibbles at--now holding a piece in each hand._] Pretty substantial dream, eh? There's a fine, fat raisin. [WILLIAM _eats the raisin, then looks into the sugar-bowl._] Don't hesitate, William. Sugar won't hurt you now. Nothing can hurt you any more. Fall to, William--help yourself. [WILLIAM _looks over his shoulder, fearing the return of_ FREDERIK.] Oh, he won't come back in a hurry. Ha! Frederik thought he saw me, William; well, he didn't. He had a bad conscience--hallucination. [WILLIAM _nibbles a lump of sugar._] Now, William, I have a message for you. Won't you try and take it for me, eh? [_But_ WILLIAM _eats another lump of sugar._] I see ... I can't expect to get any assistance from a boy while his little stomach's calling. [WILLIAM _empties the cream jug and helps himself to cakes. Presently the music dies out._] Now I'm going to tell you something. [_Impressively._] You're a very lucky boy, William; I congratulate you. Do you know why--of all this household--you are the only one to help me?... This is the secret: in a little time--it won't be long--you're going--[_As though he were imparting the most delightful information._]--to know better! Think of _that_! Isn't the news splendid? [_But_ WILLIAM _eats on._] Think of what most of us have to endure before _we_ know better! Why, William, you're going into the circus without paying for a ticket. You're laying down the burden before you climb the hill. And in your case, William, you are fortunate indeed; for there are some little soldiers in this world already handicapped when they begin the battle of life.... Their parents haven't fitted them for the struggle.... Like little moon moths,--they look in at the windows; they beat at the panes; they see the lights of happy firesides--the lights of home; but they never get in.... You are one of these wanderers, William.... And so, it is well for you that before your playing time is over--before your man's work begins,--you're going to know the great secret. Happy boy! No coarsening of your child's heart, until you stand before the world like Frederik; no sweat and toil such as dear old James is facing; no dimming of the eye and trembling of the hand such as the poor old Doctor shall know in time to come; no hot tears to blister your eyes, ... tears such as Katie is shedding now; but, in all your youth, your faith--your innocence,--you'll fall asleep and oh! the awakening, William!... "It is well with the _child_." [WILLIAM _lays down the cake and, clasping his hands, thinks._ PETER _answers his thoughts._] What? No--don't think of it! Nonsense! You _don't_ want to grow up to be a man. Grow up to fail? Or, still worse--to succeed--to be famous? To wear a heavy laurel wreath? A wreath to be held up by tired hands that ache for one hour's freedom. No, no, you're to escape all that, William; joy is on the way to meet you with sweets in its outstretched hands and laughter on its lips. [WILLIAM _takes the last swallow of a piece of cake, exclaims_ "Hm!" _in a satisfied way, brushes the crumbs off his lap, and sits back in his chair._] Have you had enough? Good! William, I want you to try to understand that you're to help me, will you? Will you tell Miss Catherine that-- WILLIAM. [_Without looking up, his hands folded in his lap._] Take me back with you, Mr. Grimm? PETER. Can you see me, William? WILLIAM. No, sir; but I know. PETER. Come here. [WILLIAM _doesn't move._] Here ... here ... [WILLIAM _advances to the center of the room and pauses hesitatingly._] Take my hand ... [WILLIAM _approaches in the direction of the voice._ PETER _takes_ WILLIAM'S _outstretched hand._] Have you got it? WILLIAM. No, sir.... PETER. [_Putting his hand on_ WILLIAM'S _head._] Now?... Do you feel it? WILLIAM. I feel something, yes, sir. [_Puts his hand on_ PETER'S _hand, which is still on his head._] But where's your hand? There's nothing there. PETER. But you hear me? WILLIAM. I can't really hear you.... It's a dream. [_Coaxingly._] Oh, Mr. Grimm, take me back with you. PETER. You're not quite ready to go with me yet, William--not until we can see each other face to face. WILLIAM. Why did you come back, Mr. Grimm? Wasn't it nice where you were? PETER. It was indeed. It was like--[_Whimsically._]--new toys. WILLIAM. [_To whom the idea appeals._] As nice as that! PETER. Nicer. But I had to come back with this message. I want you to help me to deliver it. [_Indicating the picture._ WILLIAM. Where's the bosom of Abraham, Mr. Grimm? PETER. Eh? WILLIAM. The minister says you're asleep there. PETER. Stuff and nonsense! I haven't been near the bosom of Abraham. WILLIAM. Too bad you died before you went to the circus, Mr. Grimm. But it must be great to be in a place where you can look down and see the circus for nothing. Do you remember the clown that sang: "Uncle Rat has gone to town?" PETER. Yes, indeed; but let us talk of something more important. Come here, William [_He starts towards the desk._]; would you like to see someone whom all little boys love--love more than anybody else in the whole world? [PETER _is standing at the desk with his finger on the torn pieces of the picture._ WILLIAM. Yes, the clown in the circus.... No ... it isn't a clown; ... it's our mother.... Yes, I want to see my mother, Annamarie. [_Unconsciously_ WILLIAM _comes to the desk and sees the torn picture-- picks up a piece and looks at it. Very simply._] Why ... there she is!... That's her face. PETER. Ah! You recognize her. Mother's face is there, William, but it's in little bits. We must put her together, William. We must show her to everybody in the house, so that everybody will say: "How in the world did she ever get here? To whom does this picture belong?" We must set them to thinking. WILLIAM. Yes. Let us show her to everybody. [_He sits and joins the pieces under the guidance of_ PETER.] Annamarie ... Annamarie ... PETER. You remember many things, William ... things that happened when you lived with Annamarie, don't you? WILLIAM. I was very little.... PETER. Still, you remember.... WILLIAM. [_Evasively._] I was afraid.... PETER. You loved her. WILLIAM. [_To picture._] Oh, yes ... yes, I loved you. PETER. Now, through that miracle of love, you can remember many things tucked away in your childish brain,--things laid away in your mind like toys upon a shelf. Come, pick them up and dust them off and bring them out again. It will come back. When you lived with Annamarie ... there was you ... and Annamarie ... and-- WILLIAM. --and the other one. PETER. Ah! We're getting nearer! Who _was_ the other one? WILLIAM. [_Gives a quick glance towards the door--then as though speaking to the picture._] I must put you together before _he_ comes back. [_He fits the other pieces together_--PETER _trying to guide him. Presently_ WILLIAM _hums as a child will when at play, singing the tune of "Uncle Rat."_] "Uncle Rat has gone to town." PETER _and_ WILLIAM. [_Singing together._] "Ha! H'm!" [_At this instant_, PETER _is indicating another piece of the picture._ WILLIAM. Her other foot. [_Then sings._] "Uncle Rat has gone to town, To buy his niece a wedding gown." [_Adjusting a piece of the picture._] Her hand. WILLIAM _and_ PETER. [_Singing._] "Ha! H'm!" WILLIAM. Her other hand. [_Sings_.] "What shall the wedding breakfast be? Hard boiled eggs and--" [_Speaking_.] Where's--[WILLIAM _pauses--looking for a piece of the picture_. PETER. [_Finishing the verse_.] "A cup of tea." [_With a gesture as though knocking on the door of the adjoining room to attract_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY'S _attention_. WILLIAM. [_Speaks_.] There's her hat. WILLIAM _and_ PETER. [_Singing_.] "Ha! H'm!" WILLIAM. [_Stops singing and claps his hands with boyish delight--staring at the picture_.] Annamarie! Annamarie! You're not in bits any more-- you're all put together. _By this time,_ PETER _is going up the stairs, and, as he stands in front of_ CATHERINE'S _door, it opens_. PETER _passes in and_ CATHERINE _comes out_. CATHERINE. [_Astonished_.] Why, William! What are you doing here? WILLIAM. Miss Catherine! Come down! Come down! I have something to show you. CATHERINE. [_Not coming down_.] No, dear--come upstairs; there's a good boy. You mustn't play down there. Come to bed. [_Passes into_ WILLIAM'S _room_. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Who has entered, and sees_ WILLIAM..] William! WILLIAM. Look--look! [_Pointing to the picture_.] See what old Mr. Grimm brought back with him. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Alarmed_.] What are you talking about, William? Old Mr. Grimm is dead. WILLIAM. No, he isn't; ... he's come back.... He has been in this room. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Absurd! WILLIAM. I was talking to him. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. You're feverish again. I must get the Doctor. [_Comes down to_ WILLIAM.] And I thought you were feeling better! [_Seeing_ CATHERINE, _who appears on the balcony as though wondering why_ WILLIAM _doesn't come to bed_.] The child's mind is wandering. He imagines all sorts of things. I'll call the Doctor-- PETER. [_Who has re-entered._] You needn't--he's coming now. Come in, Andrew. I'm giving you one more chance. _The_ DOCTOR _enters, wearing his skull-cap, and carrying his pipe in his hand. It is evident that he has come over in a hurry._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Surprised._] I was just going for you. How fortunate that you came. DR. MACPHERSON. I thought I'd have another peep at William. _By this time_, CATHERINE _has seated herself on a chair, and takes_ WILLIAM _on her lap. He puts his arms round her neck._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. He's quite delirious. DR. MACPHERSON. Doesn't look it. [_Putting his hand on_ WILLIAM'S _cheek and forehead._] Very slight fever. What makes you think he was delirious? [_Taking_ WILLIAM'S _pulse._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Interrupting._] He said that old Mr. Grimm was in this room--that he was talking to him. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Interested._] Yes? Really? Well, possibly he is. Nothing remarkable in _that_, is there? PETER. Well, at last! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. What? Oh, of course, you believe in-- DR. MACPHERSON. In fact, I had a compact with him to return if-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. A compact? Of all the preposterous-- DR. MACPHERSON. Not at all. Dozens of cases on record--as I can show you-- where these compacts have actually been kept. [_Suddenly struck--looking at_ WILLIAM.] I wonder if that boy's a sensitive. [_Hand on his chin._] I wonder ... CATHERINE. [_Echoing the_ DOCTOR'S _words._] A sensitive? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. What's that? DR. MACPHERSON. It's difficult to explain. I mean a human organism so constituted that it can be _informed_ or _controlled_ by those who--er-- have--[_With a gesture._] crossed over. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I think I'll put the boy to bed, Doctor. DR. MACPHERSON. Just a moment, Mistress Batholommey. I'm here to find out what ails William. William, what makes you think that Mr. Grimm is in this room? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I wouldn't have the child encouraged in such ideas, Catherine. I-- DR. MACPHERSON. Sh! Please, please. [_Taking the boy on his knee._] What makes you think Peter Grimm is in this room? WILLIAM. [_Hesitating._] ... The things he said to me. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Said to you? CATHERINE. [_Wonderingly._] William, ... are you sure he ... DR. MACPHERSON. Said to you, eh? [WILLIAM _nods assent._] _Old_ Mr. Grimm? [WILLIAM _nods._] Sure of that, William? WILLIAM. Oh. yes, sir. DR. MACPHERSON. Think before you speak, my boy; what did Mr. Grimm say to you? WILLIAM. Lots of things ... MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Really! DR. MACPHERSON. [_Raises his hand for silence._] How did he look, William? WILLIAM. I didn't see him. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Ha! DR. MACPHERSON. You must have seen something. WILLIAM. I thought once I saw his hat on the peg where it used to hang. [_Looks at the peg._] No, it's gone. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Remonstrating._] Doctor! DR. MACPHERSON. [_Thinking._] I wonder if he really did-- CATHERINE. Do you think he could have seen Uncle Peter? PETER. [_Pointing to the desk._] William! WILLIAM. Look! ... [_Points to the picture._] That's what I wanted to show you when you were upstairs. CATHERINE. [_Seeing the picture._] It's his mother--Annamarie. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. The Lord save us--his mother! I didn't know you'd heard from Annamarie. CATHERINE. We haven't. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Then how'd that picture get into the house? PETER. Ah! I knew she'd begin! Now that she's wound up, we shall get at the truth. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. It's a new picture. She's much changed. How ever did it find its way here? CATHERINE. I never saw it before. It's very strange.... We've all been waiting for news of her. Even her mother doesn't know where she is, or-- could Marta have received this since I-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I'll ask her. [_Exit into dining-room._ CATHERINE. If not, who had the picture?... And why weren't we _all_ told?... Who tore it up? Did you, William? [WILLIAM _shakes his head, meaning "No."_] Who has been at the desk? No one save Frederik ... Frederik ... and surely he--[_She pauses--perplexed._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Re-entering._] No, Marta hasn't heard a word; and, only a few minutes ago, she asked Frederik if some message hadn't come, but he said "No, nothing." I didn't tell her of the picture. CATHERINE. [_Looking at the picture._] I wonder if there was any message with it. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I remember the day that picture came ... the day your uncle died.... It was in a long blue envelope--the size of the picture.... I took it from the postman myself because every one was distracted and rushing about. It dropped to the floor and as I picked it up I thought I knew the writing; but I couldn't remember whose it was.... It was directed to your uncle.... [_Looking from the desk to the waste-basket._] There's the envelope [_Holding up a scrap of blue envelope._] and paper; ... some one has burned it. CATHERINE. Annamarie wrote to my uncle ... DR. MACPHERSON. [_Not understanding._] But what could Peter have to say to _me_ concerning Annamarie? [_Making a resolution--rising._] We're going to find out. You may draw the curtains, Catherine, if you please. [CATHERINE _draws the curtains. The_ DOCTOR _turns the lights down and closes the door. A pause._] Peter Grimm ... PETER. Yes, Andrew?... DR. MACPHERSON. [_Not hearing._] If you have come back ... if you are in the room ... and the boy speaks truly--give me some sign ... some indication ... PETER. I can't give you a sign, Andrew.... I have spoken to the boy ... the boy ... DR. MACPHERSON. If you cannot make your presence known to me--I know there are great difficulties--will you try and send your message by William? I presume you have one-- PETER. Yes, that's right. DR. MACPHERSON. --or else you wouldn't have come back. PETER. That's just the point I wanted to make, Andrew. You understand perfectly. DR. MACPHERSON. [_As before._] I am waiting.... We are all waiting. [_Noticing that a door is a trifle ajar._] The door's open again. [MRS. BATHOLOMMEY, _without making a sound, closes it and sits as before._ PETER. Sh! Listen! [_A pause._ WILLIAM. [_In a peculiar manner--as though in a half dream--but not shutting his eyes. As though controlled by_ PETER.] There was Annamarie and me and the other. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Very low, as though afraid to interrupt_ WILLIAM'S _train of thought._] What other? WILLIAM. The man ... that came. DR. MACPHERSON. What man? WILLIAM. The man that made Annamarie cry. CATHERINE. Who was he? WILLIAM. I don't know ... PETER. Yes, you do. Don't tell lies, William. DR. MACPHERSON. What man made Annamarie cry? WILLIAM. I can't remember.... PETER. Yes, you can.... You're afraid.... CATHERINE. [_In a low voice._] So you do remember the time when you lived with Annamarie; ... you always told me that you didn't ... [_To_ DR. MACPHERSON.] I must know more of this--[_Pauses abruptly._] Think, William, who came to the house? PETER. That's what _I_ asked you, William. WILLIAM. That's what _he_ asked ... DR. MACPHERSON. Who? WILLIAM. Mr. Grimm. DR. MACPHERSON. When, William? WILLIAM. Just now ... CATHERINE _and_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Together._] Just now! DR. MACPHERSON. H'm.... You both ask the same question, eh? The man that came to see-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Perplexed._] It can't be possible that the child knows what he's talking about. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Ignoring her._] What did you tell Mr. Grimm when he asked you? PETER. You'd better make haste, William. Frederik is coming back. WILLIAM. [_Looking uneasily over his shoulder._] I'm afraid. CATHERINE. Why does he always look towards that door? You're not afraid now, William? WILLIAM. [_Looking towards the door._] N-no--but.... Please, please don't let Mr. Frederik come back. 'Cause then I'll be afraid again. DR. MACPHERSON. Ah! PETER. William! William! WILLIAM. [_Rising quickly._] Yes, Mr. Grimm? PETER. You must say that I am very unhappy. WILLIAM. He says he is very unhappy. DR. MACPHERSON. Why is he unhappy?... Ask him. WILLIAM. Why are you unhappy, Mr. Grimm? PETER. I am thinking of Catherine's future.... WILLIAM. [_Not understanding the last word--puzzled._] Eh? PETER. To-morrow ... WILLIAM. [_After a slight pause._] To-morrow ... PETER. Catherine's-- WILLIAM. [_Looks at_ CATHERINE--_hesitating._] Your--[_Stops._ CATHERINE _gives the_ DOCTOR _a quick glance--she seems to divine the message._ DR. MACPHERSON. [_Prompting._] Her-- CATHERINE. What, William? What of to-morrow? PETER. She must not marry Frederik. WILLIAM. I mustn't say _that_. DR. MACPHERSON. What? WILLIAM. What he wanted me to say. [_Points towards_ PETER. _All instinctively look towards the spot to which_ WILLIAM _points, but they see no one._ PETER. [_Speaking slowly to the boy._] Catherine--must--not--marry Frederik Grimm. DR. MACPHERSON. Speak, William. No one will hurt you. WILLIAM. Oh, yes, _he_ will.... [_Looking timidly towards the door_ FREDERIK _passed through._] I don't want to tell his name--'cause ... 'cause ... DR. MACPHERSON. Why don't you tell the name, William? PETER. Make haste, William, make haste. WILLIAM. [_Trembling._] I'm afraid ... I'm afraid ... he will make Annamarie cry; ... he makes me cry ... CATHERINE. [_With suppressed excitement--half to herself._] Why are you afraid of him? Was Frederik the man that came to see Annamarie? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Catherine! CATHERINE. [_On her knees before_ WILLIAM.] Was he? Was it Frederik Grimm? Tell me, William. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Surely you don't believe ... CATHERINE. [_In a low voice._] I've thought of a great many things to-day ... little things ... little things I'd never noticed before.... I'm putting them together just as he put that picture together.... I must know the truth. PETER. William, make haste.... Frederik is listening at the door. WILLIAM. [_Frightened._] I won't say any more. He's there ... at the door ... [_He looks over his shoulder and_ CATHERINE _goes towards the door._ DR. MACPHERSON. William, tell me. PETER. William! CATHERINE _opens the door suddenly._ FREDERIK _is standing, listening. He is taken unawares and for a few seconds he does not move--then he recovers._ WILLIAM. Please don't let him scold me. I'm afraid of him. [_Going towards the stairs--looking at_ FREDERIK.] I was afraid of him when I lived with Annamarie and he came to see us and made her cry. DR. MACPHERSON. Are you sure you remember that? Weren't you too small? WILLIAM. No, I do remember.... I always did remember; only for a little while I--I forgot.... I must go to bed. He told me to. [_Goes upstairs._ PETER. [_Calling after_ WILLIAM.] You're a good boy, William. [WILLIAM _goes to his room._ CATHERINE. [_After a slight pause--simply._] Frederik, you've heard from Annamarie.... [_Gestures towards the desk._ FREDERIK _sees the photograph and is silent._] You've had a letter from her. You tried to destroy it. Why did you tell Marta that you'd had no message--no news? You went to see her, too. Why did you tell me that you'd never seen her since she went away? Why did you lie to me? Why do you hate that child? FREDERIK. Are you going to believe what that boy-- CATHERINE. I'm going to find out. I'm going to find out where she is, before I marry you. That child may be right or wrong; but I'm going to know what his mother was to you. I want the truth. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Who has been in thought--now looking up._] We've heard the truth. We had that message from Peter Grimm himself. CATHERINE. Yes, it is true. I believe Uncle Peter Grimm was in this room to-night. FREDERIK. [_Not surprised--glancing towards the spot where_ PETER _stood when he thought he saw him._] Oh! You, too? Did you see him, too? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Incredulously._] Impossible! CATHERINE. I don't care what anyone else may think--people have the right to think for themselves; but I believe he has been here--he _is_ here. Uncle Peter, if you can hear me now, give me back my promise--or--or I'll take it back! PETER. [_Gently--smilingly--relieved._] I did give it back to you, my dear; but what a time I have had getting it across! CURTAIN. ACT III. _The third act takes place at twenty minutes to twelve on the same night._ _The fire is out. The table on which_ PETER _took his coffee in the first act is now being used by the_ DOCTOR _for_ WILLIAM'S _medicines, two bottles, two glasses, two teaspoons, a clinical thermometer, &c._ WILLIAM, _who has been questioned by the_ DOCTOR, _is now asleep upstairs._ PETER'S _hat hangs on the peg in the shadow. Although the hour is late, no one has thought of going to bed._ FREDERIK _is waiting at the hotel for the lawyer whom_ HICKS _was to send to arrange for the sale of_ PETER GRIMM'S _nurseries, but he has not arrived. The_ DOCTOR, _full of his theories, is seated before the fire, writing the account of_ PETER GRIMM'S _return, for the American Branch of the "London Society for Psychical Research." It is now a fine, clear night. The clouds are almost silvery and a hint of the moon is showing._ DR. MACPHERSON. [_Reading what he has written._] "To be forwarded to the 'London Society for Psychical Research': Dr. Hyslop: Dear Sir: This evening at the residence of Peter--" [_Pauses and inserts "the late" and continues to read after inserting the words._] "--the late Peter Grimm-- the well-known horticulturist of Grimm Manor, New York, certain phenomena were observed which would clearly indicate the return of Peter Grimm, ten days after his decease. While he was invisible to all, three people were present besides myself--one of these, a child of eight, who received the message. No spelling out by signals nor automatic writing was employed, but word of mouth." [_A rap sounds._] Who will that be at this hour?... [_Looks at the clock._] Nearly midnight. [_Opening the door._] Yes? A VOICE. [_Outside._] Telegram for Frederik Grimm. DR. MACPHERSON. Not in. I'll sign. [_He signs and, receiving the telegram, sets it against a candle-stick on the desk and resumes his seat. Reads:_] "I made a compact with Peter Grimm, while he was in the flesh, that whichever went first was to return and give the other some sign; and I propose to give positive proof--" [_He hesitates--thinks--then repeats._] "positive proof that he kept this compact and that I assisted in the carrying out of his instructions." MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Enters--evidently highly wrought up by the events of the evening._] Who was that? Who knocked? DR. MACPHERSON. Telegram. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. I thought perhaps Frederik had come back. Don't you consider William much better? DR. MACPHERSON. Mm ... MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Dear, dear! The scene that took place to-night has completely upset me. [_The_ DOCTOR _takes up his pen and reads to himself._] Well, Doctor: [_She pushes forward a chair and sits at the other side of the table--facing him._] the breaking off of the engagement is rather sudden, isn't it? We've been talking it over in the front parlour, Mr. Batholommey and I. James has finished his work and has just joined us. I suggest sending out a card--a neat card--saying that, owing to the bereavement in the family, the wedding has been indefinitely postponed. Of course, it isn't exactly true. DR. MACPHERSON. Won't take place at all. [_Goes on reading._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Evidently not; but if the whole matter looks very strange to me--how is it going to look to other people; especially when we haven't any--any rational explanation--as yet? We must get out of it in some fashion. DR. MACPHERSON. Whose business is it? MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Nobody's, of course. But Catherine's position is certainly unusual; and the strangest part of it all is--she doesn't seem to feel her situation. She's sitting alone in the library, seemingly placid and happy. What I really wish to consult you about is this: shouldn't the card we're going to send out have a narrow black border? [_The_ DOCTOR _is now writing._] Doctor, you don't appear to be interested. You might at least answer my question. DR. MACPHERSON. What chance have I had to answer? You've done all the talking. MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Rising--annoyed._] Oh, of course, all these little matters sound trivial to you; but men like you couldn't look after the workings of the _next_ world if other people didn't attend to _this_. Some one has to do it. DR. MACPHERSON. I fully appreciate the fact, Mistress Batholommey, that other people are making it possible for me to be myself. I'll admit that; and now if I might have a few moments in peace to attend to something really important-- _The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _has entered with his hat in his hand._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Doctor, I've been thinking things over. I ran in for a moment to suggest that we suspend judgment until the information William has volunteered can be verified. I can scarcely believe that-- DR. MACPHERSON. Ump! [_Rises and goes to the telephone on the desk._] Four-red. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. I regret that Frederik left the house without offering some explanation. DR. MACPHERSON. [_At the 'phone._] Marget, I'm at Peter's. I mean--I'm at the Grimms'. Send me my bag. I'll stay the night with William. Bye. [_Seats himself at the table._ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Tell Frederik that, if he cares to consult me, I shall be at home in my study. Good-night, Doctor. Good-night, Rose. DR. MACPHERSON. Hold on, Mr. Batholommey! [_The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _turns._] I'm writing an account of all that's happened here to-night-- REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Dubiously._] Indeed! DR. MACPHERSON. I shall verify every word of the evidence by William's mother for whom I am searching. [_The_ REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY _smiles faintly behind his hand._] Then I shall send in my report, and not until then. What I wish to ask is this: would you have any objection to the name of Mrs. Batholommey being used as a witness? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Looks perplexed._] Well,--er--a-- MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Oh, no, you don't! You may flout our beliefs; but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with "the wife of a clergyman who was present!" It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You cannot prop up your wild-eyed-- REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Rose, my dear! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Sweeping on._]--theories against the good black of a minister's coat. _I_ think myself that you have _probably_ stumbled on the truth about William's mother. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. _Can_ it be true? Oh, dreadful! Dreadful! MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. But that child knew it all along. He's eight years old and he was with her until five--and five's the age of memory. Every incident of his mother's life has lingered in his little mind. Supposing you do find her and learn that it's all true: what do you prove? Simply that _William remembered_, and that's all there is to it. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. Let us hope that there's not a word of truth in it. Don't you think, Doctor--mind, I'm not opposing your ideas as a clergyman,--I'm just echoing what _everybody else_ thinks--don't you believe these spiritualistic ideas, leading _away_ from the Heaven _we_ were taught to believe in, tend towards irresponsibility--er-- eccentricity--and--often--er--insanity? Is it healthy--that's the idea--is it healthy? DR. MACPHERSON. Well, Batholommey, religion has frequently led to the stake, and I never heard of the Spanish Inquisition being called _healthy_ for anybody taking part in it. Still, religion flourishes. But your old-fashioned, unscientific, gilt, ginger-bread Heaven blew up ten years ago--went out. My Heaven's just coming in. It's new. Dr. Funk and a lot of the clergymen are in already. You'd better get used to it, Batholommey, and get in line and into the procession. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. You'll have to convince me first, Doctor--and that no man can do. I made up my mind at twenty-one, and my Heaven is just where it was then. DOCTOR MACPHERSON. So I see. It hasn't improved a particle. REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Tolerantly._] Well, well. Good-night. [MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _follows him in the hall._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. Good-night, Henry; I'll be home to-morrow. You'll be glad to see me, dear, won't you? REV. MR. BATHOLOMMEY. My church mouse! [_He pats her cheek, kisses her good-night and goes._ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY. [_Who has gone to the door of her room--giving_ DR. MACPHERSON _a parting shot._] Write as much as you like, Doctor; words are but air. We didn't see Peter Grimm and you know and I know and everybody knows that _seeing_ is believing. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Looking up._] Damn everybody! It's everybody's ignorance that has set the world back a thousand years. Where was I before you--Oh, yes. [_Reads as_ MRS. BATHOLOMMEY _leaves the room._] "I assisted in the carrying out of his instructions." [FREDERIK GRIMM _enters._ FREDERIK. Anybody in this house come to their senses yet? DR. MACPHERSON. I think so, my boy. I think several in this house have come to their senses. Catherine has, for one. I'm very glad to see you back, Frederik. I have a few questions to put to you. FREDERIK. Why don't you have more light? It's half dark in this room. [_He picks up the lamp from the_ DOCTOR'S _table and holds it so that he can look searchingly in the direction of the desk to see if_ PETER'S _apparition is still there. His eye is suddenly riveted on the telegram resting against the candlestick on the desk._] Is that telegram for me? DR. MACPHERSON. Yes. FREDERIK. Oh.... It may explain perhaps why I've been kept waiting at the hotel.... [_Tries to go to the desk but cannot muster up courage._] I had an appointment to meet a man who wanted to buy the gardens. I may as well tell you, I'm thinking of selling out root and branch. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Amazed._] Selling out? Peter Grimm's gardens? So this is the end of Peter's great work? FREDERIK. You'll think it strange, Doctor; but I--I simply can't make up my mind to go near that old desk of my uncle's.... I have a perfect terror of the thing! Would you mind handing me that telegram? [_The_ DOCTOR _looks at him with scarcely veiled contempt, and hands him the telegram. After a glance at the contents,_ FREDERIK _gives vent to a long-drawn breath._] Billy Hicks--the man I was to sell to--is dead.... [_Tosses the telegram across the table towards_ DR. MACPHERSON, _who does not take it. It lies on the table._] I knew it this afternoon! I knew he would die ... but I wouldn't let myself believe it. Someone told it to me ... whispered it to me.... Doctor, as sure as you live--somebody else is doing my thinking for me in this house. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Studying_ FREDERIK.] What makes you say that? FREDERIK. To-night--in this room, I thought I saw my uncle ... [_Pointing towards the desk._] there. DR. MACPHERSON. Eh?... FREDERIK. And just before I--I saw him--I--I had the ... the strangest impulse to go to the foot of the stairs and call Kitty--give her the house--and run--run--get out of it. DR. MACPHERSON. Oh, a good impulse, I see! Very unusual, I should say. FREDERIK. I thought he gave me a terrible look--a terrible look. DR. MACPHERSON. Your uncle? FREDERIK. Yes. My God! I won't forget that look! And as I started out of the room--he blotted out.... I mean--I thought I saw him blot out; ... then I left the photograph on the desk and-- DR. MACPHERSON. That's how William came by it. [_Jots down a couple of notes._] Did you ever have this impulse before--to give up Catherine--to let her have the cottage? FREDERIK. Not much, I hadn't. Certainly not. I told you someone else was thinking for _me_. I don't want to give her up. It's folly! I've always been fond of her. But if she has turned against me, I'm not going to sit here and cry about it. I shall be up and off. [_Rising._] But I'll tell you one thing: from this time, I propose to think for myself. I've taken a room at the hotel and a few things for the night. I've done with this house. I'd like to sell it along with the gardens, and let a stranger raze it to the ground; but--[_Thinks as he looks towards the desk._] when I walk out of here to-night--it's hers--she can have it. ... I wouldn't sleep here.... I give her the home because ... DR. MACPHERSON. Because you don't believe anything; but you want to be on the safe side in case he--[_Gesturing to desk._] was there. FREDERIK. [_Puzzled--awed--his voice almost dropping to a whisper._] How do you account for it, Doctor? DR. MACPHERSON. It might have been an hallucination or perhaps you did see him, though it could have been inflammation of conscience, Frederik: when did you last see Annamarie? FREDERIK. [_Angrily._] Haven't I told you already that I refuse to answer any questions as to my-- DR. MACPHERSON. I think it only fair to tell you that it won't make a particle of difference whether you answer me or not. I have someone on the track now--working from an old address; I've called in the detectives and I'll find her, you may be sure of that. As long as I'm going to know it, I may as well hear your side of it, too. When did you last see Annamarie? FREDERIK. [_Sits--answers dully, mechanically, after a pause._] About three years ago. DR. MACPHERSON. Never since? FREDERIK. No. DR. MACPHERSON. What occurred the last time you saw her? FREDERIK. [_Quietly, as before._] What _always_ occurs when a young man realizes that he has his life before him, must be respected--looked up to, settle down, think of his future and forget a silly girl? DR. MACPHERSON. A scene took place, eh? Was William present? FREDERIK. Yes. She held him in her arms. DR. MACPHERSON. And then? FREDERIK. I left the house. DR. MACPHERSON. Then it's all true. [FREDERIK _is silent._] What are you going to do for William? FREDERIK. Nothing. I'm a rich man now--and if I recognize him--he'll be at me till the day he dies. His mother's gone to the dogs and under her influence, the boy-- DR. MACPHERSON. Be silent, you damned young scoundrel. Oh! What an act of charity if the good Lord took William, and I say it with all my heart. Out of all you have--not a crumb for-- FREDERIK. I want you to know I've sweat for that money, and I'm going to keep it! DR. MACPHERSON. _You've_ sweat for-- FREDERIK. [_Showing feeling._]--Yes! How do you think I got the money? I went to jail for it--jail, jail. Every day I've been in this house has been spent in prison. I've been doing time. Do you think it didn't get on my nerves? I've gone to bed at nine o'clock and thought of what I was missing in New York. I've got up at cock-crow to be in time for grace at the breakfast table. I took charge of a class in Sabbath-school, and I handed out the infernal cornucopias at the church Christmas tree, while he played Santa Claus. What more can a fellow do to earn his money? Don't you call that sweating? No, sir; I've danced like a damned hand-organ monkey for the pennies he left me, and I had to grin and touch my hat and make believe I liked it. Now I'm going to spend every cent for my own personal pleasure. DR. MACPHERSON. Will rich men never learn wisdom! FREDERIK. [_Rising_.] No, they won't! But in every fourth generation there comes along a _wise_ fellow--a spender who knows how to distribute the money others have hoarded: I'm the spender. DR. MACPHERSON. Shame upon you and your like! Your breed should be exterminated. FREDERIK. [_Taking a little packet of letters from the desk_.] Oh, no, we're quite as necessary as you are. And now--I shall answer no more questions. I'm done. Good-night, Doctor. DR. MACPHERSON. Good-night and good-bye. [_With a look of disgust, he has gone to the table, held a medicine bottle to the light to look at the label and poured a spoonful into a wine-glass filled with water. As_ FREDERIK _leaves the house, the_ DOCTOR _taps on a door and calls_.] Catherine! [CATHERINE _enters, and shows by the glance she directs at the front door that she knows_ FREDERIK _has been in the room and has just left the house_.] Burn up your wedding dress. We've made no mistake. I can tell you _that_! [_Goes up the stairs to_ WILLIAM'S _room, taking the lamp with him_. JAMES _has entered, and, taking_ CATHERINE'S _hand, holds it for a moment_. JAMES. Good-night, Catherine. [_She turns and lays her hand on his shoulder_. CATHERINE. I wonder, James, if _he_ can see us now. JAMES. That's the big mystery!... Who can tell? But any man who works with flowers and things that grow--knows there is no such thing as death-- there's nothing but life--life and always life. I'll be back in the morning.... Won't you ... see me to the door? CATHERINE. Yes ... yes.... [_They go up together,_ CATHERINE _carrying a candle into the dark vestibule. The moment they disappear, a lamp standing on the piano goes out as though the draught from the door or an unseen hand had extinguished it. It is now quite dark outside, and the moon is hidden for a moment. At the same time, a light, seemingly coming from nowhere, reveals_ PETER GRIMM _standing in the room at the door--as though he had been there when the young people passed out. He is smiling and happy. The moon is not seen, but the light of it (as though it had come out from behind a cloud) now reveals the old windmill. From outside the door the voices of_ JAMES _and_ CATHERINE _are heard as they both say:_] Good-night. JAMES. Catherine, ... I won't go without it.... PETER. [_Knowing that_ JAMES, _is demanding a kiss._] Aha! [_Rubs his hands in satisfaction--then listens--and after a second pause exclaims, with an upraised finger, as though he were hearing the kiss._] Ah! Now I can go.... [_He walks to the peg on which his hat hangs, and takes it down. His work is done._ CATHERINE _re-enters, darting into the hall in girlish confusion._ JAMES' HAPPY VOICE. [_Outside._] Good-night! CATHERINE. [_Calling to him through the crack in the door._] Good-night! [_She closes the door, turns the key and draws the heavy bolt--then leans against the door, candle-stick in hand--the wind has blown out the candle._] Oh, I'm so happy! I'm so happy! PETER. Then good-night to you, my darling: love cannot say good-bye. [_She goes to_ PETER'S _chair, and, sitting, thinks it all over--her hands clasped in her lap--her face radiant with happiness._] Here in your childhood's home I leave you. Here in the years to come, the way lies clear before you. [_His arm upraised._] "_Lust in Rust_"--Pleasure and Peace go with you. [CATHERINE _looks towards the door--remembering_ JAMES' _kiss--half smiling._] [_Humorously._] Y--es; I saw you. I heard ... I know.... Here on some sunny, blossoming day when, as a wife, you look out upon my gardens--every flower and tree and shrub shall bloom enchanted to your eyes.... All that happens--happens again. And if, at first, a little knock of poverty taps at the door, and James finds the road hard and steep--what is money?--a thing,--a good thing to have,--but still a thing ... and happiness will come without it. And when, as a mother, you shall see my plantings with new eyes, my Catherine,--when you explain each leaf and bud to your little people--you will remember the time when _we_ walked together through the leafy lanes and I taught you--even as you teach them--you little thing!... So, I shall linger in your heart. And some day, should your children wander far away and my gardens blossom for a stranger who may take my name from off the gates,--what _is_ my name? Already it grows faint to my ears. [_Lightly._] Yes, yes, yes, let others take my work.... Why should _we_ care? All that happens, happens again. [_She rests her elbow on the chair, half hides her face in her hand._] And never forget this: I shall be waiting for you--I shall know all your life. I shall adore your children and be their grandfather just as though I were here; I shall find it hard not to laugh at them when they are bad, and I shall worship them when they are good--and I don't want them too good.... Frederik was good.... I shall be everywhere about you ... in the stockings at Christmas, in a big, busy, teeming world of shadows just outside your threshold, or whispering in the still noises of the night.... And oh! as the years pass, [_Standing over her chair._] you cannot imagine what pride I shall take in your comfortable middle life--the very _best_ age, I think--when you two shall look out on your possessions arm in arm--and take your well-earned comfort and ease. How I shall love to see you look fondly at each other as you say: "Be happy, Jim--you've worked hard for this;" or James says: "Take your comfort, little mother, let them all wait upon _you--you_ waited upon _them_. Lean back in your carriage--you've earned it!" And towards the end--[_Sitting on a chair by her side and looking into her face._] after all the luxuries and vanities and possessions cease to be so important--people return to very simple things, dear. The evening of life comes bearing its own lamp. Then, perhaps, as a little old grandmother, a little old child whose bed-time is drawing near, I shall see you happy to sit out in the sunlight of another day; asking nothing more of life than the few hours to be spent with those you love,... telling your grandchildren, at your knees, how much brighter the flowers blossomed when _you_ were young. Ha! Ha! Ha! All that happens, happens again.... And when, one glad day, glorified, radiant, young once more, the mother and I shall take you in our arms,--oh! what a reunion! [_Inspired._] The flight of love--to love.... And now ... [_He bends over her and caresses her hand._] good-night. [CATHERINE _rises and, going to the desk, buries her face in the bunch of flowers placed there in memory of_ PETER. CATHERINE. Dear Uncle Peter.... MARTA _enters--pausing to hear if all is quiet in_ WILLIAM'S _room_. CATHERINE, _lifting her face, sees_ MARTA _and rapturously hugs her, to_ MARTA'S _amazement--then goes up the stairs_. PETER. [_Whose eyes never leave_ CATHERINE.] "_Lust in Rust_!" Pleasure and Peace! Amen! [CATHERINE _passes into her room, the music dying away as her door closes_. MARTA, _still wondering, goes to the clock and winds it_.] Poor Marta! Every time she thinks of me, she winds my clock. We're not quite forgotten. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Re-appears, carrying_ WILLIAM, _now wrapped up in an old-fashioned Dutch patchwork quilt. The_ DOCTOR _has a lamp in his free hand_.] So you want to go downstairs, eh? Very good! How do you feel, laddie? WILLIAM. New all over. DR. MACPHERSON. [_Placing the lamp on the little table right, and laying_ WILLIAM _on the couch_.] Now I'll get you the glass of cold water. [_Goes into the dining-room, leaving the door open_. PETER. [_Calling after the_ DOCTOR.] Good-night, Andrew. I'm afraid the world will have to wait a little longer for the _big_ guesser. Drop in often. I shall be glad to see you here. WILLIAM. [_Quickly rising on the couch, looks towards the peg on which_ PETER GRIMM'S _hat hung. Calling_.] Mr. Grimm! Where are you? I knew that you were down here. [_Seeing_ PETER.] Oh, [_Raising himself to his knees on the sofa_.] I see you _now_! PETER. Yes? [_There is an impressive pause and silence as they face each other_. WILLIAM. Oh, you've got your hat;... it's off the peg.... You're going. Need you go right away--Mr. Grimm? Can't you wait a little while? PETER. I'll wait for you, William. WILLIAM. May I go with you? Thank you. I couldn't find the way without you. PETER. Yes, you could. It's the surest way in this world. But I'll wait,-- don't worry. WILLIAM. I sha'n't. [_Coaxingly_.] Don't be in a hurry ... I want--[_Lies down happily_.] to take a nap first.... I'm sleepy. [_He pulls the covering up and sleeps_. PETER. I wish you the pleasantest dream a little boy can have in _this_ world. _Instantly, as though the room were peopled with faint images of_ WILLIAM'S _dream, the phantom circus music is heard, with its elfin horns; and, through the music, voices call "Hai! Hai!" The sound of the cracking of a whip is heard, and the blare of a clown's ten-cent tin horn. The phantom voice of the_ CLOWN _(very faint) calls:_ CLOWN'S VOICE. Billy Miller's big show and monster circus is in town this afternoon! Don't forget the date! Only one ring--no confusion. Circus day comes but once a year, little sir. Come early and see the wild animals and hear the lion roar-r-r! Mind, I shall expect _you!_ Wonderful troupe of trained mice in the side-show. _During the above, the deeper voice of a_ "HAWKER"--_muffled and far off-- cries:_ HAWKER'S VOICE. Peanuts, pop-corn, lemonade--ice cold lemo--lemo-- lemonade! Circus day comes but once a year. _Breaking in through the music, and the voices of the_ CLOWN _and_ HAWKER, _the gruff voice of a_ "BARKER" _is heard calling._ BARKER'S VOICE. Walk in and see the midgets and the giant! Only ten cents--one dime! _As these voices die away, the_ CLOWN, _whose voice indicates that he is now perched on the head of the couch, sings:_ CLOWN'S VOICE. "Uncle Rat has gone to town, Ha! H'm! Uncle Rat has gone to town To buy his niece"-- _His voice ends abruptly--the music stops. Everything is over. There is silence. Then three clear knocks sound on the door._ PETER. Come in.... [_The door opens. No one is there--but a faint path of phosphorous light is seen._] Oh, friends! Troops of you! [_As though he recognizes the unseen guests._] I've been gone so long that you came for me, eh? I'm quite ready to go back. I'm just waiting for a happy little fellow who's going back with us.... We'll follow. Do you all go ahead-- lead the way. [_He looks at_ WILLIAM, _holds out his arms, and_ WILLIAM _jumps up and runs into them._] Well, William! You _know better_ now. Come! [_Picking up_ WILLIAM.] Happy, eh? [WILLIAM _nods, his face beaming._ WILLIAM. Oh, yes! PETER. Let's be off, then. [_As they turn towards the door._ DR. MACPHERSON. [_Re-entering, goes to the couch with the water, and suddenly, setting down the glass, exclaims in a hushed voice:_] My God! He's dead! [_He half raises up a boy that appears to be_ WILLIAM. _The light from the lamp on the table falls on the dead face of the child. Then the_ DOCTOR _gently lays the boy down again on the couch, and sits pondering over the mystery of death._ PETER. [_To the_ DOCTOR.] Oh, no! There never was so fair a prospect for _life_! WILLIAM. [_In_ PETER'S _arms._] I _am_ happy! _Outside a hazy moonlight shimmers. A few stars twinkle in the far-away sky; and the low moon is seen back of the old windmill._ PETER. [_To_ WILLIAM.] If the rest of them only knew what they're missing, eh? WILLIAM. [_Begins to sing, joyously._] "Uncle Rat has gone to town." PETER _dances up a few steps towards the door, singing with_ WILLIAM. PETER _and_ WILLIAM. "Ha! H'm! Uncle Rat has gone to town To buy his niece a wedding gown. Ha! H'm!" PETER. [_Gives one last fond look towards_ CATHERINE'S _room. To_ WILLIAM.] We're off! [_Putting the boy over his shoulder, they sing together, as they go up, the phantom circus music accompanying them._] "What shall the wedding breakfast be? Ha! H'm!" PETER. [_Alone._] "What shall the wedding breakfast be? Hard boiled eggs and a cup of tea." WILLIAM _and_ PETER. "Ha! H'm!" PETER GRIMM _has danced off with the child through the faint path of light. As he goes, the wind or an unseen hand closes the door after them. There is a moment's pause until their voices are no longer heard--then the curtain slowly descends. The air of the song is taken up by an unseen orchestra and continues as the audience passes out._ CURTAIN. Publication Date: August 13th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-bx.belasco

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-charlotte-bronte-villette/

Charlotte Bronte Villette Vol. I Publication Date: December 18th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-penelope.edwards

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-frankie-hickling-reality-for-isabella/

Frankie Hickling Reality For Isabella  SAM   “Bella?” I whispered so soft I thou't she would not hear me but she did. She look like she was going to die any time.   “Sam.......” Bella started but was cut off when she moved her arm. “Sam, will you keep me a promise? Never for get me and always love me. Give that note on the desk to Leanne please it was stuff that we wonted to do to gather be for we died.” Her voce was getting very weak but she keep’t on going. “also tell her that the numbers are all the people she needs to call and that I love her.”      I held her good hand in my hand. I was crying. I never cry but for Bella I’ll cry. “Bella please don’t leave me. I love you please don’t go.” I said chocking on my tears. Bella look’t at me in my eyes and said the word’s that I love so much “I love you to sam........I love you to..........”.   Bella’s eyes closed. I new it when she let out her breath that it was over. My loving Isabella was daed. I cried by her in till her parents came home. They found me hugging there little girl crying.  There little girl that had just committed suicide.   *********************************************************************** 3 years before     ISABELLA     “Isabella come on were going to be late for school!” yelled my twin brother Anddy from the end of the  stairs. God He is so a pain in the a*s. I look in my mere and see my waist length black hair is in curls, my parsing blue eyes have very little makeup on them, and my light blue rock and role tank top with black short shorts. I say I’m looking good. I grab my school bag and run out of my room and down the stares three at a time.   “ I’m here.” I say to anddy. Anddy is emo. He haves black hair with green and blue in it, blue eyes like mine, and he is fit but not that fit. Anddy haves black skinny jeans on with a Black Veil Brides T-shirt and a thin black sweatshirt .   “It tacks you to long to get ready. I like ready in 20 mins. Anddy says to me as he grabs his car keys.   “Ya well your a boy so it shouldn’t tack so long for you” I say to him.   “Is, I do more to my hair in the morning you don't do any thing but brush it.”    “Soooooooooooooooooo...........”    “Lets just go and get in the car so we can go and get this over with” Anddy says as walking out to his black mustang. I love this car even if I have the same, the only thing that is not the same is plate. Anddy’s say’s MUSIC and mine says B*TCH.      The ride to school was the same as every day Anddy and I fighting over the music, him heavy mettle  or screamo and me pop are Rap. He won again.............. The ride was so hirable with this sh*t of music (A/N NO AFFENS TO PEOPLE WHO LIKE SCREAMO OR HEAVEY METTLE. I LOVE THAT TYPE OF MUSIC)      When we got to school I like ran for my life out of the car be for it was even fully park’t yet. I’m free!   I look for my best and only friend Leanne. The one who get’s what my life is like.     “Bella! Bella! Over here you dum*ss!!!” I hared Leanne yell to me from the other side of the parking lot.  I run over to her and give her the biggest hug that I can give to her. “ Hahaha I miss you to Bella.” she giggled. I finely let her go and look’t at her. She is so pretty.......no not pretty but beautiful . She just don't   know it. She don't  know that ever guy in or school wont to get with her and every girl wont’s to be her. Leanne haves shoulder length hair that is black with blue and green high lights. The high lights change every month or if she gets bored. She is haves her black skinny jeans on with her My Chemical Romance t-shirt. It look’s good but the thing that I love on her is the lime green converse. I got to ask her where she got them.    Leanne lost some weight, even when she was never fat. She is made out of all mussel, with how much sports she plays it’s crazy. She is about 5’9 ya she’s tall and its a good thing to.    “YO ISABELLA SNAP OUT OF IT WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR CLASS. I CANT BE LATE ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!” Leanne yelled at me with her hands going all over the place. I might of blank out........again. I got to stop doing that.    “ Ok lets go, I know how you are and being late.” I said and started to walk to class. I can tell that this is going to be a good year. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leanne    “Don’t you just love my hair I got it done last night and my nails to!” said some preppy girl in my class. Just shoot me and let the suffering end!!!! It’s the same thing every year, Jocks and Preps being jerks and fake. Teachers tying to teach us, and us the loners, the emos, and  the seance’s are going to kill some one if they bug us.   “Hey look at the new kids......there hot” said some girl. I just pull my hood over my head  more. I hate new kids. They last new kid was one of my guy friends then he dated a preppy girl...... Just by dating her he left me.    “ HI! You must be the new kids, I’m Mr. Bean. You can call me Mr.B. Would you guy’s like to tell the class about your self?” Mr.B said in his I’m young and cool voce. Hahaha he sound like a Smurf when he did that. Wait did I say smurf...God I need to stop hanging out with Isabella.   “Hi I’m Sam.....Um and this is my brother Damon. We moved from Canada and You people might call us Emo because how we look. Lets just say We don’t give a f*ck what you think.” Said the sam kid.     “Hey I’m Damon as Sam just said, My fav color is black, I like Screamo band like Black Veil Brides, I hate bloned people, and my fav store to shop at is Hot Topic.” I put look at him thou my hood and lets just say he is hot. He haves Black hair with some green in it. He haves nice lips with a lip ring in it, and green eyes that you can get lost in. I look over at Isabella who is on the other side of the room. Why is she on the other side of the rom you ask? Why lets just say we gleed the Jocks butts to the chars. Bella was looking at the new guy Sam. Sam had black hair with blue in it, a lip rin like Damon, and really pretty blue eyes. He was cute, but by the look on Bella she thinks he is hot.    “Thank you guys now I will give you your seat. Sam you can sit with Isabella, Isabella say hi so he knows where you are.” Bella just set there staring off in to nothing.......... O god. She’s in Smurf land.     “BELLA!” I scream at the top of my longs. Every one look’t at me like I was a freak....well you can say I am but Im not really.     “DONT KILL THE SMURF YOU STUPED LITTLE GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!” O god Bella needs help. The teacher cleared his throat and turns back to Sam.     “That is Isabella. The only thing I have to tell you is don’t touch her, she just flip’t Jesse on his back and brook his nose.” Mrs.B said. Sam just nodded and set by her. She look like she was sleeping yet aging.      “And Damon you can sit by Leanne” Mr.B said with a bitter voce. What was that for I never did any thing to him. Wait yes I did I punch’t him in the mouth last year.  “Say Hi Leanne.”      “Ok Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Leanne!” I said and then giggled.     Damon came and set by. We sat in silence for a little. I don’t like silence so I tock out my I pod and put it on full blast. It was one of my fever't bands. The Used. I was almost asleep when I felt one of  my head phone’s getting puled out of my ear. NO ONE TUCHES MY I POD BUT ME!!!!!!!!!!      I look at how haves it and it is Damon. “Give me my head phone now!!!!” I say in Im going to kill you voce. Damon look at me with a big grin and said the wrong word. “Nope”. He said nope.     IM GOING TO KILL HIM!!!!!!! I tex Bella and say.     ‘I beat up one you beat up 2.’ I hint send at not even a min later she gave me the nod.    ‘on three i mouth to her’    ‘one’   ‘two ’ ‘three’     Bella and I lung for the boys. Damon was down with a black eye and a split lip in two punches. I jump on top of him and just keep punching. “ISABELLA AND LEANNE GET OFF THEM NOW!!!!!!!” I got up and fix’t my shirt. I look over at Bell’s and she just thou a big punch in Sam’s no no square.     “You two get your butts up here now!” said Mr.B. Bella and I walk to the front of the class. “You two are going to tack them to the nurse now and your going to have a month of after school.” A month....not so bad at least Bella will be there.     “Ok” we say at the same time and go to help the boys up. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Publication Date: October 5th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-zzfrankiehickling

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-yuliana-yarbrough-competitive-friends/

Yuliana Yarbrough Competitive Friends Have Your Own Style Publication Date: November 29th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-alaysia

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-alexander-dumas-fils-the-lady-of-the-camellias/

Alexander Dumas (fils) The Lady of the Camellias CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS)   CAMILLE (LA DAME AUX CAMILIAS)   By Alexandre Dumas, fils   Chapter 1 In my opinion, it is impossible to create characters until one has spent a long time in studying men, as it is impossible to speak a language until it has been seriously acquired. Not being old enough to invent, I content myself with narrating, and I beg the reader to assure himself of the truth of a story in which all the characters, with the exception of the heroine, are still alive. Eye-witnesses of the greater part of the facts which I have collected are to be found in Paris, and I might call upon them to confirm me if my testimony is not enough. And, thanks to a particular circumstance, I alone can write these things, for I alone am able to give the final details, without which it would have been impossible to make the story at once interesting and complete. This is how these details came to my knowledge. On the 12th of March, 1847, I saw in the Rue Lafitte a great yellow placard announcing a sale of furniture and curiosities. The sale was to take place on account of the death of the owner. The owner's name was not mentioned, but the sale was to be held at 9, Rue d'Antin, on the 16th, from 12 to 5. The placard further announced that the rooms and furniture could be seen on the 13th and 14th. I have always been very fond of curiosities, and I made up my mind not to miss the occasion, if not of buying some, at all events of seeing them. Next day I called at 9, Rue d'Antin. It was early in the day, and yet there were already a number of visitors, both men and women, and the women, though they were dressed in cashmere and velvet, and had their carriages waiting for them at the door, gazed with astonishment and admiration at the luxury which they saw before them. I was not long in discovering the reason of this astonishment and admiration, for, having begun to examine things a little carefully, I discovered without difficulty that I was in the house of a kept woman. Now, if there is one thing which women in society would like to see (and there were society women there), it is the home of those women whose carriages splash their own carriages day by day, who, like them, side by side with them, have their boxes at the Opera and at the Italiens, and who parade in Paris the opulent insolence of their beauty, their diamonds, and their scandal. This one was dead, so the most virtuous of women could enter even her bedroom. Death had purified the air of this abode of splendid foulness, and if more excuse were needed, they had the excuse that they had merely come to a sale, they knew not whose. They had read the placards, they wished to see what the placards had announced, and to make their choice beforehand. What could be more natural? Yet, all the same, in the midst of all these beautiful things, they could not help looking about for some traces of this courtesan's life, of which they had heard, no doubt, strange enough stories. Unfortunately the mystery had vanished with the goddess, and, for all their endeavours, they discovered only what was on sale since the owner's decease, and nothing of what had been on sale during her lifetime. For the rest, there were plenty of things worth buying. The furniture was superb; there were rosewood and buhl cabinets and tables, Sevres and Chinese vases, Saxe statuettes, satin, velvet, lace; there was nothing lacking. I sauntered through the rooms, following the inquisitive ladies of distinction. They entered a room with Persian hangings, and I was just going to enter in turn, when they came out again almost immediately, smiling, and as if ashamed of their own curiosity. I was all the more eager to see the room. It was the dressing-room, laid out with all the articles of toilet, in which the dead woman's extravagance seemed to be seen at its height. On a large table against the wall, a table three feet in width and six in length, glittered all the treasures of Aucoc and Odiot. It was a magnificent collection, and there was not one of those thousand little things so necessary to the toilet of a woman of the kind which was not in gold or silver. Such a collection could only have been got together little by little, and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended it. Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman's dressing-room, I amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that these magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and different coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling a separate shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the poor child, in not having left her to pay the ordinary penalty, but rather to die in the midst of her beauty and luxury, before the coming of old age, the courtesan's first death. Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice, especially in woman? She preserves no dignity, she inspires no interest. The everlasting repentance, not of the evil ways followed, but of the plans that have miscarried, the money that has been spent in vain, is as saddening a thing as one can well meet with. I knew an aged woman who had once been "gay," whose only link with the past was a daughter almost as beautiful as she herself had been. This poor creature to whom her mother had never said, "You are my child," except to bid her nourish her old age as she herself had nourished her youth, was called Louise, and, being obedient to her mother, she abandoned herself without volition, without passion, without pleasure, as she would have worked at any other profession that might have been taught her. The constant sight of dissipation, precocious dissipation, in addition to her constant sickly state, had extinguished in her mind all the knowledge of good and evil that God had perhaps given her, but that no one had ever thought of developing. I shall always remember her, as she passed along the boulevards almost every day at the same hour, accompanied by her mother as assiduously as a real mother might have accompanied her daughter. I was very young then, and ready to accept for myself the easy morality of the age. I remember, however, the contempt and disgust which awoke in me at the sight of this scandalous chaperoning. Her face, too, was inexpressibly virginal in its expression of innocence and of melancholy suffering. She was like a figure of Resignation. One day the girl's face was transfigured. In the midst of all the debauches mapped out by her mother, it seemed to her as if God had left over for her one happiness. And why indeed should God, who had made her without strength, have left her without consolation, under the sorrowful burden of her life? One day, then, she realized that she was to have a child, and all that remained to her of chastity leaped for joy. The soul has strange refuges. Louise ran to tell the good news to her mother. It is a shameful thing to speak of, but we are not telling tales of pleasant sins; we are telling of true facts, which it would be better, no doubt, to pass over in silence, if we did not believe that it is needful from time to time to reveal the martyrdom of those who are condemned without bearing, scorned without judging; shameful it is, but this mother answered the daughter that they had already scarce enough for two, and would certainly not have enough for three; that such children are useless, and a lying-in is so much time lost. Next day a midwife, of whom all we will say is that she was a friend of the mother, visited Louise, who remained in bed for a few days, and then got up paler and feebler than before. Three months afterward a man took pity on her and tried to heal her, morally and physically; but the last shock had been too violent, and Louise died of it. The mother still lives; how? God knows. This story returned to my mind while I looked at the silver toilet things, and a certain space of time must have elapsed during these reflections, for no one was left in the room but myself and an attendant, who, standing near the door, was carefully watching me to see that I did not pocket anything. I went up to the man, to whom I was causing so much anxiety. "Sir," I said, "can you tell me the name of the person who formerly lived here?" "Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier." I knew her by name and by sight. "What!" I said to the attendant; "Marguerite Gautier is dead?" "Yes, sir." "When did she die?" "Three weeks ago, I believe." "And why are the rooms on view?" "The creditors believe that it will send up the prices. People can see beforehand the effect of the things; you see that induces them to buy." "She was in debt, then?" "To any extent, sir." "But the sale will cover it?" "And more too." "Who will get what remains over?" "Her family." "She had a family?" "It seems so." "Thanks." The attendant, reassured as to my intentions, touched his hat, and I went out. "Poor girl!" I said to myself as I returned home; "she must have had a sad death, for, in her world, one has friends only when one is perfectly well." And in spite of myself I began to feel melancholy over the fate of Marguerite Gautier. It will seem absurd to many people, but I have an unbounded sympathy for women of this kind, and I do not think it necessary to apologize for such sympathy. One day, as I was going to the Prefecture for a passport, I saw in one of the neighbouring streets a poor girl who was being marched along by two policemen. I do not know what was the matter. All I know is that she was weeping bitterly as she kissed an infant only a few months old, from whom her arrest was to separate her. Since that day I have never dared to despise a woman at first sight. Chapter 2 The sale was to take place on the 16th. A day's interval had been left between the visiting days and the sale, in order to give time for taking down the hangings, curtains, etc. I had just returned from abroad. It was natural that I had not heard of Marguerite's death among the pieces of news which one's friends always tell on returning after an absence. Marguerite was a pretty woman; but though the life of such women makes sensation enough, their death makes very little. They are suns which set as they rose, unobserved. Their death, when they die young, is heard of by all their lovers at the same moment, for in Paris almost all the lovers of a well-known woman are friends. A few recollections are exchanged, and everybody's life goes on as if the incident had never occurred, without so much as a tear. Nowadays, at twenty-five, tears have become so rare a thing that they are not to be squandered indiscriminately. It is the most that can be expected if the parents who pay for being wept over are wept over in return for the price they pay. As for me, though my initials did not occur on any of Marguerite's belongings, that instinctive indulgence, that natural pity that I have already confessed, set me thinking over her death, more perhaps than it was worth thinking over. I remembered having often met Marguerite in the Bois, where she went regularly every day in a little blue coupe drawn by two magnificent bays, and I had noticed in her a distinction quite apart from other women of her kind, a distinction which was enhanced by a really exceptional beauty. These unfortunate creatures whenever they go out are always accompanied by somebody or other. As no man cares to make himself conspicuous by being seen in their company, and as they are afraid of solitude, they take with them either those who are not well enough off to have a carriage, or one or another of those elegant, ancient ladies, whose elegance is a little inexplicable, and to whom one can always go for information in regard to the women whom they accompany. In Marguerite's case it was quite different. She was always alone when she drove in the Champs-Elysees, lying back in her carriage as much as possible, dressed in furs in winter, and in summer wearing very simple dresses; and though she often passed people whom she knew, her smile, when she chose to smile, was seen only by them, and a duchess might have smiled in just such a manner. She did not drive to and fro like the others, from the Rond-Point to the end of the Champs-Elysees. She drove straight to the Bois. There she left her carriage, walked for an hour, returned to her carriage, and drove rapidly home. All these circumstances which I had so often witnessed came back to my memory, and I regretted her death as one might regret the destruction of a beautiful work of art. It was impossible to see more charm in beauty than in that of Marguerite. Excessively tall and thin, she had in the fullest degree the art of repairing this oversight of Nature by the mere arrangement of the things she wore. Her cashmere reached to the ground, and showed on each side the large flounces of a silk dress, and the heavy muff which she held pressed against her bosom was surrounded by such cunningly arranged folds that the eye, however exacting, could find no fault with the contour of the lines. Her head, a marvel, was the object of the most coquettish care. It was small, and her mother, as Musset would say, seemed to have made it so in order to make it with care. Set, in an oval of indescribable grace, two black eyes, surmounted by eyebrows of so pure a curve that it seemed as if painted; veil these eyes with lovely lashes, which, when drooped, cast their shadow on the rosy hue of the cheeks; trace a delicate, straight nose, the nostrils a little open, in an ardent aspiration toward the life of the senses; design a regular mouth, with lips parted graciously over teeth as white as milk; colour the skin with the down of a peach that no hand has touched, and you will have the general aspect of that charming countenance. The hair, black as jet, waving naturally or not, was parted on the forehead in two large folds and draped back over the head, leaving in sight just the tip of the ears, in which there glittered two diamonds, worth four to five thousand francs each. How it was that her ardent life had left on Marguerite's face the virginal, almost childlike expression, which characterized it, is a problem which we can but state, without attempting to solve it. Marguerite had a marvellous portrait of herself, by Vidal, the only man whose pencil could do her justice. I had this portrait by me for a few days after her death, and the likeness was so astonishing that it has helped to refresh my memory in regard to some points which I might not otherwise have remembered. Some among the details of this chapter did not reach me until later, but I write them here so as not to be obliged to return to them when the story itself has begun. Marguerite was always present at every first night, and passed every evening either at the theatre or the ball. Whenever there was a new piece she was certain to be seen, and she invariably had three things with her on the ledge of her ground-floor box: her opera-glass, a bag of sweets, and a bouquet of camellias. For twenty-five days of the month the camellias were white, and for five they were red; no one ever knew the reason of this change of colour, which I mention though I can not explain it; it was noticed both by her friends and by the habitue's of the theatres to which she most often went. She was never seen with any flowers but camellias. At the florist's, Madame Barjon's, she had come to be called "the Lady of the Camellias," and the name stuck to her. Like all those who move in a certain set in Paris, I knew that Marguerite had lived with some of the most fashionable young men in society, that she spoke of it openly, and that they themselves boasted of it; so that all seemed equally pleased with one another. Nevertheless, for about three years, after a visit to Bagnees, she was said to be living with an old duke, a foreigner, enormously rich, who had tried to remove her as far as possible from her former life, and, as it seemed, entirely to her own satisfaction. This is what I was told on the subject. In the spring of 1847 Marguerite was so ill that the doctors ordered her to take the waters, and she went to Bagneres. Among the invalids was the daughter of this duke; she was not only suffering from the same complaint, but she was so like Marguerite in appearance that they might have been taken for sisters; the young duchess was in the last stage of consumption, and a few days after Marguerite's arrival she died. One morning, the duke, who had remained at Bagneres to be near the soil that had buried a part of his heart, caught sight of Marguerite at a turn of the road. He seemed to see the shadow of his child, and going up to her, he took her hands, embraced and wept over her, and without even asking her who she was, begged her to let him love in her the living image of his dead child. Marguerite, alone at Bagneres with her maid, and not being in any fear of compromising herself, granted the duke's request. Some people who knew her, happening to be at Bagneres, took upon themselves to explain Mademoiselle Gautier's true position to the duke. It was a blow to the old man, for the resemblance with his daughter was ended in one direction, but it was too late. She had become a necessity to his heart, his only pretext, his only excuse, for living. He made no reproaches, he had indeed no right to do so, but he asked her if she felt herself capable of changing her mode of life, offering her in return for the sacrifice every compensation that she could desire. She consented. It must be said that Marguerite was just then very ill. The past seemed to her sensitive nature as if it were one of the main causes of her illness, and a sort of superstition led her to hope that God would restore to her both health and beauty in return for her repentance and conversion. By the end of the summer, the waters, sleep, the natural fatigue of long walks, had indeed more or less restored her health. The duke accompanied her to Paris, where he continued to see her as he had done at Bagneres. This liaison, whose motive and origin were quite unknown, caused a great sensation, for the duke, already known for his immense fortune, now became known for his prodigality. All this was set down to the debauchery of a rich old man, and everything was believed except the truth. The father's sentiment for Marguerite had, in truth, so pure a cause that anything but a communion of hearts would have seemed to him a kind of incest, and he had never spoken to her a word which his daughter might not have heard. Far be it from me to make out our heroine to be anything but what she was. As long as she remained at Bagneres, the promise she had made to the duke had not been hard to keep, and she had kept it; but, once back in Paris, it seemed to her, accustomed to a life of dissipation, of balls, of orgies, as if the solitude, only interrupted by the duke's stated visits, would kill her with boredom, and the hot breath of her old life came back across her head and heart. We must add that Marguerite had returned more beautiful than she had ever been; she was but twenty, and her malady, sleeping but not subdued, continued to give her those feverish desires which are almost always the result of diseases of the chest. It was a great grief to the duke when his friends, always on the lookout for some scandal on the part of the woman with whom, it seemed to them, he was compromising himself, came to tell him, indeed to prove to him, that at times when she was sure of not seeing him she received other visits, and that these visits were often prolonged till the following day. On being questioned, Marguerite admitted everything to the duke, and advised him, without arriere-pensee, to concern himself with her no longer, for she felt incapable of carrying out what she had undertaken, and she did not wish to go on accepting benefits from a man whom she was deceiving. The duke did not return for a week; it was all he could do, and on the eighth day he came to beg Marguerite to let him still visit her, promising that he would take her as she was, so long as he might see her, and swearing that he would never utter a reproach against her, not though he were to die of it. This, then, was the state of things three months after Marguerite's return; that is to say, in November or December, 1842. Chapter 3 At one o'clock on the 16th I went to the Rue d'Antin. The voice of the auctioneer could be heard from the outer door. The rooms were crowded with people. There were all the celebrities of the most elegant impropriety, furtively examined by certain great ladies who had again seized the opportunity of the sale in order to be able to see, close at hand, women whom they might never have another occasion of meeting, and whom they envied perhaps in secret for their easy pleasures. The Duchess of F. elbowed Mlle. A., one of the most melancholy examples of our modern courtesan; the Marquis de T. hesitated over a piece of furniture the price of which was being run high by Mme. D., the most elegant and famous adulteress of our time; the Duke of Y., who in Madrid is supposed to be ruining himself in Paris, and in Paris to be ruining himself in Madrid, and who, as a matter of fact, never even reaches the limit of his income, talked with Mme. M., one of our wittiest story-tellers, who from time to time writes what she says and signs what she writes, while at the same time he exchanged confidential glances with Mme. de N., a fair ornament of the Champs-Elysees, almost always dressed in pink or blue, and driving two big black horses which Tony had sold her for 10,000 francs, and for which she had paid, after her fashion; finally, Mlle. R., who makes by her mere talent twice what the women of the world make by their dot and three times as much as the others make by their amours, had come, in spite of the cold, to make some purchases, and was not the least looked at among the crowd. We might cite the initials of many more of those who found themselves, not without some mutual surprise, side by side in one room. But we fear to weary the reader. We will only add that everyone was in the highest spirits, and that many of those present had known the dead woman, and seemed quite oblivious of the fact. There was a sound of loud laughter; the auctioneers shouted at the top of their voices; the dealers who had filled the benches in front of the auction table tried in vain to obtain silence, in order to transact their business in peace. Never was there a noisier or a more varied gathering. I slipped quietly into the midst of this tumult, sad to think of when one remembered that the poor creature whose goods were being sold to pay her debts had died in the next room. Having come rather to examine than to buy, I watched the faces of the auctioneers, noticing how they beamed with delight whenever anything reached a price beyond their expectations. Honest creatures, who had speculated upon this woman's prostitution, who had gained their hundred per cent out of her, who had plagued with their writs the last moments of her life, and who came now after her death to gather in at once the fruits of their dishonourable calculations and the interest on their shameful credit, How wise were the ancients in having only one God for traders and robbers! Dresses, cashmeres, jewels, were sold with incredible rapidity. There was nothing that I cared for, and I still waited. All at once I heard: "A volume, beautifully bound, gilt-edged, entitled Manon Lescaut. There is something written on the first page. Ten francs." "Twelve," said a voice after a longish silence. "Fifteen," I said. Why? I did not know. Doubtless for the something written. "Fifteen," repeated the auctioneer. "Thirty," said the first bidder in a tone which seemed to defy further competition. It had now become a struggle. "Thirty-five," I cried in the same tone. "Forty." "Fifty." "Sixty." "A hundred." If I had wished to make a sensation I should certainly have succeeded, for a profound silence had ensued, and people gazed at me as if to see what sort of a person it was, who seemed to be so determined to possess the volume. The accent which I had given to my last word seemed to convince my adversary; he preferred to abandon a conflict which could only have resulted in making me pay ten times its price for the volume, and, bowing, he said very gracefully, though indeed a little late: "I give way, sir." Nothing more being offered, the book was assigned to me. As I was afraid of some new fit of obstinacy, which my amour propre might have sustained somewhat better than my purse, I wrote down my name, had the book put on one side, and went out. I must have given considerable food for reflection to the witnesses of this scene, who would no doubt ask themselves what my purpose could have been in paying a hundred francs for a book which I could have had anywhere for ten, or, at the outside, fifteen. An hour after, I sent for my purchase. On the first page was written in ink, in an elegant hand, an inscription on the part of the giver. It consisted of these words: Manon to Marguerite. Humility. It was signed Armand Duval. What was the meaning of the word Humility? Was Manon to recognise in Marguerite, in the opinion of M. Armand Duval, her superior in vice or in affection? The second interpretation seemed the more probable, for the first would have been an impertinent piece of plain speaking which Marguerite, whatever her opinion of herself, would never have accepted. I went out again, and thought no more of the book until at night, when I was going to bed. Manon Lescaut is a touching story. I know every detail of it, and yet whenever I come across the volume the same sympathy always draws me to it; I open it, and for the hundredth time I live over again with the heroine of the Abbe Prevost. Now this heroine is so true to life that I feel as if I had known her; and thus the sort of comparison between her and Marguerite gave me an unusual inclination to read it, and my indulgence passed into pity, almost into a kind of love for the poor girl to whom I owed the volume. Manon died in the desert, it is true, but in the arms of the man who loved her with the whole energy of his soul; who, when she was dead, dug a grave for her, and watered it with his tears, and buried his heart in it; while Marguerite, a sinner like Manon, and perhaps converted like her, had died in a sumptuous bed (it seemed, after what I had seen, the bed of her past), but in that desert of the heart, a more barren, a vaster, a more pitiless desert than that in which Manon had found her last resting-place. Marguerite, in fact, as I had found from some friends who knew of the last circumstances of her life, had not a single real friend by her bedside during the two months of her long and painful agony. Then from Manon and Marguerite my mind wandered to those whom I knew, and whom I saw singing along the way which led to just such another death. Poor souls! if it is not right to love them, is it not well to pity them? You pity the blind man who has never seen the daylight, the deaf who has never heard the harmonies of nature, the dumb who has never found a voice for his soul, and, under a false cloak of shame, you will not pity this blindness of heart, this deafness of soul, this dumbness of conscience, which sets the poor afflicted creature beside herself and makes her, in spite of herself, incapable of seeing what is good, of bearing the Lord, and of speaking the pure language of love and faith. Hugo has written Marion Delorme, Musset has written Bernerette, Alexandre Dumas has written Fernande, the thinkers and poets of all time have brought to the courtesan the offering of their pity, and at times a great man has rehabilitated them with his love and even with his name. If I insist on this point, it is because many among those who have begun to read me will be ready to throw down a book in which they will fear to find an apology for vice and prostitution; and the author's age will do something, no doubt, to increase this fear. Let me undeceive those who think thus, and let them go on reading, if nothing but such a fear hinders them. I am quite simply convinced of a certain principle, which is: For the woman whose education has not taught her what is right, God almost always opens two ways which lead thither the ways of sorrow and of love. They are hard; those who walk in them walk with bleeding feet and torn hands, but they also leave the trappings of vice upon the thorns of the wayside, and reach the journey's end in a nakedness which is not shameful in the sight of the Lord. Those who meet these bold travellers ought to succour them, and to tell all that they have met them, for in so doing they point out the way. It is not a question of setting at the outset of life two sign-posts, one bearing the inscription "The Right Way," the other the inscription "The Wrong Way," and of saying to those who come there, "Choose." One must needs, like Christ, point out the ways which lead from the second road to the first, to those who have been easily led astray; and it is needful that the beginning of these ways should not be too painful nor appear too impenetrable. Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to the Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven thee because thou hast loved much," a sublimity of pardon which can only have called forth a sublime faith. Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects, souls bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood, the evil of their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is stretched out to lave them and set them in the convalescence of the heart? It is to my own generation that I speak, to those for whom the theories of M. de Voltaire happily exist no longer, to those who, like myself, realize that humanity, for these last fifteen years, has been in one of its most audacious moments of expansion. The science of good and evil is acquired forever; faith is refashioned, respect for sacred things has returned to us, and if the world has not all at once become good, it has at least become better. The efforts of every intelligent man tend in the same direction, and every strong will is harnessed to the same principle: Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair. Do not let us despise the woman who is neither mother, sister, maid, nor wife. Do not let us limit esteem to the family nor indulgence to egoism. Since "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance," let us give joy to heaven. Heaven will render it back to us with usury. Let us leave on our way the alms of pardon for those whom earthly desires have driven astray, whom a divine hope shall perhaps save, and, as old women say when they offer you some homely remedy of their own, if it does no good it will do no harm. Doubtless it must seem a bold thing to attempt to deduce these grand results out of the meagre subject that I deal with; but I am one of those who believe that all is in little. The child is small, and he includes the man; the brain is narrow, and it harbours thought; the eye is but a point, and it covers leagues. Chapter 4 Two days after, the sale was ended. It had produced 3.50,000 francs. The creditors divided among them two thirds, and the family, a sister and a grand-nephew, received the remainder. The sister opened her eyes very wide when the lawyer wrote to her that she had inherited 50,000 francs. The girl had not seen her sister for six or seven years, and did not know what had become of her from the moment when she had disappeared from home. She came up to Paris in haste, and great was the astonishment of those who had known Marguerite when they saw as her only heir a fine, fat country girl, who until then had never left her village. She had made the fortune at a single stroke, without even knowing the source of that fortune. She went back, I heard afterward, to her countryside, greatly saddened by her sister's death, but with a sadness which was somewhat lightened by the investment at four and a half per cent which she had been able to make. All these circumstances, often repeated in Paris, the mother city of scandal, had begun to be forgotten, and I was even little by little forgetting the part I had taken in them, when a new incident brought to my knowledge the whole of Marguerite's life, and acquainted me with such pathetic details that I was taken with the idea of writing down the story which I now write. The rooms, now emptied of all their furniture, had been to let for three or four days when one morning there was a ring at my door. My servant, or, rather, my porter, who acted as my servant, went to the door and brought me a card, saying that the person who had given it to him wished to see me. I glanced at the card and there read these two words: Armand Duval. I tried to think where I had seen the name, and remembered the first leaf of the copy of Manon Lescaut. What could the person who had given the book to Marguerite want of me? I gave orders to ask him in at once. I saw a young man, blond, tall, pale, dressed in a travelling suit which looked as if he had not changed it for some days, and had not even taken the trouble to brush it on arriving at Paris, for it was covered with dust. M. Duval was deeply agitated; he made no attempt to conceal his agitation, and it was with tears in his eyes and a trembling voice that he said to me: "Sir, I beg you to excuse my visit and my costume; but young people are not very ceremonious with one another, and I was so anxious to see you to-day that I have not even gone to the hotel to which I have sent my luggage, and have rushed straight here, fearing that, after all, I might miss you, early as it is." I begged M. Duval to sit down by the fire; he did so, and, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, hid his face in it for a moment. "You must be at a loss to understand," he went on, sighing sadly, "for what purpose an unknown visitor, at such an hour, in such a costume, and in tears, can have come to see you. I have simply come to ask of you a great service." "Speak on, sir, I am entirely at your disposal." "You were present at the sale of Marguerite Gautier?" At this word the emotion, which he had got the better of for an instant, was too much for him, and he was obliged to cover his eyes with his hand. "I must seem to you very absurd," he added, "but pardon me, and believe that I shall never forget the patience with which you have listened to me." "Sir," I answered, "if the service which I can render you is able to lessen your trouble a little, tell me at once what I can do for you, and you will find me only too happy to oblige you." M. Duval's sorrow was sympathetic, and in spite of myself I felt the desire of doing him a kindness. Thereupon he said to me: "You bought something at Marguerite's sale?" "Yes, a book." "Manon Lescaut?" "Precisely." "Have you the book still?" "It is in my bedroom." On hearing this, Armand Duval seemed to be relieved of a great weight, and thanked me as if I had already rendered him a service merely by keeping the book. I got up and went into my room to fetch the book, which I handed to him. "That is it indeed," he said, looking at the inscription on the first page and turning over the leaves; "that is it in deed," and two big tears fell on the pages. "Well, sir," said he, lifting his head, and no longer trying to hide from me that he had wept and was even then on the point of weeping, "do you value this book very greatly?" "Why?" "Because I have come to ask you to give it up to me." "Pardon my curiosity, but was it you, then, who gave it to Marguerite Gautier?" "It was!" "The book is yours, sir; take it back. I am happy to be able to hand it over to you." "But," said M. Duval with some embarrassment, "the least I can do is to give you in return the price which you paid for it." "Allow me to offer it to you. The price of a single volume in a sale of that kind is a mere nothing, and I do not remember how much I gave for it." "You gave one hundred francs." "True," I said, embarrassed in my turn, "how do you know?" "It is quite simple. I hoped to reach Paris in time for the sale, and I only managed to get here this morning. I was absolutely resolved to have something which had belonged to her, and I hastened to the auctioneer and asked him to allow me to see the list of the things sold and of the buyers' names. I saw that this volume had been bought by you, and I decided to ask you to give it up to me, though the price you had set upon it made me fear that you might yourself have some souvenir in connection with the possession of the book." As he spoke, it was evident that he was afraid I had known Marguerite as he had known her. I hastened to reassure him. "I knew Mlle. Gautier only by sight," I said; "her death made on me the impression that the death of a pretty woman must always make on a young man who had liked seeing her. I wished to buy something at her sale, and I bid higher and higher for this book out of mere obstinacy and to annoy some one else, who was equally keen to obtain it, and who seemed to defy me to the contest. I repeat, then, that the book is yours, and once more I beg you to accept it; do not treat me as if I were an auctioneer, and let it be the pledge between us of a longer and more intimate acquaintance." "Good," said Armand, holding out his hand and pressing mine; "I accept, and I shall be grateful to you all my life." I was very anxious to question Armand on the subject of Marguerite, for the inscription in the book, the young man's hurried journey, his desire to possess the volume, piqued my curiosity; but I feared if I questioned my visitor that I might seem to have refused his money only in order to have the right to pry into his affairs. It was as if he guessed my desire, for he said to me: "Have you read the volume?" "All through." "What did you think of the two lines that I wrote in it?" "I realized at once that the woman to whom you had given the volume must have been quite outside the ordinary category, for I could not take those two lines as a mere empty compliment." "You were right. That woman was an angel. See, read this letter." And he handed to me a paper which seemed to have been many times reread. I opened it, and this is what it contained: "MY DEAR ARMAND:—I have received your letter. You are still good, and I thank God for it. Yes, my friend, I am ill, and with one of those diseases that never relent; but the interest you still take in me makes my suffering less. I shall not live long enough, I expect, to have the happiness of pressing the hand which has written the kind letter I have just received; the words of it would be enough to cure me, if anything could cure me. I shall not see you, for I am quite near death, and you are hundreds of leagues away. My poor friend! your Marguerite of old times is sadly changed. It is better perhaps for you not to see her again than to see her as she is. You ask if I forgive you; oh, with all my heart, friend, for the way you hurt me was only a way of proving the love you had for me. I have been in bed for a month, and I think so much of your esteem that I write every day the journal of my life, from the moment we left each other to the moment when I shall be able to write no longer. If the interest you take in me is real, Armand, when you come back go and see Julie Duprat. She will give you my journal. You will find in it the reason and the excuse for what has passed between us. Julie is very good to me; we often talk of you together. She was there when your letter came, and we both cried over it. "If you had not sent me any word, I had told her to give you those papers when you returned to France. Do not thank me for it. This daily looking back on the only happy moments of my life does me an immense amount of good, and if you will find in reading it some excuse for the past. I, for my part, find a continual solace in it. I should like to leave you something which would always remind you of me, but everything here has been seized, and I have nothing of my own. "Do you understand, my friend? I am dying, and from my bed I can hear a man walking to and fro in the drawing-room; my creditors have put him there to see that nothing is taken away, and that nothing remains to me in case I do not die. I hope they will wait till the end before they begin to sell. "Oh, men have no pity! or rather, I am wrong, it is God who is just and inflexible! "And now, dear love, you will come to my sale, and you will buy something, for if I put aside the least thing for you, they might accuse you of embezzling seized goods. "It is a sad life that I am leaving! "It would be good of God to let me see you again before I die. According to all probability, good-bye, my friend. Pardon me if I do not write a longer letter, but those who say they are going to cure me wear me out with bloodletting, and my hand refuses to write any more. The last two words were scarcely legible. I returned the letter to Armand, who had, no doubt, read it over again in his mind while I was reading it on paper, for he said to me as he took it: "Who would think that a kept woman could have written that?" And, overcome by recollections, he gazed for some time at the writing of the letter, which he finally carried to his lips. "And when I think," he went on, "that she died before I could see her, and that I shall never see her again, when I think that she did for me what no sister would ever have done, I can not forgive myself for having left her to die like that. Dead! Dead and thinking of me, writing and repeating my name, poor dear Marguerite!" And Armand, giving free outlet to his thoughts and his tears, held out his hand to me, and continued: "People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like this over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I made that woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good, how resigned she was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her, and to-day I feel unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants me. Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for an hour!" It is always difficult to console a sorrow that is unknown to one, and nevertheless I felt so lively a sympathy for the young man, he made me so frankly the confidant of his distress, that I believed a word from me would not be indifferent to him, and I said: "Have you no parents, no friends? Hope. Go and see them; they will console you. As for me, I can only pity you." "It is true," he said, rising and walking to and fro in the room, "I am wearying you. Pardon me, I did not reflect how little my sorrow must mean to you, and that I am intruding upon you something which can not and ought not to interest you at all." "You mistake my meaning. I am entirely at your service; only I regret my inability to calm your distress. If my society and that of my friends can give you any distraction, if, in short, you have need of me, no matter in what way, I hope you will realize how much pleasure it will give me to do anything for you." "Pardon, pardon," said he; "sorrow sharpens the sensations. Let me stay here for a few minutes longer, long enough to dry my eyes, so that the idlers in the street may not look upon it as a curiosity to see a big fellow like me crying. You have made me very happy by giving me this book. I do not know how I can ever express my gratitude to you." "By giving me a little of your friendship," said I, "and by telling me the cause of your suffering. One feels better while telling what one suffers." "You are right. But to-day I have too much need of tears; I can not very well talk. One day I will tell you the whole story, and you will see if I have reason for regretting the poor girl. And now," he added, rubbing his eyes for the last time, and looking at himself in the glass, "say that you do not think me too absolutely idiotic, and allow me to come back and see you another time." He cast on me a gentle and amiable look. I was near embracing him. As for him, his eyes again began to fill with tears; he saw that I perceived it and turned away his head. "Come," I said, "courage." "Good-bye," he said. And, making a desperate effort to restrain his tears, he rushed rather than went out of the room. I lifted the curtain of my window, and saw him get into the cabriolet which awaited him at the door; but scarcely was he seated before he burst into tears and hid his face in his pocket-handkerchief. Chapter 5 A good while elapsed before I heard anything more of Armand, but, on the other hand, I was constantly hearing of Marguerite. I do not know if you have noticed, if once the name of anybody who might in the natural course of things have always remained unknown, or at all events indifferent to you, should be mentioned before you, immediately details begin to group themselves about the name, and you find all your friends talking to you about something which they have never mentioned to you before. You discover that this person was almost touching you and has passed close to you many times in your life without your noticing it; you find coincidences in the events which are told you, a real affinity with certain events of your own existence. I was not absolutely at that point in regard to Marguerite, for I had seen and met her, I knew her by sight and by reputation; nevertheless, since the moment of the sale, her name came to my ears so frequently, and, owing to the circumstance that I have mentioned in the last chapter, that name was associated with so profound a sorrow, that my curiosity increased in proportion with my astonishment. The consequence was that whenever I met friends to whom I had never breathed the name of Marguerite, I always began by saying: "Did you ever know a certain Marguerite Gautier?" "The Lady of the Camellias?" "Exactly." "Oh, very well!" The word was sometimes accompanied by a smile which could leave no doubt as to its meaning. "Well, what sort of a girl was she?" "A good sort of girl." "Is that all?" "Oh, yes; more intelligence and perhaps a little more heart than most." "Do you know anything particular about her?" "She ruined Baron de G." "No more than that?" "She was the mistress of the old Duke of..." "Was she really his mistress?" "So they say; at all events, he gave her a great deal of money." The general outlines were always the same. Nevertheless I was anxious to find out something about the relations between Marguerite and Armand. Meeting one day a man who was constantly about with known women, I asked him: "Did you know Marguerite Gautier?" The answer was the usual: "Very well." "What sort of a girl was she?" "A fine, good girl. I was very sorry to hear of her death." "Had she not a lover called Armand Duval?" "Tall and blond?" "Yes. "It is quite true." "Who was this Armand?" "A fellow who squandered on her the little money he had, and then had to leave her. They say he was quite wild about it." "And she?" "They always say she was very much in love with him, but as girls like that are in love. It is no good to ask them for what they can not give." "What has become of Armand?" "I don't know. We knew him very little. He was with Marguerite for five or six months in the country. When she came back, he had gone." "And you have never seen him since?" "Never." I, too, had not seen Armand again. I was beginning to ask myself if, when he had come to see me, the recent news of Marguerite's death had not exaggerated his former love, and consequently his sorrow, and I said to myself that perhaps he had already forgotten the dead woman, and along with her his promise to come and see me again. This supposition would have seemed probable enough in most instances, but in Armand's despair there had been an accent of real sincerity, and, going from one extreme to another, I imagined that distress had brought on an illness, and that my not seeing him was explained by the fact that he was ill, perhaps dead. I was interested in the young man in spite of myself. Perhaps there was some selfishness in this interest; perhaps I guessed at some pathetic love story under all this sorrow; perhaps my desire to know all about it had much to do with the anxiety which Armand's silence caused me. Since M. Duval did not return to see me, I decided to go and see him. A pretext was not difficult to find; unluckily I did not know his address, and no one among those whom I questioned could give it to me. I went to the Rue d'Antin; perhaps Marguerite's porter would know where Armand lived. There was a new porter; he knew as little about it as I. I then asked in what cemetery Mlle. Gautier had been buried. It was the Montmartre Cemetery. It was now the month of April; the weather was fine, the graves were not likely to look as sad and desolate as they do in winter; in short, it was warm enough for the living to think a little of the dead, and pay them a visit. I went to the cemetery, saying to myself: "One glance at Marguerite's grave, and I shall know if Armand's sorrow still exists, and perhaps I may find out what has become of him." I entered the keeper's lodge, and asked him if on the 22nd of February a woman named Marguerite Gautier had not been buried in the Montmartre Cemetery. He turned over the pages of a big book in which those who enter this last resting-place are inscribed and numbered, and replied that on the 22nd of February, at 12 o'clock, a woman of that name had been buried. I asked him to show me the grave, for there is no finding one's way without a guide in this city of the dead, which has its streets like a city of the living. The keeper called over a gardener, to whom he gave the necessary instructions; the gardener interrupted him, saying: "I know, I know.—It is not difficult to find that grave," he added, turning to me. "Why?" "Because it has very different flowers from the others." "Is it you who look after it?" "Yes, sir; and I wish all relations took as much trouble about the dead as the young man who gave me my orders." After several turnings, the gardener stopped and said to me: "Here we are." I saw before me a square of flowers which one would never have taken for a grave, if it had not been for a white marble slab bearing a name. The marble slab stood upright, an iron railing marked the limits of the ground purchased, and the earth was covered with white camellias. "What do you say to that?" said the gardener. "It is beautiful." "And whenever a camellia fades, I have orders to replace it." "Who gave you the order?" "A young gentleman, who cried the first time he came here; an old pal of hers, I suppose, for they say she was a gay one. Very pretty, too, I believe. Did you know her, sir?" "Yes." "Like the other?" said the gardener, with a knowing smile. "No, I never spoke to her." "And you come here, too! It is very good of you, for those that come to see the poor girl don't exactly cumber the cemetery." "Doesn't anybody come?" "Nobody, except that young gentleman who came once." "Only once?" "Yes, sir." "He never came back again?" "No, but he will when he gets home." "He is away somewhere?" "Yes." "Do you know where he is?" "I believe he has gone to see Mlle. Gautier's sister." "What does he want there?" "He has gone to get her authority to have the corpse dug up again and put somewhere else." "Why won't he let it remain here?" "You know, sir, people have queer notions about dead folk. We see something of that every day. The ground here was only bought for five years, and this young gentleman wants a perpetual lease and a bigger plot of ground; it will be better in the new part." "What do you call the new part?" "The new plots of ground that are for sale, there to the left. If the cemetery had always been kept like it is now, there wouldn't be the like of it in the world; but there is still plenty to do before it will be quite all it should be. And then people are so queer!" "What do you mean?" "I mean that there are people who carry their pride even here. Now, this Demoiselle Gautier, it appears she lived a bit free, if you'll excuse my saying so. Poor lady, she's dead now; there's no more of her left than of them that no one has a word to say against. We water them every day. Well, when the relatives of the folk that are buried beside her found out the sort of person she was, what do you think they said? That they would try to keep her out from here, and that there ought to be a piece of ground somewhere apart for these sort of women, like there is for the poor. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I gave it to them straight, I did: well-to-do folk who come to see their dead four times a year, and bring their flowers themselves, and what flowers! and look twice at the keep of them they pretend to cry over, and write on their tombstones all about the tears they haven't shed, and come and make difficulties about their neighbours. You may believe me or not, sir, I never knew the young lady; I don't know what she did. Well, I'm quite in love with the poor thing; I look after her well, and I let her have her camellias at an honest price. She is the dead body that I like the best. You see, sir, we are obliged to love the dead, for we are kept so busy, we have hardly time to love anything else." I looked at the man, and some of my readers will understand, without my needing to explain it to them, the emotion which I felt on hearing him. He observed it, no doubt, for he went on: "They tell me there were people who ruined themselves over that girl, and lovers that worshipped her; well, when I think there isn't one of them that so much as buys her a flower now, that's queer, sir, and sad. And, after all, she isn't so badly off, for she has her grave to herself, and if there is only one who remembers her, he makes up for the others. But we have other poor girls here, just like her and just her age, and they are just thrown into a pauper's grave, and it breaks my heart when I hear their poor bodies drop into the earth. And not a soul thinks about them any more, once they are dead! 'Tisn't a merry trade, ours, especially when we have a little heart left. What do you expect? I can't help it. I have a fine, strapping girl myself; she's just twenty, and when a girl of that age comes here I think of her, and I don't care if it's a great lady or a vagabond, I can't help feeling it a bit. But I am taking up your time, sir, with my tales, and it wasn't to hear them you came here. I was told to show you Mlle. Gautier's grave; here you have it. Is there anything else I can do for you?" "Do you know M. Armand Duval's address?" I asked. "Yes; he lives at Rue de ——; at least, that's where I always go to get my money for the flowers you see there." "Thanks, my good man." I gave one more look at the grave covered with flowers, half longing to penetrate the depths of the earth and see what the earth had made of the fair creature that had been cast to it; then I walked sadly away. "Do you want to see M. Duval, sir?" said the gardener, who was walking beside me. "Yes." "Well, I am pretty sure he is not back yet, or he would have been here already." "You don't think he has forgotten Marguerite?" "I am not only sure he hasn't, but I would wager that he wants to change her grave simply in order to have one more look at her." "Why do you think that?" "The first word he said to me when he came to the cemetery was: 'How can I see her again?' That can't be done unless there is a change of grave, and I told him all about the formalities that have to be attended to in getting it done; for, you see, if you want to move a body from one grave to another you must have it identified, and only the family can give leave for it under the direction of a police inspector. That is why M. Duval has gone to see Mlle. Gautier's sister, and you may be sure his first visit will be for me." We had come to the cemetery gate. I thanked the gardener again, putting a few coins into his hand, and made my way to the address he had given me. Armand had not yet returned. I left word for him, begging him to come and see me as soon as he arrived, or to send me word where I could find him. Next day, in the morning, I received a letter from Duval, telling me of his return, and asking me to call on him, as he was so worn out with fatigue that it was impossible for him to go out. Chapter 6 I found Armand in bed. On seeing me he held out a burning hand. "You are feverish," I said to him. "It is nothing, the fatigue of a rapid journey; that is all." "You have been to see Marguerite's sister?" "Yes; who told you?" "I knew it. Did you get what you wanted?" "Yes; but who told you of my journey, and of my reason for taking it?" "The gardener of the cemetery." "You have seen the tomb?" I scarcely dared reply, for the tone in which the words were spoken proved to me that the speaker was still possessed by the emotion which I had witnessed before, and that every time his thoughts or speech travelled back to that mournful subject emotion would still, for a long time to come, prove stronger than his will. I contented myself with a nod of the head. "He has looked after it well?" continued Armand. Two big tears rolled down the cheeks of the sick man, and he turned away his head to hide them from me. I pretended not to see them, and tried to change the conversation. "You have been away three weeks," I said. Armand passed his hand across his eyes and replied, "Exactly three weeks." "You had a long journey." "Oh, I was not travelling all the time. I was ill for a fortnight or I should have returned long ago; but I had scarcely got there when I took this fever, and I was obliged to keep my room." "And you started to come back before you were really well?" "If I had remained in the place for another week, I should have died there." "Well, now you are back again, you must take care of yourself; your friends will come and look after you; myself, first of all, if you will allow me." "I shall get up in a couple of hours." "It would be very unwise." "I must." "What have you to do in such a great hurry?" "I must go to the inspector of police." "Why do you not get one of your friends to see after the matter? It is likely to make you worse than you are now." "It is my only chance of getting better. I must see her. Ever since I heard of her death, especially since I saw her grave, I have not been able to sleep. I can not realize that this woman, so young and so beautiful when I left her, is really dead. I must convince myself of it. I must see what God has done with a being that I have loved so much, and perhaps the horror of the sight will cure me of my despair. Will you accompany me, if it won't be troubling you too much?" "What did her sister say about it?" "Nothing. She seemed greatly surprised that a stranger wanted to buy a plot of ground and give Marguerite a new grave, and she immediately signed the authorization that I asked her for." "Believe me, it would be better to wait until you are quite well." "Have no fear; I shall be quite composed. Besides, I should simply go out of my mind if I were not to carry out a resolution which I have set myself to carry out. I swear to you that I shall never be myself again until I have seen Marguerite. It is perhaps the thirst of the fever, a sleepless night's dream, a moment's delirium; but though I were to become a Trappist, like M. de Rance', after having seen, I will see." "I understand," I said to Armand, "and I am at your service. Have you seen Julie Duprat?" "Yes, I saw her the day I returned, for the first time." "Did she give you the papers that Marguerite had left for you?" Armand drew a roll of papers from under his pillow, and immediately put them back. "I know all that is in these papers by heart," he said. "For three weeks I have read them ten times over every day. You shall read them, too, but later on, when I am calmer, and can make you understand all the love and tenderness hidden away in this confession. For the moment I want you to do me a service." "What is it?" "Your cab is below?" "Yes. "Well, will you take my passport and ask if there are any letters for me at the poste restante? My father and sister must have written to me at Paris, and I went away in such haste that I did not go and see before leaving. When you come back we will go together to the inspector of police, and arrange for to-morrow's ceremony." Armand handed me his passport, and I went to Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau. There were two letters addressed to Duval. I took them and returned. When I re-entered the room Armand was dressed and ready to go out. "Thanks," he said, taking the letters. "Yes," he added, after glancing at the addresses, "they are from my father and sister. They must have been quite at a loss to understand my silence." He opened the letters, guessed at rather than read them, for each was of four pages; and a moment after folded them up. "Come," he said, "I will answer tomorrow." We went to the police station, and Armand handed in the permission signed by Marguerite's sister. He received in return a letter to the keeper of the cemetery, and it was settled that the disinterment was to take place next day, at ten o'clock, that I should call for him an hour before, and that we should go to the cemetery together. I confess that I was curious to be present, and I did not sleep all night. Judging from the thoughts which filled my brain, it must have been a long night for Armand. When I entered his room at nine on the following morning he was frightfully pale, but seemed calm. He smiled and held out his hand. His candles were burned out; and before leaving he took a very heavy letter addressed to his father, and no doubt containing an account of that night's impressions. Half an hour later we were at Montmartre. The police inspector was there already. We walked slowly in the direction of Marguerite's grave. The inspector went in front; Armand and I followed a few steps behind. From time to time I felt my companion's arm tremble convulsively, as if he shivered from head to feet. I looked at him. He understood the look, and smiled at me; we had not exchanged a word since leaving the house. Just before we reached the grave, Armand stopped to wipe his face, which was covered with great drops of sweat. I took advantage of the pause to draw in a long breath, for I, too, felt as if I had a weight on my chest. What is the origin of that mournful pleasure which we find in sights of this kind? When we reached the grave the gardener had removed all the flower-pots, the iron railing had been taken away, and two men were turning up the soil. Armand leaned against a tree and watched. All his life seemed to pass before his eyes. Suddenly one of the two pickaxes struck against a stone. At the sound Armand recoiled, as at an electric shock, and seized my hand with such force as to give me pain. One of the grave-diggers took a shovel and began emptying out the earth; then, when only the stones covering the coffin were left, he threw them out one by one. I scrutinized Armand, for every moment I was afraid lest the emotions which he was visibly repressing should prove too much for him; but he still watched, his eyes fixed and wide open, like the eyes of a madman, and a slight trembling of the cheeks and lips were the only signs of the violent nervous crisis under which he was suffering. As for me, all I can say is that I regretted having come. When the coffin was uncovered the inspector said to the grave-digger: "Open it." They obeyed, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The coffin was of oak, and they began to unscrew the lid. The humidity of the earth had rusted the screws, and it was not without some difficulty that the coffin was opened. A painful odour arose in spite of the aromatic plants with which it was covered. "O my God, my God!" murmured Armand, and turned paler than before. Even the grave-digger drew back. A great white shroud covered the corpse, closely outlining some of its contours. This shroud was almost completely eaten away at one end, and left one of the feet visible. I was nearly fainting, and at the moment of writing these lines I see the whole scene over again in all its imposing reality. "Quick," said the inspector. Thereupon one of the men put out his hand, began to unsew the shroud, and taking hold of it by one end suddenly laid bare the face of Marguerite. It was terrible to see, it is horrible to relate. The eyes were nothing but two holes, the lips had disappeared, vanished, and the white teeth were tightly set. The black hair, long and dry, was pressed tightly about the forehead, and half veiled the green hollows of the cheeks; and yet I recognised in this face the joyous white and rose face that I had seen so often. Armand, unable to turn away his eyes, had put the handkerchief to his mouth and bit it. For my part, it was as if a circle of iron tightened about my head, a veil covered my eyes, a rumbling filled my ears, and all I could do was to unstop a smelling bottle which I happened to have with me, and to draw in long breaths of it. Through this bewilderment I heard the inspector say to Duval, "Do you identify?" "Yes," replied the young man in a dull voice. "Then fasten it up and take it away," said the inspector. The grave-diggers put back the shroud over the face of the corpse, fastened up the coffin, took hold of each end of it, and began to carry it toward the place where they had been told to take it. Armand did not move. His eyes were fixed upon the empty grave; he was as white as the corpse which we had just seen. He looked as if he had been turned to stone. I saw what was coming as soon as the pain caused by the spectacle should have abated and thus ceased to sustain him. I went up to the inspector. "Is this gentleman's presence still necessary?" I said, pointing to Armand. "No," he replied, "and I should advise you to take him away. He looks ill." "Come," I said to Armand, taking him by the arm. "What?" he said, looking at me as if he did not recognise me. "It is all over," I added. "You must come, my friend; you are quite white; you are cold. These emotions will be too much for you." "You are right. Let us go," he answered mechanically, but without moving a step. I took him by the arm and led him along. He let himself be guided like a child, only from time to time murmuring, "Did you see her eyes?" and he turned as if the vision had recalled her. Nevertheless, his steps became more irregular; he seemed to walk by a series of jerks; his teeth chattered; his hands were cold; a violent agitation ran through his body. I spoke to him; he did not answer. He was just able to let himself be led along. A cab was waiting at the gate. It was only just in time. Scarcely had he seated himself, when the shivering became more violent, and he had an actual attack of nerves, in the midst of which his fear of frightening me made him press my hand and whisper: "It is nothing, nothing. I want to weep." His chest laboured, his eyes were injected with blood, but no tears came. I made him smell the salts which I had with me, and when we reached his house only the shivering remained. With the help of his servant I put him to bed, lit a big fire in his room, and hurried off to my doctor, to whom I told all that had happened. He hastened with me. Armand was flushed and delirious; he stammered out disconnected words, in which only the name of Marguerite could be distinctly heard. "Well?" I said to the doctor when he had examined the patient. "Well, he has neither more nor less than brain fever, and very lucky it is for him, for I firmly believe (God forgive me!) that he would have gone out of his mind. Fortunately, the physical malady will kill the mental one, and in a month's time he will be free from the one and perhaps from the other." Chapter 7 Illnesses like Armand's have one fortunate thing about them: they either kill outright or are very soon overcome. A fortnight after the events which I have just related Armand was convalescent, and we had already become great friends. During the whole course of his illness I had hardly left his side. Spring was profuse in its flowers, its leaves, its birds, its songs; and my friend's window opened gaily upon his garden, from which a reviving breath of health seemed to come to him. The doctor had allowed him to get up, and we often sat talking at the open window, at the hour when the sun is at its height, from twelve to two. I was careful not to refer to Marguerite, fearing lest the name should awaken sad recollections hidden under the apparent calm of the invalid; but Armand, on the contrary, seemed to delight in speaking of her, not as formerly, with tears in his eyes, but with a sweet smile which reassured me as to the state of his mind. I had noticed that ever since his last visit to the cemetery, and the sight which had brought on so violent a crisis, sorrow seemed to have been overcome by sickness, and Marguerite's death no longer appeared to him under its former aspect. A kind of consolation had sprung from the certainty of which he was now fully persuaded, and in order to banish the sombre picture which often presented itself to him, he returned upon the happy recollections of his liaison with Marguerite, and seemed resolved to think of nothing else. The body was too much weakened by the attack of fever, and even by the process of its cure, to permit him any violent emotions, and the universal joy of spring which wrapped him round carried his thoughts instinctively to images of joy. He had always obstinately refused to tell his family of the danger which he had been in, and when he was well again his father did not even know that he had been ill. One evening we had sat at the window later than usual; the weather had been superb, and the sun sank to sleep in a twilight dazzling with gold and azure. Though we were in Paris, the verdure which surrounded us seemed to shut us off from the world, and our conversation was only now and again disturbed by the sound of a passing vehicle. "It was about this time of the year, on the evening of a day like this, that I first met Marguerite," said Armand to me, as if he were listening to his own thoughts rather than to what I was saying. I did not answer. Then turning toward me, he said: "I must tell you the whole story; you will make a book out of it; no one will believe it, but it will perhaps be interesting to do." "You will tell me all about it later on, my friend," I said to him; "you are not strong enough yet." "It is a warm evening, I have eaten my ration of chicken," he said to me, smiling; "I have no fever, we have nothing to do, I will tell it to you now." "Since you really wish it, I will listen." This is what he told me, and I have scarcely changed a word of the touching story. Yes (Armand went on, letting his head sink back on the chair), yes, it was just such an evening as this. I had spent the day in the country with one of my friends, Gaston R—. We returned to Paris in the evening, and not knowing what to do we went to the Varietes. We went out during one of the entr'actes, and a tall woman passed us in the corridor, to whom my friend bowed. "Whom are you bowing to?" I asked. "Marguerite Gautier," he said. "She seems much changed, for I did not recognise her," I said, with an emotion that you will soon understand. "She has been ill; the poor girl won't last long." I remember the words as if they had been spoken to me yesterday. I must tell you, my friend, that for two years the sight of this girl had made a strange impression on me whenever I came across her. Without knowing why, I turned pale and my heart beat violently. I have a friend who studies the occult sciences, and he would call what I experienced "the affinity of fluids"; as for me, I only know that I was fated to fall in love with Marguerite, and that I foresaw it. It is certainly the fact that she made a very definite impression upon me, that many of my friends had noticed it and that they had been much amused when they saw who it was that made this impression upon me. The first time I ever saw her was in the Place de la Bourse, outside Susse's; an open carriage was stationed there, and a woman dressed in white got down from it. A murmur of admiration greeted her as she entered the shop. As for me, I was rivetted to the spot from the moment she went in till the moment when she came out again. I could see her through the shop windows selecting what she had come to buy. I might have gone in, but I dared not. I did not know who she was, and I was afraid lest she should guess why I had come in and be offended. Nevertheless, I did not think I should ever see her again. She was elegantly dressed; she wore a muslin dress with many flounces, an Indian shawl embroidered at the corners with gold and silk flowers, a straw hat, a single bracelet, and a heavy gold chain, such as was just then beginning to be the fashion. She returned to her carriage and drove away. One of the shopmen stood at the door looking after his elegant customer's carriage. I went up to him and asked him what was the lady's name. "Mademoiselle Marguerite Gautier," he replied. I dared not ask him for her address, and went on my way. The recollection of this vision, for it was really a vision, would not leave my mind like so many visions I had seen, and I looked everywhere for this royally beautiful woman in white. A few days later there was a great performance at the Opera Comique. The first person I saw in one of the boxes was Marguerite Gautier. The young man whom I was with recognised her immediately, for he said to me, mentioning her name: "Look at that pretty girl." At that moment Marguerite turned her opera-glass in our direction and, seeing my friend, smiled and beckoned to him to come to her. "I will go and say 'How do you do?' to her," he said, "and will be back in a moment." "I could not help saying 'Happy man!'" "Why?" "To go and see that woman." "Are you in love with her?" "No," I said, flushing, for I really did not know what to say; "but I should very much like to know her." "Come with me. I will introduce you." "Ask her if you may." "Really, there is no need to be particular with her; come." What he said troubled me. I feared to discover that Marguerite was not worthy of the sentiment which I felt for her. In a book of Alphonse Karr entitles Am Rauchen, there is a man who one evening follows a very elegant woman, with whom he had fallen in love with at first sight on account of her beauty. Only to kiss her hand he felt that he had the strength to undertake anything, the will to conquer anything, the courage to achieve anything. He scarcely dares glance at the trim ankle which she shows as she holds her dress out of the mud. While he is dreaming of all that he would do to possess this woman, she stops at the corner of the street and asks if he will come home with her. He turns his head, crosses the street, and goes sadly back to his own house. I recalled the story, and, having longed to suffer for this woman, I was afraid that she would accept me too promptly and give me at once what I fain would have purchased by long waiting or some great sacrifice. We men are built like that, and it is very fortunate that the imagination lends so much poetry to the senses, and that the desires of the body make thus such concession to the dreams of the soul. If any one had said to me, You shall have this woman to-night and be killed tomorrow, I would have accepted. If any one had said to me, you can be her lover for ten pounds, I would have refused. I would have cried like a child who sees the castle he has been dreaming about vanish away as he awakens from sleep. All the same, I wished to know her; it was my only means of making up my mind about her. I therefore said to my friend that I insisted on having her permission to be introduced to her, and I wandered to and fro in the corridors, saying to myself that in a moment's time she was going to see me, and that I should not know which way to look. I tried (sublime childishness of love!) to string together the words I should say to her. A moment after my friend returned. "She is expecting us," he said. "Is she alone?" I asked. "With another woman." "There are no men?" "No." "Come, then." My friend went toward the door of the theatre. "That is not the way," I said. "We must go and get some sweets. She asked me for some." We went into a confectioner's in the passage de l'Opera. I would have bought the whole shop, and I was looking about to see what sweets to choose, when my friend asked for a pound of raisins glaces. "Do you know if she likes them?" "She eats no other kind of sweets; everybody knows it. "Ah," he went on when we had left the shop, "do you know what kind of woman it is that I am going to introduce you to? Don't imagine it is a duchess. It is simply a kept woman, very much kept, my dear fellow; don't be shy, say anything that comes into your head." "Yes, yes," I stammered, and I followed him, saying to myself that I should soon cure myself of my passion. When I entered the box Marguerite was in fits of laughter. I would rather that she had been sad. My friend introduced me; Marguerite gave me a little nod, and said, "And my sweets?" "Here they are." She looked at me as she took them. I dropped my eyes and blushed. She leaned across to her neighbour and said something in her ear, at which both laughed. Evidently I was the cause of their mirth, and my embarrassment increased. At that time I had as mistress a very affectionate and sentimental little person, whose sentiment and whose melancholy letters amused me greatly. I realized the pain I must have given her by what I now experienced, and for five minutes I loved her as no woman was ever loved. Marguerite ate her raisins glaces without taking any more notice of me. The friend who had introduced me did not wish to let me remain in so ridiculous a position. "Marguerite," he said, "you must not be surprised if M. Duval says nothing: you overwhelm him to such a degree that he can not find a word to say." "I should say, on the contrary, that he has only come with you because it would have bored you to come here by yourself." "If that were true," I said, "I should not have begged Ernest to ask your permission to introduce me." "Perhaps that was only in order to put off the fatal moment." However little one may have known women like Marguerite, one can not but know the delight they take in pretending to be witty and in teasing the people whom they meet for the first time. It is no doubt a return for the humiliations which they often have to submit to on the part of those whom they see every day. To answer them properly, one requires a certain knack, and I had not had the opportunity of acquiring it; besides, the idea that I had formed of Marguerite accentuated the effects of her mockery. Nothing that dame from her was indifferent to me. I rose to my feet, saying in an altered voice, which I could not entirely control: "If that is what you think of me, madame, I have only to ask your pardon for my indiscretion, and to take leave of you with the assurance that it shall not occur again." Thereupon I bowed and quitted the box. I had scarcely closed the door when I heard a third peal of laughter. It would not have been well for anybody who had elbowed me at that moment. I returned to my seat. The signal for raising the curtain was given. Ernest came back to his place beside me. "What a way you behaved!" he said, as he sat down. "They will think you are mad." "What did Marguerite say after I had gone?" "She laughed, and said she had never seen any one so funny. But don't look upon it as a lost chance; only do not do these women the honour of taking them seriously. They do not know what politeness and ceremony are. It is as if you were to offer perfumes to dogs—they would think it smelled bad, and go and roll in the gutter." "After all, what does it matter to me?" I said, affecting to speak in a nonchalant way. "I shall never see this woman again, and if I liked her before meeting her, it is quite different now that I know her." "Bah! I don't despair of seeing you one day at the back of her box, and of bearing that you are ruining yourself for her. However, you are right, she hasn't been well brought up; but she would be a charming mistress to have." Happily, the curtain rose and my friend was silent. I could not possibly tell you what they were acting. All that I remember is that from time to time I raised my eyes to the box I had quitted so abruptly, and that the faces of fresh visitors succeeded one another all the time. I was far from having given up thinking about Marguerite. Another feeling had taken possession of me. It seemed to me that I had her insult and my absurdity to wipe out; I said to myself that if I spent every penny I had, I would win her and win my right to the place I had abandoned so quickly. Before the performance was over Marguerite and her friend left the box. I rose from my seat. "Are you going?" said Ernest. "Yes." "Why?" At that moment he saw that the box was empty. "Go, go," he said, "and good luck, or rather better luck." I went out. I heard the rustle of dresses, the sound of voices, on the staircase. I stood aside, and, without being seen, saw the two women pass me, accompanied by two young men. At the entrance to the theatre they were met by a footman. "Tell the coachman to wait at the door of the Cafe' Anglais," said Marguerite. "We will walk there." A few minutes afterward I saw Marguerite from the street at a window of one of the large rooms of the restaurant, pulling the camellias of her bouquet to pieces, one by one. One of the two men was leaning over her shoulder and whispering in her ear. I took up my position at the Maison-d'or, in one of the first-floor rooms, and did not lose sight of the window for an instant. At one in the morning Marguerite got into her carriage with her three friends. I took a cab and followed them. The carriage stopped at No. 9, Rue d'Antin. Marguerite got out and went in alone. It was no doubt a mere chance, but the chance filled me with delight. From that time forward, I often met Marguerite at the theatre or in the Champs-Elysees. Always there was the same gaiety in her, the same emotion in me. At last a fortnight passed without my meeting her. I met Gaston and asked after her. "Poor girl, she is very ill," he answered. "What is the matter?" "She is consumptive, and the sort of life she leads isn't exactly the thing to cure her. She has taken to her bed; she is dying." The heart is a strange thing; I was almost glad at hearing it. Every day I went to ask after her, without leaving my name or my card. I heard she was convalescent and had gone to Bagneres. Time went by, the impression, if not the memory, faded gradually from my mind. I travelled; love affairs, habits, work, took the place of other thoughts, and when I recalled this adventure I looked upon it as one of those passions which one has when one is very young, and laughs at soon afterward. For the rest, it was no credit to me to have got the better of this recollection, for I had completely lost sight of Marguerite, and, as I told you, when she passed me in the corridor of the Varietes, I did not recognise her. She was veiled, it is true; but, veiled though she might have been two years earlier, I should not have needed to see her in order to recognise her: I should have known her intuitively. All the same, my heart began to beat when I knew that it was she; and the two years that had passed since I saw her, and what had seemed to be the results of that separation, vanished in smoke at the mere touch of her dress. Chapter 8 However (continued Armand after a pause), while I knew myself to be still in love with her, I felt more sure of myself, and part of my desire to speak to Marguerite again was a wish to make her see that I was stronger than she. How many ways does the heart take, how many reasons does it invent for itself, in order to arrive at what it wants! I could not remain in the corridor, and I returned to my place in the stalls, looking hastily around to see what box she was in. She was in a ground-floor box, quite alone. She had changed, as I have told you, and no longer wore an indifferent smile on her lips. She had suffered; she was still suffering. Though it was April, she was still wearing a winter costume, all wrapped up in furs. I gazed at her so fixedly that my eyes attracted hers. She looked at me for a few seconds, put up her opera-glass to see me better, and seemed to think she recognised me, without being quite sure who I was, for when she put down her glasses, a smile, that charming, feminine salutation, flitted across her lips, as if to answer the bow which she seemed to expect; but I did not respond, so as to have an advantage over her, as if I had forgotten, while she remembered. Supposing herself mistaken, she looked away. The curtain went up. I have often seen Marguerite at the theatre. I never saw her pay the slightest attention to what was being acted. As for me, the performance interested me equally little, and I paid no attention to anything but her, though doing my utmost to keep her from noticing it. Presently I saw her glancing across at the person who was in the opposite box; on looking, I saw a woman with whom I was quite familiar. She had once been a kept woman, and had tried to go on the stage, had failed, and, relying on her acquaintance with fashionable people in Paris, had gone into business and taken a milliner's shop. I saw in her a means of meeting with Marguerite, and profited by a moment in which she looked my way to wave my hand to her. As I expected, she beckoned to me to come to her box. Prudence Duvernoy (that was the milliner's auspicious name) was one of those fat women of forty with whom one requires very little diplomacy to make them understand what one wants to know, especially when what one wants to know is as simple as what I had to ask of her. I took advantage of a moment when she was smiling across at Marguerite to ask her, "Whom are you looking at?" "Marguerite Gautier." "You know her?" "Yes, I am her milliner, and she is a neighbour of mine." "Do you live in the Rue d'Antin?" "No. 7. The window of her dressing-room looks on to the window of mine." "They say she is a charming girl." "Don't you know her?" "No, but I should like to." "Shall I ask her to come over to our box?" "No, I would rather for you to introduce me to her." "At her own house?" "Yes. "That is more difficult." "Why?" "Because she is under the protection of a jealous old duke." "'Protection' is charming." "Yes, protection," replied Prudence. "Poor old man, he would be greatly embarrassed to offer her anything else." Prudence then told me how Marguerite had made the acquaintance of the duke at Bagneres. "That, then," I continued, "is why she is alone here?" "Precisely." "But who will see her home?" "He will." "He will come for her?" "In a moment." "And you, who is seeing you home?" "No one." "May I offer myself?" "But you are with a friend, are you not?" "May we offer, then?" "Who is your friend?" "A charming fellow, very amusing. He will be delighted to make your acquaintance." "Well, all right; we will go after this piece is over, for I know the last piece." "With pleasure; I will go and tell my friend." "Go, then. Ah," added Prudence, as I was going, "there is the duke just coming into Marguerite's box." I looked at him. A man of about seventy had sat down behind her, and was giving her a bag of sweets, into which she dipped at once, smiling. Then she held it out toward Prudence, with a gesture which seemed to say, "Will you have some?" "No," signalled Prudence. Marguerite drew back the bag, and, turning, began to talk with the duke. It may sound childish to tell you all these details, but everything relating to Marguerite is so fresh in my memory that I can not help recalling them now. I went back to Gaston and told him of the arrangement I had made for him and for me. He agreed, and we left our stalls to go round to Mme. Duvernoy's box. We had scarcely opened the door leading into the stalls when we had to stand aside to allow Marguerite and the duke to pass. I would have given ten years of my life to have been in the old man's place. When they were on the street he handed her into a phaeton, which he drove himself, and they were whirled away by two superb horses. We returned to Prudence's box, and when the play was over we took a cab and drove to 7, Rue d'Antin. At the door, Prudence asked us to come up and see her showrooms, which we had never seen, and of which she seemed very proud. You can imagine how eagerly I accepted. It seemed to me as if I was coming nearer and nearer to Marguerite. I soon turned the conversation in her direction. "The old duke is at your neighbours," I said to Prudence. "Oh, no; she is probably alone." "But she must be dreadfully bored," said Gaston. "We spend most of our evening together, or she calls to me when she comes in. She never goes to bed before two in the morning. She can't sleep before that." "Why?" "Because she suffers in the chest, and is almost always feverish." "Hasn't she any lovers?" I asked. "I never see any one remain after I leave; I don't say no one ever comes when I am gone. Often in the evening I meet there a certain Comte de N., who thinks he is making some headway by calling on her at eleven in the evening, and by sending her jewels to any extent; but she can't stand him. She makes a mistake; he is very rich. It is in vain that I say to her from time to time, 'My dear child, there's the man for you.' She, who generally listens to me, turns her back and replies that he is too stupid. Stupid, indeed, he is; but it would be a position for her, while this old duke might die any day. Old men are egoists; his family are always reproaching him for his affection for Marguerite; there are two reasons why he is likely to leave her nothing. I give her good advice, and she only says it will be plenty of time to take on the count when the duke is dead. It isn't all fun," continued Prudence, "to live like that. I know very well it wouldn't suit me, and I should soon send the old man about his business. He is so dull; he calls her his daughter; looks after her like a child; and is always in the way. I am sure at this very moment one of his servants is prowling about in the street to see who comes out, and especially who goes in." "Ah, poor Marguerite!" said Gaston, sitting down to the piano and playing a waltz. "I hadn't a notion of it, but I did notice she hasn't been looking so gay lately." "Hush," said Prudence, listening. Gaston stopped. "She is calling me, I think." We listened. A voice was calling, "Prudence!" "Come, now, you must go," said Mme. Duvernoy. "Ah, that is your idea of hospitality," said Gaston, laughing; "we won't go till we please." "Why should we go?" "I am going over to Marguerite's." "We will wait here." "You can't." "Then we will go with you." "That still less." "I know Marguerite," said Gaston; "I can very well pay her a call." "But Armand doesn't know her." "I will introduce him." "Impossible." We again heard Marguerite's voice calling to Prudence, who rushed to her dressing-room window. I followed with Gaston as she opened the window. We hid ourselves so as not to be seen from outside. "I have been calling you for ten minutes," said Marguerite from her window, in almost an imperious tone of voice. "What do you want?" "I want you to come over at once." "Why?" "Because the Comte de N. is still here, and he is boring me to death." "I can't now." "What is hindering you?" "There are two young fellows here who won't go." "Tell them that you must go out." "I have told them." "Well, then, leave them in the house. They will soon go when they see you have gone." "They will turn everything upside down." "But what do they want?" "They want to see you." "What are they called?" "You know one, M. Gaston R." "Ah, yes, I know him. And the other?" "M. Armand Duval; and you don't know him." "No, but bring them along. Anything is better than the count. I expect you. Come at once." Marguerite closed her window and Prudence hers. Marguerite, who had remembered my face for a moment, did not remember my name. I would rather have been remembered to my disadvantage than thus forgotten. "I knew," said Gaston, "that she would be delighted to see us." "Delighted isn't the word," replied Prudence, as she put on her hat and shawl. "She will see you in order to get rid of the count. Try to be more agreeable than he is, or (I know Marguerite) she will put it all down to me." We followed Prudence downstairs. I trembled; it seemed to me that this visit was to have a great influence on my life. I was still more agitated than on the evening when I was introduced in the box at the Opera Comique. As we reached the door that you know, my heart beat so violently that I was hardly able to think. We heard the sound of a piano. Prudence rang. The piano was silent. A woman who looked more like a companion than a servant opened the door. We went into the drawing-room, and from that to the boudoir, which was then just as you have seen it since. A young man was leaning against the mantel-piece. Marguerite, seated at the piano, let her fingers wander over the notes, beginning scraps of music without finishing them. The whole scene breathed boredom, the man embarrassed by the consciousness of his nullity, the woman tired of her dismal visitor. At the voice of Prudence, Marguerite rose, and coming toward us with a look of gratitude to Mme. Duvernoy, said: "Come in, and welcome." Chapter 9 "Good-evening, my dear Gaston," said Marguerite to my companion. "I am very glad to see you. Why didn't you come to see me in my box at the Varietes?" "I was afraid it would be indiscreet." "Friends," and Marguerite lingered over the word, as if to intimate to those who were present that in spite of the familiar way in which she greeted him, Gaston was not and never had been anything more than a friend, "friends are always welcome." "Then, will you permit me to introduce M. Armand Duval?" "I had already authorized Prudence to do so." "As far as that goes, madame," I said, bowing, and succeeding in getting more or less intelligible sounds out of my throat, "I have already had the honour of being introduced to you." Marguerite's beautiful eyes seemed to be looking back in memory, but she could not, or seemed not to, remember. "Madame," I continued, "I am grateful to you for having forgotten the occasion of my first introduction, for I was very absurd and must have seemed to you very tiresome. It was at the Opera Comique, two years ago; I was with Ernest de ——." "Ah, I remember," said Marguerite, with a smile. "It was not you who were absurd; it was I who was mischievous, as I still am, but somewhat less. You have forgiven me?" And she held out her hand, which I kissed. "It is true," she went on; "you know I have the bad habit of trying to embarrass people the first time I meet them. It is very stupid. My doctor says it is because I am nervous and always ill; believe my doctor." "But you seem quite well." "Oh! I have been very ill." "I know." "Who told you?" "Every one knew it; I often came to inquire after you, and I was happy to hear of your convalescence." "They never gave me your card." "I did not leave it." "Was it you, then, who called every day while I was ill, and would never leave your name?" "Yes, it was I." "Then you are more than indulgent, you are generous. You, count, wouldn't have done that," said she, turning toward M. de N., after giving me one of those looks in which women sum up their opinion of a man. "I have only known you for two months," replied the count. "And this gentleman only for five minutes. You always say something ridiculous." Women are pitiless toward those whom they do not care for. The count reddened and bit his lips. I was sorry for him, for he seemed, like myself, to be in love, and the bitter frankness of Marguerite must have made him very unhappy, especially in the presence of two strangers. "You were playing the piano when we came in," I said, in order to change the conversation. "Won't you be so good as to treat me as an old acquaintance and go on?" "Oh," said she, flinging herself on the sofa and motioning to us to sit down, "Gaston knows what my music is like. It is all very well when I am alone with the count, but I won't inflict such a punishment on you." "You show me that preference?" said M. de N., with a smile which he tried to render delicately ironical. "Don't reproach me for it. It is the only one." It was fated that the poor man was not to say a single word. He cast a really supplicating glance at Marguerite. "Well, Prudence," she went on, "have you done what I asked you to do?" "Yes. "All right. You will tell me about it later. We must talk over it; don't go before I can speak with you." "We are doubtless intruders," I said, "and now that we, or rather I, have had a second introduction, to blot out the first, it is time for Gaston and me to be going." "Not in the least. I didn't mean that for you. I want you to stay." The count took a very elegant watch out of his pocket and looked at the time. "I must be going to my club," he said. Marguerite did not answer. The count thereupon left his position by the fireplace and going up to her, said: "Adieu, madame." Marguerite rose. "Adieu, my dear count. Are you going already?" "Yes, I fear I am boring you." "You are not boring me to-day more than any other day. When shall I be seeing you?" "When you permit me." "Good-bye, then." It was cruel, you will admit. Fortunately, the count had excellent manners and was very good-tempered. He merely kissed Marguerite's hand, which she held out to him carelessly enough, and, bowing to us, went out. As he crossed the threshold, he cast a glance at Prudence. She shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say: "What do you expect? I have done all I could." "Nanine!" cried Marguerite. "Light M. le Comte to the door." We heard the door open and shut. "At last," cried Marguerite, coming back, "he has gone! That man gets frightfully on my nerves!" "My dear child," said Prudence, "you really treat him too badly, and he is so good and kind to you. Look at this watch on the mantel-piece, that he gave you: it must have cost him at least three thousand francs, I am sure." And Mme. Duvernoy began to turn it over, as it lay on the mantel-piece, looking at it with covetous eyes. "My dear," said Marguerite, sitting down to the piano, "when I put on one side what he gives me and on the other what he says to me, it seems to me that he buys his visits very cheap." "The poor fellow is in love with you." "If I had to listen to everybody who was in love with me, I shouldn't have time for my dinner." And she began to run her fingers over the piano, and then, turning to us, she said: "What will you take? I think I should like a little punch." "And I could eat a little chicken," said Prudence. "Suppose we have supper?" "That's it, let's go and have supper," said Gaston. "No, we will have supper here." She rang, and Nanine appeared. "Send for some supper." "What must I get?" "Whatever you like, but at once, at once." Nanine went out. "That's it," said Marguerite, jumping like a child, "we'll have supper. How tiresome that idiot of a count is!" The more I saw her, the more she enchanted me. She was exquisitely beautiful. Her slenderness was a charm. I was lost in contemplation. What was passing in my mind I should have some difficulty in explaining. I was full of indulgence for her life, full of admiration for her beauty. The proof of disinterestedness that she gave in not accepting a rich and fashionable young man, ready to waste all his money upon her, excused her in my eyes for all her faults in the past. There was a kind of candour in this woman. You could see she was still in the virginity of vice. Her firm walk, her supple figure, her rosy, open nostrils, her large eyes, slightly tinged with blue, indicated one of those ardent natures which shed around them a sort of voluptuous perfume, like Eastern vials, which, close them as tightly as you will, still let some of their perfume escape. Finally, whether it was simple nature or a breath of fever, there passed from time to time in the eyes of this woman a glimmer of desire, giving promise of a very heaven for one whom she should love. But those who had loved Marguerite were not to be counted, nor those whom she had loved. In this girl there was at once the virgin whom a mere nothing had turned into a courtesan, and the courtesan whom a mere nothing would have turned into the most loving and the purest of virgins. Marguerite had still pride and independence, two sentiments which, if they are wounded, can be the equivalent of a sense of shame. I did not speak a word; my soul seemed to have passed into my heart and my heart into my eyes. "So," said she all at once, "it was you who came to inquire after me when I was ill?" "Yes." "Do you know, it was quite splendid of you! How can I thank you for it?" "By allowing me to come and see you from time to time." "As often as you like, from five to six, and from eleven to twelve. Now, Gaston, play the Invitation A la Valse." "Why?" "To please me, first of all, and then because I never can manage to play it myself." "What part do you find difficult?" "The third part, the part in sharps." Gaston rose and went to the piano, and began to play the wonderful melody of Weber, the music of which stood open before him. Marguerite, resting one hand on the piano, followed every note on the music, accompanying it in a low voice, and when Gaston had come to the passage which she had mentioned to him, she sang out, running her fingers along the top of the piano: "Do, re, mi, do, re, fa, mi, re; that is what I can not do. Over again." Gaston began over again, after which Marguerite said: "Now, let me try." She took her place and began to play; but her rebellious fingers always came to grief over one of the notes. "Isn't it incredible," she said, exactly like a child, "that I can not succeed in playing that passage? Would you believe that I sometimes spend two hours of the morning over it? And when I think that that idiot of a count plays it without his music, and beautifully, I really believe it is that that makes me so furious with him." And she began again, always with the same result. "The devil take Weber, music, and pianos!" she cried, throwing the music to the other end of the room. "How can I play eight sharps one after another?" She folded her arms and looked at us, stamping her foot. The blood flew to her cheeks, and her lips half opened in a slight cough. "Come, come," said Prudence, who had taken off her hat and was smoothing her hair before the glass, "you will work yourself into a rage and do yourself harm. Better come and have supper; for my part, I am dying of hunger." Marguerite rang the bell, sat down to the piano again, and began to hum over a very risky song, which she accompanied without difficulty. Gaston knew the song, and they gave a sort of duet. "Don't sing those beastly things," I said to Marguerite, imploringly. "Oh, how proper you are!" she said, smiling and giving me her hand. "It is not for myself, but for you." Marguerite made a gesture as if to say, "Oh, it is long since that I have done with propriety!" At that moment Nanine appeared. "Is supper ready?" asked Marguerite. "Yes, madame, in one moment." "Apropos," said Prudence to me, "you have not looked round; come, and I will show you." As you know, the drawing-room was a marvel. Marguerite went with us for a moment; then she called Gaston and went into the dining-room with him to see if supper was ready. "Ah," said Prudence, catching sight of a little Saxe figure on a side-table, "I never knew you had this little gentleman." "Which?" "A little shepherd holding a bird-cage." "Take it, if you like it." "I won't deprive you of it." "I was going to give it to my maid. I think it hideous; but if you like it, take it." Prudence only saw the present, not the way in which it was given. She put the little figure on one side, and took me into the dressing-room, where she showed me two miniatures hanging side by side, and said: "That is the Comte de G., who was very much in love with Marguerite; it was he who brought her out. Do you know him?" "No. And this one?" I inquired, pointing to the other miniature. "That is the little Vicomte de L. He was obliged to disappear." "Why?" "Because he was all but ruined. That's one, if you like, who loved Marguerite." "And she loved him, too, no doubt?" "She is such a queer girl, one never knows. The night he went away she went to the theatre as usual, and yet she had cried when he said good-bye to her." Just then Nanine appeared, to tell us that supper was served. When we entered the dining-room, Marguerite was leaning against the wall, and Gaston, holding her hands, was speaking to her in a low voice. "You are mad," replied Marguerite. "You know quite well that I don't want you. It is no good at the end of two years to make love to a woman like me. With us, it is at once, or never. Come, gentlemen, supper!" And, slipping away from Gaston, Marguerite made him sit on her right at table, me on her left, then called to Nanine: "Before you sit down, tell them in the kitchen not to open to anybody if there is a ring." This order was given at one o'clock in the morning. We laughed, drank, and ate freely at this supper. In a short while mirth had reached its last limit, and the words that seem funny to a certain class of people, words that degrade the mouth that utters them, were heard from time to time, amidst the applause of Nanine, of Prudence, and of Marguerite. Gaston was thoroughly amused; he was a very good sort of fellow, but somewhat spoiled by the habits of his youth. For a moment I tried to forget myself, to force my heart and my thoughts to become indifferent to the sight before me, and to take my share of that gaiety which seemed like one of the courses of the meal. But little by little I withdrew from the noise; my glass remained full, and I felt almost sad as I saw this beautiful creature of twenty drinking, talking like a porter, and laughing the more loudly the more scandalous was the joke. Nevertheless, this hilarity, this way of talking and drinking, which seemed to me in the others the mere results of bad company or of bad habits, seemed in Marguerite a necessity of forgetting, a fever, a nervous irritability. At every glass of champagne her cheeks would flush with a feverish colour, and a cough, hardly perceptible at the beginning of supper, became at last so violent that she was obliged to lean her head on the back of her chair and hold her chest in her hands every time that she coughed. I suffered at the thought of the injury to so frail a constitution which must come from daily excesses like this. At length, something which I had feared and foreseen happened. Toward the end of supper Marguerite was seized by a more violent fit of coughing than any she had had while I was there. It seemed as if her chest were being torn in two. The poor girl turned crimson, closed her eyes under the pain, and put her napkin to her lips. It was stained with a drop of blood. She rose and ran into her dressing-room. "What is the matter with Marguerite?" asked Gaston. "She has been laughing too much, and she is spitting blood. Oh, it is nothing; it happens to her every day. She will be back in a minute. Leave her alone. She prefers it." I could not stay still; and, to the consternation of Prudence and Nanine, who called to me to come back, I followed Marguerite. Chapter 10 The room to which she had fled was lit only by a single candle. She lay back on a great sofa, her dress undone, holding one hand on her heart, and letting the other hang by her side. On the table was a basin half full of water, and the water was stained with streaks of blood. Very pale, her mouth half open, Marguerite tried to recover breath. Now and again her bosom was raised by a long sigh, which seemed to relieve her a little, and for a few seconds she would seem to be quite comfortable. I went up to her; she made no movement, and I sat down and took the hand which was lying on the sofa. "Ah! it is you," she said, with a smile. I must have looked greatly agitated, for she added: "Are you unwell, too?" "No, but you: do you still suffer?" "Very little;" and she wiped off with her handkerchief the tears which the coughing had brought to her eyes; "I am used to it now." "You are killing yourself, madame," I said to her in a moved voice. "I wish I were a friend, a relation of yours, that I might keep you from doing yourself harm like this." "Ah! it is really not worth your while to alarm yourself," she replied in a somewhat bitter tone; "see how much notice the others take of me! They know too well that there is nothing to be done." Thereupon she got up, and, taking the candle, put it on the mantel-piece and looked at herself in the glass. "How pale I am!" she said, as she fastened her dress and passed her fingers over her loosened hair. "Come, let us go back to supper. Are you coming?" I sat still and did not move. She saw how deeply I had been affected by the whole scene, and, coming up to me, held out her hand, saying: "Come now, let us go." I took her hand, raised it to my lips, and in spite of myself two tears fell upon it. "Why, what a child you are!" she said, sitting down by my side again. "You are crying! What is the matter?" "I must seem very silly to you, but I am frightfully troubled by what I have just seen." "You are very good! What would you have of me? I can not sleep. I must amuse myself a little. And then, girls like me, what does it matter, one more or less? The doctors tell me that the blood I spit up comes from my throat; I pretend to believe them; it is all I can do for them." "Listen, Marguerite," I said, unable to contain myself any longer; "I do not know what influence you are going to have over my life, but at this present moment there is no one, not even my sister, in whom I feel the interest which I feel in you. It has been just the same ever since I saw you. Well, for Heaven's sake, take care of yourself, and do not live as you are living now." "If I took care of myself I should die. All that supports me is the feverish life I lead. Then, as for taking care of oneself, that is all very well for women with families and friends; as for us, from the moment we can no longer serve the vanity or the pleasure of our lovers, they leave us, and long nights follow long days. I know it. I was in bed for two months, and after three weeks no one came to see me." "It is true I am nothing to you," I went on, "but if you will let me, I will look after you like a brother, I will never leave your side, and I will cure you. Then, when you are strong again, you can go back to the life you are leading, if you choose; but I am sure you will come to prefer a quiet life, which will make you happier and keep your beauty unspoiled." "You think like that to-night because the wine has made you sad, but you would never have the patience that you pretend to." "Permit me to say, Marguerite, that you were ill for two months, and that for two months I came to ask after you every day." "It is true, but why did you not come up?" "Because I did not know you then." "Need you have been so particular with a girl like me?" "One must always be particular with a woman; it is what I feel, at least." "So you would look after me?" "Yes." "You would stay by me all day?" "Yes. "And even all night?" "As long as I did not weary you." "And what do you call that?" "Devotion." "And what does this devotion come from?" "The irresistible sympathy which I have for you." "So you are in love with me? Say it straight out, it is much more simple." "It is possible; but if I am to say it to you one day, it is not to-day." "You will do better never to say it." "Why?" "Because only one of two things can come of it." "What?" "Either I shall not accept: then you will have a grudge against me; or I shall accept: then you will have a sorry mistress; a woman who is nervous, ill, sad, or gay with a gaiety sadder than grief, a woman who spits blood and spends a hundred thousand francs a year. That is all very well for a rich old man like the duke, but it is very bad for a young man like you, and the proof of it is that all the young lovers I have had have very soon left me." I did not answer; I listened. This frankness, which was almost a kind of confession, the sad life, of which I caught some glimpse through the golden veil which covered it, and whose reality the poor girl sought to escape in dissipation, drink, and wakefulness, impressed me so deeply that I could not utter a single word. "Come," continued Marguerite, "we are talking mere childishness. Give me your arm and let us go back to the dining-room. They won't know what we mean by our absence." "Go in, if you like, but allow me to stay here." "Why?" "Because your mirth hurts me." "Well, I will be sad." "Marguerite, let me say to you something which you have no doubt often heard, so often that the habit of hearing it has made you believe it no longer, but which is none the less real, and which I will never repeat." "And that is...?" she said, with the smile of a young mother listening to some foolish notion of her child. "It is this, that ever since I have seen you, I know not why, you have taken a place in my life; that, if I drive the thought of you out of my mind, it always comes back; that when I met you to-day, after not having seen you for two years, you made a deeper impression on my heart and mind than ever; that, now that you have let me come to see you, now that I know you, now that I know all that is strange in you, you have become a necessity of my life, and you will drive me mad, not only if you will not love me, but if you will not let me love you." "But, foolish creature that you are, I shall say to you, like Mme. D., 'You must be very rich, then!' Why, you don't know that I spend six or seven thousand francs a month, and that I could not live without it; you don't know, my poor friend, that I should ruin you in no time, and that your family would cast you off if you were to live with a woman like me. Let us be friends, good friends, but no more. Come and see me, we will laugh and talk, but don't exaggerate what I am worth, for I am worth very little. You have a good heart, you want some one to love you, you are too young and too sensitive to live in a world like mine. Take a married woman. You see, I speak to you frankly, like a friend." "But what the devil are you doing there?" cried Prudence, who had come in without our bearing her, and who now stood just inside the door, with her hair half coming down and her dress undone. I recognised the hand of Gaston. "We are talking sense," said Marguerite; "leave us alone; we will be back soon." "Good, good! Talk, my children," said Prudence, going out and closing the door behind her, as if to further emphasize the tone in which she had said these words. "Well, it is agreed," continued Marguerite, when we were alone, "you won't fall in love with me?" "I will go away." "So much as that?" I had gone too far to draw back; and I was really carried away. This mingling of gaiety, sadness, candour, prostitution, her very malady, which no doubt developed in her a sensitiveness to impressions, as well as an irritability of nerves, all this made it clear to me that if from the very beginning I did not completely dominate her light and forgetful nature, she was lost to me. "Come, now, do you seriously mean what you say?" she said. "Seriously." "But why didn't you say it to me sooner?" "When could I have said it?" "The day after you had been introduced to me at the Opera Comique." "I thought you would have received me very badly if I had come to see you." "Why?" "Because I had behaved so stupidly." "That's true. And yet you were already in love with me." "Yes." "And that didn't hinder you from going to bed and sleeping quite comfortably. One knows what that sort of love means." "There you are mistaken. Do you know what I did that evening, after the Opera Comique?" "No." "I waited for you at the door of the Cafe Anglais. I followed the carriage in which you and your three friends were, and when I saw you were the only one to get down, and that you went in alone, I was very happy." Marguerite began to laugh. "What are you laughing at?" "Nothing." "Tell me, I beg of you, or I shall think you are still laughing at me." "You won't be cross?" "What right have I to be cross?" "Well, there was a sufficient reason why I went in alone." "What?" "Some one was waiting for me here." If she had thrust a knife into me she would not have hurt me more. I rose, and holding out my hand, "Goodbye," said I. "I knew you would be cross," she said; "men are frantic to know what is certain to give them pain." "But I assure you," I added coldly, as if wishing to prove how completely I was cured of my passion, "I assure you that I am not cross. It was quite natural that some one should be waiting for you, just as it is quite natural that I should go from here at three in the morning." "Have you, too, some one waiting for you?" "No, but I must go." "Good-bye, then." "You send me away?" "Not the least in the world." "Why are you so unkind to me?" "How have I been unkind to you?" "In telling me that some one was waiting for you." "I could not help laughing at the idea that you had been so happy to see me come in alone when there was such a good reason for it." "One finds pleasure in childish enough things, and it is too bad to destroy such a pleasure when, by simply leaving it alone, one can make somebody so happy." "But what do you think I am? I am neither maid nor duchess. I didn't know you till to-day, and I am not responsible to you for my actions. Supposing one day I should become your mistress, you are bound to know that I have had other lovers besides you. If you make scenes of jealousy like this before, what will it be after, if that after should ever exist? I never met any one like you." "That is because no one has ever loved you as I love you." "Frankly, then, you really love me?" "As much as it is possible to love, I think." "And that has lasted since—?" "Since the day I saw you go into Susse's, three years ago. "Do you know, that is tremendously fine? Well, what am to do in return?" "Love me a little," I said, my heart beating so that I could hardly speak; for, in spite of the half-mocking smiles with which she had accompanied the whole conversation, it seemed to me that Marguerite began to share my agitation, and that the hour so long awaited was drawing near. "Well, but the duke?" "What duke?" "My jealous old duke." "He will know nothing." "And if he should?" "He would forgive you." "Ah, no, he would leave me, and what would become of me?" "You risk that for some one else." "How do you know?" "By the order you gave not to admit any one to-night." "It is true; but that is a serious friend." "For whom you care nothing, as you have shut your door against him at such an hour." "It is not for you to reproach me, since it was in order to receive you, you and your friend." Little by little I had drawn nearer to Marguerite. I had put my arms about her waist, and I felt her supple body weigh lightly on my clasped hands. "If you knew how much I love you!" I said in a low voice. "Really true?" "I swear it." "Well, if you will promise to do everything I tell you, without a word, without an opinion, without a question, perhaps I will say yes." "I will do everything that you wish!" "But I forewarn you I must be free to do as I please, without giving you the slightest details what I do. I have long wished for a young lover, who should be young and not self-willed, loving without distrust, loved without claiming the right to it. I have never found one. Men, instead of being satisfied in obtaining for a long time what they scarcely hoped to obtain once, exact from their mistresses a full account of the present, the past, and even the future. As they get accustomed to her, they want to rule her, and the more one gives them the more exacting they become. If I decide now on taking a new lover, he must have three very rare qualities: he must be confiding, submissive, and discreet." "Well, I will be all that you wish." "We shall see." "When shall we see?" "Later on." "Why?" "Because," said Marguerite, releasing herself from my arms, and, taking from a great bunch of red camellias a single camellia, she placed it in my buttonhole, "because one can not always carry out agreements the day they are signed." "And when shall I see you again?" I said, clasping her in my arms. "When this camellia changes colour." "When will it change colour?" "To-morrow night between eleven and twelve. Are you satisfied?" "Need you ask me?" "Not a word of this either to your friend or to Prudence, or to anybody whatever." "I promise." "Now, kiss me, and we will go back to the dining-room." She held up her lips to me, smoothed her hair again, and we went out of the room, she singing, and I almost beside myself. In the next room she stopped for a moment and said to me in a low voice: "It must seem strange to you that I am ready to take you at a moment's notice. Shall I tell you why? It is," she continued, taking my hand and placing it against her heart so that I could feel how rapidly and violently it palpitated; "it is because I shall not live as long as others, and I have promised myself to live more quickly." "Don't speak to me like that, I entreat you." "Oh, make yourself easy," she continued, laughing; "however short a time I have to live, I shall live longer than you will love me!" And she went singing into the dining-room. "Where is Nanine?" she said, seeing Gaston and Prudence alone. "She is asleep in your room, waiting till you are ready to go to bed," replied Prudence. "Poor thing, I am killing her! And now gentlemen, it is time to go." Ten minutes after, Gaston and I left the house. Marguerite shook hands with me and said good-bye. Prudence remained behind. "Well," said Gaston, when we were in the street, "what do you think of Marguerite?" "She is an angel, and I am madly in love with her." "So I guessed; did you tell her so?" "Yes." "And did she promise to believe you?" "No." "She is not like Prudence." "Did she promise to?" "Better still, my dear fellow. You wouldn't think it; but she is still not half bad, poor old Duvernoy!" Chapter 11 Chapter 11 At this point Armand stopped. "Would you close the window for me?" he said. "I am beginning to feel cold. Meanwhile, I will get into bed." I closed the window. Armand, who was still very weak, took off his dressing-gown and lay down in bed, resting his head for a few moments on the pillow, like a man who is tired by much talking or disturbed by painful memories. "Perhaps you have been talking too much," I said to him. "Would you rather for me to go and leave you to sleep? You can tell me the rest of the story another day." "Are you tired of listening to it?" "Quite the contrary." "Then I will go on. If you left me alone, I should not sleep." When I returned home (he continued, without needing to pause and recollect himself, so fresh were all the details in his mind), I did not go to bed, but began to reflect over the day's adventure. The meeting, the introduction, the promise of Marguerite, had followed one another so rapidly, and so unexpectedly, that there were moments when it seemed to me I had been dreaming. Nevertheless, it was not the first time that a girl like Marguerite had promised herself to a man on the morrow of the day on which he had asked for the promise. Though, indeed, I made this reflection, the first impression produced on me by my future mistress was so strong that it still persisted. I refused obstinately to see in her a woman like other women, and, with the vanity so common to all men, I was ready to believe that she could not but share the attraction which drew me to her. Yet, I had before me plenty of instances to the contrary, and I had often heard that the affection of Marguerite was a thing to be had more or less dear, according to the season. But, on the other hand, how was I to reconcile this reputation with her constant refusal of the young count whom we had found at her house? You may say that he was unattractive to her, and that, as she was splendidly kept by the duke, she would be more likely to choose a man who was attractive to her, if she were to take another lover. If so, why did she not choose Gaston, who was rich, witty, and charming, and why did she care for me, whom she had thought so ridiculous the first time she had seen me? It is true that there are events of a moment which tell more than the courtship of a year. Of those who were at the supper, I was the only one who had been concerned at her leaving the table. I had followed her, I had been so affected as to be unable to hide it from her, I had wept as I kissed her hand. This circumstance, added to my daily visits during the two months of her illness, might have shown her that I was somewhat different from the other men she knew, and perhaps she had said to herself that for a love which could thus manifest itself she might well do what she had done so often that it had no more consequence for her. All these suppositions, as you may see, were improbable enough; but whatever might have been the reason of her consent, one thing was certain, she had consented. Now, I was in love with Marguerite. I had nothing more to ask of her. Nevertheless, though she was only a kept woman, I had so anticipated for myself, perhaps to poetize it a little, a hopeless love, that the nearer the moment approached when I should have nothing more to hope, the more I doubted. I did not close my eyes all night. I scarcely knew myself. I was half demented. Now, I seemed to myself not handsome or rich or elegant enough to possess such a woman, now I was filled with vanity at the thought of it; then I began to fear lest Marguerite had no more than a few days' caprice for me, and I said to myself that since we should soon have to part, it would be better not to keep her appointment, but to write and tell her my fears and leave her. From that I went on to unlimited hope, unbounded confidence. I dreamed incredible dreams of the future; I said to myself that she should owe to me her moral and physical recovery, that I should spend my whole life with her, and that her love should make me happier than all the maidenly loves in the world. But I can not repeat to you the thousand thoughts that rose from my heart to my head, and that only faded away with the sleep that came to me at daybreak. When I awoke it was two o'clock. The weather was superb. I don't think life ever seemed to me so beautiful and so full of possibilities. The memories of the night before came to me without shadow or hindrance, escorted gaily by the hopes of the night to come. From time to time my heart leaped with love and joy in my breast. A sweet fever thrilled me. I thought no more of the reasons which had filled my mind before I slept. I saw only the result, I thought only of the hour when I was to see Marguerite again. It was impossible to stay indoors. My room seemed too small to contain my happiness. I needed the whole of nature to unbosom myself. I went out. Passing by the Rue d'Antin, I saw Marguerite's coupe' waiting for her at the door. I went toward the Champs-Elysees. I loved all the people whom I met. Love gives one a kind of goodness. After I had been walking for an hour from the Marly horses to the Rond-Point, I saw Marguerite's carriage in the distance; I divined rather than recognised it. As it was turning the corner of the Champs-Elysees it stopped, and a tall young man left a group of people with whom he was talking and came up to her. They talked for a few moments; the young man returned to his friends, the horses set out again, and as I came near the group I recognised the one who had spoken to Marguerite as the Comte de G., whose portrait I had seen and whom Prudence had indicated to me as the man to whom Marguerite owed her position. It was to him that she had closed her doors the night before; I imagined that she had stopped her carriage in order to explain to him why she had done so, and I hoped that at the same time she had found some new pretext for not receiving him on the following night. How I spent the rest of the day I do not know; I walked, smoked, talked, but what I said, whom I met, I had utterly forgotten by ten o'clock in the evening. All I remember is that when I returned home, I spent three hours over my toilet, and I looked at my watch and my clock a hundred times, which unfortunately both pointed to the same hour. When it struck half past ten, I said to myself that it was time to go. I lived at that time in the Rue de Provence; I followed the Rue du Mont-Blanc, crossed the Boulevard, went up the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the Rue de Port-Mahon, and the Rue d'Antin. I looked up at Marguerite's windows. There was a light. I rang. I asked the porter if Mlle. Gautier was at home. He replied that she never came in before eleven or a quarter past eleven. I looked at my watch. I intended to come quite slowly, and I had come in five minutes from the Rue de Provence to the Rue d'Antin. I walked to and fro in the street; there are no shops, and at that hour it is quite deserted. In half an hour's time Marguerite arrived. She looked around her as she got down from her coupe, as if she were looking for some one. The carriage drove off; the stables were not at the house. Just as Marguerite was going to ring, I went up to her and said, "Good-evening." "Ah, it is you," she said, in a tone that by no means reassured me as to her pleasure in seeing me. "Did you not promise me that I might come and see you to-day?" "Quite right. I had forgotten." This word upset all the reflections I had had during the day. Nevertheless, I was beginning to get used to her ways, and I did not leave her, as I should certainly have done once. We entered. Nanine had already opened the door. "Has Prudence come?" said Marguerite. "No, madame." "Say that she is to be admitted as soon as she comes. But first put out the lamp in the drawing-room, and if any one comes, say that I have not come back and shall not be coming back." She was like a woman who is preoccupied with something, and perhaps annoyed by an unwelcome guest. I did not know what to do or say. Marguerite went toward her bedroom; I remained where I was. "Come," she said. She took off her hat and her velvet cloak and threw them on the bed, then let herself drop into a great armchair beside the fire, which she kept till the very beginning of summer, and said to me as she fingered her watch-chain: "Well, what news have you got for me?" "None, except that I ought not to have come to-night." "Why?" "Because you seem vexed, and no doubt I am boring you." "You are not boring me; only I am not well; I have been suffering all day. I could not sleep, and I have a frightful headache." "Shall I go away and let you go to bed?" "Oh, you can stay. If I want to go to bed I don't mind your being here." At that moment there was a ring. "Who is coming now?" she said, with an impatient movement. A few minutes after there was another ring. "Isn't there any one to go to the door? I shall have to go." She got up and said to me, "Wait here." She went through the rooms, and I heard her open the outer door. I listened. The person whom she had admitted did not come farther than the dining-room. At the first word I recognised the voice of the young Comte de N. "How are you this evening?" he said. "Not well," replied Marguerite drily. "Am I disturbing you?" "Perhaps. "How you receive me! What have I done, my dear Marguerite?" "My dear friend, you have done nothing. I am ill; I must go to bed, so you will be good enough to go. It is sickening not to be able to return at night without your making your appearance five minutes afterward. What is it you want? For me to be your mistress? Well, I have already told you a hundred times, No; you simply worry me, and you might as well go somewhere else. I repeat to you to-day, for the last time, I don't want to have anything to do with you; that's settled. Good-bye. Here's Nanine coming in; she can light you to the door. Good-night." Without adding another word, or listening to what the young man stammered out, Marguerite returned to the room and slammed the door. Nanine entered a moment after. "Now understand," said Marguerite, "you are always to say to that idiot that I am not in, or that I will not see him. I am tired out with seeing people who always want the same thing; who pay me for it, and then think they are quit of me. If those who are going to go in for our hateful business only knew what it really was they would sooner be chambermaids. But no, vanity, the desire of having dresses and carriages and diamonds carries us away; one believes what one hears, for here, as elsewhere, there is such a thing as belief, and one uses up one's heart, one's body, one's beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after having ruined others and ruined one's self." "Come, come, madame, be calm," said Nanine; "your nerves are a bit upset to-night." "This dress worries me," continued Marguerite, unhooking her bodice; "give me a dressing-gown. Well, and Prudence?" "She has not come yet, but I will send her to you, madame, the moment she comes." "There's one, now," Marguerite went on, as she took off her dress and put on a white dressing-gown, "there's one who knows very well how to find me when she is in want of me, and yet she can't do me a service decently. She knows I am waiting for an answer. She knows how anxious I am, and I am sure she is going about on her own account, without giving a thought to me." "Perhaps she had to wait." "Let us have some punch." "It will do you no good, madame," said Nanine. "So much the better. Bring some fruit, too, and a pate or a wing of chicken; something or other, at once. I am hungry." Need I tell you the impression which this scene made upon me, or can you not imagine it? "You are going to have supper with me," she said to me; "meanwhile, take a book. I am going into my dressing-room for a moment." She lit the candles of a candelabra, opened a door at the foot of the bed, and disappeared. I began to think over this poor girl's life, and my love for her was mingled with a great pity. I walked to and fro in the room, thinking over things, when Prudence entered. "Ah, you here?"' she said, "where is Marguerite?" "In her dressing-room." "I will wait. By the way, do you know she thinks you charming?" "No." "She hasn't told you?" "Not at all." "How are you here?" "I have come to pay her a visit." "At midnight?" "Why not?" "Farceur!" "She has received me, as a matter of fact, very badly." "She will receive you better by and bye." "Do you think so?" "I have some good news for her." "No harm in that. So she has spoken to you about me?" "Last night, or rather to-night, when you and your friend went. By the way, what is your friend called? Gaston R., his name is, isn't it?" "Yes," said I, not without smiling, as I thought of what Gaston had confided to me, and saw that Prudence scarcely even knew his name. "He is quite nice, that fellow; what does he do?" "He has twenty-five thousand francs a year." "Ah, indeed! Well, to return to you. Marguerite asked me all about you: who you were, what you did, what mistresses you had had; in short, everything that one could ask about a man of your age. I told her all I knew, and added that you were a charming young man. That's all." "Thanks. Now tell me what it was she wanted to say to you last night." "Nothing at all. It was only to get rid of the count; but I have really something to see her about to-day, and I am bringing her an answer now." At this moment Marguerite reappeared from her dressing-room, wearing a coquettish little nightcap with bunches of yellow ribbons, technically known as "cabbages." She looked ravishing. She had satin slippers on her bare feet, and was in the act of polishing her nails. "Well," she said, seeing Prudence, "have you seen the duke?" "Yes, indeed." "And what did he say to you?" "He gave me—" "How much?" "Six thousand." "Have you got it?" "Yes. "Did he seem put out?" "No." "Poor man!" This "Poor man!" was said in a tone impossible to render. Marguerite took the six notes of a thousand francs. "It was quite time," she said. "My dear Prudence, are you in want of any money?" "You know, my child, it is the 15th in a couple of days, so if you could lend me three or four hundred francs, you would do me a real service." "Send over to-morrow; it is too late to get change now." "Don't forget." "No fear. Will you have supper with us?" "No, Charles is waiting for me." "You are still devoted to him?" "Crazy, my dear! I will see you to-morrow. Good-bye, Armand." Mme. Duvernoy went out. Marguerite opened the drawer of a side-table and threw the bank-notes into it. "Will you permit me to get into bed?" she said with a smile, as she moved toward the bed. "Not only permit, but I beg of you." She turned back the covering and got into bed. "Now," said she, "come and sit down by me, and let's have a talk." Prudence was right: the answer that she had brought to Marguerite had put her into a good humour. "Will you forgive me for my bad temper tonight?" she said, taking my hand. "I am ready to forgive you as often as you like." "And you love me?" "Madly." "In spite of my bad disposition?" "In spite of all." "You swear it?" "Yes," I said in a whisper. Nanine entered, carrying plates, a cold chicken, a bottle of claret, and some strawberries. "I haven't had any punch made," said Nanine; "claret is better for you. Isn't it, sir?" "Certainly," I replied, still under the excitement of Marguerite's last words, my eyes fixed ardently upon her. "Good," said she; "put it all on the little table, and draw it up to the bed; we will help ourselves. This is the third night you have sat up, and you must be in want of sleep. Go to bed. I don't want anything more." "Shall I lock the door?" "I should think so! And above all, tell them not to admit anybody before midday." Chapter 12 At five o'clock in the morning, as the light began to appear through the curtains, Marguerite said to me: "Forgive me if I send you away; but I must. The duke comes every morning; they will tell him, when he comes, that I am asleep, and perhaps he will wait until I wake." I took Marguerite's head in my hands; her loosened hair streamed about her; I gave her a last kiss, saying: "When shall I see you again?" "Listen," she said; "take the little gilt key on the mantelpiece, open that door; bring me back the key and go. In the course of the day you shall have a letter, and my orders, for you know you are to obey blindly." "Yes; but if I should already ask for something?" "What?" "Let me have that key." "What you ask is a thing I have never done for any one." "Well, do it for me, for I swear to you that I don't love you as the others have loved you." "Well, keep it; but it only depends on me to make it useless to you, after all." "How?" "There are bolts on the door." "Wretch!" "I will have them taken off." "You love, then, a little?" "I don't know how it is, but it seems to me as if I do! Now, go; I can't keep my eyes open." I held her in my arms for a few seconds and then went. The streets were empty, the great city was still asleep, a sweet freshness circulated in the streets that a few hours later would be filled with the noise of men. It seemed to me as if this sleeping city belonged to me; I searched my memory for the names of those whose happiness I had once envied; and I could not recall one without finding myself the happier. To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure. The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way, if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers. Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them, how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious veil! But to be really loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time, for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat a thousand, and think they have bought their own redemption by once lending a sovereign to a poor devil who is dying of hunger without asking for interest or a receipt. Then, when God allows love to a courtesan, that love, which at first seems like a pardon, becomes for her almost without penitence. When a creature who has all her past to reproach herself with is taken all at once by a profound, sincere, irresistible love, of which she had never felt herself capable; when she has confessed her love, how absolutely the man whom she loves dominates her! How strong he feels with his cruel right to say: You do no more for love than you have done for money. They know not what proof to give. A child, says the fable, having often amused himself by crying "Help! a wolf!" in order to disturb the labourers in the field, was one day devoured by a Wolf, because those whom he had so often deceived no longer believed in his cries for help. It is the same with these unhappy women when they love seriously. They have lied so often that no one will believe them, and in the midst of their remorse they are devoured by their love. Hence those great devotions, those austere retreats from the world, of which some of them have given an example. But when the man who inspires this redeeming love is great enough in soul to receive it without remembering the past, when he gives himself up to it, when, in short, he loves as he is loved, this man drains at one draught all earthly emotions, and after such a love his heart will be closed to every other. I did not make these reflections on the morning when I returned home. They could but have been the presentiment of what was to happen to me, and, despite my love for Marguerite, I did not foresee such consequences. I make these reflections to-day. Now that all is irrevocably ended, they a rise naturally out of what has taken place. But to return to the first day of my liaison. When I reached home I was in a state of mad gaiety. As I thought of how the barriers which my imagination had placed between Marguerite and myself had disappeared, of how she was now mine; of the place I now had in her thoughts, of the key to her room which I had in my pocket, and of my right to use this key, I was satisfied with life, proud of myself, and I loved God because he had let such things be. One day a young man is passing in the street, he brushes against a woman, looks at her, turns, goes on his way. He does not know the woman, and she has pleasures, griefs, loves, in which he has no part. He does not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would only laugh at him, as Marguerite had laughed at me. Weeks, months, years pass, and all at once, when they have each followed their fate along a different path, the logic of chance brings them face to face. The woman becomes the man's mistress and loves him. How? why? Their two existences are henceforth one; they have scarcely begun to know one another when it seems as if they had known one another always, and all that had gone before is wiped out from the memory of the two lovers. It is curious, one must admit. As for me, I no longer remembered how I had lived before that night. My whole being was exalted into joy at the memory of the words we had exchanged during that first night. Either Marguerite was very clever in deception, or she had conceived for me one of those sudden passions which are revealed in the first kiss, and which die, often enough, as suddenly as they were born. The more I reflected the more I said to myself that Marguerite had no reason for feigning a love which she did not feel, and I said to myself also that women have two ways of loving, one of which may arise from the other: they love with the heart or with the senses. Often a woman takes a lover in obedience to the mere will of the senses, and learns without expecting it the mystery of immaterial love, and lives henceforth only through her heart; often a girl who has sought in marriage only the union of two pure affections receives the sudden revelation of physical love, that energetic conclusion of the purest impressions of the soul. In the midst of these thoughts I fell asleep; I was awakened by a letter from Marguerite containing these words: "Here are my orders: To-night at the Vaudeville. "Come during the third entr'acte." I put the letter into a drawer, so that I might always have it at band in case I doubted its reality, as I did from time to time. She did not tell me to come to see her during the day, and I dared not go; but I had so great a desire to see her before the evening that I went to the Champs-Elysees, where I again saw her pass and repass, as I had on the previous day. At seven o'clock I was at the Vaudeville. Never had I gone to a theatre so early. The boxes filled one after another. Only one remained empty, the stage box. At the beginning of the third act I heard the door of the box, on which my eyes had been almost constantly fixed, open, and Marguerite appeared. She came to the front at once, looked around the stalls, saw me, and thanked me with a look. That night she was marvellously beautiful. Was I the cause of this coquetry? Did she love me enough to believe that the more beautiful she looked the happier I should be? I did not know, but if that had been her intention she certainly succeeded, for when she appeared all heads turned, and the actor who was then on the stage looked to see who had produced such an effect on the audience by her mere presence there. And I had the key of this woman's room, and in three or four hours she would again be mine! People blame those who let themselves be ruined by actresses and kept women; what astonishes me is that twenty times greater follies are not committed for them. One must have lived that life, as I have, to know how much the little vanities which they afford their lovers every day help to fasten deeper into the heart, since we have no other word for it, the love which he has for them. Prudence next took her place in the box, and a man, whom I recognised as the Comte de G., seated himself at the back. As I saw him, a cold shiver went through my heart. Doubtless Marguerite perceived the impression made on me by the presence of this man, for she smiled to me again, and, turning her back to the count, appeared to be very attentive to the play. At the third entr'acte she turned and said two words: the count left the box, and Marguerite beckoned to me to come to her. "Good-evening," she said as I entered, holding out her hand. "Good-evening," I replied to both Marguerite and Prudence. "Sit down." "But I am taking some one's place. Isn't the Comte de G. coming back?" "Yes; I sent him to fetch some sweets, so that we could talk by ourselves for a moment. Mme. Duvernoy is in the secret." "Yes, my children," said she; "have no fear. I shall say nothing." "What is the matter with you to-night?" said Marguerite, rising and coming to the back of the box and kissing me on the forehead. "I am not very well." "You should go to bed," she replied, with that ironical air which went so well with her delicate and witty face. "Where?" "At home." "You know that I shouldn't be able to sleep there." "Well, then, it won't do for you to come and be pettish here because you have seen a man in my box." "It is not for that reason." "Yes, it is. I know; and you are wrong, so let us say no more about it. You will go back with Prudence after the theatre, and you will stay there till I call. Do you understand?" "Yes." How could I disobey? "You still love me?" "Can you ask?" "You have thought of me?" "All day long." "Do you know that I am really afraid that I shall get very fond of you? Ask Prudence." "Ah," said she, "it is amazing!" "Now, you must go back to your seat. The count will be coming back, and there is nothing to be gained by his finding you here." "Because you don't like seeing him." "No; only if you had told me that you wanted to come to the Vaudeville to-night I could have got this box for you as well as he." "Unfortunately, he got it for me without my asking him, and he asked me to go with him; you know well enough that I couldn't refuse. All I could do was to write and tell you where I was going, so that you could see me, and because I wanted to see you myself; but since this is the way you thank me, I shall profit by the lesson." "I was wrong; forgive me." "Well and good; and now go back nicely to your place, and, above all, no more jealousy." She kissed me again, and I left the box. In the passage I met the count coming back. I returned to my seat. After all, the presence of M. de G. in Marguerite's box was the most natural thing in the world. He had been her lover, he sent her a box, he accompanied her to the theatre; it was all quite natural, and if I was to have a mistress like Marguerite I should have to get used to her ways. Nonetheless, I was very unhappy all the rest of the evening, and went away very sadly after having seen Prudence, the count, and Marguerite get into the carriage, which was waiting for them at the door. However, a quarter of an hour later I was at Prudence's. She had only just got in. Chapter 13 "You have come almost as quickly as we," said Prudence. "Yes," I answered mechanically. "Where is Marguerite?" "At home." "Alone?" "With M. de G." I walked to and fro in the room. "Well, what is the matter?" "Do you think it amuses me to wait here till M. de G. leaves Marguerite's?" "How unreasonable you are! Don't you see that Marguerite can't turn the count out of doors? M. de G. has been with her for a long time; he has always given her a lot of money; he still does. Marguerite spends more than a hundred thousand francs a year; she has heaps of debts. The duke gives her all that she asks for, but she does not always venture to ask him for all that she is in want of. It would never do for her to quarrel with the count, who is worth to her at least ten thousand francs a year. Marguerite is very fond of you, my dear fellow, but your liaison with her, in her interests and in yours, ought not to be serious. You with your seven or eight thousand francs a year, what could you do toward supplying all the luxuries which a girl like that is in need of? It would not be enough to keep her carriage. Take Marguerite for what she is, for a good, bright, pretty girl; be her lover for a month, two months; give her flowers, sweets, boxes at the theatre; but don't get any other ideas into your head, and don't make absurd scenes of jealousy. You know whom you have to do with; Marguerite isn't a saint. She likes you, you are very fond of her; let the rest alone. You amaze me when I see you so touchy; you have the most charming mistress in Paris. She receives you in the greatest style, she is covered with diamonds, she needn't cost you a penny, unless you like, and you are not satisfied. My dear fellow, you ask too much!" "You are right, but I can't help it; the idea that that man is her lover hurts me horribly." "In the first place," replied Prudence; "is he still her lover? He is a man who is useful to her, nothing more. She has closed her doors to him for two days; he came this morning—she could not but accept the box and let him accompany her. He saw her home; he has gone in for a moment, he is not staying, because you are waiting here. All that, it seems to me, is quite natural. Besides, you don't mind the duke." "Yes; but he is an old man, and I am sure that Marguerite is not his mistress. Then, it is all very well to accept one liaison, but not two. Such easiness in the matter is very like calculation, and puts the man who consents to it, even out of love, very much in the category of those who, in a lower stage of society, make a trade of their connivance, and a profit of their trade." "Ah, my dear fellow, how old-fashioned you are! How many of the richest and most fashionable men of the best families I have seen quite ready to do what I advise you to do, and without an effort, without shame, without remorse, Why, one sees it every day. How do you suppose the kept women in Paris could live in the style they do, if they had not three or four lovers at once? No single fortune, however large, could suffice for the expenses of a woman like Marguerite. A fortune of five hundred thousand francs a year is, in France, an enormous fortune; well, my dear friend, five hundred thousand francs a year would still be too little, and for this reason: a man with such an income has a large house, horses, servants, carriages; he shoots, has friends, often he is married, he has children, he races, gambles, travels, and what not. All these habits are so much a part of his position that he can not forego them without appearing to have lost all his money, and without causing scandal. Taking it all round, with five hundred thousand francs a year he can not give a woman more than forty or fifty thousand francs in the year, and that is already a good deal. Well, other lovers make up for the rest of her expenses. With Marguerite, it is still more convenient; she has chanced by a miracle on an old man worth ten millions, whose wife and daughter are dead; who has only some nephews, themselves rich, and who gives her all she wants without asking anything in return. But she can not ask him for more than seventy thousand francs a year; and I am sure that if she did ask for more, despite his health and the affection he has for her he would not give it to her. "All the young men of twenty or thirty thousand francs a year at Paris, that is to say, men who have only just enough to live on in the society in which they mix, know perfectly well, when they are the lovers of a woman like Marguerite, that she could not so much as pay for the rooms she lives in and the servants who wait upon her with what they give her. They do not say to her that they know it; they pretend not to see anything, and when they have had enough of it they go their way. If they have the vanity to wish to pay for everything they get ruined, like the fools they are, and go and get killed in Africa, after leaving a hundred thousand francs of debt in Paris. Do you think a woman is grateful to them for it? Far from it. She declares that she has sacrificed her position for them, and that while she was with them she was losing money. These details seem to you shocking? Well, they are true. You are a very nice fellow; I like you very much. I have lived with these women for twenty years; I know what they are worth, and I don't want to see you take the caprice that a pretty girl has for you too seriously. "Then, besides that," continued Prudence; "admit that Marguerite loves you enough to give up the count or the duke, in case one of them were to discover your liaison and to tell her to choose between him and you, the sacrifice that she would make for you would be enormous, you can not deny it. What equal sacrifice could you make for her, on your part, and when you had got tired of her, what could you do to make up for what you had taken from her? Nothing. You would have cut her off from the world in which her fortune and her future were to be found; she would have given you her best years, and she would be forgotten. Either you would be an ordinary man, and, casting her past in her teeth, you would leave her, telling her that you were only doing like her other lovers, and you would abandon her to certain misery; or you would be an honest man, and, feeling bound to keep her by you, you would bring inevitable trouble upon yourself, for a liaison which is excusable in a young man, is no longer excusable in a man of middle age. It becomes an obstacle to every thing; it allows neither family nor ambition, man's second and last loves. Believe me, then, my friend, take things for what they are worth, and do not give a kept woman the right to call herself your creditor, no matter in what." It was well argued, with a logic of which I should have thought Prudence incapable. I had nothing to reply, except that she was right; I took her hand and thanked her for her counsels. "Come, come," said she, "put these foolish theories to flight, and laugh over them. Life is pleasant, my dear fellow; it all depends on the colour of the glass through which one sees it. Ask your friend Gaston; there's a man who seems to me to understand love as I understand it. All that you need think of, unless you are quite a fool, is that close by there is a beautiful girl who is waiting impatiently for the man who is with her to go, thinking of you, keeping the whole night for you, and who loves you, I am certain. Now, come to the window with me, and let us watch for the count to go; he won't be long in leaving the coast clear." Prudence opened the window, and we leaned side by side over the balcony. She watched the few passers, I reflected. All that she had said buzzed in my head, and I could not help feeling that she was right; but the genuine love which I had for Marguerite had some difficulty in accommodating itself to such a belief. I sighed from time to time, at which Prudence turned, and shrugged her shoulders like a physician who has given up his patient. "How one realizes the shortness of life," I said to myself, "by the rapidity of sensations! I have only known Marguerite for two days, she has only been my mistress since yesterday, and she has already so completely absorbed my thoughts, my heart, and my life that the visit of the Comte de G. is a misfortune for me." At last the count came out, got into his carriage and disappeared. Prudence closed the window. At the same instant Marguerite called to us: "Come at once," she said; "they are laying the table, and we'll have supper." When I entered, Marguerite ran to me, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me with all her might. "Are we still sulky?" she said to me. "No, it is all over," replied Prudence. "I have given him a talking to, and he has promised to be reasonable." "Well and good." In spite of myself I glanced at the bed; it was not unmade. As for Marguerite, she was already in her white dressing-gown. We sat down to table. Charm, sweetness, spontaneity, Marguerite had them all, and I was forced from time to time to admit that I had no right to ask of her anything else; that many people would be very happy to be in my place; and that, like Virgil's shepherd, I had only to enjoy the pleasures that a god, or rather a goddess, set before me. I tried to put in practice the theories of Prudence, and to be as gay as my two companions; but what was natural in them was on my part an effort, and the nervous laughter, whose source they did not detect, was nearer to tears than to mirth. At last the supper was over and I was alone with Marguerite. She sat down as usual on the hearthrug before the fire and gazed sadly into the flames. What was she thinking of? I know not. As for me, I looked at her with a mingling of love and terror, as I thought of all that I was ready to suffer for her sake. "Do you know what I am thinking of?" "No." "Of a plan that has come into my head." "And what is this plan?" "I can't tell you yet, but I can tell you what the result would be. The result would be that in a month I should be free, I should have no more debts, and we could go and spend the summer in the country." "And you can't tell me by what means?" "No, only love me as I love you, and all will succeed." "And have you made this plan all by yourself?" "Yes." "And you will carry it out all by yourself?" "I alone shall have the trouble of it," said Marguerite, with a smile which I shall never forget, "but we shall both partake its benefits." I could not help flushing at the word benefits; I thought of Manon Lescaut squandering with Desgrieux the money of M. de B. I replied in a hard voice, rising from my seat: "You must permit me, my dear Marguerite, to share only the benefits of those enterprises which I have conceived and carried out myself." "What does that mean?" "It means that I have a strong suspicion that M. de G. is to be your associate in this pretty plan, of which I can accept neither the cost nor the benefits." "What a child you are! I thought you loved me. I was mistaken; all right." She rose, opened the piano and began to play the "Invitation a la Valse", as far as the famous passage in the major which always stopped her. Was it through force of habit, or was it to remind me of the day when we first met? All I know is that the melody brought back that recollection, and, coming up to her, I took her head between my hands and kissed her. "You forgive me?" I said. "You see I do," she answered; "but observe that we are only at our second day, and already I have had to forgive you something. Is this how you keep your promise of blind obedience?" "What can I do, Marguerite? I love you too much and I am jealous of the least of your thoughts. What you proposed to me just now made me frantic with delight, but the mystery in its carrying out hurts me dreadfully." "Come, let us reason it out," she said, taking both my hands and looking at me with a charming smile which it was impossible to resist, "You love me, do you not? and you would gladly spend two or three months alone with me in the country? I too should be glad of this solitude a deux, and not only glad of it, but my health requires it. I can not leave Paris for such a length of time without putting my affairs in order, and the affairs of a woman like me are always in great confusion; well, I have found a way to reconcile everything, my money affairs and my love for you; yes, for you, don't laugh; I am silly enough to love you! And here you are taking lordly airs and talking big words. Child, thrice child, only remember that I love you, and don't let anything disturb you. Now, is it agreed?" "I agree to all you wish, as you know." "Then, in less than a month's time we shall be in some village, walking by the river side, and drinking milk. Does it seem strange that Marguerite Gautier should speak to you like that? The fact is, my friend, that when this Paris life, which seems to make me so happy, doesn't burn me, it wearies me, and then I have sudden aspirations toward a calmer existence which might recall my childhood. One has always had a childhood, whatever one becomes. Don't be alarmed; I am not going to tell you that I am the daughter of a colonel on half-pay, and that I was brought up at Saint-Denis. I am a poor country girl, and six years ago I could not write my own name. You are relieved, aren't you? Why is it you are the first whom I have ever asked to share the joy of this desire of mine? I suppose because I feel that you love me for myself and not for yourself, while all the others have only loved me for themselves. "I have often been in the country, but never as I should like to go there. I count on you for this easy happiness; do not be unkind, let me have it. Say this to yourself: 'She will never live to be old, and I should some day be sorry for not having done for her the first thing she asked of me, such an easy thing to do!'" What could I reply to such words, especially with the memory of a first night of love, and in the expectation of a second? An hour later I held Marguerite in my arms, and, if she had asked me to commit a crime, I would have obeyed her. At six in the morning I left her, and before leaving her I said: "Till to-night!" She kissed me more warmly than ever, but said nothing. During the day I received a note containing these words: "DEAR CHILD: I am not very well, and the doctor has ordered quiet. I shall go to bed early to-night and shall not see you. But, to make up, I shall expect you to-morrow at twelve. I love you." My first thought was: She is deceiving me! A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, for I already loved this woman too much not to be overwhelmed by the suspicion. And yet, I was bound to expect such a thing almost any day with Marguerite, and it had happened to me often enough with my other mistresses, without my taking much notice of it. What was the meaning of the hold which this woman had taken upon my life? Then it occurred to me, since I had the key, to go and see her as usual. In this way I should soon know the truth, and if I found a man there I would strike him in the face. Meanwhile I went to the Champs-Elysees. I waited there four hours. She did not appear. At night I went into all the theatres where she was accustomed to go. She was in none of them. At eleven o'clock I went to the Rue d'Antin. There was no light in Marguerite's windows. All the same, I rang. The porter asked me where I was going. "To Mlle. Gautier's," I said. "She has not come in." "I will go up and wait for her." "There is no one there." Evidently I could get in, since I had the key, but, fearing foolish scandal, I went away. Only I did not return home; I could not leave the street, and I never took my eyes off Marguerite's house. It seemed to me that there was still something to be found out, or at least that my suspicions were about to be confirmed. About midnight a carriage that I knew well stopped before No. 9. The Comte de G. got down and entered the house, after sending away the carriage. For a moment I hoped that the same answer would be given to him as to me, and that I should see him come out; but at four o'clock in the morning I was still awaiting him. I have suffered deeply during these last three weeks, but that is nothing, I think, in comparison with what I suffered that night. Chapter 14 When I reached home I began to cry like a child. There is no man to whom a woman has not been unfaithful, once at least, and who will not know what I suffered. I said to myself, under the weight of these feverish resolutions which one always feels as if one had the force to carry out, that I must break with my amour at once, and I waited impatiently for daylight in order to set out forthwith to rejoin my father and my sister, of whose love at least I was certain, and certain that that love would never be betrayed. However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and sorrow in my eyes: "MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left. "Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you. "I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back to my father's. "Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has become impossible. "I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday." As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was. I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at once. "Shall I wait for an answer?" asked Joseph (my servant, like all servants, was called Joseph). "If they ask whether there is a reply, you will say that you don't know, and wait." I buoyed myself up with the hope that she would reply. Poor, feeble creatures that we are! All the time that my servant was away I was in a state of extreme agitation. At one moment I would recall how Marguerite had given herself to me, and ask myself by what right I wrote her an impertinent letter, when she could reply that it was not M. de G. who supplanted me, but I who had supplanted M. de G.: a mode of reasoning which permits many women to have many lovers. At another moment I would recall her promises, and endeavour to convince myself that my letter was only too gentle, and that there were not expressions forcible enough to punish a woman who laughed at a love like mine. Then I said to myself that I should have done better not to have written to her, but to have gone to see her, and that then I should have had the pleasure of seeing the tears that she would shed. Finally, I asked myself what she would reply to me; already prepared to believe whatever excuse she made. Joseph returned. "Well?" I said to him. "Sir," said he, "madame was not up, and still asleep, but as soon as she rings the letter will be taken to her, and if there is any reply it will be sent." She was asleep! Twenty times I was on the point of sending to get the letter back, but every time I said to myself: "Perhaps she will have got it already, and it would look as if I have repented of sending it." As the hour at which it seemed likely that she would reply came nearer, I regretted more and more that I had written. The clock struck, ten, eleven, twelve. At twelve I was on the point of keeping the appointment as if nothing had happened. In the end I could see no way out of the circle of fire which closed upon me. Then I began to believe, with the superstition which people have when they are waiting, that if I went out for a little while, I should find an answer when I got back. I went out under the pretext of going to lunch. Instead of lunching at the Cafe Foy, at the corner of the Boulevard, as I usually did, I preferred to go to the Palais Royal and so pass through the Rue d'Antin. Every time that I saw a woman at a distance, I fancied it was Nanine bringing me an answer. I passed through the Rue d'Antin without even coming across a commissionaire. I went to Very's in the Palais Royal. The waiter gave me something to eat, or rather served up to me whatever he liked, for I ate nothing. In spite of myself, my eyes were constantly fixed on the clock. I returned home, certain that I should find a letter from Marguerite. The porter had received nothing, but I still hoped in my servant. He had seen no one since I went out. If Marguerite had been going to answer me she would have answered long before. Then I began to regret the terms of my letter; I should have said absolutely nothing, and that would undoubtedly have aroused her suspicions, for, finding that I did not keep my appointment, she would have inquired the reason of my absence, and only then I should have given it to her. Thus, she would have had to exculpate herself, and what I wanted was for her to exculpate herself. I already realized that I should have believed whatever reasons she had given me, and anything was better than not to see her again. At last I began to believe that she would come to see me herself; but hour followed hour, and she did not come. Decidedly Marguerite was not like other women, for there are few who would have received such a letter as I had just written without answering it at all. At five, I hastened to the Champs-Elysees. "If I meet her," I thought, "I will put on an indifferent air, and she will be convinced that I no longer think about her." As I turned the corner of the Rue Royale, I saw her pass in her carriage. The meeting was so sudden that I turned pale. I do not know if she saw my emotion; as for me, I was so agitated that I saw nothing but the carriage. I did not go any farther in the direction of the Champs-Elysees. I looked at the advertisements of the theatres, for I had still a chance of seeing her. There was a first night at the Palais Royal. Marguerite was sure to be there. I was at the theatre by seven. The boxes filled one after another, but Marguerite was not there. I left the Palais Royal and went to all the theatres where she was most often to be seen: to the Vaudeville, the Varietes, the Opera Comique. She was nowhere. Either my letter had troubled her too much for her to care to go to the theatre, or she feared to come across me, and so wished to avoid an explanation. So my vanity was whispering to me on the boulevards, when I met Gaston, who asked me where I had been. "At the Palais Royal." "And I at the Opera," said he; "I expected to see you there." "Why?" "Because Marguerite was there." "Ah, she was there?" "Yes. "Alone?" "No; with another woman." "That all?" "The Comte de G. came to her box for an instant; but she went off with the duke. I expected to see you every moment, for there was a stall at my side which remained empty the whole evening, and I was sure you had taken it." "But why should I go where Marguerite goes?" "Because you are her lover, surely!" "Who told you that?" "Prudence, whom I met yesterday. I give you my congratulations, my dear fellow; she is a charming mistress, and it isn't everybody who has the chance. Stick to her; she will do you credit." These simple reflections of Gaston showed me how absurd had been my susceptibilities. If I had only met him the night before and he had spoken to me like that, I should certainly not have written the foolish letter which I had written. I was on the point of calling on Prudence, and of sending her to tell Marguerite that I wanted to speak to her; but I feared that she would revenge herself on me by saying that she could not see me, and I returned home, after passing through the Rue d'Antin. Again I asked my porter if there was a letter for me. Nothing! She is waiting to see if I shall take some fresh step, and if I retract my letter of to-day, I said to myself as I went to bed; but, seeing that I do not write, she will write to me to-morrow. That night, more than ever, I reproached myself for what I had done. I was alone, unable to sleep, devoured by restlessness and jealousy, when by simply letting things take their natural course I should have been with Marguerite, hearing the delicious words which I had heard only twice, and which made my ears burn in my solitude. The most frightful part of the situation was that my judgment was against me; as a matter of fact, everything went to prove that Marguerite loved me. First, her proposal to spend the summer with me in the country, then the certainty that there was no reason why she should be my mistress, since my income was insufficient for her needs and even for her caprices. There could not then have been on her part anything but the hope of finding in me a sincere affection, able to give her rest from the mercenary loves in whose midst she lived; and on the very second day I had destroyed this hope, and paid by impertinent irony for the love which I had accepted during two nights. What I had done was therefore not merely ridiculous, it was indelicate. I had not even paid the woman, that I might have some right to find fault with her; withdrawing after two days, was I not like a parasite of love, afraid of having to pay the bill of the banquet? What! I had only known Marguerite for thirty-six hours; I had been her lover for only twenty-four; and instead of being too happy that she should grant me all that she did, I wanted to have her all to myself, and to make her sever at one stroke all her past relations which were the revenue of her future. What had I to reproach in her? Nothing. She had written to say she was unwell, when she might have said to me quite crudely, with the hideous frankness of certain women, that she had to see a lover; and, instead of believing her letter, instead of going to any street in Paris except the Rue d'Antin, instead of spending the evening with my friends, and presenting myself next day at the appointed hour, I was acting the Othello, spying upon her, and thinking to punish her by seeing her no more. But, on the contrary, she ought to be enchanted at this separation. She ought to find me supremely foolish, and her silence was not even that of rancour; it was contempt. I might have made Marguerite a present which would leave no doubt as to my generosity and permit me to feel properly quits of her, as of a kept woman, but I should have felt that I was offending by the least appearance of trafficking, if not the love which she had for me, at all events the love which I had for her, and since this love was so pure that it could admit no division, it could not pay by a present, however generous, the happiness that it had received, however short that happiness had been. That is what I said to myself all night long, and what I was every moment prepared to go and say to Marguerite. When the day dawned I was still sleepless. I was in a fever. I could think of nothing but Marguerite. As you can imagine, it was time to take a decided step, and finish either with the woman or with one's scruples, if, that is, she would still be willing to see me. But you know well, one is always slow in taking a decided step; so, unable to remain within doors and not daring to call on Marguerite, I made one attempt in her direction, an attempt that I could always look upon as a mere chance if it succeeded. It was nine o'clock, and I went at once to call upon Prudence, who asked to what she owed this early visit. I dared not tell her frankly what brought me. I replied that I had gone out early in order to reserve a place in the diligence for C., where my father lived. "You are fortunate," she said, "in being able to get away from Paris in this fine weather." I looked at Prudence, asking myself whether she was laughing at me, but her face was quite serious. "Shall you go and say good-bye to Marguerite?" she continued, as seriously as before. "No." "You are quite right." "You think so?" "Naturally. Since you have broken with her, why should you see her again?" "You know it is broken off?" "She showed me your letter." "What did she say about it?" "She said: 'My dear Prudence, your protege is not polite; one thinks such letters, one does not write them."' "In what tone did she say that?" "Laughingly," and she added: "He has had supper with me twice, and hasn't even called." That, then, was the effect produced by my letter and my jealousy. I was cruelly humiliated in the vanity of my affection. "What did she do last night?" "She went to the opera." "I know. And afterward?" "She had supper at home." "Alone?" "With the Comte de G., I believe." So my breaking with her had not changed one of her habits. It is for such reasons as this that certain people say to you: Don't have anything more to do with the woman; she cares nothing about you. "Well, I am very glad to find that Marguerite does not put herself out for me," I said with a forced smile. "She has very good reason not to. You have done what you were bound to do. You have been more reasonable than she, for she was really in love with you; she did nothing but talk of you. I don't know what she would not have been capable of doing." "Why hasn't she answered me, if she was in love with me?" "Because she realizes she was mistaken in letting herself love you. Women sometimes allow you to be unfaithful to their love; they never allow you to wound their self-esteem; and one always wounds the self-esteem of a woman when, two days after one has become her lover, one leaves her, no matter for what reason. I know Marguerite; she would die sooner than reply." "What can I do, then?" "Nothing. She will forget you, you will forget her, and neither will have any reproach to make against the other." "But if I write and ask her forgiveness?" "Don't do that, for she would forgive you." I could have flung my arms round Prudence's neck. A quarter of an hour later I was once more in my own quarters, and I wrote to Marguerite: "Some one, who repents of a letter that he wrote yesterday and who will leave Paris to-morrow if you do not forgive him, wishes to know at what hour he might lay his repentance at your feet. "When can he find you alone? for, you know, confessions must be made without witnesses." I folded this kind of madrigal in prose, and sent it by Joseph, who handed it to Marguerite herself; she replied that she would send the answer later. I only went out to have a hasty dinner, and at eleven in the evening no reply had come. I made up my mind to endure it no longer, and to set out next day. In consequence of this resolution, and convinced that I should not sleep if I went to bed, I began to pack up my things. Chapter 15 It was hardly an hour after Joseph and I had begun preparing for my departure, when there was a violent ring at the door. "Shall I go to the door?" said Joseph. "Go," I said, asking myself who it could be at such an hour, and not daring to believe that it was Marguerite. "Sir," said Joseph coming back to me, "it is two ladies." "It is we, Armand," cried a voice that I recognised as that of Prudence. I came out of my room. Prudence was standing looking around the place; Marguerite, seated on the sofa, was meditating. I went to her, knelt down, took her two hands, and, deeply moved, said to her, "Pardon." She kissed me on the forehead, and said: "This is the third time that I have forgiven you." "I should have gone away to-morrow." "How can my visit change your plans? I have not come to hinder you from leaving Paris. I have come because I had no time to answer you during the day, and I did not wish to let you think that I was angry with you. Prudence didn't want me to come; she said that I might be in the way." "You in the way, Marguerite! But how?" "Well, you might have had a woman here," said Prudence, "and it would hardly have been amusing for her to see two more arrive." During this remark Marguerite looked at me attentively. "My dear Prudence," I answered, "you do not know what you are saying." "What a nice place you've got!" Prudence went on. "May we see the bedroom?" "Yes." Prudence went into the bedroom, not so much to see it as to make up for the foolish thing which she had just said, and to leave Marguerite and me alone. "Why did you bring Prudence?" I asked her. "Because she was at the theatre with me, and because when I leave here I want to have some one to see me home." "Could not I do?" "Yes, but, besides not wishing to put you out, I was sure that if you came as far as my door you would want to come up, and as I could not let you, I did not wish to let you go away blaming me for saying 'No.'" "And why could you not let me come up?" "Because I am watched, and the least suspicion might do me the greatest harm." "Is that really the only reason?" "If there were any other, I would tell you; for we are not to have any secrets from one another now." "Come, Marguerite, I am not going to take a roundabout way of saying what I really want to say. Honestly, do you care for me a little?" "A great deal." "Then why did you deceive me?" "My friend, if I were the Duchess So and So, if I had two hundred thousand francs a year, and if I were your mistress and had another lover, you would have the right to ask me; but I am Mlle. Marguerite Gautier, I am forty thousand francs in debt, I have not a penny of my own, and I spend a hundred thousand francs a year. Your question becomes unnecessary and my answer useless." "You are right," I said, letting my head sink on her knees; "but I love you madly." "Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me a little better. Your letter gave me a great deal of pain. If I had been free, first of all I would not have seen the count the day before yesterday, or, if I had, I should have come and asked your forgiveness as you ask me now, and in future I should have had no other lover but you. I fancied for a moment that I might give myself that happiness for six months; you would not have it; you insisted on knowing the means. Well, good heavens, the means were easy enough to guess! In employing them I was making a greater sacrifice for you than you imagine. I might have said to you, 'I want twenty thousand francs'; you were in love with me and you would have found them, at the risk of reproaching me for it later on. I preferred to owe you nothing; you did not understand the scruple, for such it was. Those of us who are like me, when we have any heart at all, we give a meaning and a development to words and things unknown to other women; I repeat, then, that on the part of Marguerite Gautier the means which she used to pay her debts without asking you for the money necessary for it, was a scruple by which you ought to profit, without saying anything. If you had only met me to-day, you would be too delighted with what I promised you, and you would not question me as to what I did the day before yesterday. We are sometimes obliged to buy the satisfaction of our souls at the expense of our bodies, and we suffer still more, when, afterward, that satisfaction is denied us." I listened, and I gazed at Marguerite with admiration. When I thought that this marvellous creature, whose feet I had once longed to kiss, was willing to let me take my place in her thoughts, my part in her life, and that I was not yet content with what she gave me, I asked if man's desire has indeed limits when, satisfied as promptly as mine had been, it reached after something further. "Truly," she continued, "we poor creatures of chance have fantastic desires and inconceivable loves. We give ourselves now for one thing, now for another. There are men who ruin themselves without obtaining the least thing from us; there are others who obtain us for a bouquet of flowers. Our hearts have their caprices; it is their one distraction and their one excuse. I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them. "Your letter undeceived me; it showed me that you lacked the intelligence of the heart; it did you more harm with me than anything you could possibly have done. It was jealousy certainly, but ironical and impertinent jealousy. I was already feeling sad when I received your letter. I was looking forward to seeing you at twelve, to having lunch with you, and wiping out, by seeing you, a thought which was with me incessantly, and which, before I knew you, I had no difficulty in tolerating. "Then," continued Marguerite, "you were the only person before whom it seemed to me, from the first, that I could think and speak freely. All those who come about women like me have an interest in calculating their slightest words, in thinking of the consequences of their most insignificant actions. Naturally we have no friends. We have selfish lovers who spend their fortunes, riot on us, as they say, but on their own vanity. For these people we have to be merry when they are merry, well when they want to sup, sceptics like themselves. We are not allowed to have hearts, under penalty of being hooted down and of ruining our credit. "We no longer belong to ourselves. We are no longer beings, but things. We stand first in their self-esteem, last in their esteem. We have women who call themselves our friends, but they are friends like Prudence, women who were once kept and who have still the costly tastes that their age does not allow them to gratify. Then they become our friends, or rather our guests at table. Their friendship is carried to the point of servility, never to that of disinterestedness. Never do they give you advice which is not lucrative. It means little enough to them that we should have ten lovers extra, as long as they get dresses or a bracelet out of them, and that they can drive in our carriage from time to time or come to our box at the theatre. They have our last night's bouquets, and they borrow our shawls. They never render us a service, however slight, without seeing that they are paid twice its value. You yourself saw when Prudence brought me the six thousand francs that I had asked her to get from the duke, how she borrowed five hundred francs, which she will never pay me back, or which she will pay me in hats, which will never be taken out of their boxes. "We can not, then, have, or rather I can not have more than one possible kind of happiness, and this is, sad as I sometimes am, suffering as I always am, to find a man superior enough not to ask questions about my life, and to be the lover of my impressions rather than of my body. Such a man I found in the duke; but the duke is old, and old age neither protects nor consoles. I thought I could accept the life which he offered me; but what would you have? I was dying of ennui, and if one is bound to be consumed, it is as well to throw oneself into the flames as to be asphyxiated with charcoal. "Then I met you, young, ardent, happy, and I tried to make you the man I had longed for in my noisy solitude. What I loved in you was not the man who was, but the man who was going to be. You do not accept the position, you reject it as unworthy of you; you are an ordinary lover. Do like the others; pay me, and say no more about it." Marguerite, tired out with this long confession, threw herself back on the sofa, and to stifle a slight cough put up her handkerchief to her lips, and from that to her eyes. "Pardon, pardon," I murmured. "I understood it all, but I wanted to have it from your own lips, my beloved Marguerite. Forget the rest and remember only one thing: that we belong to one another, that we are young, and that we love. Marguerite, do with me as you will; I am your slave, your dog, but in the name of heaven tear up the letter which I wrote to you and do not make me leave you to-morrow; it would kill me." Marguerite drew the letter from her bosom, and handing it to me with a smile of infinite sweetness, said: "Here it is. I have brought it back." I tore the letter into fragments and kissed with tears the hand that gave it to me. At this moment Prudence reappeared. "Look here, Prudence; do you know what he wants?" said Marguerite. "He wants you to forgive him." "Precisely." "And you do?" "One has to; but he wants more than that." "What, then?" "He wants to have supper with us." "And do you consent?" "What do you think?" "I think that you are two children who haven't an atom of sense between you; but I also think that I am very hungry, and that the sooner you consent the sooner we shall have supper." "Come," said Marguerite, "there is room for the three of us in my carriage." "By the way," she added, turning to me, "Nanine will be gone to bed. You must open the door; take my key, and try not to lose it again." I embraced Marguerite until she was almost stifled. Thereupon Joseph entered. "Sir," he said, with the air of a man who is very well satisfied with himself, "the luggage is packed." "All of it?" "Yes, sir." "Well, then, unpack it again; I am not going." Chapter 16 I might have told you of the beginning of this liaison in a few lines, but I wanted you to see every step by which we came, I to agree to whatever Marguerite wished, Marguerite to be unable to live apart from me. It was the day after the evening when she came to see me that I sent her Manon Lescaut. From that time, seeing that I could not change my mistress's life, I changed my own. I wished above all not to leave myself time to think over the position I had accepted, for, in spite of myself, it was a great distress to me. Thus my life, generally so calm, assumed all at once an appearance of noise and disorder. Never believe, however disinterested the love of a kept woman may be, that it will cost one nothing. Nothing is so expensive as their caprices, flowers, boxes at the theatre, suppers, days in the country, which one can never refuse to one's mistress. As I have told you, I had little money. My father was, and still is, receveur general at C. He has a great reputation there for loyalty, thanks to which he was able to find the security which he needed in order to attain this position. It is worth forty thousand francs a year, and during the ten years that he has had it, he has paid off the security and put aside a dowry for my sister. My father is the most honourable man in the world. When my mother died, she left six thousand francs a year, which he divided between my sister and myself on the very day when he received his appointment; then, when I was twenty-one, he added to this little income an annual allowance of five thousand francs, assuring me that with eight thousand francs a year I might live very happily at Paris, if, in addition to this, I would make a position for myself either in law or medicine. I came to Paris, studied law, was called to the bar, and, like many other young men, put my diploma in my pocket, and let myself drift, as one so easily does in Paris. My expenses were very moderate; only I used up my year's income in eight months, and spent the four summer months with my father, which practically gave me twelve thousand francs a year, and, in addition, the reputation of a good son. For the rest, not a penny of debt. This, then, was my position when I made the acquaintance of Marguerite. You can well understand that, in spite of myself, my expenses soon increased. Marguerite's nature was very capricious, and, like so many women, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one distractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much time with me as possible, she would write to me in the morning that she would dine with me, not at home, but at some restaurant in Paris or in the country. I would call for her, and we would dine and go on to the theatre, often having supper as well; and by the end of the evening I had spent four or five louis, which came to two or three thousand francs a month, which reduced my year to three months and a half, and made it necessary for me either to go into debt or to leave Marguerite. I would have consented to anything except the latter. Forgive me if I give you all these details, but you will see that they were the cause of what was to follow. What I tell you is a true and simple story, and I leave to it all the naivete of its details and all the simplicity of its developments. I realized then that as nothing in the world would make me forget my mistress, it was needful for me to find some way of meeting the expenses into which she drew me. Then, too, my love for her had so disturbing an influence upon me that every moment I spent away from Marguerite was like a year, and that I felt the need of consuming these moments in the fire of some sort of passion, and of living them so swiftly as not to know that I was living them. I began by borrowing five or six thousand francs on my little capital, and with this I took to gambling. Since gambling houses were destroyed gambling goes on everywhere. Formerly, when one went to Frascati, one had the chance of making a fortune; one played against money, and if one lost, there was always the consolation of saying that one might have gained; whereas now, except in the clubs, where there is still a certain rigour in regard to payments, one is almost certain, the moment one gains a considerable sum, not to receive it. You will readily understand why. Gambling is only likely to be carried on by young people very much in need of money and not possessing the fortune necessary for supporting the life they lead; they gamble, then, and with this result; or else they gain, and then those who lose serve to pay for their horses and mistresses, which is very disagreeable. Debts are contracted, acquaintances begun about a green table end by quarrels in which life or honour comes to grief; and though one may be an honest man, one finds oneself ruined by very honest men, whose only defect is that they have not two hundred thousand francs a year. I need not tell you of those who cheat at play, and of how one hears one fine day of their hasty disappearance and tardy condemnation. I flung myself into this rapid, noisy, and volcanic life, which had formerly terrified me when I thought of it, and which had become for me the necessary complement of my love for Marguerite. What else could I have done? The nights that I did not spend in the Rue d'Antin, if I had spent them alone in my own room, I could not have slept. Jealousy would have kept me awake, and inflamed my blood and my thoughts; while gambling gave a new turn to the fever which would otherwise have preyed upon my heart, and fixed it upon a passion which laid hold on me in spite of myself, until the hour struck when I might go to my mistress. Then, and by this I knew the violence of my love, I left the table without a moment's hesitation, whether I was winning or losing, pitying those whom I left behind because they would not, like me, find their real happiness in leaving it. For the most of them, gambling was a necessity; for me, it was a remedy. Free of Marguerite, I should have been free of gambling. Thus, in the midst of all that, I preserved a considerable amount of self-possession; I lost only what I was able to pay, and gained only what I should have been able to lose. For the rest, chance was on my side. I made no debts, and I spent three times as much money as when I did not gamble. It was impossible to resist an existence which gave me an easy means of satisfying the thousand caprices of Marguerite. As for her, she continued to love me as much, or even more than ever. As I told you, I began by being allowed to stay only from midnight to six o'clock, then I was asked sometimes to a box in the theatre, then she sometimes came to dine with me. One morning I did not go till eight, and there came a day when I did not go till twelve. But, sooner than the moral metamorphosis, a physical metamorphosis came about in Marguerite. I had taken her cure in hand, and the poor girl, seeing my aim, obeyed me in order to prove her gratitude. I had succeeded without effort or trouble in almost isolating her from her former habits. My doctor, whom I had made her meet, had told me that only rest and calm could preserve her health, so that in place of supper and sleepless nights, I succeeded in substituting a hygienic regime and regular sleep. In spite of herself, Marguerite got accustomed to this new existence, whose salutary effects she already realized. She began to spend some of her evenings at home, or, if the weather was fine, she wrapped herself in a shawl, put on a veil, and we went on foot, like two children, in the dim alleys of the Champs-Elysees. She would come in tired, take a light supper, and go to bed after a little music or reading, which she had never been used to do. The cough, which every time that I heard it seemed to go through my chest, had almost completely disappeared. At the end of six weeks the count was entirely given up, and only the duke obliged me to conceal my liaison with Marguerite, and even he was sent away when I was there, under the pretext that she was asleep and had given orders that she was not to be awakened. The habit or the need of seeing me which Marguerite had now contracted had this good result: that it forced me to leave the gaming-table just at the moment when an adroit gambler would have left it. Settling one thing against another, I found myself in possession of some ten thousand francs, which seemed to me an inexhaustible capital. The time of the year when I was accustomed to join my father and sister had now arrived, and I did not go; both of them wrote to me frequently, begging me to come. To these letters I replied as best I could, always repeating that I was quite well and that I was not in need of money, two things which, I thought, would console my father for my delay in paying him my annual visit. Just then, one fine day in summer, Marguerite was awakened by the sunlight pouring into her room, and, jumping out of bed, asked me if I would take her into the country for the whole day. We sent for Prudence, and all three set off, after Marguerite had given Nanine orders to tell the duke that she had taken advantage of the fine day to go into the country with Mme. Duvernoy. Besides the presence of Mme. Duvernoy being needful on account of the old duke, Prudence was one of those women who seem made on purpose for days in the country. With her unchanging good-humour and her eternal appetite, she never left a dull moment to those whom she was with, and was perfectly happy in ordering eggs, cherries, milk, stewed rabbit, and all the rest of the traditional lunch in the country. We had now only to decide where we should go. It was once more Prudence who settled the difficulty. "Do you want to go to the real country?" she asked. "Yes." "Well, let us go to Bougival, at the Point du Jour, at Widow Arnould's. Armand, order an open carriage." An hour and a half later we were at Widow Arnould's. Perhaps you know the inn, which is a hotel on week days and a tea garden on Sundays. There is a magnificent view from the garden, which is at the height of an ordinary first floor. On the left the Aqueduct of Marly closes in the horizon, on the right one looks across bill after hill; the river, almost without current at that spot, unrolls itself like a large white watered ribbon between the plain of the Gabillons and the island of Croissy, lulled eternally by the trembling of its high poplars and the murmur of its willows. Beyond, distinct in the sunlight, rise little white houses, with red roofs, and manufactories, which, at that distance, put an admirable finish to the landscape. Beyond that, Paris in the mist! As Prudence had told us, it was the real country, and, I must add, it was a real lunch. It is not only out of gratitude for the happiness I owe it, but Bougival, in spite of its horrible name, is one of the prettiest places that it is possible to imagine. I have travelled a good deal, and seen much grander things, but none more charming than this little village gaily seated at the foot of the hill which protects it. Mme. Arnould asked us if we would take a boat, and Marguerite and Prudence accepted joyously. People have always associated the country with love, and they have done well; nothing affords so fine a frame for the woman whom one loves as the blue sky, the odours, the flowers, the breeze, the shining solitude of fields, or woods. However much one loves a woman, whatever confidence one may have in her, whatever certainty her past may offer us as to her future, one is always more or less jealous. If you have been in love, you must have felt the need of isolating from this world the being in whom you would live wholly. It seems as if, however indifferent she may be to her surroundings, the woman whom one loves loses something of her perfume and of her unity at the contact of men and things. As for me, I experienced that more than most. Mine was not an ordinary love; I was as much in love as an ordinary creature could be, but with Marguerite Gautier; that is to say, that at Paris, at every step, I might elbow the man who had already been her lover or who was about to, while in the country, surrounded by people whom we had never seen and who had no concern with us, alone with nature in the spring-time of the year, that annual pardon, and shut off from the noise of the city, I could hide my love, and love without shame or fear. The courtesan disappeared little by little. I had by me a young and beautiful woman, whom I loved, and who loved me, and who was called Marguerite; the past had no more reality and the future no more clouds. The sun shone upon my mistress as it might have shone upon the purest bride. We walked together in those charming spots which seemed to have been made on purpose to recall the verses of Lamartine or to sing the melodies of Scudo. Marguerite was dressed in white, she leaned on my arm, saying over to me again under the starry sky the words she had said to me the day before, and far off the world went on its way, without darkening with its shadow the radiant picture of our youth and love. That was the dream that the hot sun brought to me that day through the leaves of the trees, as, lying on the grass of the island on which we had landed, I let my thought wander, free from the human links that had bound it, gathering to itself every hope that came in its way. Add to this that from the place where I was I could see on the shore a charming little house of two stories, with a semicircular railing; through the railing, in front of the house, a green lawn, smooth as velvet, and behind the house a little wood full of mysterious retreats, where the moss must efface each morning the pathway that had been made the day before. Climbing flowers clung about the doorway of this uninhabited house, mounting as high as the first story. I looked at the house so long that I began by thinking of it as mine, so perfectly did it embody the dream that I was dreaming; I saw Marguerite and myself there, by day in the little wood that covered the hillside, in the evening seated on the grass, and I asked myself if earthly creatures had ever been so happy as we should be. "What a pretty house!" Marguerite said to me, as she followed the direction of my gaze and perhaps of my thought. "Where?" asked Prudence. "Yonder," and Marguerite pointed to the house in question. "Ah, delicious!" replied Prudence. "Do you like it?" "Very much." "Well, tell the duke to take it for you; he would do so, I am sure. I'll see about it if you like." Marguerite looked at me, as if to ask me what I thought. My dream vanished at the last words of Prudence, and brought me back to reality so brutally that I was still stunned with the fall. "Yes, yes, an excellent idea," I stammered, not knowing what I was saying. "Well, I will arrange that," said Marguerite, freeing my hand, and interpreting my words according to her own desire. "Let us go and see if it is to let." The house was empty, and to let for two thousand francs. "Would you be happy here?" she said to me. "Am I sure of coming here?" "And for whom else should I bury myself here, if not for you?" "Well, then, Marguerite, let me take it myself." "You are mad; not only is it unnecessary, but it would be dangerous. You know perfectly well that I have no right to accept it save from one man. Let me alone, big baby, and say nothing." "That means," said Prudence, "that when I have two days free I will come and spend them with you." We left the house, and started on our return to Paris, talking over the new plan. I held Marguerite in my arms, and as I got down from the carriage, I had already begun to look upon her arrangement with less critical eyes. Chapter 17 Next day Marguerite sent me away very early, saying that the duke was coming at an early hour, and promising to write to me the moment he went, and to make an appointment for the evening. In the course of the day I received this note: "I am going to Bougival with the duke; be at Prudence's to-night at eight." At the appointed hour Marguerite came to me at Mme. Duvernoy's. "Well, it is all settled," she said, as she entered. "The house is taken?" asked Prudence. "Yes; he agreed at once." I did not know the duke, but I felt ashamed of deceiving him. "But that is not all," continued Marguerite. "What else is there?" "I have been seeing about a place for Armand to stay." "In the same house?" asked Prudence, laughing. "No, at Point du Jour, where we had dinner, the duke and I. While he was admiring the view, I asked Mme. Arnould (she is called Mme. Arnould, isn't she?) if there were any suitable rooms, and she showed me just the very thing: salon, anteroom, and bed-room, at sixty francs a month; the whole place furnished in a way to divert a hypochondriac. I took it. Was I right?" I flung my arms around her neck and kissed her. "It will be charming," she continued. "You have the key of the little door, and I have promised the duke the key of the front door, which he will not take, because he will come during the day when he comes. I think, between ourselves, that he is enchanted with a caprice which will keep me out of Paris for a time, and so silence the objections of his family. However, he has asked me how I, loving Paris as I do, could make up my mind to bury myself in the country. I told him that I was ill, and that I wanted rest. He seemed to have some difficulty in believing me. The poor old man is always on the watch. We must take every precaution, my dear Armand, for he will have me watched while I am there; and it isn't only the question of his taking a house for me, but he has my debts to pay, and unluckily I have plenty. Does all that suit you?" "Yes," I answered, trying to quiet the scruples which this way of living awoke in me from time to time. "We went all over the house, and we shall have everything perfect. The duke is going to look after every single thing. Ah, my dear," she added, kissing me, "you're in luck; it's a millionaire who makes your bed for you." "And when shall you move into the house?" inquired Prudence. "As soon as possible." "Will you take your horses and carriage?" "I shall take the whole house, and you can look after my place while I am away." A week later Marguerite was settled in her country house, and I was installed at Point du Jour. Then began an existence which I shall have some difficulty in describing to you. At first Marguerite could not break entirely with her former habits, and, as the house was always en fete, all the women whom she knew came to see her. For a whole month there was not a day when Marguerite had not eight or ten people to meals. Prudence, on her side, brought down all the people she knew, and did the honours of the house as if the house belonged to her. The duke's money paid for all that, as you may imagine; but from time to time Prudence came to me, asking for a note for a thousand francs, professedly on behalf of Marguerite. You know I had won some money at gambling; I therefore immediately handed over to Prudence what she asked for Marguerite, and fearing lest she should require more than I possessed, I borrowed at Paris a sum equal to that which I had already borrowed and paid back. I was then once more in possession of some ten thousand francs, without reckoning my allowance. However, Marguerite's pleasure in seeing her friends was a little moderated when she saw the expense which that pleasure entailed, and especially the necessity she was sometimes in of asking me for money. The duke, who had taken the house in order that Marguerite might rest there, no longer visited it, fearing to find himself in the midst of a large and merry company, by whom he did not wish to be seen. This came about through his having once arrived to dine tete-a-tete with Marguerite, and having fallen upon a party of fifteen, who were still at lunch at an hour when he was prepared to sit down to dinner. He had unsuspectingly opened the dining-room door, and had been greeted by a burst of laughter, and had had to retire precipitately before the impertinent mirth of the women who were assembled there. Marguerite rose from table, and joined the duke in the next room, where she tried, as far as possible, to induce him to forget the incident, but the old man, wounded in his dignity, bore her a grudge for it, and could not forgive her. He said to her, somewhat cruelly, that he was tired of paying for the follies of a woman who could not even have him treated with respect under his own roof, and he went away in great indignation. Since that day he had never been heard of. In vain Marguerite dismissed her guests, changed her way of life; the duke was not to be heard of. I was the gainer in so, far that my mistress now belonged to me more completely, and my dream was at length realized. Marguerite could not be without me. Not caring what the result might be, she publicly proclaimed our liaison, and I had come to live entirely at her house. The servants addressed me officially as their master. Prudence had strictly sermonized Marguerite in regard to her new manner of life; but she had replied that she loved me, that she could not live without me, and that, happen what might, she would not sacrifice the pleasure of having me constantly with her, adding that those who were not satisfied with this arrangement were free to stay away. So much I had heard one day when Prudence had said to Marguerite that she had something very important to tell her, and I had listened at the door of the room into which they had shut themselves. Not long after, Prudence returned again. I was at the other end of the garden when she arrived, and she did not see me. I had no doubt, from the way in which Marguerite came to meet her, that another similar conversation was going to take place, and I was anxious to hear what it was about. The two women shut themselves into a boudoir, and I put myself within hearing. "Well?" said Marguerite. "Well, I have seen the duke." "What did he say?" "That he would gladly forgive you in regard to the scene which took place, but that he has learned that you are publicly living with M. Armand Duval, and that he will never forgive that. 'Let Marguerite leave the young man,' he said to me, 'and, as in the past, I will give her all that she requires; if not, let her ask nothing more from me.'" "And you replied?" "That I would report his decision to you, and I promised him that I would bring you into a more reasonable frame of mind. Only think, my dear child, of the position that you are losing, and that Armand can never give you. He loves you with all his soul, but he has no fortune capable of supplying your needs, and he will be bound to leave you one day, when it will be too late and when the duke will refuse to do any more for you. Would you like me to speak to Armand?" Marguerite seemed to be thinking, for she answered nothing. My heart beat violently while I waited for her reply. "No," she answered, "I will not leave Armand, and I will not conceal the fact that I am living with him. It is folly no doubt, but I love him. What would you have me do? And then, now that he has got accustomed to be always with me, he would suffer too cruelly if he had to leave me so much as an hour a day. Besides, I have not such a long time to live that I need make myself miserable in order to please an old man whose very sight makes me feel old. Let him keep his money; I will do without it." "But what will you do?" "I don't in the least know." Prudence was no doubt going to make some reply, but I entered suddenly and flung myself at Marguerite's feet, covering her hands with tears in my joy at being thus loved. "My life is yours, Marguerite; you need this man no longer. Am I not here? Shall I ever leave you, and can I ever repay you for the happiness that you give me? No more barriers, my Marguerite; we love; what matters all the rest?" "Oh yes, I love you, my Armand," she murmured, putting her two arms around my neck. "I love you as I never thought I should ever love. We will be happy; we will live quietly, and I will say good-bye forever to the life for which I now blush. You won't ever reproach me for the past? Tell me!" Tears choked my voice. I could only reply by clasping Marguerite to my heart. "Well," said she, turning to Prudence, and speaking in a broken voice, "you can report this scene to the duke, and you can add that we have no longer need of him." From that day forth the duke was never referred to. Marguerite was no longer the same woman that I had known. She avoided everything that might recall to me the life which she had been leading when I first met her. Never did wife or sister surround husband or brother with such loving care as she had for me. Her nature was morbidly open to all impressions and accessible to all sentiments. She had broken equally with her friends and with her ways, with her words and with her extravagances. Any one who had seen us leaving the house to go on the river in the charming little boat which I had bought would never have believed that the woman dressed in white, wearing a straw hat, and carrying on her arm a little silk pelisse to protect her against the damp of the river, was that Marguerite Gautier who, only four months ago, had been the talk of the town for the luxury and scandal of her existence. Alas, we made haste to be happy, as if we knew that we were not to be happy long. For two months we had not even been to Paris. No one came to see us, except Prudence and Julie Duprat, of whom I have spoken to you, and to whom Marguerite was afterward to give the touching narrative that I have there. I passed whole days at the feet of my mistress. We opened the windows upon the garden, and, as we watched the summer ripening in its flowers and under the shadow of the trees, we breathed together that true life which neither Marguerite nor I had ever known before. Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore. It was at this time that she read Manon Lescaut, over and over again. I found her several times making notes in the book, and she always declared that when a woman loves, she can not do as Manon did. The duke wrote to her two or three times. She recognised the writing and gave me the letters without reading them. Sometimes the terms of these letters brought tears to my eyes. He had imagined that by closing his purse to Marguerite, he would bring her back to him; but when he had perceived the uselessness of these means, he could hold out no longer; he wrote and asked that he might see her again, as before, no matter on what conditions. I read these urgent and repeated letters, and tore them in pieces, without telling Marguerite what they contained and without advising her to see the old man again, though I was half inclined to, so much did I pity him, but I was afraid lest, if I so advised her she should think that I wished the duke, not merely to come and see her again, but to take over the expenses of the house; I feared, above all, that she might think me capable of shirking the responsibilities of every consequence to which her love for me might lead her. It thus came about that the duke, receiving no reply, ceased to write, and that Marguerite and I continued to live together without giving a thought to the future. Chapter 18 It would be difficult to give you all the details of our new life. It was made up of a series of little childish events, charming for us but insignificant to any one else. You know what it is to be in love with a woman, you know how it cuts short the days, and with what loving listlessness one drifts into the morrow. You know that forgetfulness of everything which comes of a violent confident, reciprocated love. Every being who is not the beloved one seems a useless being in creation. One regrets having cast scraps of one's heart to other women, and one can not believe in the possibility of ever pressing another hand than that which one holds between one's hands. The mind admits neither work nor remembrance; nothing, in short, which can distract it from the one thought in which it is ceaselessly absorbed. Every day one discovers in one's mistress a new charm and unknown delights. Existence itself is but the unceasing accomplishment of an unchanging desire; the soul is but the vestal charged to feed the sacred fire of love. We often went at night-time to sit in the little wood above the house; there we listened to the cheerful harmonies of evening, both of us thinking of the coming hours which should leave us to one another till the dawn of day. At other times we did not get up all day; we did not even let the sunlight enter our room. The curtains were hermetically closed, and for a moment the external world did not exist for us. Nanine alone had the right to open our door, but only to bring in our meals and even these we took without getting up, interrupting them with laughter and gaiety. To that succeeded a brief sleep, for, disappearing into the depths of our love, we were like two divers who only come to the surface to take breath. Nevertheless, I surprised moments of sadness, even tears, in Marguerite; I asked her the cause of her trouble, and she answered: "Our love is not like other loves, my Armand. You love me as if I had never belonged to another, and I tremble lest later on, repenting of your love, and accusing me of my past, you should let me fall back into that life from which you have taken me. I think that now that I have tasted of another life, I should die if I went back to the old one. Tell me that you will never leave me!" "I swear it!" At these words she looked at me as if to read in my eyes whether my oath was sincere; then flung herself into my arms, and, hiding her head in my bosom, said to me: "You don't know how much I love you!" One evening, seated on the balcony outside the window, we looked at the moon which seemed to rise with difficulty out of its bed of clouds, and we listened to the wind violently rustling the trees; we held each other's hands, and for a whole quarter of an hour we had not spoken, when Marguerite said to me: "Winter is at hand. Would you like for us to go abroad?" "Where?" "To Italy." "You are tired of here?" "I am afraid of the winter; I am particularly afraid of your return to Paris." "Why?" "For many reasons." And she went on abruptly, without giving me her reasons for fears: "Will you go abroad? I will sell all that I have; we will go and live there, and there will be nothing left of what I was; no one will know who I am. Will you?" "By all means, if you like, Marguerite, let us travel," I said. "But where is the necessity of selling things which you will be glad of when we return? I have not a large enough fortune to accept such a sacrifice; but I have enough for us to be able to travel splendidly for five or six months, if that will amuse you the least in the world." "After all, no," she said, leaving the window and going to sit down on the sofa at the other end of the room. "Why should we spend money abroad? I cost you enough already, here." "You reproach me, Marguerite; it isn't generous." "Forgive me, my friend," she said, giving me her hand. "This thunder weather gets on my nerves; I do not say what I intend to say." And after embracing me she fell into a long reverie. Scenes of this kind often took place, and though I could not discover their cause, I could not fail to see in Marguerite signs of disquietude in regard to the future. She could not doubt my love, which increased day by day, and yet I often found her sad, without being able to get any explanation of the reason, except some physical cause. Fearing that so monotonous a life was beginning to weary her, I proposed returning to Paris; but she always refused, assuring me that she could not be so happy anywhere as in the country. Prudence now came but rarely; but she often wrote letters which I never asked to see, though, every time they came, they seemed to preoccupy Marguerite deeply. I did not know what to think. One day Marguerite was in her room. I entered. She was writing. "To whom are you writing?" I asked. "To Prudence. Do you want to see what I am writing?" I had a horror of anything that might look like suspicion, and I answered that I had no desire to know what she was writing; and yet I was certain that letter would have explained to me the cause of her sadness. Next day the weather was splendid.' Marguerite proposed to me to take the boat and go as far as the island of Croissy. She seemed very cheerful; when we got back it was five o'clock. "Mme. Duvernoy has been here," said Nanine, as she saw us enter. "She has gone again?" asked Marguerite. "Yes, madame, in the carriage; she said it was arranged." "Quite right," said Marguerite sharply. "Serve the dinner." Two days afterward there came a letter from Prudence, and for a fortnight Marguerite seemed to have got rid of her mysterious gloom, for which she constantly asked my forgiveness, now that it no longer existed. Still, the carriage did not return. "How is it that Prudence does not send you back your carriage?" I asked one day. "One of the horses is ill, and there are some repairs to be done. It is better to have that done while we are here, and don't need a carriage, than to wait till we get back to Paris." Prudence came two days afterward, and confirmed what Marguerite had said. The two women went for a walk in the garden, and when I joined them they changed the conversation. That night, as she was going, Prudence complained of the cold and asked Marguerite to lend her a shawl. So a month passed, and all the time Marguerite was more joyous and more affectionate than she ever had been. Nevertheless, the carriage did not return, the shawl had not been sent back, and I began to be anxious in spite of myself, and as I knew in which drawer Marguerite put Prudence's letters, I took advantage of a moment when she was at the other end of the garden, went to the drawer, and tried to open it; in vain, for it was locked. When I opened the drawer in which the trinkets and diamonds were usually kept, these opened without resistance, but the jewel cases had disappeared, along with their contents no doubt. A sharp fear penetrated my heart. I might indeed ask Marguerite for the truth in regard to these disappearances, but it was certain that she would not confess it. "My good Marguerite," I said to her, "I am going to ask your permission to go to Paris. They do not know my address, and I expect there are letters from my father waiting for me. I have no doubt he is concerned; I ought to answer him." "Go, my friend," she said; "but be back early." I went straight to Prudence. "Come," said I, without beating about the bush, "tell me frankly, where are Marguerite's horses?" "Sold." "The shawl?" "Sold." "The diamonds?" "Pawned." "And who has sold and pawned them?" "Why did you not tell me?" "Because Marguerite made me promise not to." "And why did you not ask me for money?" "Because she wouldn't let me." "And where has this money gone?" "In payments." "Is she much in debt?" "Thirty thousand francs, or thereabouts. Ah, my dear fellow, didn't I tell you? You wouldn't believe me; now you are convinced. The upholsterer whom the duke had agreed to settle with was shown out of the house when he presented himself, and the duke wrote next day to say that he would answer for nothing in regard to Mlle. Gautier. This man wanted his money; he was given part payment out of the few thousand francs that I got from you; then some kind souls warned him that his debtor had been abandoned by the duke and was living with a penniless young man; the other creditors were told the same; they asked for their money, and seized some of the goods. Marguerite wanted to sell everything, but it was too late, and besides I should have opposed it. But it was necessary to pay, and in order not to ask you for money, she sold her horses and her shawls, and pawned her jewels. Would you like to see the receipts and the pawn tickets?" And Prudence opened the drawer and showed me the papers. "Ah, you think," she continued, with the insistence of a woman who can say, I was right after all, "ah, you think it is enough to be in love, and to go into the country and lead a dreamy, pastoral life. No, my friend, no. By the side of that ideal life, there is a material life, and the purest resolutions are held to earth by threads which seem slight enough, but which are of iron, not easily to be broken. If Marguerite has not been unfaithful to you twenty times, it is because she has an exceptional nature. It is not my fault for not advising her to, for I couldn't bear to see the poor girl stripping herself of everything. She wouldn't; she replied that she loved you, and she wouldn't be unfaithful to you for anything in the world. All that is very pretty, very poetical, but one can't pay one's creditors in that coin, and now she can't free herself from debt, unless she can raise thirty thousand francs." "All right, I will provide that amount." "You will borrow it?" "Good heavens! Why, yes!" "A fine thing that will be to do; you will fall out with your father, cripple your resources, and one doesn't find thirty thousand francs from one day to another. Believe me, my dear Armand, I know women better than you do; do not commit this folly; you will be sorry for it one day. Be reasonable. I don't advise you to leave Marguerite, but live with her as you did at the beginning. Let her find the means to get out of this difficulty. The duke will come back in a little while. The Comte de N., if she would take him, he told me yesterday even, would pay all her debts, and give her four or five thousand francs a month. He has two hundred thousand a year. It would be a position for her, while you will certainly be obliged to leave her. Don't wait till you are ruined, especially as the Comte de N. is a fool, and nothing would prevent your still being Marguerite's lover. She would cry a little at the beginning, but she would come to accustom herself to it, and you would thank me one day for what you had done. Imagine that Marguerite is married, and deceive the husband; that is all. I have already told you all this once, only at that time it was merely advice, and now it is almost a necessity." What Prudence said was cruelly true. "This is how it is," she went on, putting away the papers she had just shown me; "women like Marguerite always foresee that some one will love them, never that they will love; otherwise they would put aside money, and at thirty they could afford the luxury of having a lover for nothing. If I had only known once what I know now! In short, say nothing to Marguerite, and bring her back to Paris. You have lived with her alone for four or five months; that is quite enough. Shut your eyes now; that is all that any one asks of you. At the end of a fortnight she will take the Comte de N., and she will save up during the winter, and next summer you will begin over again. That is how things are done, my dear fellow!" And Prudence appeared to be enchanted with her advice, which I refused indignantly. Not only my love and my dignity would not let me act thus, but I was certain that, feeling as she did now, Marguerite would die rather than accept another lover. "Enough joking," I said to Prudence; "tell me exactly how much Marguerite is in need of." "I have told you: thirty thousand francs." "And when does she require this sum?" "Before the end of two months." "She shall have it." Prudence shrugged her shoulders. "I will give it to you," I continued, "but you must swear to me that you will not tell Marguerite that I have given it to you." "Don't be afraid." "And if she sends you anything else to sell or pawn, let me know." "There is no danger. She has nothing left." I went straight to my own house to see if there were any letters from my father. There were four. Chapter 19 In his first three letters my father inquired the cause of my silence; in the last he allowed me to see that he had heard of my change of life, and informed me that he was about to come and see me. I have always had a great respect and a sincere affection for my father. I replied that I had been travelling for a short time, and begged him to let me know beforehand what day he would arrive, so that I could be there to meet him. I gave my servant my address in the country, telling him to bring me the first letter that came with the postmark of C., then I returned to Bougival. Marguerite was waiting for me at the garden gate. She looked at me anxiously. Throwing her arms round my neck, she said to me: "Have you seen Prudence?" "No." "You were a long time in Paris." "I found letters from my father to which I had to reply." A few minutes afterward Nanine entered, all out of breath. Marguerite rose and talked with her in whispers. When Nanine had gone out Marguerite sat down by me again and said, taking my hand: "Why did you deceive me? You went to see Prudence." "Who told you?" "Nanine." "And how did she know?" "She followed you." "You told her to follow me?" "Yes. I thought that you must have had a very strong motive for going to Paris, after not leaving me for four months. I was afraid that something might happen to you, or that you were perhaps going to see another woman." "Child!" "Now I am relieved. I know what you have done, but I don't yet know what you have been told." I showed Marguerite my father's letters. "That is not what I am asking you about. What I want to know is why you went to see Prudence." "To see her." "That's a lie, my friend." "Well, I went to ask her if the horse was any better, and if she wanted your shawl and your jewels any longer." Marguerite blushed, but did not answer. "And," I continued, "I learned what you had done with your horses, shawls, and jewels." "And you are vexed?" "I am vexed that it never occurred to you to ask me for what you were in want of." "In a liaison like ours, if the woman has any sense of dignity at all, she ought to make every possible sacrifice rather than ask her lover for money and so give a venal character to her love. You love me, I am sure, but you do not know on how slight a thread depends the love one has for a woman like me. Who knows? Perhaps some day when you were bored or worried you would fancy you saw a carefully concerted plan in our liaison. Prudence is a chatterbox. What need had I of the horses? It was an economy to sell them. I don't use them and I don't spend anything on their keep; if you love me, I ask nothing more, and you will love me just as much without horses, or shawls, or diamonds." All that was said so naturally that the tears came to my eyes as I listened. "But, my good Marguerite," I replied, pressing her hands lovingly, "you knew that one day I should discover the sacrifice you had made, and that the moment I discovered it I should allow it no longer." "But why?" "Because, my dear child, I can not allow your affection for me to deprive you of even a trinket. I too should not like you to be able, in a moment when you were bored or worried, to think that if you were living with somebody else those moments would not exist; and to repent, if only for a minute, of living with me. In a few days your horses, your diamonds, and your shawls shall be returned to you. They are as necessary to you as air is to life, and it may be absurd, but I like you better showy than simple." "Then you no longer love me." "Foolish creature!" "If you loved me, you would let me love you my own way; on the contrary, you persist in only seeing in me a woman to whom luxury is indispensable, and whom you think you are always obliged to pay. You are ashamed to accept the proof of my love. In spite of yourself, you think of leaving me some day, and you want to put your disinterestedness beyond risk of suspicion. You are right, my friend, but I had better hopes." And Marguerite made a motion to rise; I held her, and said to her: "I want you to be happy and to have nothing to reproach me for, that is all." "And we are going to be separated!" "Why, Marguerite, who can separate us?" I cried. "You, who will not let me take you on your own level, but insist on taking me on mine; you, who wish me to keep the luxury in the midst of which I have lived, and so keep the moral distance which separates us; you, who do not believe that my affection is sufficiently disinterested to share with me what you have, though we could live happily enough on it together, and would rather ruin yourself, because you are still bound by a foolish prejudice. Do you really think that I could compare a carriage and diamonds with your love? Do you think that my real happiness lies in the trifles that mean so much when one has nothing to love, but which become trifling indeed when one has? You will pay my debts, realize your estate, and then keep me? How long will that last? Two or three months, and then it will be too late to live the life I propose, for then you will have to take everything from me, and that is what a man of honour can not do; while now you have eight or ten thousand francs a year, on which we should be able to live. I will sell the rest of what I do not want, and with this alone I will make two thousand francs a year. We will take a nice little flat in which we can both live. In the summer we will go into the country, not to a house like this, but to a house just big enough for two people. You are independent, I am free, we are young; in heaven's name, Armand, do not drive me back into the life I had to lead once!" I could not answer. Tears of gratitude and love filled my eyes, and I flung myself into Marguerite's arms. "I wanted," she continued, "to arrange everything without telling you, pay all my debts, and take a new flat. In October we should have been back in Paris, and all would have come out; but since Prudence has told you all, you will have to agree beforehand, instead of agreeing afterward. Do you love me enough for that?" It was impossible to resist such devotion. I kissed her hands ardently, and said: "I will do whatever you wish." It was agreed that we should do as she had planned. Thereupon, she went wild with delight; danced, sang, amused herself with calling up pictures of her new flat in all its simplicity, and began to consult me as to its position and arrangement. I saw how happy and proud she was of this resolution, which seemed as if it would bring us into closer and closer relationship, and I resolved to do my own share. In an instant I decided the whole course of my life. I put my affairs in order, and made over to Marguerite the income which had come to me from my mother, and which seemed little enough in return for the sacrifice which I was accepting. There remained the five thousand francs a year from my father; and, whatever happened, I had always enough to live on. I did not tell Marguerite what I had done, certain as I was that she would refuse the gift. This income came from a mortgage of sixty thousand francs on a house that I had never even seen. All that I knew was that every three months my father's solicitor, an old friend of the family, handed over to me seven hundred and fifty francs in return for my receipt. The day when Marguerite and I came to Paris to look for a flat, I went to this solicitor and asked him what had to be done in order to make over this income to another person. The good man imagined I was ruined, and questioned me as to the cause of my decision. As I knew that I should be obliged, sooner or later, to say in whose favour I made this transfer, I thought it best to tell him the truth at once. He made none of the objections that his position as friend and solicitor authorized him to make, and assured me that he would arrange the whole affair in the best way possible. Naturally, I begged him to employ the greatest discretion in regard to my father, and on leaving him I rejoined Marguerite, who was waiting for me at Julie Duprat's, where she had gone in preference to going to listen to the moralizings of Prudence. We began to look out for flats. All those that we saw seemed to Marguerite too dear, and to me too simple. However, we finally found, in one of the quietest parts of Paris, a little house, isolated from the main part of the building. Behind this little house was a charming garden, surrounded by walls high enough to screen us from our neighbours, and low enough not to shut off our own view. It was better than our expectations. While I went to give notice at my own flat, Marguerite went to see a business agent, who, she told me, had already done for one of her friends exactly what she wanted him to do for her. She came on to the Rue de Provence in a state of great delight. The man had promised to pay all her debts, to give her a receipt for the amount, and to hand over to her twenty thousand francs, in return for the whole of her furniture. You have seen by the amount taken at the sale that this honest man would have gained thirty thousand francs out of his client. We went back joyously to Bougival, talking over our projects for the future, which, thanks to our heedlessness, and especially to our love, we saw in the rosiest light. A week later, as we were having lunch, Nanine came to tell us that my servant was asking for me. "Let him come in," I said. "Sir," said he, "your father has arrived in Paris, and begs you to return at once to your rooms, where he is waiting for you." This piece of news was the most natural thing in the world, yet, as we heard it, Marguerite and I looked at one another. We foresaw trouble. Before she had spoken a word, I replied to her thought, and, taking her hand, I said, "Fear nothing." "Come back as soon as possible," whispered Marguerite, embracing me; "I will wait for you at the window." I sent on Joseph to tell my father that I was on my way. Two hours later I was at the Rue de Provence. Chapter 20 My father was seated in my room in his dressing-gown; he was writing, and I saw at once, by the way in which he raised his eyes to me when I came in, that there was going to be a serious discussion. I went up to him, all the same, as if I had seen nothing in his face, embraced him, and said: "When did you come, father?" "Last night." "Did you come straight here, as usual?" "Yes." "I am very sorry not to have been here to receive you." I expected that the sermon which my father's cold face threatened would begin at once; but he said nothing, sealed the letter which he had just written, and gave it to Joseph to post. When we were alone, my father rose, and leaning against the mantel-piece, said to me: "My dear Armand, we have serious matters to discuss." "I am listening, father." "You promise me to be frank?" "Am I not accustomed to be so?" "Is it not true that you are living with a woman called Marguerite Gautier?" "Yes." "Do you know what this woman was?" "A kept woman." "And it is for her that you have forgotten to come and see your sister and me this year?" "Yes, father, I admit it." "You are very much in love with this woman?" "You see it, father, since she has made me fail in duty toward you, for which I humbly ask your forgiveness to-day." My father, no doubt, was not expecting such categorical answers, for he seemed to reflect a moment, and then said to me: "You have, of course, realized that you can not always live like that?" "I fear so, father, but I have not realized it." "But you must realize," continued my father, in a dryer tone, "that I, at all events, should not permit it." "I have said to myself that as long as I did nothing contrary to the respect which I owe to the traditional probity of the family I could live as I am living, and this has reassured me somewhat in regard to the fears I have had." Passions are formidable enemies to sentiment. I was prepared for every struggle, even with my father, in order that I might keep Marguerite. "Then, the moment is come when you must live otherwise." "Why, father?" "Because you are doing things which outrage the respect that you imagine you have for your family." "I don't follow your meaning." "I will explain it to you. Have a mistress if you will; pay her as a man of honour is bound to pay the woman whom he keeps, by all means; but that you should come to forget the most sacred things for her, that you should let the report of your scandalous life reach my quiet countryside, and set a blot on the honourable name that I have given you, it can not, it shall not be." "Permit me to tell you, father, that those who have given you information about me have been ill-informed. I am the lover of Mlle. Gautier; I live with her; it is the most natural thing in the world. I do not give Mlle. Gautier the name you have given me; I spend on her account what my means allow me to spend; I have no debts; and, in short, I am not in a position which authorizes a father to say to his son what you have just said to me." "A father is always authorized to rescue his son out of evil paths. You have not done any harm yet, but you will do it." "Father!" "Sir, I know more of life than you do. There are no entirely pure sentiments except in perfectly chaste women. Every Manon can have her own Des Grieux, and times are changed. It would be useless for the world to grow older if it did not correct its ways. You will leave your mistress." "I am very sorry to disobey you, father, but it is impossible." "I will compel you to do so." "Unfortunately, father, there no longer exists a Sainte Marguerite to which courtesans can be sent, and, even if there were, I would follow Mlle. Gautier if you succeeded in having her sent there. What would you have? Perhaps am in the wrong, but I can only be happy as long as I am the lover of this woman." "Come, Armand, open your eyes. Recognise that it is your father who speaks to you, your father who has always loved you, and who only desires your happiness. Is it honourable for you to live like husband and wife with a woman whom everybody has had?" "What does it matter, father, if no one will any more? What does it matter, if this woman loves me, if her whole life is changed through the love which she has for me and the love which I have for her? What does it matter, if she has become a different woman?" "Do you think, then, sir, that the mission of a man of honour is to go about converting lost women? Do you think that God has given such a grotesque aim to life, and that the heart should have any room for enthusiasm of that kind? What will be the end of this marvellous cure, and what will you think of what you are saying to-day by the time you are forty? You will laugh at this love of yours, if you can still laugh, and if it has not left too serious a trace in your past. What would you be now if your father had had your ideas and had given up his life to every impulse of this kind, instead of rooting himself firmly in convictions of honour and steadfastness? Think it over, Armand, and do not talk any more such absurdities. Come, leave this woman; your father entreats you." I answered nothing. "Armand," continued my father, "in the name of your sainted mother, abandon this life, which you will forget more easily than you think. You are tied to it by an impossible theory. You are twenty-four; think of the future. You can not always love this woman, who also can not always love you. You both exaggerate your love. You put an end to your whole career. One step further, and you will no longer be able to leave the path you have chosen, and you will suffer all your life for what you have done in your youth. Leave Paris. Come and stay for a month or two with your sister and me. Rest in our quiet family affection will soon heal you of this fever, for it is nothing else. Meanwhile, your mistress will console herself; she will take another lover; and when you see what it is for which you have all but broken with your father, and all but lost his love, you will tell me that I have done well to come and seek you out, and you will thank me for it. Come, you will go with me, Armand, will you not?" I felt that my father would be right if it had been any other woman, but I was convinced that he was wrong with regard to Marguerite. Nevertheless, the tone in which he said these last words was so kind, so appealing, that I dared not answer. "Well?" said he in a trembling voice. "Well, father, I can promise nothing," I said at last; "what you ask of me is beyond my power. Believe me," I continued, seeing him make an impatient movement, "you exaggerate the effects of this liaison. Marguerite is a different kind of a woman from what you think. This love, far from leading me astray, is capable, on the contrary, of setting me in the right direction. Love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it. If you knew Marguerite, you would understand that I am in no danger. She is as noble as the noblest of women. There is as much disinterestedness in her as there is cupidity in others." "All of which does not prevent her from accepting the whole of your fortune, for the sixty thousand francs which come to you from your mother, and which you are giving her, are, understand me well, your whole fortune." My father had probably kept this peroration and this threat for the last stroke. I was firmer before these threats than before his entreaties. "Who told you that I was handing this sum to her?" I asked. "My solicitor. Could an honest man carry out such a procedure without warning me? Well, it is to prevent you from ruining yourself for a prostitute that I am now in Paris. Your mother, when she died, left you enough to live on respectably, and not to squander on your mistresses." "I swear to you, father, that Marguerite knew nothing of this transfer." "Why, then, do you make it?" "Because Marguerite, the woman you calumniate, and whom you wish me to abandon, is sacrificing all that she possesses in order to live with me." "And you accept this sacrifice? What sort of a man are you, sir, to allow Mlle. Gautier to sacrifice anything for you? Come, enough of this. You will leave this woman. Just now I begged you; now I command you. I will have no such scandalous doings in my family. Pack up your things and get ready to come with me." "Pardon me, father," I said, "but I shall not come." "And why?" "Because I am at an age when no one any longer obeys a command." My father turned pale at my answer. "Very well, sir," he said, "I know what remains to be done." He rang and Joseph appeared. "Have my things taken to the Hotel de Paris," he said to my servant. And thereupon he went to his room and finished dressing. When he returned, I went up to him. "Promise me, father," I said, "that you will do nothing to give Marguerite pain?" My father stopped, looked at me disdainfully, and contented himself with saying, "I believe you are mad." After this he went out, shutting the door violently after him. I went downstairs, took a cab, and returned to Bougival. Marguerite was waiting for me at the window. Chapter 21 Chapter 21 "At last you have come," she said, throwing her arms round my neck. "But how pale you are!" I told her of the scene with my father. "My God! I was afraid of it," she said. "When Joseph came to tell you of your father's arrival I trembled as if he had brought news of some misfortune. My poor friend, I am the cause of all your distress. You will be better off, perhaps, if you leave me and do not quarrel with your father on my account. He knows that you are sure to have a mistress, and he ought to be thankful that it is I, since I love you and do not want more of you than your position allows. Did you tell him how we had arranged our future?" "Yes; that is what annoyed him the most, for he saw how much we really love one another." "What are we to do, then?" "Hold together, my good Marguerite, and let the storm pass over." "Will it pass?" "It will have to." "But your father will not stop there." "What do you suppose he can do?" "How do I know? Everything that a father can do to make his son obey him. He will remind you of my past life, and will perhaps do me the honour of inventing some new story, so that you may give me up." "You know that I love you." "Yes, but what I know, too, is that, sooner or later, you will have to obey your father, and perhaps you will end by believing him." "No, Marguerite. It is I who will make him believe me. Some of his friends have been telling him tales which have made him angry; but he is good and just, he will change his first impression; and then, after all, what does it matter to me?" "Do not say that, Armand. I would rather anything should happen than that you should quarrel with your family; wait till after to-day, and to-morrow go back to Paris. Your father, too, will have thought it over on his side, and perhaps you will both come to a better understanding. Do not go against his principles, pretend to make some concessions to what he wants; seem not to care so very much about me, and he will let things remain as they are. Hope, my friend, and be sure of one thing, that whatever happens, Marguerite will always be yours." "You swear it?" "Do I need to swear it?" How sweet it is to let oneself be persuaded by the voice that one loves! Marguerite and I spent the whole day in talking over our projects for the future, as if we felt the need of realizing them as quickly as possible. At every moment we awaited some event, but the day passed without bringing us any new tidings. Next day I left at ten o'clock, and reached the hotel about twelve. My father had gone out. I went to my own rooms, hoping that he had perhaps gone there. No one had called. I went to the solicitor's. No one was there. I went back to the hotel, and waited till six. M. Duval did not return, and I went back to Bougival. I found Marguerite not waiting for me, as she had been the day before, but sitting by the fire, which the weather still made necessary. She was so absorbed in her thoughts that I came close to her chair without her hearing me. When I put my lips to her forehead she started as if the kiss had suddenly awakened her. "You frightened me," she said. "And your father?" "I have not seen him. I do not know what it means. He was not at his hotel, nor anywhere where there was a chance of my finding him." "Well, you must try again to-morrow." "I am very much inclined to wait till he sends for me. I think I have done all that can be expected of me." "No, my friend, it is not enough; you must call on your father again, and you must call to-morrow." "Why to-morrow rather than any other day?" "Because," said Marguerite, and it seemed to me that she blushed slightly at this question, "because it will show that you are the more keen about it, and he will forgive us the sooner." For the remainder of the day Marguerite was sad and preoccupied. I had to repeat twice over everything I said to her to obtain an answer. She ascribed this preoccupation to her anxiety in regard to the events which had happened during the last two days. I spent the night in reassuring her, and she sent me away in the morning with an insistent disquietude that I could not explain to myself. Again my father was absent, but he had left this letter for me: "If you call again to-day, wait for me till four. If I am not in by four, come and dine with me to-morrow. I must see you." I waited till the hour he had named, but he did not appear. I returned to Bougival. The night before I had found Marguerite sad; that night I found her feverish and agitated. On seeing me, she flung her arms around my neck, but she cried for a long time in my arms. I questioned her as to this sudden distress, which alarmed me by its violence. She gave me no positive reason, but put me off with those evasions which a woman resorts to when she will not tell the truth. When she was a little calmed down, I told her the result of my visit, and I showed her my father's letter, from which, I said, we might augur well. At the sight of the letter and on hearing my comment, her tears began to flow so copiously that I feared an attack of nerves, and, calling Nanine, I put her to bed, where she wept without a word, but held my hands and kissed them every moment. I asked Nanine if, during my absence, her mistress had received any letter or visit which could account for the state in which I found her, but Nanine replied that no one had called and nothing had been sent. Something, however, had occurred since the day before, something which troubled me the more because Marguerite concealed it from me. In the evening she seemed a little calmer, and, making me sit at the foot of the bed, she told me many times how much she loved me. She smiled at me, but with an effort, for in spite of herself her eyes were veiled with tears. I used every means to make her confess the real cause of her distress, but she persisted in giving me nothing but vague reasons, as I have told you. At last she fell asleep in my arms, but it was the sleep which tires rather than rests the body. From time to time she uttered a cry, started up, and, after assuring herself that I was beside her, made me swear that I would always love her. I could make nothing of these intermittent paroxysms of distress, which went on till morning. Then Marguerite fell into a kind of stupor. She had not slept for two nights. Her rest was of short duration, for toward eleven she awoke, and, seeing that I was up, she looked about her, crying: "Are you going already?" "No," said I, holding her hands; "but I wanted to let you sleep on. It is still early." "What time are you going to Paris?" "At four." "So soon? But you will stay with me till then?" "Of course. Do I not always?" "I am so glad! Shall we have lunch?" she went on absentmindedly. "If you like." "And then you will be nice to me till the very moment you go?" "Yes; and I will come back as soon as I can." "You will come back?" she said, looking at me with haggard eyes. "Naturally." "Oh, yes, you will come back to-night. I shall wait for you, as I always do, and you will love me, and we shall be happy, as we have been ever since we have known each other." All these words were said in such a strained voice, they seemed to hide so persistent and so sorrowful a thought, that I trembled every moment lest Marguerite should become delirious. "Listen," I said. "You are ill. I can not leave you like this. I will write and tell my father not to expect me." "No, no," she cried hastily, "don't do that. Your father will accuse me of hindering you again from going to see him when he wants to see you; no, no, you must go, you must! Besides, I am not ill. I am quite well. I had a bad dream and am not yet fully awake." From that moment Marguerite tried to seem more cheerful. There were no more tears. When the hour came for me to go, I embraced her and asked her if she would come with me as far as the train; I hoped that the walk would distract her and that the air would do her good. I wanted especially to be with her as long as possible. She agreed, put on her cloak and took Nanine with her, so as not to return alone. Twenty times I was on the point of not going. But the hope of a speedy return, and the fear of offending my father still more, sustained me, and I took my place in the train. "Till this evening!" I said to Marguerite, as I left her. She did not reply. Once already she had not replied to the same words, and the Comte de G., you will remember, had spent the night with her; but that time was so far away that it seemed to have been effaced from my memory, and if I had any fear, it was certainly not of Marguerite being unfaithful to me. Reaching Paris, I hastened off to see Prudence, intending to ask her to go and keep Marguerite company, in the hope that her mirth and liveliness would distract her. I entered without being announced, and found Prudence at her toilet. "Ah!" she said, anxiously; "is Marguerite with you?" "No." "How is she?" "She is not well." "Is she not coming?" "Did you expect her?" Madame Duvernoy reddened, and replied, with a certain constraint: "I only meant that since you are at Paris, is she not coming to join you?" "No." I looked at Prudence; she cast down her eyes, and I read in her face the fear of seeing my visit prolonged. "I even came to ask you, my dear Prudence, if you have nothing to do this evening, to go and see Marguerite; you will be company for her, and you can stay the night. I never saw her as she was to-day, and I am afraid she is going to be ill." "I am dining in town," replied Prudence, "and I can't go and see Marguerite this evening. I will see her tomorrow." I took leave of Mme. Duvernoy, who seemed almost as preoccupied as Marguerite, and went on to my father's; his first glance seemed to study me attentively. He held out his hand. "Your two visits have given me pleasure, Armand," he said; "they make me hope that you have thought over things on your side as I have on mine." "May I ask you, father, what was the result of your reflection?" "The result, my dear boy, is that I have exaggerated the importance of the reports that had been made to me, and that I have made up my mind to be less severe with you." "What are you saying, father?" I cried joyously. "I say, my dear child, that every young man must have his mistress, and that, from the fresh information I have had, I would rather see you the lover of Mlle. Gautier than of any one else." "My dear father, how happy you make me!" We talked in this manner for some moments, and then sat down to table. My father was charming all dinner time. I was in a hurry to get back to Bougival to tell Marguerite about this fortunate change, and I looked at the clock every moment. "You are watching the time," said my father, "and you are impatient to leave me. O young people, how you always sacrifice sincere to doubtful affections!" "Do not say that, father; Marguerite loves me, I am sure of it." My father did not answer; he seemed to say neither yes nor no. He was very insistent that I should spend the whole evening with him and not go till the morning; but Marguerite had not been well when I left her. I told him of it, and begged his permission to go back to her early, promising to come again on the morrow. The weather was fine; he walked with me as far as the station. Never had I been so happy. The future appeared as I had long desired to see it. I had never loved my father as I loved him at that moment. Just as I was leaving him, he once more begged me to stay. I refused. "You are really very much in love with her?" he asked. "Madly." "Go, then," and he passed his hand across his forehead as if to chase a thought, then opened his mouth as if to say something; but he only pressed my hand, and left me hurriedly, saying: "Till to-morrow, then!" Chapter 22 It seemed to me as if the train did not move. I reached Bougival at eleven. Not a window in the house was lighted up, and when I rang no one answered the bell. It was the first time that such a thing had occurred to me. At last the gardener came. I entered. Nanine met me with a light. I went to Marguerite's room. "Where is madame?" "Gone to Paris," replied Nanine. "To Paris!" "Yes, sir." "When?" "An hour after you." "She left no word for me?" "Nothing." Nanine left me. Perhaps she had some suspicion or other, I thought, and went to Paris to make sure that my visit to my father was not an excuse for a day off. Perhaps Prudence wrote to her about something important. I said to myself when I was alone; but I saw Prudence; she said nothing to make me suppose that she had written to Marguerite. All at once I remembered Mme. Duvernoy's question, "Isn't she coming to-day?" when I had said that Marguerite was ill. I remembered at the same time how embarrassed Prudence had appeared when I looked at her after this remark, which seemed to indicate an appointment. I remembered, too, Marguerite's tears all day long, which my father's kind reception had rather put out of my mind. From this moment all the incidents grouped themselves about my first suspicion, and fixed it so firmly in my mind that everything served to confirm it, even my father's kindness. Marguerite had almost insisted on my going to Paris; she had pretended to be calmer when I had proposed staying with her. Had I fallen into some trap? Was Marguerite deceiving me? Had she counted on being back in time for me not to perceive her absence, and had she been detained by chance? Why had she said nothing to Nanine, or why had she not written? What was the meaning of those tears, this absence, this mystery? That is what I asked myself in affright, as I stood in the vacant room, gazing at the clock, which pointed to midnight, and seemed to say to me that it was too late to hope for my mistress's return. Yet, after all the arrangements we had just made, after the sacrifices that had been offered and accepted, was it likely that she was deceiving me? No. I tried to get rid of my first supposition. Probably she had found a purchaser for her furniture, and she had gone to Paris to conclude the bargain. She did not wish to tell me beforehand, for she knew that, though I had consented to it, the sale, so necessary to our future happiness, was painful to me, and she feared to wound my self-respect in speaking to me about it. She would rather not see me till the whole thing was done, and that was evidently why Prudence was expecting her when she let out the secret. Marguerite could not finish the whole business to-day, and was staying the night with Prudence, or perhaps she would come even now, for she must know bow anxious I should be, and would not wish to leave me in that condition. But, if so, why those tears? No doubt, despite her love for me, the poor girl could not make up her mind to give up all the luxury in which she had lived until now, and for which she had been so envied, without crying over it. I was quite ready to forgive her for such regrets. I waited for her impatiently, that I might say to her, as I covered her with kisses, that I had guessed the reason of her mysterious absence. Nevertheless, the night went on, and Marguerite did not return. My anxiety tightened its circle little by little, and began to oppress my head and heart. Perhaps something had happened to her. Perhaps she was injured, ill, dead. Perhaps a messenger would arrive with the news of some dreadful accident. Perhaps the daylight would find me with the same uncertainty and with the same fears. The idea that Marguerite was perhaps unfaithful to me at the very moment when I waited for her in terror at her absence did not return to my mind. There must be some cause, independent of her will, to keep her away from me, and the more I thought, the more convinced I was that this cause could only be some mishap or other. O vanity of man, coming back to us in every form! One o'clock struck. I said to myself that I would wait another hour, but that at two o'clock, if Marguerite had not returned, I would set out for Paris. Meanwhile I looked about for a book, for I dared not think. Manon Lescaut was open on the table. It seemed to me that here and there the pages were wet as if with tears. I turned the leaves over and then closed the book, for the letters seemed to me void of meaning through the veil of my doubts. Time went slowly. The sky was covered with clouds. An autumn rain lashed the windows. The empty bed seemed at moments to assume the aspect of a tomb. I was afraid. I opened the door. I listened, and heard nothing but the voice of the wind in the trees. Not a vehicle was to be seen on the road. The half hour sounded sadly from the church tower. I began to fear lest some one should enter. It seemed to me that only a disaster could come at that hour and under that sombre sky. Two o'clock struck. I still waited a little. Only the sound of the bell troubled the silence with its monotonous and rhythmical stroke. At last I left the room, where every object had assumed that melancholy aspect which the restless solitude of the heart gives to all its surroundings. In the next room I found Nanine sleeping over her work. At the sound of the door, she awoke and asked if her mistress had come in. "No; but if she comes in, tell her that I was so anxious that I had to go to Paris." "At this hour?" "Yes. "But how? You won't find a carriage." "I will walk." "But it is raining." "No matter." "But madame will be coming back, or if she doesn't come it will be time enough in the morning to go and see what has kept her. You will be murdered on the way." "There is no danger, my dear Nanine; I will see you to-morrow." The good girl went and got me a cloak, put it over my shoulders, and offered to wake up Mme. Arnould to see if a vehicle could be obtained; but I would hear of nothing, convinced as I was that I should lose, in a perhaps fruitless inquiry, more time than I should take to cover half the road. Besides, I felt the need of air and physical fatigue in order to cool down the over-excitement which possessed me. I took the key of the flat in the Rue d'Antin, and after saying good-bye to Nanine, who came with me as far as the gate, I set out. At first I began to run, but the earth was muddy with rain, and I fatigued myself doubly. At the end of half an hour I was obliged to stop, and I was drenched with sweat. I recovered my breath and went on. The night was so dark that at every step I feared to dash myself against one of the trees on the roadside, which rose up sharply before me like great phantoms rushing upon me. I overtook one or two wagons, which I soon left behind. A carriage was going at full gallop toward Bougival. As it passed me the hope came to me that Marguerite was in it. I stopped and cried out, "Marguerite! Marguerite!" But no one answered and the carriage continued its course. I watched it fade away in the distance, and then started on my way again. I took two hours to reach the Barriere de l'Etoile. The sight of Paris restored my strength, and I ran the whole length of the alley I had so often walked. That night no one was passing; it was like going through the midst of a dead city. The dawn began to break. When I reached the Rue d'Antin the great city stirred a little before quite awakening. Five o'clock struck at the church of Saint Roch at the moment when I entered Marguerite's house. I called out my name to the porter, who had had from me enough twenty-franc pieces to know that I had the right to call on Mlle. Gautier at five in the morning. I passed without difficulty. I might have asked if Marguerite was at home, but he might have said "No," and I preferred to remain in doubt two minutes longer, for, as long as I doubted, there was still hope. I listened at the door, trying to discover a sound, a movement. Nothing. The silence of the country seemed to be continued here. I opened the door and entered. All the curtains were hermetically closed. I drew those of the dining-room and went toward the bed-room and pushed open the door. I sprang at the curtain cord and drew it violently. The curtain opened, a faint light made its way in. I rushed to the bed. It was empty. I opened the doors one after another. I visited every room. No one. It was enough to drive one mad. I went into the dressing-room, opened the window, and called Prudence several times. Mme. Duvernoy's window remained closed. I went downstairs to the porter and asked him if Mlle. Gautier had come home during the day. "Yes," answered the man; "with Mme. Duvernoy." "She left no word for me?" "No." "Do you know what they did afterward?" "They went away in a carriage." "What sort of a carriage?" "A private carriage." What could it all mean? I rang at the next door. "Where are you going, sir?" asked the porter, when he had opened to me. "To Mme. Duvernoy's." "She has not come back." "You are sure?" "Yes, sir; here's a letter even, which was brought for her last night and which I have not yet given her." And the porter showed me a letter which I glanced at mechanically. I recognised Marguerite's writing. I took the letter. It was addressed, "To Mme. Duvernoy, to forward to M. Duval." "This letter is for me," I said to the porter, as I showed him the address. "You are M. Duval?" he replied. "Yes. "Ah! I remember. You often came to see Mme. Duvernoy." When I was in the street I broke the seal of the letter. If a thunder-bolt had fallen at my feet I should have been less startled than I was by what I read. "By the time you read this letter, Armand, I shall be the mistress of another man. All is over between us. "Go back to your father, my friend, and to your sister, and there, by the side of a pure young girl, ignorant of all our miseries, you will soon forget what you would have suffered through that lost creature who is called Marguerite Gautier, whom you have loved for an instant, and who owes to you the only happy moments of a life which, she hopes, will not be very long now." When I had read the last word, I thought I should have gone mad. For a moment I was really afraid of falling in the street. A cloud passed before my eyes and my blood beat in my temples. At last I came to myself a little. I looked about me, and was astonished to see the life of others continue without pausing at my distress. I was not strong enough to endure the blow alone. Then I remembered that my father was in the same city, that I might be with him in ten minutes, and that, whatever might be the cause of my sorrow, he would share it. I ran like a madman, like a thief, to the Hotel de Paris; I found the key in the door of my father's room; I entered. He was reading. He showed so little astonishment at seeing me, that it was as if he was expecting me. I flung myself into his arms without saying a word. I gave him Marguerite's letter, and, falling on my knees beside his bed, I wept hot tears. Chapter 23 When the current of life had resumed its course, I could not believe that the day which I saw dawning would not be like those which had preceded it. There were moments when I fancied that some circumstance, which I could not recollect, had obliged me to spend the night away from Marguerite, but that, if I returned to Bougival, I should find her again as anxious as I had been, and that she would ask me what had detained me away from her so long. When one's existence has contracted a habit, such as that of this love, it seems impossible that the habit should be broken without at the same time breaking all the other springs of life. I was forced from time to time to reread Marguerite's letter, in order to convince myself that I had not been dreaming. My body, succumbing to the moral shock, was incapable of movement. Anxiety, the night walk, and the morning's news had prostrated me. My father profited by this total prostration of all my faculties to demand of me a formal promise to accompany him. I promised all that he asked, for I was incapable of sustaining a discussion, and I needed some affection to help me to live, after what had happened. I was too thankful that my father was willing to console me under such a calamity. All that I remember is that on that day, about five o'clock, he took me with him in a post-chaise. Without a word to me, he had had my luggage packed and put up behind the chaise with his own, and so he carried me off. I did not realize what I was doing until the town had disappeared and the solitude of the road recalled to me the emptiness of my heart. Then my tears again began to flow. My father had realized that words, even from him, would do nothing to console me, and he let me weep without saying a word, only sometimes pressing my hand, as if to remind me that I had a friend at my side. At night I slept a little. I dreamed of Marguerite. I woke with a start, not recalling why I was in the carriage. Then the truth came back upon me, and I let my head sink on my breast. I dared not say anything to my father. I was afraid he would say, "You see I was right when I declared that this woman did not love you." But he did not use his advantage, and we reached C. without his having said anything to me except to speak of matters quite apart from the event which had occasioned my leaving Paris. When I embraced my sister, I remembered what Marguerite had said about her in her letter, and I saw at once how little my sister, good as she was, would be able to make me forget my mistress. Shooting had begun, and my father thought that it would be a distraction for me. He got up shooting parties with friends and neighbours. I went without either reluctance or enthusiasm, with that sort of apathy into which I had sunk since my departure. We were beating about for game and I was given my post. I put down my unloaded gun at my side, and meditated. I watched the clouds pass. I let my thought wander over the solitary plains, and from time to time I heard some one call to me and point to a hare not ten paces off. None of these details escaped my father, and he was not deceived by my exterior calm. He was well aware that, broken as I now was, I should some day experience a terrible reaction, which might be dangerous, and, without seeming to make any effort to console me, he did his utmost to distract my thoughts. My sister, naturally, knew nothing of what had happened, and she could not understand how it was that I, who had formerly been so lighthearted, had suddenly become so sad and dreamy. Sometimes, surprising in the midst of my sadness my father's anxious scrutiny, I pressed his hand as if to ask him tacitly to forgive me for the pain which, in spite of myself, I was giving him. Thus a month passed, but at the end of that time I could endure it no longer. The memory of Marguerite pursued me unceasingly. I had loved, I still loved this woman so much that I could not suddenly become indifferent to her. I had to love or to hate her. Above all, whatever I felt for her, I had to see her again, and at once. This desire possessed my mind, and with all the violence of a will which had begun to reassert itself in a body so long inert. It was not enough for me to see Marguerite in a month, a week. I had to see her the very next day after the day when the thought had occurred to me; and I went to my father and told him that I had been called to Paris on business, but that I should return promptly. No doubt he guessed the reason of my departure, for he insisted that I should stay, but, seeing that if I did not carry out my intention the consequences, in the state in which I was, might be fatal, he embraced me, and begged me, almost, with tears, to return without delay. I did not sleep on the way to Paris. Once there, what was I going to do? I did not know; I only knew that it must be something connected with Marguerite. I went to my rooms to change my clothes, and, as the weather was fine and it was still early, I made my way to the Champs-Elysees. At the end of half an hour I saw Marguerite's carriage, at some distance, coming from the Rond-Point to the Place de la Concorde. She had repurchased her horses, for the carriage was just as I was accustomed to see it, but she was not in it. Scarcely had I noticed this fact, when looking around me, I saw Marguerite on foot, accompanied by a woman whom I had never seen. As she passed me she turned pale, and a nervous smile tightened about her lips. For my part, my heart beat violently in my breast; but I succeeded in giving a cold expression to my face, as I bowed coldly to my former mistress, who just then reached her carriage, into which she got with her friend. I knew Marguerite: this unexpected meeting must certainly have upset her. No doubt she had heard that I had gone away, and had thus been reassured as to the consequences of our rupture; but, seeing me again in Paris, finding herself face to face with me, pale as I was, she must have realized that I had not returned without purpose, and she must have asked herself what that purpose was. If I had seen Marguerite unhappy, if, in revenging myself upon her, I could have come to her aid, I should perhaps have forgiven her, and certainly I should have never dreamt of doing her an injury. But I found her apparently happy, some one else had restored to her the luxury which I could not give her; her breaking with me seemed to assume a character of the basest self-interest; I was lowered in my own esteem as well as in my love. I resolved that she should pay for what I had suffered. I could not be indifferent to what she did, consequently what would hurt her the most would be my indifference; it was, therefore, this sentiment which I must affect, not only in her eyes, but in the eyes of others. I tried to put on a smiling countenance, and I went to call on Prudence. The maid announced me, and I had to wait a few minutes in the drawing-room. At last Mme. Duvernoy appeared and asked me into her boudoir; as I seated myself I heard the drawing-room door open, a light footstep made the floor creak and the front door was closed violently. "I am disturbing you," I said to Prudence. "Not in the least. Marguerite was there. When she heard you announced, she made her escape; it was she who has just gone out." "Is she afraid of me now?" "No, but she is afraid that you would not wish to see her." "But why?" I said, drawing my breath with difficulty, for I was choked with emotion. "The poor girl left me for her carriage, her furniture, and her diamonds; she did quite right, and I don't bear her any grudge. I met her to-day," I continued carelessly. "Where?" asked Prudence, looking at me and seeming to ask herself if this was the same man whom she had known so madly in love. "In the Champs-Elysees. She was with another woman, very pretty. Who is she?" "What was she like?" "Blonde, slender, with side curls; blue eyes; very elegant." "Ali! It was Olympe; she is really very pretty." "Whom does she live with?" "With nobody; with anybody." "Where does she live?" "Rue Troncliet, No.—. Do you want to make love to her?" "One never knows." "And Marguerite?" "I should hardly tell you the truth if I said I think no more about her; but I am one of those with whom everything depends on the way in which one breaks with them. Now Marguerite ended with me so lightly that I realize I was a great fool to have been as much in love with her as I was, for I was really very much in love with that girl." You can imagine the way in which I said that; the sweat broke out on my forehead. "She was very fond of you, you know, and she still is; the proof is, that after meeting you to-day, she came straight to tell me about it. When she got here she was all of a tremble; I thought she was going to faint." "Well, what did she say?" "She said, 'He is sure to come here,' and she begged me to ask you to forgive her." "I have forgiven her, you may tell her. She was a good girl; but, after all, like the others, and I ought to have expected what happened. I am even grateful to her, for I see now what would have happened if I had lived with her altogether. It was ridiculous." "She will be very glad to find that you take it so well. It was quite time she left you, my dear fellow. The rascal of an agent to whom she had offered to sell her furniture went around to her creditors to find out how much she owed; they took fright, and in two days she would have been sold up." "And now it is all paid?" "More or less." "And who has supplied the money?" "The Comte de N. Ah, my dear friend, there are men made on purpose for such occasions. To cut a long story short he gave her twenty thousand francs, but he has had his way at last. He knows quite well that Marguerite is not in love with him; but he is very nice with her all the same. As you have seen, he has repurchased her horses, he has taken her jewels out of pawn, and he gives her as much money as the duke used to give her; if she likes to live quietly, he will stay with her a long time." "And what is she doing? Is she living in Paris altogether?" "She would never go back to Bougival after you went. I had to go myself and see after all her things, and yours, too. I made a package of them and you can send here for them. You will find everything, except a little case with your initials. Marguerite wanted to keep it. If you really want it, I will ask her for it." "Let her keep it," I stammered, for I felt the tears rise from my heart to my eyes at the recollection of the village where I had been so happy, and at the thought that Marguerite cared to keep something which had belonged to me and would recall me to her. If she had entered at that moment my thoughts of vengeance would have disappeared, and I should have fallen at her feet. "For the rest," continued Prudence, "I never saw her as she is now; she hardly takes any sleep, she goes to all the balls, she goes to suppers, she even drinks. The other day, after a supper, she had to stay in bed for a week; and when the doctor let her get up, she began again at the risk of her life. Shall you go and see her?" "What is the good? I came to see you, because you have always been charming to me, and I knew you before I ever knew Marguerite. I owe it to you that I have been her lover, and also, don't I, that I am her lover no longer?" "Well, I did all I could to get her away from you, and I believe you will be thankful to me later on." "I owe you a double gratitude," I added, rising, for I was disgusted with the woman, seeing her take every word I said to her as if it were serious. "You are going?" "Yes." I had learned enough. "When shall I be seeing you?" "Soon. Good-bye." "Good-bye." Prudence saw me to the door, and I went back to my own rooms with tears of rage in my eyes and a desire for vengeance in my heart. So Marguerite was no different from the others; so the steadfast love that she had had for me could not resist the desire of returning to her former life, and the need of having a carriage and plunging into dissipation. So I said to myself, as I lay awake at night though if I had reflected as calmly as I professed to I should have seen in this new and turbulent life of Marguerite the attempt to silence a constant thought, a ceaseless memory. Unfortunately, evil passion had the upper hand, and I only sought for some means of avenging myself on the poor creature. Oh, how petty and vile is man when he is wounded in one of his narrow passions! This Olympe whom I had seen was, if not a friend of Marguerite, at all events the woman with whom she was most often seen since her return to Paris. She was going to give a ball, and, as I took it for granted that Marguerite would be there, I tried to get an invitation and succeeded. When, full of my sorrowful emotions, I arrived at the ball, it was already very animated. They were dancing, shouting even, and in one of the quadrilles I perceived Marguerite dancing with the Comte de N., who seemed proud of showing her off, as if he said to everybody: "This woman is mine." I leaned against the mantel-piece just opposite Marguerite and watched her dancing. Her face changed the moment she caught sight of me. I saluted her casually with a glance of the eyes and a wave of the hand. When I reflected that after the ball she would go home, not with me but with that rich fool, when I thought of what would follow their return, the blood rose to my face, and I felt the need of doing something to trouble their relations. After the contredanse I went up to the mistress of the house, who displayed for the benefit of her guests a dazzling bosom and magnificent shoulders. She was beautiful, and, from the point of view of figure, more beautiful than Marguerite. I realized this fact still more clearly from certain glances which Marguerite bestowed upon her while I was talking with her. The man who was the lover of such a woman might well be as proud as M. de N., and she was beautiful enough to inspire a passion not less great than that which Marguerite had inspired in me. At that moment she had no lover. It would not be difficult to become so; it depended only on showing enough money to attract her attention. I made up my mind. That woman should be my mistress. I began by dancing with her. Half an hour afterward, Marguerite, pale as death, put on her pelisse and left the ball. Chapter 24 It was something already, but it was not enough. I saw the hold which I had upon this woman, and I took a cowardly advantage of it. When I think that she is dead now, I ask myself if God will ever forgive me for the wrong I did her. After the supper, which was noisy as could be, there was gambling. I sat by the side of Olympe and put down my money so recklessly that she could not but notice me. In an instant I had gained one hundred and fifty or two hundred louis, which I spread out before me on the table, and on which she fastened her eyes greedily. I was the only one not completely absorbed by the game, and able to pay her some attention. All the rest of the night I gained, and it was I who gave her money to play, for she had lost all she had before her and probably all she had in the house. At five in the morning, the guests departed. I had gained three hundred louis. All the players were already on their way downstairs; I was the only one who had remained behind, and as I did not know any of them, no one noticed it. Olympe herself was lighting the way, and I was going to follow the others, when, turning back, I said to her: "I must speak to you." "To-morrow," she said. "No, now." "What have you to say?" "You will see." And I went back into the room. "You have lost," I said. "Yes. "All that you had in the house?" She hesitated. "Be frank." "Well, it is true." "I have won three hundred louis. Here they are, if you will let me stay here to-night." And I threw the gold on the table. "And why this proposition?" "Because I am in love with you, of course." "No, but because you love Marguerite, and you want to have your revenge upon her by becoming my lover. You don't deceive a woman like me, my dear friend; unluckily, I am still too young and too good-looking to accept the part that you offer me." "So you refuse?" "Yes. "Would you rather take me for nothing? It is I who wouldn't accept then. Think it over, my dear Olympe; if I had sent some one to offer you these three hundred louis on my behalf, on the conditions I attach to them, you would have accepted. I preferred to speak to you myself. Accept without inquiring into my reasons; say to yourself that you are beautiful, and that there is nothing surprising in my being in love with you." Marguerite was a woman in the same position as Olympe, and yet I should never have dared say to her the first time I met her what I had said to the other woman. I loved Marguerite. I saw in her instincts which were lacking in the other, and at the very moment in which I made my bargain, I felt a disgust toward the woman with whom I was making it. She accepted, of course, in the end, and at midday I left her house as her lover; but I quitted her without a recollection of the caresses and of the words of love which she had felt bound to shower upon me in return for the six thousand francs which I left with her. And yet there were men who had ruined themselves for that woman. From that day I inflicted on Marguerite a continual persecution. Olympe and she gave up seeing one another, as you might imagine. I gave my new mistress a carriage and jewels. I gambled, I committed every extravagance which could be expected of a man in love with such a woman as Olympe. The report of my new infatuation was immediately spread abroad. Prudence herself was taken in, and finally thought that I had completely forgotten Marguerite. Marguerite herself, whether she guessed my motive or was deceived like everybody else, preserved a perfect dignity in response to the insults which I heaped upon her daily. Only, she seemed to suffer, for whenever I met her she was more and more pale, more and more sad. My love for her, carried to the point at which it was transformed into hatred, rejoiced at the sight of her daily sorrow. Often, when my cruelty toward her became infamous, Marguerite lifted upon me such appealing eyes that I blushed for the part I was playing, and was ready to implore her forgiveness. But my repentance was only of a moment's duration, and Olympe, who had finally put aside all self-respect, and discovered that by annoying Marguerite she could get from me whatever she wanted, constantly stirred up my resentment against her, and insulted her whenever she found an opportunity, with the cowardly persistence of a woman licensed by the authority of a man. At last Marguerite gave up going to balls or theatres, for fear of meeting Olympe and me. Then direct impertinences gave way to anonymous letters, and there was not a shameful thing which I did not encourage my mistress to relate and which I did not myself relate in reference to Marguerite. To reach such a point I must have been literally mad. I was like a man drunk upon bad wine, who falls into one of those nervous exaltations in which the hand is capable of committing a crime without the head knowing anything about it. In the midst of it all I endured a martyrdom. The not disdainful calm, the not contemptuous dignity with which Marguerite responded to all my attacks, and which raised her above me in my own eyes, enraged me still more against her. One evening Olympe had gone somewhere or other, and had met Marguerite, who for once had not spared the foolish creature, so that she had had to retire in confusion. Olympe returned in a fury, and Marguerite fainted and had to be carried out. Olympe related to me what had happened, declared that Marguerite, seeing her alone, had revenged herself upon her because she was my mistress, and that I must write and tell her to respect the woman whom I loved, whether I was present or absent. I need not tell you that I consented, and that I put into the letter which I sent to her address the same day, everything bitter, shameful, and cruel that I could think of. This time the blow was more than the unhappy creature could endure without replying. I felt sure that an answer would come, and I resolved not to go out all day. About two there was a ring, and Prudence entered. I tried to assume an indifferent air as I asked her what had brought her; but that day Mme. Duvernoy was not in a laughing humour, and in a really moved voice she said to me that since my return, that is to say for about three weeks, I had left no occasion untried which could give pain to Marguerite, that she was completely upset by it, and that the scene of last night and my angry letter of the morning had forced her to take to her bed. In short, without making any reproach, Marguerite sent to ask me for a little pity, since she had no longer the moral or physical strength to endure what I was making her suffer. "That Mlle. Gautier," I said to Prudence, "should turn me out of her own house is quite reasonable, but that she should insult the woman whom I love, under the pretence that this woman is my mistress, is a thing I will never permit." "My friend," said Prudence, "you are under the influence of a woman who has neither heart nor sense; you are in love with her, it is true, but that is not a reason for torturing a woman who can not defend herself." "Let Mlle. Gautier send me her Comte de N. and the sides will be equal." "You know very well that she will not do that. So, my dear Armand, let her alone. If you saw her you would be ashamed of the way in which you are treating her. She is white, she coughs—she won't last long now." And Prudence held out her hand to me, adding: "Come and see her; it will make her very happy." "I have no desire to meet M. de N." "M. de N. is never there. She can not endure him." "If Marguerite wishes to see me, she knows where I live; let her come to see me, but, for my part, I will never put foot in the Rue d'Antin." "Will you receive her well?" "Certainly." "Well, I am sure that she will come." "Let her come." "Shall you be out to-day?" "I shall be at home all the evening." "I will tell her." And Prudence left me. I did not even write to tell Olympe not to expect me. I never troubled much about her, scarcely going to see her one night a week. She consoled herself, I believe, with an actor from some theatre or other. I went out for dinner and came back almost immediately. I had a fire lit in my room and I told Joseph he could go out. I can give you no idea of the different impressions which agitated me during the hour in which I waited; but when, toward nine o'clock, I heard a ring, they thronged together into one such emotion, that, as I opened the door, I was obliged to lean against the wall to keep myself from falling. Fortunately the anteroom was in half darkness, and the change in my countenance was less visible. Marguerite entered. She was dressed in black and veiled. I could scarcely recognise her face through the veil. She went into the drawing-room and raised her veil. She was pale as marble. "I am here, Armand," she said; "you wished to see me and I have come." And letting her head fall on her hands, she burst into tears. I went up to her. "What is the matter?" I said to her in a low voice. She pressed my hand without a word, for tears still veiled her voice. But after a few minutes, recovering herself a little, she said to me: "You have been very unkind to me, Armand, and I have done nothing to you." "Nothing?" I answered, with a bitter smile. "Nothing but what circumstances forced me to do." I do not know if you have ever in your life experienced, or if you will ever experience, what I felt at the sight of Marguerite. The last time she had come to see me she had sat in the same place where she was now sitting; only, since then, she had been the mistress of another man, other kisses than mine had touched her lips, toward which, in spite of myself, my own reached out, and yet I felt that I loved this woman as much, more perhaps, than I had ever loved her. It was difficult for me to begin the conversation on the subject which brought her. Marguerite no doubt realized it, for she went on: "I have come to trouble you, Armand, for I have two things to ask: pardon for what I said yesterday to Mlle. Olympe, and pity for what you are perhaps still ready to do to me. Intentionally or not, since your return you have given me so much pain that I should be incapable now of enduring a fourth part of what I have endured till now. You will have pity on me, won't you? And you will understand that a man who is not heartless has other nobler things to do than to take his revenge upon a sick and sad woman like me. See, take my hand. I am in a fever. I left my bed to come to you, and ask, not for your friendship, but for your indifference." I took Marguerite's hand. It was burning, and the poor woman shivered under her fur cloak. I rolled the arm-chair in which she was sitting up to the fire. "Do you think, then, that I did not suffer," said I, "on that night when, after waiting for you in the country, I came to look for you in Paris, and found nothing but the letter which nearly drove me mad? How could you have deceived me, Marguerite, when I loved you so much? "Do not speak of that, Armand; I did not come to speak of that. I wanted to see you only not an enemy, and I wanted to take your hand once more. You have a mistress; she is young, pretty, you love her they say. Be happy with her and forget me." "And you. You are happy, no doubt?" "Have I the face of a happy woman, Armand? Do not mock my sorrow, you, who know better than any one what its cause and its depth are." "It only depended on you not to have been unhappy at all, if you are as you say." "No, my friend; circumstances were stronger than my will. I obeyed, not the instincts of a light woman, as you seem to say, but a serious necessity, and reasons which you will know one day, and which will make you forgive me." "Why do you not tell me those reasons to-day?" "Because they would not bring about an impossible reunion between us, and they would separate you perhaps from those from whom you must not be separated." "Who do you mean?" "I can not tell you." "Then you are lying to me." Marguerite rose and went toward the door. I could not behold this silent and expressive sorrow without being touched, when I compared in my mind this pale and weeping woman with the madcap who had made fun of me at the Opera Comique. "You shall not go," I said, putting myself in front of the door. "Why?" "Because, in spite of what you have done to me, I love you always, and I want you to stay here." "To turn me out to-morrow? No; it is impossible. Our destinies are separate; do not try to reunite them. You will despise me perhaps, while now you can only hate me." "No, Marguerite," I cried, feeling all my love and all my desire reawaken at the contact of this woman. "No, I will forget everything, and we will be happy as we promised one another that we would be." Marguerite shook her head doubtfully, and said: "Am I not your slave, your dog? Do with me what you will. Take me; I am yours." And throwing off her cloak and hat, she flung them on the sofa, and began hurriedly to undo the front of her dress, for, by one of those reactions so frequent in her malady, the blood rushed to her head and stifled her. A hard, dry cough followed. "Tell my coachman," she said, "to go back with the carriage." I went down myself and sent him away. When I returned Marguerite was lying in front of the fire, and her teeth chattered with the cold. I took her in my arms. I undressed her, without her making a movement, and carried her, icy cold, to the bed. Then I sat beside her and tried to warm her with my caresses. She did not speak a word, but smiled at me. It was a strange night. All Marguerite's life seemed to have passed into the kisses with which she covered me, and I loved her so much that in my transports of feverish love I asked myself whether I should not kill her, so that she might never belong to another. A month of love like that, and there would have remained only the corpse of heart or body. The dawn found us both awake. Marguerite was livid white. She did not speak a word. From time to time, big tears rolled from her eyes, and stayed upon her cheeks, shining like diamonds. Her thin arms opened, from time to time, to hold me fast, and fell back helplessly upon the bed. For a moment it seemed to me as if I could forget all that had passed since I had left Bougival, and I said to Marguerite: "Shall we go away and leave Paris?" "No, no!" she said, almost with affright; "we should be too unhappy. I can do no more to make you happy, but while there is a breath of life in me, I will be the slave of your fancies. At whatever hour of the day or night you will, come, and I will be yours; but do not link your future any more with mine, you would be too unhappy and you would make me too unhappy. I shall still be pretty for a while; make the most of it, but ask nothing more." When she had gone, I was frightened at the solitude in which she left me. Two hours afterward I was still sitting on the side of the bed, looking at the pillow which kept the imprint of her form, and asking myself what was to become of me, between my love and my jealousy. At five o'clock, without knowing what I was going to do, I went to the Rue d'Antin. Nanine opened to me. "Madame can not receive you," she said in an embarrassed way. "Why?" "Because M. le Comte de N. is there, and he has given orders to let no one in." "Quite so," I stammered; "I forgot." I went home like a drunken man, and do you know what I did during the moment of jealous delirium which was long enough for the shameful thing I was going to do? I said to myself that the woman was laughing at me; I saw her alone with the count, saying over to him the same words that she had said to me in the night, and taking a five-hundred-franc note I sent it to her with these words: "You went away so suddenly that I forgot to pay you. Here is the price of your night." Then when the letter was sent I went out as if to free myself from the instantaneous remorse of this infamous action. I went to see Olympe, whom I found trying on dresses, and when we were alone she sang obscene songs to amuse me. She was the very type of the shameless, heartless, senseless courtesan, for me at least, for perhaps some men might have dreamed of her as I dreamed of Marguerite. She asked me for money. I gave it to her, and, free then to go, I returned home. Marguerite had not answered. I need not tell you in what state of agitation I spent the next day. At half past nine a messenger brought me an envelope containing my letter and the five-hundred-franc note, not a word more. "Who gave you this?" I asked the man. "A lady who was starting with her maid in the next mail for Boulogne, and who told me not to take it until the coach was out of the courtyard." I rushed to the Rue d'Antin. "Madame left for England at six o'clock," said the porter. There was nothing to hold me in Paris any longer, neither hate nor love. I was exhausted by this series of shocks. One of my friends was setting out on a tour in the East. I told my father I should like to accompany him; my father gave me drafts and letters of introduction, and eight or ten days afterward I embarked at Marseilles. It was at Alexandria that I learned from an attache at the embassy, whom I had sometimes seen at Marguerite's, that the poor girl was seriously ill. I then wrote her the letter which she answered in the way you know; I received it at Toulon. I started at once, and you know the rest. Now you have only to read a few sheets which Julie Duprat gave me; they are the best commentary on what I have just told you. Chapter 25 Armand, tired by this long narrative, often interrupted by his tears, put his two hands over his forehead and closed his eyes to think, or to try to sleep, after giving me the pages written by the hand of Marguerite. A few minutes after, a more rapid breathing told me that Armand slept, but that light sleep which the least sound banishes. This is what I read; I copy it without adding or omitting a syllable: To-day is the 15th December. I have been ill three or four days. This morning I stayed in bed. The weather is dark, I am sad; there is no one by me. I think of you, Armand. And you, where are you, while I write these lines? Far from Paris, far, far, they tell me, and perhaps you have already forgotten Marguerite. Well, be happy; I owe you the only happy moments in my life. I can not help wanting to explain all my conduct to you, and I have written you a letter; but, written by a girl like me, such a letter might seem to be a lie, unless death had sanctified it by its authority, and, instead of a letter, it were a confession. To-day I am ill; I may die of this illness, for I have always had the presentiment that I shall die young. My mother died of consumption, and the way I have always lived could but increase the only heritage she ever left me. But I do not want to die without clearing up for you everything about me; that is, if, when you come back, you will still trouble yourself about the poor girl whom you loved before you went away. This is what the letter contained; I shall like writing it over again, so as to give myself another proof of my own justification. You remember, Armand, how the arrival of your father surprised us at Bougival; you remember the involuntary fright that his arrival caused me, and the scene which took place between you and him, which you told me of in the evening. Next day, when you were at Paris, waiting for your father, and he did not return, a man came to the door and handed in a letter from M. Duval. His letter, which I inclose with this, begged me, in the most serious terms, to keep you away on the following day, on some excuse or other, and to see your father, who wished to speak to me, and asked me particularly not to say anything to you about it. You know how I insisted on your returning to Paris next day. You had only been gone an hour when your father presented himself. I won't say what impression his severe face made upon me. Your father had the old theory that a courtesan is a being without heart or reason, a sort of machine for coining gold, always ready, like the machine, to bruise the hand that gives her everything, and to tear in pieces, without pity or discernment, those who set her in motion. Your father had written me a very polite letter, in order that I might consent to see him; he did not present himself quite as he had written. His manner at first was so stiff, insolent, and even threatening, that I had to make him understand that I was in my own house, and that I had no need to render him an account of my life, except because of the sincere affection which I had for his son. M. Duval calmed down a little, but still went on to say that he could not any longer allow his son to ruin himself over me; that I was beautiful, it was true, but, however beautiful I might be, I ought not to make use of my beauty to spoil the future of a young man by such expenditure as I was causing. At that there was only one thing to do, to show him the proof that since I was your mistress I had spared no sacrifice to be faithful to you without asking for more money than you had to give me. I showed him the pawn tickets, the receipts of the people to whom I had sold what I could not pawn; I told him of my resolve to part with my furniture in order to pay my debts, and live with you without being a too heavy expense. I told him of our happiness, of how you had shown me the possibility of a quieter and happier life, and he ended by giving in to the evidence, offering me his hand, and asking pardon for the way in which he had at first approached me. Then he said to me: "So, madame, it is not by remonstrances or by threats, but by entreaties, that I must endeavour to obtain from you a greater sacrifice than you have yet made for my son." I trembled at this beginning. Your father came over to me, took both my hands, and continued in an affectionate voice: "My child, do not take what I have to say to you amiss; only remember that there are sometimes in life cruel necessities for the heart, but that they must be submitted to. You are good, your soul has generosity unknown to many women who perhaps despise you, and are less worthy than you. But remember that there is not only the mistress, but the family; that besides love there are duties; that to the age of passion succeeds the age when man, if he is to be respected, must plant himself solidly in a serious position. My son has no fortune, and yet he is ready to abandon to you the legacy of his mother. If he accepted from you the sacrifice which you are on the point of making, his honour and dignity would require him to give you, in exchange for it, this income, which would always put you out of danger of adversity. But he can not accept this sacrifice, because the world, which does not know you, would give a wrong interpretation to this acceptance, and such an interpretation must not tarnish the name which we bear. No one would consider whether Armand loves you, whether you love him, whether this mutual love means happiness to him and redemption to you; they would see only one thing, that Armand Duval allowed a kept woman (forgive me, my child, for what I am forced to say to you) to sell all she had for him. Then the day of reproaches and regrets would arrive, be sure, for you or for others, and you would both bear a chain that you could not sever. What would you do then? Your youth would be lost, my son's future destroyed; and I, his father, should receive from only one of my children the recompense that I look for from both. "You are young, beautiful, life will console you; you are noble, and the memory of a good deed will redeem you from many past deeds. During the six months that he has known you Armand has forgotten me. I wrote to him four times, and he has never once replied. I might have died and he not known it! "Whatever may be your resolution of living otherwise than as you have lived, Armand, who loves you, will never consent to the seclusion to which his modest fortune would condemn you, and to which your beauty does not entitle you. Who knows what he would do then! He has gambled, I know; without telling you of it, I know also, but, in a moment of madness, he might have lost part of what I have saved, during many years, for my daughter's portion, for him, and for the repose of my old age. What might have happened may yet happen. "Are you sure, besides, that the life which you are giving up for him will never again come to attract you? Are you sure, you who have loved him, that you will never love another? Would you not-suffer on seeing the hindrances set by your love to your lover's life, hindrances for which you would be powerless to console him, if, with age, thoughts of ambition should succeed to dreams of love? Think over all that, madame. You love Armand; prove it to him by the sole means which remains to you of yet proving it to him, by sacrificing your love to his future. No misfortune has yet arrived, but one will arrive, and perhaps a greater one than those which I foresee. Armand might become jealous of a man who has loved you; he might provoke him, fight, be killed. Think, then, what you would suffer in the presence of a father who should call on you to render an account for the life of his son! "Finally, my dear child, let me tell you all, for I have not yet told you all, let me tell you what has brought me to Paris. I have a daughter, as I have told you, young, beautiful, pure as an angel. She loves, and she, too, has made this love the dream of her life. I wrote all that to Armand, but, absorbed in you, he made no reply. Well, my daughter is about to marry. She is to marry the man whom she loves; she enters an honourable family, which requires that mine has to be no less honourable. The family of the man who is to become my son-in-law has learned what manner of life Armand is leading in Paris, and has declared to me that the marriage must be broken off if Armand continues this life. The future of a child who has done nothing against you, and who has the right of looking forward to a happy future, is in your hands. Have you the right, have you the strength, to shatter it? In the name of your love and of your repentance, Marguerite, grant me the happiness of my child." I wept silently, my friend, at all these reflections which I had so often made, and which, in the mouth of your father, took a yet more serious reality. I said to myself all that your father dared not say to me, though it had come to his lips twenty times: that I was, after all, only a kept woman, and that whatever excuse I gave for our liaison, it would always look like calculation on my part; that my past life left me no right to dream of such a future, and that I was accepting responsibilities for which my habits and reputation were far from giving any guarantee. In short, I loved you, Armand. The paternal way in which M. Duval had spoken to me; the pure memories that he awakened in me; the respect of this old man, which I would gain; yours, which I was sure of gaining later on: all that called up in my heart thoughts which raised me in my own eyes with a sort of holy pride, unknown till then. When I thought that one day this old man, who was now imploring me for the future of his son, would bid his daughter mingle my name with her prayers, as the name of a mysterious friend, I seemed to become transformed, and I felt a pride in myself. The exaltation of the moment perhaps exaggerated the truth of these impressions, but that was what I felt, friend, and these new feelings silenced the memory of the happy days I had spent with you. "Tell me, sir," I said to your father, wiping away my tears, "do you believe that I love your son?" "Yes," said M. Duval. "With a disinterested love?" "Yes. "Do you believe that I had made this love the hope, the dream, the forgiveness—of my life?" "Implicitly." "Well, sir, embrace me once, as you would embrace your daughter, and I swear to you that that kiss, the only chaste kiss I have ever had, will make me strong against my love, and that within a week your son will be once more at your side, perhaps unhappy for a time, but cured forever." "You are a noble child," replied your father, kissing me on the forehead, "and you are making an attempt for which God will reward you; but I greatly fear that you will have no influence upon my son." "Oh, be at rest, sir; he will hate me." I had to set up between us, as much for me as for you, an insurmountable barrier. I wrote to Prudence to say that I accepted the proposition of the Comte de N., and that she was to tell him that I would sup with her and him. I sealed the letter, and, without telling him what it contained, asked your father to have it forwarded to its address on reaching Paris. He inquired of me what it contained. "Your son's welfare," I answered. Your father embraced me once more. I felt two grateful tears on my forehead, like the baptism of my past faults, and at the moment when I consented to give myself up to another man I glowed with pride at the thought of what I was redeeming by this new fault. It was quite natural, Armand. You told me that your father was the most honest man in the world. M. Duval returned to his carriage, and set out for Paris. I was only a woman, and when I saw you again I could not help weeping, but I did not give way. Did I do right? That is what I ask myself to-day, as I lie ill in my bed, that I shall never leave, perhaps, until I am dead. You are witness of what I felt as the hour of our separation approached; your father was no longer there to support me, and there was a moment when I was on the point of confessing everything to you, so terrified was I at the idea that you were going to bate and despise me. One thing which you will not believe, perhaps, Armand, is that I prayed God to give me strength; and what proves that he accepted my sacrifice is that he gave me the strength for which I prayed. At supper I still had need of aid, for I could not think of what I was going to do, so much did I fear that my courage would fail me. Who would ever have said that I, Marguerite Gautier, would have suffered so at the mere thought of a new lover? I drank for forgetfulness, and when I woke next day I was beside the count. That is the whole truth, friend. Judge me and pardon me, as I have pardoned you for all the wrong that you have done me since that day. Chapter 26 What followed that fatal night you know as well as I; but what you can not know, what you can not suspect, is what I have suffered since our separation. I heard that your father had taken you away with him, but I felt sure that you could not live away from me for long, and when I met you in the Champs-Elysees, I was a little upset, but by no means surprised. Then began that series of days; each of them brought me a fresh insult from you. I received them all with a kind of joy, for, besides proving to me that you still loved me, it seemed to me as if the more you persecuted me the more I should be raised in your eyes when you came to know the truth. Do not wonder at my joy in martyrdom, Armand; your love for me had opened my heart to noble enthusiasm. Still, I was not so strong as that quite at once. Between the time of the sacrifice made for you and the time of your return a long while elapsed, during which I was obliged to have recourse to physical means in order not to go mad, and in order to be blinded and deafened in the whirl of life into which I flung myself. Prudence has told you (has she not?) how I went to all the fetes and balls and orgies. I had a sort of hope that I should kill myself by all these excesses, and I think it will not be long before this hope is realized. My health naturally got worse and worse, and when I sent Mme. Duvernoy to ask you for pity I was utterly worn out, body and soul. I will not remind you, Armand, of the return you made for the last proof of love that I gave you, and of the outrage by which you drove away a dying woman, who could not resist your voice when you asked her for a night of love, and who, like a fool, thought for one instant that she might again unite the past with the present. You had the right to do what you did, Armand; people have not always put so high a price on a night of mine! I left everything after that. Olympe has taken my place with the Comte de N., and has told him, I hear, the reasons for my leaving him. The Comte de G. was at London. He is one of those men who give just enough importance to making love to women like me for it to be an agreeable pastime, and who are thus able to remain friends with women, not hating them because they have never been jealous of them, and he is, too, one of those grand seigneurs who open only a part of their hearts to us, but the whole of their purses. It was of him that I immediately thought. I joined him in London. He received me as kindly as possible, but he was the lover there of a woman in society, and he feared to compromise himself if he were seen with me. He introduced me to his friends, who gave a supper in my honour, after which one of them took me home with him. What else was there for me to do, my friend? If I had killed myself it would have burdened your life, which ought to be happy, with a needless remorse; and then, what is the good of killing oneself when one is so near dying already? I became a body without a soul, a thing without a thought; I lived for some time in that automatic way; then I returned to Paris, and asked after you; I heard then that you were gone on a long voyage. There was nothing left to hold me to life. My existence became what it had been two years before I knew you. I tried to win back the duke, but I had offended him too deeply. Old men are not patient, no doubt because they realize that they are not eternal. I got weaker every day. I was pale and sad and thinner than ever. Men who buy love examine the goods before taking them. At Paris there were women in better health, and not so thin as I was; I was rather forgotten. That is all the past up to yesterday. Now I am seriously ill. I have written to the duke to ask him for money, for I have none, and the creditors have returned, and come to me with their bills with pitiless perseverance. Will the duke answer? Why are you not in Paris, Armand? You would come and see me, and your visits would do me good. December 20. The weather is horrible; it is snowing, and I am alone. I have been in such a fever for the last three days that I could not write you a word. No news, my friend; every day I hope vaguely for a letter from you, but it does not come, and no doubt it will never come. Only men are strong enough not to forgive. The duke has not answered. Prudence is pawning my things again. I have been spitting blood all the time. Oh, you would be sorry for me if you could see me. You are indeed happy to be under a warm sky, and not, like me, with a whole winter of ice on your chest. To-day I got up for a little while, and looked out through the curtains of my window, and watched the life of Paris passing below, the life with which I have now nothing more to do. I saw the faces of some people I knew, passing rapidly, joyous and careless. Not one lifted his eyes to my window. However, a few young men have come to inquire for me. Once before I was ill, and you, though you did not know me, though you had had nothing from me but an impertinence the day I met you first, you came to inquire after me every day. We spent six months together. I had all the love for you that a woman's heart can hold and give, and you are far away, you are cursing me, and there is not a word of consolation from you. But it is only chance that has made you leave me, I am sure, for if you were at Paris, you would not leave my bedside. December 25. My doctor tells me I must not write every day. And indeed my memories only increase my fever, but yesterday I received a letter which did me good, more because of what it said than by the material help which it contained. I can write to you, then, to-day. This letter is from your father, and this is what it says: "MADAME: I have just learned that you are ill. If I were at Paris I would come and ask after you myself; if my son were here I would send him; but I can not leave C., and Armand is six or seven hundred leagues from here; permit me, then, simply to write to you, madame, to tell you how pained I am to hear of your illness, and believe in my sincere wishes for your speedy recovery. "One of my good friends, M. H., will call on you; will you kindly receive him? I have intrusted him with a commission, the result of which I await impatiently. "Believe me, madame, "Yours most faithfully." This is the letter he sent me. Your father has a noble heart; love him well, my friend, for there are few men so worthy of being loved. This paper signed by his name has done me more good than all the prescriptions of our great doctor. This morning M. H. called. He seemed much embarrassed by the delicate mission which M. Duval had intrusted to him. As a matter of fact, he came to bring me three thousand francs from your father. I wanted to refuse at first, but M. H. told me that my refusal would annoy M. Duval, who had authorized him to give me this sum now, and later on whatever I might need. I accepted it, for, coming from your father, it could not be exactly taking alms. If I am dead when you come back, show your father what I have written for him, and tell him that in writing these lines the poor woman to whom he was kind enough to write so consoling a letter wept tears of gratitude and prayed God for him. January 4. I have passed some terrible days. I never knew the body could suffer so. Oh, my past life! I pay double for it now. There has been some one to watch by me every night; I can not breathe. What remains of my poor existence is shared between being delirious and coughing. The dining-room is full of sweets and all sorts of presents that my friends have brought. Some of them, I dare say, are hoping that I shall be their mistress later on. If they could see what sickness has made of me, they would go away in terror. Prudence is giving her New Year's presents with those I have received. There is a thaw, and the doctor says that I may go out in a few days if the fine weather continues. January 8. I went out yesterday in my carriage. The weather was lovely. The Champs-Elysees was full of people. It was like the first smile of spring. Everything about me had a festal air. I never knew before that a ray of sunshine could contain so much joy, sweetness, and consolation. I met almost all the people I knew, all happy, all absorbed in their pleasures. How many happy people don't even know that they are happy! Olympe passed me in an elegant carriage that M. de N. has given her. She tried to insult me by her look. She little knows how far I am from such things now. A nice fellow, whom I have known for a long time, asked me if I would have supper with him and one of his friends, who, he said, was very anxious to make my acquaintance. I smiled sadly and gave him my hand, burning with fever. I never saw such an astonished countenance. I came in at four, and had quite an appetite for my dinner. Going out has done me good. If I were only going to get well! How the sight of the life and happiness of others gives a desire of life to those who, only the night before, in the solitude of their soul and in the shadow of their sick-room, only wanted to die soon! January 10. The hope of getting better was only a dream. I am back in bed again, covered with plasters which burn me. If I were to offer the body that people paid so dear for once, how much would they give, I wonder, to-day? We must have done something very wicked before we were born, or else we must be going to be very happy indeed when we are dead, for God to let this life have all the tortures of expiation and all the sorrows of an ordeal. January 12. I am always ill. The Comte de N. sent me some money yesterday. I did not keep it. I won't take anything from that man. It is through him that you are not here. Oh, that good time at Bougival! Where is it now? If I come out of this room alive I will make a pilgrimage to the house we lived in together, but I will never leave it until I am dead. Who knows if I shall write to you to-morrow? January 25. I have not slept for eleven nights. I am suffocated. I imagine every moment that I am going to die. The doctor has forbidden me to touch a pen. Julie Duprat, who is looking after me, lets me write these few lines to you. Will you not come back before I die? Is it all over between us forever? It seems to me as if I should get well if you came. What would be the good of getting well? January 28. This morning I was awakened by a great noise. Julie, who slept in my room, ran into the dining-room. I heard men's voices, and hers protesting against them in vain. She came back crying. They had come to seize my things. I told her to let what they call justice have its way. The bailiff came into my room with his hat on. He opened the drawers, wrote down what he saw, and did not even seem to be aware that there was a dying woman in the bed that fortunately the charity of the law leaves me. He said, indeed, before going, that I could appeal within nine days, but he left a man behind to keep watch. My God! what is to become of me? This scene has made me worse than I was before. Prudence wanted to go and ask your father's friend for money, but I would not let her. I received your letter this morning. I was in need of it. Will my answer reach you in time? Will you ever see me again? This is a happy day, and it has made me forget all the days I have passed for the last six weeks. I seem as if I am better, in spite of the feeling of sadness under the impression of which I replied to you. After all, no one is unhappy always. When I think that it may happen to me not to die, for you to come back, for me to see the spring again, for you still to love me, and for us to begin over again our last year's life! Fool that I am! I can scarcely hold the pen with which I write to you of this wild dream of my heart. Whatever happens, I loved you well, Armand, and I would have died long ago if I had not had the memory of your love to help me and a sort of vague hope of seeing you beside me again. February 4. The Comte de G. has returned. His mistress has been unfaithful to him. He is very sad; he was very fond of her. He came to tell me all about it. The poor fellow is in rather a bad way as to money; all the same, he has paid my bailiff and sent away the man. I talked to him about you, and he promised to tell you about me. I forgot that I had been his mistress, and he tried to make me forget it, too. He is a good friend. The duke sent yesterday to inquire after me, and this morning he came to see me. I do not know how the old man still keeps alive. He remained with me three hours and did not say twenty words. Two big tears fell from his eyes when he saw how pale I was. The memory of his daughter's death made him weep, no doubt. He will have seen her die twice. His back was bowed, his head bent toward the ground, his lips drooping, his eyes vacant. Age and sorrow weigh with a double weight on his worn-out body. He did not reproach me. It looked as if he rejoiced secretly to see the ravages that disease had made in me. He seemed proud of being still on his feet, while I, who am still young, was broken down by suffering. The bad weather has returned. No one comes to see me. Julie watches by me as much as she can. Prudence, to whom I can no longer give as much as I used to, begins to make excuses for not coming. Now that I am so near death, in spite of what the doctors tell me, for I have several, which proves that I am getting worse, I am almost sorry that I listened to your father; if I had known that I should only be taking a year of your future, I could not have resisted the longing to spend that year with you, and, at least, I should have died with a friend to hold my hand. It is true that if we had lived together this year, I should not have died so soon. God's will be done! February 5. Oh, come, come, Armand! I suffer horribly; I am going to die, O God! I was so miserable yesterday that I wanted to spend the evening, which seemed as if it were going to be as long as the last, anywhere but at home. The duke came in the morning. It seems to me as if the sight of this old man, whom death has forgotten, makes me die faster. Despite the burning fever which devoured me, I made them dress me and take me to the Vaudeville. Julie put on some rouge for me, without which I should have looked like a corpse. I had the box where I gave you our first rendezvous. All the time I had my eyes fixed on the stall where you sat that day, though a sort of country fellow sat there, laughing loudly at all the foolish things that the actors said. I was half dead when they brought me home. I coughed and spat blood all the night. To-day I can not speak, I can scarcely move my arm. My God! My God! I am going to die! I have been expecting it, but I can not get used to the thought of suffering more than I suffer now, and if— After this the few characters traced by Marguerite were indecipherable, and what followed was written by Julie Duprat. February 18. Since the day that Marguerite insisted on going to the theatre she has got worse and worse. She has completely lost her voice, and now the use of her limbs. What our poor friend suffers is impossible to say. I am not used to emotions of this kind, and I am in a state of constant fright. How I wish you were here! She is almost always delirious; but delirious or lucid, it is always your name that she pronounces, when she can speak a word. The doctor tells me that she is not here for long. Since she got so ill the old duke has not returned. He told the doctor that the sight was too much for him. Mme. Duvernoy is not behaving well. This woman, who thought she could get more money out of Marguerite, at whose expense she was living almost completely, has contracted liabilities which she can not meet, and seeing that her neighbour is no longer of use to her, she does not even come to see her. Everybody is abandoning her. M. de G., prosecuted for his debts, has had to return to London. On leaving, he sent us more money; he has done all he could, but they have returned to seize the things, and the creditors are only waiting for her to die in order to sell everything. I wanted to use my last resources to put a stop to it, but the bailiff told me it was no use, and that there are other seizures to follow. Since she must die, it is better to let everything go than to save it for her family, whom she has never cared to see, and who have never cared for her. You can not conceive in the midst of what gilded misery the poor thing is dying. Yesterday we had absolutely no money. Plate, jewels, shawls, everything is in pawn; the rest is sold or seized. Marguerite is still conscious of what goes on around her, and she suffers in body, mind, and heart. Big tears trickle down her cheeks, so thin and pale that you would never recognise the face of her whom you loved so much, if you could see her. She has made me promise to write to you when she can no longer write, and I write before her. She turns her eyes toward me, but she no longer sees me; her eyes are already veiled by the coming of death; yet she smiles, and all her thoughts, all her soul are yours, I am sure. Every time the door opens her eyes brighten, and she thinks you are going to come in; then, when she sees that it is not you, her face resumes its sorrowful expression, a cold sweat breaks out over it, and her cheek-bones flush. February 19, midnight. What a sad day we have had to-day, poor M. Armand! This morning Marguerite was stifling; the doctor bled her, and her voice has returned to her a while. The doctor begged her to see a priest. She said "Yes," and he went himself to fetch an abbe' from Saint Roch. Meanwhile Marguerite called me up to her bed, asked me to open a cupboard, and pointed out a cap and a long chemise covered with lace, and said in a feeble voice: "I shall die as soon as I have confessed. Then you will dress me in these things; it is the whim of a dying woman." Then she embraced me with tears and added: "I can speak, but I am stifled when I speak; I am stifling. Air!" I burst into tears, opened the window, and a few minutes afterward the priest entered. I went up to him; when he knew where he was, he seemed afraid of being badly received. "Come in boldly, father," I said to him. He stayed a very short time in the room, and when he came out he said to me: "She lived a sinner, and she will die a Christian." A few minutes afterward he returned with a choir boy bearing a crucifix, and a sacristan who went before them ringing the bell to announce that God was coming to the dying one. They went all three into the bed-room where so many strange words have been said, but was now a sort of holy tabernacle. I fell on my knees. I do not know how long the impression of what I saw will last, but I do not think that, till my turn comes, any human thing can make so deep an impression on me. The priest anointed with holy oil the feet and hands and forehead of the dying woman, repeated a short prayer, and Marguerite was ready to set out for the heaven to which I doubt not she will go, if God has seen the ordeal of her life and the sanctity of her death. Since then she has not said a word or made a movement. Twenty times I should have thought her dead if I had not heard her breathing painfully. February 20, 5 P.M. All is over. Marguerite fell into her last agony at about two o'clock. Never did a martyr suffer such torture, to judge by the cries she uttered. Two or three times she sat upright in the bed, as if she would hold on to her life, which was escaping toward God. Two or three times also she said your name; then all was silent, and she fell back on the bed exhausted. Silent tears flowed from her eyes, and she was dead. Then I went up to her; I called her, and as she did not answer I closed her eyes and kissed her on the forehead. Poor, dear Marguerite, I wish I were a holy woman that my kiss might recommend you to God. Then I dressed her as she had asked me to do. I went to find a priest at Saint Roch, I burned two candles for her, and I prayed in the church for an hour. I gave the money she left to the poor. I do not know much about religion, but I think that God will know that my tears were genuine, my prayers fervent, my alms-giving sincere, and that he will have pity on her who, dying young and beautiful, has only had me to close her eyes and put her in her shroud. February 22. The burial took place to-day. Many of Marguerite's friends came to the church. Some of them wept with sincerity. When the funeral started on the way to Montmartre only two men followed it: the Comte de G., who came from London on purpose, and the duke, who was supported by two footmen. I write you these details from her house, in the midst of my tears and under the lamp which burns sadly beside a dinner which I can not touch, as you can imagine, but which Nanine has got for me, for I have eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. My life can not retain these sad impressions for long, for my life is not my own any more than Marguerite's was hers; that is why I give you all these details on the very spot where they occurred, in the fear, if a long time elapsed between them and your return, that I might not be able to give them to you with all their melancholy exactitude. Chapter 27 "You have read it?" said Armand, when I had finished the manuscript. "I understand what you must have suffered, my friend, if all that I read is true." "My father confirmed it in a letter." We talked for some time over the sad destiny which had been accomplished, and I went home to rest a little. Armand, still sad, but a little relieved by the narration of his story, soon recovered, and we went together to pay a visit to Prudence and to Julie Duprat. Prudence had become bankrupt. She told us that Marguerite was the cause of it; that during her illness she had lent her a lot of money in the form of promissory notes, which she could not pay, Marguerite having died without having returned her the money, and without having given her a receipt with which she could present herself as a creditor. By the help of this fable, which Mme. Duvernoy repeated everywhere in order to account for her money difficulties, she extracted a note for a thousand francs from Armand, who did not believe it, but who pretended to, out of respect for all those in whose company Marguerite had lived. Then we called on Julie Duprat, who told us the sad incident which she had witnessed, shedding real tears at the remembrance of her friend. Lastly, we went to Marguerite's grave, on which the first rays of the April sun were bringing the first leaves into bud. One duty remained to Armand—to return to his father. He wished me to accompany him. We arrived at C., where I saw M. Duval, such as I had imagined him from the portrait his son had made of him, tall, dignified, kindly. He welcomed Armand with tears of joy, and clasped my hand affectionately. I was not long in seeing that the paternal sentiment was that which dominated all others in his mind. His daughter, named Blanche, had that transparence of eyes, that serenity of the mouth, which indicates a soul that conceives only holy thoughts and lips that repeat only pious words. She welcomed her brother's return with smiles, not knowing, in the purity of her youth, that far away a courtesan had sacrificed her own happiness at the mere invocation of her name. I remained for some time in their happy family, full of indulgent care for one who brought them the convalescence of his heart. I returned to Paris, where I wrote this story just as it had been told me. It has only one merit, which will perhaps be denied it; that is, that it is true. I do not draw from this story the conclusion that all women like Marguerite are capable of doing all that she did—far from it; but I have discovered that one of them experienced a serious love in the course of her life, that she suffered for it, and that she died of it. I have told the reader all that I learned. It was my duty. I am not the apostle of vice, but I would gladly be the echo of noble sorrow wherever I bear its voice in prayer. The story of Marguerite is an exception, I repeat; had it not been an exception, it would not have been worth the trouble of writing it. Publication Date: August 12th 2017 https://www.bookrix.com/-albiorix

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-charl-a-marais-sins-of-the-father/

Charl A. Marais Sins of the father Text: Charl A. Marais Editing: Charl A. Marais All rights reserved. Publication Date: December 4th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-charmd

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-christina-d-she-cried/

Christina.D She Cried Chapter 1 . ‘She’s back agin?’ A silent whisper echoed as I walked towards my allocated room. My footsteps didn’t make a sound; it was my berthing that gave me away. Faces. New ones and ones that I haven’t seen before, but they all looked, out of interest I guess, to see what everyone else was looking at. ‘This one is much better. Don’t you think?’ Lucy asked me as we walked into my new room. I quickly smiled and nodded. She put my bags down next to the new bed and walked out. ‘The lights go off at 9.’ She smiled with her bright, shiny, white teeth and closed the door behind her. I sighed. It’s only been a month. This ward was only a little bit different from the other one. White walls, a TV, a high single bed, and a huge window looking out to the park. Not a sight of him. Trees looming as high as my window. I can’t stand any longer. I slowly walked towards the bed, letting my shaking hand lead me. As I sat down my breath eventually evened. Is this the last one? Please be the last hospital. I don’t think I can take another one. Or another room, as they think changing the room will make me feel like its different and nothing will happen again. Nothing like the last time. But its always the same. I remember. The room five doors down, only a corridor away from this one. I choked as my breath deepened. My chest wouldn’t let get off it. The coughs felt like beatings at my throat. Pain. I held on to the side of the bed as blood dripped down my cheek, mixed with my tears. As it finally stopped, I laid down on my back. It all happened here. I don’t want to go to another hospital, I want to stay here. I want to die here. Chapter 2 ‘It’s rude not to move out the way.’ I leaned on one leg. Flicked my hair back and flicked whoever was talking to me off too. I have to do this. Strong breaths. Keep calm. I walked towards the lady and made myself visible. ‘This needs to change.’ She seemed dazed only a little aware that I was even there, her eyes wondering around the room. ‘What?’ even her voice was slow, like her thoughts seemed to be. ‘The time we have to go to bed. It’s stupid. Only old people go to bed at 8.’ Her eyes were on me now, and so was her grin. ‘ Im sorry. But are you serious?’ I kept a strong non-emotional face. ‘Well child, I understand that you might think its un-fair that you have to go to bed at 8, but it’s there for a reason. You’re not the only one in this hospital; some people really need their sleep.’ Her eyes seemed like they were burning through me. ‘Look lady, I have been to a lot of hospitals, and none of them had the stupid idea, most of them shut their lights at 10 or 9.’ Her large smile made me shiver a little. ‘I don’t appreciate you calling me lady. My name is Lucy and I’m a nurse, so in case you want someone else’s medication in the morning, I suggest you go back to your ward.’ I took a deep breath and just stared at her as she walked away. Her jet black hair tied in a sleek ponytail, just slightly brushing her waist. A deep laugh came from behind me. ‘ She won’t do anything like that, she just doesn't like anyone disturbing her thoughts. She's actually really nice.’ The voice from before. I turned to see a slim, tall, brown haired guy grinning at me. He’s eyes seemed to be a chocolate color, his cheekbones and jaw bones were really pointy, and his hair seemed to swish to one side nicely. ‘I don’t really care. She didn't scare me.’ I crossed my arms and breathed. ‘But your breathing is really deep, you seem pretty scared.’ He gave me a crooked smile. ‘Were in a hospital you idiot, there’s obviously something wrong with me.’ I gave him a blank stare as his face dropped. ‘Oh, Yeah. I’m sorry. I should know, of all people.’ He seemed apologetic enough. ‘I mean that was really un considerate, Its just were standing at the waiting room, and you seem healthy. And I’m sorry.’ His eyes pleaded me. ‘Its fine.’ I have him an awkward smile. ‘So you just came here to talk to Lucy?’ I nodded. ‘You?’ ‘NO, Im meant to be meeting my girlfriend soon, haven’t seen her in a while, with all the cancer treatments going on, I haven’t had time.’ I think he was expecting me to feel sorry for him? ‘Oh ok, well I better go and leave you to it then.’ I awkwardly waved my arms as a goodbye. ‘Wait!’ He shouted at me as I walked away from him. But his genuine voice made me turn around. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Sutton.’ I smiled politely. ‘Im Brandon. I’ll see you around?’ ‘Yeah.’ Then I quickly scuffled to my room. Publication Date: February 18th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-christina.d.

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-shaelyn-ray-the-tire-swing/

Shaelyn Ray The tire swing The tire swing I'm Mary,I just moved here to Iowa from Florida.I'm taking a walk in these woods and it's dark and quiet...I like it this way.I see bugs,birds,rabbits,lizards,and lots of ants.I'm four and usually I'm not allowed to walk alone like this,but mommy says that since the woods were right behind our house I could.These trees are over thousands of years old and are starting to cave in,rot,or lots of moss is growing over them.I see one tree that looks only twenty years old and guess what....there's a tire swing on it!I start running and soon I'm on the tire swing pushing myself kicking the tree,flying back,and repeating the cycle.The tree squeked and groaned and moaned and every now and then I had to swat bugs off me,but I didn't mind.I started swinging super high and fast.I was laughing and having the time of my life.Soon I felt the swing tipping upside down and I was dumped to the ground,there was a hole in the ground that I fell in and soon I met my death. Publication Date: December 30th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-jasperismine

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-monay-smith-james-and-karmen/

Monay smith James And Karmen James And Karmen Publication Date: October 16th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-magicbutterfl

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-bloody-raven-my-hero/

bloody raven my hero it's a cold rainy night, the sounds of the energetic city rush through the air. i lean my head back and let the cool rain drip onto my face. i kick my feet as they hang off the side of the building. most people would feel like a king if they were 30 stories off the ground. not me though... i feel like a baby bird getting ready to fly out of the nest, but instead of flying i'll be falling. i look down at the passing cars and fast walking people, its a long way down...just sitting here with my feet dangling off the edge sends chills up my spine. the rain's coming down hard... at least that will wash away my blood when i hit the ground. i stand up and feel the air blow through my hair. its begging me to jump, pushing towards the edge. i close my eyes and take a deep breath, good bye world. "NO!!! STOP!!!" a hand grabs my arm and yanks me away from the edge. "NO!! LET GO OF ME!!! I HAVE TO JUMP!!!" i scream as i struggle to escape the strangers clutch. "NO, I WONT LET YOU!" the stranger spins me around and looks into my eyes. i stand there frozen, staring into his eyes. they're the most beautiful eyes i have ever seen, they're an amazing shade of bright green. "w-who are you?" i whisper, my eyes still locked on his eyes. "your hero." this comment snaps me back to reality. "HERO?! YOU DIDN'T HELP ME!!! I WANTED TO JUMP! BUT YOU STOPPED ME!!" i scream once again i start struggling to get away from him. "why would you want to jump?" he tightens his grip on me and i look him dead in the eyes and say "because my life isn't worth living" he pulls me closer to him. then his lips meet mine and a huge montage flashes in my mind. im sitting in a corner crying... a dark shadow starts getting closer to me. then the stranger... he jumps in front of me and fights the shadow away. i gasp and fall to my knees as soon as he takes his lips off mine. "what... who....who are you?" i whisper. he kneels next to me and once again whispers "your hero...." i look up at him with tears rolling down my face. "who did you save me from?" he looks down at his feet and says "a bad man, he slipped some pills in your drink that make you forget everything. you were at a party and he tried hurting you...but i stopped him. thats why you want to die. you've been mentally scarred but you dont remember." i look down at the ground and watch the water drip off my hair and into a puddle. "you.... you did save me...thank you." he looks up at me and i look up at him. i sit up and stare in to his eyes. he puts his hand on my cheek and says "you dont remember anything do you?" i shake my head and he sighs "we were married... until he gave you those pills.... then you didn't remember me and you were afraid of me." my eyes widen and i say "m-married?" he slowely pulls my head in closer to his and kisses me. the flashback starts again and i see the wedding and i see us in a small little house together. he removes his lips and i gasp again and i almost pass out. he catches me and keeps me from falling. i look up at him, a tear rolls down my cheek. "M-M-Micheal?" he smiles and and hugs me. "yes...emily i missed you so much!" i start crying and laughing "you are my hero! i love you!" Publication Date: May 21st 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-bloodyraven13

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-jojo14-characters-in-my-book-quot-my-life-quot/

jojo14 characters in my book "My Life" <3 character to ma book! the one and only isabel! she still has black hair here, its not white in this pic so booya! 19 years old :)) this is the one and only baby that cussis like a truck driver Isaac! i love this kid character :) i had to add contacts so his eyes are blue! 3 years old this is Jacob. 22 years old this is jake :) 21 the cutie zoe! 2 years old this is Scylla 20 years old this is jeff 27 years old Nancy aka ass-face 19 years old this is Chris 19 years old this is angela 19 years old this is Abby 18 years old this is janice! 20 years old this is Braden. 21 years old Mark! 23 years old this is the cashier, Zane. 20 years old more people to come! Publication Date: March 21st 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-jojo14

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-ella-g-you-never-came-back/

Ella G You Never Came Back. - 1 - I always looked up to you as my diamond, but one day you left. I walk on the streets alone with no welcome hand holding mine.  You went away for some time. God knows what happened to you. You don't contact because of reception.    I never got to say I love you before you left.   - 2 -  My heart aches for you because I always sob every night.  It's already been two years.  You said you were coming back on the first day of December. It's November, and near the end too. I can't wait for you to come back. I only want to hug you tight and kiss you hard and say I love you. I want to pour all my emotions and words and hug you tight,  but I wonder if that day will come. Anyways,   people always want things.   And sometimes they don't get what they're seeking.     - 3 -  It's late and I'm awake.   You call me your shooting star because I always ran away from you when we were in elementary school. Now we're in 8th together, and I always think of you. You always hold my hand and brush my blonde hair out of my face and kiss me gently and lead me to my classes. Now I brush the laptop screen of us together and lead myself to misery.   One day, you contacted me.  - 4 -  You said you missed me as our tears fell. You put your hand on the screen and I put mine too.   It felt as if we were in capsules. I just want you to come back.   God accepted my prayers finally and you came.      - 5 -  I started looking around the airport and didn't see anything till you turned me around and planted a kiss on my lips. I hugged you tight as we cried silently saying I missed you.   Then I said the words I never got to say.   "I love you."   Your perfect smile made me cry and smile as I kissed you again. You said seven words that made my hug you tighter. "I'll never let go until I die."   And you never did let me go.   And that's why I loved and missed you so much.   Because of your love.   You're my shooting star, and I'm yours. Publication Date: May 30th 2020 https://www.bookrix.com/-sedfc4e6728a225

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-part-11/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Surprise part 11 Near death experience "Gal held onto kazuto,s hand tightly as she cried d..dont die on me please kazuto kun"salica sat in a chair in the corner feeling guilty for running away saying to herself" it was all her fault and that this wouldn't have happened if she stayed home " "Gal turned her attention to kiritos monitor watching his heart beat for abit then looking back at him and running her fingers through his soft hair" she felt her heart skip a beat looking at the one she loves in the hospital bed as she was crying silica just watched since she couldnt do anything as kazuto's aunt walked in to the room as she saw kazuto on the bed knocked out with bruises and blood on his face as she saw Gal and silica "what happened to kazuto Gal" she asked as she started crying, "when he found silica she was being bullied and he tried to step in and help her but instead th..they" she tried to say it but she couldnt stop the tears from coming out as silica was just looking down as she started crying from seeing kazuto on the hospital bed, "i..i..i.m sorry!, this is all my fault if i didnt run off like that this wouldnt have happened to kazuto" she said with a devistating look on her face as Gal just kept crying while holding his hand as they heard the phone ring and they called kazuto's aunt outside, 5 minutes later she came back into the room walking to Gal as she whispered in her ear they think he's going to make it but they dont know for how long he will be out for" kazuto's aunt grabbed silica by the hand and took her home as she left Gal alone in the room with him "listen silica im not blaming you for what happened, you were upset over seeing him kiss Gal but we need to let her be here for him since she is his girlfreind and he needs her there for him for when he wakes up he doesnt have to see noone else except for the one he loves as silica was listening she kept looking up at the window kazuto was staying in as they both went home. Kazuto awakes later that night kazuto awoke with Gal asleep holding his hand and her head in his lap as he just smiled "Gal" he whispered into her ear as she got up slowly and looked at him "hello" she just started to cry as she saw he was awake as she clinged to him, kissing him on the lips as she just cryed and cryed until kazuto looked her in the eyes "i wont ever leave you" he said with a smile and hugged her as they just stood there looking at echouther smiling, when morning came the nurse and doctors came into the room to find them both asleep in the bed as kazuto had his arm around her as the nurses woke them up "so i see you're awake mr. kiragaya, ill go contact your gurdian to come see you and well let you go later on in the day when she gets here "they all leave the room and leave Gal and him talking about how she felt when she saw him on the floor near death but she nearly killed the guys that did it to him as she just kept crying telling him everything that happened as kazuto's aunt came walking in as she rand to the side of the bed hugging him tightly "i was really scared dont you ever do that again to me" she said with a sad look on her face as silica came walking in as she saw kazuto in the bed sitting up she started crying as she just fell to her knees "i...im sorry, its all my fault that you were put in to the hospital" she said with a devistating look on her face as kazuto got up and grabbed her "i dont care about that as long as your safe, im glad that your ok" he said with a smile on his face as he tried to walked bk to his bed feeling weak as Gal kissed him on the lips, Kazuto's aunt grabbed silica by the hand and helped her out as they left the hospital knowing that kazuto had to stay for two days "ill stay by your side for forever kazuto" Gal said with a smile on her face as kazuto was sleeping from being weak. Publication Date: October 10th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-dnf10382a424525

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-tabbitha-hay-dare-to-not-pass/

Tabbitha Hay Dare to Not Pass Is it the Beginning or the End           Even when I notice the small things, my heart aches for You. How did I get this way? No, how did we? We were once just good friends, great even. Then You told my friend, the judgmental one, how you felt and She told me how She felt. Everything She said was rude but true. Oh, how I dreaded that day. How I dreaded not speaking up instead of listening. How I wish I kicked Her out of my house and told her not to speak, even if I did not feel it quite then, when I would stop crushing on Him. I started getting feelings for You, strong ones to boot. So I started making You mad because I lost the reaction I used to have. When I was just days from telling You everything, oh, my heart cracked when You told me you the news. You got a girlfriend but things really did not change. I became enclosed in my own little world and no person has yet to break the barrier other than two. You and Him, the guy I once liked, still like. Oh, how I hurt. The two people I cared for wanted to be just friends. Then summer came along… I ran as fast as I could to California. I could not get away from the three of you fast enough. I could not disappear the way I wanted or move away. Away from you; away from Him; and away from Her; just leaving me stuck. Between You and Her is a raging war, a never ending war between us four. Yet here I am, and there you are: closer but further apart… The days we fight, I long for it to be over. I sometimes wonder if you can see the longing behind my eyes, or maybe the pain of everything. I see it in your eyes sometimes. Some of our friends have seen it as well. Even on our bad days, I feel lost and clueless about what to do. I just want to scream it at You but I do not because it would be wrong and selfish thing to do, and now… I just do not know what to do. So now, is the just the beginning or is it the end of our friendship? Publication Date: October 1st 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-pg9a52537bf5225

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-aaliyah-life-isn-039-t-the-same-characters/

Aaliyah Life isn't the same (characters) Text: gggggggg Images: ggggg Editing: g Translation: ff All rights reserved. Publication Date: November 18th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-aaliyahlovescookies

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-kylee-boen-my-hero/

Kylee Boen My Hero Publication Date: January 18th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-kyleej23

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-april-tomczak-one-two-three-like-a-bride-i-sing/

April tomczak one two three like a bride i sing a bride but no husband one day it all started when my boyfriend asked me to marry him i posed 4 a sec in shock and then he said are you ok i said im fine im just in shock well if you dont want to marry me you dont have to i want to i said. chapter 2 seting up 4 the wedding i started to call all my friends and get my dress and the cake and stuff my hubby went to have the batchler party and i had my party so the wedding was a day away! chapter 3 the wedding was here i got ready and was standing at the alter when my hubby didn't show up it was my dream wedding i wanted it to be all i wanted so i went home and fond my hubby dead i was in shock i called 911 they came so fast then they fond finger prents. chapter 4 IT was my mom she never liked him i called my mom and said you killed my hubby i will never 4 give you and i hung up on her then i said i moving to my sisters i was not safe here my hubby side of the family will kill me so i have to go . chapter 5 So im at my sisters well its going ok i guess well i finely got over every thing im not going to date 4 a long time still but i dont like my mom still i loved my hubby but she had to ruin it 5 years later im marryed noe i have to babys and lovele step mom . Text: love All rights reserved. Publication Date: October 23rd 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-amt524

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-uk-guio-p-oityouiou-random-old-fashion-quick-plays/

uk;guio[;p oityouiou Random old fashion quick plays Rude Witch? EXT. TOWER BRIDGE - AFTERNOON Considerate waitress LADY AMOR BLACKMAN is arguing with loving mechanic MR. ARCHER PARKER. AMOR tries to hug ARCHER but she shakes her off.   AMOR Please Archer, don't leave me.     ARCHER I'm sorry Amor, but I'm looking for somebody a bit more brave. Somebody who faces her fears head on, instead of running away.     AMOR I am such a person!   ARCHER frowns.   ARCHER I'm sorry, Amor. I just don't feel excited by this relationship anymore.   ARCHER leaves. AMOR sits down, looking defeated. Moments later, hilarious Chef LADY CHARLOTTE WILLIS barges in looking flustered.   AMOR Goodness, Charlotte! Is everything okay?     CHARLOTTE I'm afraid not.     AMOR What is it? Don't keep me in suspense...     CHARLOTTE It's ... a Witch ... I saw an evil Witch kill a bunch of Regulars at the cafe!     AMOR Defenseless Regulars at the cafe?     CHARLOTTE Yes, defenseless Regulars at the cafe!     AMOR Bloomin' heck, Charlotte! We've got to do something.     CHARLOTTE I agree, but I wouldn't know where to start.     AMOR You can start by telling me where this happened.     CHARLOTTE I was...   CHARLOTTE fans herself and begins to wheeze.   AMOR Focus Charlotte, focus! Where did it happen?     CHARLOTTE a book shop! That's right - a book shop!   AMOR springs up and begins to run.   EXT. A ROAD - CONTINUOUS AMOR rushes along the street, followed by CHARLOTTE. They take a short cut through some back gardens, jumping fences along the way.   EXT. A BOOK SHOP - SHORTLY AFTER CHARITY GUMP a rude Witch terrorises two Regulars at the cafe. AMOR, closely followed by CHARLOTTE, rushes towards CHARITY, but suddenly stops in her tracks.   CHARLOTTE What is is? What's the matter?     AMOR That's not just any old Witch, that's Charity Gump!     CHARLOTTE Who's Charity Gump?     AMOR Who's Charity Gump? Who's Charity Gump? Only the most rude Witch in the universe!     CHARLOTTE Blinkin' knickers, Amor! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most rude Witch in the universe!     AMOR You can say that again.     CHARLOTTE Blinkin' knickers, Amor! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most rude Witch in the universe!     AMOR I'm going to need gun, lots of gun.   Charity turns and sees Amor and Charlotte. She grins an evil grin.   CHARITY Amor Blackman, we meet again.     CHARLOTTE You've met?     AMOR Yes. It was a long, long time ago...     EXT. A PARK - BACK IN TIME A young AMOR is sitting in a park listening to some classical music, when suddenly a dark shadow casts over her. She looks up and sees CHARITY. She takes off her headphones.   CHARITY Would you like some toffee?   AMOR's eyes light up, but then he studies CHARITY more closely, and looks uneasy.   AMOR I don't know, you look kind of rude.     CHARITY Me? No. I'm not rude. I'm the least rude Witch in the world.     AMOR Wait, you're a Witch?   AMOR runs away, screaming.   EXT. A BOOK SHOP - PRESENT DAY   CHARITY You were a coward then, and you are a coward now.     CHARLOTTE (To AMOR) You ran away?     AMOR (To CHARLOTTE) I was a young child. What was I supposed to do?   AMOR turns to CHARITY.   AMOR I may have run away from you then, but I won't run away this time!   AMOR runs away. She turns back and shouts.   AMOR I mean, I am running away, but I'll be back - with gun .     CHARITY I'm not scared of you.     AMOR You should be.     INT. A SMALL CAFE - LATER THAT DAY AMOR and CHARLOTTE walk around searching for something.   AMOR I feel sure I left my gun somewhere around here.     CHARLOTTE Are you sure? It does seem like an odd place to keep deadly gun.     AMOR You know nothing Charlotte Willis.     CHARLOTTE We've been searching for ages. I really don't think they're here.   Suddenly, CHARITY appears, holding a pair of gun.   CHARITY Looking for something?     CHARLOTTE Crikey, Amor, she's got your gun.     AMOR Tell me something I don't already know!     CHARLOTTE The earth's circumference at the equator is about 40,075 km.     AMOR I know that already!     CHARLOTTE you're my mirror self.     CHARITY (appalled) Dude!   While CHARITY is looking at CHARLOTTE with disgust, AMOR lunges forward and grabs her deadly gun. He wields them, triumphantly.   AMOR Prepare to die, you rude sprout!     CHARITY No please! All I did was kill a bunch of Regulars at the cafe!   ARCHER enters, unseen by any of the others.   AMOR I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour! Those Regulars at the cafe were defenceless! Well now they have a defender - and that's me! Amor Blackman defender of innocent Regulars at the cafe.     CHARITY Don't hurt me! Please!     AMOR Give me one good reason why I shouldn't use these gun on you right away!     CHARITY Because Amor, I am your mother.   AMOR looks stunned for a few moments, but then collects herself.   AMOR No you're not!     CHARITY Ah well, it had to be worth a try.   CHARITY tries to grab the gun but AMOR dodges out of the way.   AMOR Who's the mummy now? Huh? Huh?   Unexpectedly, CHARITY slumps to the ground.   CHARLOTTE Did she just faint?     AMOR I think so. Well that's disappointing. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic conclusion, involving my deadly gun.   AMOR crouches over CHARITY's body.   CHARLOTTE Be careful, Amor. It could be a trick.     AMOR No, it's not a trick. It appears that... It would seem... Charity Gump is dead!     AMOR What?     AMOR Yes, it appears that I scared her to death.   CHARLOTTE claps her hands.   CHARLOTTE So your gun did save the day, after all.   ARCHER steps forward.   ARCHER Is it true? Did you kill the rude Witch?     AMOR Archer how long have you been...?   ARCHER puts her arm around AMOR.   ARCHER Long enough.     AMOR Then you saw it for yourself. I killed Charity Gump.     ARCHER Then the Regulars at the cafe are safe?     AMOR It does seem that way!   A crowd of vulnerable Regulars at the cafe enter, looking relived.   ARCHER You are their hero.   The Regulars at the cafe bow to AMOR.   AMOR There is no need to bow to me. I seek no worship. The knowledge that Charity Gump will never kill Regulars at the cafe ever again, is enough for me.     ARCHER You are humble as well as brave!   One of the Regulars at the cafe passes AMOR a magic necklace   ARCHER I think they want you to have it, as a symbol of their gratitude.     AMOR I couldn't possibly.   Pause.   AMOR Well, if you insist.   AMOR takes the necklace.   AMOR Thank you.   The Regulars at the cafe bow their heads once more, and leave. AMOR turns to ARCHER.   AMOR Does this mean you want me back?     ARCHER Oh, Amor, of course I want you back!   AMOR smiles for a few seconds, but then looks defiant.   AMOR Well you can't have me.     ARCHER WHAT?     AMOR You had no faith in me. You had to see my scare a Witch to death before you would believe in me. I don't want a lover like that.     ARCHER But...     AMOR Please leave. I want to spend time with the one person who stayed with me through thick and thin - my best friend, Charlotte.   CHARLOTTE grins.   ARCHER But...     CHARLOTTE You heard the lady. Now be off with you. Skidaddle! Shoo!     ARCHER Amor?     AMOR I'm sorry Archer, but I think you should skidaddle.   ARCHER leaves. CHARLOTTE turns to AMOR.   CHARLOTTE Did you mean that? You know ... that I'm your best friend?     AMOR Of course you are!   The two walk off arm in arm. Suddenly CHARLOTTE stops.   CHARLOTTE When I said you're my mirror self, you know I was just trying to distract the Witch don't you?     THE END Cold-blooded Zombie   INT. A SWEET SHOP - AFTERNOON Articulate scout DR MATTHEW GLOOP is arguing with articulate hairdresser MRS CHLOE BUTTERSCOTCH. MATTHEW tries to hug CHLOE but she shakes him off.   MATTHEW Please Chloe, don't leave me.     CHLOE I'm sorry Matthew, but I'm looking for somebody a bit more brave. Somebody who faces his fears head on, instead of running away.     MATTHEW I am such a person!   CHLOE frowns.   CHLOE I'm sorry, Matthew. I just don't feel excited by this relationship anymore.   CHLOE leaves. MATTHEW sits down, looking defeated. Moments later, down to earth gardener MR TONY RANDALL barges in looking flustered.   MATTHEW Goodness, Tony! Is everything okay?     TONY I'm afraid not.     MATTHEW What is it? Don't keep me in suspense...     TONY It's ... a zombie ... I saw an evil zombie burgle a bunch of swimmers!     MATTHEW Defenseless swimmers?     TONY Yes, defenseless swimmers!     MATTHEW Bloomin' heck, Tony! We've got to do something.     TONY I agree, but I wouldn't know where to start.     MATTHEW You can start by telling me where this happened.     TONY I was...   TONY fans himself and begins to wheeze.   MATTHEW Focus Tony, focus! Where did it happen?     TONY Sydney Opera House! That's right - Sydney Opera House!   MATTHEW springs up and begins to run.   EXT. A ROAD - CONTINUOUS MATTHEW rushes along the street, followed by TONY. They take a short cut through some back gardens, jumping fences along the way.   INT. SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE - SHORTLY AFTER FOREST PARKER a cold-blooded zombie terrorises two swimmers. MATTHEW, closely followed by TONY, rushes towards FOREST, but suddenly stops in his tracks.   TONY What is is? What's the matter?     MATTHEW That's not just any old zombie, that's Forest Parker!     TONY Who's Forest Parker?     MATTHEW Who's Forest Parker? Who's Forest Parker? Only the most cold-blooded zombie in the universe!     TONY Blinkin' knickers, Matthew! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most cold-blooded zombie in the universe!     MATTHEW You can say that again.     TONY Blinkin' knickers, Matthew! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most cold-blooded zombie in the universe!     MATTHEW I'm going to need candlesticks, lots of candlesticks.   Forest turns and sees Matthew and Tony. He grins an evil grin.   FOREST Matthew Gloop, we meet again.     TONY You've met?     MATTHEW Yes. It was a long, long time ago...     EXT. A PARK - BACK IN TIME A young MATTHEW is sitting in a park listening to some flute music, when suddenly a dark shadow casts over him. He looks up and sees FOREST. He takes off his headphones.   FOREST Would you like some white mice?   MATTHEW's eyes light up, but then he studies FOREST more closely, and looks uneasy.   MATTHEW I don't know, you look kind of cold-blooded.     FOREST Me? No. I'm not cold-blooded. I'm the least cold-blooded zombie in the world.     MATTHEW Wait, you're a zombie?   MATTHEW runs away, screaming.   INT. SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE - PRESENT DAY   FOREST You were a coward then, and you are a coward now.     TONY (To MATTHEW) You ran away?     MATTHEW (To TONY) I was a young child. What was I supposed to do?   MATTHEW turns to FOREST.   MATTHEW I may have run away from you then, but I won't run away this time!   MATTHEW runs away. He turns back and shouts.   MATTHEW I mean, I am running away, but I'll be back - with candlesticks .     FOREST I'm not scared of you.     MATTHEW You should be.     EXT. A GREASY DINER - LATER THAT DAY MATTHEW and TONY walk around searching for something.   MATTHEW I feel sure I left my candlesticks somewhere around here.     TONY Are you sure? It does seem like an odd place to keep deadly candlesticks.     MATTHEW You know nothing Tony Randall.     TONY We've been searching for ages. I really don't think they're here.   Suddenly, FOREST appears, holding a pair of candlesticks.   FOREST Looking for something?     TONY Crikey, Matthew, he's got your candlesticks.     MATTHEW Tell me something I don't already know!     TONY The earth's circumference at the equator is about 40,075 km.     MATTHEW I know that already!     TONY I pickle my earwax and keep it in a jar under my bed.     FOREST (appalled) Dude!   While FOREST is looking at TONY with disgust, MATTHEW lunges forward and grabs his deadly candlesticks. He wields them, triumphantly.   MATTHEW Prepare to die, you cold-blooded courgette!     FOREST No please! All I did was burgle a bunch of swimmers!   CHLOE enters, unseen by any of the others.   MATTHEW I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour! Those swimmers were defenceless! Well now they have a defender - and that's me! Matthew Gloop defender of innocent swimmers.     FOREST Don't hurt me! Please!     MATTHEW Give me one good reason why I shouldn't use these candlesticks on you right away!     FOREST Because Matthew, I am your father.   MATTHEW looks stunned for a few moments, but then collects himself.   MATTHEW No you're not!     FOREST Ah well, it had to be worth a try.   FOREST tries to grab the candlesticks but MATTHEW dodges out of the way.   MATTHEW Who's the daddy now? Huh? Huh?   Unexpectedly, FOREST slumps to the ground.   TONY Did he just faint?     MATTHEW I think so. Well that's disappointing. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic conclusion, involving my deadly candlesticks.   MATTHEW crouches over FOREST's body.   TONY Be careful, Matthew. It could be a trick.     MATTHEW No, it's not a trick. It appears that... It would seem... Forest Parker is dead!     MATTHEW What?     MATTHEW Yes, it appears that I scared him to death.   TONY claps his hands.   TONY So your candlesticks did save the day, after all.   CHLOE steps forward.   CHLOE Is it true? Did you kill the cold-blooded zombie?     MATTHEW Chloe how long have you been...?   CHLOE puts her arm around MATTHEW.   CHLOE Long enough.     MATTHEW Then you saw it for yourself. I killed Forest Parker.     CHLOE Then the swimmers are safe?     MATTHEW It does seem that way!   A crowd of vulnerable swimmers enter, looking relived.   CHLOE You are their hero.   The swimmers bow to MATTHEW.   MATTHEW There is no need to bow to me. I seek no worship. The knowledge that Forest Parker will never burgle swimmers ever again, is enough for me.     CHLOE You are humble as well as brave!   One of the swimmers passes MATTHEW a wooden talisman   CHLOE I think they want you to have it, as a symbol of their gratitude.     MATTHEW I couldn't possibly.   Pause.   MATTHEW Well, if you insist.   MATTHEW takes the talisman.   MATTHEW Thank you.   The swimmers bow their heads once more, and leave. MATTHEW turns to CHLOE.   MATTHEW Does this mean you want me back?     CHLOE Oh, Matthew, of course I want you back!   MATTHEW smiles for a few seconds, but then looks defiant.   MATTHEW Well you can't have me.     CHLOE WHAT?     MATTHEW You had no faith in me. You had to see my scare a zombie to death before you would believe in me. I don't want a lover like that.     CHLOE But...     MATTHEW Please leave. I want to spend time with the one person who stayed with me through thick and thin - my best friend, Tony.   TONY grins.   CHLOE But...     TONY You heard the gentleman. Now be off with you. Skidaddle! Shoo!     CHLOE Matthew?     MATTHEW I'm sorry Chloe, but I think you should skidaddle.   CHLOE leaves. TONY turns to MATTHEW.   TONY Did you mean that? You know ... that I'm your best friend?     MATTHEW Of course you are!   The two walk off arm in arm. Suddenly TONY stops.   TONY When I said I pickle my earwax and keep it in a jar under my bed, you know I was just trying to distract the zombie don't you?     THE END Thoughtless Ghost   EXT. NOTTING HILL - AFTERNOON Understanding navigator PROF WENNA BLACKSMITH is arguing with friendly navigator MR HECTOR BARKER. WENNA tries to hug HECTOR but he shakes her off.   WENNA Please Hector, don't leave me.     HECTOR I'm sorry Wenna, but I'm looking for somebody a bit more brave. Somebody who faces her fears head on, instead of running away.     WENNA I am such a person!   HECTOR frowns.   HECTOR I'm sorry, Wenna. I just don't feel excited by this relationship anymore.   HECTOR leaves. WENNA sits down, looking defeated. Moments later, lovable painter MRS KATY WALKER barges in looking flustered.   WENNA Goodness, Katy! Is everything okay?     KATY I'm afraid not.     WENNA What is it? Don't keep me in suspense...     KATY It's ... a ghost ... I saw an evil ghost terrify a bunch of children!     WENNA Defenseless children?     KATY Yes, defenseless children!     WENNA Bloomin' heck, Katy! We've got to do something.     KATY I agree, but I wouldn't know where to start.     WENNA You can start by telling me where this happened.     KATY I was...   KATY fans herself and begins to wheeze.   WENNA Focus Katy, focus! Where did it happen?     KATY a book shop! That's right - a book shop!   WENNA springs up and begins to run.   EXT. A ROAD - CONTINUOUS WENNA rushes along the street, followed by KATY. They take a short cut through some back gardens, jumping fences along the way.   EXT. A BOOK SHOP - SHORTLY AFTER FAIRYDUST WILLIAMS a thoughtless ghost terrorises two children. WENNA, closely followed by KATY, rushes towards FAIRYDUST, but suddenly stops in her tracks.   KATY What is is? What's the matter?     WENNA That's not just any old ghost, that's Fairydust Williams!     KATY Who's Fairydust Williams?     WENNA Who's Fairydust Williams? Who's Fairydust Williams? Only the most thoughtless ghost in the universe!     KATY Blinkin' knickers, Wenna! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most thoughtless ghost in the universe!     WENNA You can say that again.     KATY Blinkin' knickers, Wenna! We're going to need some help if we're going to stop the most thoughtless ghost in the universe!     WENNA I'm going to need rainbows, lots of rainbows.   Fairydust turns and sees Wenna and Katy. She grins an evil grin.   FAIRYDUST Wenna Blacksmith, we meet again.     KATY You've met?     WENNA Yes. It was a long, long time ago...     EXT. A PARK - BACK IN TIME A young WENNA is sitting in a park listening to some classical music, when suddenly a dark shadow casts over her. She looks up and sees FAIRYDUST. She takes off her headphones.   FAIRYDUST Would you like some jelly tots?   WENNA's eyes light up, but then he studies FAIRYDUST more closely, and looks uneasy.   WENNA I don't know, you look kind of thoughtless.     FAIRYDUST Me? No. I'm not thoughtless. I'm the least thoughtless ghost in the world.     WENNA Wait, you're a ghost?   WENNA runs away, screaming.   EXT. A BOOK SHOP - PRESENT DAY   FAIRYDUST You were a coward then, and you are a coward now.     KATY (To WENNA) You ran away?     WENNA (To KATY) I was a young child. What was I supposed to do?   WENNA turns to FAIRYDUST.   WENNA I may have run away from you then, but I won't run away this time!   WENNA runs away. She turns back and shouts.   WENNA I mean, I am running away, but I'll be back - with rainbows .     FAIRYDUST I'm not scared of you.     WENNA You should be.     EXT. A LIBRARY - LATER THAT DAY WENNA and KATY walk around searching for something.   WENNA I feel sure I left my rainbows somewhere around here.     KATY Are you sure? It does seem like an odd place to keep deadly rainbows.     WENNA You know nothing Katy Walker.     KATY We've been searching for ages. I really don't think they're here.   Suddenly, FAIRYDUST appears, holding a pair of rainbows.   FAIRYDUST Looking for something?     KATY Crikey, Wenna, she's got your rainbows.     WENNA Tell me something I don't already know!     KATY The earth's circumference at the equator is about 40,075 km.     WENNA I know that already!     KATY I bite my toenails.     FAIRYDUST (appalled) Dude!   While FAIRYDUST is looking at KATY with disgust, WENNA lunges forward and grabs her deadly rainbows. He wields them, triumphantly.   WENNA Prepare to die, you thoughtless carrot!     FAIRYDUST No please! All I did was terrify a bunch of children!   HECTOR enters, unseen by any of the others.   WENNA I cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour! Those children were defenceless! Well now they have a defender - and that's me! Wenna Blacksmith defender of innocent children.     FAIRYDUST Don't hurt me! Please!     WENNA Give me one good reason why I shouldn't use these rainbows on you right away!     FAIRYDUST Because Wenna, I am your mother.   WENNA looks stunned for a few moments, but then collects herself.   WENNA No you're not!     FAIRYDUST Ah well, it had to be worth a try.   FAIRYDUST tries to grab the rainbows but WENNA dodges out of the way.   WENNA Who's the mummy now? Huh? Huh?   Unexpectedly, FAIRYDUST slumps to the ground.   KATY Did she just faint?     WENNA I think so. Well that's disappointing. I was rather hoping for a more dramatic conclusion, involving my deadly rainbows.   WENNA crouches over FAIRYDUST's body.   KATY Be careful, Wenna. It could be a trick.     WENNA No, it's not a trick. It appears that... It would seem... Fairydust Williams is dead!     WENNA What?     WENNA Yes, it appears that I scared her to death.   KATY claps her hands.   KATY So your rainbows did save the day, after all.   HECTOR steps forward.   HECTOR Is it true? Did you kill the thoughtless ghost?     WENNA Hector how long have you been...?   HECTOR puts his arm around WENNA.   HECTOR Long enough.     WENNA Then you saw it for yourself. I killed Fairydust Williams.     HECTOR Then the children are safe?     WENNA It does seem that way!   A crowd of vulnerable children enter, looking relived.   HECTOR You are their hero.   The children bow to WENNA.   WENNA There is no need to bow to me. I seek no worship. The knowledge that Fairydust Williams will never terrify children ever again, is enough for me.     HECTOR You are humble as well as brave!   One of the children passes WENNA a tinkling necklace   HECTOR I think they want you to have it, as a symbol of their gratitude.     WENNA I couldn't possibly.   Pause.   WENNA Well, if you insist.   WENNA takes the necklace.   WENNA Thank you.   The children bow their heads once more, and leave. WENNA turns to HECTOR.   WENNA Does this mean you want me back?     HECTOR Oh, Wenna, of course I want you back!   WENNA smiles for a few seconds, but then looks defiant.   WENNA Well you can't have me.     HECTOR WHAT?     WENNA You had no faith in me. You had to see my scare a ghost to death before you would believe in me. I don't want a lover like that.     HECTOR But...     WENNA Please leave. I want to spend time with the one person who stayed with me through thick and thin - my best friend, Katy.   KATY grins.   HECTOR But...     KATY You heard the lady. Now be off with you. Skidaddle! Shoo!     HECTOR Wenna?     WENNA I'm sorry Hector, but I think you should skidaddle.   HECTOR leaves. KATY turns to WENNA.   KATY Did you mean that? You know ... that I'm your best friend?     WENNA Of course you are!   The two walk off arm in arm. Publication Date: December 2nd 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-bfbfb7c31ee6065

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-william-shakespeare-love-s-labour-s-lost/

William Shakespeare Love's Labour's Lost Dramatis Personae. FERDINAND, King of Navarre BEROWNE, Lord attending on the King LONGAVILLE, Lord attending on the King DUMAINE, Lord attending on the King BOYET, Lord attending on the Princess of France MARCADE, Lord attending on the Princess of France DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, a fantastical Spaniard SIR NATHANIEL, a Curate HOLOFERNES, a Schoolmaster DULL, a Constable COSTARD, a Clown MOTH, Page to Armado A FORESTER THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE ROSALINE, Lady attending on the Princess MARIA, Lady attending on the Princess KATHARINE, Lady attending on the Princess JAQUENETTA, a country wench Officers and Others, Attendants on the King and Princess. SCENE: Navarre ACT I. SCENE I. The King of Navarre's park [Enter the King, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.] KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live regist'red upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity. Therefore, brave conquerors--for so you are That war against your own affections And the huge army of the world's desires-- Our late edict shall strongly stand in force: Navarre shall be the wonder of the world; Our court shall be a little academe, Still and contemplative in living art. You three, Berowne, Dumain, and Longaville, Have sworn for three years' term to live with me, My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes That are recorded in this schedule here: Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names, That his own hand may strike his honour down That violates the smallest branch herein. If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do, Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too. LONGAVILLE. I am resolv'd; 'tis but a three years' fast: The mind shall banquet, though the body pine: Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits. DUMAINE. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified: The grosser manner of these world's delights He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves; To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die, With all these living in philosophy. BEROWNE. I can but say their protestation over; So much, dear liege, I have already sworn, That is, to live and study here three years. But there are other strict observances: As, not to see a woman in that term, Which I hope well is not enrolled there: And one day in a week to touch no food, And but one meal on every day beside; The which I hope is not enrolled there: And then to sleep but three hours in the night And not be seen to wink of all the day,-- When I was wont to think no harm all night, And make a dark night too of half the day,-- Which I hope well is not enrolled there. O! these are barren tasks, too hard to keep, Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep. KING. Your oath is pass'd to pass away from these. BEROWNE. Let me say no, my liege, an if you please: I only swore to study with your Grace, And stay here in your court for three years' space. LONGAVILLE. You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest. BEROWNE. By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest. What is the end of study? let me know. KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know. BEROWNE. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense? KING. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense. BEROWNE. Come on, then; I will swear to study so, To know the thing I am forbid to know, As thus: to study where I well may dine, When I to feast expressly am forbid; Or study where to meet some mistress fine, When mistresses from common sense are hid; Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath, Study to break it, and not break my troth. If study's gain be thus, and this be so, Study knows that which yet it doth not know. Swear me to this, and I will ne'er say no. KING. These be the stops that hinder study quite, And train our intellects to vain delight. BEROWNE. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain: As painfully to pore upon a book, To seek the light of truth; while truth the while Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look. Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. Study me how to please the eye indeed, By fixing it upon a fairer eye; Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed, And give him light that it was blinded by. Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights That give a name to every fixed star Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Too much to know is to know nought but fame; And every godfather can give a name. KING. How well he's read, to reason against reading! DUMAINE. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding! LONGAVILLE. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding. BEROWNE. The spring is near, when green geese are a-breeding. DUMAINE. How follows that? BEROWNE. Fit in his place and time. DUMAINE. In reason nothing. BEROWNE. Something then in rime. LONGAVILLE. Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost That bites the first-born infants of the spring. BEROWNE. Well, say I am: why should proud summer boast Before the birds have any cause to sing? Why should I joy in any abortive birth? At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows; But like of each thing that in season grows; So you, to study now it is too late, Climb o'er the house to unlock the little gate. KING. Well, sit out; go home, Berowne; adieu. BEROWNE. No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you; And though I have for barbarism spoke more Than for that angel knowledge you can say, Yet confident I'll keep what I have swore, And bide the penance of each three years' day. Give me the paper; let me read the same; And to the strict'st decrees I'll write my name. KING. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame! BEROWNE. 'Item. That no woman shall come within a mile of my court.'Hath this been proclaimed? LONGAVILLE. Four days ago. BEROWNE. Let's see the penalty. 'On pain of losing her tongue.' Who devised this penalty? LONGAVILLE. Marry, that did I. BEROWNE. Sweet lord, and why? LONGAVILLE. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. BEROWNE. A dangerous law against gentility! 'Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.' This article, my liege, yourself must break; For well you know here comes in embassy The French king's daughter, with yourself to speak-- A mild of grace and complete majesty-- About surrender up of Aquitaine To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father: Therefore this article is made in vain, Or vainly comes th' admired princess hither. KING. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot. BEROWNE. So study evermore is over-shot: While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should; And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, 'Tis won as towns with fire; so won, so lost. KING. We must of force dispense with this decree; She must lie here on mere necessity. BEROWNE. Necessity will make us all forsworn Three thousand times within this three years' space; For every man with his affects is born, Not by might master'd, but by special grace. If I break faith, this word shall speak for me: I am forsworn 'on mere necessity.' So to the laws at large I write my name; [Subscribes] And he that breaks them in the least degree Stands in attainder of eternal shame. Suggestions are to other as to me; But I believe, although I seem so loath, I am the last that will last keep his oath. But is there no quick recreation granted? KING. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted With a refined traveller of Spain; A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain; One who the music of his own vain tongue Doth ravish like enchanting harmony; A man of complements, whom right and wrong Have chose as umpire of their mutiny: This child of fancy, that Armado hight, For interim to our studies shall relate, In high-born words, the worth of many a knight From tawny Spain lost in the world's debate. How you delight, my lords, I know not, I; But, I protest, I love to hear him lie, And I will use him for my minstrelsy. BEROWNE. Armado is a most illustrious wight, A man of fire-new words, fashion's own knight. LONGAVILLE. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport; And so to study three years is but short. [Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD.] DULL. Which is the duke's own person? BEROWNE. This, fellow. What wouldst? DULL. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his Grace's tharborough: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood. BEROWNE. This is he. DULL. Signior Arm--Arm--commends you. There's villainy abroad: this letter will tell you more. COSTARD. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. KING. A letter from the magnificent Armado. BEROWNE. How long soever the matter, I hope in God for high words. LONGAVILLE. A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience! BEROWNE. To hear, or forbear laughing? LONGAVILLE. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or, to forbear both. BEROWNE. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness. COSTARD. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta. The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner. BEROWNE. In what manner? COSTARD. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner,--it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman, for the form,--in some form. BEROWNE. For the following, sir? COSTARD. As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the right! KING. Will you hear this letter with attention? BEROWNE. As we would hear an oracle. COSTARD. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh. KING. 'Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's god and body's fostering patron,' COSTARD. Not a word of Costard yet. KING. 'So it is,'-- COSTARD. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so.-- KING. Peace! COSTARD. Be to me, and every man that dares not fight! KING. No words! COSTARD. Of other men's secrets, I beseech you. KING. 'So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper: so much for the time when. Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest. But to the place where, it standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden: there did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth,'-- COSTARD. Me. KING. 'that unlettered small-knowing soul,'-- COSTARD. Me. KING. 'that shallow vassal,'-- COSTARD. Still me.-- KING. 'which, as I remember, hight Costard,'-- COSTARD. O me. KING. 'sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with--with,--O! with but with this I passion to say wherewith,'-- COSTARD. With a wench. KING. 'with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman. Him, I,--as my ever-esteemed duty pricks me on,--have sent to thee, to receive the meed of punishment, by thy sweet Grace's officer, Antony Dull, a man of good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.' DULL. Me, an't please you; I am Antony Dull. KING. 'For Jaquenetta,--so is the weaker vessel called, which I apprehended with the aforesaid swain,--I keep her as a vessel of thy law's fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice, bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and heart-burning heat of duty, DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.' BEROWNE. This is not so well as I looked for, but the best that ever I heard. KING. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to this? COSTARD. Sir, I confess the wench. KING. Did you hear the proclamation? COSTARD. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the marking of it. KING. It was proclaimed a year's imprisonment to be taken with a wench. COSTARD. I was taken with none, sir: I was taken with a damosel. KING. Well, it was proclaimed 'damosel'. COSTARD. This was no damosel neither, sir; she was a 'virgin'. KING. It is so varied too; for it was proclaimed 'virgin'. COSTARD. If it were, I deny her virginity: I was taken with a maid. KING. This maid not serve your turn, sir. COSTARD. This maid will serve my turn, sir. KING. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week with bran and water. COSTARD. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge. KING. And Don Armado shall be your keeper. My Lord Berowne, see him delivered o'er: And go we, lords, to put in practice that Which each to other hath so strongly sworn. [Exeunt KING, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN.] BEROWNE. I'll lay my head to any good man's hat These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn. Sirrah, come on. COSTARD. I suffer for the truth, sir: for true it is I was taken with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow! [Exeunt.] SCENE II. The park. [Enter ARMADO and MOTH.] ARMADO. Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy? MOTH. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad. ARMADO. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp. MOTH. No, no; O Lord, sir, no. ARMADO. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender juvenal? MOTH. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough senior. ARMADO. Why tough senior? Why tough senior? MOTH. Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal? ARMADO. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender. MOTH. And I, tough senior, as an appertinent title to your old time, which we may name tough. ARMADO. Pretty and apt. MOTH. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and my saying pretty? ARMADO. Thou pretty, because little. MOTH. Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt? ARMADO. And therefore apt, because quick. MOTH. Speak you this in my praise, master? ARMADO. In thy condign praise. MOTH. I will praise an eel with the same praise. ARMADO. What! That an eel is ingenious? MOTH. That an eel is quick. ARMADO. I do say thou art quick in answers: thou heat'st my blood. MOTH. I am answered, sir. ARMADO. I love not to be crossed. MOTH. [Aside] He speaks the mere contrary: crosses love not him. ARMADO. I have promised to study three years with the duke. MOTH. You may do it in an hour, sir. ARMADO. Impossible. MOTH. How many is one thrice told? ARMADO. I am ill at reck'ning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster. MOTH. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir. ARMADO. I confess both: they are both the varnish of a complete man. MOTH. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace amounts to. ARMADO. It doth amount to one more than two. MOTH. Which the base vulgar do call three. ARMADO. True. MOTH. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here's three studied ere ye'll thrice wink; and how easy it is to put 'years' to the word 'three,' and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you. ARMADO. A most fine figure! MOTH. [Aside] To prove you a cipher. ARMADO. I will hereupon confess I am in love; and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devised curtsy. I think scorn to sigh: methinks I should out-swear Cupid. Comfort me, boy: what great men have been in love? MOTH. Hercules, master. ARMADO. Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy, name more; and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage. MOTH. Samson, master: he was a man of good carriage, great carriage, for he carried the town gates on his back like a porter; and he was in love. ARMADO. O well-knit Samson! strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in love too. Who was Samson's love, my dear Moth? MOTH. A woman, master. ARMADO. Of what complexion? MOTH. Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four. ARMADO. Tell me precisely of what complexion. MOTH. Of the sea-water green, sir. ARMADO. Is that one of the four complexions? MOTH. As I have read, sir; and the best of them too. ARMADO. Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers; but to have a love of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit. MOTH. It was so, sir, for she had a green wit. ARMADO. My love is most immaculate white and red. MOTH. Most maculate thoughts, master, are masked under such colours. ARMADO. Define, define, well-educated infant. MOTH. My father's wit my mother's tongue assist me! ARMADO. Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty, and pathetical! MOTH. If she be made of white and red, Her faults will ne'er be known; For blushing cheeks by faults are bred, And fears by pale white shown. Then if she fear, or be to blame, By this you shall not know, For still her cheeks possess the same Which native she doth owe. A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red. ARMADO. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar? MOTH. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since; but I think now 'tis not to be found; or if it were, it would neither serve for the writing nor the tune. ARMADO. I will have that subject newly writ o'er, that I may example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind Costard: she deserves well. MOTH. [Aside] To be whipped; and yet a better love than my master. ARMADO. Sing, boy: my spirit grows heavy in love. MOTH. And that's great marvel, loving a light wench. ARMADO. I say, sing. MOTH. Forbear till this company be past. [Enter DULL, COSTARD, and JAQUENETTA.] DULL. Sir, the Duke's pleasure is, that you keep Costard safe: and you must suffer him to take no delight nor no penance; but a' must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at the park; she is allowed for the day-woman. Fare you well. ARMADO. I do betray myself with blushing. Maid! JAQUENETTA. Man? ARMADO. I will visit thee at the lodge. JAQUENETTA. That's hereby. ARMADO. I know where it is situate. JAQUENETTA. Lord, how wise you are! ARMADO. I will tell thee wonders. JAQUENETTA. With that face? ARMADO. I love thee. JAQUENETTA. So I heard you say. ARMADO. And so, farewell. JAQUENETTA. Fair weather after you! DULL. Come, Jaquenetta, away! [Exit with JAQUENETTA.] ARMADO. Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be pardoned. COSTARD. Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full stomach. ARMADO. Thou shalt be heavily punished. COSTARD. I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but lightly rewarded. ARMADO. Take away this villain: shut him up. MOTH. Come, you transgressing slave: away! COSTARD. Let me not be pent up, sir: I will fast, being loose. MOTH. No, sir; that were fast and loose: thou shalt to prison. COSTARD. Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I have seen, some shall see-- MOTH. What shall some see? COSTARD. Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon. It is not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as another man, and therefore I can be quiet. [Exeunt MOTH and COSTARD.] ARMADO. I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn,--which is a great argument of falsehood,--if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil; there is no evil angel but Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules' club, and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard's rapier. The first and second cause will not serve my turn; the passado he respects not, the duello he regards not; his disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour! rust, rapier! be still, drum! for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rime, for I am sure I shall turn sonneter. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio. [Exit.] ACT II. SCENE II. The King of Navarre's park. A pavilion and tents at a distance. [Enter the PRINCESS OF FRANCE, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, LORDS, and other Attendants.] BOYET. Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits: Consider who the king your father sends, To whom he sends, and what's his embassy: Yourself, held precious in the world's esteem, To parley with the sole inheritor Of all perfections that a man may owe, Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As Nature was in making graces dear When she did starve the general world beside, And prodigally gave them all to you. PRINCESS. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise: Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, Not utt'red by base sale of chapmen's tongues. I am less proud to hear you tell my worth Than you much willing to be counted wise In spending your wit in the praise of mine. But now to task the tasker: good Boyet, You are not ignorant, all-telling fame Doth noise abroad, Navarre hath made a vow, Till painful study shall outwear three years, No woman may approach his silent court: Therefore to's seemeth it a needful course, Before we enter his forbidden gates, To know his pleasure; and in that behalf, Bold of your worthiness, we single you As our best-moving fair solicitor. Tell him the daughter of the King of France, On serious business, craving quick dispatch, Importunes personal conference with his Grace. Haste, signify so much; while we attend, Like humble-visag'd suitors, his high will. BOYET. Proud of employment, willingly I go. PRINCESS. All pride is willing pride, and yours is so. [Exit BOYET.] Who are the votaries, my loving lords, That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke? FIRST LORD. Lord Longaville is one. PRINCESS. Know you the man? MARIA. I know him, madam: at a marriage feast, Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized In Normandy, saw I this Longaville. A man of sovereign parts, he is esteem'd, Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms: Nothing becomes him ill that he would well. The only soil of his fair virtue's gloss,-- If virtue's gloss will stain with any soil,-- Is a sharp wit match'd with too blunt a will; Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills It should none spare that come within his power. PRINCESS. Some merry mocking lord, belike; is't so? MARIA. They say so most that most his humours know. PRINCESS. Such short-liv'd wits do wither as they grow. Who are the rest? KATHARINE. The young Dumain, a well-accomplish'd youth, Of all that virtue love for virtue lov'd; Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill, For he hath wit to make an ill shape good, And shape to win grace though he had no wit. I saw him at the Duke Alencon's once; And much too little of that good I saw Is my report to his great worthiness. ROSALINE. Another of these students at that time Was there with him, if I have heard a truth: Berowne they call him; but a merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal. His eye begets occasion for his wit, For every object that the one doth catch The other turns to a mirth-moving jest, Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor, Delivers in such apt and gracious words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and voluble is his discourse. PRINCESS. God bless my ladies! Are they all in love, That every one her own hath garnished With such bedecking ornaments of praise? FIRST LORD. Here comes Boyet. [Re-enter BOYET.] PRINCESS. Now, what admittance, lord? BOYET. Navarre had notice of your fair approach, And he and his competitors in oath Were all address'd to meet you, gentle lady, Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt; He rather means to lodge you in the field, Like one that comes here to besiege his court, Than seek a dispensation for his oath, To let you enter his unpeeled house. Here comes Navarre. [The LADIES mask.] [Enter KING, LONGAVILLE, DUMAINE, BEROWNE, and ATTENDANTS.] KING. Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre. PRINCESS. 'Fair' I give you back again; and 'welcome' I have not yet: the roof of this court is too high to be yours, and welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine. KING. You shall be welcome, madam, to my court. PRINCESS. I will be welcome then: conduct me thither. KING. Hear me, dear lady; I have sworn an oath. PRINCESS. Our Lady help my lord! he'll be forsworn. KING. Not for the world, fair madam, by my will. PRINCESS. Why, will shall break it; will, and nothing else. KING. Your ladyship is ignorant what it is. PRINCESS. Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise, Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance. I hear your Grace hath sworn out house-keeping: 'Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord, And sin to break it. But pardon me, I am too sudden bold: To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me. Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming, And suddenly resolve me in my suit. [Gives a paper.] KING. Madam, I will, if suddenly I may. PRINCESS. You will the sooner that I were away, For you'll prove perjur'd if you make me stay. BEROWNE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once? ROSALINE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once? BEROWNE. I know you did. ROSALINE. How needless was it then To ask the question! BEROWNE. You must not be so quick. ROSALINE. 'Tis long of you, that spur me with such questions. BEROWNE. Your wit's too hot, it speeds too fast, 'twill tire. ROSALINE. Not till it leave the rider in the mire. BEROWNE. What time o' day? ROSALINE. The hour that fools should ask. BEROWNE. Now fair befall your mask! ROSALINE. Fair fall the face it covers! BEROWNE. And send you many lovers! ROSALINE. Amen, so you be none. BEROWNE. Nay, then will I be gone. KING. Madam, your father here doth intimate The payment of a hundred thousand crowns; Being but the one half of an entire sum Disbursed by my father in his wars. But say that he or we,--as neither have,-- Receiv'd that sum, yet there remains unpaid A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which, One part of Aquitaine is bound to us, Although not valued to the money's worth. If then the King your father will restore But that one half which is unsatisfied, We will give up our right in Aquitaine, And hold fair friendship with his majesty. But that, it seems, he little purposeth, For here he doth demand to have repaid A hundred thousand crowns; and not demands, On payment of a hundred thousand crowns, To have his title live in Aquitaine; Which we much rather had depart withal, And have the money by our father lent, Than Aquitaine so gelded as it is. Dear Princess, were not his requests so far From reason's yielding, your fair self should make A yielding 'gainst some reason in my breast, And go well satisfied to France again. PRINCESS. You do the king my father too much wrong, And wrong the reputation of your name, In so unseeming to confess receipt Of that which hath so faithfully been paid. KING. I do protest I never heard of it; And, if you prove it, I'll repay it back Or yield up Aquitaine. PRINCESS. We arrest your word. Boyet, you can produce acquittances For such a sum from special officers Of Charles his father. KING. Satisfy me so. BOYET. So please your Grace, the packet is not come, Where that and other specialties are bound: To-morrow you shall have a sight of them. KING. It shall suffice me; at which interview All liberal reason I will yield unto. Meantime receive such welcome at my hand As honour, without breach of honour, may Make tender of to thy true worthiness. You may not come, fair Princess, in my gates; But here without you shall be so receiv'd As you shall deem yourself lodg'd in my heart, Though so denied fair harbour in my house. Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell: To-morrow shall we visit you again. PRINCESS. Sweet health and fair desires consort your Grace! KING. Thy own wish wish I thee in every place. [Exeunt KING and his Train.] BEROWNE. Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart. ROSALINE. Pray you, do my commendations; I would be glad to see it. BEROWNE. I would you heard it groan. ROSALINE. Is the fool sick? BEROWNE. Sick at the heart. ROSALINE. Alack! let it blood. BEROWNE. Would that do it good? ROSALINE. My physic says 'ay.' BEROWNE. Will you prick't with your eye? ROSALINE. No point, with my knife. BEROWNE. Now, God save thy life! ROSALINE. And yours from long living! BEROWNE. I cannot stay thanksgiving. [Retiring.] DUMAINE. Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same? BOYET. The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name. DUMAINE. A gallant lady! Monsieur, fare you well. [Exit.] LONGAVILLE. I beseech you a word: what is she in the white? BOYET. A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light. LONGAVILLE. Perchance light in the light. I desire her name. BOYET. She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame. LONGAVILLE. Pray you, sir, whose daughter? BOYET. Her mother's, I have heard. LONGAVILLE. God's blessing on your beard! BOYET. Good sir, be not offended. She is an heir of Falconbridge. LONGAVILLE. Nay, my choler is ended. She is a most sweet lady. BOYET. Not unlike, sir; that may be. [Exit LONGAVILLE.] BEROWNE. What's her name in the cap? BOYET. Rosaline, by good hap. BEROWNE. Is she wedded or no? BOYET. To her will, sir, or so. BEROWNE. You are welcome, sir. Adieu! BOYET. Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you. [Exit BEROWNE.--LADIES unmask.] MARIA. That last is Berowne, the merry mad-cap lord; Not a word with him but a jest. BOYET. And every jest but a word. PRINCESS. It was well done of you to take him at his word. BOYET. I was as willing to grapple as he was to board. MARIA. Two hot sheeps, marry! BOYET. And wherefore not ships? No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips. MARIA. You sheep and I pasture: shall that finish the jest? BOYET. So you grant pasture for me. [Offering to kiss her.] MARIA. Not so, gentle beast. My lips are no common, though several they be. BOYET. Belonging to whom? MARIA. To my fortunes and me. PRINCESS. Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles, agree; This civil war of wits were much better us'd On Navarre and his book-men, for here 'tis abus'd. BOYET. If my observation,--which very seldom lies, By the heart's still rhetoric disclosed with eyes, Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected. PRINCESS. With what? BOYET. With that which we lovers entitle affected. PRINCESS. Your reason. BOYET. Why, all his behaviours did make their retire To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire; His heart, like an agate, with your print impress'd, Proud with his form, in his eye pride express'd; His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see, Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be; All senses to that sense did make their repair, To feel only looking on fairest of fair. Methought all his senses were lock'd in his eye, As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy; Who, tend'ring their own worth from where they were glass'd, Did point you to buy them, along as you pass'd. His face's own margent did quote such amazes That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes. I'll give you Aquitaine, and all that is his, An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss. PRINCESS. Come, to our pavilion: Boyet is dispos'd. BOYET. But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclos'd. I only have made a mouth of his eye, By adding a tongue which I know will not lie. ROSALINE. Thou art an old love-monger, and speak'st skilfully. MARIA. He is Cupid's grandfather, and learns news of him. ROSALINE. Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but grim. BOYET. Do you hear, my mad wenches? MARIA. No. BOYET. What, then, do you see? ROSALINE. Ay, our way to be gone. BOYET. You are too hard for me. [Exeunt.] ACT III. SCENE I. The King of Navarre's park. [Enter ARMADO and MOTH.] ARMADO. Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing. MOTH [Singing.] Concolinel,-- ARMADO. Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years; take this key, give enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must employ him in a letter to my love. MOTH. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl? ARMADO. How meanest thou? brawling in French? MOTH. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note,--do you note me?--that most are affected to these. ARMADO. How hast thou purchased this experience? MOTH. By my penny of observation. ARMADO. But O--but O,-- MOTH. 'The hobby-horse is forgot.' ARMADO. Call'st thou my love 'hobby-horse'? MOTH. No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love perhaps, a hackney. But have you forgot your love? ARMADO. Almost I had. MOTH. Negligent student! learn her by heart. ARMADO. By heart and in heart, boy. MOTH. And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove. ARMADO. What wilt thou prove? MOTH. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the instant: by heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you cannot enjoy her. ARMADO. I am all these three. MOTH. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all. ARMADO. Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter. MOTH. A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador for an ass. ARMADO. Ha, ha! what sayest thou? MOTH. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is very slow-gaited. But I go. ARMADO. The way is but short: away! MOTH. As swift as lead, sir. ARMADO. The meaning, pretty ingenious? Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow? MOTH. Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no. ARMADO. I say lead is slow. MOTH. You are too swift, sir, to say so: Is that lead slow which is fir'd from a gun? ARMADO. Sweet smoke of rhetoric! He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he; I shoot thee at the swain. MOTH. Thump then, and I flee. [Exit.] ARMADO. A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace! By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face: Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place. My herald is return'd. [Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD.] MOTH. A wonder, master! here's a costard broken in a shin. ARMADO. Some enigma, some riddle: come, thy l'envoy; begin. COSTARD. No egma, no riddle, no l'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir. O! sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l'envoy, no l'envoy; no salve, sir, but a plantain. ARMADO. By virtue thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous smiling: O! pardon me, my stars. Doth the inconsiderate take salve for l'envoy, and the word l'envoy for a salve? MOTH. Do the wise think them other? Is not l'envoy a salve? ARMADO. No, page: it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain. I will example it: The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three. There's the moral. Now the l'envoy. MOTH. I will add the l'envoy. Say the moral again. ARMADO. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three. MOTH. Until the goose came out of door, And stay'd the odds by adding four. Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l'envoy. The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee, Were still at odds, being but three. ARMADO. Until the goose came out of door, Staying the odds by adding four. MOTH. A good l'envoy, ending in the goose; would you desire more? COSTARD. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that's flat. Sir, your pennyworth is good an your goose be fat. To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose: Let me see: a fat l'envoy; ay, that's a fat goose. ARMADO. Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin? MOTH. By saying that a costard was broken in a shin. Then call'd you for the l'envoy. COSTARD. True, and I for a plantain: thus came your argument in; Then the boy's fat l'envoy, the goose that you bought; And he ended the market. ARMADO. But tell me; how was there a costard broken in a shin? MOTH. I will tell you sensibly. COSTARD. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth: I will speak that l'envoy: I, Costard, running out, that was safely within, Fell over the threshold and broke my shin. ARMADO. We will talk no more of this matter. COSTARD. Till there be more matter in the shin. ARMADO. Sirrah Costard. I will enfranchise thee. COSTARD. O! marry me to one Frances: I smell some l'envoy, some goose, in this. ARMADO. By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty, enfreedoming thy person: thou wert immured, restrained, captivated, bound. COSTARD. True, true; and now you will be my purgation, and let me loose. ARMADO. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this:--[Giving a letter.] Bear this significant to the country maid Jaquenetta. [Giving money.] there is remuneration; for the best ward of mine honour is rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow. [Exit.] MOTH. Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu. COSTARD. My sweet ounce of man's flesh! my incony Jew! [Exit MOTH.] Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O! that's the Latin word for three farthings: three farthings, remuneration. 'What's the price of this inkle?' 'One penny.' 'No, I'll give you a remuneration.' Why, it carries it. Remuneration! Why, it is a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of this word. [Enter BEROWNE.] BEROWNE. O! My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met. COSTARD. Pray you, sir, how much carnation riband may a man buy for a remuneration? BEROWNE. What is a remuneration? COSTARD. Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing. BEROWNE. Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk. COSTARD. I thank your worship. God be wi' you! BEROWNE. Stay, slave; I must employ thee: As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave, Do one thing for me that I shall entreat. COSTARD. When would you have it done, sir? BEROWNE. O, this afternoon. COSTARD. Well, I will do it, sir! fare you well. BEROWNE. O, thou knowest not what it is. COSTARD. I shall know, sir, when I have done it. BEROWNE. Why, villain, thou must know first. COSTARD. I will come to your worship to-morrow morning. BEROWNE. It must be done this afternoon. Hark, slave, it is but this: The princess comes to hunt here in the park, And in her train there is a gentle lady; When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name, And Rosaline they call her: ask for her And to her white hand see thou do commend This seal'd-up counsel. [Gives him a shilling.] There's thy guerdon: go. COSTARD. Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration; a 'leven-pence farthing better; most sweet gardon! I will do it, sir, in print. Gardon- remuneration! [Exit.] BEROWNE. And I,-- Forsooth, in love; I, that have been love's whip; A very beadle to a humorous sigh; A critic, nay, a night-watch constable; A domineering pedant o'er the boy, Than whom no mortal so magnificent! This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator, and great general Of trotting 'paritors: O my little heart! And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! What! I love! I sue, I seek a wife! A woman, that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, And never going aright, being a watch, But being watch'd that it may still go right! Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all; And, among three, to love the worst of all, A wightly wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed, Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard: And I to sigh for her! to watch for her! To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan: Some men must love my lady, and some Joan. [Exit.] ACT IV. SCENE I. The King of Navarre's park. [Enter the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, LORDS, ATTENDANTS, and a FORESTER. PRINCESS. Was that the King that spurr'd his horse so hard Against the steep uprising of the hill? BOYET. I know not; but I think it was not he. PRINCESS. Whoe'er a' was, a' show'd a mounting mind. Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch; On Saturday we will return to France. Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush That we must stand and play the murderer in? FORESTER. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice; A stand where you may make the fairest shoot. PRINCESS. I thank my beauty, I am fair that shoot, And thereupon thou speak'st the fairest shoot. FORESTER. Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so. PRINCESS. What, what? First praise me, and again say no? O short-liv'd pride! Not fair? Alack for woe! FORESTER. Yes, madam, fair. PRINCESS. Nay, never paint me now; Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow. Here, good my glass [Gives money]:--take this for telling true: Fair payment for foul words is more than due. FORESTER. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit. PRINCESS. See, see! my beauty will be sav'd by merit. O heresy in fair, fit for these days! A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise. But come, the bow: now mercy goes to kill, And shooting well is then accounted ill. Thus will I save my credit in the shoot: Not wounding, pity would not let me do't; If wounding, then it was to show my skill, That more for praise than purpose meant to kill. And out of question so it is sometimes, Glory grows guilty of detested crimes, When, for fame's sake, for praise, an outward part, We bend to that the working of the heart; As I for praise alone now seek to spill The poor deer's blood, that my heart means no ill. BOYET. Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty Only for praise' sake, when they strive to be Lords o'er their lords? PRINCESS. Only for praise; and praise we may afford To any lady that subdues a lord. [Enter COSTARD.] BOYET. Here comes a member of the commonwealth. COSTARD. God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady? PRINCESS. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that have no heads. COSTARD. Which is the greatest lady, the highest? PRINCESS. The thickest and the tallest. COSTARD. The thickest and the tallest! It is so; truth is truth. An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit, One o' these maids' girdles for your waist should be fit. Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here. PRINCESS. What's your will, sir? What's your will? COSTARD. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one Lady Rosaline. PRINCESS. O! thy letter, thy letter; he's a good friend of mine. Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve; Break up this capon. BOYET. I am bound to serve. This letter is mistook; it importeth none here. It is writ to Jaquenetta. PRINCESS. We will read it, I swear. Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear. BOYET. 'By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible; true, that thou art beauteous; truth itself, that thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal! The magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set eye upon the pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon, and he it was that might rightly say, Veni, vidi, vici; which to anatomize in the vulgar-- O base and obscure vulgar!--videlicet, he came, saw, and overcame: he came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who came? the king: Why did he come? to see: Why did he see? to overcome: To whom came he? to the beggar: What saw he? the beggar. Who overcame he? the beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose side? the king's; the captive is enriched: on whose side? the beggar's. The catastrophe is a nuptial: on whose side? the king's, no, on both in one, or one in both. I am the king, for so stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may: Shall I enforce thy love? I could: Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou exchange for rags? robes; for tittles? titles; for thyself? -me. Thus, expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot, my eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part. Thine in the dearest design of industry, DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO. 'Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar 'Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey; Submissive fall his princely feet before, And he from forage will incline to play. But if thou strive, poor soul, what are thou then? Food for his rage, repasture for his den.' PRINCESS. What plume of feathers is he that indited this letter? What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better? BOYET. I am much deceiv'd but I remember the style. PRINCESS. Else your memory is bad, going o'er it erewhile. BOYET. This Armado is a Spaniard, that keeps here in court; A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport To the Prince and his book-mates. PRINCESS. Thou fellow, a word. Who gave thee this letter? COSTARD. I told you; my lord. PRINCESS. To whom shouldst thou give it? COSTARD. From my lord to my lady. PRINCESS. From which lord to which lady? COSTARD. From my Lord Berowne, a good master of mine, To a lady of France that he call'd Rosaline. PRINCESS. Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords, away. Here, sweet, put up this: 'twill be thine another day. [Exeunt PRINCESS and TRAIN.] BOYET. Who is the suitor? who is the suitor? ROSALINE. Shall I teach you to know? BOYET. Ay, my continent of beauty. ROSALINE. Why, she that bears the bow. Finely put off! BOYET. My lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou marry, Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry. Finely put on! ROSALINE. Well then, I am the shooter. BOYET. And who is your deer? ROSALINE. If we choose by the horns, yourself: come not near. Finely put on indeed! MARIA. You still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the brow. BOYET. But she herself is hit lower: have I hit her now? ROSALINE. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit it? BOYET. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit it. ROSALINE. Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, Thou canst not hit it, my good man. BOYET. An I cannot, cannot, cannot, An I cannot, another can. [Exeunt ROSALINE and KATHARINE.] COSTARD. By my troth, most pleasant: how both did fit it! MARIA. A mark marvellous well shot; for they both did hit it. BOYET. A mark! O! mark but that mark; A mark, says my lady! Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be. MARIA. Wide o' the bow-hand! I' faith, your hand is out. COSTARD. Indeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout. BOYET. An' if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in. COSTARD. Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin. MARIA. Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul. COSTARD. She's too hard for you at pricks, sir; challenge her to bowl. BOYET. I fear too much rubbing. Good-night, my good owl. [Exeunt BOYET and MARIA.] COSTARD. By my soul, a swain! a most simple clown! Lord, Lord! how the ladies and I have put him down! O' my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit! When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit. Armado, o' the one side, O! a most dainty man! To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan! To see him kiss his hand! and how most sweetly a' will swear! And his page o' t'other side, that handful of wit! Ah! heavens, it is a most pathetical nit. [Shouting within.] Sola, sola! [Exit running.] SCENE II. The same. Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL. NATHANIEL. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of a good conscience. HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo, the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth. NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly varied, like a scholar at the least: but, sir, I assure ye it was a buck of the first head. HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo. DULL. Twas not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation, as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were, replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his inclination,--after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather, unlettered, or ratherest, unconfirmed fashion,--to insert again my haud credo for a deer. DULL. I sthe deer was not a haud credo; 'twas a pricket. HOLOFERNES. Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus! O! thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! NATHANIEL. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts: And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should be, Which we of taste and feeling are, for those parts that do fructify in us more than he; For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school. But, omne bene, say I; being of an old Father's mind: Many can brook the weather that love not the wind. DULL. You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit, What was a month old at Cain's birth, that's not five weeks old as yet? HOLOFERNES. Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull. DULL. What is Dictynna? NATHANIEL. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon. HOLOFERNES. The moon was a month old when Adam was no more, And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score. The allusion holds in the exchange. DULL. 'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange. HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say, the allusion holds in the exchange. DULL. And I say the pollusion holds in the exchange, for the moon is never but a month old; and I say beside that 'twas a pricket that the Princess killed. HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, I have call'd the deer the Princess killed, a pricket. NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge; so it shall please you to abrogate scurrility. HOLOFERNES. I will something affect the letter; for it argues facility. The preyful Princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket; Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting. The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket- Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting. If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel! Of one sore I an hundred make, by adding but one more L. NATHANIEL. A rare talent! DULL. [Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent. HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it. NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you: you are a good member of the commonwealth. HOLOFERNES. Mehercle! if their sons be ingenious, they shall want no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth us. [Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.] JAQUENETTA. God give you good morrow, Master parson. HOLOFERNES. Master parson, quasi pers-on. And if one should be pierced, which is the one? COSTARD. Marry, Master schoolmaster, he that is likest to a hogshead. HOLOFERNES. Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre or conceit in a turf of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; 'tis pretty; it is well. JAQUENETTA. Good Master parson [Giving a letter to NATHANIEL.], be so good as read me this letter: it was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado: I beseech you read it. HOLOFERNES. 'Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat,' and so forth. Ah! good old Mantuan. I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice: --Venetia, Venetia, Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia. Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not. Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa. Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather as Horace says in his-- What, my soul, verses? NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned. HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine. NATHANIEL. If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? Ah! never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow'd; Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove; Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes, Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend: If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice. Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend; All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder; Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire. Thy eye Jove's lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder, Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire. Celestial as thou art, O! pardon love this wrong, That sings heaven's praise with such an earthly tongue. HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the 'tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin, was this directed to you? JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir; from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange queen's lords. HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: 'To the snow-white hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.' I will look again on the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party writing to the person written unto: 'Your Ladyship's in all desired employment, Berowne.'--Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one of the votaries with the king; and here he hath framed a letter to a sequent of the stranger queen's, which, accidentally, or by the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet; deliver this paper into the royal hand of the king; it may concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu. JAQUENETTA. Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life! COSTARD. Have with thee, my girl. [Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.] NATHANIEL. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very religiously; and, as a certain Father saith-- HOLOFERNES. Sir, tell not me of the Father; I do fear colourable colours. But to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir Nathaniel? NATHANIEL. Marvellous well for the pen. HOLOFERNES. I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your society. NATHANIEL. And thank you too; for society,--saith the text,--is the happiness of life. HOLOFERNES. And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it. [To DULL] Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away! the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. [Exeunt.] SCENE III. The same. [Enter BEROWNE, with a paper.] BEROWNE. The king he is hunting the deer: I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil: I am tolling in a pitch,--pitch that defiles: defile! a foul word! Well, sit thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I am the fool: well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o' my side. I will not love; if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O! but her eye,--by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to rime, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already; the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper; God give him grace to groan! [Gets up into a tree.] [Enter the KING, with a paper.] KING. Ay me! BEROWNE. [Aside.] Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thumped him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets! KING. So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows; Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright Through the transparent bosom of the deep, As doth thy face through tears of mine give light. Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep: No drop but as a coach doth carry thee; So ridest thou triumphing in my woe. Do but behold the tears that swell in me, And they thy glory through my grief will show: But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell. How shall she know my griefs? I'll drop the paper: Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here? [Steps aside.] What, Longaville! and reading! Listen, ear. [Enter LONGAVILLE, with a paper.] BEROWNE. Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear! LONGAVILLE. Ay me! I am forsworn. BEROWNE. Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers. KING. In love, I hope: sweet fellowship in shame! BEROWNE. One drunkard loves another of the name. LONGAVILLE. Am I the first that have been perjur'd so? BEROWNE. I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know; Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society, The shape of love's Tyburn that hangs up simplicity. LONGAVILLE. I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move. O sweet Maria, empress of my love! These numbers will I tear, and write in prose. BEROWNE. O! rimes are guards on wanton Cupid's hose: Disfigure not his slop. LONGAVILLE. This same shall go. Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury? Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment. A woman I forswore; but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love; Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is: Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, Exhal'st this vapour-vow; in thee it is: If broken, then it is no fault of mine: If by me broke, what fool is not so wise To lose an oath to win a paradise! BEROWNE. This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity; A green goose a goddess; pure, pure idolatry. God amend us, God amend! We are much out o' the way. LONGAVILLE. By whom shall I send this?--Company! Stay. [Steps aside.] BEROWNE. All hid, all hid; an old infant play. Like a demigod here sit I in the sky, And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye. More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish. [Enter DUMAINE, with a paper.] Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish! DUMAINE. O most divine Kate! BEROWNE. O most profane coxcomb! DUMAINE. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye! BEROWNE. By earth, she is but corporal; there you lie. DUMAINE. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted. BEROWNE. An amber-colour'd raven was well noted. DUMAINE. As upright as the cedar. BEROWNE. Stoop, I say; Her shoulder is with child. DUMAINE. As fair as day. BEROWNE. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine. DUMAINE. O! that I had my wish. LONGAVILLE. And I had mine! KING. And I mine too, good Lord! BEROWNE. Amen, so I had mine. Is not that a good word? DUMAINE. I would forget her; but a fever she Reigns in my blood, and will remember'd be. BEROWNE. A fever in your blood! Why, then incision Would let her out in saucers: sweet misprision! DUMAINE. Once more I'll read the ode that I have writ. BEROWNE. Once more I'll mark how love can vary wit. DUMAINE. On a day, alack the day! Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, 'gan passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wish'd himself the heaven's breath. Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so! But, alack! my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn; Vow, alack! for youth unmeet, Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me, That I am forsworn for thee; Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were; And deny himself for Jove, Turning mortal for thy love. This will I send, and something else more plain, That shall express my true love's fasting pain. O! would the King, Berowne and Longaville Were lovers too. Ill, to example ill, Would from my forehead wipe a perjur'd note; For none offend where all alike do dote. LONGAVILLE. [Advancing.] Dumain, thy love is far from charity, That in love's grief desir'st society; You may look pale, but I should blush, I know, To be o'erheard and taken napping so. KING. [Advancing.] Come, sir, you blush; as his, your case is such. You chide at him, offending twice as much: You do not love Maria; Longaville Did never sonnet for her sake compile; Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart His loving bosom, to keep down his heart. I have been closely shrouded in this bush, And mark'd you both, and for you both did blush. I heard your guilty rimes, observ'd your fashion, Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion: Ay me! says one. O Jove! the other cries; One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other's eyes: [To LONGAVILLE] You would for paradise break faith and troth; [To DUMAIN] And Jove, for your love would infringe an oath. What will Berowne say when that he shall hear Faith infringed which such zeal did swear? How will he scorn! how will he spend his wit! How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it! For all the wealth that ever I did see, I would not have him know so much by me. BEROWNE. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy. [Descends from the tree.] Ah! good my liege, I pray thee pardon me: Good heart! what grace hast thou thus to reprove These worms for loving, that art most in love? Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears There is no certain princess that appears: You'll not be perjur'd; 'tis a hateful thing: Tush! none but minstrels like of sonneting. But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not, All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot? You found his mote; the king your mote did see; But I a beam do find in each of three. O! what a scene of foolery have I seen, Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen; O me! with what strict patience have I sat, To see a king transformed to a gnat; To see great Hercules whipping a gig, And profound Solomon to tune a jig, And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys, And critic Timon laugh at idle toys! Where lies thy grief, O! tell me, good Dumaine? And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain? And where my liege's? all about the breast: A caudle, ho! KING. Too bitter is thy jest. Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view? BEROWNE. Not you by me, but I betray'd by you. I that am honest; I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in; I am betrayed by keeping company With men like men, men of inconstancy. When shall you see me write a thing in rime? Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute's time In pruning me? When shall you hear that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb?-- KING. Soft! whither away so fast? A true man or a thief that gallops so? BEROWNE. I post from love; good lover, let me go. [Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD.] JAQUENETTA. God bless the king! KING. What present hast thou there? COSTARD. Some certain treason. KING. What makes treason here? COSTARD. Nay, it makes nothing, sir. KING. If it mar nothing neither, The treason and you go in peace away together. JAQUENETTA. I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read; Our parson misdoubts it; 'twas treason, he said. KING. Berowne, read it over. [Giving the letter to him.] Where hadst thou it? JAQUENETTA. Of Costard. KING. Where hadst thou it? COSTARD. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. [BEROWNE tears the letter.] KING. How now! What is in you? Why dost thou tear it? BEROWNE. A toy, my liege, a toy: your Grace needs not fear it. LONGAVILLE. It did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it. DUMAINE. [Picking up the pieces.] It is Berowne's writing, and here is his name. BEROWNE. [To COSTARD.] Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born to do me shame. Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess. KING. What? BEROWNE. That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess; He, he, and you, and you, my liege, and I, Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die. O! dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more. DUMAINE. Now the number is even. BEROWNE. True, true, we are four. Will these turtles be gone? KING. Hence, sirs; away! COSTARD. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay. [Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA.] BEROWNE. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O! let us embrace! As true we are as flesh and blood can be: The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face; Young blood doth not obey an old decree: We cannot cross the cause why we were born, Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn. KING. What! did these rent lines show some love of thine? BEROWNE. 'Did they?' quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline That, like a rude and savage man of Inde At the first op'ning of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty? KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now? My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon; She, an attending star, scarce seen a light. BEROWNE. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne. O! but for my love, day would turn to night. Of all complexions the cull'd sovereignty Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek, Where several worthies make one dignity, Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,-- Fie, painted rhetoric! O! she needs it not: To things of sale a seller's praise belongs; She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot. A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn, Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye: Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born, And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy. O! 'tis the sun that maketh all things shine! KING. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. BEROWNE. Is ebony like her? O wood divine! A wife of such wood were felicity. O! who can give an oath? Where is a book? That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack, If that she learn not of her eye to look. No face is fair that is not full so black. KING. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons, and the school of night; And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well. BEROWNE. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. O! if in black my lady's brows be deck'd, It mourns that painting and usurping hair Should ravish doters with a false aspect; And therefore is she born to make black fair. Her favour turns the fashion of the days, For native blood is counted painting now; And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise, Paints itself black, to imitate her brow. DUMAINE. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black. LONGAVILLE. And since her time are colliers counted bright. KING. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack. DUMAINE. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light. BEROWNE. Your mistresses dare never come in rain, For fear their colours should be wash'd away. KING. 'Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain, I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day. BEROWNE. I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here. KING. No devil will fright thee then so much as she. DUMAINE. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear. LONGAVILLE. Look, here's thy love: [Showing his shoe.] my foot and her face see. BEROWNE. O! if the streets were paved with thine eyes, Her feet were much too dainty for such tread. DUMAINE. O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies The street should see as she walk'd over head. KING. But what of this? Are we not all in love? BEROWNE. Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn. KING. Then leave this chat; and, good Berowne, now prove Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn. DUMAINE. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil. LONGAVILLE. O! some authority how to proceed; Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil. DUMAINE. Some salve for perjury. BEROWNE. O, 'tis more than need. Have at you, then, affection's men-at-arms: Consider what you first did swear unto, To fast, to study, and to see no woman; Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth. Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young, And abstinence engenders maladies. And where that you you have vow'd to study, lords, In that each of you have forsworn his book, Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look? For when would you, my lord, or you, or you, Have found the ground of study's excellence Without the beauty of a woman's face? From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the academes, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire. Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigour of the traveller. Now, for not looking on a woman's face, You have in that forsworn the use of eyes, And study too, the causer of your vow; For where is author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? Learning is but an adjunct to ourself, And where we are our learning likewise is: Then when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes, Do we not likewise see our learning there? O! we have made a vow to study, lords, And in that vow we have forsworn our books: For when would you, my liege, or you, or you, In leaden contemplation have found out Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes Of beauty's tutors have enrich'd you with? Other slow arts entirely keep the brain; And therefore, finding barren practisers, Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil; But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain, But with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. It adds a precious seeing to the eye; A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound, When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd: Love's feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails: Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste. For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs; O! then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish, all the world; Else none at all in aught proves excellent. Then fools you were these women to forswear, Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools. For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love, Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men, Or for men's sake, the authors of these women; Or women's sake, by whom we men are men, Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths. It is religion to be thus forsworn; For charity itself fulfils the law; And who can sever love from charity? KING. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field! BEROWNE. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords; Pell-mell, down with them! be first advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them. LONGAVILLE. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by: Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France? KING. And win them too; therefore let us devise Some entertainment for them in their tents. BEROWNE. First, from the park let us conduct them thither; Then homeward every man attach the hand Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon We will with some strange pastime solace them, Such as the shortness of the time can shape; For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours, Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers. KING. Away, away! No time shall be omitted, That will betime, and may by us be fitted. BEROWNE. Allons! allons! Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn; And justice always whirls in equal measure: Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn; If so, our copper buys no better treasure. [Exeunt.] ACT V. SCENE I. The King of Navarre's park. [Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.] HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit. NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado. HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te: his humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet. [Draws out his table-book.] HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak dout, fine, when he should say doubt; det when he should pronounce debt,--d, e, b, t, not d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour vocatur nebour, neigh abbreviated ne. This is abhominable, which he would call abominable,--it insinuateth me of insanie: anne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic. NATHANIEL. Laus Deo, bone intelligo. HOLOFERNES. Bone? bone for bene: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve. [Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.] NATHANIEL. Videsne quis venit? HOLOFERNES. Video, et gaudeo. ARMADO. [To MOTH] Chirrah! HOLOFERNES. Quare chirrah, not sirrah? ARMADO. Men of peace, well encountered. HOLOFERNES. Most military sir, salutation. MOTH. [Aside to COSTARD.] They have been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps. COSTARD. O! they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon. MOTH. Peace! the peal begins. ARMADO. [To HOLOFERNES.] Monsieur, are you not lettered? MOTH. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt backward with the horn on his head? HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added. MOTH. Ba! most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning. HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant? MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I. HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them,--a, e, i,-- MOTH. The sheep; the other two concludes it,--o, u. ARMADO. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit! snip, snap, quick and home! It rejoiceth my intellect: true wit! MOTH. Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old. HOLOFERNES. What is the figure? What is the figure? MOTH. Horns. HOLOFERNES. Thou disputes like an infant; go, whip thy gig. MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circum circa. A gig of a cuckold's horn. COSTARD. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O! an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me. Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say. HOLOFERNES. O, I smell false Latin! 'dunghill' for unguem. ARMADO. Arts-man, praeambula; we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain? HOLOFERNES. Or mons, the hill. ARMADO. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain. HOLOFERNES. I do, sans question. ARMADO. Sir, it is the King's most sweet pleasure and affection to congratulate the princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon. HOLOFERNES. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable, for the afternoon. The word is well culled, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir; I do assure. ARMADO. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let it pass: I do beseech thee, remember thy courtsy; I beseech thee, apparel thy head: and among other importunate and most serious designs, and of great import indeed, too, but let that pass: for I must tell thee it will please his Grace, by the world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio: but, sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable: some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world: but let that pass. The very all of all is, but, sweet heart, I do implore secrecy, that the King would have me present the princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal, to the end to crave your assistance. HOLOFERNES. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies. Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some show in the posterior of this day, to be rendered by our assistance, the King's command, and this most gallant, illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the princess, I say none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies. NATHANIEL. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them? HOLOFERNES. Joshua, yourself; myself, Alexander; this gallant gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules,-- ARMADO. Pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that Worthy's thumb; he is not so big as the end of his club. HOLOFERNES. Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I will have an apology for that purpose. MOTH. An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may cry 'Well done, Hercules; now thou crushest the snake!' That is the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to do it. ARMADO. For the rest of the Worthies?-- HOLOFERNES. I will play three myself. MOTH. Thrice-worthy gentleman! ARMADO. Shall I tell you a thing? HOLOFERNES. We attend. ARMADO. We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you, follow. HOLOFERNES. Via, goodman Dull! Thou has spoken no word all this while. DULL. Nor understood none neither, sir. HOLOFERNES. Allons! we will employ thee. DULL. I'll make one in a dance, or so, or I will play on the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay. HOLOFERNES. Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away. [Exeunt.] SCENE II. The same. Before the Princess's pavilion. [Enter the PRINCESS, KATHARINE, ROSALINE and MARIA.] PRINCESS. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, If fairings come thus plentifully in. A lady wall'd about with diamonds! Look you what I have from the loving king. ROSALINE. Madam, came nothing else along with that? PRINCESS. Nothing but this! Yes, as much love in rime As would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name. ROSALINE. That was the way to make his godhead wax; For he hath been five thousand years a boy. KATHARINE. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too. ROSALINE. You'll ne'er be friends with him: a' kill'd your sister. KATHARINE. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; And so she died: had she been light, like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha' been a grandam ere she died; And so may you, for a light heart lives long. ROSALINE. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word? KATHARINE. A light condition in a beauty dark. ROSALINE. We need more light to find your meaning out. KATHARINE. You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff; Therefore I'll darkly end the argument. ROSALINE. Look what you do, you do it still i' the dark. KATHARINE. So do not you; for you are a light wench. ROSALINE. Indeed, I weigh not you; and therefore light. KATHARINE. You weigh me not? O! that's you care not for me. ROSALINE. Great reason; for 'past cure is still past care.' PRINCESS. Well bandied both; a set of wit well play'd. But, Rosaline, you have a favour too: Who sent it? and what is it? ROSALINE. I would you knew. An if my face were but as fair as yours, My favour were as great: be witness this. Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne; The numbers true, and, were the numbering too, I were the fairest goddess on the ground: I am compar'd to twenty thousand fairs. O! he hath drawn my picture in his letter. PRINCESS. Anything like? ROSALINE. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise. PRINCESS. Beauteous as ink; a good conclusion. KATHARINE. Fair as a text B in a copy-book. ROSALINE. 'Ware pencils! how! let me not die your debtor, My red dominical, my golden letter: O, that your face were not so full of O's! KATHARINE. A pox of that jest! and beshrew all shrows! PRINCESS. But, Katharine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine? KATHARINE. Madam, this glove. PRINCESS. Did he not send you twain? KATHARINE. Yes, madam; and, moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover; A huge translation of hypocrisy, Vilely compil'd, profound simplicity. MARIA. This, and these pearl, to me sent Longaville; The letter is too long by half a mile. PRINCESS. I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short? MARIA. Ay, or I would these hands might never part. PRINCESS. We are wise girls to mock our lovers so. ROSALINE. They are worse fools to purchase mocking so. That same Berowne I'll torture ere I go. O that I knew he were but in by th' week! How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rimes, And shape his service wholly to my hests, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! So perttaunt-like would I o'ersway his state That he should be my fool, and I his fate. PRINCESS. None are so surely caught, when they are catch'd, As wit turn'd fool: folly, in wisdom hatch'd, Hath wisdom's warrant and the help of school And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool. ROSALINE. The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity's revolt to wantonness. MARIA. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As fool'ry in the wise when wit doth dote; Since all the power thereof it doth apply To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity. [Enter BOYET.] PRINCESS. Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face. BOYET. O! I am stabb'd with laughter! Where's her Grace? PRINCESS. Thy news, Boyet? BOYET. Prepare, madam, prepare!-- Arm, wenches, arm! encounters mounted are Against your peace: Love doth approach disguis'd, Armed in arguments; you'll be surpris'd: Muster your wits; stand in your own defence; Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence. PRINCESS. Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say. BOYET. Under the cool shade of a sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour; When, lo, to interrupt my purpos'd rest, Toward that shade I might behold addrest The king and his companions: warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by, And overheard what you shall overhear; That, by and by, disguis'd they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page, That well by heart hath conn'd his embassage: Action and accent did they teach him there; 'Thus must thou speak' and 'thus thy body bear,' And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put him out; 'For' quoth the King 'an angel shalt thou see; Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' The boy replied 'An angel is not evil; I should have fear'd her had she been a devil.' With that all laugh'd, and clapp'd him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubb'd his elbow, thus, and fleer'd, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried 'Via! we will do't, come what will come.' The third he caper'd, and cried 'All goes well.' The fourth turn'd on the toe, and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion's solemn tears. PRINCESS. But what, but what, come they to visit us? BOYET. They do, they do, and are apparell'd thus, Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess. Their purpose is to parley, court, and dance; And every one his love-feat will advance Unto his several mistress; which they'll know By favours several which they did bestow. PRINCESS. And will they so? The gallants shall be task'd: For, ladies, we will every one be mask'd; And not a man of them shall have the grace, Despite of suit, to see a lady's face. Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear, And then the king will court thee for his dear; Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine, So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline. And change you favours too; so shall your loves Woo contrary, deceiv'd by these removes. ROSALINE. Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight. KATHARINE. But, in this changing, what is your intent? PRINCESS. The effect of my intent is to cross theirs; They do it but in mocking merriment; And mock for mock is only my intent. Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mock'd withal Upon the next occasion that we meet With visages display'd to talk and greet. ROSALINE. But shall we dance, if they desire us to't? PRINCESS. No, to the death, we will not move a foot, Nor to their penn'd speech render we no grace; But while 'tis spoke each turn away her face. BOYET. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker's heart, And quite divorce his memory from his part. PRINCESS. Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt The rest will ne'er come in, if he be out. There's no such sport as sport by sport o'erthrown, To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own: So shall we stay, mocking intended game, And they well mock'd, depart away with shame. [Trumpet sounds within.] BOYET. The trumpet sounds: be mask'd; the maskers come. [The LADIES mask.] [Enter BLACKAMOORS with music; MOTH, the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE in Russian habits, and masked.] MOTH. 'All hail, the richest heauties on the earth!' BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta. MOTH. 'A holy parcel of the fairest dames [The LADIES turn their backs to him.] That ever turn'd their--backs--to mortal views! BEROWNE. 'Their eyes,' villain, 'their eyes.' MOTH. 'That ever turn'd their eyes to mortal views! Out'-- BOYET. True; 'out,' indeed. MOTH. 'Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold'-- BEROWNE. 'Once to behold,' rogue. MOTH. 'Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes--with your sun-beamed eyes'-- BOYET. They will not answer to that epithet; You were best call it 'daughter-beamed eyes.' MOTH. They do not mark me, and that brings me out. BEROWNE. Is this your perfectness? be gone, you rogue. [Exit MOTH.] ROSALINE. What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet. If they do speak our language, 'tis our will That some plain man recount their purposes: Know what they would. BOYET. What would you with the princess? BEROWNE. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation. ROSALINE. What would they, say they? BOYET. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation. ROSALINE. Why, that they have; and bid them so be gone. BOYET. She says you have it, and you may be gone. KING. Say to her we have measur'd many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass. BOYET. They say that they have measur'd many a mile To tread a measure with you on this grass. ROSALINE. It is not so. Ask them how many inches Is in one mile? If they have measured many, The measure then of one is easily told. BOYET. If to come hither you have measur'd miles, And many miles, the Princess bids you tell How many inches doth fill up one mile. BEROWNE. Tell her we measure them by weary steps. BOYET. She hears herself. ROSALINE. How many weary steps Of many weary miles you have o'ergone Are number'd in the travel of one mile? BEROWNE. We number nothing that we spend for you; Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without accompt. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, That we, like savages, may worship it. ROSALINE. My face is but a moon, and clouded too. KING. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do! Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, Those clouds remov'd, upon our watery eyne. ROSALINE. O vain petitioner! beg a greater matter; Thou now requests'st but moonshine in the water. KING. Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. Thou bid'st me beg; this begging is not strange. ROSALINE. Play, music, then! Nay, you must do it soon. [Music plays.] Not yet! No dance! thus change I like the moon. KING. Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged? ROSALINE. You took the moon at full; but now she's chang'd. KING. Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it. ROSALINE. Our ears vouchsafe it. KING. But your legs should do it. ROSALINE. Since you are strangers, and come here by chance, We'll not be nice: take hands; we will not dance. KING. Why take we hands then? ROSALINE. Only to part friends. Curtsy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends. KING. More measure of this measure: be not nice. ROSALINE. We can afford no more at such a price. KING. Price you yourselves? what buys your company? ROSALINE. Your absence only. KING. That can never be. ROSALINE. Then cannot we be bought: and so adieu; Twice to your visor, and half once to you! KING. If you deny to dance, let's hold more chat. ROSALINE. In private then. KING. I am best pleas'd with that. [They converse apart.] BEROWNE. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee. PRINCESS. Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three. BEROWNE. Nay, then, two treys, an if you grow so nice, Metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice! There's half a dozen sweets. PRINCESS. Seventh sweet, adieu: Since you can cog, I'll play no more with you. BEROWNE. One word in secret. PRINCESS. Let it not be sweet. BEROWNE. Thou griev'st my gall. PRINCESS. Gall! bitter. BEROWNE. Therefore meet. [They converse apart.] DUMAINE. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word? MARIA. Name it. DUMAINE. Fair lady,-- MARIA. Say you so? Fair lord, Take that for your fair lady. DUMAINE. Please it you, As much in private, and I'll bid adieu. [They converse apart.] KATHARINE. What, was your visord made without a tongue? LONGAVILLE. I know the reason, lady, why you ask. KATHARINE. O! for your reason! quickly, sir; I long. LONGAVILLE. You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half. KATHARINE. 'Veal' quoth the Dutchman. Is not 'veal' a calf? LONGAVILLE. A calf, fair lady! KATHARINE. No, a fair lord calf. LONGAVILLE. Let's part the word. KATHARINE. No, I'll not be your half. Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox. LONGAVILLE. Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks! Will you give horns, chaste lady? do not so. KATHARINE. Then die a calf, before your horns do grow. LONGAVILLE. One word in private with you ere I die. KATHARINE. Bleat softly, then; the butcher hears you cry. [They converse apart.] BOYET. The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen As is the razor's edge invisible, Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen, Above the sense of sense; so sensible Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings, Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things. ROSALINE. Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off. BEROWNE. By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff! KING. Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits. PRINCESS. Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits. [Exeunt KING, LORDS, Music, and Attendants.] Are these the breed of wits so wondered at? BOYET. Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff'd out. ROSALINE. Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat. PRINCESS. O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of countenance quite. ROSALINE. O! They were all in lamentable cases! The King was weeping-ripe for a good word. PRINCESS. Berowne did swear himself out of all suit. MARIA. Dumaine was at my service, and his sword: 'No point' quoth I; my servant straight was mute. KATHARINE. Lord Longaville said, I came o'er his heart; And trow you what he call'd me? PRINCESS. Qualm, perhaps. KATHARINE. Yes, in good faith. PRINCESS. Go, sickness as thou art! ROSALINE. Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. But will you hear? The king is my love sworn. PRINCESS. And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me. KATHARINE. And Longaville was for my service born. MARIA. Dumaine is mine, as sure as bark on tree. BOYET. Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear: Immediately they will again be here In their own shapes; for it can never be They will digest this harsh indignity. PRINCESS. Will they return? BOYET. They will, they will, God knows, And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows; Therefore, change favours; and, when they repair, Blow like sweet roses in this summer air. PRINCESS. How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood. BOYET. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud: Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown. PRINCESS. Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do If they return in their own shapes to woo? ROSALINE. Good madam, if by me you'll be advis'd, Let's mock them still, as well known as disguis'd. Let us complain to them what fools were here, Disguis'd like Muscovites, in shapeless gear; And wonder what they were, and to what end Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn'd, And their rough carriage so ridiculous, Should be presented at our tent to us. BOYET. Ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand. PRINCESS. Whip to our tents, as roes run over land. [Exeunt PRINCESS, ROSALINE, KATHARINE, and MARIA.] [Re-enter the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE in their proper habits.] KING. Fair sir, God save you! Where's the princess? BOYET. Gone to her tent. Please it your Majesty Command me any service to her thither? KING. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word. BOYET. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord. [Exit.] BEROWNE. This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease, And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs; And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve: He can carve too, and lisp: why this is he That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy; This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms; nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and in ushering Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. This is the flower that smiles on every one, To show his teeth as white as whales-bone; And consciences that will not die in debt Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet. KING. A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart, That put Armado's page out of his part! [Re-enter the PRINCESS, ushered by BOYET; ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, and Attendants.] BEROWNE. See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou, Till this man show'd thee? and what art thou now? KING. All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day! PRINCESS. 'Fair' in 'all hail' is foul, as I conceive. KING. Construe my speeches better, if you may. PRINCESS. Then wish me better: I will give you leave. KING. We came to visit you, and purpose now To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then. PRINCESS. This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow: Nor God, nor I, delights in perjur'd men. KING. Rebuke me not for that which you provoke: The virtue of your eye must break my oath. PRINCESS. You nickname virtue: vice you should have spoke; For virtue's office never breaks men's troth. Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure As the unsullied lily, I protest, A world of torments though I should endure, I would not yield to be your house's guest; So much I hate a breaking cause to be Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity. KING. O! you have liv'd in desolation here, Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame. PRINCESS. Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear; We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game. A mess of Russians left us but of late. KING. How, madam! Russians? PRINCESS. Ay, in truth, my lord; Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state. ROSALINE. Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord: My lady, to the manner of the days, In courtesy gives undeserving praise. We four indeed confronted were with four In Russian habit: here they stay'd an hour, And talk'd apace; and in that hour, my lord, They did not bless us with one happy word. I dare not call them fools; but this I think, When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink. BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet, Your wit makes wise things foolish:when we greet, With eyes best seeing, heaven's fiery eye, By light we lose light: your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor. ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye- BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty. ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong, It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue. BEROWNE. O! am yours, and all that I possess. ROSALINE. All the fool mine? BEROWNE. I cannot give you less. ROSALINE. Which of the visors was it that you wore? BEROWNE. Where? when? what visor? why demand you this? ROSALINE. There, then, that visor; that superfluous case That hid the worse,and show'd the better face. KING. We are descried: they'll mock us now downright. DUMAINE. Let us confess, and turn it to a jest. PRINCESS. Amaz'd, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad? ROSALINE. Help! hold his brows! he'll swound. Why look you pale? Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy. BEROWNE. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. Can any face of brass hold longer out?-- Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me; Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout; Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance; Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit; And I will wish thee never more to dance, Nor never more in Russian habit wait. O! never will I trust to speeches penn'd, Nor to the motion of a school-boy's tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rime, like a blind harper's song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical; these summer-flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation: I do forswear them; and I here protest, By this white glove,--how white the hand, God knows!-- Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes; And, to begin, wench,--so God help me, la!-- My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw. ROSALINE. Sans 'sans,' I pray you. BEROWNE. Yet I have a trick Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick; I'll leave it by degrees. Soft! let us see: Write 'Lord have mercy on us' on those three; They are infected; in their hearts it lies; They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes: These lords are visited; you are not free, For the Lord's tokens on you do I see. PRINCESS. No, they are free that gave these tokens to us. BEROWNE. Our states are forfeit; seek not to undo us. ROSALINE. It is not so. For how can this be true, That you stand forfeit, being those that sue? BEROWNE. Peace! for I will not have to do with you. ROSALINE. Nor shall not, if I do as I intend. BEROWNE. Speak for yourselves: my wit is at an end. KING. Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression Some fair excuse. PRINCESS. The fairest is confession. Were not you here but even now, disguis'd? KING. Madam, I was. PRINCESS. And were you well advis'd? KING. I was, fair madam. PRINCESS. When you then were here, What did you whisper in your lady's ear? KING. That more than all the world I did respect her. PRINCESS. When she shall challenge this, you will reject her. KING. Upon mine honour, no. PRINCESS. Peace! peace! forbear; Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear. KING. Despise me when I break this oath of mine. PRINCESS. I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline, What did the Russian whisper in your ear? ROSALINE. Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear As precious eyesight, and did value me Above this world; adding thereto, moreover, That he would wed me, or else die my lover. PRINCESS. God give thee joy of him! The noble lord Most honourably doth uphold his word. KING. What mean you, madam? by my life, my troth, I never swore this lady such an oath. ROSALINE. By heaven, you did; and, to confirm it plain, You gave me this: but take it, sir, again. KING. My faith and this the princess I did give; I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve. PRINCESS. Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear; And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear. What, will you have me, or your pearl again? BEROWNE. Neither of either; I remit both twain. I see the trick on't: here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick, That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she's dispos'd, Told our intents before; which once disclos'd, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, woo'd but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to add more terror, We are again forsworn, in will and error. Much upon this it is: [To BOYET.] and might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady's foot by the squire, And laugh upon the apple of her eye? And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out: go, you are allow'd; Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There's an eye Wounds like a leaden sword. BOYET. Full merrily Hath this brave manage, this career, been run. BEROWNE. Lo! he is tilting straight! Peace! I have done. [Enter COSTARD Welcome, pure wit! thou part'st a fair fray. COSTARD. O Lord, sir, they would know Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no? BEROWNE. What, are there but three? COSTARD. No, sir; but it is vara fine, For every one pursents three. BEROWNE. And three times thrice is nine. COSTARD. Not so, sir; under correction, sir, I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know what we know: I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir,-- BEROWNE. Is not nine. COSTARD. Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount. BEROWNE. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine. COSTARD. O Lord, sir! it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir. BEROWNE. How much is it? COSTARD. O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great, sir. BEROWNE. Art thou one of the Worthies? COSTARD. It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompion the Great; for mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy; but I am to stand for him. BEROWNE. Go, bid them prepare. COSTARD. We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care. [Exit COSTARD.] KING. Berowne, they will shame us; let them not approach. BEROWNE. We are shame-proof, my lord, and 'tis some policy To have one show worse than the king's and his company. KING. I say they shall not come. PRINCESS. Nay, my good lord, let me o'errule you now. That sport best pleases that doth least know how; Where zeal strives to content, and the contents Die in the zeal of those which it presents; Their form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth. BEROWNE. A right description of our sport, my lord. [Enter ARMADO.] ARMADO. Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words. [Converses apart with the KING, and delivers a paper to him.] PRINCESS. Doth this man serve God? BEROWNE. Why ask you? PRINCESS. He speaks not like a man of God his making. ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too-too vain, too-too vain: but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement! [Exit.] KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Armado's page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus: And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive, These four will change habits and present the other five. BEROWNE. There is five in the first show. KING. You are deceived, 'tis not so. BEROWNE. The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy:-- Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein. KING. The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain. [Enter COSTARD, armed for POMPEY.] COSTARD. 'I Pompey am'-- BEROWNE. You lie, you are not he. COSTARD. 'I Pompey am'-- BOYET. With libbard's head on knee. BEROWNE. Well said, old mocker: I must needs be friends with thee. COSTARD. 'I Pompey am, Pompey surnam'd the Big'-- DUMAINE. 'The Great.' COSTARD. It is 'Great,' sir; 'Pompey surnam'd the Great, That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to sweat: And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance, And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France. If your ladyship would say 'Thanks, Pompey,' I had done. PRINCESS. Great thanks, great Pompey. COSTARD. 'Tis not so much worth; but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in 'Great.' BEROWNE. My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy. [Enter SIR NATHANIEL armed, for ALEXANDER.] NATHANIEL. 'When in the world I liv'd, I was the world's commander; By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might: My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander'-- BOYET. Your nose says, no, you are not; for it stands to right. BEROWNE. Your nose smells 'no' in this, most tender-smelling knight. PRINCESS. The conqueror is dismay'd. Proceed, good Alexander. NATHANIEL. 'When in the world I liv'd, I was the world's commander;'-- BOYET. Most true; 'tis right, you were so, Alisander. BEROWNE. Pompey the Great,-- COSTARD. Your servant, and Costard. BEROWNE. Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander. COSTARD. [To Sir Nathaniel.] O! sir, you have overthrown Alisander the conqueror! You will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this; your lion, that holds his poll-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax: he will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror, and afeard to speak! Run away for shame, Alisander. [Nathaniel retires.] There, an't shall please you: a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed! He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler; but for Alisander,--alas! you see how 'tis--a little o'erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort. PRINCESS. Stand aside, good Pompey. [Enter HOLOFERNES armed, for JUDAS; and MOTH armed, for HERCULES.] HOLOFERNES. 'Great Hercules is presented by this imp, Whose club kill'd Cerberus, that three-headed canis; And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. Quoniam he seemeth in minority, Ergo I come with this apology.' Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.--[MOTH retires.] 'Judas I am.'-- DUMAINE. A Judas! HOLOFERNES. Not Iscariot, sir. 'Judas I am, ycliped Maccabaeus.' DUMAINE. Judas Maccabaeus clipt is plain Judas. BEROWNE. A kissing traitor. How art thou prov'd Judas? HOLOFERNES. 'Judas I am.'-- DUMAINE. The more shame for you, Judas. HOLOFERNES. What mean you, sir? BOYET. To make Judas hang himself. HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir; you are my elder. BEROWNE. Well follow'd: Judas was hanged on an elder. HOLOFERNES. I will not be put out of countenance. BEROWNE. Because thou hast no face. HOLOFERNES. What is this? BOYET. A cittern-head. DUMAINE. The head of a bodkin. BEROWNE. A death's face in a ring. LONGAVILLE. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen. BOYET. The pommel of Caesar's falchion. DUMAINE. The carved-bone face on a flask. BEROWNE. Saint George's half-cheek in a brooch. DUMAINE. Ay, and in a brooch of lead. BEROWNE. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now, forward; for we have put thee in countenance. HOLOFERNES. You have put me out of countenance. BEROWNE. False: we have given thee faces. HOLOFERNES. But you have outfaced them all. BEROWNE. An thou wert a lion we would do so. BOYET. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude! nay, why dost thou stay? DUMAINE. For the latter end of his name. BEROWNE. For the ass to the Jude? give it him:--Jud-as, away! HOLOFERNES. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble. BOYET. A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark, he may stumble. PRINCESS. Alas! poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited. [Enter ARMADO armed, for HECTOR.] BEROWNE. Hide thy head, Achilles: here comes Hector in arms. DUMAINE. Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry. KING. Hector was but a Troyan in respect of this. BOYET. But is this Hector? DUMAINE. I think Hector was not so clean-timber'd. LONGAVILLE. His leg is too big for Hector's. DUMAINE. More calf, certain. BOYET. No; he is best indued in the small. BEROWNE. This cannot be Hector. DUMAINE. He's a god or a painter; for he makes faces. ARMADO. 'The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift,'-- DUMAINE. A gilt nutmeg. BEROWNE. A lemon. LONGAVILLE. Stuck with cloves. DUMAINE. No, cloven. ARMADO. Peace! 'The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion; A man so breath'd that certain he would fight ye, From morn till night, out of his pavilion. I am that flower,'-- DUMAINE. That mint. LONGAVILLE. That columbine. ARMADO. Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue. LONGAVILLE. I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector. DUMAINE. Ay, and Hector's a greyhound. ARMADO. The sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried; when he breathed, he was a man. But I will forward with my device. [To the PRINCESS.] Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing. PRINCESS. Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted. ARMADO. I do adore thy sweet Grace's slipper. BOYET. [Aside to DUMAIN.] Loves her by the foot. DUMAINE. [Aside to BOYET.] He may not by the yard. ARMADO. 'This Hector far surmounted Hannibal,'-- COSTARD. The party is gone; fellow Hector, she is gone; she is two months on her way. ARMADO. What meanest thou? COSTARD. Faith, unless you play the honest Troyan, the poor wench is cast away: she's quick; the child brags in her belly already; 'tis yours. ARMADO. Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die. COSTARD. Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta that is quick by him, and hanged for Pompey that is dead by him. DUMAINE. Most rare Pompey! BOYET. Renowned Pompey! BEROWNE. Greater than great, great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the Huge! DUMAINE. Hector trembles. BEROWNE. Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on! stir them on! DUMAINE. Hector will challenge him. BEROWNE. Ay, if a' have no more man's blood in his belly than will sup a flea. ARMADO. By the north pole, I do challenge thee. COSTARD. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man: I'll slash; I'll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my arms again. DUMAINE. Room for the incensed Worthies! COSTARD. I'll do it in my shirt. DUMAINE. Most resolute Pompey! MOTH. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose your reputation. ARMADO. Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me; I will not combat in my shirt. DUMAINE. You may not deny it: Pompey hath made the challenge. ARMADO. Sweet bloods, I both may and will. BEROWNE. What reason have you for 't? ARMADO. The naked truth of it is: I have no shirt; I go woolward for penance. BOYET. True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen; since when, I'll be sworn, he wore none but a dish-clout of Jaquenetta's, and that a' wears next his heart for a favour. [Enter MONSIEUR MARCADE, a messenger.] MARCADE. God save you, madam! PRINCESS. Welcome, Marcade; But that thou interrupt'st our merriment. MARCADE. I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The king your father-- PRINCESS. Dead, for my life! MARCADE. Even so: my tale is told. BEROWNE. Worthies away! the scene begins to cloud. ARMADO. For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier. [Exeunt WORTHIES.] KING. How fares your Majesty? PRINCESS. Boyet, prepare: I will away to-night. KING. Madam, not so: I do beseech you stay. PRINCESS. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords, For all your fair endeavours; and entreat, Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide The liberal opposition of our spirits, If over-boldly we have borne ourselves In the converse of breath; your gentleness Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord! A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue. Excuse me so, coming so short of thanks For my great suit so easily obtain'd. KING. The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed, And often at his very loose decides That which long process could not arbitrate: And though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince; Yet, since love's argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but newly found. PRINCESS. I understand you not: my griefs are double. BEROWNE. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; And by these badges understand the king. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Play'd foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, Hath much deform'd us, fashioning our humours Even to the opposed end of our intents; And what in us hath seem'd ridiculous,-- As love is full of unbefitting strains; All wanton as a child, skipping and vain; Form'd by the eye, and, therefore, like the eye, Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, Varying in subjects, as the eye doth roll To every varied object in his glance: Which parti-coated presence of loose love Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes, Have misbecom'd our oaths and gravities, Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies, Our love being yours, the error that love makes Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false, By being once false for ever to be true To those that make us both,--fair ladies, you: And even that falsehood, in itself a sin, Thus purifies itself and turns to grace. PRINCESS. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love; Your favours, the ambassadors of love; And, in our maiden council, rated them At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy, As bombast and as lining to the time; But more devout than this in our respects Have we not been; and therefore met your loves In their own fashion, like a merriment. DUMAINE. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest. LONGAVILLE. So did our looks. ROSALINE. We did not quote them so. KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves. PRINCESS. A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur'd much, Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this: If for my love,--as there is no such cause,-- You will do aught, this shall you do for me: Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed To some forlorn and naked hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world; There stay until the twelve celestial signs Have brought about the annual reckoning. If this austere insociable life Change not your offer made in heat of blood, If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds, Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love, But that it bear this trial, and last love, Then, at the expiration of the year, Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts; And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine, I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut My woeful self up in a mournful house, Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father's death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither intitled in the other's heart. KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny, To flatter up these powers of mine with rest, The sudden hand of death close up mine eye! Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast. BEROWNE. And what to me, my love? and what to me? ROSALINE. You must he purged too, your sins are rack'd; You are attaint with faults and perjury; Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, But seek the weary beds of people sick. DUMAINE. But what to me, my love? but what to me? KATHARINE. A wife! A beard, fair health, and honesty; With three-fold love I wish you all these three. DUMAINE. O! shall I say I thank you, gentle wife? KATHARINE. No so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say. Come when the King doth to my lady come; Then, if I have much love, I'll give you some. DUMAINE. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. KATHARINE. Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again. LONGAVILLE. What says Maria? MARIA. At the twelvemonth's end I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. LONGAVILLE. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. MARIA. The liker you; few taller are so young. BEROWNE. Studies my lady? mistress, look on me; Behold the window of my heart, mine eye, What humble suit attends thy answer there. Impose some service on me for thy love. ROSALINE. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne, Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal to win me, if you please,-- Without the which I am not to be won,-- You shall this twelvemonth term, from day to day, Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit To enforce the pained impotent to smile. BEROWNE. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. ROSALINE. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools. A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you and that fault withal; But if they will not, throw away that spirit, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right joyful of your reformation. BEROWNE. A twelvemonth! well, befall what will befall, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital. PRINCESS. [To the King.] Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave. KING. No, madam; we will bring you on your way. BEROWNE. Our wooing doth not end like an old play: Jack hath not Jill; these ladies' courtesy Might well have made our sport a comedy. KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then 'twill end. BEROWNE. That's too long for a play. [Enter ARMADO.] ARMADO. Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me,-- PRINCESS. Was not that not Hector? DUMAINE. The worthy knight of Troy. ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary: I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three yeasr. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of our show. KING. Call them forth quickly; we will do so. ARMADO. Holla! approach. [Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others.] This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SPRING I. When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then on every tree Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! II. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! WINTER III. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. IV. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-who; Tu-whit, to-who--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. ARMADO. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way: we this way. [Exeunt.] Publication Date: May 29th 2008 https://www.bookrix.com/-bx.shakespeare

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-m-e-the-long-road-ahead/

M.E. The Long Road Ahead Dedicated to those who keep their promises A friend's last favor is something to pay closely attention to. I promised him, and I will keep that promise. We started back on our journey as soon as the sun perked over the horizon. I took one look at him, and I knew he would leave shortly. I laid him in the sleigh. He kept preaching about his homeland, "I live in the very middle of my homeland, Tennessee. Hills and valleys are all that the eye can see..." I saw that the sun was lowering for night to come. It seemed like it was a bomb that was ready to burst. That bomb exploded when the moon was out and the sun was gone. His eyes were closed and a smile displayed on his ghastly face. I cried out to God for I knew my promise would be kept. Text: M.E. Images: toptenz.com Editing: M.E. All rights reserved. Publication Date: February 22nd 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-porcelainedoll

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-morgan-johnson-crushed-dream/

Morgan Johnson Crushed Dream I tuned my black guitar. Misty tapped on the microphone to make sure it works. Zelda played the drums. Me, Misty, and Zelda are going to be in a band. Our band is called Bloody Roses. We're a goth band. "Okay, let's try this song again," I said. We're trying to learn our first song Zelda made up. It's called 'The Dark'. It's really cool. I played the intro, and we started our song. When the song was done, we had to take a breath. "Okay, Olivia, you were a little off, but it was great. Zelda, you're the best song writer ever," Misty said. We played our song again, this time perfectly. "Let's go upstairs and get some water," Zelda said. This IS her house. We followed her. "Hi girls. Zelda...I see your still goth sweetie-pie," Mrs.Henderson said. "I'm not goth, more like...expressive," Zelda said getting three water bottles out of the fridge. I walked to the bathroom to fix my makeup. Zelda and Misty followed. Mrs.Henderson disapproves of Zelda's image. That's one thing we all share. Our parents don't like us being goth. "So, do you think we have a chance of being good at my brother's party tomorrow?" Misty asked. I shrugged. We walked to Zelda's basement to play the song again. After a few times, me and Misty had to go home. We said goodbye and went our different ways. I walked to my room. My room is so gloomy and dark. I love it. Mom walked in with hot chocolate-chip cookies. "Hey Mom," I said snuggling with my one-eyed teddybear. "Hi honey. How's your band coming along?" she asked looking around my room. When we first moved here, my room was all pink, and white. Now, it's violet and black. My two favorite colors. "Good. Our song is really awesome. You should hear it some time," I said taking a gooey cookie. "Oh no, I don't really like to listen to emo songs," she said sitting on my bed next to me. I shrugged. My boyfriend's emo. "Well, I like it," I said taking another cookie. "So, what's the cookies for?" "Just wanna give you a yummy treat," Mom said. I rolled my eyes. Mom walked out the door. I heard something hit my window. I opened it. It's Chris. I climbed down my big lemon tree. "Hey," I said kissing him. "Hey Olivia," Chris said. I held his hand. "Wanna go to the park?" I asked. "The park is really pretty," Chris said feeling sick to his stomach. I laughed. "We can sit in the not-so-pretty part," I said. He nodded and we started walking. When we got to the park, we sat down on a bench. Chris asked me about Bloody Roses. We talked for a bit, then we played around like we're ten. We drew pictures with chalk some random kid left here. Chris drew a big heart that says O + C in it. I kissed him and we walked back to my house bare-foot. We held hands as we walked. I love Chris, he's the best. "See you at school on Monday, and maybe I'll be back tomorrow," Chris said as I climbed up my lemon tree. I waved and he went back home. I was looking through my drawers when I found a poster my dad gave me. It says, 'Cheer up, emo kid!' I took a red marker and drew a big circle so it looked like the words were inside of it. I put a slash diagonally inside the circle. I hung up my poster over my bed on the ceiling. My dad gave it to me, but I don't like what it says on it anymore. That was before I met Chris. I went downstairs for dinner. Mom was making a salad. I sighed. "Dad's not coming over for dinner again. You can beg all you want, but that damn man will only come once a week," Mom said. My parents are divorced, so life is pretty rough. She gave me my bowl of salad. I ate fast and ran to my room. I slipped on my pajamas and crawled in bed. Mom came in to say goodnight, and went to her room. I waited a few hours for her to fall asleep. I silently opened my window. I climbed down the lemon tree and walked to Chris' house. I threw a stone at his bedroom window. He climbed down a ladder from the side of his house. I hugged him. "Olivia, I'm breaking up with you," Chris said. "What? Why? What did I do wrong?" I asked, tears swelling up in my eyes. "Look, I have too. My family and I, we're moving. Those long distance relationships never work out. I'm sorry," he said hugging me. I squeezed him. I sadly waved goodbye. When I got back, I took down my poster and ripped it up. I threw it away and screamed into my pillow. Luckily, my mom's a deep sleeper. Now, Chris can't go with me to junior prom! This is great. I didn't get that much sleep since I was crying eighty percent of the time. I woke up so tired that I went back to sleep and woke up around noon. I ate toast and told my mother all about it. She wasn't even mad about me sneaking out. I cried on her shoulder. Mom said today we can have a movie day, since it's starting to rain. We watched a movie. Most of the time, I was looking out the window at the pouring rain. It looked like an angel took a huge bucket of water and is just pouring it all down. When the movie was done, I had ice cream. Mom said when you brake up with some one, you should always eat ice cream. For some reason, it just makes me feel a little better. "Let's have a shopping spree! Okay, it's pouring. But we can still shop!" Mom said looking hopeful. I know she's trying to be the 'Best Mom Ever', but it's not working. I just hugged her and walked to the bathroom for a hot bath. After my bath, I changed into another pair of pajamas and took a nap on the couch. I feel a lot better. It's still raining hard outside. I looked out the window. I saw Chris and his family moving boxes and furniture to a moving truck. I sighed. It's probably a good thing he broke up with me, our relationship would never work out if he's there and I'm here. I don't even know where he's moving to. Let's face it, after the first emo girl...I'll be gone just like that. It's crap, but it's not like he wants to move. Mom kissed my forehead and went out to her hair appointment. I painted my nails black. I called Zelda and told her everything. We got together to practice our song. When I arrived at Zelda's house, Misty was there. I hugged her and we walked to Zelda's basement together. "Hey Zeld," I say picking up my guitar. "Hey guys. Misty's brother's party is starting right now. Lets go over the song again and then my mom can drop us off," Zelda said. We played 'The Dark' again perfectly. Mrs. Henderson drove us to the Ora's. Rider, Misty's brother, was in the back with his guests. I've never been to Misty's house before. Rider is punk-rock, so he and Misty get along most of the time. We walked to the backyard, in our all black outfits. My hair was in a bun. I put in two chopsticks making an X in the bun. My black painted fingernails tapped nervously on my black guitar. I'm obsessed with the color black. Rider led us to the stage. I guess his dad built it. Rider wears eyeliner. Misty said he dyed his hair black without getting their parents' approval. We got ready on stage. Zelda was really nervous. "It's okay to be scared," I said, my arm around her shoulder. "I'm nervous too." We all nodded at each other. I played the intro. Everyone was looking at us. Misty held her stomach. We all took a deep breath...and played our song. After we played, everyone was clapping. We stepped off the stage grinning. "How did we do?" Zelda asked Rider. Rider frowned. "Listen, you guys were good. But your not that good. I'll have you play at my parties when your better," Rider said. He walked away and started talking to a girl with long blond hair. We went back to Zelda's house grumpy. "I can't believe this. 'I'll let you play at my parties when your better.' I can't believe him!" Misty said, furious. "It's okay Misty," I said. Misty shook her head. "Can I spent the night Zeld?" She asked. Zelda yawned and nodded. I hugged them and went home. That was just Misty's brother. I wonder what the judges on The Next Top Band, will say to us. I called The Next Top Band company. They said me and my band can get in tomorrow. I love how this stuff is always the next day. I thanked them and hung up. I called Zelda and told her and Misty what I did. The next day, I was so excited. The thing about Chris can't upset me now! I got ready for school and ate some heart-shaped waffles. I drank my orange juice and was out the door. I sat next to my friend Griffin on the bus. I told him all about our band, and the TV show, and Rider's party. "No way." "Way." I said grinning. We hugged. "Griffin and Olivia sittin' in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G." Paige said. Paige is evil. She has an awesome name, but she's mean to me. "Shut up," I said. "Shut up, bitch," Griffin said. Paige stuck out her tongue. I walked with Griffin to homeroom. Misty and Zelda are close friends, but Griffin is number one. I sat next to him in homeroom. He gave me the answers to our math homework. It felt like homeroom just zipped past us. In language arts, I sat in front of Misty. Misty and Zelda don't like Griffin because he curses. I don't mind so much. It felt like language arts would NEVER end. I went into the girls' locker and changed for gym. My friend Emily lined up in the gymnasium next to me. Mrs. Nezzra had us stretch and do some yoga. After gym is French. Instead of French, I want to learn about Cairo, Egypt. Cairo is a city there. I walked to French with a swagger. I sat behind Griffin. He agrees with me about the Egypt thing. I drew a picture of me and him in a plane. I wrote at the top of the paper 'Going to Egypt!!' I folded it and passed it to him. He looked back at me and smiled. Mrs. Alli gave us a worksheet. We had to write sentences in French and in English. I wish I had a fun teacher. The ones who make it a game. Luckily, I'm good at French. I whispered some sentences to Griffin and how to spell them. We have a deal. He helps me in math, and I help him in French. After French we went to the cafeteria. I sat down at a table. Griffin came over with two salads, two slices of apple pie, and two water bottles. He gave me a tray and I took some of the food. My mom packs my lunch. I hate her ham and tuna sandwiches. So Griffin gets two salads, slices of pie, and water bottles. Like I said, he's the best. After lunch, the school day went by really quickly. I got home and redid my makeup. Mom drove us to the studio and waited in the car. After we signed in and got our numbers, we waited. Hours passed and finally it was our turn. We walked in the room. There were three judges. The Jonas Brothers! I don't know why they're judging this, but who cares? "Cool, a goth band," Nick said. Zelda loves him. "We are gonna be singing a song we made up," Misty said. She wasn't scared at all. We played 'The Dark' for them. Kevin was the first to speak. "I liked it, it was original," he said. We smiled hopefully at Joe. "I'm sorry girls, but I didn't like it," Joe said. Misty frowned. We turned to Nick. This was it. If he liked us, we could be a hit. If he doesn't, we'd go back to being nobodies. I bit my lip. Misty rested her head on Zelda's shoulder. Zelda was rubbing her hands together. "Girls.........I'm sorry. I didn't like it. Your not gonna be a band," Nick said. I cried. We walked out to the waiting room. We sat down and cried as the next band got called in. I sniffed. "This is horrible. The whole world saw us. We are on TV you know," I said. I could feel my eyeliner running down my cheek as I sobbed. I got eyeliner on Misty's violet dress. She didn't mind, since she was busy pouring out all her tears on Zelda's t-shirt. We can't live our dream. We can't be famous. We can't be a band. This is a nightmare. What will we do now? Music was our life. We don't have the strength to pick up our instruments again. Now we have a real reason to be gloomy. I looked at my friends. I wiped my eyes. We hugged. Suddenly, the world went gray. Publication Date: April 7th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-puppyluv11

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-pauline-droste-is-it-to-late/

Pauline Droste Is it to late? To Michalle The End “They are really excited to me you. Zelda has talked so much about you.“ Finally the doorbell rings. I sit nervously on my chair and can’t stop dithering. Mom already ran to the door and opens it.     “Didn’t you tell me your grandmother died?” whispers Norwin in my ear. I have to swallow. I did, as an excuse to leave the hospital with tears in my eyes.     “Can we talk about that later?” The sound in my voice tells him that I really don’t want to talk about it right now. He nods insightfully and jumps up to welcome my grandparents.     “Hello Mr. and Ms. Ruthven. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.” He shakes their hands but looks at me. I am not sure if I see a smile on his face or if I just imagine it.     “Oh, Zelda, what a nice young man you met.” Grandma nudges in my side.     “But call me Wim, Mr. Ruthven was my father.” says my Grandpa.     Like a Gentleman. Words can’t describe how much I want to kiss him right now. But not here in front of my grandparents. And I still have that talk. If he wants to kiss me after I survived that, I really deserve it.     “Save the Sir! Just because I am at least 60 years older than you it doesn’t mean I am an old man.” Norwin looks at Wim surprised, but nods abashed. My Grandmother taps her husband’s shoulder.     “You have been in better shape. Don’t push it to far, darling.” “Yea, yea. Whatever the wife says.” My Grandparents both lough and sit down on a couch. I want what they have so badly, but I will probably never get it. Our time lives to fast for the word forever.  I feel how I get a worry line on my forehead. I wipe it away fast. Norwin grabs my hand and pulls me into the living room. The chaos I call my family carries me totally into a family mood.  Even if my six brothers are all over 20 they still act like five year olds when they are together. It makes me happy that they were able to make it today., and they all brought they own little families. I grab my four year nephew and dance with him in the living room.  I laugh about all the old stories like I hear them for the very first time. I forget the talk I have to have until after dinner, when everyone slowly gets to bed. In the end just my brother Finlay, Norwin and I are left. I breathe deep. With a look I signal Finlay that it is time. He nods inconspicuous and says: “Now it is time for me, too.” When he is gone I move down from Norwin's fold. I look in his bright blue-grey eyes. Now there is no way back.     “I want you to just listen to me. The reason I lied is more than understandable.” A silent nod. Now Zelda just say it. “I have leukemia, better said acute lymphatic leukemia. … On the day we met I just figured it out. … That is the reason my hair gets thinner, that is the reason I get thinner, that is the reason I never have time when you don’t work. I laid all my therapy appointments on days you don’t have to work so we don’t meet by accident. If you want to leave now that is fine for me. I would understand it and wouldn’t even be angry. I wouldn’t be angry if you hate me now and never want to see me again. I just want to let you know that the reason I didn’t tell you is that I really like you. I like you a lot. It has killed me inside not to tell you about it…” I couldn’t move on speaking. Norwin moved while I was talking closer towards me. His face didn’t tell me anything, until the moment his lips touched mine. I felt a tiny smile. For a wonderful kiss it was quiet around us.     “I could never leave you. Not for something like that. You didn’t break my heart.“ We smiled at each other for a while before tears climbed into my eyes.       “So you are not angry?” I ask carefully.     “How could I. It is not your fault.” He wipes my tears away. “Is everything ok again?” I smile. “Yes!” and more tears run their way to my chin. This time he kisses them away.     “I don’t deserve someone like you.”     “Says the right one.” We laugh again, until one of my nephew come to us.     “Why are you still awake?” I ask him.     “You woke me up.” He rubs his eyes.     “Come on, I’ll bring you back to bed. We are now quiet.” I get up but Norwin holds me back.     “Mommy and Daddy say the same and then their start all over again.” A chuckle escapes my lips. I really can imagine that for Grant.     “I’ll do that. Do I see you upstairs?” I nod and go to the other direction.     “Do you like aunt Zelda as much as Mammy and Daddy like each other?” I hear the little man’s questions. I would love to know Norwin’s answer. But am I sure? A yes would mean he loves me like a god and a no would break my heart. When I arrive in my room I get ready for bed and hop in it. Prepared to wait for a long time I pull out a book. It is Dr. Sleep by Stephen King and Norwin’s favorite book. As a good girlfriend I should have read it.     “Preparation”     Is on the first page, naked in black letters. It begins with an accident in a resort in Colorado in the 1980. But I don’t come any farther, because Norwin enters the room. As fast as I can I hide the book under my pillow.     “Did you wait long?” I shake my head.     “No, I just got in bed. It is still cold in here.” With an arch smile he replies: “Give me a minute, and then we can warm it up together.” I bite my lip but nod. Norwin leaves the room and I pull out the book from under my pillow. To be prepared for more surprises I put it in my closet. After a few minutes he returns from the bathroom, just wearing his underpants. I must smile when I see him that naked in front of me.     “Happy Birthday!”     “What?” Norwin points at the clock. 0:01     “Today is your birthday. Don’t tell me you forgot that. Now you can legally drink.” We both have to laugh. “And while we are on that subject.” He pulls out a bottle. “Dalmore 62? Are you kidding me?” I take the classy drop.     “Yes, it’s just ice tea.”     “You are such an idiot.” You put the bottle to the side and punch his arm softly.     “Hey, what was that for?” He rubs the place I hit him.     We smile at each other.     “Come here you!” He grabs my hands and holds them over my head together.     “Hey!” We just look at each other for a moment. This moment is just perfect. I feel how he lays his arms around my hips and pull me on him. We move on looking at each other until I close my eyes and lay my head on his chest.     “Being 18 is exhausting.” I feel how his chest vibrates from his laughing before I fall asleep in a dreamless sleep.     When I wake up on the next morning the bed it empty. I get up on my elbows to have a better view. I look around in the room. Where is Norwin? The clock over my door says we already have after 11. I never sleep that long. Especially not on my birthday. Usually I am way too nervous to sleep at all. I want to get up and dress, when I hear a knock on my door.     “Yes?” The door opens and my dog Link runs in my room. The fluffy Pomeranian jumps on my bed and licks hearty over my face.     “Hi Puppy.” I greet him. He lies down on my blanket and wags his tail back and forth. I hear someone whispering behind the door.     “On three. One, two …”     “Surprise!” My whole family attacks my room. I have the biggest smile on my face when everyone tries to come in my room. Actually my room is really big, but when 6 brothers, plus wife or girlfriend, plus 7 children and plus parents and grandparents and of course Norwin, well then it is full. Norwin is with the children on top. They start singing and my Grandmother carries a cake with a big 18 in the room.     “Thank you. Thank you. Thank  you. I don’t know what to say.” Tears of joy run down my cheek. Every one of the children is carrying a present and lay them on my bed.     “You didn’t have to do that, with a family like you I don’t need any presents.”     “If you don’t want them, I take them.” Logan sits down and starts to open the first present.     “No daddy! That are Zelda’s!” his little daughter says.     “There you heard it. Your daughter says they belong to me.“ I lift her up on my bed. “Do you want to help me to open them?” She nods really fast.     “Me, too. Me, too.” All the other children yell. Norwin lifts them on my bed.     “But first you have to blow out the candles.” Wim pushes his wife closer to my bed. I take a deep breath and reflect a wish. Then I blow out the candles.     “What did you wish for?” all the kids ask.     “You are not allowed to tell. Or it won’t come true.” blames grandma them. I open the first present, after the children asked me for it the thousands time. I got seven boxes in all colors and shapes. The first is the smallest one. A small ring is in it. I recognize it as my grandma’s engagement ring.     “I can’t accept that.” I say in tears.     “Yes you can. Darling, since your mother told us the very first time she is pregnant I wait for this moment. I will not accept a “no!”” She pulls out the ring out of the blue velvet box and puts it on my finger. It fits perfectly. I hug her until the kids force me to open the next present. So I grab on and open it carefully. It is a shoebox. I look at it irritated because it is a shoebox for old-man-shoes. But when I lift up the top, I find a bunch of self-drawn pictures.     “We made them just for you!” The oldest one says happily. I hug every single one of them and give them a kiss on their forehead. In the other boxes I find stuff like clothes, more jewelry and perfume. When I want to open the last one Norwin stops me.     “I will not accept a no.” On my face is a big question mark, but without more questions I open it. A small green sea-monster-like stuffed animal is in it.     “Ah, thank you?” I say puzzled.     “That is not all. We start in two days!”     “And what?” I ask him with big eyes. “If you don’t figure it out by yourself you have to wait!” A huge smile is on his face. The two days are over way too fast. With packed suitcases and still no idea where we are going I jump in Norwin’s car. The engine purrs and we drive to the airport. With closed eyes and ears he brings me through the security checks. After a short while we finally arrive in our plane and of course he takes the window seat and closes the curtain right away. Jerk, is my first thought. It is my first time one the airplane and I can’t look out of the window. While Norwin falls asleep after 20 minutes, I can’t believe how he can miss this adventure. After three hours and at least hundreds failed tries to look out of the window we finally land. But this time Norwin is not trying to cover my ears.     “Lady’s and Gentelmen, welcome to Scotland. We have nice 22°C outside, which are about 72°F. The local time is 16:30. Please stay buckled up until the fasten seatbelt signs are off. I hope you had a nice flight and will travel again with British Airways.” Is the announcement through the speakers.     “Scotland? You took me to Scotland?” In my face are too many emotions to count them all, but I am sure enthusiasm is one of them.     “The best Haggis in the world, baby!” he replies. I just skew my eyes.     “Without me.” After hours of waiting in all the lines we arrive in our hotel. Well, palace would describe it better.  The wall outside is out of grey bricks and the windows big and white. A red dressed page brings us to our suite. He opens the door and brings our suitcases in it.     “Is there anything else you need, sir?” I nearly don’t hear him. My eyes look at the stunning view out of our window. I nearly don’t even hear his ridiculous accent.     “No thank you.” I hear Norwin’s voice behind me. Then I hear the rustle of money. The door falls in its look and we are alone. Far away from home. I feel how Norwin comes closer to me and lays his arms around me.     “Happy Birthday!” he whispers in my ear. I feel his hot breath on my ear. How his lips kiss the skin behind my ear.     “Let’s go and have dinner.” Even if the hotel is really modern, it is very welcoming. In the hotel own restaurant we sit down and of course Norwin orders Haggis. I skew my eyes disgusted, when the bowels mix is brought to our table. On my plate a fish looks at me really stupid, but here I know what I have on my plate. After dinner we go back to our room and fall asleep right away.     Our vacation is way too fast over. When I am back home mom tells me that the doctor called and really wants to talk to me. I have to swallow. That doesn’t sound good. On the same evening I call him, but the only thing he tells me is that I should come to his office. Although I swore to Norwin that I am going to tell him everything I will not tell him this. My appointment is three days later. I drive with my parents to the hospital. When we arrive there we can get to the doctor right away. Without any waiting. Another bad sign.     “Good Morning Miss Ruthven.” I take his hand and shake it. Then he takes my parents hands and shakes them to.     “Good Morning Dr. Smith.” I answer. I am so nervous I can barely talk.     “We got your test results…” He makes a pause a deep breath. “To get a positive result with the therapy the cancer has to go back at least 25%. I am afraid I have to tell you we didn’t get that for your results. Your cancer didn’t reply to the therapy. There is nothing we can do for you anymore. I am really sorry.” With these words my world breaks into little pieces. Tears run down my face. Is that my death sentence? “When you’re lucky,… If there is anything you want to do in your life, do it now.” I take my hand down from my face and look at my parents. They are crying as much as I do. Even Dr. Smith seems to be touched.     I have no idea how I got home, but when my parents bring me through the door, I see my whole family in front of me. Even my parent’s siblings and their children. They are all waiting for me in the living room. They just came for me. I am not sure if the tears I am crying are tears of joy or grief, probably a mix out of both. I see Norwin standing in a corner, just by himself and silently crying. I stay in the door, unsure what to say or to do. I clear my throat.     “I am sure, everyone here knows the reason we are here today. But I am not afraid. Not if you have a family like me. No one of us knows the reason god wants to take me this early, but I am sure he has his reason. I don’t want to cry tonight, never again for the rest of my life. I want to celebrate. I want to celebrate the life I have left and don’t cry about the part I don’t. We are all going to celebrate the time we have left. I don’t want to cry. I don’t to see anyone crying tonight. I know it is hard, but I want that the last thing I do is to celebrate life and to not cry for it. I grab a glass next to me, and I hope that the substance is alcohol. “So raise you glass with me and drink for the life! Cheers!” “Cheers” everyone repeats. The night is long and when Norwin forces me to go to bed I am not tired at all. We cuddle the whole night and talk. Not about me, him or us. We just talk. When the sun comes up and kisses the horizon we both lost our fear. He gives me a kiss on my forehead und moves down to my nose to my mouth. With my last breath I die on his lips. Publication Date: January 14th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-qm9bffcbdc5f915

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-drake-spire-revisiting/

Drake Spire Revisiting Dedication to those friends I once lost in time, and whom I wish to find again. Just to ask, did anyone go to Kindercare in tampa at around the year 2003? (they should be class of 2017 unless they didn't pass or they skip a grade) First Chapter and only chapter I stayed at the table my date was supposed to be at. I remember telling him to be here at this specific time. Yet, somehow he isn't here. Since I was staying here for a while I thought of memories of past boyfriends. Unfortunately, most of them weren't fond memories. I started with the first one. Seventh grade, Polk Middle School, he was a boy that had dark blonde hair. His eyes were a deep blue, the blue that was like the sea before a great storm. So calm, so deep. He was the one to ask me out, and he was natural in the way we dated. I know it was only middle school and I didn't think it was going anywhere at the time. However, what was weeks turned into months, and months into years. We were the perfect couple, we knew each other's heart, as well as our mind. Almost connected. He and I had made love for the first time in both of our lives. Even though it was my first, I still believe it was the most passionate. So when we were in highschool, at around my sophmore year, he told me that he had to move. He said he had to move to Missouri, for family matters. We made love for the second time before he left. He told me he'd be back in three years. I can't say I still don't look for his beautiful eyes and his calm nature. As you can tell, I never saw him again. Next, was a guy who, truthfully from the start, was just for fun. He wasn't anything special. I don't even remember how long it lasted. It was just something that lasted for about 1 or 2 months. We had crazy moments. Embarrasing times too. I ended it. I ended it because I saw another man that I could probably go for without having for fun. "Here you are ma'am" The waiter placed my food on the table I sat at, while I was dozing off. He broke my train of thought. "Thank you, sir." He nodded as if he heard that too many times. "You're date is a no show, ma'am?" "Yeah, but it's alright, it gave me time to think about somethings." "Well, please enjoy your meal." The man I longed for after I ended that other relationship that was mostly for fun, looked like my first boyfriend, and I think that's why I dated him. I expected him to be perfect like my first boyfriend. Sadly, the saying "Don't judge abook by it's cover" didn't fail. He was always busy doing something. When he had time for me, I could tell his mind was somewhere else. He was too invested in his work to have any space in his mind for me. For some reason, I really, really wanted it to work out. I wanted it to be as amazing as it was with my first. My hopes were not fulfilled, we broke it off in a few months. That brings me to the guy I'm hoping to date, but I can already tell that he's not as good as my first. He's already late to the date. I notice my watch, thirty minutes late. I notice that I haven't touched my plate of food. I start to eat the pasta that was luke-warm. Still mid-dazed out of my mind, I barely noticed that a man sat in the empty seat in front of me. "You are thi-" I start to say, then notice that it isn't the date I was expecting. It was the waiter that served me. "Late? I delivered your food on time." "Why are you sitting here?" "I'm the chef why can't I sit here? I made that meal for you. Plus, I served it to you." "Why would a chef want to do that to a girl like me?" "I don't know. Perhaps he sees that you are lonely and wants to make all his customers happy." I didn't reply to what he said. The food here was amazing. I could tell that the food I was eating was made by someone that was way more experienced than most cooks i've ever met. "Will you charge me for such a meal" "Compliments of the chef." I finished the food quickly. His voice, it sounded familiar. "Have you been in any commercials or tv shows or movies or anything?" "No, no. Why do you ask?" "You sound familiar." "Oh, do I now?" He motioned one of his waiters to bring wine. Soon, there was a wine glass for two and red wine was filled in both of them. "'Oh I don't drink." "Yes, you do, or atleast you will after our best drink in our inventory will persuade you to." She lightly swirled the wine she took long sniff of it. She was convinced that it was supposed to be good. She tasted it, it was wonderful. She tasted how old it was. It wasn't bitter but the alchohol was balanced with the grape that fermented in this great drink. "For someone who doesn't drink, you sure have the aquired taste for red wine." "Why would you wanna give me something so splendid?" "Do you really want to know?" I nodded, I really wanted to know, I thought this night was going to be with some lame guy that didn't even show up to the date. "It's a celebration." "Celebration for what?" He smiled with a big grin. Then I noticed his eyes when he said this: "For finding my lost friend from Middle school" Publication Date: May 9th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-rwa0d463c2da815

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-briahna-w-why-me-1/

Briahna W******* Why me? The story of Marcy Humpton (part 3) This book is dedicated to all the people with hurt and sorrow built inside. I love you Lauren H. PLEASE, MOVE, GET OUT OF THE WAY,MOVE PLEASE!!" Brent screamed. I know because I was faintly awake. I was pulled into a room with a hard looking bed. It only had one pillow and a yoga mat coverd with a shaggy faint blue sheet. As the doctors and nurses filled me up with anti-biotics I glimpsed across the room and read the sign on the side of the door which read,"Insulation Room". At this point I realized that the doctors weren't trying to see why my cancer was causing me to faint, they were trying to keep me alive!! As the lifted me from the roller bed and put me on the hard bed. I closed my eyes and thought to myself,"This is it Marcy no more pain,its all over, rest now....." "Mr. and Mrs. Humpton, I'm very very sorry, we did everything we could, her heart just, just it just gave out." "NOOOOOOO NO NO WHY WHY MY BABY GIRL!!!"Screamed mom and dad. "WHY GOD WHY WHY NOW!!" Brent cried."Doctor come quick! It must have been a false calculation the monitor showed that her heart stopped beating!" A nurse said puzzled. "Well get her on Intensive care!" "Mr. and Mrs. Humpton we have somehow saved your daughter, she's in Intensive care at this point but we will be keeping her for atleast a week to run test and make sure she is stable,consider your selves lucky!" Text: Maybe used for inspiration ONLY! All rights reserved. Publication Date: November 20th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-writerluvr7

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-black-ghost-losers-never-win/

Black Ghost Losers Never Win Chapter 1 In the southern half of American was a town called Lake City. There, lived a Caucasian teenage male named Cain Barras. He was seventeen-year-old, 5’10” and had spiky dark blonde hair. He spent almost his entire life in group-homes for abused and neglected children.             Cain tends to have a problem with his temper, which caused him to get evicted from several homes in the past. At thirteen years old he was sentenced to two years in a juvenile detention center to ‘adjust’ his behavior. Unfortunately his jail sentence did little for his attitude, except make it worst.                           Cain stood in front of another teenager named Marco in the bedroom of their group home. Marco had blood dripping down the side of his mouth from a busted lip. Cain balled his fist, ready to strike Marco when a short kid named Denis jumped on his back. Cain took hold of Denis and flung him to the ground violently.             With his attention on Denis, Cain didn’t see Marco get up and rush him. Marco tried to tackle Cain, but couldn’t bring him to the ground. Cain grabbed Marco by the shirt, punched him in the right side of his face, and shoved him back to the floor. By this time Denis was on his feet. He ran at Cain, getting greeted by a set of hard knuckles to the nose.             Watching Denis fall on the hardwood floor Cain grinned on the inside. He wiped the sweat from his brow, leaving a few drops of blood on his face from his bruises hands. Cain saw that Denis was finished, so he went to Marco to take his victory. Cain stood over his defeated rival, and started kicking him in the stomach fiercely.             “Cain! Cain!” Mrs. Linda, the home supervisor shouted. She snatched him by the arm, but was throw off.             “Get off me!” Cain yelled, continuing his assault. Mr. Wallace ran in the room shortly after, locking eyes with Cain.             “Cain … that’s enough…” Mr. Wallace said. Cain clenched his teeth in anger and faced Mr. Wallace. He wanted to attack him as well, but experienced his hand to hand training once before. Mr. Wallace walked to Cain slowly, pulling out a set of handcuffs. “You know the drill.”             Cain kept his eyes on Mr. Wallace as he moved closer. He clutched his fists, breathing hard. His anxiety pumped excess energy through his body and his mind began to think irrationally. Once Mr. Wallace got within striking distance, Cain took a swing at him.             Mr. Wallace caught Cain’s arm and twisted it back, causing Cain to fall on one knee. The fire in Cain’s eyes still burned, so Mr. Wallace tightened his grip, increasing the pain. He wasn’t going to let go until Cain gave in, which he eventually did.               An hour later, Cain was sitting in Mrs. Linda’s office in a pair of tight handcuffs. Mrs. Linda sat in her chair looking stressed and aggravated. She was writing on a piece of paper in pen. When she finished, she dropped the pen and stared Cain in the eyes.             “Cain… I’m sorry, but your stay here is up,” she told him. Cain kept his gaze to the ground, still angry from earlier. “Your too much of a liability to yourself and to the others,” he sucked his teeth to her statement.             “Liability huh?” Cain said, not believing her.             “Yes Cain, a liability. You can not continue to do what your doing. You can’t fight your way through life, you’ll end up in jail, or worse...” Mrs. Linda felt sorry for him despite his actions. She felt sorry for all the teens here, which was why she took the job. She wanted to make a difference in their lives, but Cain proved to be a little too much for her. “Cain, look. I know what you’ve been through, and I know how you feel… It’s not easy to…”             “You don’t know shit about me,” Cain interrupted. “Not, jack, shit.” he lifted his head and stared her hard in the eyes.             Mrs. Linda sighed and straightened her papers. “Cain, your lucky I’m not pressing charges on you,” She informed, changing the subject. “With that being said, I’m going to make some calls and see if we can find you somewhere else to live, but until then, you ‘Can Not’ stay here another night…” After Mrs. Linda finished her sentence a police officer walked into the room. He glanced down at Cain. “So, you’ll be going with Officer James until we can find you a new home,” Officer James used his head to motion for Cain to get up.             “Com’ on, time to go,” Officer James said. Cain got up from his seat and crept to the door, stopping in the doorway.             He glanced back at Mrs. Linda. “Thanks…” he said coldly. “For nothin’.”                   Two hours later Cain was being escorted down the hall of the River county jail. He wore a dark green two-piece jail outfit with brown open toe sandals. The correction officer led him to cell block-C and punched in his code. The door opened and they walked into a large room that held two floors of close door jail cells.             “Aye! Open cell 29!” the correctional officer yelled at the other guard. Cain looked up and heard the cell door unlock. The correctional officer nodded to let him know he could go to his room.             Cain clenched his jaw, and headed up the stairs. He opened the door and flung the sack that carried his bed sheets, toothpaste, and toothbrush on the floor. After he fully entered the cell he shut the door, hearing it lock behind him.             His cellmate was lying in bed staring at the ceiling. He was a black male who seemed to be in his middle twenties. “What up man?” the guy said, looking at Cain.             “Nothin’,” Cain shot back, glancing around the small amount of living space. He was so upset and angry that he didn’t even make his bed. He just laid down on the mattress, and got ready for a restless night. Chapter 2 On the western part of Lake City was a sixteen-year-old African American female named Serena Woods. Serena’s not too tall standing at 5’4”. She has braided hair, brown skin, and dark lost eyes. She was walking from the corner store with her arms folded, looking uncomfortable.             Serena headed down the sidewalk with her head titled to the ground. She would constantly glance around; feeling like someone was following her. It seemed as if the people on the street were staring at her, and that made Serena’s heart race.             She stopped at a street crossing, keeping her head lowered. When a man came behind her she jumped on the inside and spun around, gazing at him with sketchy eyes. The man saw that he frightened her and nodded, flashing a harmless smile.             “Sorry,” he apologized. Serena didn’t reply. She turned back around and exhaled on the inside.             When the walk light came on, Serena moved rather briskly. She reached the final blocks that led to the group home that raised her. Coming closer to her building, she saw five other girls that lived there on the porch steps. From the looks of things it was Stephanie and her gang.             Serena’s group home was composed of eight females from ages twelve to eighteen. The toughest female there was Stephanie. She was a taller dark skin teen who had long micro braids and a bad attitude. Stephanie had a team of girls who followed her every command. If you weren’t apart of their pack then you were prey, and that’s exactly what Serena was.              Serena finally reached her home and stopped walking. She moved her eyes to Stephanie who stood strong with her clan behind her. Stephanie grinned when Serena tried to walk around her.             “Where you goin’ ‘whore-ena’?” Stephanie mocked, purposely mispronouncing Serena’s name.             “Too my room,” Serena murmured, keeping her eyes lowered. She walked to the door, having to bump through the group. Stephanie watched her entered the house with a look of disgust on her face.             “I can’t stand that trick,” Stephanie growled, balling her fists.             When Serena got to her room, she took out her cheap mp3 player and sat on the bed Indian style. She didn’t have that many songs on her player, but the ones she did have never got old to her. Serena pressed play and turned the volume up. A small smile began to grow on her face as she bobbed her head to the music.             Every since childhood, music has had a special effect on her. Serena stayed in a constant depressed state, but whenever she would play her music, it soothed her. Sometimes, she would actually feel like everything would be okay.             While listening to her music, Serena started to quietly sing along. She was so into what she was doing that she didn’t notice her door crack open. Stephanie crept inside the room silently with the rest of her group. She saw Serena on the bed seemingly happy, and it sickened her to the stomach.             “Aye Whore-ena!” Stephanie barked, stepping further into the room. Serena heard something and pulled the ear buds out of her ears. The short smile on her face instantly faded.             “… What?” Serena timidly asked.             “Shut… up,” Stephanie retorted, walking closer to her. “Don’t nobody wanna hear yo ugly ass voice.” Serena turned her head from her rival, staring at the wooden floorboards. Stephanie got in her face and knelt down to her level. “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you!” she exclaimed, grabbing her face by the cheeks. Serena knocked her hands away. “lil’ ass girl, I outta beat yo ass…”             Serena wanted to say something, but couldn’t muster the courage. She felt weak, and feeble. Not to mention that any word from her mouth would probably result in a group assault.             Stephanie towered over Serena, waiting for an excuse to hit her. But Serena stayed quiet, and that further angered Stephanie. Just the sight of Serena sitting still flared the hatred in her Stephanie’s heart.             “Get up,” Stephanie commanded, not able to hold her anger any longer. “Get yo ass up!”  Serena cooperated and slowly stood to her feet. The other girls surrounded her like a pack hyenas. Stephanie locked eyes with her victim, seeing the sadness that lies within. “You think you betta’ than somebody huh?” She turned her ear to Serena as if she were waiting to hear an answer. “Huh?” Serena remained silent, growing on Stephanie’s nerves.             “It’s 4:30!” a loud female voice echoed from the hallway. “Ya’ll Girls get down here! Time for work!” It was the head lady of the group home, Ms. Andrews. “Girls!”             Stephanie gritted her teeth, staring at Serena. “You got lucky this time, whore-ena,” Stephanie hissed. She turned around and led her gang out of the room.             “Girls get down here now!”             Serena remained still for a little while, and then placed her belongings in the drawers. It was time to go to work at the thrift store. They didn’t get paid too well for their service, but it was better than nothing. The idea behind the whole job ‘thing’ was to help them by helping society. The concept of it was good, even if it didn’t actually work.               By the time Serena’s shift was over it was 10:00pm. In their group home that meant lights out. All of the other girls had taken their showers for the day except Serena. She always took the last shower so she could, ‘get away’.             Serena sat on the toilet in the bathroom dripping wet and wrapped in a towel. The shower water was still running to give the illusion that she was still washing herself. She did this so she could hide what she was really doing; smoking heroin.             She placed the tar like drug on a piece of aluminum foil, and sparked a flame underneath it with her lighter. As the drug began to heat up, Serena whipped out a straw and put in her mouth. She inhaled the smoke that leaked from the foil into her lungs.             Serena hadn’t always been into drugs like this. Only recently had she begun her use of heroin. She did so because everything else wasn’t strong enough to ease the inner pain that ate at her very existence. It started with smoking weed at age twelve. She enjoyed the feeling it gave her. The high from marijuana would take her away from the past that haunts her day and night. But one day she woke up, and marijuana wasn’t enough. So then she tired popping pills. Sleeping pills, Nyquil, codeine, all of it. Like weed, it worked, but her nightmarish memories would always bare its ugly face moments after the high dissipated.             A few months ago she met a guy who said he had the answers to all her problems. He offered Serena a substance that she heard negative things about, Heroin. She was reluctant to try it at first, but felt like that was her only option. If nothing else could make her forget, then maybe this could. And it did, if not only for a moment.             Serena’s eyes dilated while she inhaled more smoke. She smiled as her mind took her to a safe, warm, and friendly euphoria. Serena loved this place; it was so peaceful, so different than real life. She coughed a little and shook her head. Her body started to tingle and she felt weak, but was still lost in a false state of happiness.             Moments later Serena dropped to the floor. Her hand clung to the foil and her lighter lie a few inches from her face. Still breathing, she gazed at the ceiling, enjoying the best part of her day.             “Serena! Serena!” a girl called from the hallway. “I gotta go to the bathroom,” when she got no response, she swung the bathroom door open. “You can’t possible still be in the sho…” The girl suddenly stopped talking upon seeing Serena lying on the floor naked. She covered her mouth and gasped. Not knowing what to think or do, she screamed at the top of her lungs in fear. “Mrs. Andrewwww!!!!!!” Chapter 3 A week later on a Saturday afternoon, Serena was sitting in a room with ten other people. After her ‘incident’ at her old group home, she was moved to another place that specialized in teen drug abuse. Serena didn’t want to go, but at the same time, she didn’t care. She disliked her last home anyway, and was glad to be rid of Stephanie and her gang. Unfortunately, her new home inquired that they take monthly drug test and was much stricter.             Serena sat shyly in her seat with her arms folded and head lowered. She stared at the floor as different people where asked to introduce their selves for the rehabilitation class. The classroom set up consisted of ten chairs placed in a large circle, with a seat for the instructor in the middle. The person to Serena’s left just got done greeting the class and sat down. Mrs. Kerry, the instructor glanced at Serena, letting her know it was her turn.             Serena slid out of her seat, nervously moving her hands behind her back.  “… I’m, Serena. And, I’m sixteen years old,” she paused, wanting to stop.             “Is there something else you’d like to tell us, Serena?” Mrs. Kerry said. She was urging Serena to tell about her drug issue, like everyone else did. Serena lightly shook her head, but Mrs. Kerry’s soft eyes persuaded her other wise.             “And I, I sometimes… use drugs,” Serena painfully confessed.              “Thank you Serena, you can be seated now,” Mrs. Kerry smiled. She stood up from her seat and addressed the class. “I just want to let ya’ll know that you should all be proud of yourselves. Coming here today is the beginning of a new drug free era in your life.”             Serena sighed on the inside. Being at the rehabilitation class was utterly humiliating. Mrs. Kerry may be nice, but she talked to them like they were children. All Serena wanted was to be left alone, but it seemed as if that was too much to ask.             Mrs. Kerry told the class to close their eyes and Serena unwillingly obeyed. “Alright, I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you to raise your hand if it applies to you.”             Everyone in the class nodded and closed their eyes. “Okay. Raise your hand if you ever tried marijuana,” Mrs. Kerry announced. She watched as the whole class lifted their hands. “Raise you hand if you ever took any form of pills, legal or illegal,” Two people in the class lowered their hands while the others kept them raised. “Alright, raise your hand if you tried any of these drugs. Cocaine, heroin, crack, or meth…” four more people lowered their hands, leaving Serena and two others. Mrs. Kerry wrote down the names of those who still had their hands raised.             Mrs. Kerry took special interest in Serena however. Everyone in the class was eighteen and older, minus Serena. The fact that Serena tried drugs on that level at her age worried Mrs. Kerry. She figured she’d have to pay special attention to her.             “Okay. Lower and your hands, and open your eyes.” Mrs. Kerry said. She caught Serena’s eye and smiled at Her. “Now, for our next exercise, I want you to form groups of two.”             Serena slid back in her chair. She hated group work, and was ready to leave. Unfortunately she had an hour left in the class. So her day was far from over.                           Meanwhile, Cain was riding in the back of a van staring out of the window. It was time for him to move to his new ‘home’. From what he’s been told, the group home he was going to was more like a juvenile hall. He hated the idea of that.             The van rode down two more blocks of road and stopped in front of a large building. The driver and Cain’s Social worker stepped out first, then unlock Cain’s door. Can’s social worker, Mr. Derek went ahead and entered the building while Cain got his one suitcase and book bag.             When Cain came into the building, ne noticed there were two glass doors. The one on the right was where Mr. Derek was, but Cain wondered where the other door led. Having no time to wander, he entered the right door and walked to Mr. Derek.             “Cain. Sign in here,” Mr. Derek ordered. Cain sighed and went to write his name on the form. Afterwards he dropped the pen on the paper and glared at the social worker. “Mr. Tony will be down in a second.”             Cain cut his eyes and leaned against the wall. It wasn’t long before the door next to the office flew open, letting in a male and female. The man was tall, strongly built, and looked like he didn’t play games. The lady was older, probably in her forties, and had a stern face. The man shook Mr. Derek’s hand and turned to Cain.             “Cain, this is Mr. Tony, the head of the home. And this is his assistant, Mrs. Miles.” Mr. Tony extended his hand to Cain, who reluctantly shook it.             “Good to have on board Cain,” Mr. Tony greeted. “Welcome home,” Mrs. Miles added. The look on Cain’s face told them how he hated that this was going to be his ‘home’.             “Follow me,” Mr. Tony commanded in an easy voice. Cain picked up his luggage and did as told. While walking through the halls and showing Cain around, Mr. Tony explained to him the rules. “Now this place can be two things, it’s all up to you. It can be fun, or it can be hell. How you act decides that,” Mr. Tony walked up the stairway and headed to the second door on the right. “This is where you’ll be staying,” he showed Cain an empty room with one bed. “We only have one person per room, tends to keep the tension low.”             Cain entered his room and dropped his luggage. “Word,” he muttered.             “Now, lunch is in a hour, any questions?” Mr. Tony said.             “Yea… how come you only showed me half the building?” Cain asked, thinking about the door he saw when he first entered the place.             “That’s because we only own half the building.” Mr. Tony explained. “The other half is another group home for drug abusers. In the past we tried to run as one big home, but it didn’t turn out so well. So the owner decided to make the two separate,” Cain shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t ask for all that excess information. “So… see you in a hour,” Mr. Tony walked to the door, but stopped in the doorway. “Almost forgot, I don’t know if Mr. Derek told you, but you start school on Monday.”             “Ight,” Cain sighed. He watched Mr. Tony leave the room and laid out on the bed. He dreaded the thought of school, but whether he was ready or not, it was coming sooner than he liked.              Chapter 4 At 10:30am on a Monday morning, Cain was walking to his English class. He stormed down the halls holding his head high with a menacing frown on his face. A lot of the students he passed by moved out of his way, if not just a little. Upon getting to his class, he opened the door.             Cain glanced at the different faces he didn’t know as he went to a seat in the back. He hated school, and had a particular bad attitude toward English, because it was the cause for him being held back in the fifth grade. Cain sat down in his seat dropping his backpack by his side. It took a while for the classroom to fill up, but the remainder of the students got into the room before the late bell rang.             The teacher, Ms. Nancy, a younger lady stood in front of the class smiling. She noticed Cain the second he entered the room. “Hey class, hope you had a good weekend.” She greeted. Some students nodded, but the majority paid her little mind. “Well, it comes to my attention that we have a new student,” Ms. Nancy shot Cain a friendly smile, which he did not return. “Why don’t you tell us your name hun.”             With out standing up, Cain lifted his head, staring Ms. Nancy in the eye. “Cain…” he exclaimed, his voice echoing through the room. Ms. Nancy’s smile kind of faded as Cain continued to stare at her. There was something about the look in eyes that wasn’t right.             Ms. Nancy came back to her senses and pulled out a novel from her desk. “So, if you all would take out your books, we can pick back up where we started,” She announced. She went over to Cain and handed him a copy of the book ‘ The Scarlet letter ’. Cain was hesitant to take the book, showing zero interest in what they were about to do.             After giving her new student the novel, Ms. Nancy stepped back a little weary about him. She returned to the front of the class and began her lesson plan. Cain zoned out at once. He gazed around the room to see if there were any attractive females near him. One girl a couple of seats from his right was appealing. She had medium brown hair, smooth skin, and soft features.             Cain leaned back in his desk studying her. He knew it was only a matter of seconds before she would feel his eyes. Just like he had predicted the girl glanced behind her. She locked eyes with Cain for a moment before quickly turning her head forward. Cain bit his lip, angry that she showed no sign of interest in him. With nothing else to do, he placed his head on the desk and closed his eyes.             “Cain,” Ms. Nancy exclaimed, waking Cain from his slumber. He jerked his head up and looked around the class. All eyes were on him. “Can you pick up for us on page 141?”             Cain scrunched his face in confusion. “Huh?”             “Were reading The Scarlet letter, and I would like for you to read the next few paragraphs,” She explained. Cain slowly slid his book open, completely lost. “Were on page 141, paragraph three.”              Cain flipped through the pages, finally locating where he needed to be. He stared at the mass amount of words that filled the page. His heart rate slowed when he fully realized what he had to do.             “Umm,” Cain paused, getting one final moment to mentally prepare himself for something he was never good at, reading. “The-they walked, to the, town hall… uh, center. For the the…”.             “The ceremony,” Ms. Nancy assisted, helping him with the word that tied his brain.             “Ceremony,” Cain repeated. He heard kids snickering around him. Ms. Nancy cleared her throat, quieting those that laughed. Cain tightened his grip on the book and continued to read. “When, they reached, reached th-the.” Before he could get the word out, someone’s quiet chuckle transformed into a full on laugh. That was the last straw. Cain’s head shot up and he glared at the guy who laughed at him with burning eyes. “Somethin’s funny?” Cain blurted out. His rage quieted the classroom. “Smile one more time and see what happens!”             “Cain, calm down sweetie,” Ms. Nancy told him, but it was too late. Cain’s short temper had snapped.             “Man they think it’s funny, but aint shit funny though,” He barked, letting his anger lose. The guy who snickered at Cain was looking at him, still having a hard time holding his smile back. Cain noticed this and stood from his seat. “You think I’m playin’ huh?” Ms. Nancy reached and grabbed Cain by the arm, outraged at his actions.             “Cain, sit down now!” she commanded. With out a word, Cain spun around and glared at Ms. Nancy with eyes that would intimidate a fearless man. She took a step back and let go of him. “… I want you out of my room. Now,” Ms. Nancy ordered. She was frightened, but held herself steady.             Cain slapped the book off his desk. “Fuck this,” he told Ms. Nancy to her face. She watched as he stormed out of the classroom, leaving his belongings behind.                 By the time the lunch bell rang, Cain was getting out of detention. His performance in English class cost him twelve hours of after school detention. Something that wasn’t new to him. He walked out of the prison like class and through the halls.             His first day of school and things were already going bad. Cain went to the lunchroom, getting in the free and reduced lunch line. It took about twenty minutes for him to get his food and it wasn’t worth the wait. On his plate was a scoop of day old spaghetti, cold corn bread, rice, and green beans.                Cain exited the cafeteria with his unwanted meal and went outside. He noticed the school was completely divided into groups. Walking through the gym he found out that that’s where most of the black students hung out. Around the outskirts of the gym were Mexicans, Hispanics, and other kids of that descent. The lunchroom was where most of the white students were, and the popular kids where outside in their circles. There weren’t many Orientals or other races at his school, but the ones who were where scatted amongst the various other groups.             With no one to hang with, Cain found a seat on the stadium steps. He set his plate aside and stared at the field. This school sucked to him. He preferred his old school over this place. Cain picked up his fork and began eating his food.             When he was finished he leaned back on the steps in a miserable state of mind. Bored, Cain looked around him, catching sight of a girl all the way across the stadium. It was Serena.             Serena sat alone as well, appearing more upset than Cain. She hadn’t touched her lunch and didn’t plan too either. Cain watched her as she sulked there in the seat. There was something different about her than the others. Something that Cain felt from where he sat.             The class bell rang, indicating that lunch was over. The ringing of the bell broke him from his thoughts. He stood up, straightening his clothes. Cain looked over, stealing one last glance at Serena before he left the stadium, knowing he had a long day ahead of him. Chapter 5 The same day after lunch was over, Serena walked to her fifth period class, which was gym. She got there extra earlier and sat on the far side of the bleachers. Minutes later, students started to fill up the gym. They piled unto the stands staying amongst their group of friends; leaving Serena by herself.             The gym teacher, Coach Long entered the room once the late bell rang. He stood in front of the class and folded his arms. “Quiet down,” he said, raising his voice over the teens. “I need to take attendance,” He lifted his notepad and began calling out names.               As Coach Long performed roll call, Serena felt stares and glanced to her right. A group of students, both girls and guys were at the top of the bleachers. They appeared to be looking at her clothing snickering to each other. Serena moved her eyes to the busted shoes that covered her feet. She’s had them for two years, but couldn’t afford anymore. Her shirt was unappealing as well, and her old jeans didn’t help. Compared to the others she was a fashion train wreck.             She turned her head away from them, imagining the things they were saying about her. “Serena Woods, … Serena Woods,” Coach Long repeated, breaking Serena out of her daze. The coach was gazing at her with his notepad in hand. He knew he had a new student, but wanted to make sure she was her. “Your Serena aren’t you?” he asked.             Serena slowly nodded her head.  “Y-yea,” she stammered. Some of the teens in the class chuckled at her lack of awareness, making Serena feel that much more uncomfortable.             “Alright, the rest of ya’ll go get dressed. Serena, you wait here, I gotta get your uniform,” Coach Long informed, walking toward his office. Serena remained still, watching the other kids swarm into the different locker rooms. When Coach Long returned he handed Serena a grey and blue P.E uniform. “Here you go,” he smiled.             Serena received the uniform and got up from the bleachers. Gym was her least favorite class; athletics have never been her strong side. She dragged her feet to the girl’s locker room, heading down the stairs.             All the girls in her gym class were scattered throughout the locker room getting dressed. Serena moved through the cluster of females heading to the bathroom to change clothes. Due to certain past events, being naked in front of others was too much for her. She went to a bathroom stall and started to undress.             Since she was the last person to get ready, Serena lingered around the locker room for a little bit. Knowing she couldn’t stay back any longer, Serena forced herself to exit the girl’s locker room and walked back to the basketball court. Coach Long stood in front of the class holding a mesh bag. He had his whistle hanging from his mouth as if it were a cigarette.             “Today we’re playing volley ball, same as yesterday. I want this half of you over there, and the other half right here,” The coach instructed, pointing to two different volleyball court set-ups in the gym. The class took their time to divide, and took even longer to form two teams.             Coach Long walked in the middle of the gym between the two volleyball nets. He removed two balls from a mesh bag and tossed them over to the students. “You know the rules,” he called out, placing on his dark shades. “Play ball!” he blew his whistle loudly, hurting a few ears.             The class immediately started their game, hitting the balls back and forth between the teams. Serena was on the right side of the gym, standing as far away from the net as possible. She never played volleyball before, and didn’t know the rules. She just hopped the ball wouldn’t come her way.             One girl named Jenifer was doing more talking than playing. Her and her friend Eliza were standing in front of Serena. When someone on the other team struck the volleyball, it flew over the net and toward Jenifer. Jenifer let out a high pitch shriek quickly moving out of the ball’s way. Seeing the volleyball come straight at her, Serena did the first thing that came to mind; she swung her arm and smacked it away.             The ball bounced off Serena’s hand and slapped an unsuspecting Jenifer across the head. Jenifer over reacted to the blow, allowing herself to fall on the floor. Everyone who saw her get hit burst into laughter. Jenifer sat up looking shocked and hurt at the same time. Serena covered her mouth, embarrassed about what she did. She went to Jenifer extending her hand to help her up.             “… Sorry …” Serena apologized. Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper.             Jenifer swiped Serena’s hand away in anger. “What’s your problem?” she snapped. She slowly got to her feet tossing Serena the evil eye.             Serena moved her hand away, placing it behind her back in shame. “I didn’t mean to…”             “What ever,” Jenifer rudely interrupted, showing her disgust. Serena lowered her eyes, wondering why she even bothered. It seemed like every time she did something, she’d do it wrong, and she hated that. So for the rest of the period she chose to stay on the sidelines.             Four minutes before the bell rang, Serena was in the locker room changing clothes in the bathroom stall like before. As soon as she got done, she reached to open the stall door, but heard voices enter the bathroom. It was Jenifer and Eliza.             “Ugh, you saw what that trick did to me?” Jenifer said, going to a mirror to look at her self.             “Yea,” Eliza chuckled. “It was hilarious.”             “Shut up,” Jenifer shot back. “I was sooo pissed. I could just hit that bitch in the face,” Eliza laughed again. “With her ugly as clothes. You saw what she had on today?”             “How couldn’t I?” Eliza exclaimed. “She looked like the poster child for the salvation army.” The two broke out in mocking laughter, unaware that very one they insulted could hear every word they said. “Someone needs to give her a make over.”             Jenifer continued to primp in the mirror, pushing her long black hair to the back. “Girl please, Even with a make over she’d be lame. You saw how she act? … ‘sorry, I didn’t mean to’, ”Jenifer mimicked Serena’s soft voice in a goofy manner.             “Oooh, that’s how she sound too,”             “I was like, ‘bitch’ I got yo sorry,” Jenifer stated, right when she opened her mouth to say more, the bell rang. “Oh shit… we betta get outta here for we late.”             Jenifer and Eliza rushed out of the bathroom, leaving an emotionally damaged Serena in the stall. Serena sat down on the toilet with the hurtful words she heard replaying in her mind. She wanted to cry, but held it in. tears never really were her thing, but that didn’t mean that what they said didn’t take its toll. Too Serena, it was just like her old school. First day there and already she was branded as an outcast.   Chapter 6 Time trickled to 6:00pm and Cain was back in his room. He had nothing to do, so he lied on the bed staring at the ceiling. He wandered about his mother, and hoped she was doing well. Now that he thought about it, it’s been some time since she wrote him. And that’s not a good sign. Cain sighed as he pictured his mother behind bars.                        His thoughts were interrupted by a loud banging noise coming from the room next to his. One of the other boys must have lost their temper again. Cain had found out that this place was home to guys just like him. Some of them were even worse, constantly exploding over the littlest of things.             Cain stirred on his bed as the racket grew louder. He had half a mind of going in there and shutting the kid up him self, but he was already in trouble for his outburst at school. Apparently the school notified Mr. Tony about Cain’s actions in Ms. Nancy’s class. Surprisingly Mr. Tony didn’t act out. He asked Cain what happened and when Cain told him, Mr. Tony said he understood. Still, Cain wasn’t off the hook. He was ordered kitchen duty for the rest of the week.             “Hey what’s the problem?” Mr. Tony shouted, his voice echoing through the thin walls. The kid said something that couldn’t be understood and started pounding the door again. By now Cain heard enough, he had to get away.             He picked up a pack of cigarettes, put them in his pocket, and walked out of his room. He figured he would wonder around since he didn’t get the chance to on Saturday or Sunday. Cain moved slowly through the hall, hearing less and less of the noise behind him. He went to the stairway to go outside, but something told him to go up instead. Cain traveled up the stairs to see where it led. On the top floor there was a single door that he opened so he could see what’s on the other side.             To his non-surprise the door led nowhere. All that lied before him was the flat roof of the building. There were a few vents on the roof as well as a satellite dish, but that didn’t interest him. He turned to go back inside when someone caught his eye. A female sat on the edge of the building with her feet dangling down the side. It was the same girl he saw sitting by herself at lunch, Serena. He wandered how and why she was there.             Cain walked to Serena slowly and stopped directly behind her. She didn’t seem to notice him; she had ear buds in her ears listening to music. Cain whipped out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, lighting it shortly after.             “What you doin’ up here?” Cain asked. Serena flinched at the sound of his voice; she didn’t know anyone was behind her.             She turned around, looking at Cain oddly. Instead of answering his question, Serena shrugged her shoulders in response. Cain saw how she was sitting directly on the edge of the roof. He knew that wasn’t safe, this was a four-story building.             “You not afraid of fallin’?” Cain wondered, still standing near her.             Serena shook her head. “No,” she truthfully answered. But the way she said it didn’t seem right. It was like she didn’t care if she fell.             Cain took a hit off his cigarette staring a Serena. Even though she was giving obvious signs that she didn’t want to talk, Cain ignored them. He could almost see inside her, and knew her pain was similar to his own. Because of that, he was drawn to her.             Cain took a seat beside Serena, who slightly scooted over. “You smoke?” he offered her a cigarette from his pack. Serena looked at Cain then the pack of New Ports in his hand. It’s been a little over a week since she’s experienced any type of high, and she longed for that feeling; no matter how faint it was. Serena cautiously removed a cigarette from the pack, keeping her eyes on Cain. Cain handed her his lighter so she could spark a flame.             “Who are you?” Serena asked. Wondering why he was talking to her.             “Cain,” he answered, making eye contact. Serena nervously glanced away. “What about you, what’s yo name?”             Serena inhaled the smoke from the cigarette and exhaled it from her lungs. “Serena,” she told him. Her voice was weak when she said that, as if she were ashamed of her name.             “Like Serena Williams?” Cain joked. He saw a fragment of a smile come on her face, but it vanished quickly.             “I wish…” She said to him. They both kind of gazed at the ground for a little bit. Cain fiddled his thumbs during the moment of silence between them.             “So, you go to Burke huh?” Cain asked, referring to the high school they attended. Serena’s eyes widened. She looked at him suspiciously.             “How you know?” She questioned. The thought that he was stalking came into her paranoid mind. Cain could tell she was getting worked up about something. Her body language displayed it.             “Relax…” Cain calmly told her. “I go there too, I saw you at lunch.” Serena seemed to lower her guard again. Thinking back to it, she saw him too. He sat on the other side of the bleachers by his self, just like her.             “Oh,” she replied.             “Yea… that’s why I’m like, why you up, you know? Unless you stay in this building,” Cain explained.                         He watched as Serena nodded her head slowly. “… I do…” she stated. Cain took another pull of the short cigarette and flung it over the side of the roof. “I hate this place,” Serena confessed.             .“Who you tellin’,” Cain agreed. “I only been here for three days and it’s already drivin’ me crazy.” Serena’s lips curled in to a smile, that’s exactly how she felt. “But truth be told, I been in homes like this my whole life.” Cain froze when those words left his mouth. That was the first time he fully came into realization of what he just said.             “Me too,” Serena added, breaking Cain from his daze. He looked at her sadly.             “Yup. It’s like you neva get use to it. You just learn to settle,” he said.             Serena shook her head as she finished her cigarette. “That’s the worst part…” she responded. The two sat there quietly, each getting lost in their own past of sorrow. Suddenly Serena stood to her feet. “I better get going,” she told Cain.             He remained still, staring at the buildings around them. “Aight,” he turned his head and watched Serena walk to the door. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow,” he called out.             Serena stopped in her tracks, keeping her back toward him. “…Maybe…” she muttered under her breath, going inside the building. Chapter 7 The next day during the final minutes of fourth period, Serena sat in her desk staring at the floor. All the other students in the class were waiting for the bell to ring so they could go to lunch. They chatted amongst their selves while Serena twiddled her fingers in her seat.             Her mind still dwelled on her encounter with Cain yesterday. It made no sense to her why he would want to socialize with her. Every time a guy ever talked to Serena it was because he wanted something. A lot of times that thing would be sex, but there have been a few instances were they did so for a demeaning prank. The odd thing about it was that Serena didn’t sense any foul play from Cain. That intrigued her and scared her at the same time.             The lunch bell echoed through out the classroom, making Serena flinch. She slowly gathered her things and headed to her locker. Walking through the busy hallways, Serena held her books close to her chest. As usual, it felt like everyone was staring at her.             She finally made it to her locker and began unpacking her things when Jenifer and Eliza stepped to her. Serena raised her eyebrow, wondering what they wanted.             “Hey, I was told to give you this,” Jenifer had a mocking smirk on her face as she handed Serena a pink sticky note. It read,  “Warning: don’t ever wear that again, ‘signed by fashion police’,”  Serena’s heart sunk a little while Jenifer and Eliza broke into laughter. “That’s your warning, next time ‘You Will’ be arrested,” Jenifer teased, walking away.             Serena dropped the note on the ground. She never understood why people did things like that. She always questioned why she was the one to be picked on and made fun of. What was it about her that made people belittle her? Questions like those were what made Serena hate herself.             Brushing off the insult that was just handed to her, Serena closed her locker and went to the lunch line. She entered the cafeteria going straight to the reduced lunch section. Today they were serving mash potatoes, green beans, and ham. Not exactly her favorite, but better than starving.             Serena received her food and sat at a table in the far corned by herself. It was a little cold in the lunchroom, so she curled up a little bit. She lifted her fork and scooped up a portion of green beans when she felt someone standing behind her. Serena turned around to see Cain gazing down at her with a plate in hand.             With out asking, Cain dropped his plate on the table and took a seat. Serena stared at him like he was crazy. They talked one time yesterday and he’s already trying to have lunch with her? He had to have something up his sleeve she thought.             Serena continued to eat her food like Cain wasn’t there. She figured if she didn’t say anything, then maybe he’d leave, but he didn’t. Cain sat there quietly eating his lunch next to her.             After five minutes of no words Serena couldn’t take it anymore. She placed her fork on the plate and stared at Cain. “What do you want?” She asked, sounding spiteful.             Cain paused eating to swallow his food. “What you mean?”             “What do you want from me?” Serena repeated. “Why do you keep trynna talk to me? You aint got nobody else to hang with?” her eyes were more tense than usual. She kept her stare on Cain as he lowered his fork.             “I don’t,” he shrugged. His words took Serena off guard. For a brief second the two locked eyes, and Serena saw in Cain what he saw in her.             “Oh… I’m sorry,” she shyly apologized, changing her tone.             “About what? Me not havin’ no friends?” Cain replied; his voice was calm but cold at the same time. Like Serena, Cain had been branded as an Outcast since his first day. His outburst in English was to thank for that. It wasn’t long after that that word of his actions spread across the school, making everyone think he’s crazy.             “Your not the only one,” Serena remarked, adding to Cain’s negative comment.              “If that’s true, then what’s the problem with me eatin’ with you?” he persuaded. Serena shifted her eyes to the table; a smile secretly glowed inside her. She didn’t want to show it, but it was nice to be around someone else, even if she didn’t know really them.             “I guess you have a point,” Serena replied, holding in her nervousness.             Cain took a bite out of his bland burger and stared at Serena with Interest in his eyes. “So, What you been up to…”               Fast forward five hours and Serena was hanging outside by the group home she lived in. She sat on a bench near her building thinking about her time with Cain at lunch. It actually wasn’t that bad, and Serena was beginning to think that Cain wasn’t either.             The thing that got to her the most though, had to be the vibe she got from him. They’ve only conversed twice, but yet she felt like she knew him. His eyes held the same sorrow, regret, and loneliness as hers. Not to mention the pain that scratched his voice. Cain was someone she could relate too, and Serena loved the idea of that.             Serena’s warm thoughts were abruptly put to a stop when an old school Monte Carlo swerved in front of her. The crisp, blood red paint job gleamed in the sun, and the roar of the motor vibrated the area. Serena sighed as the window of the car rolled down, and a guy called K-9 peeped his head out.             K-9 was a 23 year old drug dealer with dark skin and a bad attitude. He stood at 5’9”, had permanent gold teeth, and wore black and grey. K-9 was the one who persuaded Serena to try heroin in the first place. He’s part of the reason she lives where she lives now.             “Aye what up baby girl?” K-9 asked. Serena cringed at the sound of his deep, criminal voice. She hated when he called her ‘baby girl’, which was something he always did.             “nothin’,” Serena retorted, not directly looking at him.             “I aint hear from ya in like a week. Just so happen I be the area when I seen ya,” K-9 eyed Serena up and down. “You know I got what you need, all you gotta do is say the word,” Serena kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to encourage him. “Oh so you good then?” K-9 removed a small pack of powered heroin from his pocket. He lifted the bag in the air and dangled it from the car window. “Baby girl,” he exclaimed, catching her attention. Serena glanced up and her eyes got stuck on the bag of drugs.             Her heart quickened as she watched the heroin sway side to side before her very eyes. She’s been clean for a week, but that wasn’t of her own will. Serena had craved to get high since she got here, and now the opportunity was directly in her face.             Serena got up from the bench stepping to the car door. “I don’t have any money,” she told him. K-9 shrugged his shoulders like he didn’t care.             “I do credit…” he said, placing the bag in Serena’s possession. She slid it in her pocket while looking around. “I know you still got my numba’.”             “Yea,” Serena nodded, happy to have her ‘medicine’.             K-9 put his hand on the steering wheel, shifting the car in drive. “Don’t be no stranga’ now.” He rolled his window up, hit the gas, and sped down the street.             Serena remained where she stood, excited and disappointed at the same time. Deep down inside she did want to quit using heroin, but her hunger for it had grown too strong. A week without it seemed far too long, and Serena had plans to ‘get away’ tonight.  Chapter 8 At 10:01pm, Cain stood in the clean kitchen of this group home. He pulled off his tight, latex gloves and flung them in the trash. Kitchen duty wasn’t a joke, but Cain made short work of it. Back when he stayed with his parent’s, his mom would make him clean up all the time.             Cain stretched his arms to the sky and yawned. It’s been a long day and his body cried for sleep. But first, he had to have a quick smoke. For some strange reason, Cain couldn’t sleep soundly unless he had a cigarette.             He walked up the stairs to his bedroom, ignoring the racket that came from his housemates. Cain somehow managed to stay out of trouble so far. He figured if he didn’t talk or interact with the others then everything would be good, which proved to be true. Cain swung open the door to his room and staggered inside. He went ahead and changed clothes, putting on some sweat pants and a tank top.             After grabbing his pack of cigarettes, Cain headed for the stairway. Since it’s after 10:00pm, it would be breaking the rules for him to go outside. Technically, smoking cigarettes under eighteen was breaking the rules, but Cain didn’t care. To him, that just meant he had to smoke elsewhere, and he knew just the place.             Creeping up the stairs, Cain made it to the top floor and gently opened the door. He didn’t want to make too much noise and alert Mr. Tony. The second he got completely outside he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it up. He walked around the rooftop, blowing out the smoke that entered his lungs. His nerves began to relax, until he heard somebody coughing.             Cain’s eyes narrowed as the coughing continued. He crouched down and looked around him, wondering where the noise was coming from. As it continued Cain was able to pin point the location. He quietly snuck to a tall air conditioning unit that was planted on the roof. Cain got behind the unit and glanced around it. He was shocked at what he saw.             Serena was sitting on the ground, curled in fetal position. She let out another cough and stared at Cain. The pupils of her eyes were constricted and she smelled like sour vinegar. Although the expression on her face was blank, Serena recognized who stood in front of her.             “…Cain…” she said in a raspy voice.             “Wha… Serena? What you doin’?” Cain knelt down to her side, not knowing what to do. He put his hand on her arm, feeling how cool her body temperature had gotten. “Serena you aight?”             “Yea… I’m, perfect,” she replied. Cain looked at her shivering body and shook his head. He recognized the scent that stained her clothes. It was that of heroin, which he was no stranger too. He had an uncle who was addicted to heroin; so seeing Serena like this was disappointing.              Cain read the lost expression on Serena’s face and took a seat next to her. He knew how long the high could last, and was willing to wait it out. Serena was so far gone that she leaned on Cain’s shoulder. He sighed and put his arm around her, rubbing her back gently.             Part of Cain questioned why he was doing this; showing such strong concern for someone he didn’t know. But deep inside he knew the answer to the question. Empathy and pity, two emotions he wasn’t fond of. Serena coughed a little and unknowingly snuggled closer to him.                         About an hour later, Serena’s high had faded completely, and she opened her eyes. For some strange reason she felt warm, comfortable, and safe; something that she hasn’t felt in years. She let out a tired yawn before realizing someone had their arm around her. Serena jumped to her feet in a heartbeat and spotted Cain before her.             “wha-what are you…” Serena paused in mid sentence; a vague memory of Cain entered her mind. She rubbed her eyes surprised to know that what she thought was a dream, was real. Cain actually did sit next to her. “How did you find me here?”             Cain scratched his head as he slowly got to his feet. “I came out to take a smoke when I heard someone coughin’. Come to find out, it was you,” he explained.             Serena cleared her throat, folding her arms. A mix of emotions dashed up her spine. She was embarrassed that someone found her like this, and angry but yet glad that Cain stayed with her.             Serena wiped her eyes. “Look, this is weird. I…”             “Why do you do it?” Cain interrupted, staring at her. Serena looked like she didn’t know what he was talking about.             “Do what?” she asked.             “Use heroin?” Cain answered. “Why do you do it?”             “I don’t use Heroin!” Serena lied, getting defensive.             “I know that scent from anywhere,” Cain replied. He got closer to Serena, making her take a step back. “You aint gotta lie to me.”             Serena jerked her head away from Cain, scrunching her face up. “What’s your problem!” She shouted. “I don’t even know you; and you don’t know me. Why don’t you just leave me alone?” Cain lowered his eyes, glaring at the cement roof.             “Because… I can’t,” Cain told her. He raised his head and locked eyes with Serena. The two stood there staring at each other in cool silence.             “… Why?” She wondered, changing her demeanor from angry, to sensitive and curious.             Cain clenched his teeth preparing himself to tell her the truth. “When I look at you . . . I see me,” he confessed. “I see how I was when I was a little’.”             Serena tensed up, not knowing how to feel about what he said. “Quit lyin’,” she snapped, trying to brush off the impact of his words. “Quit actin’ like you care…”             “I do,” Cain replied.             Serena shook her head in disbelief. Making herself think he was lying. “No you don’t,” her voice was filled with conflicting emotion and she tilted her head to the ground, looking tearful. “No one does,” she mumbled.             Cain gently placed his hand under her chin, raising her head back up. “I do,” he calmly repeated, looking deep into her pained eyes. The resistance Serena built up in her loosened, and a single tear ran down the side of her face. Cain used his finger to wipe away her tear.             Serena didn’t know what to think. She blinked lightly as Cain released his hand from her and walked away. Part of her wanted to call out to him, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. So she stood there quietly and watched as he headed back inside the building. Chapter 9 The next morning, Cain awoke to the sound of his alarm clock. He swiped it off the nightstand and on to the floor, knocking the batteries out. He did that everyday he woke up. Cain sat up in bed and rubbed the crust from his eyes. Another school day lie ahead of him, something he hated.             He slid out of the bed without making the sheets and headed straight for the shower. He spent less than tens minutes washing himself and about thirty seconds brushing his teeth. After Cain finished getting dressed, he crept down the stairs and out of his home. When he walked through the door he was surprised to see Serena standing around the front of the building with her book bag on. She held the straps of her backpack and glared at Cain as he closed the door.             “Hey…” Serena greeted, giving Cain a light wave.             “What up,” he replied. Without saying another word, Cain continued on his way to school. He noticed Serena walk briskly to catch up with him. She lingered behind by a few steps, but remained close to him. “You followin’ me now?” Cain asked with out stopping.             “No,” Serena quickly answered. “Just, didn’t, want to walk alone.” Cain shrugged and kept moving forward. “So . . . what’s your first class?”             “My first class?” Cain repeated, sounding like he wondered why she asked such a question. “It’s math. You?”             “Um, history,” she replied, walking a little closer to him. He watched her glance around the area, looking nervous. Cain couldn’t help but crack at smile at her. Serena acted like a lost little kid in a big city. It was hard to believe that someone so shy and timid could be on heroin. Still, he was kind of glad she was warming up to him.             “Who yo teacher? Ms. Kate?” Cain asked. Serena nodded her head up and down quickly.             “Yea! H-how’d you know?” She wondered.             “I didn’t,” Cain shrugged. “Good guess, I guess.”             “Yea… I don’t really like her class though,” Serena added, thinking about her mean classmates. “I don’t really like this school.”             “Me either,” He agreed. “Everybody here’s stuck up.”             “I know,” Serena said. “My old school was… okay I guess.”             “What school was that?” Cain asked, turning to Serena. She felt his eyes on her, but didn’t have the courage to look into them.             “Fairfield,” she muttered.             “Oh yea? Man I went to Kindle Wood,” Cain proclaimed. “I was like the only white boy there. Everybody else was either, Black or Mexican.”             “Really?” Serena exclaimed; her black eyes appeared to glisten in the morning sun. “Kindle Wood was our biggest rival,” Cain watched as she smiled brightly. It was like her whole sadden demeanor did a complete turn around. Her skin seemed smoother and her eyes glistened. Serena really was a pretty girl; she just never let it show. Almost like she were ashamed of it.             They arrived at their school shortly after. The outside of the school was surrounded with cars, students, and teachers. The first bell hadn’t yet ringed, but would soon enough.             Cain took a quick glimpse at the overly packed setting and continued forward to the front doors. Serena however, kind of slid behind him, walking slowly and looking around constantly. Her behavior changed when they reached the inside of the school, she seemed to slid back into her ‘shell’.             Cain held the door for Serena and came in behind her. “Com’ on, I walk to yo class,” he offered. Serena nodded her head, looking nervous again.             He led Serena through the packed hallways. As they moved through the crowd, they felt the eyes of many staring at them. That made Cain’s demeanor change as well. His aura switched from relaxed and laid back, to something hard and intimidating.             Serena’s eye moved around sheepishly. She noticed that people weren’t staring at her like they did before. It seemed as if they were giving her some kind of misguided respect. She glanced up at Cain who had his head held tall while cruising down the hallways; the scowl on his face made many look away. Serena moved a little closer to him, feeling secure and even the smallest bit brave.             When they reached her class, the late bell was a few minutes from ringing. Serena stopped at the front of her class, standing in the doorway. She didn’t want to leave Cain’s side, but had no choice. With her arms folded and head lowered, Serena bit her lip shyly.             “Guess, I’ll see you later,” she spoke in almost a whisper, making Cain strain to hear her.             “Yea,” He nodded. “See you at lunch,” Cain watched as that rare beautiful smile grazed Serena’s face for the second time today.             “Yea… I guess so,” she replied. Chapter 10 Later that week on Friday night, Serena crept up the hall stairway to the top floor. It was time for light’s out in her group home, which meant she could ‘get away’ for a while. She gently opened the door and tip toed on to the roof. Serena made her way to her usual spot behind the air conditioning vent when she stopped dead in her tracks.             Cain sat on the ground before her smoking a cigarette. He moved his eyes in her direction, noticing her shift her hands behind her back. Serena didn’t want him to see the bag of heroin she clung tightly too.             “Cain…? ” Serena spoke nervously, surprised to see him. “What are you doing here?” She wondered.             “Nothin’,” he replied. “I came out here for the same reasons you did,” Serena looked at him slightly confused. “I had to get out that building, wanted some air.” He took a drag from his cigarette and flicked the remainder of it on the cement tile. Serena slipped the bag of heroin in her pocket and took a seat next to Cain. Over the past few days she has grown quite fond of him, and enjoys being in his presence.             “I know what you mean,” she added, wrapping her arms around her knees. “But I like this place better than my last one.”             Cain turned his gaze to her. “How come?”             “Because… I didn’t really get along with some of the girls there,” she said, making light of the real situation.             “I had that same problem at every home I’ve been too,” Cain stated. “Doesn’t matter where you go, there’s always gonna be that one person who pushes yo buttons.”              “I guess,” Serena agreed. “My only problem here, is that their so strict.” She rubbed her nose and thought about all the rules her group home had. “The classes they force us to go too has to be the worst part.”             Cain sat quietly listening to Serena talk. She spoke on how much she disliked the drug classes and the drug tests. She told him how the head of her house was so hard on them. As she talked though, Cain remembered when he saw her while she was high. That picture of her shivering on the ground was etched into his memory.             “Why do you do it?” He asked, cutting her off.             Serena stopped talking in mid sentence. She knew what he meant, but decided to play dumb. “Huh? Do what?”             “Why do you smoke heroin?” Cain repeated. “You never answered me the last time I asked you.”             For a good minute Serena didn’t say a word. Part of her wanted to tell him, but her shy side fought to resist. “I…I, stopped,” She lied. “I stopped using it.”             Cain sighed deeply; there was no way he would be fooled by that. “Then what’s in yo pocket?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.             Serena stood up with a scowl on her face. “Look I told you I don’t do it anymore!” she exclaimed, getting defensive.             Cain lowered his head in disappoint. “Like I said before . . . you don’t have to lie to me,” he informed her. “I mean look at me. Who am I to judge what you do?”             Serena lowered her emotional guard. The way in which Cain talked to her was relaxing and calm. His words were genuine, and he had been more concerned about her that anyone has ever been.             “I’ve seen what that stuff can do somebody… My uncle died because of an overdose,” Cain said. “And I don’t wanna see that happen to you.” He raised his head and glared at Serena. His eyes weren’t as hard as they usually were. They seemed broken, like whatever suffering he’d held inside bled through.             Serena couldn’t take anymore and had to turn her head from him. Her lips quivered as she desperately tried to conceal tears. “Why do I do it?” she said, repeating Cain’s question. “Mrs. Kerry, the lady at the addiction class asks me that all the time. She says she knows what I’ve been through, and understands. But she doesn’t.”             Cain slowly got on his feet and walked closer to Serena. “That’s what they all say,” he added, a sad half smile on his face. “But how can they? If they never went through it. If they never relived it in constant nightmares and daydreams. If they never…”             “… Felt his touch,” Serena interrupted. Her eyes faced the floor as her hellish past bared its ugly face. “Your right.” She stepped closer to Cain, their bodies mere inches from each other’s. “How can they understand, when they never tasted his hot breathe, and had his hands glide up your thighs… ”             Cain’s heart started to beat faster upon hearing Serena talk. He reminisced on the agony that stained his heart, awakening his inner rage. “What about blood running down your back, from the metal end of a belt hittin’ you repeatedly. Or the sound of her screams, when he chose to pick on someone else.”             The two began speaking different memories and feelings of what they’ve experienced. Serena went on and on about the molestation, which her foster father cast upon her daily. Cain continued to rant about his childhood beatings that were so gruesome the wounds and bruises remained etched on his body.             Serena’s voice grew louder as she cried to Cain about the time her former social worker coerced her into sexual intercourse. Cain’s teeth clenched when he confessed how he wept all night long, after his mother was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for killing his father in self-defense. The two were blinded by past sorrows, almost losing track of reality, but remember whom they stood in front of.             Serena raised her head and stared directly in Cain’s blazing red eyes. He had not cried, but the expression on his face told her he longed too. Cain sniffled a little as he resumed eye contact with Serena. He watched tears glide down the side of her cheeks, dripping off her jaw.             That same beauty Cain witnessed earlier that week when Serena smiled, he saw right before him. “You know…” Serena stated, speaking softly. “That’s why I do it.” She covered her mouth and sobbed quietly. “I want it to go away. I want all of it to go away, forever.”             “Makes sense,” Cain said, he paused and looked at the dark sky filled with dull stars. “But is it really worth your life?”             Serena didn’t respond. She kept her gaze on the ground. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.             Cain shook his head at her answer. “No… it aint,” he peacefully told her. Cain opened his hand and extended it to her.             Without wanting to comply, Serena felt her body move on it’s own. She dug in her pocket and dropped the bag of heroin in Cain’s hand. Cain nodded at her, taking a step back. He turned around and launched the drugs off the roof and onto the street somewhere.             Serena knew she just lost her chance to ‘get away’, but she didn’t care. For the first time ever, she felt like she didn’t need to get high. She watched as Cain started walking back to her and met him half way. She took a seat back on the floor and sat next to him, snuggling closely. Chapter 11 Late Monday morning after 4th period, Cain and Serena were sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch. The two sat facing each other at a table by their selves. Enjoying each other’s company, the pair was in their own world.             “Aye, check this out,” Cain said, placing a pea in a spoon. He bent the plastic utensil back by the head and let it go, launching the pea in the air. Serena watched as the pea came back down and landed directly on his tongue. She covered her mouth, laughing at his little trick. “I can do three at once too,” he bragged.             “Yea right,” Serena doubted. Cain sucked his teeth and grabbed his spoon again. He performed the same act, but this time with three peas. Serena lightly applauded him, smiling brightly.             “Your turn,” Cain told her. Serena’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head.             “Your crazy if you think imma do that,” she refused.             “Com’ on, I did it twice. You can’t do it one time?” He reasoned.             “Nope,” she replied.             “I’ll help you,” Cain added, taking a pea from his plate and putting it on the spoon. “Com’ on. Open yo mouth.”             Serena looked at Cain with a small smirk on her face. “Alright...” she gave in. “But don’t laugh.”             “I got you,” Cain replied. Serena sat straight in her seat and opened her mouth wide. Cain bent the spoon back, aiming it at his buddy, and flicked the pea into her mouth. She swallowed the pea whole and broke out laughing. “Was that hard?” he asked, grinning at Serena.             “Yea,” she playfully joked.               While Cain and Serena laughed with each other, Jenifer was sitting at a table with her friends across from them. Her boyfriend Jake, and Eliza sat by her side. They were all watching Cain and Serena have fun, hating every moment of it.             “How lame can you get?” Jenifer snarled, seeing the constant smile on Serena’s face.             “Aye you know the sayin’, losers of a feather, flock together,” Eliza added, making the whole table snicker. The smirk on Jenifer’s face faded as she looked back at Cain and Serena. Her mind browsed through different thoughts on how to ruin they’re day.             “You know, we should do somethin’,” Jenifer stated. “Like teach them a lesson.”             “What you got in mind babe?” Jake asked, looking at his girlfriend. Without responding, Jenifer snatched Jake’s chocolate milk from his plate. She opened it up and poured a little bit out, to make room for other ingredients she planned to add.             “A bomb,” She grinned while putting mashed green beans in the carton. “Aye someone get some hot sauce.” One of the other kids at the table got up to fetch the sauce.             “Put rice in there too!” Eliza exclaimed.             Jenifer scraped the remainder of the rice off her plate and into the milk. “Good one,” when the kid came back with the hot sauce, she took it and added it to the mixture. “This is going to be too funny,” Jenifer said, imaging the results of her prank. She shook the milk cartoon up and handed it to Jake. “Don’t, miss.”             “Dude,” Jake said cracking his knuckles. “I never miss,” he grabbed the carton of milk and aimed at his targets. Jake flung the milk over two tables of students and watched it crash in front of Serena and Cain.             The carton basically exploded upon hitting their table, covering both Cain and Serena with a disgusting, mushy liquid. Half of the cafeteria witnessed them get soaked in contaminated milk and burst out laughing. Serena closed her eyes tightly and wiped the slop from her face. She didn’t know what happened; Cain on the other hand was a bomb about to go off.             The entire cafeteria was staring at Cain and Serena laughing and making jokes seconds after the prank. Cain’s short fuse already burned out, and he searched the crowd for the one responsible. His eyes floated from face to face, until he saw Jenifer and Jake. The mocking expression they had told the whole story.             Jake high fived one of his partners. “Nice bro!” Jake’s teammate chuckled. Jenifer sat back and enjoyed the commotion with an evil grin on her face. But when she saw Cain storming toward them, her smile melted away.             “Dude, check it out,” one of Jake’s buddy pointed to Cain who made his way over to their table. Jake got on his feet and eyed Cain down.             “My bad bro, did I do that?” Jake mocked. Instead of responding, Cain struck Jake across the face with his fist. The whole table got quiet when he was punched again.             Cain grabbed Jake by the shirt and flung him to the ground. Before he could continue his assault, two football players snatched him up. They shoved him away from the table, almost making him fall. Cain clenched his fist and rushed the jocks, knocking Jenifer to the floor while doing so.             Serena jumped up from her seat and ran to stop Cain, but the School’s security got there first. One guard tackled Cain to the ground while the others restrained Jake and the Jocks. Eliza helped Jenifer off the floor, shocked at Cain’s reaction. Jenifer brushed her self off, seeing Cain being dragged away by security.             “Get off me!” Cain growled, eyes boiling with rage. The two guards that held him tightened their grip, fearing he might break loose.             Serena was speechless as she watched her only friend be carried away. “Next time, keep your ‘retard’ boyfriend on a leash!” Jenifer snapped, angry that Cain knocked her to the floor.             Serena glanced at Jenifer and then down to her clothes that were a mess. The cafeteria remained in up roar after witnessing the brawl, and some students were still laughing her. With no real reason to finish the school day, Serena stormed out of lunchroom, heading home. Chapter 12 The next day Cain was sitting on the porch steps of his group home. He had gotten suspended for five days because of the fight from yesterday. Of course that didn’t bother him, he was just upset that he wouldn’t be able to spend time with Serena.             Letting out a deep sigh Cain thought back to the other day, dwelling on the incident at lunch. To be honest he wasn’t over the situation, and planned to settle the score the moment he got back to school. Had it not been for the campus security he would have torn through Jake and his friends; at least that's what he thought.             “Hey,” someone said, breaking Cain from his daze. He looked up and spotted Serena standing with her book bag on.             “What up?” he replied, sounding slightly down.             “Nothin’,” Serena took a seat next him on the steps.             “Why you aint at school?” Cain asked. It was lunchtime after all.             “I was, I just left early,” she admitted. “Really, I didn’t want to go to school at all.”             “I feel you,” Cain replied. He sat up straighter and stretched his arms out. “You hungry?”             “Kind of,” Serena nodded.             “I know a lil spot that got some good food,” Cain informed. “You down?” Serena answered Cain’s question with a smile.             “Sure!” she exclaimed. “I just hope they’re not too pricey.”             “Don’t worry bout that,” Cain told her. He got on his feet and headed down the sidewalk with Serena behind him. “It aint too far from here. Just around this corner.” They walked up the block to a place called ‘BB-Grill’. Cain held the door for Serena as they went inside. “What you want?” he asked, staring at the menu.               “Umm…” Serena studied the various types of meals they had and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said in a childish manner.             “You eat burgers right?” Cain questioned, watching her nod her head. “Then get that number two. It’s one of my favorites.”             “Okay,” she agreed. The cashier whipped out a pencil and pad ready to take her order. “Umm, can I get the number two… with uh, Sprite please.” she nervously told the worker.             “Ight, and you?” The cashier turned her gaze to Cain.             “I want the number five,” he said, pulling his wallet from his jean pocket. Serena realized Cain was going to pay for her meal and blushed on the inside. She unknowingly leaned closer to him, brushing his shoulder. Cain felt the warmth of Serena’s body and glanced at her, smiling unintentionally. “Aye, you can find us a seat?”             “Y-yea,” Serena nodded. She searched the small restaurant for a spot to eat. On the far side of the room was a table with two chairs by the window, which was perfect. Serena briskly made her way over and took a seat. When Cain came over carrying their food, she smiled brightly. He passed Serena her drink and sat down in front of her. Cain wasted no time and ripped the wrapper from his burger, taking a mouth size bite. Serena giggled at his appetite. “I see someone’s hungry.”             “Hell yea,” Cain replied, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll try and be as civilized as possible,” he joked.             “Don’t worry, I won’t judge,” Serena picked up her burger and bit a small piece off. She looked up while chewing her food and saw Jennifer Hudson on TV singing. The movie playing was  ‘Dream Girls’ . “I love this movie!” she pointed to the TV screen behind Cain.             He glanced over his shoulder and continued to eat. “I aint neva’ see it before,” he admitted.             “What!” Serena exclaimed. “I’ve seen both versions, the new and old one. The new one is better to me though. I love Jenifer Hudson, she’s my favorite singer.”             “For real?” Cain asked, stuffing a hand full of fries in his mouth. “I aint never really heard her sing before.” Serena’s eyes flew open to his response.             “Hold on, Imma let you hear somethin’.” she went into her book bag to find her music player. “You can’t really hear the TV, but I got that song on my Mp3.” Serena pulled the device from her bag and scrolled through her songs, finding what she searched for. “Listen to this,” she put an ear bud in Cain’s ear, letting him listen to part of song ‘ You gonna love me’ .             Cain put his food down and secured the ear bud in his ear with his hand. “Yea she can sing,” He nodded, hearing Jennifer Hudson hit different levels of notes.             “She can do more than sing,” Serena added. “Like, when I was lil, I use to want to be a singer. And I wanted to sing just like her.” She stopped talking, thinking about her childhood. “But that was just a stupid dream I use to have.” Serena seemed slightly down about what she said, but brushed it off and smiled at Cain.             “Can you sing?” Cain asked, eating his food again.             She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe…”             “Only one way to find out,” he said, grinning at her.             “No, way. I’m not about to sing in here,” Serena refused.             “Who says you gotta do it here?”             “I’m not singing at all,” she replied.             Cain nudged her foot with his own. “Not even for me?” he wondered.              Serena took a deep breath and sighed. “For you… I guess I could make an exception.” Cain smiled, showing his crooked teeth. “But under one condition,” The smile dropped off his face and he raised an eyebrow. “You sing for me first.”             The two broke into laughter. “Yea, we’ll see about that.” Cain responded. Serena stopped laughing, but continued to smile. It’s been a long time since she had this much fun, and she didn’t want it end. Because there’s no telling if it will ever happen again. Chapter 13 The next day after seventh period, Serena was on her way home. Like always, she didn’t have the greatest of times at school, and couldn’t wait to get to the room and relax. She also wanted to see Cain again. They had spent all of yesterday together; it was probably the best time of her life.             She walked down the sidewalk with a smile on her face, thinking about her only friend. Never has she met someone who actually knew how she felt, or could relate to her. Some of the girls in her previous home had experienced similar history as her, but they acted different. They didn’t show their selves friendly like Cain did. And it was because of that that Serena’s feelings for him had spiked.             To other’s Cain was an unpredictable, odd, and disturbed teenager. Serena on the other hand saw him for who he really was. She had experienced his kindness, and knew his painful past played a major role in forging the person he was today. She liked his awkwardness and envied the way he stuck up for himself. In secret, Serena was beginning to fall him.             “Aye baby girl!” A voice echoed, breaking Serena’s thought process. Her eyes narrowed and she hesitated to turn around, fearing who called her. K-9’s Monte Carlo glided next to her, cruising down the street at the same pace she did.  “What’s happenin’ with ya?” K-9 grinned.              “N-nothin’,” Serena retorted. She continued to walk forward and kept her eyes ahead.             K-9 hung his arm out of the car window, watching Serena’s every move. “I aint here from ya in a lil min’,” he exclaimed. “Had me worried.” Serena didn’t say a word, she wished he’d just go away and leave her alone. “Aye you need a ride?”             “No,” she weakly shot back. K-9 stuck his head outside and glared at her in intimidation.             “It aint right for young lady to walk by herself,” he added. His voice sounded calm, but it was laced with malicious. “Gon’ and get in…” his offer was more of a demand, and his eyes coerced her into opening the side door.             Serena took a seat in the drug dealer’s cold car staying as far away from him as possible. K-9 pressed the auto lock, locking the doors and sped off. He leaned back in the seat while cruising down the street.             “So what’s up baby girl? Where you been?” he questioned.             “Home,” Serena quietly answered.             “Word,” K-9 nodded. “It’s been like a month since I seen ya. And yo credit’s just about due…”             Serena’s heart skipped a beat. She had forgot all about the money she owed him for the supply of drugs he gave her. “I-I, I don’t, have anything,” She admitted, staring at the carpet floor. K-9 turned down the music and leaned closer to her.             “Say what?” he said, acting like he didn’t hear her the first time.             “I said, I dont… have it,” she repeated, feeling even more ashamed than before.             K-9 pulled a blunt from his jean pocket and placed it in his mouth. He glanced at Serena, scheming in the back of his mind. “Aye you’ll look in that glover compartment for me?” Serena shyly did as told, opening the compartment in front of her. The first thing her eyes caught hold of was the king size revolver lying by a pack of cigarettes. The barrel of the gun seemed to be pointing at her. “Aye you see my lighter?” he asked. Serena glanced around the glove compartment and spotted the lighter to the right of the gun. She grabbed it slowly and handed it to K-9.             With out saying thank you, K-9 took the lighter and sparked his blunt. He appeared to lean back even further in his seat while smoking. Serena stared out of the window, waiting for him to speak again.             “So you aint got the money huh?” he said, a deep glaze in his eyes. K-9 shook his head and shot Serena a cold stare. “Man what you gon do baby girl?”             Serena sunk in her seat looking frightened. “I don’t, know…” she muttered.  K-9 clenched his jaw in anger, but seemed to calm down out of nowhere.             “That’s cool. Cause we can work out a payment plan,” he swerved right into a narrow path on the side of the building. Driving further down the slim road, Serena began to grow nervous. This was not the way to her group home; in fact she had no idea where she was. K-9 stopped his cart in the back of the building and hit the blunt again. “I’ll tell you what. I like you baby girl, so imma let you make it up me.” Serena kept her eyes away from him, afraid to look his way. “I got a way for both us a make a lil money,” he stated. “But I need yo help.”             “Wh-what’s that?”             K-9 placed his hand on her thigh with a heartless expression on his face. “Imma need you to fuck somethin’,” he said coldly. Serena’s chest began to move up and down quickly. She knew what ever K-9 had in mind wasn’t going to be good, but would have never imaged prostitution.             “No… I can get the money,” Serena implied, shaking her head fiercely.             “Too late for that,” he replied, shutting that idea down. “You gon make us some good money too…” Serena turned her head as K-9 leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. “But I gotta see what you workin’ with first though.” After hearing that, Serena reached for the door handle, but was snatched up by K-9. “Com’ on baby girl… don’t make this hard.”             “No…” Serena mumbled, trying to avoid the tongue that glided down the side of her face. “Please, I can get you the money…” K-9 wasn’t hearing a word she said. His mind was already made up. “Stop, . . . please” she begged. K-9 went for her shirt, pulling it off gently.             “Relax baby girl…” he whispered. “You gon’ enjoy this.” Chapter 14 Two minutes after midnight, Cain was sound asleep in his bed. Today had been pretty boring, and it didn’t help that he wasn’t able to see Serena. He thought the time they spend together meant something, but maybe he was wrong. Surely Serena would have tried to contact him if that was the case.             He tossed and turned in the sheets, unable to get a good sleep. Cain’s mind spiraled around in his skull. He was dreaming about Serena, and something wasn’t right. In his dream she was being afflicted, hurt, no was there for her. Cain rushed to be by her side, but seemed get further and further away the faster he ran. Then it happened, she disappeared, whispering while doing so.             ‘…Cain….’ Her voice echoed through out a blank atmosphere in Cain’s mind; ending the dream abruptly.             Cain jerked up in his bed, sweating fiercely. He looked around his room with wide, red eyes. Something wasn’t right. He sprung out of the bed and snatched on a pair of pants. Serena was in trouble, and he could feel it.             With out even putting on a shirt Cain ran out of his room. He had no idea where Serena was, but had a pretty good guess of where to start his search. He dashed to stairway and climbed to the top level. Yanking open the door to the roof, his eyes grazed the area, spotting who he came for.             Serena was standing on the edge on the four-story building staring down at the concrete sidewalk. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. She had bruises on her arm and face from failing to escape K-9. The thing that hurt her the most though, was her broken spirit; it had finally shattered.             “Serena!” she heard someone yell. When she looked behind her she saw Cain running in her direction. “Serena…” he said, stopping at the ledge. He glared at her with concern printed all over his face. “What are you doin’?”             Serena gazed at him with a tear leaking from her right eye. Before she could say or do anything, Cain quickly grabbed her and swung her to the safety of his arms. He clung tightly to her as she began to weep quietly.             “I’m sorry,” Serena mumbled. “But I just can’t take anymore.” Cain didn’t say a word, he continued to hold her, stroking her hair gently. “I want it all to end . . . everything.”             “Don’t say that,” Cain spoke up.             “Why?” Serena shot back, water constantly running from her eyes. “Give me one reason, one good reason I should be alive?” Cain stared at the roof’s tile, thinking about how much he cared for Serena. “Exactly. There is none. There’s…”             “Me,” Cain softly interrupted. The tears that streamed down Serena’s face almost came to a halt. She slowly lifted her head, replaying what he just said. “Me.” He repeated. “If you do, what you think you want to do. Then I’ll have no one.” Cain cleared his throat, keeping his voice strong instead of weak and feeble. “I can’t lose you, your all I have. My mother’s gone . . . but you, your all I got now. I don’t wanna lose you too.” His voice broke and he lowered his head. No tears dripped from his eyes, but there was no question he meant what he said. “I love you Serena, and I’ll neva let ‘Anything’ happen to you.”             His words torn at Serena’s damaged heart, forcing more tears to drip off her face. “I need you…” she muttered, wrapping her arms around his back. “He won’t leave me alone.”             “Who?” Cain asked. It was beginning to come clear to him that someone pushed her to this fragile state of mind.             “K-9,” Serena buried her head in his chest as the truth slipped from her lips. “I owned him money, but I don’t have it. Now, ... now he wants me. Wants me to make his money.” She clenched her teeth as pictured her self on a dirty street corner, prostituting. “He wants to sell me! Sell my body…” she exclaimed, dreading the very idea of it. Serena raised her eyes and stared Cain in the face. “Don’t let him do it! Don’t let him have me Cain!” She cried.             Cain stood quietly, stilling holding on to Serena. His love for her was the only thing that kept his head on his shoulders, because on the inside, Cain’s blood was boiling. Hearing K-9’s plans for Serena made the hatred in his heart over flow, but he kept his raging emotions within and let out a deep sigh.             “I wont,” Cain simply replied. “I promise you that.” Chapter 15 The next day at 11:30pm, Serena was in a dark ally waiting for K-9. She and Cain had devised a plan to get rid of him once and for all. She stood quietly, waiting for the infamous Monte Carlo to drive down the narrow path, which it did moments later.             Serena’s heart started to race in her chest. She hoped this would work. K-9 drove next to her and unlocked the doors. He watched her as she walked around the back of the car to get in.             “What up baby girl?” he grinned. “Ready to make some money?” Serena couldn’t look him in the eye, so she simply nodded her head. “Good. But first thing first. Let’s get you warmed up.” K-9 grazed his tongue across his teeth and slid his pants zipper down.             Serena cringed on the inside, but gathered her strength. “Okay, just let me get comfortable,” she said. She began to remove her jacket slowly, taking out the knife she hid in the pocket. Serena covered the blade with her jacket, getting ready to take action.             K-9 rolled his eyes ready to make moves. “Com’ on baby girl, we aint got all day,” he rushed. “We gotta…” his words diminished the second he felt a three-inch knife sink into his right leg. He cried out in agony, clutching the painful wound. Serena went for the car door, but K-9 grabbed her by the arm. His grip was so tight that it short-circuited her blood flood. “You dead…” he growled, eyes blazing with rage.             K-9 dragged Serena closer to him when a brick suddenly broke through the driver side window. Glass flew all over the in and outside of the car as the brick landed in K-9’s lap. The shock of the window getting smashed gave Serena the second she needed to escape from K-9’s grasp. She virtually kicked the door open and ran out of the vehicle.             K-9 shoved open his door and staggered out of the car. “What the hell goin’ on?” he wondered. He snatched the knife out of his leg, tossing it to the ground when he caught sight of Cain who stood directly in front of him. Both of Cain’s fists were balled tightly and he had a scowl of hate on his face. K-9 clenched his jaw, putting two and two together. “You gon pay for that, white boy. You and yo lil bitch.”             Cain rushed K-9, tackling him into the side of the car. K-9 crashed on his vehicle violently; his stab wound pulsed in pain. Cain struck him across the face twice, and then threw him on the ground. K-9 shook his head quickly, keeping himself from being dazed. He felt Cain come behind him and scooped up glass fragments on the ground from his broken window.             Cain grabbed K-9 by the shirt, cocking his arm back to hit him again, but was slapped in the face with shattered glass and dirt. The glass sliced through his skin, causing blood run down his face. His own blood blinded his eyes, and Cain back stepped into the car. K-9 quickly got on his feet and slammed a fist into Cain’s right eye.             Serena covered her mouth upon seeing the turn of events. She flinched when Cain got struck again. “Cain…” she mumbled.             K-9 back handed Cain fiercely, and threw him down. “Yea. What’s up now?” K-9 taunted, kicking him in the stomach. “Punk ass white boy.” He reached in his jeans and removed a glock 36.             Serena’s eyes widened and she knew she had to do something. She glanced around the area desperately searching for a way to fend off her oppressor. Her eyes traveled to the damaged Monte Carlo and she ran to it.             “Turn yo faggot ass around!” K-9 exclaimed as he kicked Cain once more. Cain coughed in agony from the blow to the stomach. He slowly flipped over on his back, wiping the blood from his eyes. K-9 grinned while he aimed the gun between Cain’s eyes. “After I’m done with you... imma spend some quality time with yo chick,” he snarled. The look on his face was psychotic and ghastly.             “No!” Serena yelled, coming behind them. She carried the revolver she saw yesterday in K-9’s glove compartment. With both eyes closed, Serena couldn’t bare to look as she fired a round at K-9.             The bullet struck the brick wall in front of K-9 and he spun around in a heartbeat. He lifted his weapon and pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet snuck into Serena’s upper chest, causing blood to spew from the wound. The second ripped into her lower torso, tearing through the liver and grazing the stomach before exploding out of her back.             Cain completely froze as he watched Serena’s body drop to the ground. His mouth hung open and his eyes shifted to K-9. Before he knew it, he was staring down the barrel of a gun again.             K-9 showed his jagged gold teeth in a crooked grin, and squeezed the trigger. With his eyes closed, Cain waited for the sound of the gunshot to scratch his ears, but it didn’t. To his surprise, the only thing he heard was a clicking noise in the back of K-9s gun.             “What the…” K-9 muttered, staring at his weapon. He looked back at Cain who was lost, and smacked him across head with his pistol. K-9 limped back to his car to make a quick escape.             Cain clutched the injury on his forehead as the tires from K-9s car skidded out of the alley. He wiped his face again when the image of Serena getting shot appeared in his memory.             “Serena!” Cain exclaimed. He tried to jump to his feet, but stumbled back down. Cain tightened his fist and ignored the pain that swelled his body, as he forced his way closer to Serena. “Serena…” he repeated, inching his way to her.             She laid flat on the ground with dull eyes. Her chest just barely moved up and down, indicating that her heart was still beating. Cain got next to Serena and gently rose her, holding her carefully in his arms.              Serena felt Cain’s touch and pulsed in pain; her eyes moved to his face. “…C-Cain…” she wheezed, coughing afterwards. Blood slipped out of the side of her mouth.             “Don’t talk,” Cain calmly replied, trying to keep himself from losing it. He heard the sirens in the background and knew help was on the way. “You gon be aight…” he lowered his head and felt a tear exit his eye, landing on Serena’s face.             “Cain,” Serena repeated. Her voice sounded weaker than before and her breathing slowed. She began to think back to her childhood, dwelling on the times when she would be at her worst. “Wh, when I was lil. I use to… always want someone to, to hold me.” She stammered, fighting to get every word out. “Hold me, and tell me. Everything would be okay…”             Cain forced a false smile on his face and started to rock Serena’s body peacefully in his arms. “Everything… ‘will’ be okay,” he told her. “You got me? Everything gon be just fine.” He watched as that rare beautiful smile grew on Serena’s face one last time.              “Everything… will be, . . . okay,” she lied to herself. Serena and Cain both knew that wasn’t going to be true. Because she died in his arms moments before the ambulance arrived.  Chapter 16 Four days later, at Serena’s funeral, Cain stood amongst a small crowd that consisted of Serena’s group home, and his self. He was on the front row under the tent that hung over Serena’s casket. His eyes were stuck on the uneven grass as the preacher spoke words he didn’t listen to.             The only thing in his mind was how everything turned out like this. He had finally found someone that he understood, and vise versa. Someone who cherished his company; some one he loved. Cain raised his head when he realized the casket was being lowered into the ground.             Instead of crying, he tightened his jaw. Keeping back every bit of emotion that screamed to be released. The dark brown casket sunk lower and lower, finally leaving eyesight. It was over. The bleak funeral had official ended.             Everyone began to walk away; very few wiped away tears. The preacher gathered his belongings and left the site as well. No one remained, no one but Cain. He still stood quietly in the same spot.             The funeral director ordered his workers to take down the settings when he noticed Cain. He walked over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be aight son.” The man told Cain. “She’s in a better place.”             Cain looked at the guy and nodded. “Yea,” he said. “But I’m still gonna miss her,” he mumbled to himself. The guy patted Cain’s shoulder and headed back to work.             Cain remained where he stood to say his final goodbyes. “I love you Serena,” he confessed. “These otha’ folk may forget you, but I won’t. I’ll never forget…” He clenched his fist while suppressing the sorrow that tore his heart. “I miss you soo much.” He said, breaking down on the inside. “I really do…” Cain got back in control of his feelings, and did what he’s always done with his pain. He secured it tightly in place in his heart, and tucked away the key. “Until we meet again.”             He walked away from the grave site with his hands in his pockets. It truly pained him to see the death of the last person he loved, but that’s life; life for him at least. While others spent their days surrounded by friends, family, and loved ones, Cain had nothing. He always questioned why he went through the things he did. Why he suffered loss after loss after loss. The answer never quite showed its face to him, even though it was obvious. Losers never win.                                                                               The End Publication Date: March 31st 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-br8649913fd9335

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-bradley-lester-love-lost-found/

Bradley Lester Love Lost Found Publication Date: September 21st 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-bradsglester

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-jenifer-ruano-so-far-from-your-weapon/

Jenifer Ruano So Far From Your Weapon What goes around . . . The Ford Falcon rolled in off the interstate and onto the graveled parking lot of the old motel. It was dusk and the setting sun cast a red shadow over the east side of the building. The weathered and battered car drove slowly along the desolate lot, and the woman inside it took care to note each number on every piss yellow door of the building. There were five other cars in the lot and none of them were his but she knew he would show up here, he always did. Whether alone or with some piece of trash who was willing to open her legs for him, but she hoped he’d be alone. As the Falcon pulled into the space furthest from the building she cut the engine and the car heaved back in protest before sputtering violently to a rest. The sunset had washed out the sky to an orange haze which fell onto the hood of the car, revealing the chipped paint and specks of rust. She sat lighting a cigarette and waited for the sky to go dark. After a while she pulled her oversized purse onto her lap and began rummaging through it before pulling out the Colt 45 pistol. She stared at the dulled silver and with ease ran her thumb over the barrel and then up to the chamber. Taking a deep breath she tucks the gun securely into the back waistband of her jeans. An hour passed and then another when finally . . . darkness. The aroma of cigarettes and leather permeated the small interior of the car and made her slightly nauseous but she lit another smoke anyway and the flame blazed in front of her hazel eyes. Where the hell was he? She thought, growing more annoyed. Just then headlights reflected off of one of the windows on the building and shot across the parking lot as a black pick-up truck pulled in, his pick-up. As he drove past the Falcon she sunk down into her seat to avoid being seen. A thousand butterflies fluttered in her throat at the sight of him. As the truck pulled into a space its brakes squeaked irritatingly and then went silent. He emerged from the truck in gray jeans, boots and a black buttoned up shirt. He takes a drag from his cigarette before flicking it onto the dirt road. A billow of smoke clung to the air above him as he slammed the truck door shut and walked toward the stairs that lead up to the second floor. He was drunk and his heavy boots weaved and bobbed on his unstable legs. She studied him through the dirty glass of the Falcon before bringing the ashy end of her cigarette to her mouth as she took a final puff. A smirk rippled over her lips. Her eyes watched him as he walked all the way up to his room and until his door shut. As she exited the Falcon she exhaled a long stream of smoke out the side of her mouth. Shrugging into her leather jacket she reached into the pocket and fingered with the bullets like they were diamonds, feeling some sort of grim satisfaction. She pulled out two from her pocket she reached around and removed the pistol from her waistband and slid the bullets into the chamber and locked it into place. Her hands were sweaty so she rubbed the moisture onto her jeans and then returned the gun to her waistband and walked toward the building. Her mind began to wander as her boots crunched and kicked up dust over the loose gravel while she walked. She remembered all the beatings and the sleepless nights where she dared not move for fear he’d wake in a drunken rage. She remembered the lies he told and to the whore who slept in their bed. And with that her pace quickened into a rage fueled strut and marched up the steps to the second floor. When she arrived at the top step she looked down the long corridor and heard the muffled sounds of a television reverberating off the window of one of the rooms closest to her. His door was three doors down and the light in the hall above it flickered like a strobe. She stopped in front of his door and her heart swelled into her ears. Taking in a deep breath she pounded her fist on the door. "What?” He barked from the other side. She could hear his heavy footsteps approaching the door. “It’s me,” she called. “Open up!” Silence fell on the other side of the door and as she stood there she could feel his presence on the other side. It was as if they were in a faceoff with only the door between them. The door lock snapped loudly and the chain hit the door, making a jangly sound before the door creaked open. He stood there with his wiry brown hair, looking longer than she remembered it in messy tendrils around his face. He leaned against the door frame and smirked. His dark blue jeans were stained and he smelled of oil and booze. She wanted to slap him. “Baby,” he said smoothly and then shook his head from side-to-side. “Mmm-mmm. Don’t you look good tonight.” “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” She asked, softening the tone of her voice as much as possible but the sight of him made her positively ill. He raised an eyebrow and then narrowed his eyes on her before stepping aside and allowing her to pass. She walked in. With a click the door shut behind her and she could feel him close against her back. She gritted her teeth as he put his hand against the nape of her neck and moved her hair away. A shiver ran through her and before she could pull away he suddenly pulled her close, burying his face in her neck. “Get off me damn it!” She cried, ripping herself away from him. He stammered backwards. “What the hell is your problem pussycat?” He asked maliciously. She fell silent and he stepped toward her. “Why else did you come here?” Suddenly she pulled the gun from her waistband and then clicks off the safety and eases it to her side. His eyes followed. “What are you doing?” He whispered. His eyes pierced her. “You asked why I came here,” she said. He laughed, dismissing her, and took another step but stopped cold with the barrel of the gun in his face. “Now listen baby.” He puts his hands up. “Have you lost your goddamned mind?” he asked. “You tell me . . . baby.” She smirked. Darkness fell on his face like a heavy curtain and the shadows in the room lengthened and coil against his penetrating stare. “You won’t do it,” he spat. She bit the inside of her lip. “You can’t do it,” he taunts. “You don’t have it in you.” “Shut up!” She shouted and tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. His glanced sideways to the bedside table and her eyes followed. There was a pocket knife next to the lamp. In a flash he lunged for the knife, surprising her and she stammered backwards, accidently pulling the trigger, but the gun doesn't fire. As he turned to face her with a devilish smile she saw the blade catch the gleam of the soft glow of the lamp. “I told you that you couldn’t do it you bitch!” He snarled as he walked towards her. She took a step back, losing her footing against the bed and then regained her stature. He finger pulled the trigger again and a blast echoed loudly through the room. A look of shock bleeds down his face at the same time crimson began to stain his shirt. He looked at her and then down to his blood soaked shirt where he pulled back his bloody hand in disbelief. She held her breath. He fell to his knees and then braced himself on the mattress to try and stand, but fell again. Drops of blood fall onto the dirt green carpet below. “You damn bitch.” He gasped and looked at her. His eyes were big glossy globes before he collapsed to the floor with a thud. The air was thick and the smell of gunfire still hung heavy in the room. She returned the gun to her waistband and then knelt in front of him as a dark puddle of blood began to form around him. She took care not to get any on her dusty boots as she maneuvered to listen for any breathes coming from his mouth. His breathing narrowed and then hollowed, until it stopped completely. She stared into his face. His dark eyes were lifeless; an empty desert. As she stood over his body she realized how silent the motel had become. Cautiously she walked to the door and using the sleeve of her shirt, she opened it quietly and stepped out into the night. Beads of sweat against her neck instantly cool against the desert wind. It was dark now and elm trees swayed to and fro. The motel door clicked behind her and escaped down the long corridor. Once she reached her car she lit another cigarette and looked up at the room. Her hair trails in the wind and she took a long drag from the cigarette. She smirked and pulled the car door open and slid into the leather seat and starts the car. The old Falcon car erupted into a loud rumble and she revved the engine twice before flooring the pedal. The tires peeled off the road and onto the interstate, spitting dirt and rock behind it. END Text: © J. Ruano, 2011 All Rights Reserved All rights reserved. Publication Date: December 24th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-jenwen

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-olivia-price-it-039-s-just-him/

Olivia Price It's just him. Dad is dad. It's just him. Drunk. Used to be is yelling again I'm trying to sleep again too. "Kiara Bank,get out of here!" That's what I call my Dad'Used to be',because he used to be the best dad ever. He would take me out to ice-cream, tell me and mom he loved us all the time and take off of numerous days of work just to be with us. Mom staggered out of the master bed room obvious to be tired of her used to be the dream come true. "Derek, baby." My strong mother whined. "You need rest, a good meal, and a decent celebration to go to after work,some place like home."Used to be rolled his big now redded eyes and yelled "Matter of fact your right get in the kitchen and make me a decent meal, NOW!" Mom half limped,half ran to the kitchen to make used to be a huge dinner one we had of roman noodles and one he's about to have of steak, chicken, rice, and my moms favorite mixed vegetables with white meat making my thin-filled stomach growl I could smell the simmering meat from my huge space in the basement. Used to be stopped being Dad when my little sister Kayy was born. For a long time he had been secretly abusing my little sister. I never cry that's one thing abot me that is wierd, I never cry. Though the night I walked in on him abusing her, I screamed, I cried and I bust his eye out of uncontrollable rage with my mothers favorite flower vase. I kept on hitting him until my fingers were nothing but cuts and blood. Later I found out that I had bust is head and knocked out three of his teeth. My used to be is crying his eyes out right now. I can here my mom telling him it's not his fault and we still love him and he's still our role model and the best dad ever. I'm probaly the only one in the house that knew mom was lying,my sisters and my brother were probaly in their rooms thinking it's all over now Dad loves us and in the morning they will sadly find out that is terribly so not the case."Sweet mother of God!" I heard used to be say,then I heard the horrible sounds of vomit. After the sounds ended I knew my mommmy my role model is on her knees cleaning up his disgustings,stanky,clumpy vomit with him slurring out I love yous and sweet smiles. "KaKa?" Used to be calling by my nickname drunk al- most makes me want to run up and hug him so hard I can't explain it. "Get out!" I forced those words to come out of my mouth."KaKa, I'm so sorry." I bet he forced those words to come out his mouth too. "Mommy!" I yelled I knew I was to old to be calling my mommy,mommy but I was just like that. "Mommy!" I yelled again tears welling in my eyes. The only thing keeping me from running and hugging him is the tears burning the crap out of my eyes because what he did to my family. Mommy came in slowly driving Used to be out of my room. After he was gone I heard the faint voice of my little sister Kayy, "KaKa?" my sister asked just like Used to be did and I knew what she was about to ask."Is everthing gonna be okay now, does Daddy love us again? When she asked that me and her burst into tears both of us knowing why the other is crying without either of us saying a word." Sweet-heart." I said. I was just like Kayy's mommy now since Used to be turned into used to be. "It's probaly never going to be the same again but I'll make it better for you." I said trying to be the mother mommy used to have time to be."Okay KaKa I do believe you." she said "G'night Kayy" "G'night KaKa" He Lied. "Used to be lied to us,again mommy" I whined to mommy early the next morning when everyone was sleeping. "Baby" Mommy whined back "Mommy is very tired right now and it would be very sweet of you if you go check on your siblings for me" I knew mommy was tired seriously so I did what was asked of me and went to go check on my siblings. I went downstairs and both my sisters and my brother were in my room. "What are you guys doing in here!" I yelled but when I looked at their faces I instantly regreted it. "What's up?" I asked when a tear streamed down my little brother Charles cheek. "We wanted to suprise you." My brother Charles said "We wanted to let you know how much we love you" Kayy said "I wuv you" My youngest sister Keinna said. "What are you talking about?" I said confused this hasn't happened in about a year, I always forget my......birthday. "Ohhhhh!" I yelled "It's my birthday!" "KaKa it's really something wrong with you if you can never remember your own birthday!"Kayy said laughing. I knew it was supposed to be a joke but it is true. " I was so into your birthday Charles because it's next week isn't it?" I said "Yeah but yours comes first KaKa." He said back. . Publication Date: May 18th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-livia1999

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-yo-yo-lara-i-can-039-t-take-it-anymore/

Yo_Yo Lara I can't take it anymore Book One My Mask   Gina's POV:  I've been suffering all my life. My parents didn't want me, they abused me, left me on the streets to die. So instead of being poor, I decieded to sell drugs for money to go to school. I tried to make friends but I only made friends with Christina, a Christian. Her name fits her well but I don't want to tell her that I'm a drug seller because she won't be my friend anymore. But she has a Light that I don't understand, why does she smile so much if she has gone through the pain of separation, and getting a new home? She always talks about God and how He can change me but, how can I believe in someone I can't see? I can't help it. I pretend to smile to make friends but I can't make friends because they already know that I am a lier, stealer and a drug dealer. I like a nobody at school. No boy likes me, I wish I could be part of society, but I don't fit. My Life I go to sell drugs at midnight, get chased by cops, go to a bar to be a Stripper to get more money. It's my daily routine. But I am tired of it, I must make a change.   TO BE CONTINUED!!!! Text: Yo_Yo Lara Images: Yo_Yo Lara Editing: BookRix Translation: Yo_Yo Lara All rights reserved. Publication Date: September 28th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-chda2c000e12d45

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-amber-barnum-here-in-now/

Amber Barnum Here in now found then lost Friday September 5th Today I really hope will be good because we just started school today. Nothing will stop me from having a good year (because I don’t think 3 years of middle school will just turn bad all of a sudden) my last birthday my Mom got me a diary. What I was expecting was a Cell phone or something like that, but no all thanks to my sister molly she has been trying to get rid of me. I tried to tell her that if I get a cell phone I’ll be out of the house more often. But she just won’t listen. Our relationship doesn’t work very well. She doesn’t listen to me so I’m forst not to listen to her that’s just how things work in this family. My dad says to deal with it (like sarcastically). My brother is like nice to me on and off its kind of ANNOYING!!! But he isn’t like my sister (luckily). My mom just isn’t any help with my problems sometimes she just says “I don’t care how it happened, I’m finishing it”. Anyways the way I actually get to talk with my friends (because I don’t have a Cell Phone) is my sarcastic dads laptop that’s another thing I want a laptop, but I keep having to wait (my dad’s catch fraze well one of them: Something to look forward to). Well back to school that was a difference saying that hmm, today was a total disaster because all my friends have new cooler friends (as if I’m delightful) so I have to make new friends I hope I don’t end up with only one choice (that’s Melanie she is NUTS!) but there was one girl I could be friends with her name way Bridgett she is really nice to me (did I mention my name is Lilly? Well it is) and is the luckiest person in the world! But I am not just her friend for that I’m not shallow or anything all she has is a cell phone but in some ways I’m the lucky one. Well whatever today’s class was Art like the only class I actually like in the whole school. So yeah I suppose we are already friends now (I think) but I’m glad I made 1 friend (at the least) so I tried inciting her over but she is always in CDC or homework club all the time. It really stinks because my parent “can’t afford that” (well CDC) they say 700$ is a lot of money for the whole year but it does include the summers. But whatever I guess, when I’m a rich and famous actress they won’t be laughing then. Saturday September 5th The best part of starting school on a Friday is you start school then get like 2 days! But the worst part of school this year is my new locker Neibor is the super popular super mean heather Jones she has EVERYONE even the teachers in her little spell. She thinks she owns the school just because her daddy owns a star buck’s branch (which he has to share so it isn’t all that impressive). People just think she is a queen or something, and many CLAIM that they have seen her mansion but I doubt it. I don’t even think she lives in a mansion. She only hangs out with people whose parent or family member owns a store or something like that. But I don’t bother even trying to tell her that my aunt owns 6 hotels. I don’t even care to be her friend at all. She is just snobby!!!!! Telling you about her is one thing showing is another thing so here is my drawling of her (don’t be jealous she is all fake every part of her). I even think she isn’t even her I think she is some type of monster or like a robot or even an alien. But even aliens have better personalities then heather. You see what I mean well enough about her, more about well anything else. Today I was really bored so I went to the school chat room on my dad’s computer there were like only three the first was called popular and pretty the second was boys group and the third was gossip with anyone. So I was forced to either join gossip with anyone or popular girls so I decided popular girls to annoy heather and Stacy and Cindy and all them. Chat room A: Stacy: what is Lilly doing in this chat room? Cindy: no idea  she definitely does not belong here Lilly: you know I can read right, unlike you two Cindy: we can read we aren’t stupid Lilly: yes you are Cindy is typing ……… Heather: well isn’t it the no life looser Lilly: you know the teachers and the principle monitor these chat rooms right? Heather: not tonight my sister is a teacher and she volunteered to “help out” and monitor tonight. Lilly: wow heather you are so rude and a witch Heather: awe thanks your too nice Lilly: why do you even try to be popular >:( Cindy: Lilly I am not stupid Heather: Cindy please! Cindy: what I’m just telling her and an hour earlier this time Heather has left this chat room Cindy has left this chat room Lilly has now left this chat room Stacy: hello? Hello? So that was quit the chat we had. So yeah not really, it was the best we ever had when I didn’t kick out the name calling but never mind that. My life is ruined because of heather my mom found the chat history and didn’t like how I was speaking to heather and I had to say sorry to her at school on Monday. (Thanks a lot heather). I now hate heather more than usual; lucky for her I am practically an adult now so I won’t go down to her low level. But she still annoys me A LOT!!! I will never ever talk to her nicely again and won’t ever say sorry EVER!!! Today Bridgett could come over so we could hang out a little. But if anyone even her found out I actually had a diary I would be TOTTALLY RUINED!!! For life!!!! I was tired when Bridgett came over, but still didn’t fall asleep when she was over. Because then I would be rude (and in trouble with my mom). My experience with dogs well wasn’t really good, I was terrified of them!!!! But Bridgett had 3 and she brought the chiwawa over (I was scared) but didn’t want her to know so I kept it low and didn’t stay too close to her dog. He looked as scared as I was he was shaking and running away from me I almost did the same! Monday September 7th Today at school wasn’t too good because Bridgett had a lunch practice with her cheer squad. I didn’t know where to sit it was embarrassing having to sit alone, then surprisingly Heather invited me to sit with her (I had no idea why) we where enemies weren’t we? She just ate and said I needed a makeover and asked if I wanted to come to the mall with her after school today I didn’t want to be rude so I actually said yes!! I don’t even know why it just seemed like I had to (I was under her spell!) After school I went with her to the mall I wouldn’t help it I think she found out my aunt owns multiple hotels who knows (Cindy and Stacy). We went and I looked like totally different it was like looking at heather or her looking in a mirror or something like that is was kind of cool and scary at the same time. I looked like one of the heathers (that’s Cindy and Stacy) it was freaking me out a little, but eldest we aren’t enemies that much anymore. So I shouldn’t be worrying at all its no problem (I really hope). They have been all nice to me all of the sudden. But I haven’t been worried so they couldn’t call me any names. I’m really nervous though because they have never EVER been nice to me before. I am a total dork!!!! They are just pretending (or so I’m told) the older kids know a lot so it must be true  the sad part is I actually believed them but if they play me I will have to play them but this time HARD BALL! (I’m keeping the wardrobe they bought me). And my mom thinks it’s real she is always on heathers side in everything! It really sucks for me because if she does something bad it’s my entire fault. So I am just going to avoid her for the rest of my life. (which won’t be hard I have been doing it good so far). Thursday September 11th Today I’m going to stand up to heather give her a taste of her own medicine. And I did and this is what I said “you know you aren’t so cool heather, you are uncool in my GIANT book, and people only like you for your money which isn’t going to last forever”!!! she looked super mad but I felt proud of myself for standing up for myself and telling heather off. Everyone thought I had some guts to tell her off some said I was a dork some where amazed and wanted to be my friend. But I said I know I did a good thing and I don’t need all the glory and I am definitely NOT a dork! And that was that now I had friends (other than Bridgett). I am now the head bee in this school. Friday September 12th Pretty much everyone forgot about yesterday so everything is back to normal in this school I’m still the dorky nerd who loves art and doesn’t have a cell phone. Pretty good week I had. no one thinks I’m amazing anymore, glory goes bye really fast in this school, except for Heather (which sucks! For me) me and heather will NEVER EVER be friends. The End Publication Date: September 29th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-darkmagic10186

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-kaylah-kirk-the-color-blue/

Kaylah Kirk The Color Blue Prologe: Publication Date: August 3rd 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-kaylahkirk

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-mikayla-beebe-i-can-039-t-stand-it-anymore/

MiKayla Beebe I Can't Stand It Anymore Intro I don't really know what I was suppose to do. I look into my mothers eyes every morning to see her eyes full of hurt and disappointment. I hate seeing her hurt so bad why do I continue to be such a bad person?    Recently my mother has found out about me smoking pot. I don't mind that she found out I practically smoked it right in front of her to get a reaction. She ignores everything about me who I am and what I do. The only time she notices anything is when someone forces her to.     I was sitting in my room one night smoking and some guy the next day had informed my mother he saw me it doesn't scare her that you would have had to be looking in but as soon as I can get my hands on a camera I am going to set one up and if he looks into my window one more damn time I am going to screw him so bad.     I work all day and lay in bed staring at the celling at night, I've gotten so sick of laying in bed I decided to reorganize my room and then move everything around and paint the walls one of them is even chalkboard. Next thing As I get done painting I realize it's 5'o clock in the morning. I finally lay in my bed and dirft off to sleep. Next thing I know it's 1 in the afternoon. I get up to straighten up the house and I get ready for work. I plan on riding my longboard to work today. So we will see how that goes.     So before leaving I didn't process that I suck at building up speed on a longboard so I got halfway to work when I had to start riding on the sidewalk which was difficult and I ended up having to carry the longboard the rest of the way. It didn't bother me I always leave my house way earleir than I need to in fear that something may go wrong and I'll need more time.    I end up getting to work sitting down eating some candy waiting for my shift to start. Business was pretty steady all night I worked and busted my ass all night trying to get everything done.     We were making sure the place was nice and neat for the meeting at nine in the morning. My manager doesn't like it when I walk to work so she decided that she'd pick me up before the meeting.    Chapter 1  Of course I have a meeting at the crack of dawn and I can't seem to sleep just my luck. It's four a.m.    I'm still writing calm you harmones!  Publication Date: December 6th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-ndc08dc19c28445

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-smartcookie-the-assignment/

Smartcookie The Assignment The Assignment Wake up Rein. I’m up father. Do I have to go to a new school today. Why can’t I just go back tomy old school. Geez Rein only if you were like your other sisters. But your not. You got that right. With my long black hair and brown eyes I’m nothing like them. Ha Ha Ha. Um rein I still find that creepy. Okay let’s go. Alright dad. So this is the school. Yeah. Mighty big huh. Yep. Okay bye rein have fun do kill yourself. Not if this school kills me first. Okay bye dad. Students we have a new student today her name is rein. Rein would you like to introduce yourself. Sure. My name is Rein Perry and I am fourteen years old. Class-Hi Rein. Ellen-why don’t you sit with me sure. Huh there’s a boy looking at me I wonder what his problem is. Ellen who are you looking at oh I see. That’s Jake he’s very popular and very hot he’s been her all his life all the girls like him. Oh. We’ll this is interesting. Crap something hit me. What’s this a letter. Huh unknown ( meet me outside the class room at 10:00 you go first.) I wonder who it could be. Teacher may I be excused yeah. Well I’m out here now where’s the idiot that hit me with this paper. Hi Rein. Who is this? Oh it’s Jake. What do you want? I need to tell you something. I think I love you. What? I don’t have time for games like this I’m leaving, wait. Let go of my arm. What is he doing? Get your hand off of my arm. Whats his problem. But all of a sudden he grabs me by my waist and kisses me. Rein what are you doing? All of a sudden he throws me on the floor. Stay down do you here me. What? Who do you take me for let go bam right in the stomach. Rein stop I was assigned by your father to watch over you and to become your friend here at school. But why did you kiss me well I trying to get you to like me so I wouldn’t have to give up my cover. Your father was right you are difficult. What! Nothing just relax. Now that you know that I will be following you should get ride of all your feeling for me. What feelings for you Ha ha don’t make me laugh and I’m not buying your story either. Eight hours later at home. (Dad) I did assign him to follow you Rein. You’ve got to be kidding me. Told you so. Shut up jake. I’m going to my room. Ah that stupid jerk. Makes me angry. Jake- does she always get that angry. Yeah. Jake- I’ll check on her. I wouldn’t do that if you value you life. I’ll go check anyway. What are you doing in my room shut the door I have something to tell you. Who do you think you are trying to follow me around like a little child I’ll show you who doesn’t have feelings. Jake-what are you doing. She pushes me against the wall then kisses me and then let’s go and say see didn’t feel anything. Okay bye see you at school. Jake- I’m leaving Mr. Perry. Okay jake be safe. Okay. For some reason when she kissed me I felt like I actually liked it. Next day. Oh I hope today’s normal. Ah what are you doing in my room and on top of me in your pajamas? I wanted to sleep here and your dad said okay. That doesn’t explain how you ended up on me. I don’t know I was sleeping on the couch last night and the last thing I saw was your dad walking through the house. Dad in room ( sneaky, sneaky I wonder what she did when she saw jake on top of her. Ha, Ha. Okay let’s go to school. Okay. Well, well, well now if it isn’t Rein with the hottest boy in school. Spare- what if their dating he would never espically not with her. So jake do you want to date me instead of hanging out with her. I slept with her last night. What. You heard me. Ow. Jake- why did you do that. You don’t just shout that stuff out people will get the wrong idea. There goes the bell. Jake- Hey wait oh not this again. What do you want. He grabs my hand come on let’s go to class. Okay but let go oh sorry. Today class we will be learning about chemistry. Rein hey. Jake stay away from her. What I was just saying hey. Hey back off jake you are so protective. I was just watching out for you. Well you don’t have to. Jake and Rein go to the principles office now. Rein uh see what you’ve done now. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot! Why did you pull that. I was just watching out for you. Don’t follow me any more. I mean look at me I’m crying over this okay I’m gone. Wait Rein. Let go of my arm why me why did you take this assignment any way. I took this assignment because. Shut up I’m leaving. She left. I took this assignment because I’ve loved her ever since I saw her at the park a few days before school. Wow this assignment is going to be fun but tougher than I thought. I better go and find her. That stupid jake always running my life. Hey still crying. No. here let me get that. What are What are you doing get away but then he kisses me and tells me in my ear don’t cry and then puts me on his back and takes me home. But what about school. Does it really matter they won’t care about us. I’m home dad. Oh he’s not here. Get some rest. Okay. I’ll be waiting down stairs. Alright. Publication Date: October 18th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-smartcookie

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-tiana-webb-masks/

Tiana Webb Masks Masks [Enter stage left strutting onto the stage. Skip and turn]    See ya babes [wave fingers, turn to face audience, sigh in relief] .    This [gesture to me] is how everyone sees me. But that’s not the real me [pull hairband out] . The real me [sit on blocks centre-stage] isn’t the girl that everyone thinks they know so well.    I want to ask you a question, and I want you to be truthful. What would it take to make you do it?    What would it take to make you forget about the promise you made to the ones you love? That silent promise that it a part of every family. The promise not to hurt them. What would it take to make you think that you leaving them, permanently, would have no effect on them? For me, it wasn’t much [look down . [look up, lean back, hands in front, palms forward] Now, now, how about I explain it before you jump to conclusions?    Well [drag out] , ok. Let’s say that [pause] right off [pause] you’re not seriously thinking about it. Just, [pause, shrug] merely entertaining the option. [As an aside] And yes, to those like me that is an option. Sometimes it’s so hard [voice breaks] to remember that it’s not the only option. But it isn’t.    And [drag out] you aren’t seriously depressed. Not that feeling of drowning, [of falling into a hole that you can never get out of and no one can see it [stand up] and no one cure it and no matter what you do or what you try you know you will never be able to find a way out.] [One breath]    [sigh, sit down] Say it’s not that.    What about [drag out] loss? Would that do it? Losing someone you never dreamed you’d be without, and suddenly, they’re gone. And you’re left with the knowledge that [those eyes that voice that person who completed you or made life magic or simply understood you] [One breath] - that person is gone.    I guess heaven was needing a hero, like you. [sing] [really depressed] [slowly put hair into bun] Would you follow? Would you simply give up? [scoff] Probably not. You’d probably get over it. [scornful]    [smugly] How about pain? That pain deep inside you. [pull hair down, run hands through agitated, knees up] The pain that didn’t stop, that made it impossible to think [voice breaks] . The pain you knew for sure would last [bend over in pain] . Would never end.    [back to being smug] [plait hair] You think you’d hold on then? Would you? How? Medication? [laugh] Yeah, and what if that didn’t work? You think you’d hang in then? Just accept it and live with the pain? [matter-of-factly] Just tough it out. That simple, huh?    [scoff] Yeah, right. [stand up] Admit it! You simply can never know if there’s something out there that will be too big for you to beat.    [sigh, sit down] This is how I feel every day. [rip hair out] And I just wanted it to stop [voce breaks, sad, desperate] .    You couldn’t hear it, could you? [That voice in my head [point to head] telling me that I’m not okay [right fist to head] that I’m never going to be fine [left fist to head] that nothing I do will ever be good enough [both hands down] that no matter what I do], or what I try, I will never [stand up] escape this nightmare inside my head [hold head] . [angry] And you thought I was fine [sit, head in hands, breath, sit up] .    But I wasn’t. The urge just kept getting stronger [gesture both hands] and stronger [gesture both sounds] , and that voice in my head [one hand to side of head] just kept getting louder [same hand fist near temple] and louder [other hand to other temple, get louder] , no matter what I did [hands down] . No matter how much I tried to block it out [punch leg] .    It’s easy for you to sit there [gesture to audience] and say to me, “ You [point] should’ve held on. Just get over it already [swipe hands to side] . Just…be normal, be stronger.” You didn’t hear. No one did. [They heard laughing, talking, music] [bright and cheerful] . [Different sounds good sounds me] [one breath] , I only heard what that voice in my head told me.    I’ve often been asked, “What does it feel like? What does depression feel like?” Well, I’ll explain it to you. [stand up] Imagine walking into the ocean, blindfolded. [slowly walk down-stage] Just keep walking, never knowing where you’re going. You just know you’re getting deeper. Now just keep going until you drown [open eyes] . You want to reach the surface, you want relief, [hand reaches up] but the current just keeps pulling you down [sink to ground, one knee, hand up] and you can feel that you are not strong enough to reach the surface. That’s what it’s like [look to audience, hand down] . Drowning, and knowing that you don’t have the strength to reach the surface, to reach the much needed air.    Now [drag] , imagine the relief you would feel if someone had come along and rescued you. Someone pulled you out of the water so that you could breathe again [stand up, hug self] . That’s what self-harm is like. After the suffocating feeling in your chest [hold chest with both hands, breathless] , the relief of being able to feel again. That’s why people do it. Not for attention [swipe both hands to sides] , but for relief [fist down] .    Now imagine what it would be like not to self-harm. Just [pause] feeling that feeling of suffocation, of drowning. That’s how I felt. And it never went away [swipe hand to side] . Never [yell, both hands fisted at sides] . No matter what I did. No matter how much I tried to cover my ears [cover ears] . Because it wasn’t a voice like mine [point to me] and yours [point to audience] , but a voice inside my head that grew louder and louder [get louder] the more I ignored it.    It was always there. Until I did what I did. Until I finally broke down and exposed to the world what was really hidden behind that bright and cheerful mask that everyone knew so well. Until they finally saw me for the pathetic little waste of space that I am. [pause] Until I finally found that relief.    [Say something I’m giving up on you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t] [sing] get to you. [speak]    You didn’t see, didn’t hear. You think I was weak. That there was another way, a better way. [stand on blocks] I’m telling you: there wasn’t. And all I wanted was for it to stop [voice breaks, lean forward on blocks] .    Not because I’m weak. You don’t know what it’s like. [lean back, sit down, knees up] It’s a pain that hurts so deep down inside I can’t find where it starts and where it ends. Sometimes [pause] I can’t stop crying, and other times I just can’t find any tears. I just feel so alone, and I wish I could tell someone, [stand up] but I don’t know who I could turn to with this. No one would understand how I feel.    I wish it would just go away. [lay head on blocks] I cry and cry at night, when no one can hear me, until my pillow’s soaked, until I can’t think of anything except for that emptiness inside. I pretended to be like everyone else, to be popular and liked by everyone. I was horrible to others just so I could fit in.    I wonder if anyone ever noticed what was happening inside me if anyone even cared. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone…so scared…as I did then. [quickly put hair into ponytail]    I walk through my life like an actor in a play wearing different masks when I’m with different people [ smile, talk to imaginary people] . But none of them are me [pull hairband out] . Not the real me. I have no idea who I am. I hate myself…whoever I am these days [bitterly] .    [I’m just out to find], [sing] the better part of me. [speak]    [lean back] There are times when I dream of heaven and what it’s like to die – to be in a place where everything is peaceful and everyone is happy. Where no one blames you for things you didn’t do. Or expects you to be someone you aren’t. Where everyone gets along with each other [silent for a moment daydreaming] .    The truth is, I never felt like my life was worth saving. I felt like I had nothing to live for, and I was always so…sad. [knees up] But my pain was the worst part [shudder, hug self] . The thing that bothers me the most about what happened after my show of weakness is that it made me realise just how obvious [wrap arms around knees] the signs had been. How obvious my pain was. And I realised someone could have saved me. You [point] could have saved me [stand up, look at audience, shout] ! But I guess you never really cared about me [bitterly, quiet] .    Nobody ever really cared about me [stride to back of room, recollect, turn to audience] . I’d always thought so, but after what happened, I knew for certain. [jump onto blocks] I mean, why would they? Look at me [hold arms out] .    [I’m looking at the mirror on the wall], [sing] [here we are again. Through my rise and fall] [speak] , [you’ve been my only friend]. [sing]    [sit] I’d only ever been taken for granted by those around me and used by people who don’t understand what it does to someone. What using someone and not caring about what they think does to someone. It’s hard [stand up] !    Too hard [fall to knees] .    Well, I thought no one cared about me. [stand up] But the best thing that came out of my act of desperation was finding someone who actually cares about me. Someone that I’d always cared for but had never thought cared about me.    He has become a very important person in my life and the one who reminds me every day why life is worth living.    This is how you remind me of what I really am. [sing]    Yeah, sure. Life will always have its ups and downs and it hasn’t been easy to let go of the familiar feelings of depression but, with his help, I’ve gotten there.    I won’t give up on us, even if the skies get rough. [speak]    He has given me hope in life and has helped me to become more connected with life and my family and friends. I am finally able to enjoy things in life and not feel guilt over it, even if I have just recently lost someone.    Well, I know the feeling, of finding yourself stuck out on the ledge. And there ain't no healing, from cutting yourself with the jagged edge. Stop thinking about the easy way out, ta ke it from someone who's been where you're at. Cos you’re not done, you’re far too young, and the best is yet to come. [sing]    I just hope that someday, everyone will find their reason to live. Publication Date: May 4th 2015 https://www.bookrix.com/-vm960b0275a1635

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-angel-fang-life-is-not-always-serene/

Angel Fang Life is not always serene. Indeed,it is not Publication Date: February 5th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-angelfang

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-rwby-lover-kirito-039-s-surprise-part-10/

RWBY lover, Asuna Yuuki Kirito's Surprise part 10 The love circle Gal and Silica woke up with kazuto missing as they both looked at echouther with confusion "huh, where did he go" they both said with a confused look as they walked down stairs seeing him as he's cooking breakfast for them "good morning, and silica your mom sent you a letter" he said with a smile, as she opened it to read it she read it out aloud "my dearest daughter i am sending your stuff to kazuto's house so you can live with him and gal because you practically stay there all day any way now hand the letter to kazuto, dear kazuto take care of my daughter because she loves you so much so please dont break her heart and as for Gal take care of her to dont let her get in trouble, love Silicas mom" he close the letter as silica screamed with excitement and Gal and kazuto just smiled at her "its just like a slumber party except for im living here now with you three, at that moment kazuto's aunt came walking in to the kitchen as she opened her eyes wide "What, your coming to live with us silica" she asked with an amazed look as "mhm my mom is sending my stuff right now it should be here in a few minutes" she answered with a blush since shes going to be living with kazuto. "well we have an extra roo" she was about to finish as silica screamed "ill stay with kazuto in his room!" she said with a smile and a blush "now dont be thinking your gunna have him to your self, i mean he is Gals boyfreind" kazuto's aunt said with a smile, "i know that" she said with a slouch as Gal walked up to kazuto and kissed him, "i love you kazuto" Gal said with a smile as kazuto smiled at her and kissed her "i love you two " he smiled and kept cooking. "now take your seat so i can give you all breakfast", kazuto said with a caring voice as they all took there seats and ate breakfast with kazuto, after breakfast kazuto and gal walked up to his room and sat on his bed talking about having silica living with them and things they wont be albe to do but in the end they just agreed with it, "ok silica heres the rules no kissing kazuto, no pulling a fast one on him and no stealing him away from me" she said with a demanding voice "ok" she said with a sarcastic voice, "ok imma go down stairs and wait for my stuff to get here" she ran out of the room down the stairs. The love circle part 2 "it took a while for my stuff to get to your house didnt it kazuto" Silica said with a smile, "yeah it did which im amazed by, since you live pretty close by" he said with a confused look on his face "well anyway lets get my stuff up to your room" she said with a smile as they all started carrying things to his room, when they finished silica walked out of the room to make stuff to drink as Gal pushed kazuto on to the bed she started kissing him deeply as they started to get into it silica walked into the room as she tapped her foot looking at them "if you want to be alone you could just tell me" she said with an annoyed voice as she walked out of his room as gal and kazuto just started kissing again as gal was ontop of him as kazuto was looking at her, "i love you Gal" he said with a dazed face of looking at her as gal just started kissing him without stopping for anything as kazuto's aunt opened the door as she saw gal and kazuto kissing, "you could have locked the door you too and where's silica" Gal and kazuto stopped kissing as they looked at her "i think she went down stairs" Gal said with an annoyed face. kazuto's aunt closed the door as Gal stood up and locked it "sorry Gal we should have done that in the first place" he said with a kinda annoyed face as they heard a knock on the door as kazuto's aunt screamed "silicas gone" she said with a sad voice from on the other side of the door as Gal opened the door, but kazuto was the one to run out and go look for her "where could you have gone" he said talking to him self running around town as he finnally turned around the corner as she was hugging her knees in the alley just not talking as kazuto saw she was being bullied by two guys as he ran in and punched one of them as they started kicking him while he was down "huh, you're going to pay for that you little shit" one of the man that were kicking him said with an angered voice as Gal walked around the corner and grabbed on of the men by the leg and snapped his leg outta place, as the other guy swung at her she moved and grabbed his arm snapping it outta place as she just looked at them with no emotion on her face as she saw kazuto on the floor caughing up blood "kazuto!" she ran up to him and hugged him close "please be ok please be ok please be ok" she said repeatedly as she listened to his heart beat, and she started crying for fear of losing him as they took him to the hospital to await his health condition. Publication Date: October 10th 2013 https://www.bookrix.com/-dnf10382a424525

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sarah-bowden-diary/

Sarah Bowden Diary I dedicate this book to the only person who stayed at my side through it all. Jay thanks Stud :D I also, Dedicate this book to everyone who's made a mistake, it happens just learn from it. How it started My Diary Wednesday I stopped going to church months ago because of the bad decisions that I decided to make. I was only 14 years old when I made this dumb decision and because of that decision I can’t see the one guy who I really like. I went to a church where the teenagers have their own building. Sounds awesome right well that’s how it started.   Wednesday night service I met this guy named Luke he was 16 and I thought he was just the cutesiest guy ever. I walked up to him and his stepbrother to introduce myself to them. After praise and worship was over everyone had gone outside, Luke walked up to me and asked for my number I didn’t give it to him. He had no problem collecting all the other girl’s numbers though. Me and my friend were talking when Luke walked back up to me and started talking to me; all the girls that saw him talking to me were just jumping in the conversation which was annoying. I walked away and went inside and went to the sound room where I saw Jay.     Me and Jay walked around we even danced, when I was with him I felt happy all the time. Even when we were mad at each other I was still happy because he’s in my life. After Wednesday night was over I went home and started texting Jay.           Lust   Sunday   I went to church Sunday and saw my friend Emmanuel he went to school with Luke. He came and sat next to me and said Luke was talking about you at school, he said he wants you to be his main chick. I didn’t know what that was til he explained it to me. A main chick is the girlfriend, Side chicks are the ones that he have on the side. I didn’t really care I just knew that I liked him, stupid yeah I know but that’s how I felt. Even though I liked Luke I liked Jay and still do.   Church had finished early for the teens so me and my friends walked outside and sat on the bench. I pulled out my phone to text jay just to see how is morning was going. Jay is just one of those guys’ that’s hard to find because there’s not a lot of guys out there like him anymore. He’s just awesome Mistakes   guys out there like him anymore. He’s just awesome     Wednesday   I didn’t come to church for 2 Wednesday because I was celebrating my dad’s 40th birthday. I went to church the following Wednesday to walk into drama! This girl Kayla walked up to me and just went off on me, I asked her if we could talk outside because praise and worship was going on and everyone was staring at us. We walked outside and she said this girl who claimed to be my sister told her to say away from Luke cause Luke was Sarah’s (Mine). I was confused I only have 2 sisters and their 5 and 8. She started talking to her friend so I walked inside tapped Luke on the knee and asked if I could talk to him. Luke and I walked over to the pool table to talk, I told him that I was sorry for all the drama that tiara had caused; he accepted my apology and asked for my number and I gave it to him.   Around 11 at night I got a text message from Luke and we started talking. He made me feel I don’t know how I felt with him I guess it was more lust than it was love.     A couple weeks later he asked me out for the first time and I said no because I just wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted. He said will you be my beauty and can I be your beast that was the corniest thing I’ve ever heard lol. He asked me out 4 more times and I finally said yes.     I missed Jay so much I just slowly but surely stopped talking to him and I made my life all about Luke. I would go to church for found films and me and Luke would just leave and go somewhere and make-out. I started acting different drama literally became my life. Jay told me millions of times he’s not a good guy you’re going to get hurt, I didn’t listen to him at all when Jay started telling me these things I started to hate him a little because I just wanted him to be happy for me. And see how much Luke made me happy. Life   I sang the song not a bad thing to Luke at like 10 at night and he said you have a beautiful voice. He said Am I the first guy you’ve ever sang to I told him no Jay was the first, he got pissed he has jealousy problems I found that out later on in the relationship.     I’m the type of girl that likes when someone just stands up and says you’re my girl I don’t like you with him, I wanted Jay to be the one to say that….  But he wasn’t… it never came... Jay is the nicest guy in the world but… I don’t think he’s the type of guy to fight for what he wants. Me and Jay didn’t talk for a while I started to feel lonely yes I had Luke but I wanted Jay back. I started acting bad I would ditch church to be with Luke  I would tell my parents that I was going to church when I would be with Luke Making out. Because I was with Luke I knew that all the other girls were jealous so I would kiss him in front of the other girls just so they could see that he was mine! Before Luke I rarely did anything bad but once he came I felt like I had to try and keep up with him.   And the biggest mistake of them all, I went to dance practice got there an hour early; I saw Jay and I thought that was kind of weird because I’ve never seen him up at church when I had dance practice. I just walked passed him and went inside where I saw Luke we walked around talking with some friends and him and his friend pulled me and my “Friend” in the room and started making out. We laid on the floor first he was on top than I was he sat up with me on top of him and sucked on my upper boob and gave me a hickey. After all of that it was time for us to get to dance class.   My dad picked me up from dance he came inside the building when I walked in the hallway with my dad Luke tried to pin me up against the wall and kiss me I dodged it though and gave him the look and he backed away. I would’ve kissed him before I left but I wasn’t allowed to date then. When I got home Luke told me to call him and I did he wanted to know what was going on why I dodged when I told him that was my dad, He said your dad is one big as* nigga. This was true my dad can be scary at times. I was on the phone with Luke til like 12 in the morning and I got caught and got my phone taken away. I wasn’t able to text or call or see anyone for a couple days. I told my 19 year old brother that I was dating a 16 year old he had no problem with that because he thought Luke had just turned 16 but that wasn’t the case he was about to turn 17. When my brother finally saw Luke for the first time he was like no he’s not a good dude, I didn’t believe him and I kept dating him thinking that he was the one.     After my brother found out I was still dating him he told my parents and I got in so much trouble. They wanted to know everything about him when they sat down to talk with me. I started by saying he’s 16 about to be 17 in October he’s been in Juvie for drugs and we would kiss and stuff. My parents had a shock look on their face when I said that. They said that I would not be able to go back to church until like they felt they could trust me. I sneaked my phone back broke up with Luke wrote jay’s number down and put the phone back in its place; he’s the only one I talk to and I couldn’t be happier. Jay and I are planning on going to homecoming together and even prom.   (Based on True events of my Life.) Mistakes were made in my life don’t judge I’m still young and still learning.       Text: Sarah Images: sarah Editing: Sarah All rights reserved. Publication Date: October 28th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-ye693a3644cf445

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-brittany-richards-it-039-s-like-we-039-re-living-in-hell/

Brittany Richards It's Like We're Living In Hell! my life in hell Chapter 1   You could feel, almost literally, the tension in the air, tension between me and my mother. The constant fighting and stress became the normal. The physical and emotional hurt did too. “Stop being and ass!” She yelled at me. The only thing I said was that I thought she was taking the germaphobe-thing too far, that it was getting kind of out of hand. It wasn’t like I said it in a mean way; I was only telling her my opinion. I was always told that my opinion counted, but apparently not in this house. “Do you all want us to get fucking sick, do you want your little brother to get sick again” Tears started to tear up. She always seemed to know the right thing to get to me. And she had the nerves to bring up my little brother! I feel bad for him. Ever since he was born he’s been a “momma’s boy,” and she seems to always have him with her. It’s not like a mother kind of need though. My brother could be with me or his father my step-father, and she still needs my brother with her. I feel bad for him. My vision started to blur from the tears in my eyes. “No! I just wanted to say what was on my mind!” I yelled. Anger was boiling inside me by now. I finished getting ready for school, and grabbing my stuff, stormed out the door, slamming it behind me. I started to walk to the bus stop, and began crying again. Chapter 2 I came out of my room, my stomach was growling, so I walked to the kitchen. My mother looked up from her chair; she was with my brother as usual. “What are you doing?” she asked as I walked towards the kitchen. I was a smart ass, always have been, and still am. “I’m hungry, I want food. Is that ok with you? ‘Cause if it’s not I won’t eat.” I replied, laughing a little to myself. She didn’t understand my sarcasm. I never understood it for the rest of my family is sarcastic. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” She yelled back. I kept walking towards the kitchen, my stomach still yelling at me to feed it. “Never mind, I was trying to make a joke, that’s all.”I got to the fridge and whispered to myself, ‘God!’ and rolled my eyes. It was like she heard me, for the next thing I knew she was running at me with her hand extended. I flinched but not quickly enough. A hand slammed into my face, making me fly back, almost making me hit my head on the table. I landed on my butt. “Don’t you ever, ever, talk to me in that tone again! You hear me?” I didn’t answer her at first. I was too afraid that I would say the wrong thing. She ran over to me and raised her hand up again as if to hit me, but she didn’t, instead she yelled at me again, “Do you fucking hear me?” This time she yelled it louder. I was shocked I didn’t know that was possible.  I didn’t hesitate this time and nodded my head. My mother slowly lowered her hand, “Good, that’s what I fucking though.” She turned around and started walking back to my brother. “Such a fucking ungrateful worthless thing!” she yelled as she did. Looking back at me she yelled, “Fuck you!” I tried to hold back the tears, but I just wasn’t strong enough to do it. They started running out, almost like a waterfall. Once they started, I couldn’t hold them back. I ran to my room, forgetting about the food, I just didn’t want to be out there anymore. When I got to my room I looked in the mirror. There was a large red handprint across my face when she had hit me. I hurt real badly. Chapter 3 It was time to get ready for school and I decided to sleep in for five minutes. I asked my mother if it was ok before doing so, she said it was. It was only about four minutes later, she came running in screaming at me, “Get the fuck out of bed!” I was suddenly up but wasn’t out of bed yet, when she started pulling me literally out of bed. “You said I could sleep in for five minutes!” I yelled back, still half asleep. “You only have fucking ten minutes to get ready!” she yelled, pointing towards my alarm clock. I looked over at my clock, it read six thirty, giving me fifteen minutes to get ready, not ten. I didn’t understand why she was literally dragging me out of bed though. She pulled me off my bed and on the floor. “Now get ready I’ll be back in ten minutes and if you’re not fucking ready you’re going to school the way you are!” She seemed to like to yell at me for reasons unknown.  I got ready, but I ran out of my mother’s ‘time’ apparently. She came running in, screaming at me like before. “Why the hell aren’t you ready? What the fuck! You are going to fucking school like this!” I didn’t even have a shirt on yet. That was the last thing to do but she didn’t care. She grabbed my arm, hard, and started pulling me towards the door. When she yanked me I fell to the ground my back on the floor. She still had me by one arm. I started screaming and yelling trying to make her let go. I started trying to pull away but she wouldn’t let go. I held onto the doorway for dear life, but she just pulled harder. I was glad that I let go because at the rate she was pulling she would have either dislocated, or even broken, my arm. I kept screaming and yelling for help and for her to let go of my arm but she wouldn’t. Eventually I gave up and let her drag me.  When she was done dragging me I quickly ran into the bathroom when I got the chance too – it only took me like four tries to though – and locked the door. My back hurt really badly so I turned around to look at it in the mirror. I had a huge brush burn all over my back. Once again, like before when she tried this shit before, I started to cry. I crawled into the tub, closing the curtain behind me. I sat in the tub for awhile crying, it just wouldn’t stop. I had my shirt with me so I put it on, but it just made my back hurt worse. It was so bad that it was bleeding, badly. I knew I’d have to come out sometime; I have to go to -. Suddenly there was banging on the door. My eyes started to become watery again. I was scared for my life. Chapter 4 Now I’m not perfect, but my mother had no reasons to do most of the things she did. She eventually sent me to counseling, which was fun; because she thought the problem was me. She was wrong. There were things I have deserved in life, but a lot of it was just because my mother was like that, she still is.  We sat there for an hour, barely speaking a word. Was this supposed to help? What was this for, it wasn’t getting us anywhere? I looked around the room, which was very small. The couch I was sitting on wasn’t very comfortable. You sit across from me, with her pen and notepad. She never really wrote anything down on it, but she had it anyways. There are pictures people drew on the walls, they surround us. I stare out the window to my left and wonder what it is like outside. You say something that gets my attention. “So why do you think this is happening?” I want to say to you, “Because my mother is a psychotic bitch,” but I don’t because I know you would talk to her. Instead I just shrug my shoulders like the millions of times I have before. You ask me another question but I don’t hear it, so I look at you and you get the hint to repeat the question. “So what can we do to fix these problems you guys have?” Again I want to say something like, “Get her the hell out of my life. Save me from this hell,” but I don’t for the same reason as before. So I just shrug my shoulders again  I continued to do this for about a year. It never helped, but my mother had this idea in her head that it did. My mother has never helped me any with my problems, instead she has left me to fend for myself in life. She thinks that she is doing the right thing that she is being a good parent. She says she does these things because she loves me, but I have a hard time believing that. Chapter 5 I never come out of my room in the fear of my mother. I say locked up in my room for hours, even days, only to come out when it is an emergency, or to eat. I came out of my room once only to hear my mom mumbling something to someone, who knows who. I turned to look at her. “What did you say?” I asked her. “Nothing,” she replied. This confused me for I just heard her say something. “Seriously what did you say?” I asked her again. “I said fucking nothing! Why the hell won’t you listen to me? What the fuck! Why the hell does it matter anyways?” She yelled. I didn’t like when she yelled, but it was quite funny. Whenever she had a conversation about something important, like when I got in trouble, she would say that she wasn’t yelling. Then I would always think to myself, ‘Who are you kidding?’ She was always like this, well ever since I could remember. My father has always told me that when I was born, she wasn’t like this, but somehow I have a hard time believing him.  It saddens me to think that there are other parents out there that are like that, that would do this to their children. I had a hard time coping with this, which led to things in my life that I should have never done and now I look back and think to myself, ‘Why did I do these things in the first place?’ I realize now that there are other ways to cope with things, and not in the manor I did. Publication Date: March 12th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-jacktheunicorn

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-miley2-the-lovestory/

miley2 the lovestory the first day creek. " mr.willson sorry to interupt your class but we have a new student" said the counceler. " no problem lets see were we can seat her." said mr.willson."hmmmmm. well theres a seat right next to justin." said mr. willsonwhats your name." " w-willow, willow forbrich."i said as i cleared my throught. " well get on up there your in middle school not in kinder garden." said mr.willson. as soon as i sat down i blocked him out and started day dreaming. i lived in kentukey so i dreamed about me runing through the feileds and peting the catle. my favorate part there was the old willow tree that sat outside my window i usto stare at it for days on end thats why my mom called me willow becaise when she was little she usto look at it to and she would go outside and play ring around the rosey. "HEY HEY you umm willow." said cody a guy that sat on the other side of me. " hu what oh yeah sure." i said. " willow i would like you to-" said mr.willson right as the bell rung. " read pages 213-219. willow and issabella i would like to see you." said mr.willson said. " yes" i said for her and me. in the corner of my eye i saw justin with his black hair and brown eyes and soft lips. " you to become friends."siad mr.wilson. " yes sir mr.willson ill be friends with her." said issabella. " willow." justin said. " yes justin" i said in fear. " i was just wounderin if you wannated to go out." said justin. " yeah sure." i said and with that i kissed him strate out kissed him. then i whent to my locker and rasted home. Mom wasn't there becaues she had died three years ago. " Dad why are you all dressed you." i asked him with a shoked experetion. " well i going to have dinner with miss.gotowich." he answered. " what why. why her. shes really a wich. i don't like her and her spookey hair that is red firey locks and thoses bid black eyes. and her voice is like you steping on dead leves. why, why, why." i said. " well one i promist her i would take her to dinner. and two you need some one to take care of you wile im at work."he said. ring ring. " ill get it and by the way im going on a date to." i said to my dad. " hello." it was just grate it was miss.gotowich. "hello willow how are you." she said. " FINE! what do you need."i yelled. " may i speak to your dad." she said. " dad" i yelled. "yes." he said. "its miss. gotowich." isaid. i went in to the other room not much after that i heard him hang up the phone. then he said."bye love you have a go time you may through a party." well that mite be a problem i thought. " ok love you dad." i said before he left. the partey dodododo. " hey issabella. theres a partey at my house........ to be continued........ Publication Date: January 28th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-miley2

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-dawn-legers-i-think-i-am-in-love-with-my-stalker/

Dawn Legers I Think I Am In Love With My Stalker.... The Beginning Hi, I am Rosaleana, call me Rose. I am twenty and I have a boring ass job that pays minimum wage. I have a shitty apartment in New York. I live in the hood because that’s all I can afford. I have brown hair and hazel eyes. I am 5’2 and thin. I have one best friend, Tyrie. We do everything together but my parents never liked her because she was a bad kid but what they don’t know is that I was behind all the shit we did together. But it doesn’t matter if my parents don’t like her anymore because they kicked me out because I lost my virginity and got pregnant before I was married. Yeah, they are those kind of people. I was sixteen and once they found out they packed my shit for me and throw me out without a warning. I have never seen them after that and frankly I don’t want to ever see them. My daughter doesn’t need people like my parents in her life. I won’t ever raise her the way they raised me. I want the best for my baby girl and she will not have anything to do with them. (Until she in old enough to make that decision herself.) “Hi Angle, how are you doing today?” I asked while walking into the day care that my daughter attends. “I am doing just fine and how are you Rose?” she asked politely smiling wide which showed all of her bright white teeth. “I am just great. I’m here to pick up my daughter and going to go over to my friends house. We are going to take our kids to the park today” I said even though she didn’t ask. “Awe how sweet. Well tell Tyrie that I said hi for me” she said. “I will. Did she inform you that I am going to be picking up Brenton today?” I asked because I don’t want there to be a fuse about me taking someone else’s child. “Yes, she just called about twenty minutes ago informing informing me. Thank you for making sure” she said while I started to walk into the kids room to pick up Rebeca, but call her Becka, and Brenton. When I walked into the room I saw Becka and and Brenton playing with legos. Awe I thought to myself. I smiled a huge smile and I bet I looked liked a weirdo because some of the kids gave me a weird look. I turned my head to find the teacher and sure enough she sitting at her desk on the computer. I walked over and signed my daughter and Brenton out. “Hi Mis. Ball. How are you doing today?” I asked trying to make small talk. “I am tired. I’m ready to go home and jump in my bed” she said while smirking. “How are you Rose?” she asked. “I am just fine” I answered while giving her a half smile and turned around to get the babies. “Mommy” Becka shrieked while jumped up and hugging me. “Hey sweetie. Ready?” I asked while I kissing her head. Yes!” she said very excitingly. I looked over at Brenton and picked him up. He is two and half years younger then Becka which makes Brenton one and half. Becka started to tickle his foot and he screamed while laughing. “Becka not in here. The kids are playing. We don’t want to be rude” I remind her and put Brenton’s coat on him and his shoes while Becka put her shoes on. Benton yelled in my ear telling me that he is ready to go ASAP!  I looked over at him and he had a huge smile on his face. “You’re a brat” I commented and he just laughed and smiled bigger. I walked over to Becka to see if she was done putting on her shoes but of course she was trying to put them on the wrong feet. “Becka your shoes are on the wrong feet again” I informed her. She looked up at me with rosy red cheeks. She looked a little embarrassed and changed the shoes to the right feet right away. “Thank ma’am” she said while jumping up to her feet. I took her by her hand and Brenton was in my arms and we walked out. When we got to the car Becka ran in front of me and I was about to scream her name when she opened the door for me to put Brenton in. “How helpful you are. Thank you baby” I said. She smiled the biggest smile and ran around the car to her side. I made sure she was buckled before I drove off and in no time we were at Tyrie’s house. I looked back and I saw both of them asleep. I got out of the car and closed my door quietly and walked up to Tryie’s  to get her. I knocked a few times but there was no answer. That’s weird. She knew we were coming I thought to myself. She must have fallen asleep. I pulled out the keys to her house and was about to unlock the door when I noticed that the was cracked. Okay now thats weird. She wouldn’t leaves her door unlocked or even leave it open I thought. I started to get worried and I slowly opened the door and there was a huge mess in the living room. The chairs looked like they where thrown across the room and the plants were tips over. The couch was moved. My eyes began to widen because this doesn’t look good. I walked back to the door and looked out to see if the kids was still asleep and they were. “Just in case” I said to myself and locked the car. I walked through the living room and right into the dinning room where the chairs where moved and the table was also moved a little. Tears began to fill my eyes because  this looks like a crime scene. Her house wouldn’t look like this other wise. I walked up stairs and into her bedroom. When I opened her door her bed was messed up. I looked over to her bathroom and it cracked open. The light was on and I walked over to it and before I even looked in I knew I would regret what I would see. I pushed the door opened enough that I could peek in but there was something in the way. “Tyrie?” I said softly to see if she is blocking the door. She didn’t answer me so I shoved the door and when I peaked my head in I saw the most horrifying scene. Her body was up against the door and there was blood all over the bathroom. She was stabbed a least ten times. I screamed and ran out of the bathroom and down the stairs and out the front door. I jumped in the car and took off. When I got home I took the kids out of the car and sat them down to watch some T.V. I picked up my phone to call the cops. They answered and I told them what I saw and her address. They said that they would send someone down to talk to me and I told them my address. I waited for the police to show up and sure enough a hour later they did. “Ma’am, are you Rosaleana?” one of the officers said. “Yes I am her. Do you guys have any leads yet?” I asked with tears stinging the back of my eyes. “Not yet but we were hoping you would know something” one officer asked while the other one looked through my front door and saw that Tyrie’s son was with me. “Isn’t that Tyrie’s son?” he asked. “Yes. I picked him up while I was picking up my daughter from daycare. Tyrie and I was going to take them to the park today to play” I said in a shaky voice and hearing the officer say her name made me cry and when I said her name I cried even harder. “I’m sorry” I said for crying. “No need to apologize” the first officer said. I nodded my head in responds because I was trying to pull myself together. “So what is going to happen to Brenton?” I asked with concern. “We can’t make that decision but here in a little bit foster care workers will come and talk to you but right now lets stay focus on the crime. Do you know anyone that would want to hurt Tyrie?” the second officer asked. It took a few minutes because almost everyone loved Tyrie. She was a nice, sweet, caring person but then it hit me. “The baby daddy” I said. “The baby daddy” both of the officers asked while looked at me so I explained the issue with the baby daddy. “He was mad at her because she refused to let Brenton go and stay the night with him. He said he was going to get her back but I didn’t know that he would go as far as killing her” I said. “And what is this baby daddy’s name?” The first officer, Dave, asked. “Robert” I said. “Okay and is there anyone else that might be angry with Tyrie?” The second Officer, Roger, asked. “Um…..her parents ever liked her. They said they wished they never had a daughter like her and Tyrie hit her mom across the face and her mother said that she would get her back” I said. “okay and is that all? Anyone else?” Roger asked. I can’t think of anyone else” I reassured them. “Here my office number. If you remember anything please call” Dave said while handing me a white card. “Okay I will” I said while I forced a small smile on my face. He nodded and walked back to his car. When they drove off, I walked back inside and sat down on the couch next to the kids.   The Foster Workers I heard a knock at the front door and I jumped up from the dinning table. I just got done cooking and everyone was eating. “Hello” I greeted a man and a female when I opened the door. “Hello. Are you Rosaleana?” The Female said. “Yes I am her” I answered. “Hello I am Jessica” She introduced herself while shacking my hand. “Nice to meet you” I said sweetly. I looked over at the man and he took me by the hand and shook it. “I am Tyler” he said. “Hello. Nice to meet you” I said greeting him too. “So lets get down to business shall we?” Jessica asked. “Oh yes please” I said while stepping outside and shutting the door behind me. “I don’t want to have this convocation around my child and Brenton” I said trying to explain why I didn’t invite them inside. “I understand but you know that I need to talk to Brenton” Tyler said. “How?” I asked. “He is one and half and he doesn’t know how to talk” I told him. “Oh well then never mind I will just need to take a look at him and ask you a few questions about him and what you think is best for him” he said. “Why me?” I asked while looking up at him. “Because in Tyrie’s will you are the godmother and Kyle is the godfather. Do you know a Kyle?” Jessica asked me. “No I don’t believe so” I said shocked because I can’t get over the thought that I was the godmother. I never knew that I thought to myself. “Yes and our first question is, do you want to keep him here with you?” Tyler asked. “Oh yes.” I said reassuring them that I do want to have custody of Brenton. “Okay perfect and do you have enough space for him?” Jessica asked. “I can move him into my room and I can have the living room?” I said but kind of asking to make sure if that was alright. “okay perfect and what about money?” Jessica asked. “What about money?” I asked back. “Do you have enough money to provide for two children?” Tyler asked. “Oh umm…I make money at work…but I can get on food stamps?” I asked. “That sounds good” Tyler said while looking over at Jessica so make sure that this will work. She nodded her head in agreement. “Oh and almost forgot, Tyrie left 100,000 dollars for you to take good care of Brenton. My eyes went big and I was in awe. “WOW!” Is all I could say. “Thank you” I said while they handed my a big back full of money. “Now all we have to do is look around the house and we will be doing a back ground check on you and you will take a piss test one a month. You will not know when though. It will be a surprise” she said while walking up to my front door and walking in. “Okay” I agreed. Publication Date: October 1st 2017 https://www.bookrix.com/-dta5d3c3a1b1c95

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-marlea-yes-or-no/

marlea Yes or No You n Me I dedicate this horrible book to my big brother Hunter, my big sister Brittany and my best friend Samantha.All of them has always been then for me Hi my names Coraline. Coraline Jones is who i am no matter how hard i try to change it. Everybody calls me CJ for short. Iv got five sisters and two brothers. Now at this point you might think that my mom needs to find a hobby, but its just not like that. See my mom ended up having four kids. Theres my eighteen year old sister Layla, me Coraline im sixteen years old, my brother Travis who's eleven, and my little baby sister Maddy shes eight. Yes i know it may not make any sense now but it will in just a minute. My father went and got four other women pregnant before he got my mom pregnant. I don't know of my three eldest sisters so i cant tell you about them. I can tell you about my big brother Troy though. Troy is seventeen in a foster home and has been in and will be in more trouble than ever. Our dad left him all alone in a store one night when a nice family found him. Troys real mom died of breast cancer when Troy was two years old. They took him in like he was one of them. Once he turned thirteen they found out that he wasn't one of them at all. Troy took his "mothers" make up and only wore the color black and every once in a blue moon white. Im still not sure if black and white are considered a color at all. Troy was what we teens would call a mixture of emo and goth. Now i cant be making Troy look like a bad kid or anything well becouse i was the same way. Publication Date: July 5th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-marlea1999

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-sharry-banks-you-and-your-doubts-part-one/

sharry banks YOU and YOUR doubts part one to:my loving mom,dad,and brother when I look into your eyes, I see more than just a loser I see, I see an eagle flying high. high in the sky.I may be the only one who sees you as more than just a sucker. But not the only one you love. You can't leave because of what you heard you have to follow your heart beleive in your self and if your heart says go then I have to release you. Go where ever your heart may take you. Publication Date: December 2nd 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-sharrybaby

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-lilprincess3-twilight-days/

lilprincess3 Twilight Days no title's in this story though there will be ..... "mwommy i hurt". my 5 year old figure said. my five years in the world were quiet quiet. though in mention we did only live in london 1995. my sister a snooty person always blames somethin on me when i did not do it though i do get my way always so shes the one who gets in trouble yah she trys but she loses. Publication Date: December 27th 2011 https://www.bookrix.com/-lilprincess3

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-mylie-paragraph-stories/

Mylie Paragraph stories Fish Pee Do fish pee? What do you think? When I swim at the beach do I swim in fish pee? Its a good thing water is filtered or I could be drinking fish pee! Ewe gross! Just thinking about it! Super hero or not? Is Super man really a super hero? Lettts find ouuuuut! Do do da la ma bam bam! Come on out Super man! Now lets look at the clip. Oo ow aw. Super man sorry but your out. Lets look at the cops. Ya awsome! Cops win! Dogs are misunderstood Hi, I'm Misty. I'm a pug and my owner Millisa like most owners misunderstand dogs. We are silented with our voice cause humans don't like when dogs bark. Also it's bad for us to beg, but really you would to if you got the same food every day. The last thing I'm going to say is whats with the clothes? Bye for now, Misty. Are we really here? Have you ever wondered if we're really here or if this is a dream and soon we'll wake up to find we look diffrint and talk different. Or mabey we like cats have 9 lives like 8 dreams and 1 life. Mabey we really live in a computer in a place that looks like mars. Wouldn't be cool to live inside a door that hs a whole different culture? Are we really here? This page was made on November 13th 2010. And finised at 10:16. I'm tired so I think I just might go to bed. I'm entering a contest to see if I can get this book published. I hope I win! It would be so cool. I'm typing this paragraph so I can finish 1 page and do another 1 tomarrow. I plan to have at least 5 pages on here. Do you like my stories? Read more at myliesreport.com. It's my own website were I put my stories up so others can read them. My dad pays for it. This is taking along time so ya. I'm in 5th grade. Awsome right! I love to write books. Oh heres a tip let other people talk about their day it makes you popular. Thats it I'm going to bed. Good night sleep tight. Oh heres a joke:Why did the cow cross the street? It was the chikens day off! Ha ha ha lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol! Ok i wasn't that funny.Heres a question: What kind of commedian are you? Stand up,slap,or a diffrent kind? Hello Hello to you.Hello to you. Hello over their. Hello r ight here. Hello to all. Publication Date: November 14th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-myliemoo227

https://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-by-perry-the-evil-uppie/

By Perry The Evil Uppie A Demon Uppie To everyone who HATES those annoying brats Club Penguin BAY BEES!! Chapter 1: Courage On January First 2001, a new uppie (puppy) was born! He was named Courage because he seemed brave. When Courage was 4, he got thrown in the Pet Shop! "Oh look at that little dog!" Laughed the dogs that were born in 1996. "STOP!!!" Cried Courage. "What are you gonna do about it?" Hissed the mean dogs. Courage did a deep growl. The mean dogs walked away...laughing. "I'll show them! I'll show them ALL!" Muttered Courage. Now, Courage is 9 years old and it is 2010. "I hope to get picked!" He whispered to his friend, Wing. Wing's real name was Max, but he didn't like Max. He was born the same year as Courage. He makes everyone call him "wing" from his love of wings. "Don't get your hopes up!" Wings replied. "GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRR!!" Growled Courage at Wing. Wing yelped. A bell was rang. The door was open. It wasn't just any open! Chapter 2: The Rich Model Mom (Mumu) A solid gold limo parked. A tan slim model leg popped out. A red carpet rolled! She came in. She scanned the room with her emerald eyes. "She seems weird!" Courage whispered to Wing. Wing nodded. A bay bee walked up to her. The bay bee was cute (not to me but it was to some of the people in the story). "Hwi Miss!" Cried the baby. The model looked down. "EWWWWWWWW!!!!" She shreiked. Then she walked away looking for a pookie. A uppie came up to her. It was Dragon! That annoying uppie always got into trouble! He was born in 1999 and was a big troublemaker! He bit the model's leg! "OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" She screeched. She soon got Dragon off. She spotted the perftect baby. She picked it. "Me want uppie!" The baby said. "Ok! Which uppie?" The Mumu replied. "That one!" She said as she pointed to Courage. Courage wagged his tail. Chapter 3: Is Wing Coming? "Aww!" The Mumu said. She picked Courage. "What about the other one Mumu?" The baby asked. The baby was obsessed with animals and didn't like to see them left behind. "Eww! We arent picking THAT one! It's ugly! And it's collar says it's name on it! It's Wing! Who wants a dog named Wing?" Explained the Mumu. "Courage is a better name and he's much cuter!" Added the Mumu. She picked up Courage and the baby and went home to the iggy. Wing got upset. He sighed, hoping a family would pick him. Chapter 4: Courage's First Night. Courage was angry the family left Wing behind. Wing and him have been best friends since they were 6 years old. He then thought of an evil plan. He would wait a night. "Arf!" Barked Courage. "What's wrong Couwage?" Asked the baby. "Arf?" He said. The baby translated that bark. The bark said "What is your name?". "Mwy name is Lola!" Replied Lola. "Arf!" Barked Courage. Lola could tell that Courage was hungry. "MUMU COUWAGE IS HUNGWY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Shouted Lola. The Mumu ran in with Uppie Chow. Courage tasted it. He spitted it out. He whimpered. The door rang. Lola's mumu ran to the door. "Are you Miss Lexi Pearl?" Asked the mailman. It was her package! "Yes!" She cried. She grabbed the package and slammed the door in the mailman's face. "OW MY BEAK WAS THERE!!!!" He cried. Lexi ignored him. Courage yawned. Lola added a yawn after Courage. "Well, it looks like it's bed time." Said Lexi. Lexi gave Courage Uppie Pajamamas. Lola changed into her Pookie Pajamas. Courage then went to sleep, dreaming of his evil plan, making the plan come more EVIL! Chapter 4: The Tapping TAP TAP TAP! Courage woke up. TAP TAP TAP! He heard tapping at the window. He tiptoed to the window. He seen it was Wing! "Man, what are you doing here? Eventually, Lexi and Lola are gonna see you!" Courage whispered. "I heard your coming up with an evil plan! I have some ideas!" Whispered Wing. "What? Have you been SPYING on me and my family?!" Whispered Courage angrily. "NO!" Whispered Wing back. Wing told him the ideas. Courage liked them. Wing soon left. Courage went to sleep. Chapter 5: Courage's Evilness on Lola Lola woke up to see her uppie right next to her. "Hwi Couwage!" She greeted happily. Courage growled. Courage then bit her! "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" She cried. Courage put on fake blood and did a yelp as loud as he could. Lexi rushd to Lola! She saw the uppie with the fake blood on him. "Oh no!" Lexi said. "Arf..." Barked Courage lightly. She too could translate only what cute uppies are saying. "Oh well I will ground Lola!" Lexi replied. "LOLA! NO TEDDY TOWN,DS,DSI OR WII OR ANYTHING ELECTRONICAL FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK!!!" Yelled Lexi. "BUT MUMU-" Lola began. "NO BUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Interupted Lexi. "You hurt Courage!" Lola cried at the top of her lungs. She then thought something was up. She remembered that uppie in the Pet Shop named Wing. Maybe he set Courage up for this! Lola couldn't leave her room. She sat on the bed and cried. "WAAAAAAAAAA!" She screamed. Lexi ignored her. She petted Courage and gave him cookies. "It's ok Courage! Lola won't hit you again!" Said Lexi. Courage then ran into Lola's room after Lexi let him go free. He shut the door and locked it. HE THEN STARTED DESTROYING LOLA'S ROOM!!!!!! Lexi didn't hear the noise yet. Bookshelfs fell over. A TV got crushed. A rare Golden Elmo was teared to shreads! The wallpaper was peeling off. "STOP!" Said Lola to Courage. "ARF!!!!!!!!!!!" He hissed. He started destroying again. Everything was wrecked. Lexi then noticed the noise. He heard footsteps. Lexi was coming upstairs! Courage quickly broke down Lola's door and ran in his room before Lexi saw anything. Lexi came up. She gasped. She saw everything destroyed! "LOLA! YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Yelled Lexi at Lola. "It wasn't mwe! Couwage did it!" She cried. Lexi went in Courage's room. He was fake-sleeping. Lexi thought it was real. She walked back in. Courage acted like he woke up from the yelling. He came out and watched. He snickered an evil uppie grin. He knew this was gonna be the best plan ever! Chapter 6: Veiwing Courage's plan. On a sheet of paper he hid where NOBODY can find it, there was the plan. One of the steps was to get rid of Lola by blaming her for his evil stunts. Then, the next step was once Lola was gone, he'd do it to Lexi and get Lexi in big trouble and in jail. He then walked out again. Lexi was yelling at Lola. Lola was crying. Lexi walked outside. "I'LL BE RIGHT BACK LOLA! BE GOOD! WATCH THE UPPIE!" Lexi yelled. Lola crawled in the living room. Courage growled. He then tipped over the fire place! The WHOLE igloo caught on fire! He destroyed things. He then ran out as he saw Lexi coming. She gasped. "COURAGE!!! LOLA!!!!" She yelled. She then saw Courage outside safe and sound. She didn't see Lola. She quickly called the Club Penguin Fire Department. "HELP QUICKLY! MY IGLOO IS ON FIRE AND MY BABY IS TRAPPED INSIDE!" She yelled through the phone. "We will be right there!" The firefighters replied. In a few minutes, they were there. They put the fire out. One went in to find Lola. He finally found her! He picked her up and took her outside. She was alive! She was coughing though and was really sick. "ARF!" Courage said. Lexi gasped. "LOLA HOW COULD YOU BURN DOWN MY IGLOO?! YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE MISS!" Yelled Lexi. Lola cried. "I DIDN'T WAAAAAAAAAA!". Lexi bought a new igloo. She punished Lola. Lexi went out again. Courage turned the water on and made it jam so a flood would start. He ran out quickly and made things so Lola couldn't get out. He found Lexi and dragged her to the igloo. Lexi looked in the window. She gasped. Her igloo was flooded! Chapter 7: Poor Lola! Lola eventually got out but was drowned. The CP baby haters laughed at Lola (including me becaause I HATE club penguin bay bees). Lexi cried. Her pookie was gone! She got a new igloo. Courage was nice after a few days. THEN GOT EVIL!! Chapter 8: The Evilness on Lexi Courage destroyed the igloo and made things fall on Lexi. Lexi screamed. Courage destroyed the igloo in a second! Lexi escaped and moved. Courage fallowed her. She renamed Courage to Cerberus after the three headed dog. He found Lexi and burnt down the igloo. He ran back to the Pet Shop, where Wing was waiting. He ran to Wing. "How did it work out?" He asked. "Perfect...just the way I planned it." Courage said. He then laughed evilly! He would do more evil stunts but for now the end. Text: Everything in this book is copyright to Perry Productions except Club Penguin... All rights reserved. Publication Date: November 17th 2010 https://www.bookrix.com/-perryproductions