New technology that makes currency more convenient, safer, and less costly will motivate people's willingness to use new forms of currency. With the technological development in computers, Internet, and cryptology, many new forms of currency emerge, such as digital currency, virtual currency and cryptocurrency, whose relative definitions are very ambiguous, and thus lead to some confusion. This thesis sorts out the evolution of currency forms starting from commodity money and accounting currency, to focusing on the new form of cryptocurrency, and then defining the concepts and interrelation of those forms of currency from a perspective of logic relation and history.
Currency is a hinge for the market economy. With the reform of technologies and systems, the form of currency is also constantly changing. Most of the time in history, currency has a slow evolution in its form. It is generally acknowledged that there are several major stages including commodity money, metal currency, mint, paper money, and fiat money.
Adam Smith thinks the earliest form of currency is commodity money in mainly daily commodities. Then there is metal currency which is handy since it was easy to be weighed, cut into, and checked. Then there is mint made by authorities. Karl Marx thinks there is a historical inevitability in the development of currency from early commodity money as accidental equivalent to gold and silver as universal equivalent. "Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver." John Maynard Keynes has distinguished three main forms of currency: commodity money, inconvertible paper money, and managed currency. Recently Frederics Mishkin has gave five forms of currency: commodity money, inconvertible currency, check, electronic payment, and electronic money.
With the rise of computers, the Internet, and blockchains, there are many new titles of currency forms, such as electronic money, digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, crypto consensus currency, decentralized currency, crypto private currency, token, stablecoin, pyramid selling currency, and so on. What kind of forms of currency do those new currency conceptions refer to? And what is the interrelation? The classification of current forms of currency cannot give a clear definition and these concepts will arise misunderstanding and even chaos. Especially in the recent upsurge of blockchains, cryptocurrency, crypto private currency, crypto private currency, token, and stablecoin rose beyond fiat money sprang up, resulting in a low threshold for issuing, strong liquidity, and a global market hard to oversee. Misconception and ignorance brought about huge financial risks. Some pyramid scheme organizations and funds plate took advantage of such a disordered situation. In the name of decentralization of cryptocurrency and governments' support for blockchains, they exaggerate the safety and prospect of cryptocurrency, crypto private currency, and token and brought great losses to investors. Therefore, this paper is going to sort out all kinds of currency forms and concepts, in order to remove the confusion of currency definitions.
This paper will define currency according to three principles: The definitions must be proven by facts and should be accepted, and it is advised to employ those concepts that are widely acknowledged by the market.
1. The Function, Nature, and Form of Currency
To analyze the complicated concepts of currency form, we firstly need look into
the function and nature of currency. Currency has three functions: storing value. Currency is a means of storing wealth or purchasing power. What's the nature of currency? This question is emphasizing which one is the basic function of currency among mediums of exchange, accounting unit, and a storable value. Other functions derive from this basic function. To answer this question, we find we can reach a consensus that currency's storing value is a derivative function. Currency can be used as medium of exchange and a charging unit so it has the function of storing beyond any exchange activities. If one thing does not have the function of medium of exchange or unit of charge, it also has the function of storing value. This is the normal value of goods or assets. In medium of exchange and unit of charge, the medium of exchange is regarded as the basic function. In other words, the nature of currency is medium of exchange. Since currency is used as medium of exchange, it has the function of a unit charging and storing value. Adam Smith has deduced that currency first appeared as a medium of exchange in bartering era. Carl Menger has elaborated the emergence of currency in goods exchanged and the evolution in different countries of different eras in a more delicate way. He stresses that the measure of value and storing value happened accidentally, and they are not included in the concept of currency. Frederics Mishkin also thinks among three functions, medium of exchange can differentiate currency from other assets like stock, bonds, and property.
However, there is strong support for taking a measure of value as the nature of currency. John Maynard Keynes thinks that money of account is "representation and titular" while general currency is merely "an object of such representation". Karl Marx also thinks that the first function of gold was providing a substance to display the value for the commodity world. The second is medium of circulation. Currency is a measure of value itself, and it is used as medium of circulation to implement this function. David Graeber thinks it is wrong to view medium of exchange as the most important function of currency. He thinks what leads to the emergence of currency is not bartering. People had borrowing and lending behavior long before bartering. In those borrowing and lending activities, currency first has the function of a measure of value. Homer and Zille also think there is a possibility that borrowing and leading lead to the development of the original measurement and currency standard. Whether the nature of currency is medium of exchange or measurement of value, both tendencies have realistic examples. There is a lack of enough evidence to make a judgement. This paper will put disagreement aside temporarily and focus on the forms of currency. Here, I accept two basic functions of currency and hereby deduce two fundamental forms of currency: commodity money and accounting currency.
2. Commodity Money and Accounting Currency
Currently the universally acknowledged currency form of the early stages is commodity money as a medium of exchange. In different areas and different times, different commodities undertook the role of an exchange medium. As commodity money, it could be bought sold early on, which is characteristic of value in use of some non-currency goods. Therefore, it was also called commodity money. But in later stages, paper money only undertakes the function of currency without value in use. It could not be called commodity as before, but it is still commodity money. Therefore, commodity money includes merchandise money, which is the earlier form of commodity money.
Adam Smith has mentioned that the cattle of ancient Greece, the salt of Abyssinia, the shells of India, the tobacco of Virginia, the dried fish of Newfoundland, the sugar of the colonies in Western India, the hides of other countries, even the nails of a village in Scotland of his time, etc., were all used as commodity money. Sydney Homer and Richard Zille think there are approximately 173 classifications of commodity, among which the most common are: beads, cattle, cloth, copper, gold, grains, iron, rice, salt, shells, silver, hides, slaves, and tobacco. Until now, cattle and sheep in some underdeveloped animal husbandry areas have the function of currency, and so do wheat and rice in grain producing districts.
The main feature of the early commodity money lies in its scarcity, and it is widely used so people are willing to accept it. When such commodities are used as a medium of exchange like cattle, sheep, wheat and so on, it is difficult for people to store, transport, separate, and examine them, which brings much inconvenience in exchange. Therefore, with the development of transaction scale, frequency, and depth, the specific forms of commodity money continue to evolve under the premises of:. The Lydians began to use official mints in the 7th century B.C. Until now, it was in circulation.
A significant change of commodity money comes from non-convertible paper money. Before the emergence of mint, the value of commodity money mainly came from value in use brought by its natural attribute, and partly from value in use convenience for exchange. The emergence of mint gives it more premium than that of noble metals with the same weight and quality. For example, a silver coin with its par value of 1 pound can only contain 0.9 pounds of silver. This premium comes from mainly the credit of the forger as an authority. The nature of "credit" is not natural, but social, which comes from social relations. When it comes to non-convertible paper money, though its natural characteristics are convenient for exchange, its value in use almost disappears. What supports its value is merely the authoritative credit.
At this moment, paper money becomes currency not just because it is a commodity, but it represents the social attribute of authority from nearly a worthless substance to commodity money. Here, it is not proper to call it commodity money. Therefore, we call paper money, mint, and early commodity money, rather than merchandise money. In the process of exchange, the ownership of commodity money is transferred, and on the contrary the ownership of commodity is also transferred. Therefore, commodity money is in the form of natural substance and it smooths the payment by substance transfer.
Accounting currency has long been covered by commodity money in mainstream economics. For this reason, David Graber even criticized the logic of the deduction of currency's emergence from bartering in economics since Adam Smith. He thought that it was a complete fallacy. He believed that the reason for the emergence of currency is not bartering, but the financial credit among people, which is debt. Early in 3000 BC, ancient Sumerian documents recorded people's activities of borrowing food and metals. In the recordings, the amount of goods and metals were only a number not a substance. According to this, Graber thought that virtual currency came first and then mint.
In John Maynard Keynes's Das Kapital, at the very beginning he defines money of account as accounting currency that represents debt, price, and average purchasing power, which is the original concept in currency theories. He stresses that currency itself is something that could pay off debt covenants and price contracts after a settlement. It is also a form of storing average purchasing power. Its nature comes from its relationship with the money of account. Here, the money of account is exactly accounting currency. Keynes also deduces general currency from accounting currency and emphasized its function in bearing debts.
The early scene of the emergence of accounting currency were that temples with a lot of wealth provided financial credit to people, so those people became accounting persons. With the development of commerce, there were financial practitioners specializing in credit such as the Bank of Babylon in 600 BC. The basic feature of accounting currency is that the record and transfer of ownership was in numbers.
There are two characteristics of early accounting currency: It is closely related to commodity money in real economic activities. On the one hand, the unit of accounting currency is often a quantity unit of certain substance as currency, such as weight unit shekel with 5000 years' history, which has become the widely used measurement unit of silver and silver coins. On the other hand, commodity money was often used as a means of separation in lending activities. Therefore, in long history, accounting currency mainly existed in financial credit and was closely related to commodity money, rather than the widely used and independent means of payment. Thus, accounting currency was covered in the history of commodity money.
With the emergence of modern banking system, especially the new means of payment of credit card, it has gained its popularity in the west. Likewise, the rapid spread of Alipay and WeChat payment has taken place in China. Finally, forms of commodity money-paper money are shrinking the scope and scale of its use. Modern accounting currency has become the major means of payment in the social economy. With the acceleration of a cashless society worldwide, accounting currency is breaking away and replacing commodity at a fast speed. As a matter of fact, following involves more new forms of currency which are all the evolving forms of accounting currency.
So far, we can give explicit definitions to commodity money and accounting currency:
Commodity money is a kind of currency that is in the form of natural substance and it smooths the payment by substance transfer.
Accounting currency is a kind of currency that people can determine the ownership by the record and transfer of ownership in numbers.
3. Electronic Money and Digital Currency
Accounting currency is a kind of currency that people can determine the ownership by the record and transfer of ownership in numbers. The evolution of recording means is just the evolution of its form. To put simply, it is the evolution of an account book. This process is consistent with the progression of mankind's information carrier. For example, the carrier of recording in Mesopotamia is muddy plate. The stele of ancient Greek and the bamboo slip of ancient China are also the carriers of accounting currency. With the emergence of paper making technology, accounting currency widely employ paper account book.
The emergence of the computer is a revolution for human's recording and spreading of information. Also, it brings fundamental changes to the form of accounting currency. The physical account book is replaced by electronic account book. Accounting currency is now entering the era of electronic money.
The era of electronic money is firstly characteristic of the digitalization of accounting system in banks. In 1958, the first electronic computer was used to deal with saving business in the Bank of America. In the 1960s, ATM began to supplant cashiers' services. Furthermore, electronic communication started to be used for transfer and settlements of assets among banks. The "Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication" was founded in 1973, has become the biggest electronic settlement network among banks all over the world.
Hong Kong, one of the global financial centers, has widely used e-service of financial system or "automatic teller machine" for terminal clients since the 1980. Clients can finish the transfer on the electronic computer systems by just holding plastic cards without going to the bank in person. This new form of currency is called electronic money. Compared with traditional payment, the payment of electronic money can save 1/3 to 1/2 of the transaction cost. In 1993, the payment of electronic money in Japan has accounted for 78% in daily payments. In Switzerland, it is 97% in proportion.
In a broadest sense, when separated from physical account book, currency systems recorded and transferred by electronic information at the same time can all be named electronic money. But the abovementioned electronic money refers to the early form of electronic money in a broad sense, that is financial services offered by banks through computers and electronic transmission technology. It includes automatic document processing system, electronic settlement by transfer of account, credit card automatic telling machine, telephone banking, and home banking system. The main part of the electronic money system works in a closed banking system. The emergence of the Internet has pushed forward the development of electronic money greatly.
The emergence of the Internet is another information technological revolution after computer, which also brings innovation in the form of accounting currency. In 1990, the Internet began its rapid commercialization. In October 1994, Stanford Federal Credit Union became the first financial institution which could provide banking services online. Some electronic money or digital cash based on the Internet appeared one after another. For example, customers of Mondex, which was acquired by MasterCard later, could transfer money by electronic wallet. In Netcash, clients could transfer money to each other by email. In 1997, Coca Cola even opened mobile payment of vending machines.
The truly popularized electronic money system based on the Internet is PayPal, founded in 1998. After its acquisition by eBay in 2002, it not only became a major payment in eBay, but also the main means of payment for wider Internet e-commerce. In 2012, its payment scale has reached 14.5 billion US dollars. China has developed its electronic money late and the popularization of credit card lags far behind the West. But thanks to the Internet wave, China's application of electronic money application on the Internet enjoys a rapid development, especially Alibaba founded in 1999, which has a decisive significance to the release of Taobao and Alipay in 2003. In 2017, China's payment scale on the Internet has reached 24.54 trillion yuan.
Though the payment system based on the Internet is still an accounting system that records and transfers money in electronic information, it belongs to the broad extent of electronic money. Internet payment system however is more open to compared with the so-called electronic money recorded and transferred in the inner system of banks before. It is necessary for us to distinguish between these two forms of currency.
Since the rise of the Internet, the new mode of economy brought by it is universally known as digital economy. In November of 2009, the UK issued "Digital Economy Act". Russian issued the "Digital Economy Planning" in 2017. China also made significant deployments for the development of digital economy in The 13th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development. Accordingly, the electronic money based on Internet is not called Internet currency or Networks currency, but "digital currency", including Mondex, PayPal, and so on.
Therefore, we define digital currency as the currency based on the Internet that can record ownership and be transfer. Before the emergence of the Internet, traditional electronic money confined to banking system was called electronic money. For the sake of convenience and respect for existing usage, it was simplified as electronic currency. In other words, it is accounting currency for electronic storage, and transmission of account books as well as transaction information.
We should pay attention that the universal form of accounting currency is numbers recorded on different media. In the broadest sense, all accounting currency can be called numeric currency. In English, digital currency means currency based on the Internet. However, the same meaning of digital currency in accounting currency can be conveyed as numeric money. In order to reduce confusion and respect reality, this paper suggests that "digital currency" specifically should refer to electronic money based on the Internet.
4. Digital Fiat Money and Virtual Currency
After the emergence of the Internet, there is a rapid development in the forms of digital currency based on the Internet. The earliest and the most widely used is the circulation of fiat money through the Internet among different countries. The abovementioned Mondex, Paypal, Alipay, and WeChat payment are extended fiat money on the Internet. Since there is digital currency independent of fiat money, in order to distinguish them we call this kind of digital currency digital fiat money.
The digital currency independent of fiat money indicates the subject of issuing and recording is not accounting currency from national currency authorities. According to different types of subjects of issuing and recording, it could be divided into two categories: individual recording digital currency and public decentralized recording digital currency.
The fast expansion of Internet business application not only stimulates the digitalization of fiat money, but also produces the demand for endogenous money in the Internet business ecosystem. Flooz.com, which went online in 1999, had a foresight of issuing a currency Flooz aiming at online shopping, but it failed in 2001 because of a lack of market. In contrast, the Internet endogenous digital currency from an authentic market demand had more vitality. In the late 1890s, Warcraft, a kind of game rose. In the process, main resource gold formed a trading and circulating market among game players. The boom of online games made game cards become an important medium of virtual property trading in the game, thus forming game card trading market. After the success of instant communication QQ, the company issued QQ coins in its ecosystem. Some other large Internet companies have similar virtual currency. These game cards and virtual currencies circulated in their own eco-system while some other also expanded beyond their ecosystem, which had arisen financial authorities' attention.
In 2007, 14 ministries and commissions including the ministry of culture jointly issued a document forbidding the purchasing commodities with virtual currency, in case virtual currency should threaten fiat money.
Commercial trading media on the Internet like Flooz, Warcraft gold coins, and QQ coins correspond with the definition of accounting currency based on the Internet, but they are radically different from Paypal, Alipay, WeChat payment, and online banking. They are not issued by national currency authorities, mortgaged on fiat money, or connected with fiat money, but issued or recorded by individuals and enterprises. Since people are accustomed to name a new lifestyle of online shopping, games, and communication as virtual world, this kind of currency beyond fiat money can be called virtual currency.
In 2012, European Central Bank defined virtual currency as an unregulated digital currency issued and controlled by developers for specific use within a virtual community. In 2014, European Banking authority defined virtual currency as a carrier of digital value. Though not issued by central banks or any other public authorities, nor connected with fiat money, it could be circulated, stored, and traded and was accepted as a means of payment by a natural or legal person. The definition of virtual currency from Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of U.S. Department of the Treasury stressed its Legal Tender. China's 14 ministers and commissions also defined this kind of online trading medium virtual currency in Plans on Further Strengthening the Administration of Internet Cafes and Online Games.
Based on the analysis above and in order to reduce confusion, we define "virtual currency" as: based in the Internet, a kind of currency issued and recorded by individuals or institutions beyond governments or abbreviated as folk digital currency. Those issued by private individuals and circulated internally are called "virtual token". In order to make the definition more accurate, we call the digital currency from the digitalization of fiat money such as PayPal, Alipay, and online banking digital fiat money.
5. The Conception of Cryptocurrency
In addition to the stimulation of the boom of Internet economy, a more important reason for the rise of virtual currency is the reflection on the polices of Keynesianism and fiat money system. After World War Ⅱ, many countries broke away from the gold standard and applied the fiat money system supported by national credit to complement Keynesian policies. While those actions prevented economic crisis and deflation, they also brought about problems like persistent inflation and excessive government intervention, finally resulting in stagflation. Therefore, Keynesian policies declined. Meanwhile, liberal monetary theory and policy prospered.
Concerning a series of problems from Keynesianism, Friedman emphasized the importance of stabilizing money He proposed single currency rules. Within the framework of fiat money, he advised to raise the independence of centralized banks to stabilize currency supply. Another more radical way is Hayek's "denationalization of currency". That is, to abandon fiat money and issue credit currency by private individuals to form a currency system that is in the endogenous market through competition. This proposal is not practical but under most circumstances, national credit is more reliable than private credit. However, the emergence of asymmetric crypto technology offers a new possibility for currency denationalization: cryptocurrency.
Asymmetric crypto algorithm was respectively discovered by James Ellis, Clifford Cocks, and Williamson Graham in 1972, as well as Whitfield Diffie, Marty Hellman, and Ralph Merkle in 1976. They later published their earlier and thus had a greater influence. Asymmetric public keys and private keys can realize encryption and decryption of information, as well as signature and verification of messages without any media. This achieves a new mode of human social interaction.
Timothy May thought that asymmetric crypto technology would fundamentally change the way that institutions and governments intervene in economic transactions as that printing changed European society in the Medieval society. It can set up as untraceable electronic currency-Crypto Credits. In 1985, David Chaum pointed out the significance of asymmetric crypto technology to free social interaction in his thesis. Soon, he realized that asymmetric crypto could be used to construct untraceable e-cash. In 1990, he established his own company DigiCash and developed virtual currency that was nearest to success on the Internet at that time.
In 1991, PGP, and John Gilmore founded a private discussion group of cryptography named Cypherpunks. In 1993, Eric Hughes publicized "Declaration of Cypherpunks", claiming that Cypherpunks was dedicated to security of personal privacy in the time of electronic network. Eric Hughes also compiled a program of privacy-enhancement mail listings which supported anonymous communication. Later, it became an important platform for the exploration of cryptocurrency. In 1993, Bruce Schneier published "Applied Cryptography" which skillfully bypassed military ban. It contributed greatly to the wide spread of crypto technology and its commercialization.
In 1998, Dai Wei from Cypherpunks put forward anonymous and distributed electronic cryptocurrency system B-money. He proposed that distributed computing was a breakthrough, but the issue of currency had not been effectively solved. In 1997, Adam Back invented Hash Cash application to justify its prevention of spam emails. In 1999, Shawn Fanning and Shawn Parker realized the technologies of point to point networking in Napster which laid a foundation for construction of decentralized network. In 2004, Hal Finney improved Hash Cash by making it "reusable workload verification".
All those above-mentioned currency systems relying on asymmetric crypto technology have failed, but there are many solutions in terms of currency confirmation, currency issuance, operation of distribution, verification mechanism and so on. Eventually, on November 1, 2008, a person named Satoshis Nakamoto, announced that he was researching a point-to-point e-cash system, which was then launched on January 3, 2009, named Bitcoin. Currently, the system has been running successfully for 10 years. Also, thousands of similar or modified currency systems have derived from Bitcoin. All these currencies have adopted asymmetric crypto technology. Thus, they are unified as "Crypto Currency".
Among the cryptocurrency systems represented by Bitcoin, the core functions of the public keys and private keys in asymmetric crypto lie in that the public keys are the public account of currency owners while the private keys are only preserved to use, to sign, and authorize for the confirmation and transfer of currency. There also exists the application of asymmetric crypto technology in current digital fiat money system, which is used to verify the security of transmitting information instead of construct account system so it should not be called cryptocurrency. Besides, people are used to translating "Crypto Currency" into "Encrypted Currency", which is incorrect. Though asymmetric crypto was originally used to encrypt and decrypt information, they were only used for message signature and verification in cryptocurrency rather than encryption.
As far as Bitcoin is concerned, it is circulation can also be realized by any means of communication, such as Pigeon Messenger. Therefore, we cannot view cryptocurrency as a branch of virtual currency. On the contrary, we should define cryptocurrency as accounting currency which employs asymmetric crypto technology to determine the ownership of currency. This is "cryptocurrency" in a broad sense.
6. Types of Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is the latest form of currency. It is the product of the market economy and technological progress. However, it is also the most confusing concept of currency in use, which brings severe harm to our society. We must clarify the definition, explore its positive aspects, and avoid related financial risks and social harm.
If we define cryptocurrency by "to determine currency ownership by asymmetric crypto technology", then Bitcoin is only one type of cryptocurrency. In the cryptocurrency system, everyone is allowed to participate in the issuance and recording of currency, is called "crypto consensus currency". Since bitcoin has successfully brought currency into an era of cryptocurrency, the so-called "Cryptocurrency" or "Encrypted Currency" actually refers to "crypto consensus currency", which is the definition of cryptocurrency in a narrow sense.
According to the previous definition of virtual currency, crypto consensus currency is also a kind of virtual currency based on the Internet, issued by people, and independent of fiat money. The fundamental difference between cryptocurrency and virtual currency is that cryptocurrency realizes the decentralization of issuance by the means of crypto technology and distributed consensus.
After the first crypto consensus currency-Bitcoin achieved its success, except for copying Litecoin and the splitting of Bitcoin into Bitcoin cash, people have also derived more kinds of cryptocurrency among which the most influential is crypto credit currency based on the credit from the governments, individuals, or institutions.
In January 2014, BitShares established by Vitalik Buterin also adopted such a crowdfunding mode, raising 31,591BTC at the price of 2,000ETH / BTC. This crowdfunding has given investors and developers over 100 times on returns and boosted the rise of cryptocurrency based on credit.
BTC system provides users with the function of issuing a child currency and virtual assets through the mortgage of BTS. However, this kind of currency issuance has not succeeded because of the great fluctuation of price of BTS. Ethereum's system offers users a more concise and mortgage-free issuing standard of token and circulation can be realized. In the bull market of blockchains in 2017, lots of cryptocurrency and blockchain projects raised funds from tokens in ERC20 standard issued by Ethereum, which was named as the first issuance of token, or namely ICO. Until now, ERC20 standard of Ethereum has issued 165,690 kinds of tokens.
These projects aim to construct decentralized crypto consensus currency by coping Bitcoin or Ethereum so that they can undertake the functions of transaction media and the measure of value. But before the project's development is accomplished, a developing group needs to issue tokens based on its credit in order to raise ICO. At that moment, the core function of a token is funding by credit. Therefore, it is a kind of security based on the issuers' credit whose ownership is confirmed by asymmetric crypto. We call it "crypto security".
After the completion of these projects. Thus, this kind of token is not a decentralized "cryptocurrency" based on distributed consensus any more, but a crypto credit currency based on private credit. It is widely known as a "token" in China. It is more appropriate to call it a "crypto private currency".
Crypto private currency can be divided into ecological circulation and open market circulation according to the sphere of circulation. That kind of currency with mere ecological internal circulation are like the QQ coin. It has only adopted crypto technology. Because of the domestic restriction policy on the circulation of cryptocurrency, the majority of domestic blockchains projects have chosen internal system circulation, such as the "Link Token" issued by Xun Lei, or the "Tianya Token" issued by Tianya. This kind of token is not a real currency, but a token. Therefore, it is called "crypto token", which is an encrypted virtual token. On February 14, 2019, the largest commercial bank of the United States JPMorgan Chase, officially declared the launch of JPMCoin, which was issued on its private chain Quarum. It is used for the value circulation within its commercial ecosystem. This could be the most influential "crypto token".
The cryptocurrency that is issued based on private credit and can circulate in open market is called "crypto private currency". It is a more accurate definition. Tokens issued by most of blockchains projects and circulating in open market can be classified as crypto private currency. In fact, before the emergence of ERC20 and ICO, the ripple with an issuance of 10 billion.
On June 18, 2019, Facebook launched Libra project collaborated with 27 commercial enterprises like MasterCard, VISA, PayPal, eBay, Uber, Coinbase, and so on, trying to set up a global currency. Its credit includes not only those of Facebook and 100 alliance enterprises in the future, but also anchors a basket of fiat money and asset mortgages. However, this cannot change the nature of private credit currency. Libra has been the most influential crypto private currency in terms of its potential so far.
Cryptocurrency is such a new concept and it developed so fast that people are widely short of knowledge about crypto consensus currency and crypto credit currency, bringing a lot of confusion. Even some enterprises or individuals make use of people's confusion to issue crypto credit currency based merely on their own credit. Then they adopt the conceptions of "Bitcoin" and "Blockchains" to propagate their advantages of "decentralization", "no tampering", "free and opening", "encouragement of national policy", "trend of world's development" and so on to deceive investors. The long-standing pyramid schemes and funds plate in society makes full use of this new underregulated technology and conception. Many "pyramid scheme currency" and "funds plate currency" emerged. Their social influence could even exceed that of other cryptocurrency and blockchains applications. The "plate circle" beyond the "currency circle" and "chain circle" could bring a large amount of harm.
The decentralization of Bitcoin and other crypto consensus currency manifests stronger vitality, which has a certain impact on fiat money system. Since 2012, central banks of the United States, Russia, China, India, and other countries have successively suppressed Bitcoin, which eventually failed. Central banks of different countries have begun to explore new ways of converting fiat money system by the application of cryptography. The fundamental characteristic of fiat money is that it is based on national credit, controlled by central bank and recorded by the financial system under the management of central bank. Cryptography can be used to convert account crypto system in fiat money, which will reduce the operating cost of fiat money and improve management efficiency. This is rather different from crypto consensus currency and crypto token. The crypto credit currency based on national credit could be called "Crypto Fiat Money".
In 2014, Tether company issued a token USDT with the help of Bitcoin network. It was anchored in US dollar in price and was issued and accepted by Tether company. It met the need of the market for a stable trading medium so it is known as "stablecoin". USDT achieved great success in 2017 when the fiat money trading channel of cryptocurrency was blocked, giving birth to more stable currencies based on US dollar. Some of them are regulated by US financial authorities and thus become "legal stable currencies". Although these "stable currencies" based on US dollar have adopted cryptography and they are issued by private sectors, they are crypto private currencies in essence. Since they are anchored in US dollar, they become an extension of US dollar supply.
Below we have basically sorted out the types of various cryptocurrencies in the market, which are defined as followed:
Crypto Consensus Currency: a virtual currency that employs asymmetric cryptography to determine the ownership, issuance, and accounting through distributed consensus.
Crypto Credit Currency: a cryptocurrency that is issued based on credit.
Crypto Private Currency: a cryptocurrency that is issued on the basis of private credit and is circulating in an open market.
Crypto Token: a cryptocurrency that is issued based on private credit and is circulating within its own ecosystem.
Crypto Fiat Money: a cryptocurrency issued on the basis of national credit.
Stablecoin: a cryptocurrency issued by private individuals to anchor fiat money.
Pyramid Scheme Currency: a cryptocurrency mainly used for a pyramid scheme that is issued on the basis of private credit.
7. The Relationship between Various Forms of Currency
From two basic features of currency- a medium of exchange and measure of value, we distinguish between commodity money and accounting currency, and then we followed the development of technology to sort out the evolution of commodity money and accounting currency. These technologies mainly improve currency from three aspects: transferring, to promote the evolution of many other currency forms.
There are thorough differences between commodity money and accounting currency: transfering: the transfer of commodity money is realized by the transfer of physical objects while the transfer of accounting currency is achieved by the account recording.
Commodity money evolves from the early daily commodities such as cattle, sheep, and wheat to precious metals, coins, and paper money. The overall direction is more convenience for circulation. Accounting currency is initially recorded on muddy plates and bamboo slips, and then on paper after its invented.
The emergence of computers has stimulated an enormous leap in recording carriers. Accounting currency has entered the era of electronic money. The emergence of the Internet realizes the transfer of currency on the Internet. Therefore, the scope of transactions is larger, the cost is lower, and the speed is faster. Currency has entered the era of digital currency.
The introduction of asymmetric cryptography into currency system, especially the conception of bitcoin, has brought significant innovation to the issuance and confirmation of currency:
 Distributed consensus introduces a new decentralized way of currency issuance based on social consensus;
 Crypto confirmation greatly weakens the dependence on central accounting persons and reduces the cost of confirmation.
The two innovations have brought about a revolutionary new form of currency: "cryptocurrency". Besides that, the combination of asymmetric crypto confirmation and the existing currency forms a variety of cryptocurrency forms, such as crypto fiat money, crypto token, stablecoin, and so on.
8. Conclusion
This paper discusses encrypted currency, etc. On the premise of respecting existing facts, this paper makes a clear and complete definition of these concepts and clarifies the interrelation between them.
Reviewing the evolution of currency form from commodity money to cryptocurrency, the apparent trend is as follows:
 There is no ultimate form of currency. Although a certain form of currency, such as gold, mint, or paper money, will be widely used in human history for such a long time that people think it is the ultimate form of currency, with the development of technology, the form of currency will also experience reforms.
 that can meet this need, currency will evolve into a new and better form.
 The form of money is increasingly separating from nature. From merchandise currency to paper currency, from commodity money to accounting currency, from physical recording to electronic recording, currency is increasingly free from the restrictions of natural entities, evolving into a more free and rapid form of ideas and society.
 Cryptocurrency is the trend of currency form nowadays. The application of asymmetric cryptography to confirm and transfer currency can bring more security at a lower cost. With the help of Internet technology, it can significantly improve the level of convenience, security, and low cost. Therefore, it is the inevitable direction of the development of currency form in the near future.
 The experimentation and competition of crypto consensus currency, crypto fiat money, and crypto private currency will continue on. The crypto consensus currency is characterized by the of decentralization independent credit of any organization; crypto fiat money is encrypted transformation of the mature fiat currency system; crypto private currency is the market competition currency based on the private credit that Hayek has envisioned. These three cryptocurrency forms are still under testing. In the future currency system, it is hard to predict which one will be the mainstream or whether the three take an equal proportion. Practice will give us an answer.

We have a romantic vision of the scientific discovery process. A white-coated chemist spends long hours in the lab, titrating, pipetting, centrifuging chemicals, until - by accident or design - they stumble upon a new molecule that might do something useful in the world. Then there are longer nights spent testing, refining, and optimizing the synthesis process, hoping that one day that chemical can be commercialized. In the luckiest of scenarios, that process might take 5 years - often it takes 10 or 20.
For Alan Aspuru-Guzik, that's 20 years too long. "Every time a human is involved, you're really wasting a lot of time," says the University of Toronto chemistry professor, who wears big, grey-rimmed glasses and usually an impish grin. "You really want to have a machine doing as many things as possible." Four years ago, while a professor at Harvard University, he succeeded in producing the first novel chemicals discovered by computer - materials for organic light-emitting diodes - selected out of 1.6 million possible candidates. From start to finish, the process just took a few months.
Since moving to Toronto two years ago, he's expanded his vision to create a self-driven laboratory, with robotic arms to do all of the hard work of discovery, development, synthesis and optimization, all at the beck and call of its human overlords, much faster than human hands ever could. Once the lab is totally up and running, it could create new chemical materials at the rate of one every hour, an incredible leap forward in productivity.
That advance is all because of one thing: the power of artificial intelligence. "The chemical industry is one of the last industries that has not really been taking advantage of AI," Aspuru-Guzik says. "Of course, many other industries, like buying stuff on the Internet have already been affected by AI, but chemistry is very hard to do because it has a very low rate of discovery and many complicated development processes." New advancements in power and ability, however, have put AI on the cusp of transforming chemistry discovery, as well as the innovation process of many tough technology industries, serving as a virtual assistant to dramatically speed up and improve what humans are capable of inventing on their own.
The idea that machines possess intelligence to rival a human goes back to the golems and automatons of antiquity. It didn't start becoming a reality until the 1950s, when Dartmouth computer scientist John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence"2 to describe a new class of computers capable of reasoning and making decisions for themselves when faced with novel situations. The first AI mastered simple tasks, such as playing games of Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess. However, over the decades, it has exploded into a variety of fields, including image processing, speech recognition, and natural language processing.
A subset of AI called machine learning promises to transform innovation. Simply put, ML searches through massive amounts of data to find patterns and then uses those patterns to make future predictions. These processes power everything, from the predictions you get from shopping websites to the results you get from online search engines. "If you go to Google and type Disney, Florida, and Delta airlines, then it's pretty clear you are going to the Magic Kingdom," says Scott Stern, a business professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper on AI and innovation. ML excels in predicting patterns too complex for humans to uncover, at least without a lot of bookkeeping. "Machine learning dramatically enhances the ability to predict things that are relatively rare in isolation, but once you aggregate them, they become clear," Stern says.
The process relies on algorithms, sets of rules, and instructions that the artificial brain can use to sift through data, supplemented by heuristics or "rules of thumb" that help narrow down the list of possibilities. This process has been significantly enhanced since the development in the mid-2000s of artificial neural networks, a set of algorithms that mirror the structure of the human brain with neurons that pass information from one to another to enable "deep learning." Since then, there has been an explosion in the applications of AI - from stock picking to facial recognition to routing your Uber. That's been especially true in the past five years or so, as the advent of cloud computing has enabled researchers and companies to use vast amounts of computing power cheaply.
AI generally comes in two types: the most common type, supervised learning, which happens when someone gives the AI an example of a target and then asks it to sift through data to find other examples of that target; unsupervised learning happens when the AI is given unstructured data and asked to find its own patterns by employing techniques such as "nearest neighbor search" to group similar objects into categories. The new frontier of AI is reinforcement learning, in which the machine brain tries different combinations based on trial-and-error, gradually honing in on an answer based on pre-defined positive and negative feedback. Google made a splash three years ago with its AlphaGo software, which used reinforcement learning to beat the best human players in Go, a Chinese game infinite-ly more difficult than chess, discovering new strategies no human had thought of.
It's the quality of discovery that makes AI so exciting not only for optimizing products and services but also for learning how to create new ones, such as the chemicals in Aspuru-Guzik's self-driving laboratory. "If you could get predictions on unstructured data to be good enough you could not simply apply them to existing things and optimize them," Stern says, "but you could undertake a resequencing of the innovation process itself for the creation of fundamentally novel products, services, and inventions." He compares the technology to lenses, which were used to make eyeglasses in the 1400s. "People got good at grinding lenses so that people could see," Stern says. "But Galileo took those lenses and built the first telescope and was immediately able to resolve the existence of moons around planets. It allowed us to literally resolve phenomena we couldn't even imagine, and ask new types of questions."
Stern, who is on the board of Atomwise, a company using AI to discover new drugs, makes the distinction between AI as a "general purpose technology" that can be used to enable other technologies, and AI as a "method of invention" that allows for the creation of fundamentally new products separate from the AI itself. Both uses could impact the development of tough technologies, allowing dramatically new breakthroughs and capabilities. Among other industries, AI is poised to transform the fields of health, climate science, and advanced computing itself.
* * *
Depending on whom you talk to, the number of possible chemicals in the world are anywhere from 1060 to 1080 - somewhere, in other words, between the number of atoms in our solar system and the number of atoms in the visible universe. Any one of those chemicals could hold the key to the development of a new drug or other therapy. While human researchers often have a good intuition of where to explore, the sheer vastness of the space leaves ample room for AI to assist in discovering brand-new possibilities that humans might not have even considered.
"In drug discovery, you're going to have all of these ideas of what could be a good candidate molecule," says Connor Coley, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at MIT. "You know what could have good bioactivity, good potency, good solubility, and other properties, - but in order to test it, you actually have to make it." Creating drugs can be a complicated process, requiring multiple chemical reactions in a specific sequence and conditions, done at scale in order to synthesize the desired amount of drug to test.
Coley previously worked in the laboratory of Klavs Jensen, an MIT professor applying those principles to the synthesis and discovery of small molecules, which form the basis of many medicines. Using supervised learning techniques, he and his colleagues have used AI to simulate the testing of candidate molecules, varying catalysts, temperature, and concentration and predicting likely outcomes. "All of those variables will have some effect on the yield, efficiency, and cost of running that reaction," says Coley. "These adaptive algorithms help you design experiments and tell you what are the most useful experiments to run."
More recently, Coley and his colleagues have been using supervised machine learning on a huge corpus of chemical reactions collated by Elsevier and other companies to help identify new molecules to test. "We're taking information chemists have been publishing for the last couple hundred years, and then trying to apply that to new molecules," Coley says. "Then we put out a full synthetic recipe about how you might be able to make it - everything you should buy, how you should combine them, and what steps you should take to produce the molecule of interest." More recently, Coley and his colleagues, including Jensen, have worked on creating a robotic platform3 similar to Aspuru-Guziks' self-driving laboratory to at least partially automate that process. "The idea is to make the research and development process a little bit easier and a little bit faster."
Coley is a member of MIT's Machine Learning for Pharmaceutical Discovery and Synthesis Consortium, a group that includes both MIT researchers and representatives from 14 pharmaceutical and biotech companies to help better train algorithms to discover and create new drugs. The companies provide financial support as well as feedback from their own processes to the labs, which produce models and algorithms for the use of members. "We benefit tremendously from understanding what are the real pain points in their workflows, and how well the existing solutions work to alleviate those pain points," Coley says. In return, such techniques could help companies to quantitatively determine which candidates for drug discovery they should pursue for testing.
Another consortium member, MIT computer science professor Regina Barzilay, recently led the use of deep learning techniques to discover a new antibiotic. Historically, antibiotics have been discovered by screening vast numbers of soil-dwelling microbes, or creating synthetic varieties based on those discoveries that she, James Collins, and colleagues wrote about in a paper published in Cell in February 20204. As the number of new molecules have shrunk, however, pharmaceutical companies have turned to screening large chemical libraries in search of novel drugs. Barzilay's team trained a specialized deep neural network called a variational autoencoder on more than 2,000 molecules to determine what molecular features inhibited the growth of E.coli bacteria, then applied their model to libraries with more than 100 million chemicals, ranking the results.
This process resulted in the identification of a drug with the unwieldy name c-Jun N-terminal kinase inhibitor SU3327, which the researchers renamed Halicin. Not only was it effective against E.coli, but they also found that it inhibited other pathogens, including A. baumanniias, a bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance and is one of the World Health Organization's top pathogens to target. In addition, they discovered two other antibiotics effective against antibiotic-resistant E.coli. "The machine learning model can explore, in silico, large chemical spaces that can be prohibitively expensive for traditional experimental approaches," Barzilay told MIT News5. "This work highlights the significant impact that machine learning can have on early antibiotic discovery efforts by simultaneously increasing the accuracy rate of lead compound identification and decreasing the cost of screening efforts," the researchers wrote.
Another veteran of Jensen's lab, Dale Thomas, has spun out a company to synthesize molecules for commercialization. Called MyTide, the startup focuses on peptides, short chains of amino acids including insulin and other hormones that drive reactions inside the body. Among other uses, they can help in regulating obesity, developing vaccines, and targeting cancer though personalized peptide therapeutics. "You can develop a peptide specifically tuned to cancer within a patient's body and trigger an immune response that allows the body to recognize a tumor as something that is not natural."
With 20 different amino acids to choose from, however, the number of potential peptides that could be used in therapies is overwhelming. "There are over a trillion different peptides that can be manufactured - and that's an understatement," Thomas says. In addition, each amide bond between amino acids is unique, requiring different conditions to form, and with dangerous side reactions if you get it wrong. "You have to understand not only the conditions for linking one amino acid to another, which is 400 different types of reactions, but also how previous couplings affect the current coupling. If you do not have the correct data collection and ability to use in-line analytics, you don't have the ability to capture the data of this building of peptides."
In order to solve the problem, the company has built a synthesizing machine that can move amino acids and other reagents through a reactor at the rate of 3,000 reactions a day. As the reactions occur, the system collects second-by-second data, including traces of UV light absorbed at different wavelengths, to show the extent of coupling of molecules. "That enables us to leverage machine learning, because we are building high-quality datasets that feed into machine learning models," says Thomas. Using the output from those models, the machine operators can then adjust variables such as the type of reagents, reaction time, and temperature, to optimize molecule synthesis, as well as to create new molecules for new purposes.
"After we run 5,000 molecules through this platform, we have 150,000 data points on the output. And we can feed that back in, in this closed loop manner, in order to redefine the next set of peptides that we should manufacture, and then carry through again to find the right target." Using these techniques, the company has been able to reduce the time required to synthesize non-naturally occurring peptides from nine weeks to four days - and use fewer reagents overall. "Our company's real aim is to start building in more complex chemistries than have previously been able to be manufactured," Thomas says. For example, the company is experimenting with building using D-amino acids, mirror images of naturally occurring L-amino acids that show increased bioactivity. Other projects include adding polymer side chains to peptides to create cardiac medicines and oils to treat eczema.
In addition to drug development, researchers are using AI to create other new therapies as well. Cellino, one of The Engine's portfolio companies, is developing cell and tissue therapies by guiding the development of stem cells using lasers. Induced pluripotent stem cells are grown on a well plate with a 20-nanometer undercoating of titanium. A laser shot at the bottom of the plate can target an individual cell, poking a tiny bubble in the cell membrane through which a liquid-borne cargo of growth factors or other components can enter, or - if the bubble is big enough - killing the cell outright. Using these controls, company scientists can precisely control the differentiation of cells into therapeutic cell types to treat various disorders.
"We are positioning ourselves as a cell and tissue foundry," says Marinna Madrid, cofounder of Cellino. "But what's unique about our technology is that we're able to do that with single-cell control because of the laser-based technology we use." The company hopes to partner with pharma and biotech companies that are differentiating cells for therapeutic applications but are having difficulty in achieving uniform, high-quality cells for implantation.
One therapy the company has been working on, for example, is the implantation of retinal pigment epithelial cells in order to treat age-related macular degeneration. As it grows these cells, the company has worked with biologists to identify which cells or regions of tissue to keep or enhance, killing the others with the laser. "There are a few things that correlate with the cells being good at doing their job in the body," says chief science officer Arnaldo Pereira, "for example, the amount of melanin granules in them, or how easily they can phagocytose the garbage that the photoreceptors sitting atop them slough off."
Ordinarily, it would take a Ph.D-level biologist painstaking hours with a microscope to identify these cells. Using AI, however, Pereira and his team have been able to design an algorithm on microscope images to quickly identify which cells to save. "If you can remove the underperforming cells and leave space for good cells to grow in that space, then you can increase your yield, and also increase the variability of cells that you get in the end," Pereira says. The company is working on a way to totally automate the process, including cell detection and lysing with the laser in order to streamline the process.
The same technique could be used for other cell therapies, for example, transplanting dopaminergic neurons to treat Parkinson's disease. Some studies have shown that transplant-ing such cells at an earlier progenitor stage produces better outcomes, but it can be difficult to determine at that stage which cells will succeed in fully differentiating into mature cells. "We plan to develop machine learning algorithms that can predict at earlier and earlier times whether or not the cell is going to be functional down the road," Madrid says.
In addition to just killing under-performing cells, the process is also able to manipulate cells by controlling the strength of the laser to poke just a small hole, through which liquid-borne cargo can enter, without killing the cell. The process could be used to insert growth factors or gene modulators to turn on or off genes within cells to individually control their growth with a high degree of precision. "So if you see that a cell is starting to differentiate down an incorrect pathway, but it's not completely lost, you could deliver a gene modulator into that cell to turn the right genes on or off to kind of course correct," Madrid says.
How AI is Personalizing Medicine
Doctors are already starting to use AI in limited ways as a virtual medical assistant with special training for pattern recognition. Radiology has been an early pioneer in this area, using AI's ability to recognize complex patterns in images.6 The FDA has already approved more than 50 algorithms7 for use with AI platforms to help detect early signs of lung, breast, and brain cancer. In Uganda, an AI Lab at Makerere University uses a smartphone app and a microscope to detect malaria in blood samples, compensating for a lack of trained pathologists in the country.
In the coming years, however, AI has the potential to transform every aspect of clinical diagnosis and treatment. "AI is not the decision-maker," says Finale Doshi-Velez, assistant professor of computer science at Harvard, who has pioneered such efforts, "but it can be the tool that provides the information and potentially the recommendations or anti-recommendations based on a patient's history to help doctors make decisions under conditions of uncertainty."
With new legislation on Electronic Medical Records under consideration to allow patients better share their medical information digitally, new apps could help doctors sift through a patient's histories quickly in order to arrive at more effective diagnoses and treatments. "You have a lot of data about the patient in the health record but the doctor just doesn't have the time to look at it," says Doshi-Velez. An app could flag, for example, when a cardiac medication a doctor prescribes might produce unforeseen side-effects. "Errors may get made simply because the doctor didn't know enough about the patient.
Doshi-Velez is currently working on more advanced algorithms to personalize treatment modalities for treating diseases such as HIV, which relies on complex cocktails of drugs given in individualized combinations, dosages, and sequences. Using data on efficacy in past patients, an algorithm could analyze a new patient based on the patient's history, including resistance mutations in the virus and previously prescribed drugs, to recommend an optimal cocktail for that patient. "The trick is to look at the data and then propose alternate strategies that have not been tested, and be able to assess how well you think your new proposal will do," says Doshi-Velez.
Not all conditions may require such highly individualized treatments, however. Doshi-Velez' lab is also working with algorithms to produce more generalized treatment protocols using past data to sort patients into categories based on the symptoms they present. "My hunch is that a lot of times that stratification is going to get us a long way; if you could split people among the right variables, then you could put them into one of 300 bins, or 10 bins," Doshi-Velez says. Once the AI has helped create those bins, she says, then humans could help determine which treatment bins patients fall into. In an ICU setting, AI could even develop protocols for treatment that might fit on just a few pieces of paper, differentiating patients based on temperature, blood pressure, and other symptoms. "They could say, whenever you're making this decision ask a patient about these five variables and follow the flow chart."
* * *
In addition to applying AI in the energy industry, a burgeoning new field is the implementation of machine learning in materials production, similar to the way that it has been used for drug design. Instead of clinical effects of molecules, however, scientists are looking to create materials with specific chemical properties. MIT professor of chemical engineer, Tonio Buonassisi, for example, has increasingly devoted resources in his lab towards creating materials for use in solar panels and environmentally sustainable applications. "I think of machine learning as a cognitive assistant that helps the researcher do their job more efficiently and faster."
In 2018, he started a program in Singapore through the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology of Singapore, specifically to use AI to speed up the creation of solar cells and other environmental materials. Much of the challenge in producing more efficient solar cells lies in optimizing several variables at once. "It's not enough that it absorbs a lot of light, it's not enough that it has the ability to extract a lot of carriers, it's not enough that it's cheap, it has to be all of those things at the same time - and more," Buonissisi says. "In mathematics, we call it a heavily constrained optimization problem."
The human brain isn't good at keeping track of so many different variables at once, so machine learning can help solve those complex problems. "It's a matter of bookkeeping," Buonassisi says. "Our brains can't really handle these very high dimensional spaces, very well, but the machine learning algorithms." In order to test the design of the experiment, Buonissisi applied it to a "toy problem," which sought to tune the size and shape of silver nanoparticles so that they would change to a desired color at a certain temperature. "With only 100 points of training data, we could predict this output parameter within just a few degrees Celsius," he says. "It was a beautiful case study of creating materials with user-defined properties that nobody had ever made before. The algorithm told us what to make."
For their next experiment, Buonissisi's lab created a convolutional neural network that could predict stable crystals made from a set of 28 precursor solutions that could be used in a particular type of solar cell. "It is a very slow technique," Buonissisi says. "It took us three to five hours per sample to fire the data and for the human to analyze it. And we developed a machine-learning algorithm that cut that time down to five minutes per sample." In the end, the process discovered two new materials, including novel alloy, and four crystals which had only been grown in bulk before, but could now be spread in a thin film. "In the old way of doing science, this would've been six independent research papers that each would have taken three or four months to produce, but we're doing it here in two months. The rate at which you are learning is increasing thanks to the availability of these tools."
The crystal films might be useful for optoelectronic applications, such as light-emitting diodes, Buonissisi says. In order to create more efficient materials for solar panels, however, you'd need to optimize not just for stability but for long-range carrier transport as well. "To really change the world, you need to move from single-objective optimization to multi-objective simultaneous optimization and that's where some of our experiments are going at the moment," he says. "Now we are starting to push stability and performance at the same time." The AI zooms in on the region of multi-variable parameter space that's most promising and then churns through samples in that region and does the final optimization from there. That emergent toolset should knock on wood, yield many materials with user-defined properties, and hopefully a lot of them will succeed in addressing climate needs and sustainability needs within the next two to five years.
On a long term basis, the process might even be able to create mass-customized materials, for example, making solar materials that would work irrespective of the different locations. "We know, for example, that a material with a given band gap would perform better in Singapore than it would in Boston because the temperature and humidity are different," Buonissisi says. "If you had the power to tailor a solar cell for one region versus another, you could squeeze out a few extra percent energy yield, which is a really big deal in terms of profitability for companies.
Another organization tackling similar problems of designing new materials to solve climate challenges is Mission Innovation, a worldwide nonprofit funded in part by Bill Gates to help spur research towards the goals of the Paris Climate Accords. Among its eight "challenges" are such fields as batteries, smart grids, and biofuels, as well as one on Clean Energy Materials9 specifically dedicated to using AI to create new environment-friendly mate-rials. "Alan was the brainchild behind it," says Mark Kozdras, a program manager at Natural Resources Canada and the co-lead of the challenge. After proposing the initiative, Aspuru-Guzik helped lead the first international conference dedicated to the concept in Mexico City in September 2017.
Since then, Kozdras has led the effort with an initial $10.8 million grant from the Canadian government and research support from several Canadian universities to create a self-driving laboratory, specifically engineered for sustainable mate-rials called a Materials Acceleration Platform, or MAP. One of its most successful efforts to date is a robotic platform created by researchers at the University of British Columbia along with Aspuru-Guzik called Ada, which uses machine learning to design and synthesize thin-film materials. In a video on the Project Ada website, a white robotic arm swivels around a platform, selecting test-tubes full of reagents, twirling them in a spin coater, and pipetting them to combine on a well plate. As a proof of concept, the UBC lab showed how they could use the platform to create a new hole transport material, a component of certain types of solar cells, optimizing it on two parameters: stability and connectivity. In a working paper published in March of this year, the team described how the AI platform shrunk the number of experiments needed to discover the material from 1,000 to 30.
"They're taking experiments that could take a year and doing them in a week," Kozdras says. "and with a 10th of the chemicals." The Canadian government has now dedicated in excess of $28 million to build a new two-floor laboratory dedicated specifically to MAPs that can solve a variety of chemical problems. In addition to photovoltaic materials, Kozdras says, the lab is planning to explore batteries and thermoelectric materials that could trans-form waste heat to energy. Another candidate is concrete, which is similarly created by mixing materials that vary in composition from place to place. An AI brain could optimize production for different areas based on their unique raw materials. "If you could increase the strength of cement, then you could use less material," Kozdras says. "Even a 1 percent reduction could have a huge environmental impact."
Aspuru-Guzik also co-founded a company called Kebotix designed specifically to use AI and self-driving laboratories to custom-design new materials based on previously undiscovered molecules. "Our tagline really is ‘Materials for tomorrow today,'" says Jill Becker, the company's CEO, a Harvard Chemistry Ph.D and formerly CEO of the successful company Cambridge NanoTech. "What we want to be is the DuPont of the 21st century." Currently, the Cam-bridge-based company employs 17 people and recently closed an $11.4 million Series A round.
Along with developing novel chemicals to suit the specific needs of clients, Kebotix is consciously focused on environmental sustainability. "We have aligned ourselves with several of the United Nations sustainability goals, and are really interested in making chemicals and materials green," says Becker, an irreverent entrepreneur taken to wearing a leather jacket onstage. "Like one day I'm envisioning the future where I can walk up to one of our self-driving labs and say, ‘Hey, Kebotix platform, make me a chemical that will make me a truly recyclable coffee cup and won't leach out nasty shit that gives people stomach cancer."
Along with neural networks and other techniques, the company uses a type of unsupervised AI for unstructured data called a generative area network, refined by Aspuru-Guzik, which can explore a space of hundreds of millions of potential chemical candidates in search of viable molecules. Shown the structure of a particular molecule, say ibuprofen, the GAN crawls the space, generating other molecules it thinks will behave similarly, then automatically challenging and rejecting them as it refines its choices. Alternatively, the GAN can explore the space between multiple molecules at once. Over video chat, Becker puts up a slide with an image of a woman wearing eye-shadow and another woman smoking a cigarette, along with a half-dozen images between them that show a graded combination of the two.
"We call this the road from aspirin to caffeine," Becker says. "Aspirin's on the left - that would be the lady with the cigarette - and caffeine is on the right - that's the lady with the eye-shadow, and instead of a roadmap of pictures of women that this narcissistic society doesn't need, it dreams up molecules in the latest space. Then we can go back in there and say, hey, I've never seen you before, can I make you? What else do you do? Can I patent you? What are your properties?"
So far, the company has both worked with clients as well as dream-ing up and patenting its own unique molecules. Kebotix gave one company, for example, some 2,300 possible chemical compounds all ranked to meet certain properties, including boiling point, vapor pressure, and melt viscosity. "They liked four of them, and made three of them," Becker says. "That saved them years and hundreds of thousands of dollars." In its own explorations, the company searched through a dataset of 7 million chemicals in order to find a new electrochromic material. "So it should be transparent, and when you send a current through it, it should give off light, but not heat," Becker says. The company has identified one such material it is in the process of patenting for smart windows, which can change color and transparency to conserve heat. "You can imagine the savings in terms of cost of electricity," Becker says.
The Utility of AI
Another major challenge that AI is beginning to tackle is the threat posed to our climate from global warming. Already AI is being used in "smart grids" that help better distribute the energy load to require less standing energy at power plants and in "smart buildings" to draw electricity for heating and cooling systems at off-peak times to put less pressure on the system as a whole. A new company, Urbint, is using a vast number of variables to help utilities cut down on direct leakage of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Among other energy infrastructure, Urbint targets natural gas pipelines, which transport methane gas - 84 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide - and are prone to corrosion and breakage.
The country has over 2 million miles of natural gas pipelines and countless more local pipes, many over 100 years old. "Just last summer, a local utility replaced a gas pipe in Chicago that had been installed the year before Lincoln became president in 1859, and had leaked 30 times in the past 30 years," says Urbint founder and CEO Corey Capasso. A successful software company entrepreneur, Capasso, helped found Urbint two years ago to help companies manage the whole infrastructure using AI. Most of the threats to energy assets come from outside, such as fallen trees from wildfires, corrosion from flooding, or a backhoe hitting an underground pipe. "If we could predict and pinpoint these very specific risks, then the utility could anticipate those risks and take action," Capasso says.
The company was launched in 2018 with $25 million in funding, mostly from Energy Impact Partners and National Grid Partners, and now serves 40 clients, including the 10 largest natural gas companies. For each company, Urbint gathers data on the location of assets and historical data on damages. "We get three or four rows of data from the utility, and then we add hundreds and hundreds of columns of our own to that," Capasso says. Among the data it includes are soil conditions, weather conditions, construction activity in the area. "We even realized that moon phase has something to do with corrosion," Capasso says. "In some areas, the moon affects the tides which affect underground aquifers, which can lead to increased corrosion in certain types of soil conditions."
The company then applies AI models to identify the patterns and sequences of events in real time that could lead to specific types of leaks or other incidents and then help the company incorporate that prediction into its workflow.
"If we predict, ‘Hey, this excavator is going to hit a gas pipe, the utility can drive on site and talk to the excavator in person and tell him why his job is extra-risky." So far, he says, the company calculates that it has been able to help large utilities reduce third-party damages by more than 30 percent. "The whole goal is to make a prediction and then take an intervention to reduce the risk," Carpasso says.
* * *
Artificial intelligence is using advanced computing to transform every other industry, so perhaps it was inevitable that AI would be used to optimize computing itself. Earlier this year, Google announced that it was using AI to help determine the optimal placement of components on chips for its Tensor Processing Unit, a processor designed to optimize Google's AI program TensorFlow - in other words, using AI to develop a better chip for AI.12 Ordinarily, human designers determine chip placement using a set of ingrained heuristics to reduce the amount of wire needed for hundreds of components.
In a paper released in March of this year, the company describes how it is using a different type of machine learning called deep reinforcement learning - the same kind of AI that Google used to create its AlphaGo program - to solve the problem. Instead of predicting results based on a pre-trained set of data, deep reinforcement learning picks solutions to problems based on how closely they meet a pre-defined "reward function" - in this case, a composite of different measures of performance. As it generates different solutions, the model uses positive and negative reinforcement to guide it towards the best solution.
While Google engineers acknowledge the difficulty of accurately programming such models, they have been able to use an algorithm to generate tens of thousands of possible solutions to chip placement, gradually honing in on the best solution. At the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this February, Google's head of AI, Jeff Dean, described how within 24 hours, one algorithm came up with a more efficient solution than designers who had spent up to eight weeks on the task.
Intel, meanwhile, has been using the principles of neural networks to design the very architecture of a new type of "neuromorphic" computer. Two years ago, the company released its Loihi neuromorphic research chip, which instead of having traditional architecture of parallel processors attached to memory, is arranged around artificial neurons and synapses that learn and store information in the same way as the brain. "This is about finding a new computer architecture that is inspired more directly from our modern understanding of neuroscience of how brains process and compute information, which is dramatically different than our standard way of computing," said Mike Davies during a press call in March to announce the release of a new neuromorphic research system, Pohoiki Springs, which integrates 768 chips containing nearly 100 million artificial neurons - the number in the brain of a small mammal. Notably, the quirky system names come from geographical features on the Hawaiian Islands.
For its first application, Intel has trained an olfactory sensing system using machine learning to recognize smells. As an odor arrives, sensory neurons "spike" in a telltale pattern that is then compared to stored patterns based on training data. Unlike vision, which relies on three colors - red, green, and blue - smell integrates thousands of different olfactory components, making it a formidable problem. With only a single sample of a particular chemical, however, the system was able to outperform a deep learning AI system by 40%. It takes 3,000 samples, says Davies, for the deep learning system to catch up to the neuromorphic system, even though eventually he concedes that the traditional system sur-passed the new design. The speed with which it can make judgments could be an advantage in certain applications in which a quick answer is important.
In addition, says Davies, the system uses significantly less energy than traditional computing systems, since unlike them, the neuromorphic system doesn't store a series of 1's and 0's. Individual neurons only spike with 1's, while the 0 state takes no energy to maintain. "Once you have an architecture that is actually exploiting the fact that one of these two binary states can save energy, then you can skew your whole algorithmic formulations to prefer zero states, and get gains that way," Davies says. "The downside is you have to rethink the algorithms because all of our algorithms don't have that property by default." In November, the company announced the formation of a Neuromorphic Research Community, with 500 corporate members, including Accenture, Airbus, GE, and Hitachi, to experiment with the system. The company hopes that in the future, it might show promise in other machine learning problems, such as image recognition and route optimization.
Other designers are using AI to help better design next-generation quantum computers, which use quantum superpositions to short-cut thousands of cumbersome computations to arrive at solutions to problems exponentially faster. While a variety of different techniques exist to create quantum computers, including superconducting circuits and trapped ions, they share a common difficulty: random errors that must be corrected to get an accurate result. Until quantum computers are able to surpass the power of conventional silicon computers, AI can help bridge the gap.
"There have been a few proposals about using machine learning to detect and classify the errors in these near-term devices," says Chris Savoie, CEO of Zapata, a quantum software company founded in part by Aspuru-Guzik. "AI could help correct those errors without even necessarily knowing the source of them. Even without correcting errors, machine learning could help improve the accuracy of quantum computers in the near-term," says Zapata chief technology officer Yudong Cao. "A quantum computer is essentially a sample generator," he says. "A machine-learning model could capture the distribution of samples and use that as a proxy for the actual distribution."
Among the applications that quantum computing could potentially revolutionize is artificial intelligence, using quantum's superior computing power for ML to come up with better solutions to optimization problems. In other words, using machine-learning techniques to optimize quantum would once again be like using AI to create better AI. No matter how "intelligent" artificial intelligence gets, the dystopian fantasies of sentient machines taking over the planet are likely to stay forever in the realm of science fiction. Instead, AI is likely to remain a powerful complement to human intelligence, allowing us to create new breakthroughs in health, climate, computing, and other industries, we could never dream up alone.
What if Driverless Cars Could Think?
Autonomous driving couldn't exist intelligence; the complicated nature of driving a car on a public street requires that a driving system is able to make split-second decisions about when to speed up, slow down, and turn to stay on the proper route and avoid obstacles. So far, however, the promise of autonomous driving has not lived up to the hype, with existing systems unable to show the control needed for real-life conditions on public roads.
The Engine portfolio company isee has a theory for why that is so - it's not the self-driving cars that are the problem, it's the other cars on the road. "If we could completely remove other humans, and just have the autonomous driver out on the streets, that should already be possible," says Yibao Zhao, founder and CEO. "But we can't move those humans, so we have to have an autonomous vehicle co-exist with other human-driven vehicles and pedestrians, and they are the most unpredictable part of the environment."
Zhao and his co-founder Chris Baker are implementing a different kind of AI based on their previous work at MIT's Computational Cognitive Science Lab, which focused more on making an artificial brain aware of the intelligence of others. "When humans make decisions, we have a lot of common sense knowledge that helps us to have a much better understanding of the environment in order to understand events that are happening," Zhao says. One of those senses, known as "theory of mind" allows us to put ourselves in the mind of another person to better understand what they are thinking and feeling and predict what they might do because of it.
"It's fundamentally a kind of probabilistic reasoning, where we realize we don't have certainty about the causes of events, or know what is going to happen next," says Baker. "But as humans uncertainty is pervasive, and yet we can make intelligent decisions and gauge risk and live healthy, successful lives." In essence, he says, models of the world, based on the possible causes and future effects.
The company is working to train autonomous driving brains not only to anticipate behavior of other drivers, but also to understand the causes of their behavior. "If we see someone change lanes, we ask why they did that," Zhao says. Are they getting ready to exit, for example, or is there something in the road. Answering that question could better determine whether we change lanes as well. It's important that causal reasoning be a part of this." Building a sophisticated model of the environment can help us understand uncertainty and reason about the 'what-if' in the future."
That's a dramatic departure from other autonomous driving companies, which are pouring their energies into creating better sensors, cameras, and handling in order to help cars better control their environment. By contrast, isee's focus on using deep learning to teach its autonomous autos "common sense" helps them better understand their environment, and anticipate and adapt to changing circumstances on the road.
After raising a first round of funding from The Engine and a second round last year of $15 million from Founder's Fund, isee has been able to design an artificial brain with enough common sense to be able to safely put cars onto public roads, hauling freight in Texas and California. "If we can move freight more efficiently, and reduce two days to one, or one day to five hours, that's a huge benefit to customers," Zhao says.
"The supply chain is full of opportunities that we can use AI to optimize."

Which celebrity do you resemble? We sat down with our amusing partners at the Boom Chicago comedy theater in Amsterdam for a brainstorm session to see what Data Science could do for their shows. Someone remarked that it would be cool to use machine learning to build a celebrity lookalike matching system for visitors of the show. So we built an app.
In our app, we use Machine Learning to calculate the distance between a visitor's face and a set of celebrity faces to find a lookalike, using the latest research in facial recognition. We then morph their face into that of their celebrity match using the latest research in Generative Adversarial Networks: the StyleGAN.
This current article dives into the most important background of our new application: generative networks. It is both written as a showcase of what current generative algorithms in deep learning can do and imply for the future, and a way to learn more about them by writing about how they work. I will save you from mathematical formulas and hope to provide you with an intuitive understanding of generative networks and our use of this type of algorithm. Note that you do have to have some basic knowledge of how neural networks work.
I'll start with some fun historical context. Then I'll explain autoencoders and generative networks, both architectures that can be used to generate images. After that, I'll go deeper into explaining the functioning behind the StyleGAN, which is the star of our application. When we have settled the necessary background, I'll go into the specifics of what we've built, and close off with the big picture of what generative networks could do for us in the future.
People Who Do Not Exist
The uncanny lady in the above picture does not exist, and never has. So, what or whom is this a picture of - who is she? She is a composite photograph, that being the blending of two or more images into one, created by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is quite literally a family portrait, of himself and his three sisters.
Wittgenstein was interested in composite photography because to him this could bring to light the commonalities between members of a category, in this case "face", or perhaps "family". Such investigations may have marked the start of the development of his theory of Family Resemblance, where he postulated that neither necessary nor sufficient features can be identified for membership of any given category, but where a category represents instead a continuous overlap between its members, analogous to how no individual thread in a rope extends its distance.
This is true for any category, except for strictly mathematical objects, such as "square", and those for which we've set conscious boundaries, such as the legal drinking age. Chairs, for a canonical example, prototypically have a seat, legs, and a back to lean against. Yet, one can easily dream up examples that jeopardise such strict definition. Bean-bag chairs may be sat on but lack the legs and back, and artistic instances may well do away with this whole sitting business entirely. Likewise, there isn't a strict definition to be found for what a face really is and is best conceived as an interwoven set of features that all contribute in their own way. Of course, to us Data Scientists, this is no surprising find at all, as this is exactly what we would expect from training a classifier!
The creation of these compositions used to involve a rather laborious practice, where subjects had to sit still in the same exact position, using repeated limited exposure, so that big brother Ludwig had to torture his poor sisterhood using head-holders such as those depicted below, in which they must have sat patiently for quite some time as the photographic plate absorbed the light. No easy feat, but they came from a very strict household.
Later on, one could do this a bit easier using computers, where now we can easily overlay digital images to facilitate a similar blend. In fact, it's something we've made use of in our app. This does however still require a strict match in angle between the two pictures. The ears should cover the ears, the eyes the eyes, mouth on mouth, and so on, just as in the example of the Wittgensteins. At present, modern machine learning techniques allow us to create similar such blends much more dynamically, with many fewer restrictions. Using generative algorithms, we can now not only generate images of people who do not exist, as Wittgenstein has, but we can also generate images of people who do exist; and we may then transform these images in various ways to our liking. Have you ever wondered what you'd look like with long hair, glasses and a mustache? Me neither, but we may now investigate these matters anyway.
Deep Learning and Generative Algorithms
Just as machine learning, and deep learning in particular, has taken over many other aspects of computer vision, so it has this niche of creating images of people that do not exist - and in extension, people who do exist, and the above mentioned facial transformations. Note that while we focus on faces in this article, as has much of the supporting literature, generative algorithms can in principle learn to generate anything at all, as long as you have a large amount of training data. You can also generate bedrooms, poetry, fireworks, and so on, given that you provide it enough data representative of the category.
There are essentially two ways by which you can generate images using deep learning: through generative adversarial networks, and through variational autoencoders. In our app, we made use of the StyleGAN, which is an instance of a generative adversarial network, an architecture that is markedly different from autoencoders. However, I will explain the autoencoders first, as they provide a great window on what the concept of a latent space is, which is such a crucial element in all of the generative architectures.
Autoencoders
Autoencoders are a neural network architecture of the unsupervised variety. That is, they are quite unlike a regular classifier, where you provide your dataset with labels and let the network discern between those. What autoencoders do is learn to reconstruct their input using fewer parameters, whereby the input serves as its own label. For images this means that you take an input picture, which is mathematically nothing more than a vector of its pixel values, and train a network to reconstruct facsimile output, taking as its loss function the pixel-to-pixel distance between the input and output. This is also called reconstruction loss, as reconstruction is the main objective of an autoencoder.
The nifty trick here is that the hidden layers in the network have fewer dimensions than the image that it takes in, thus causing the network to encode that image into a lower dimension by force of sheer economy: the layers in your network cannot just store the values of all the pixels - which you provide as input - but must instead learn a condensed representation of those pixels, such that it can recreate that image from that condensed representation. This condensed representation is what we call a latent space, typically denoted by Z. You can get Z by taking the output of the bottleneck, which is the sparsest hidden layer in the middle of the network. A latent space is called ‘latent' because it is hidden, and ‘space' because it is a compressed subspace of our original input space.
Now if you train the network on a large number of face images, such that it can reliably reproduce its input image, you could then take its latent space and consider what is to the left of it the encoder, and what is to the right of it the decoder. The business of the encoder is to translate the image into the latent space, and the business of the decoder is to generate from that latent space the image that the latent space is supposed to represent.
Because our latent subspace can no longer contain the pixel information of the original image, it has to get clever and store more general information about that image. For example, instead of encoding a blue square in terms of the amount of blue pixels it contains, you could instead describe that square using many fewer paramaters, such as the shape, the size, and the color, or rather the features of the square. The encoder does likewise for faces, encoding them into features, ranging from the general shape of the face to the nose down to the way your hair flows.
Variational Autoencoders
Autoencoders can be useful in, among other things, compression. You could for example have an encoder and a decoder on different devices, allowing you to send much smaller packages between your devices. Traditional autoencoders lack the ability however to generate new data, because although the latent space can inform the reconstruction of a particular image, changing it in any way, or presenting it with a new vector, will likely result in some kind of modern art, because its latent space is discontinuous.
The above pictures is an example of a discontinous latent space. The different colors correspond to the different digits of the famous MNIST dataset. As you can see, the areas in the latent space corresponding to certain samples are clustered away from each other. If you were to sample from this space in the area where the ? is drawn, then you get nothing in the output, because the decoder hasn't learned how to deal with that region. It however makes sense that the encoder makes these distinct clusters, as it poses an easier question to the decoder: there is little confusion as to ‘what is where'. This is good for replication, but not generation, because you can't sample from those regions, and you basically have no idea where the regions that do contain information are in the space, as the network can put anything anywhere it likes.
Variational autoencoders solve this problem by forcing the network to encode a latent space that is continuous by design. This is done in two ways, first by forcing local continuity, and second by forcing global continuity. The local continuity is forced as follows: instead of mapping its input to a latent space of size n, it instead outputs two vectors of size n: a vector of means, μ, and a vector of standard deviations, σ. The network then randomly samples its latent space from those two vectors, with each random variable corresponding to the ith mean and standard deviation from those two vectors. The reason for this is that if you take the mean and standard deviation of your inputs, and then sample from this probability distribution, you get the area around a point rather than just a single point. Now you're teaching the decoder to deal with a continuity of points rather than leave local gaps in your feature encodings. Instead of decoding single points it now learns to decode distributions with slight variation.
Now that we've forced local continuity, we're already better equipped to sample from our latent space, but we're still left with some gaping holes between our features. Just as our traditional autoencoders encode features away from each other, a variational autoencoder can do the same thing, as it can learn very different means and standard deviations for each class, again giving the decoder an easier time in reconstruction. But this is still bad for generation.
It turns out there is a way to drive these features together, which is by giving the network an award if it drives the features together. The traditional autoencoder is awarded for a good reconstruction, but the variational autoencoder is now also awarded for encoding a latent space that is normally distributed. The way this is done is by adding a Kullback-Leibler divergence to the loss function. What this does is measure how much two probability distributions diverge from each other. In the case of variational autoencoders, this measures the divergence between the distribution of the latent space and a multi-dimensional normal distribution. This is, in the case of VAEs, minimised when the mean is 0 and the standard deviation is 1. If we only optimised for KL loss, then what we would end up with is a distribution around the center that encodes no meaning whatsoever, as everything has to maximally scatter, and any structure in this space is punished by the KL loss.
However, we can play a back and forth between the reconstruction loss and the KL divergence together and get just what we want. The reconstruction objective drives to encode features into clearly distinct regions, maximising the information to the decoder, but the KL divergence punishes this tendency to drive them apart and gathers everything round its center. Together they encode features into distinct, locally continuous regions, that nevertheless hug together closely, achieving global continuity.
Entanglement
Another advantage of adding KL divergence to the objective function, is to factor out feature entanglement. Feature entanglement happens when the encoder encodes features into multiple dimensions because it just doesn't care. This means that if we want to change just the nose of our face image, we would end up also changing the ears, or mouth, or something else. Or some other parts of the nose would be elsewhere in the latent space. Disentangling a latent space means that we have dimensions that correspond to no more than one feature. Since the KL divergence drives the latent space closely around its mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, the network is punished if it encodes information in a new dimension. But since spreading information around, fulfilling the wishes of the KL divergence, allows no information content at all, the network is therefore incentivised to do this anyway but be economical about it. No messing around with a dimension here and a dimension there. A major improvement in VAE quality was found in the beta-VAE, which does nothing more than making the network care even more about the KL divergence in the loss function.
It's important to keep in mind the notion of a latent space, or feature space, and its issues with entanglement as we go on to the second way of generating: GANs, short for Generative Adversarial Networks. GANs have been producing a lot of impressive results recently, and get most of the attention in generating-stuff-land, but recent work on VAEs has shown that they are no slouch either.
Generative Adversarial Networks
In 2014, the AI-researcher Ian Goodfellow came up with Generative Adversarial Networks in an inebriated tour de force. Legend has it that after he stumbled upon the idea while chatting with friends in a bar, he took an Irish exit home to code up an example, which to his surprise and to our continuous delight, actually worked, and subsequently spawned an entirely new field of research around deep learning.
The reasoning goes as follows: just as you can make a classifier learn the difference between cats and dogs, you can make a classifier that distinguishes between pictures that are real and pictures that are generated. As adversarial already implies, networks are set up against each other. One network, the generator, attempts to replicate from a distribution of real images that it is trained on, and the discriminator then has to figure out whether this is a real or a fake: an image from the dataset, or an image generated by the generator.
The goal of the generator is to fool the discriminator, and the goal of the discriminator is to spot the fake. A good analogy is that of an art forger, such as the case of Wolfgang Beltracchi. Beltracchi is an interesting example because he doesn't directly copy paintings, but rather fills imaginary holes in their repertoires. This is a good analogy to what a GAN does, because it should generate new faces, and not just replicate its training data. If we wanted mere replication, we'd have stuck with our faithful regular autoencoders.
As the art forger improves on making paintings that look ever more like the artists they're copying, or mimicking, the discriminator must improve its discernment. At first the fakes may be easily identifiable, because, for example, the paint leaves obvious clues that it has recently dried. But the forger will soon figure this out, and improve the quality of his painting, at which point the discriminator must find out better modes of rejection. In this cat and mouse game both networks improve at their job, to the point where neither can improve any more: the point where the generated image is so good that the discriminator can no longer discern between the original and the fake, and the generator can no longer change anything about what it generates to improve its score. This point, where neither ‘player' can improve their game, is called a Nash equilibrium.
More formally, the way GANs work is that the generator network starts with some noise vector Z, which is the GAN's latent space, and passes it through the generator network to get an output. The discriminator network then must decide whether this concoction is either part of the original distribution. The networks are trained together playing what is called a Minimax game.
The discriminator is trying to always be correct in its assessment, by maximizing the amount of times it labels real data as ‘real', and generated data as ‘fake'. The generator is trying to produce good images, by minimizing the amount of times the generated data is labeled as ‘fake', or conversely, maximizing the amount of times the discriminator is fooled. It is important to train the generator along with the discriminator in gradual steps, playing them up against each other, to avoid one being blatantly better never allowing the other any useful feedback.
We find a Nash equilibrium exactly where neither the generator nor the discriminator can make any improvements on their objectives. However, what happens in practice is that the GAN gets stuck in a local optimum, or a local Nash equilibrium, where the two networks oscillate on what is not a good image at all, which can lead to some weird results that don't make much sense at all. 
We have two main goals with GANs in the context of generating face images. The first is to generate images of high quality, which on the one hand means producing a legitimate forgery a la Beltracchi, but also one of high resolution; and the other goal is to produce disentangled latent spaces. All this without too much hassle. With respect to these goals, we have two big problems with the original GAN architecture. Firstly, the original GAN produces images of rather low quality. And secondly, the original latent vector Z is still latent spaghetti, such that we have no control over its output.
Fortunately, a lot has been improved on the GAN architecture since Goodfellow's initial code and paper from 2014. I won't go over all these innovations but will get into some big improvements that distinguish the original GANs from the star of the show in our application: the StyleGAN.
Progressively Growing Images
The StyleGAN innovates on one of its more immediate predecessors, namely the Progressive GAN, or ProGAN for short. It's difficult to generate images of high quality, because the generator must learn to generate both large structure and fine details at the same time. Training is unstable and slow because generating larger images involves a much longer and more complicated process.
Various solutions to these problems have been explored. One successful solution is the Wasserstein GAN, which improves the GAN by computing a different objective function very similar to what the VAEs do: force the latent space in a certain distribution. Read more about this here.
The ProGAN and the StyleGAN build on the success of the Wasserstein GAN, but don't make further changes to the objective function. The primary contribution of the ProGAN is a training methodology where the network starts with a small image, progressively increasing its resolution by adding. This progressive up-sampling is what allows a high-resolution output because the network learns base features first and gradually increases details on the image, thus not having to do it all at once. As shown below. The generator is grown as a mirror image of the discriminator, so at no point will one overpower the other.
The power of the ProGAN lies in how it deals with features of various levels. Base features can be understood as the rough shape of the face that is depicted, and the pose that it is in. As the resolution increases, more room for detail emerges for detailed, fine features, such as the shape of the nose, the color of the hair, and so on. Because the ProGAN increases the resolution gradually, it is at each step asking a much ‘simpler question' of the network, which improves the stability and increases speed.
The StyleGAN
The ProGAN already creates realistic-looking faces, but they're missing some of the finer details. More importantly, we still have an entangled latent space. The StyleGAN also progressively grows its images but addresses these problems by first disentangling the latent space and then then using that improved latent space to inform the growing of the image step-by-step.
Mapping network
One important improvement is the mapping network. The mapping network is part of the generator, and it is composed of a bunch of fully connected layers. It is there to turn our noise vector Z into W, before it moves on through the rest of the network. Compare the two architectures below, comparing the ProGAN to the newer architecture of the StyleGAN.
Why use the mapping network to go to W first? To reduce entanglement. Going from Z to W allows the generator to turn Z into any kind of distribution that it likes, because it isn't forced to encode it in any predetermined region. This way it does not have to encode any bias that exists in the training set. For example, our dataset may be lacking men with long hair. So, at this point in our data distribution, we have a gap. Without W, we would now have a warped latent space, as the network learns that men apparently don't have long hair. Going from Z to W allows you to ‘unwarp' space such that it can still allow generating men with long hair, even when they are absent from the dataset. This reduces entangling because, in this case, ‘masculinity' is no longer strongly associated with ‘short hair'. The authors postulate that the reason that the mapping network does all these nice things, is because it is more economic to generate high quality output from disentangled vectors than entangled ones.
A second important improvement is style modules. The StyleGAN lends its name from the Style-transfer literature, which you may know from these kinds of images, where objects are transformed into their counterparts of famous artists, controlling the finer details of the image. Forcing them in the "style" of the painter but keeping the larger structure.
The way the StyleGAN controls the details of the generated image is by plugging in the disentangled W at every level of the generation process through blending layers called AdaIN. For each resolution, W blends in twice, hence its dimension of, where for the nine resolutions, there are two dimensions for each. For how the AdaIN works mathematically, I'd refer you to the paper, but suffice to say it affects the features of that resolution of the image generation process one level at a time. The levels are distinguished as follows: coarse, up to 8x8, affects general pose, hair style: the base features; middle, resolution of 16x16 to 32x32, affects finer facial features, eyes open/closed, etc; and fine, resolution of 64x64+, affects colors and fine features. Before each blending, noise is also added, to control what they call ‘stochastic features', such as freckles, small marks, and the exact way hair is flowing. This way we build up the image like the ProGAN, but we control features at multiple resolutions by blending in our disentangled W step-by-step, rather than just at the beginning.
At the beginning of the synthesis network, there is a learned constant. This is the seed of the network, where ‘normally' Z would go through. This seed is then optimized during the training process, because it is part of backpropagation. It is not explained why this helps in the paper, but it works presumably because it leaves all the control up to the disentangled W.
Thankfully, we can download the fully trained network from Nvidia, saving us countless hours of expensive training using the best TPU/GPUs on a massive dataset, which in their case is the Flickr faces dataset, consisting of 70k high-quality face images.
From Face to Space
Now that we've established how we can use the StyleGAN to generate faces using disentangled latent vectors, we can get to the next step of our celebrity matching algorithm. What we want to do now, is take an image of our own choosing and generate a latent vector from that image, such that we can play around with it, by changing parts, or by blending it with other images. Luckily, some inventive enthusiasts have forked Nvidia's StyleGAN code and improved it to provide just this functionality. One of these is a legendary figure who goes by the name Puzer. He figured that you could learn latent representations of input images using some nifty tricks.
Something you could do, is to use an average latent vector resulting in an average face, with respect to your training data. You could then compute an L2 loss comparing your image of choice, and your generated image pixel by pixel. Assuming you align your images so that the ears cover the ears, the eyes the eyes, mouth the mouth, and so on, that could work. Additionally, you could use face masks, where only those pixels that are on the face count towards your loss. By freezing the weights of the generator network, you can iteratively update your latent vector only, minimizing your loss between images. In the end, when your loss is very small, you should end up with the latent vector that produces your target image, or kind of.
In practice however, this starts off in the right direction, but gets stuck in a local minimum. It's probably comparing the images too specifically. It's also slow. Puzer innovated on this basic idea with a better idea named the perceptual loss trick Specifically, Puzer took the 9th layer from VGG16, which is a network pre-trained on ImageNet, and computed a mean squared error between their outputs, asking the question: how different are the features in these images? Doing this works beautifully well, but it's also slow.
What if you could be even niftier? Maybe by not starting with a random image, but by one that already looks a little bit like your target image. But how? That is what a man known by the name of Pbaylies figured out. He forked Puzer's code, and made it not slow. What he did was generate a lot of images using some random latent code for each image. What he then had was a lot of images with a label: their latent code. He trained a ResNet, a network that works well with images, similar to VGG16, to go from image to latent code. Now that you have a starting point you only have to update the image from that starting point, requiring many fewer steps. From our experience, Pbaylies's approach is about five times quicker than using Puzer's stategy only. Very nifty indeed. He made some other improvements too, which you can look up in the repo.
A recent paper has come out where another approach is used that is very similar. Better and niftier ways of going from images to spaces will probably come forth soon, along with better GANs. As of now, what we have is a way to get a latent space from any image we want. Which opens up many possibilities of playing around with that latent space to produce fun results.
Moving Through Feature Space
We can move around our latent space, which is disentangled and continuous. For example, we can change some part of the input Z of a face output and see the output change in some way that still is a face.
Because we have a continuous, disentangled latent space, we can explore the space between two faces, and expect them to gradually morph into each other. This works because we can do basic vector arithmetic on our latent space. Which is the kind of effect we were going for and you've already seen by now. This is simply done by looping over two latent spaces, starting at one, and then gradually taking larger proportions of the other face, while taking smaller proportions of the starting face, resulting in a smooth transition. We can then also create children of two parents by taking equal proportions of their latent spaces. A kind of pre-Mendelian conception of genetics, where children are really a fair blend of their parents.
Changing Facial Features
Now one problem is that even though our meddling with the input will at least result in a face, we still don't know where what is in the latent space: which parts of the latent space correspond to, say, someone's beard? Fortunately, we don't have to know or learn by tedious trial and error. Because of some additional nifty thinking by Puzer, we can also mess around with facial features, at levels middle and high. Middle levels in this case corresponding to the individual facial features such as hair and the senses, and high meaning composite features such as gender and age, affecting multiple features at once.
What Puzer did was generate a whole lot of faces using random latent vectors. He then classified them into groups: smiling / not smiling, young / old, male / female. Using his latent space as features, he trained a linear regression model to predict those labels. The weights of that linear model then represent the direction in feature space you need to go in to produce that output. You could also do this by taking existing face-classifiers on whatever feature you're interested in changing.
In gradual steps, you can make a person laugh more, or less, by tuning those parts of the latent vector that are involved in this effect, such as the curvature of the mouth but also the wrinkles around the eyes. Because the facial features are disentangled, we can find linear directions in our latent space and go from man to woman, not smiling to smiling, young to old. In our app, we used the laughing direction already found by Puzer to make people laugh. Literally.
Interestingly, we find some entanglement in this laughing effect. It seems that the more you make someone smile, the more likely they are to get glasses too. It could be that Puzer took a lot of smiling people with glasses in his dataset, or it could have entangled for another reason.
Measuring Entanglement
Apart from looking at the output. How can we figure out whether our latent space is really disentangled or not? The authors of the StyleGAN paper propose two new metrics: perceptual path length and linear separability. Perceptual path length means that you take two random outputs of the network, and then interpolate between them, and measure the distance in their VGG outputs, and check that there aren't any big ‘jumps', such as a nose suddenly getting really big - or glasses appearing and then disappearing. From our experiments - and of course the authors' own analysis - we can see that this is mostly sound.
Linear separability means that we can classify the inputs into binary classes, such as male/female, and young/old. From our experiments we can see that this is sound as well, as otherwise we would not be able to move our faces in these directions using only a linear model.
Generating high-quality images using generative adversarial networks is not easy, for the reasons discussed above, as well as other issues that we haven't touched on. But thanks to the smart researchers at Nvidia and elsewhere, we can generate very impressive images using the StyleGAN, and in the future we're likely to see even better results from even niftier architectures, as at just five years old, the research is very much still in its infancy.
Our application
Now that we have explained the necessary background, we can go on to tell you what we've built. We decided that it would be cool to have the model find a good-looking celebrity match - at least ostensibly. Additionally, the comedians at the BOOM Chicago thought it would be cool to turn a non-smiling photo of someone into a laughing version.
We needed to build an app that patrons of BOOM Chicago could upload their photos to, which therefore must work in a browser. The GAN code, however, requires a GPU. Web-apps don't typically run on GPUs, so we had to get creative.
In order to receive photos of visitors of the show, we created a web application that consists of two parts: the front end and the back end. The front end is developed in a reactive JavaScript framework: Vue.js. The website is responsive and user-friendly on smaller devices, executes some Python code and returns a JSON response, which is again interpreted by the front-end. Every Python function in the back end executes some SQL queries on a SQL database on Microsoft's Azure Platform, where we keep track of all submitted pictures, paths to the created morphing videos and, optionally, failure reasons.
All these components are deployed on Azure: the front-end is built in a Docker container. Docker containers are tiny ‘virtual machines' with just a clean Python installation as operating system. Docker containers can only be run when they're hosted somewhere, so we used Azure Container Registry for this. Azure Web App for Containers executes this Docker container and makes the Flask endpoints accessible via a newly created URL, for instance https://boom-backend.azurewebsites.net. Finally, we deployed a SQL server with a SQL database and storage accounts of different types: Blob storage, which is optimised for making content accessible via URLs, and File storage, which is designed to mount as a hard drive on a virtual machine.
A virtual machine is automatically started through an Automation Account a few times per day, to process whatever files have been uploaded to the file storage. We find the faces that are unprocessed by a query to the database. This face is then aligned and encoded.
Facenet
To find your celebrity match, we use the Facematch algorithm, which is a Python implementation of the Facenet literature. The way this works is tangential to generative networks and deserves a blog post of its own. But suffice to say it calculates a distance between your uploaded picture and all the images in our database, returning the smallest distance. If any of the celebrities try uploading their own images, they will end up ‘looking like' themselves. It also thinks that Will Ferrell and Chad Smith are the same person.
We interpolate by first blending in the aligned image with the generated version, Wittgenstein-style. Then we loop and blend towards the aligned version of the target image. We do the same for the ‘bad news', and then we make another loop where we gradually have the person smile, by increasing the weight on this effect. The database is updated all steps of the way. The VM stays on during the break of the show at BOOM Chicago, such that it can e-mail visitors their result in the break. If not, it turns itself off after processing all new images.
Using a virtual machine in this way feels somewhat convoluted, and perhaps better ways exist to interact with a GPU for a web-app. If you know how, let me know.
Bigger Pictures
Perhaps you've never cared about what celebrity you most look alike, let alone what your intermediate interpolated family would look like, so then what should you take away from this line of research into generative networks? Well, firstly, we've learnt that neural networks can in some way encode knowledge of what a face is, albeit purely visually. Faces, like all categories, aren't defined by some crucial singular feature but a lot of them working together in a continuous sense. And we can represent faces using continuous latent spaces. What makes your face looks like you is only a few changes away from any other. It's a very wholesome message.
Secondly, while generating, interpolating and changing faces is interesting as a purely intellectual challenge, we can speculate - and at this stage, report - on some useful applications using this knowledge in practice. I've already shown some earlier, such as the bedroom listings, Christmas trees, and shitty poetry; all for a laugh. But what else can we really do with generative networks? And I mean that in the broadest sense. Not just the StyleGAN but also some recent spawns of VAEs have been surprisingly effective at generating.
It turns out that even generating lots of face images of imaginary people can be useful. For example by generating stock photos for use in marketing. Or it can be useful for criminals, as Facebook recently shut down a StyleGAN attack, where synthetic images were used for fake profiles, in order to spread false political advertising.
And we might as well figure out what we look like with a crazy hairdo. It looks like a man named Shawn is working on a Face-Editor. A hairstylist could take a customer's photo and iterate over a few options. A plastic surgeon could do the same with faces, and hopefully avoid some disasters. The police could use it in fighting crime, evolving police sketches until they converge on an eyewitness' mental image. And we can go on.
Deep Fakes
A big topic that has reached the news multiple times over the last years is that of deep fakes, a controversial technique built on GANs and autoencoders that switches and changes faces in video. This way you can, for example, insert people into porn, or create fake political speeches. Synthesizing such deep fakes is already the topic of hot moral debate. Ought it be forbidden to generate realistic-looking fakes of people in the nude? The US Ministry of Justice recently commissioned a review on existing laws, that already prohibit non-consensual sharing of sex images, and made sure they now include new types, such as those synthetically created. So according to them, the answer is yes.
Google is now working to combat this kind of deep fake by building a discriminator of its own. However, the fakes are going to get better and better, and at some point, will be indistinguishable from reality. So, I believe that this kind of deep fake detector is a dead end and think that in the future we are going to regard video the same as text, in the sense that we verify its source before trusting its content. Stephen Wolfram has speculated that this could be done on the blockchain. If you'd like to try detecting yourself, at the time I am writing this, there is a Kaggle challenge going on on deepfake detection.
Deep fakes can also be used for more lighthearted endeavors. A YouTube channel called Ctrl Shift Face switches faces around for entertainment purposes, and various other channels are doing the same things.
One can speculate on commercial applications for this kind of algorithm too. Recently, Scorsese's The Irishman spent a good part of its 150-million-dollar budget getting Pacino back to middle age.
We've already seen how we can make people younger, so we could combine this with deep faking to create an effect like the CGI done in the Irishman, which must've taken thousands of man hours. This may however be difficult because showing emotion causes wrinkles that you do not want to filter out. As you can see in the image above, only specific wrinkles are removed. Though this shouldn't be something you can't solve with a rich dataset. In any case, GANs are already making their way into Hollywood by making people dance.
As I've mentioned, generative networks aren't limited to generating face images, and could be used for various other purposes. Even when we're still talking imagery, they could be used to generate plausible medical images that can then work to train other neural nets. It can also learn how to increase the quality of a photo or video, enhance or generate video-game environments, or create art. Outside of the realm of images, it could even learn how to synthesize new drug candidates.
And we can have some fun right now. There is a meta-game available, which prompts you with two faces and you've got to guess which one is real, and which one is fake. Be the discriminator. On the face of it, it's very difficult. But there are a few obvious giveaways that should get you close to 100%, providing some hope that we can at least detect fakes for some time to come, short as that may be. Can you find them?
StyleGAN 2
There is a StyleGAN 2 out: one that is, among other things, more flexible with angles. It's also better at removing strange artifacts from the images, which is one of the clues that you can use in the abovementioned game. You should now have all the info you need to read and understand the paper by yourself. And someone has already been working on an encoder for StyleGAN 2, so we can start coding up even better applications right away.

The following glossaries are from my personal learning of LLM and Generative AI.
General Terminology
LM: Language Model, a language model is a probability distribution over sequences of words.
LLM: Large Language Model, a language model consisting of a neural network with many parameters, trained on large quantities of unlabeled text using self-supervised learning.
Generative AI: A generative artificial intelligence or generative AI / is a type of AI system capable of generating text, images, or other media in response to prompts. Generative AI systems use generative models such as large language models to produce data based on the training data set that was used to create them.
NLP: Natural language processing is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data.
Hallucination: In artificial intelligence is a confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data.
Emergent Abilities: an ability to be emergent if it is not present in smaller models but is present in larger models. Emergent abilities are humanity's serendipities says Shuchao.
Alignment: AI alignment research aims to steer AI systems towards humans' intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances the intended objectives. A misaligned AI system is competent at advancing some objectives, but not the intended ones.
Grounding: Grounding in large language modeling is the process of associating words and phrases with their corresponding real-world entities and concepts. This is important for a number of reasons, including: 1. Ensuring that the language model is generating text that is consistent with reality. For example, if the language model is asked to generate a description of a cat, it should not generate text that is inconsistent with our real-world knowledge of cats, such as saying that cats can fly. 2. Improving the accuracy of the language model's responses. For example, if the language model is asked to answer a question about the capital of France, it should be able to correctly answer "Paris" if it has been grounded to the real-world entity "Paris" 3. Making the language model more informative. For example, if the language model is asked to generate a description of a dog, it should be able to provide more information about dogs than just their physical appearance, such as their lifespan, diet, and behavior. There are a number of different approaches to grounding in large language modeling. One common approach is to use a knowledge base, such as Wikipedia, to associate words and phrases with their corresponding real-world entities and concepts.
Base model / foundational model: a pre-trained language mdoel that serves as the starting point for building more specific models for downstream tasks. Once a foundational LLM is pre-trained, it can be fine-tuned on a specific NLP task, such as text classification, question answering, or language translation, by training it on a smaller set of task-specific data. The fine-tuning process adjusts the weights and biases of the model to better fit the particular task, while still preserving the knowledge learned during pre-training. Foundational LLMs are typically very large and complex, requiring significant computational resources to train and fine-tune. However, they have been shown to be highly effective at a wide range of NLP tasks, and their use has enabled significant advances in the field of natural language processing. Examples of foundational LLMs include BERT.
Prompt Engineering: a process of designing and constructing effective natural language prompts for use with large language models. Prompts are input patterns that are used to guide the behavior of LLMs and generate text that is relevant to a specific task or domain. Prompt engineering involves designing prompts that are well-suited to the specific task at hand, and that provide enough information for the model to generate high-quality output. Effective prompt engineering involves several key steps, including selecting appropriate keywords and phrases that are relevant to the task, specifying the desired output format or structure, and optimizing the prompt for performance and efficiency. For example, in the context of language translation, prompt engineering might involve specifying a prompt that includes the source language text and the desired target language, along with any additional context or constraints that are relevant to the translation task. In the context of question answering, prompt engineering might involve designing prompts that include relevant background information and key terms that are likely to be associated with the answer.
Zero-shot Prompting/Learning: Zero-shot learning in NLP allows a pre-trained LLM to generate responses to tasks that it hasn't been specifically trained for. In this technique, the model is provided with an input text and a prompt that describes the expected output from the model in natural language.
One-shot Prompting/Learning: a prompting technique that allows a model to process one labeled example before attempting a task.
Few-shot Prompting/Learning, aka in-context learning: a prompting technique that allows a model to process multiple labeled examples before attempting a task.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting: Chain-of-thought prompting improves the reasoning ability of LLMs by prompting them to generate a series of intermediate steps that lead to the final answer of a multi-step problem.
Modality: A high-level data category. For example, numbers, text, images, video, and audio are five different modalities.
Context Window / Context Length: context window is the number of tokens that are considered when predicting the next token.
Temperature: a hyperparameter that controls the randomness of the model's output. A temperature of 0 means always output the highest probability token.
Model Structure and Model Training
Transformer: The Transformer model is a neural network architecture that is particularly effective for natural language processing tasks. The basic structure of the Transformer can be broken down into several components:
1. Input Embeddings: The input sequence is first transformed into a vector space using an embedding layer. Each element in the sequence is represented as a dense vector.
2. Positional Encoding: Since the Transformer does not use recurrent connections, it needs a way to capture the order and position of the input sequence. This is achieved using positional encoding, which adds a fixed encoding to the input embeddings based on the position of the element in the sequence.
3. Encoder: The encoder consists of multiple layers of self-attention and feed-forward neural networks. In each layer, the input embeddings are first transformed using multi-head self-attention, which allows the model to selectively attend to different parts of the input sequence. The resulting vectors are then passed through a feed-forward neural network, which applies a non-linear transformation to each vector independently.
4. Decoder: The decoder also consists of multiple layers of self-attention and feed-forward neural networks. In each layer, the decoder takes as input a combination of the output of the previous layer and the encoded input sequence. The decoder is trained to generate the output sequence, one element at a time, by predicting the next element in the sequence based on the previous elements and the encoded input.
5. Output Layer: The final layer of the Transformer is an output layer that takes as input the output of the decoder and generates the final output sequence. In many cases, this is a softmax layer that generates probabilities for each element in the output vocabulary.
The Transformer model is highly parallelizable, which makes it well-suited for training on large datasets using modern hardware such as GPUs or TPUs. It has been shown to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of natural language processing tasks, including machine translation, language modeling, and text classification.
Attention: attention mechanism is a key component in the Transformer model, which is a popular deep learning architecture for natural language processing tasks, such as machine translation and language understanding. The attention mechanism allows the model to selectively focus on different parts of the input sequence when encoding or decoding it.
Self-attention: Self-attention mechanism is a key component of the Transformer architecture. In a self-attention mechanism, the input sequence is transformed into queries, keys, and values, which are then used to compute a set of attention scores for each input element. Unlike a traditional attention mechanism, where the queries and keys come from separate input sequences, in self-attention mechanism, the queries, keys, and values all come from the same input sequence.
CLM: causal language modeling, a pretraining task where the model reads the texts in order and has to predict the next word.
MLM: masked language modeling, a pretraining task where the model sees a corrupted version of the texts, usually done by masking some tokens randomly, and has to predict the original text.
Encoder-only models: Encoder-only language models are neural network models that use only an encoder module to process input text and generate contextualized representations of the text. In contrast to traditional Transformer models, which use both an encoder and a decoder module to generate output text, encoder-only LLMs are designed to encode text into a fixed-length vector representation that can be used for a variety of downstream natural language processing. Encoder-only models are good at understanding content but not good at generating new content.
Encoder-Decoder models: encoder-decoder language models are neural network models that consist of two main components: an encoder and a decoder. The encoder processes input text and generates a fixed-length vector representation of the input text, while the decoder uses this representation to generate output text. Encoder-decoder LLMs are commonly used for sequence-to-sequence and the Transformer model.
Decoder-only models: decoder-only language models are neural network models that use only a decoder module to generate output text, without an accompanying encoder module. Unlike encoder-decoder LLMs, which generate output text based on a fixed-length vector representation of the input text, decoder-only LLMs generate output text based on an autoregressive process, where the output tokens are generated one at a time based on the previously generated tokens. Decoder-only LLMs are commonly used for language generation tasks, such as text completion and text generation. In text completion, for example, the model is given a partial input sequence and is asked to generate the remaining sequence. Decoder-only LLMs are typically trained using maximum likelihood estimation family of models. Decoder-only models are extremely good at generating new content.
Vision Transformer: The Vision Transformer.
Self-supervised learning: a type of machine learning in which a model is trained using unlabeled data. Unlike supervised learning, where the model is trained on labeled data, self-supervised learning does not require any labeled data. Instead, the model is trained to make predictions about some aspect of the input data, such as predicting the next word in a sequence or filling in a missing segment of an image. The goal of self-supervised learning is to learn a useful representation of the input data that can be used for downstream tasks. By learning to predict certain aspects of the input data, the model can extract useful features and patterns from the data that can be used for other tasks.
Embedding: a mapping from a high-dimensional space as continuous vectors that can be used as input to a neural network.
Pre-training: a key aspect of large language modeling, which involves training a language model on a massive amount of unlabeled text data. The purpose of pre-training is to teach the model to understand the underlying structure of language and to learn useful patterns and relationships between words and phrases.
Fine-tuning, aka Adaption Tuning or Domain Adaption: the process of adapting a pre-trained language model to a specific task by training it on a smaller, task-specific dataset. Fine-tuning is an approach to transfer learning in which the weights of a pre-trained model are trained on new data. Fine-tuning can be done on the entire neural network, or on only a subset of its layers, in which case the layers that are not being fine-tuned are "frozen".
Instruction Tuning：Instruction tuning is the approach to fine-tuning pre-trained LLMs on a collection of formatted instances in the form of natural language, which is highly related to supervised fine-tuning and multi-task prompted training. Instruction tuning is an emergent paradigm in NLP wherein natural language instructions are leveraged with language models to induce zero-shot performance on unseen tasks.
PEFT: Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning methods enable efficient adaptation of pre-trained language models model parameters, thereby greatly decreasing the computational and storage costs. Recent State-of-the-Art PEFT techniques achieve performance comparable to that of full fine-tuning.
Popular PEFT methods.
1. LoRA, Low-Rank Adaptation: An important paradigm of natural language processing consists of large-scale pre-training on general domain data and adaptation to particular tasks or domains. As we pre-train larger models, full fine-tuning, which retrains all model parameters, becomes less feasible. Low-rank adaptation freezes the pretrained model weights and injects trainable rank decomposition matrices into each layer of the Transformer architecture, greatly reducing the number of trainable parameters for downstream tasks.
2. Prefix Tuning: a lightweight alternative to fine-tuning for natural language generation tasks, which keeps language model parameters frozen and instead optimizes a sequence of continuous task-specific vectors, which we call the prefix. Prefix-tuning draws inspiration from prompting for language models, allowing subsequent tokens to attend to this prefix as if it were "virtual tokens".
3. Prompt Tuning: a simple yet effective mechanism for learning "soft prompts" to condition frozen language models to perform specific downstream tasks. Unlike the discrete text prompts used by GPT-3, soft prompts are learned through backpropagation and can be tuned to incorporate signals from any number of labeled examples. Our end-to-end learned approach outperform GPT-3's few-shot learning by a large margin
4. AdaLoRA, Adaptive LoRA: many fine-tuning methods are proposed to learn incremental updates of pre-trained weights in a parameter efficient way, e.g., low-rank increments. These methods often evenly distribute the budget of incremental updates across all pre-trained weight matrices, and overlook the varying importance of different weight parameters. As a consequence, the fine-tuning performance is suboptimal. To bridge this gap, we propose AdaLoRA, which adaptively allocates the parameter budget among weight matrices according to their importance score.
Alignment Tuning: Since LLMs are trained to capture the data characteristics of pre-training corpora, they are likely to generate toxic, biased, or even harmful content for humans. It is necessary to align LLMs with human values, e.g., helpful, honest, and harmless.
RLHF, reinforcement learning from human feedback is a technique that trains a "reward model" directly from human feedback and uses the model as a reward function to optimize an agent's policy using reinforcement learning through an optimization algorithm like Proximal Policy Optimization. The reward model is trained in advance to the policy being optimized to predict if a given output is good. RLHF can improve the robustness and exploration of RL agents, especially when the reward function is sparse or noisy.
Diffusion: Diffusion Models are a class of probabilistic generative models used in machine learning to simulate the dynamics of complex systems over time. Unlike traditional generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks, Diffusion Models simulate the dynamics of a stochastic process that evolves over time, rather than generating a fixed sample from a learned distribution. Diffusion Models work by starting with a base distribution, typically a Gaussian distribution, and then gradually transforming the distribution over time by adding noise. This process is often referred to as "diffusing" the base distribution. To generate a sample from a Diffusion Model, the model is "reverse diffused" from a noisy sample to the base distribution, using a series of "diffusion steps". This process involves iteratively removing noise from the sample and updating the distribution to generate a more accurate representation of the underlying data. Diffusion Models have been shown to be effective in generating high-quality samples from complex high-dimensional data, such as natural images and videos. They have also been applied to various machine learning tasks, such as image denoising and super-resolution, as well as to modeling complex systems in physics and biology.
GAN, Generative Adversarial Network: a type of deep neural network architecture that is used to generate new data that is similar to the training data. The architecture of GANs consists of two neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. The generator network takes a random input and produces a sample that resembles the training data. The discriminator network takes a sample, either real or generated, and classifies it as either real or fake. The training process of GANs is adversarial, which means that the generator and the discriminator networks are trained against each other. As the generator network gets better at generating realistic samples, the discriminator network becomes better at distinguishing between real and fake samples. This back-and-forth training process continues until the generator network produces samples that are indistinguishable from the real samples. GANs have been used in various applications such as image and video generation, text generation, and music generation. They have also been used for other tasks such as image super-resolution, image inpainting, and style transfer.
VAE, Variational Autoencoder, a type of neural network architecture used in unsupervised learning for generative modeling. The VAE model consists of two parts: an encoder and a decoder. The encoder maps the input data to a latent representation divergence penalty into the loss function. This penalty encourages the learned latent representation to have a similar distribution to a standard normal distribution. This makes the latent representation more easily sampled and allows for the generation of new data points by sampling from the learned distribution. VAEs have been used in various applications such as image and video generation, text generation, and music generation. They have also been used for other tasks such as image inpainting, denoising, and style transfer. VAEs are particularly useful for generative modeling tasks where there is no labeled data available.
Flow-based deep generative models: a type of deep learning model used for generative modeling, which involves learning a probability distribution over a set of data, with the aim of generating new data that is similar to the original set. In flow-based models, the probability distribution is represented by a series of invertible transformations, or "flows," applied to a simple base distribution, such as a Gaussian distribution. These transformations are typically implemented using neural networks, which allow for complex and flexible mappings between the input data and the latent space where the probability distribution is defined. The key advantage of flow-based models is that they can generate samples efficiently, as the inverse transformations can be easily computed. They are also well-suited to modeling high-dimensional and continuous data, such as images and audio.
Model Compression Techniques
Pruning: Pruning involves removing unnecessary connections or nodes from the neural network. This can be done based on various criteria such as weight magnitude, activation values, or gradients. Pruning can significantly reduce the size of the model while preserving its accuracy.
Quantization: Quantization involves reducing the precision of the model's weights and activations from floating-point numbers to fixed-point numbers with fewer bits. This can reduce the memory requirements and computational complexity of the model, but may also result in a slight decrease in accuracy.
Distillation: Knowledge distillation involves training a smaller model. This can transfer the knowledge and accuracy of the larger model to the smaller model, allowing it to achieve similar performance with fewer parameters.
Low-rank factorization: Low-rank factorization involves decomposing the weight matrices of the neural network into smaller matrices with lower rank. This can reduce the number of parameters and computations required by the model, while preserving its accuracy.
Model Acronyms
GPT: a family of language models developed by OpenAI. The GPTs are encoder-only models trained to predict the next word in a sequence of text given the previous words.
InstructGPT: InstructGPT models are trained with RLHF, which are much better at following user intentions than GPT-3 while also making them more truthful and less toxic.
ChatGPT: ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response.
GLaM that are each specialized for different inputs.
LaMDA ：a Transformer-based large language model developed by Google trained on a large dialogue dataset that can generate realistic conversational responses.
PaLM: a 540-billion parameter, dense decoder-only Transformer model trained with the Pathways system, which enabled efficient training of a single model across multiple TPU v4 Pods.
FLAN: more generalizable Language Models with Instruction Fine-Tuning.
FLAN-PaLM: fine-tuned PaLM.
Gopher: a transformer language models of 280 billion parameters developed by DeepMind.
Chinchilla: a transformer language model developed by Deepmind using the same compute budget as Gopher but with 70B parameters and 4x more data.
Sparrow: a dialogue agent that's useful and reduces the risk of unsafe and inappropriate answers developed by DeepMind. Sparrow agent is designed to talk with a user, answer questions, and search the internet using Google when it's helpful to look up evidence to inform its responses.
OPT: a language model with 175 billion parameters trained on publicly available data sets developed by Meta. Decoder-only model.
LLaMA: a foundational, 65-billion-parameter large language model developed by Meta. Decoder-only model.
BERT: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers - a type of LLM developed by Google that is pre-trained on large amounts of text data. Encoder-only model.
T5: Text-To-Text Transfer Transformer.
BLOOM: a 176 billion parameter developed by Hugging Face, trained in 46 natural languages and 13 programming languages.
Alpaca-7B: a model fine-tuned from the LLaMA 7B model on 52K instruction-following demonstrations, developed by Stanford.
Koala: a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta's LLaMA on dialogue data gathered from the web, developed by Berkeley.
Vicuna-13B: an open-source chatbot trained by fine-tuning LLaMA on user-shared conversations collected from ShareGPT.
Stable Diffusion: an open source latent text-to-image diffusion model by Stability AI and their collaborators including Runway.
LLM Argumentation and Applications
Memory: Memory is the concept of persisting state between calls of a chain/agent. LangChain provides a standard interface for memory, a collection of memory implementations, and examples of chains/agents that use memory.
Indexes: Language models are often more powerful when combined with your own text data - this module covers best practices for doing exactly that.
Chains: Chains go beyond just a single LLM call, and are sequences of calls. LangChain provides a standard interface for chains, lots of integrations with other tools, and end-to-end chains for common applications.
Agents: Agents involve an LLM making decisions about which Actions to take, taking that Action, seeing an Observation, and repeating that until done. LangChain provides a standard interface for agents, a selection of agents to choose from, and examples of end to end agents.
LLM and Generative AI Related Companies and Tools
Huggging Face: model repository with lots of great open source tools to train and serve large language models, including Transformers, Accelerate, etc..
DeepSpeed is a deep learning optimization library developed by Microsoft, which has been used to train a number of LLMs, such as BLOOM.
JAX: Jax is a Python library designed for high-performance ML research, developed by Google and used internally both by Google and DeepMind teams.
OpenAI: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Anthropic: Anthropic is an AI safety and research company. We build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Anthropic's search on interpretability of Tranformer is impressive. A lot of people know how to train LLMs to get emergent abilities and few people understanding how and why emergent abilities emerge.
Cohere: Cohere empowers every developer and enterprise to build amazing products and capture true business value with language AI.
DeeepMind: AI could be one of humanity's most useful inventions. We're a team of scientists, engineers, ethicists and more, committed to solving intelligence, to advance science and benefit humanity.
Midjourney: image generation product, is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.
Stability AI: image generation, AI by the people for the people. Our goal is to maximize the accessibility of modern AI to inspire global creativity and innovation.
Runway: with video generation product, make the impossible & move creativity forward.
Character.AI: Character.ai is a neural language model chatbot web application that can generate human-like text responses and participate in contextual conversation.
AI21 Labs: AI21 Labs is a Tel Aviv-based company specializing in Natural Language Processing, which develops AI systems that can understand and generate natural language.
EleutherAI: EleutherAI is a grass-roots non-profit artificial intelligence research group. The group, considered an open-source version of OpenAI, was formed in a Discord server in July 2020 to organize a replication of GPT-3. EleutherAI is a non-profit AI research lab that focuses on interpretability and alignment of large models. EleutherAI's mission is to empower open-source artificial intelligence research.
Adept: An AI teammate for everyone. Adept is building an entirely new way to get things done. It takes your goals, in plain language, and turns them into actions on the software you use every day.
Glean: Bring people the knowledge they need to make a difference in the world. Glean is the enterprise search and knowledge discovery solution for modern teams. Search all company apps, find what you need, and discover what you should.

The following glossaries are from my personal learning of LLM and Generative AI.
General Terminology
LM: Language Model, a language model is a probability distribution over sequences of words.
LLM: Large Language Model, a language model consisting of a neural network with many parameters, trained on large quantities of unlabeled text using self-supervised learning.
Generative AI: A generative artificial intelligence or generative AI / is a type of AI system capable of generating text, images, or other media in response to prompts. Generative AI systems use generative models such as large language models to produce data based on the training data set that was used to create them.
NLP: Natural language processing is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data.
Hallucination: In artificial intelligence is a confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data.
Emergent Abilities: an ability to be emergent if it is not present in smaller models but is present in larger models. Emergent abilities are humanity's serendipities says Shuchao.
Alignment: AI alignment research aims to steer AI systems towards humans' intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances the intended objectives. A misaligned AI system is competent at advancing some objectives, but not the intended ones.
Grounding: Grounding in large language modeling is the process of associating words and phrases with their corresponding real-world entities and concepts. This is important for a number of reasons, including: 1. Ensuring that the language model is generating text that is consistent with reality. For example, if the language model is asked to generate a description of a cat, it should not generate text that is inconsistent with our real-world knowledge of cats, such as saying that cats can fly. 2. Improving the accuracy of the language model's responses. For example, if the language model is asked to answer a question about the capital of France, it should be able to correctly answer "Paris" if it has been grounded to the real-world entity "Paris" 3. Making the language model more informative. For example, if the language model is asked to generate a description of a dog, it should be able to provide more information about dogs than just their physical appearance, such as their lifespan, diet, and behavior. There are a number of different approaches to grounding in large language modeling. One common approach is to use a knowledge base, such as Wikipedia, to associate words and phrases with their corresponding real-world entities and concepts.
Base model / foundational model: a pre-trained language mdoel that serves as the starting point for building more specific models for downstream tasks. Once a foundational LLM is pre-trained, it can be fine-tuned on a specific NLP task, such as text classification, question answering, or language translation, by training it on a smaller set of task-specific data. The fine-tuning process adjusts the weights and biases of the model to better fit the particular task, while still preserving the knowledge learned during pre-training. Foundational LLMs are typically very large and complex, requiring significant computational resources to train and fine-tune. However, they have been shown to be highly effective at a wide range of NLP tasks, and their use has enabled significant advances in the field of natural language processing. Examples of foundational LLMs include BERT.
Prompt Engineering: a process of designing and constructing effective natural language prompts for use with large language models. Prompts are input patterns that are used to guide the behavior of LLMs and generate text that is relevant to a specific task or domain. Prompt engineering involves designing prompts that are well-suited to the specific task at hand, and that provide enough information for the model to generate high-quality output. Effective prompt engineering involves several key steps, including selecting appropriate keywords and phrases that are relevant to the task, specifying the desired output format or structure, and optimizing the prompt for performance and efficiency. For example, in the context of language translation, prompt engineering might involve specifying a prompt that includes the source language text and the desired target language, along with any additional context or constraints that are relevant to the translation task. In the context of question answering, prompt engineering might involve designing prompts that include relevant background information and key terms that are likely to be associated with the answer.
Zero-shot Prompting/Learning: Zero-shot learning in NLP allows a pre-trained LLM to generate responses to tasks that it hasn't been specifically trained for. In this technique, the model is provided with an input text and a prompt that describes the expected output from the model in natural language.
One-shot Prompting/Learning: a prompting technique that allows a model to process one labeled example before attempting a task.
Few-shot Prompting/Learning, aka in-context learning: a prompting technique that allows a model to process multiple labeled examples before attempting a task.
Chain-of-Thought Prompting: Chain-of-thought prompting improves the reasoning ability of LLMs by prompting them to generate a series of intermediate steps that lead to the final answer of a multi-step problem.
Modality: A high-level data category. For example, numbers, text, images, video, and audio are five different modalities.
Context Window / Context Length: context window is the number of tokens that are considered when predicting the next token.
Temperature: a hyperparameter that controls the randomness of the model's output. A temperature of 0 means always output the highest probability token.
Model Structure and Model Training
Transformer: The Transformer model is a neural network architecture that is particularly effective for natural language processing tasks. The basic structure of the Transformer can be broken down into several components:
1. Input Embeddings: The input sequence is first transformed into a vector space using an embedding layer. Each element in the sequence is represented as a dense vector.
2. Positional Encoding: Since the Transformer does not use recurrent connections, it needs a way to capture the order and position of the input sequence. This is achieved using positional encoding, which adds a fixed encoding to the input embeddings based on the position of the element in the sequence.
3. Encoder: The encoder consists of multiple layers of self-attention and feed-forward neural networks. In each layer, the input embeddings are first transformed using multi-head self-attention, which allows the model to selectively attend to different parts of the input sequence. The resulting vectors are then passed through a feed-forward neural network, which applies a non-linear transformation to each vector independently.
4. Decoder: The decoder also consists of multiple layers of self-attention and feed-forward neural networks. In each layer, the decoder takes as input a combination of the output of the previous layer and the encoded input sequence. The decoder is trained to generate the output sequence, one element at a time, by predicting the next element in the sequence based on the previous elements and the encoded input.
5. Output Layer: The final layer of the Transformer is an output layer that takes as input the output of the decoder and generates the final output sequence. In many cases, this is a softmax layer that generates probabilities for each element in the output vocabulary.
The Transformer model is highly parallelizable, which makes it well-suited for training on large datasets using modern hardware such as GPUs or TPUs. It has been shown to achieve state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of natural language processing tasks, including machine translation, language modeling, and text classification.
Attention: attention mechanism is a key component in the Transformer model, which is a popular deep learning architecture for natural language processing tasks, such as machine translation and language understanding. The attention mechanism allows the model to selectively focus on different parts of the input sequence when encoding or decoding it.
Self-attention: Self-attention mechanism is a key component of the Transformer architecture. In a self-attention mechanism, the input sequence is transformed into queries, keys, and values, which are then used to compute a set of attention scores for each input element. Unlike a traditional attention mechanism, where the queries and keys come from separate input sequences, in self-attention mechanism, the queries, keys, and values all come from the same input sequence.
CLM: causal language modeling, a pretraining task where the model reads the texts in order and has to predict the next word.
MLM: masked language modeling, a pretraining task where the model sees a corrupted version of the texts, usually done by masking some tokens randomly, and has to predict the original text.
Encoder-only models: Encoder-only language models are neural network models that use only an encoder module to process input text and generate contextualized representations of the text. In contrast to traditional Transformer models, which use both an encoder and a decoder module to generate output text, encoder-only LLMs are designed to encode text into a fixed-length vector representation that can be used for a variety of downstream natural language processing. Encoder-only models are good at understanding content but not good at generating new content.
Encoder-Decoder models: encoder-decoder language models are neural network models that consist of two main components: an encoder and a decoder. The encoder processes input text and generates a fixed-length vector representation of the input text, while the decoder uses this representation to generate output text. Encoder-decoder LLMs are commonly used for sequence-to-sequence and the Transformer model.
Decoder-only models: decoder-only language models are neural network models that use only a decoder module to generate output text, without an accompanying encoder module. Unlike encoder-decoder LLMs, which generate output text based on a fixed-length vector representation of the input text, decoder-only LLMs generate output text based on an autoregressive process, where the output tokens are generated one at a time based on the previously generated tokens. Decoder-only LLMs are commonly used for language generation tasks, such as text completion and text generation. In text completion, for example, the model is given a partial input sequence and is asked to generate the remaining sequence. Decoder-only LLMs are typically trained using maximum likelihood estimation family of models. Decoder-only models are extremely good at generating new content.
Vision Transformer: The Vision Transformer.
Self-supervised learning: a type of machine learning in which a model is trained using unlabeled data. Unlike supervised learning, where the model is trained on labeled data, self-supervised learning does not require any labeled data. Instead, the model is trained to make predictions about some aspect of the input data, such as predicting the next word in a sequence or filling in a missing segment of an image. The goal of self-supervised learning is to learn a useful representation of the input data that can be used for downstream tasks. By learning to predict certain aspects of the input data, the model can extract useful features and patterns from the data that can be used for other tasks.
Embedding: a mapping from a high-dimensional space as continuous vectors that can be used as input to a neural network.
Pre-training: a key aspect of large language modeling, which involves training a language model on a massive amount of unlabeled text data. The purpose of pre-training is to teach the model to understand the underlying structure of language and to learn useful patterns and relationships between words and phrases.
Fine-tuning, aka Adaption Tuning or Domain Adaption: the process of adapting a pre-trained language model to a specific task by training it on a smaller, task-specific dataset. Fine-tuning is an approach to transfer learning in which the weights of a pre-trained model are trained on new data. Fine-tuning can be done on the entire neural network, or on only a subset of its layers, in which case the layers that are not being fine-tuned are "frozen".
Instruction Tuning：Instruction tuning is the approach to fine-tuning pre-trained LLMs on a collection of formatted instances in the form of natural language, which is highly related to supervised fine-tuning and multi-task prompted training. Instruction tuning is an emergent paradigm in NLP wherein natural language instructions are leveraged with language models to induce zero-shot performance on unseen tasks.
PEFT: Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning methods enable efficient adaptation of pre-trained language models model parameters, thereby greatly decreasing the computational and storage costs. Recent State-of-the-Art PEFT techniques achieve performance comparable to that of full fine-tuning.
Popular PEFT methods.
1. LoRA, Low-Rank Adaptation: An important paradigm of natural language processing consists of large-scale pre-training on general domain data and adaptation to particular tasks or domains. As we pre-train larger models, full fine-tuning, which retrains all model parameters, becomes less feasible. Low-rank adaptation freezes the pretrained model weights and injects trainable rank decomposition matrices into each layer of the Transformer architecture, greatly reducing the number of trainable parameters for downstream tasks.
2. Prefix Tuning: a lightweight alternative to fine-tuning for natural language generation tasks, which keeps language model parameters frozen and instead optimizes a sequence of continuous task-specific vectors, which we call the prefix. Prefix-tuning draws inspiration from prompting for language models, allowing subsequent tokens to attend to this prefix as if it were "virtual tokens".
3. Prompt Tuning: a simple yet effective mechanism for learning "soft prompts" to condition frozen language models to perform specific downstream tasks. Unlike the discrete text prompts used by GPT-3, soft prompts are learned through backpropagation and can be tuned to incorporate signals from any number of labeled examples. Our end-to-end learned approach outperform GPT-3's few-shot learning by a large margin
4. AdaLoRA, Adaptive LoRA: many fine-tuning methods are proposed to learn incremental updates of pre-trained weights in a parameter efficient way, e.g., low-rank increments. These methods often evenly distribute the budget of incremental updates across all pre-trained weight matrices, and overlook the varying importance of different weight parameters. As a consequence, the fine-tuning performance is suboptimal. To bridge this gap, we propose AdaLoRA, which adaptively allocates the parameter budget among weight matrices according to their importance score.
Alignment Tuning: Since LLMs are trained to capture the data characteristics of pre-training corpora, they are likely to generate toxic, biased, or even harmful content for humans. It is necessary to align LLMs with human values, e.g., helpful, honest, and harmless.
RLHF, reinforcement learning from human feedback is a technique that trains a "reward model" directly from human feedback and uses the model as a reward function to optimize an agent's policy using reinforcement learning through an optimization algorithm like Proximal Policy Optimization. The reward model is trained in advance to the policy being optimized to predict if a given output is good. RLHF can improve the robustness and exploration of RL agents, especially when the reward function is sparse or noisy.
Diffusion: Diffusion Models are a class of probabilistic generative models used in machine learning to simulate the dynamics of complex systems over time. Unlike traditional generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks, Diffusion Models simulate the dynamics of a stochastic process that evolves over time, rather than generating a fixed sample from a learned distribution. Diffusion Models work by starting with a base distribution, typically a Gaussian distribution, and then gradually transforming the distribution over time by adding noise. This process is often referred to as "diffusing" the base distribution. To generate a sample from a Diffusion Model, the model is "reverse diffused" from a noisy sample to the base distribution, using a series of "diffusion steps". This process involves iteratively removing noise from the sample and updating the distribution to generate a more accurate representation of the underlying data. Diffusion Models have been shown to be effective in generating high-quality samples from complex high-dimensional data, such as natural images and videos. They have also been applied to various machine learning tasks, such as image denoising and super-resolution, as well as to modeling complex systems in physics and biology.
GAN, Generative Adversarial Network: a type of deep neural network architecture that is used to generate new data that is similar to the training data. The architecture of GANs consists of two neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. The generator network takes a random input and produces a sample that resembles the training data. The discriminator network takes a sample, either real or generated, and classifies it as either real or fake. The training process of GANs is adversarial, which means that the generator and the discriminator networks are trained against each other. As the generator network gets better at generating realistic samples, the discriminator network becomes better at distinguishing between real and fake samples. This back-and-forth training process continues until the generator network produces samples that are indistinguishable from the real samples. GANs have been used in various applications such as image and video generation, text generation, and music generation. They have also been used for other tasks such as image super-resolution, image inpainting, and style transfer.
VAE, Variational Autoencoder, a type of neural network architecture used in unsupervised learning for generative modeling. The VAE model consists of two parts: an encoder and a decoder. The encoder maps the input data to a latent representation divergence penalty into the loss function. This penalty encourages the learned latent representation to have a similar distribution to a standard normal distribution. This makes the latent representation more easily sampled and allows for the generation of new data points by sampling from the learned distribution. VAEs have been used in various applications such as image and video generation, text generation, and music generation. They have also been used for other tasks such as image inpainting, denoising, and style transfer. VAEs are particularly useful for generative modeling tasks where there is no labeled data available.
Flow-based deep generative models: a type of deep learning model used for generative modeling, which involves learning a probability distribution over a set of data, with the aim of generating new data that is similar to the original set. In flow-based models, the probability distribution is represented by a series of invertible transformations, or "flows," applied to a simple base distribution, such as a Gaussian distribution. These transformations are typically implemented using neural networks, which allow for complex and flexible mappings between the input data and the latent space where the probability distribution is defined. The key advantage of flow-based models is that they can generate samples efficiently, as the inverse transformations can be easily computed. They are also well-suited to modeling high-dimensional and continuous data, such as images and audio.
Model Compression Techniques
Pruning: Pruning involves removing unnecessary connections or nodes from the neural network. This can be done based on various criteria such as weight magnitude, activation values, or gradients. Pruning can significantly reduce the size of the model while preserving its accuracy.
Quantization: Quantization involves reducing the precision of the model's weights and activations from floating-point numbers to fixed-point numbers with fewer bits. This can reduce the memory requirements and computational complexity of the model, but may also result in a slight decrease in accuracy.
Distillation: Knowledge distillation involves training a smaller model. This can transfer the knowledge and accuracy of the larger model to the smaller model, allowing it to achieve similar performance with fewer parameters.
Low-rank factorization: Low-rank factorization involves decomposing the weight matrices of the neural network into smaller matrices with lower rank. This can reduce the number of parameters and computations required by the model, while preserving its accuracy.
Model Acronyms
GPT: a family of language models developed by OpenAI. The GPTs are encoder-only models trained to predict the next word in a sequence of text given the previous words.
InstructGPT: InstructGPT models are trained with RLHF, which are much better at following user intentions than GPT-3 while also making them more truthful and less toxic.
ChatGPT: ChatGPT is a sibling model to InstructGPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response.
GLaM that are each specialized for different inputs.
LaMDA ：a Transformer-based large language model developed by Google trained on a large dialogue dataset that can generate realistic conversational responses.
PaLM: a 540-billion parameter, dense decoder-only Transformer model trained with the Pathways system, which enabled efficient training of a single model across multiple TPU v4 Pods.
FLAN: more generalizable Language Models with Instruction Fine-Tuning.
FLAN-PaLM: fine-tuned PaLM.
Gopher: a transformer language models of 280 billion parameters developed by DeepMind.
Chinchilla: a transformer language model developed by Deepmind using the same compute budget as Gopher but with 70B parameters and 4x more data.
Sparrow: a dialogue agent that's useful and reduces the risk of unsafe and inappropriate answers developed by DeepMind. Sparrow agent is designed to talk with a user, answer questions, and search the internet using Google when it's helpful to look up evidence to inform its responses.
OPT: a language model with 175 billion parameters trained on publicly available data sets developed by Meta. Decoder-only model.
LLaMA: a foundational, 65-billion-parameter large language model developed by Meta. Decoder-only model.
BERT: Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers - a type of LLM developed by Google that is pre-trained on large amounts of text data. Encoder-only model.
T5: Text-To-Text Transfer Transformer.
BLOOM: a 176 billion parameter developed by Hugging Face, trained in 46 natural languages and 13 programming languages.
Alpaca-7B: a model fine-tuned from the LLaMA 7B model on 52K instruction-following demonstrations, developed by Stanford.
Koala: a chatbot trained by fine-tuning Meta's LLaMA on dialogue data gathered from the web, developed by Berkeley.
Vicuna-13B: an open-source chatbot trained by fine-tuning LLaMA on user-shared conversations collected from ShareGPT.
Stable Diffusion: an open source latent text-to-image diffusion model by Stability AI and their collaborators including Runway.
LLM Argumentation and Applications
Memory: Memory is the concept of persisting state between calls of a chain/agent. LangChain provides a standard interface for memory, a collection of memory implementations, and examples of chains/agents that use memory.
Indexes: Language models are often more powerful when combined with your own text data - this module covers best practices for doing exactly that.
Chains: Chains go beyond just a single LLM call, and are sequences of calls. LangChain provides a standard interface for chains, lots of integrations with other tools, and end-to-end chains for common applications.
Agents: Agents involve an LLM making decisions about which Actions to take, taking that Action, seeing an Observation, and repeating that until done. LangChain provides a standard interface for agents, a selection of agents to choose from, and examples of end to end agents.
LLM and Generative AI Related Companies and Tools
Huggging Face: model repository with lots of great open source tools to train and serve large language models, including Transformers, Accelerate, etc..
DeepSpeed is a deep learning optimization library developed by Microsoft, which has been used to train a number of LLMs, such as BLOOM.
JAX: Jax is a Python library designed for high-performance ML research, developed by Google and used internally both by Google and DeepMind teams.
OpenAI: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Anthropic: Anthropic is an AI safety and research company. We build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Anthropic's search on interpretability of Tranformer is impressive. A lot of people know how to train LLMs to get emergent abilities and few people understanding how and why emergent abilities emerge.
Cohere: Cohere empowers every developer and enterprise to build amazing products and capture true business value with language AI.
DeeepMind: AI could be one of humanity's most useful inventions. We're a team of scientists, engineers, ethicists and more, committed to solving intelligence, to advance science and benefit humanity.
Midjourney: image generation product, is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.
Stability AI: image generation, AI by the people for the people. Our goal is to maximize the accessibility of modern AI to inspire global creativity and innovation.
Runway: with video generation product, make the impossible & move creativity forward.
Character.AI: Character.ai is a neural language model chatbot web application that can generate human-like text responses and participate in contextual conversation.
AI21 Labs: AI21 Labs is a Tel Aviv-based company specializing in Natural Language Processing, which develops AI systems that can understand and generate natural language.
EleutherAI: EleutherAI is a grass-roots non-profit artificial intelligence research group. The group, considered an open-source version of OpenAI, was formed in a Discord server in July 2020 to organize a replication of GPT-3. EleutherAI is a non-profit AI research lab that focuses on interpretability and alignment of large models. EleutherAI's mission is to empower open-source artificial intelligence research.
Adept: An AI teammate for everyone. Adept is building an entirely new way to get things done. It takes your goals, in plain language, and turns them into actions on the software you use every day.
Glean: Bring people the knowledge they need to make a difference in the world. Glean is the enterprise search and knowledge discovery solution for modern teams. Search all company apps, find what you need, and discover what you should.

Aldous Huxley 
Brave New World 
Chapter One
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.
"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently-though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, "you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile... "
Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.
Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it.
"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction-"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa-at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.
"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little notebooks.
One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.
"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."
Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.
He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded-bud out of bud out of bud-were thereafter-further arrest being generally fatal-left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos- a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins-but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.
"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he were distributing largesse. "Scores."
But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay.
"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"
Major instruments of social stability.
Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.
"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't bokanovskify indefinitely."
Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible-that was the best that they could do. And even that was difficult.
"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century-what would be the use of that?"
Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify-in other words, multiply by seventy-two-and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.
"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteen thousand adult individuals."
Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddy young man approached. "Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?"
"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Foster replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. "Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better," he rattled on, "in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to working with European material. Still," he added, with a laugh, "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet."
"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and give these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge."
Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.
In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band.
Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The procession advanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution poured in... and already the bottle had passed, and it was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date of fertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group-details were transferred from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identified, the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.
"Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index," said Mr. Foster with relish, as they entered.
"Containing all the relevant information," added the Director.
"Brought up to date every morning."
"And co-ordinated every afternoon."
"On the basis of which they make their calculations."
"So many individuals, of such and such quality," said Mr. Foster.
"Distributed in such and such quantities."
"The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment."
"Unforeseen wastages promptly made good."
"Promptly," repeated Mr. Foster. "If you knew the amount of overtime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!" He laughed goodhumouredly and shook his head.
"The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertilizers."
"Who give them the embryos they ask for."
"And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail."
"After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store."
"Where we now proceed ourselves."
And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircase into the basement.
The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn insured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the day.
"Embryos are like photograph film," said Mr. Foster waggishly, as he pushed open the second door. "They can only stand red light."
And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air.
"Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster," said the Director, who was tired of talking.
Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.
Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.
Three tiers of racks: ground floor level, first gallery, second gallery.
The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded away in all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busily unloading demijohns from a moving staircase.
The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.
Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack, though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor traveling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence-so called.
"But in the interval," Mr. Foster concluded, "we've managed to do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal." His laugh was knowing and triumphant.
"That's the spirit I like," said the Director once more. "Let's walk around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster."
Mr. Foster duly told them.
Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Made them taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explained why it had to be stimulated with placentin and thyroxin. Told them of the corpus luteum extract. Showed them the jets through which at every twelfth metre from zero to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of those gradually increasing doses of pituitary administered during the final ninety-six metres of their course. Described the artificial maternal circulation installed in every bottle at Metre 112; showed them the reservoir of blood-surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and waste product filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesome tendency to anæmia, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extract and foetal foal's liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied.
Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during the last two metres out of every eight, all the embryos were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted at the gravity of the so-called "trauma of decanting," and enumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. Told them of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood of Metre 200. Explained the system of labelling-a T for the males, a circle for the females and for those who were destined to become freemartins a question mark, black on a white ground.
"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred-that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins-structurally quite normal, but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention."
He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that.
"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future... " He was going to say "future World controllers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries," instead.
The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-Minus mechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts. Down, down... A final twist, a glance at the revolution counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down the line and began the same process on the next pump.
"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Foster explained. "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par." Again he rubbed his hands.
"But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?" asked an ingenuous student.
"Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn't it occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?"
It evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered with confusion.
"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy eyeless monsters.
"Who are no use at all," concluded Mr. Foster.
Whereas, if they could discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what a triumph, what a benefaction to Society!
"Consider the horse."
They considered it.
Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown at twenty. Hence, of course, that fruit of delayed development, the human intelligence.
"But in Epsilons," said Mr. Foster very justly, "we don't need human intelligence."
Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind was mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to the Community!
"Enormous!" murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm was infectious.
He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrine co-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinal mutation to account for it. Could the effects of this germinal mutation be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be made a revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was the problem. And it was all but solved.
Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head.
Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to the neighborhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9 was enclosed and the bottle performed the remainder of their journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three metres wide.
"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.
Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."
"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue-liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing with a long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. The students and their guides stood watching her for a few moments in silence.
"Well, Lenina," said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrew the syringe and straightened herself up.
The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all the lupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.
"Henry!" Her smile flashed redly at him-a row of coral teeth.
"Charming, charming," murmured the Director and, giving her two or three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile for himself.
"What are you giving them?" asked Mr. Foster, making his tone very professional.
"Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness."
"Tropical workers start being inoculated at Metre 150," Mr. Foster explained to the students. "The embryos still have gills. We immunize the fish against the future man's diseases." Then, turning back to Lenina, "Ten to five on the roof this afternoon," he said, "as usual."
"Charming," said the Director once more, and, with a final pat, moved away after the others.
On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. "To improve their sense of balance," Mr. Foster explained. "Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads.
"And now," Mr. Foster went on, "I'd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have a big batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level," he called to two boys who had started to go down to the ground floor.
"They're round about Metre 900," he explained. "You can't really do any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their tails. Follow me."
But the Director had looked at his watch. "Ten to three," he said. "No time for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We must go up to the Nurseries before the children have finished their afternoon sleep."
Mr. Foster was disappointed. "At least one glance at the Decanting Room," he pleaded.
"Very well then." The Director smiled indulgently. "Just one glance."
Chapter Two
Mr. Foster was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.
INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.
The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.
The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.
"Set out the books," he said curtly.
In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out-a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.
"Now bring in the children."
They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike dressed in khaki.
"Put them down on the floor."
The infants were unloaded.
"Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."
Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.
The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It might almost have been done on purpose."
The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, "Watch carefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.
There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.
The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
"And now," the Director shouted, "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock."
He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.
"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Director in explanation. "But that's enough," he signalled to the nurse.
The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.
"Offer them the flowers and the books again."
The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.
"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."
Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them away again."
Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.
One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-cast people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reflexes, yet... well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?
Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago, Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers-flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport.
"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.
"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."
Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.
"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded the Director. "But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks."
"I see," said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.
There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, "Once upon a time," the Director began, "while our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents."
The Director interrupted himself. "You know what Polish is, I suppose?"
"A dead language."
"Like French and German," added another student, officiously showing off his learning.
"And 'parent'?" questioned the D.H.C.
There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.
"Human beings used to be... " he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. "Well, they used to be viviparous."
"Quite right." The Director nodded approvingly.
"And when the babies were decanted... "
"'Born,'" came the correction.
"Well, then they were the parents-I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones." The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.
"In brief," the Director summed up, "the parents were the father and the mother." The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys' eye-avoiding silence. "Mother," he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair, "These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant."
He returned to Little Reuben-to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother happened to leave the radio turned on.
While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from London suddenly started to come through; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his crash and crash, George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, according to a well-authenticated tradition, about his own genius. To Little Reuben's wink and snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectly incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that which Shaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.
"The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopædia, had been discovered." The D.H.C. made an impressive pause.
The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied.
"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford's first T-Model was put on the market." "And yet... "
Furiously the students scribbled. "Hypnopædia, first used officially in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reasons.... "
"These early experimenters," the D.H.C. was saying, "were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopædia could be made an instrument of intellectual education... "
(A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.
"The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude... "
At breakfast the next morning, "Tommy," some one says, "do you know which is the longest river in Africa?" A shaking of the head. "But don't you remember something that begins: The Nile is the... "
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the - globe... " The words come rushing out. "Although - falling - short - of... "
"Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?"
The eyes are blank. "I don't know."
"But the Nile, Tommy."
"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and - second... "
"Then which river is the longest, Tommy?"
Tommy burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)
That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about.
"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," said the Director, leading the way towards the door. The students followed him, desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up in the lift. "Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational."
"Silence, silence," whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor, and "Silence, silence," the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor. The students and even the Director himself rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course, but even Alphas have been well conditioned. "Silence, silence." All the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categorical imperative.
Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotely whispering.
A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the Director.
"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.
"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," she answered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness."
The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.
"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet."
At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.
"... all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."
There was a pause; then the voice began again.
"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able... "
The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.
"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson."
Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafœtida-wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnopædia.
"The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."
The students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horse's mouth.
Once more the Director touched the switch.
"... so frightfully clever," the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying, "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because... "
Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.
"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too-all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides-made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!" The Director almost shouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State." He banged the nearest table. "It therefore follows... "
A noise made him turn round.
"Oh, Ford!" he said in another tone, "I've gone and woken the children."
Chapter Three
Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.
The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught.
"Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." He interrupted himself.
"That's a charming little group," he said, pointing.
In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focussed attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.
"Charming, charming!" the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.
"Charming," the boys politely agreed. But their smile was rather patronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids fooling about; that was all. Just kids.
"I always think," the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels.
"What's the matter?" asked the Director.
The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing much," she answered. "It's just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I'd noticed it once or twice before. And now again to-day. He started yelling just now... "
"Honestly," put in the anxious-looking little girl, "I didn't mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly."
"Of course you didn't, dear," said the nurse reassuringly. "And so," she went on, turning back to the Director, "I'm taking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anything's at all abnormal."
"Quite right," said the Director. "Take him in. You stay here, little girl," he added, as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge. "What's your name?"
"Polly Trotsky."
"And a very good name too," said the Director. "Run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with."
The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight.
"Exquisite little creature!" said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, "What I'm going to tell you now," he said, "may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible."
He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal: and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.
A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.
"Even adolescents," the D.H.C. was saying, "even adolescents like yourselves... "
"Not possible!"
"Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality-absolutely nothing."
"Nothing?"
"In most cases, till they were over twenty years old."
"Twenty years old?" echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.
"Twenty," the Director repeated. "I told you that you'd find it incredible."
"But what happened?" they asked. "What were the results?"
"The results were terrible." A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue.
They looked around. On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger-a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark. "Terrible," he repeated.
The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth, effusive.
"Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond."
In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet mouths.
"Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off... "
In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation.
The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air in the Embryo Store. Shifts might come and go, one lupus-coloured face give place to another; majestically and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women.
Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.
His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the saluting students almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten... and he sat down on the bench with the D.H.C., he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them... straight from the horse's mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.
Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large, astonished eyes, then returned to their amusements among the leaves.
"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History," he repeated slowly, "is bunk."
He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk-and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk-and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom-all were gone. Whisk-the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk... 
"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired the Assistant Predestinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects."
"That's why you're taught no history," the Controller was saying. "But now the time has come... "
The D.H.C. looked at him nervously. There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study. Bibles, poetry-Ford knew what.
Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically.
"It's all right, Director," he said in a tone of faint derision, "I won't corrupt them."
The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.
Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed!
"I shall make a point of going," said Henry Foster.
Mustapha Mond leaned forward, shook a finger at them. "Just try to realize it," he said, and his voice sent a strange thrill quivering along their diaphragms. "Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother."
That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling.
"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."
They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.
"And do you know what a 'home' was?"
They shook their heads.
From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeen stories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift, walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLS' DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing. Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling and hissing, eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.
"Hullo, Fanny," said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegs and locker next to hers.
Fanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was also Crowne. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the plant had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising.
Lenina pulled at her zippers-downwards on the jacket, downwards with a double-handed gesture at the two that held trousers, downwards again to loosen her undergarment. Still wearing her shoes and stockings, she walked off towards the bathrooms.
Home, home-a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells.
Lenina got out of the bath, toweled herself dry, took hold of a long flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbed herself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuum machines were free.
And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children... brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, "My baby, my baby," over and over again. "My baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little baby sleeps... "
"Yes," said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, "you may well shudder."
"Who are you going out with to-night?" Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing.
"Nobody."
Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.
"I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately," Fanny explained. "Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute."
"But, my dear, you're only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn't compulsory till twenty-one."
"I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So I'm really two years late, not two years early." She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.
"SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM," Lenina read the names aloud. "OVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5cc TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY... Ugh!" Lenina shuddered. "How I loathe intravenals, don't you?"
"Yes. But when they do one good... " Fanny was a particularly sensible girl.
Our Ford-or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters-Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers-was therefore full of misery; full of mothers-therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts-full of madness and suicide.
"And yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands off the coast of New Guinea... "
The tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies of children tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscus blossoms. Home was in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses. In the Trobriands conception was the work of ancestral ghosts; nobody had ever heard of a father.
"Extremes," said the Controller, "meet. For the good reason that they were made to meet."
"Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years."
"Well, I hope he's right," said Lenina. "But, Fanny, do you really mean to say that for the next three months you're not supposed to... "
"Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shall spend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. I suppose you're going out?"
Lenina nodded.
"Who with?"
"Henry Foster."
"Again?" Fanny's kind, rather moon-like face took on an incongruous expression of pained and disapproving astonishment. "Do you mean to tell me you're still going out with Henry Foster?"
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.
"Though you probably don't know what those are," said Mustapha Mond.
They shook their heads.
Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.
"But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded, citing the hypnopædic proverb.
The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.
"But after all," Lenina was protesting, "it's only about four months now since I've been having Henry."
"Only four months! I like that. And what's more," Fanny went on, pointing an accusing finger, "there's been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has there?"
Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained defiant. "No, there hasn't been any one else," she answered almost truculently. "And I jolly well don't see why there should have been."
"Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been," Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Lenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "But seriously," she said, "I really do think you ought to be careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won't do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man-why, he'd be furious if he knew... "
"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"
He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.
"My baby. My baby... !"
"Mother!" The madness is infectious.
"My love, my one and only, precious, precious... "
Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty-they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly, how could they be stable?
"Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, that's all. He has other girls, doesn't he?"
Lenina admitted it.
"Of course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfect gentleman-always correct. And then there's the Director to think of. You know what a stickler... "
Nodding, "He patted me on the behind this afternoon," said Lenina.
"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant. "That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality."
"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability." His voice was a trumpet. Listening they felt larger, warmer.
The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning-for ever. It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death.
Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.
Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love groaning: My sin, my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering with fever, bemoaning old age and poverty-how can they tend the wheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels... The corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn.
"And after all," Fanny's tone was coaxing, "it's not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Henry. And seeing that you ought to be a little more promiscuous... "
"Stability," insisted the Controller, "stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this."
With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the huge building of the Conditioning Centre, the naked children furtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns.
Lenina shook her head. "Somehow," she mused, "I hadn't been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?"
Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. "But one's got to make the effort," she said, sententiously, "one's got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else."
"Yes, every one belongs to every one else," Lenina repeated slowly and, sighing, was silent for a moment; then, taking Fanny's hand, gave it a little squeeze. "You're quite right, Fanny. As usual. I'll make the effort."
Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day in, day out, the blood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls; at once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.
"Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy-to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all."
"Ford's in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All's well with the world."
"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the Assistant Predestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale.
"And to tell the truth," said Lenina, "I'm beginning to get just a tiny bit bored with nothing but Henry every day." She pulled on her left stocking. "Do you know Bernard Marx?" she asked in a tone whose excessive casualness was evidently forced.
Fanny looked startled. "You don't mean to say... ?"
"Why not? Bernard's an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the Savage Reservations with him. I've always wanted to see a Savage Reservation."
"But his reputation?"
"What do I care about his reputation?"
"They say he doesn't like Obstacle Golf."
"They say, they say," mocked Lenina.
"And then he spends most of his time by himself-alone." There was horror in Fanny's voice.
"Well, he won't be alone when he's with me. And anyhow, why are people so beastly to him? I think he's rather sweet." She smiled to herself; how absurdly shy he had been! Frightened almost-as though she were a World Controller and he a Gamma-Minus machine minder.
"Consider your own lives," said Mustapha Mond. "Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?"
The question was answered by a negative silence.
"Has any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fufilment?"
"Well," began one of the boys, and hesitated.
"Speak up," said the D.H.C. "Don't keep his fordship waiting."
"I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her."
"And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?"
"Horrible!"
"Horrible; precisely," said the Controller. "Our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions, they wouldn't have anything to do with them."
"Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat." Bernard ground his teeth. "Have her here, have her there." Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton. She said she'd think it over, she said she'd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford." He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face-hard, again and again.
"Yes, I really do advise you to try her," Henry Foster was saying.
"Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique worked out. But would the Governments look at it? No. There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to go on being viviparous."
"He's so ugly!" said Fanny.
"But I rather like his looks."
"And then so small." Fanny made a grimace; smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste.
"I think that's rather sweet," said Lenina. "One feels one would like to pet him. You know. Like a cat."
Fanny was shocked. "They say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle-thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood-surrogate. That's why he's so stunted."
"What nonsense!" Lenina was indignant.
"Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole."
"But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You're welcome." Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. "Every one belongs to every one else, after all."
One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!
"Or the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected. There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal."
"Well, all I can say is that I'm going to accept his invitation."
Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were large, they were strong.
"The Nine Years' War began in A.F. 141."
"Not even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate."
"Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine, trichlormethyl, chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulphide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid."
"Which I simply don't believe," Lenina concluded.
"The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order. But in the Kurfurstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement, the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag."
"Because I do want to see a Savage Reservation."
ChCH=well, what? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, a foot, with the boot still on it, flying through the air and landing, flop, in the middle of the geraniums-the scarlet ones; such a splendid show that summer!
"You're hopeless, Lenina, I give you up."
"The Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious."
Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing in silence.
"The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and... "
"Fanny Crowne's a nice girl too," said the Assistant Predestinator.
In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson was over, the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. "I do love flying," they whispered, "I do love flying, I do love having new clothes, I do love... "
"Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldn't do things by force."
"Not nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly."
"But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper. "We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better... "
"Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example, there was the conscription of consumption."
"There, I'm ready," said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechless and averted. "Let's make peace, Fanny darling."
"Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result... "
"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches... "
"One of these days," said Fanny, with dismal emphasis, "you'll get into trouble."
"Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature."
"I do love flying. I do love flying."
"Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."
"Do I look all right?" Lenina asked. Her jacket was made of bottle green acetate cloth with green viscose fur; at the cuffs and collar.
"Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green."
"Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending."
Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turned down below the knee.
"Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide."
A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Lenina's eyes; her shoes were bright green and highly polished.
"In the end," said Mustapha Mond, "the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia... "
And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging with the regulation supply of contraceptives.
"The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of. An intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction... "
"Perfect!" cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Lenina's charm for long. "And what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt!"
"Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments ; by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 15O.''
"I simply must get one like it," said Fanny.
"There were some things called the pyramids, for example.
"My old black-patent bandolier... "
"And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them of course."
"It's an absolute disgrace-that bandolier of mine."
"Such are the advantages of a really scientific education."
"The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less... "
"The introduction of Our Ford's first T-Model... "
"I've had it nearly three months."
"Chosen as the opening date of the new era."
"Ending is better than mending; ending is better... "
"There was a thing, as I've said before, called Christianity."
"Ending is better than mending."
"The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption... "
"I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love... "
"So essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen-positively a crime against society."
"Henry Foster gave it me."
"All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God."
"It's real morocco-surrogate."
"We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services."
"Ford, how I hate them!" Bernard Marx was thinking.
"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."
"Like meat, like so much meat."
"There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality."
"Do ask Henry where he got it."
"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."
"And what makes it worse, she thinks of herself as meat."
"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.P. 178."
"He does look glum," said the Assistant Predestinator, pointing at Bernard Marx.
"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug."
"Let's bait him."
"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."
"Glum, Marx, glum." The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. "What you need is a gramme of soma."
"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects."
"Ford, I should like to kill him!" But all he did was to say, "No, thank you," and fend off the proffered tube of tablets.
"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology."
"Take it," insisted Henry Foster, "take it."
"Stability was practically assured."
"One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," said the Assistant Predestinator citing a piece of homely hypnopædic wisdom.
"It only remained to conquer old age."
"Damn you, damn you!" shouted Bernard Marx.
"Hoity-toity."
"Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts... "
"And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn." They went out, laughing.
"All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished. And along with them, of course... "
"Don't forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt," said Fanny.
"Along with them all the old man's mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime."
"... two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. I must fly."
"Work, play-at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking-thinking!"
"Idiots, swine!" Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift.
"Now-such is progress-the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think-or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to... "
"Go away, little girl," shouted the D.H.C. angrily. "Go away, little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else."
"Suffer little children," said the Controller.
Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimters an hour. In the red darkness glinted innumerable rubies.
Chapter Four
§ 1
The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina's entry wars greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them.
They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned their salutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that George Edzel's ears weren't quite so big. And looking at Benito Hoover, she couldn't help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off.
Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection, of Benito's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thin body, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.
"Bernard!" she stepped up to him. "I was looking for you." Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The others looked round curiously. "I wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan." Out of the tail of her eye she could see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. "Surprised I shouldn't be begging to go with him again!" she said to herself. Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, "I'd simply love to come with you for a week in July," she went on. "That is," Lenina gave him her most deliciously significant smile, "if you still want to have me."
Bernard's pale face flushed. "What on earth for?" she wondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to her power.
"Hadn't we better talk about it somewhere else?" he stammered, looking horribly uncomfortable.
"As though I'd been saying something shocking," thought Lenina. "He couldn't look more upset if I'd made a dirty joke-asked him who his mother was, or something like that."
"I mean, with all these people about... " He was choked with confusion.
Lenina's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. "How funny you are!" she said; and she quite genuinely did think him funny. "You'll give me at least a week's warning, won't you," she went on in another tone. "I suppose we take the Blue Pacific Rocket? Does it start from the Charing-T Tower? Or is it from Hampstead?"
Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill.
"Roof!" called a creaking voice.
The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the black tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.
"Roof!"
He flung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoon sunlight made him start and blink his eyes. "Oh, roof!" he repeated in a voice of rapture. He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor. "Roof!"
He smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration into the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them.
"Roof?" he said once more, questioningly.
Then a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loud speaker began, very softly and yet very imperiously, to issue its commands.
"Go down," it said, "go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go... "
The liftman slammed the gates, touched a button and instantly dropped back into the droning twilight of the well, the twilight of his own habitual stupor.
It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeper drone of the rocket-planes hastening, invisible, through the bright sky five or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air. Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and finally down into Lenina's face.
"Isn't it beautiful!" His voice trembled a little.
She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympathetic understanding. "Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf," she answered rapturously. "And now I must fly, Bernard. Henry gets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date." And waving her hand she ran away across the wide flat roof towards the hangars. Bernard stood watching the retreating twinkle of the white stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending and unbending again, again, and the softer rolling of those well-fitted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle green jacket. His face wore an expression of pain.
"I should say she was pretty," said a loud and cheery voice just behind him.
Bernard started and looked around. The chubby red face of Benito Hoover was beaming down at him-beaming with manifest cordiality. Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.
"Pneumatic too. And how!" Then, in another tone: "But, I say," he went on, "you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma." Diving into his right-hand trouser-pocket, Benito produced a phial. "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy... But, I say!"
Bernard had suddenly turned and rushed away.
Benito stared after him. "What can be the matter with the fellow?" he wondered, and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol having been put into the poor chap's blood-surrogate must be true. "Touched his brain, I suppose."
He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet of sex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangars, ruminating.
Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and, when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting.
"Four minutes late," was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopter screws into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air. Henry accelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings were no more, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of park and garden. In the midst of them, thin-stalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-T Tower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete.
Like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshy clouds lolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell.
"There's the Red Rocket," said Henry, "just come in from New York." Looking at his watch. "Seven minutes behind time," he added, and shook his head. "These Atlantic services-they're really scandalously unpunctual."
He took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the screws overhead dropped an octave and a half, back through wasp and hornet to bumble bee, to cockchafer, to stag-beetle. The upward rush of the machine slackened off; a moment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Henry pushed at a lever; there was a click. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, till it was a circular mist before their eyes, the propeller in front of them began to revolve. The wind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in the stays. Henry kept his eye on the revolution-counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.
Lenina looked down through the window in the floor between her feet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone of park-land that separated Central London from its first ring of satellite suburbs. The green was maggoty with fore-shortened life. Forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees. Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator Fives Courts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress.
"What a hideous colour khaki is," remarked Lenina, voicing the hypnopædic prejudices of her caste.
The buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven and a half hectares. Near them a black and khaki army of labourers was busy revitrifying the surface of the Great West Road. One of the huge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they flew over. The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road, the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulated watering cart the steam rose in white clouds.
At Brentford the Television Corporation's factory was like a small town.
"They must be changing the shift," said Lenina.
Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tram-cars. Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and departure of helicopters.
"My word," said Lenina, "I'm glad I'm not a Gamma."
Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had started their first round of Obstacle Golf.
§ 2
With eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Bernard hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone.
"That horrible Benito Hoover!" And yet the man had meant well enough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly. Even Lenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her. Dared he face the risk of being humiliated by a contemptuous refusal? But if she were to say yes, what rapture! Well, now she had said it and he was still wretched-wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away to join Henry Foster, that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way.
He opened the door of his lock-up and called to a lounging couple of Delta-Minus attendants to come and push his machine out on to the roof. The hangars were staffed by a single Bokanovsky Group, and the men were twins, identically small, black and hideous. Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority. To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause Bernard's physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of he lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. "I am I, and wish I wasn't"; his self-consciousness was acute and stressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta's face, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favour of size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men. The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity. How bitterly he envied men like Henry Foster and Benito Hoover! Men who never had to shout at an Epsilon to get an order obeyed; men who took their position for granted; men who moved through the caste system as a fish through water-so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves or of the beneficent and comfortable element in which they had their being.
Slackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twin attendants wheeled his plane out on the roof.
"Hurry up!" said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced at him. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in those blank grey eyes? "Hurry up!" he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice.
He climbed into the plane and, a minute later, was flying southwards, towards the river.
The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the low floors were the presses and offices of the three great London newspapers-The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectively-twenty-two floors of them. Above were the search laboratories and the padded rooms in which Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did the delicate work. The top eighteen floors were occupied the College of Emotional Engineering.
Bernard landed on the roof of Propaganda House and stepped out.
"Ring down to Mr. Helmholtz Watson," he ordered the Gamma-Plus porter, "and tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx is waiting for him on the roof."
He sat down and lit a cigarette.
Helmholtz Watson was writing when the message came down.
"Tell him I'm coming at once," he said and hung up the receiver. Then, turning to his secretary, "I'll leave you to put my things away," he went on in the same official and impersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to the door.
He was a powerfully built man, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements, springy and agile. The round strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked. In a forcible emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as his secretary was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an Alpha Plus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering and the intervals of his educational activities, a working Emotional Engineer. He wrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopædic rhymes.
"Able," was the verdict of his superiors. "Perhaps, "a little too able."
Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which, in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation. That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover, this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem which Bernard had come to discuss with him-or rather, since it was always Helmholtz who did all the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yet once more.
Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift.
"Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on Exmoor." They clung round him imploringly.
He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. "No, no."
"We're not inviting any other man."
But Helmholtz remained unshaken even by this delightful promise. "No," he repeated, "I'm busy." And he held resolutely on his course. The girls trailed after him. It was not till he had actually climbed into Bernard's plane and slammed the door that they gave up pursuit. Not without reproaches.
"These women!" he said, as the machine rose into the air. "These women!" And he shook his head, he frowned. "Too awful," Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz did, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. "I'm taking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me," he said in a tone as casual as he could make it.
"Are you?" said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, "This last week or two," he went on, "I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at the College. Still, it's been worth it, I think. The effects... " He hesitated. "Well, they're odd, they're very odd."
A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.
The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz began again.
Speaking very slowly, "Did you ever feel," he asked, "as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using-you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?" He looked at Bernard questioningly.
"You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?"
Helmholtz shook his head. "Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it-only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing... Or else something else to write about... " He was silent; then, "You see," he went on at last, "I'm pretty good at inventing phrases-you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopædically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too."
"But your things are good, Helmholtz."
"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. "But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly-they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing-you know, like the very hardest X-rays-when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try... "
"Hush!" said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger; they listened. "I believe there's somebody at the door," he whispered.
Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quick movement flung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobody there.
"I'm sorry," said Bernard, feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish. "I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them."
He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice became plaintive. He was justifying himself. "If you knew what I'd had to put up with recently," he said almost tearfully-and the uprush of his self-pity was like a fountain suddenly released. "If you only knew!"
Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort. "Poor little Bernard!" he said to himself. But at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride.
Chapter Five
§ 1
By eight o'clock the light was failing. The loud speaker in the tower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a more than human tenor, to announce the closing of the courses. Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked back towards the Club. From the grounds of the Internal and External Secretion Trust came the lowing of those thousands of cattle which provided, with their hormones and their milk, the raw materials for the great factory at Farnham Royal.
An incessant buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistles announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis.
Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. At eight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two poised above the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a great pool of darkness towards the bright shore of the western sky. Crimson at the horizon, the last of the sunset faded, through orange, upwards into yellow and a pale watery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees, the Internal and External Secretions factory glared with a fierce electric brilliance from every window of its twenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the Golf Club-the huge Lower Caste barracks and, on the other side of a dividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha and Beta members. The approaches to the monorail station were black with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity. From under the glass vault a lighted train shot out into the open. Following its southeasterly course across the dark plain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark.
"Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies around them?" enquired Lenina.
"Phosphorus recovery," explained Henry telegraphically. "On their way up the chimney the gases go through four separate treatments. P2O5 used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated some one. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Which makes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from England alone." Henry spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in the achievement, as though it had been his own. "Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we're dead. Making plants grow."
Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was looking perpendicularly downwards at the monorail station. "Fine," she agreed. "But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons down there."
"All men are physico-chemically equal," said Henry sententiously. "Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services."
"Even an Epsilon... " Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the first time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, soft voice that said: "Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one... " Lenina remembered her first shock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under the influence of those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing of her mind, the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping of sleep.... 
"I suppose Epsilons don't really mind being Epsilons," she said aloud.
"Of course they don't. How can they? They don't know what it's like being anything else. We'd mind, of course. But then we've been differently conditioned. Besides, we start with a different heredity."
"I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon," said Lenina, with conviction.
"And if you were an Epsilon," said Henry, "your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren't a Beta or an Alpha." He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into the zenith. As they flew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond.
"What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly.
But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. "Do you know what that switchback was?" he said. "It was some human being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was-a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon.... " He sighed. Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, "Anyhow," he concluded, "there's one thing we can be certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy when he was alive. Everybody's happy now."
"Yes, everybody's happy now," echoed Lenina. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.
Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this on the whole depressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness. "CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS." From the façade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared. "LONDON'S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC."
They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: "There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle of mine." Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polished floor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and first. The saxophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto and tenor registers as though the little death were upon them. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorus mounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder-until at last, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the final shattering note of ether-music and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A flat major. And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song:
"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
 Skies are blue inside of you,
 The weather's always fine;
For
There ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine."
Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing in another world-the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! "Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted... " But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted... They were inside, here and now-safely inside with the fine weather, the perennially blue sky. And when, exhausted, the Sixteen had laid by their saxophones and the Synthetic Music apparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean of blood-surrogate.
"Good-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends." The loud speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musical politeness. "Good-night, dear friends... "
Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left the building. The depressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens. But though the separating screen of the sky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two young people still retained their happy ignorance of the night.
Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled, they took the lift up to Henry's room on the twenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as she was, and in spite of that second gramme of soma, Lenina did not forget to take all the contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations. Years of intensive hypnopædia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.
"Oh, and that reminds me," she said, as she came back from the bathroom, "Fanny Crowne wants to know where you found that lovely green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt you gave me."
§ 2
Alternate Thursdays were Bernard's Solidarity Service days. After an early dinner at the Aphroditzeum he took leave of his friend and, hailing a taxi on the roof told the man to fly to the Fordson Community Singery. The machine rose a couple of hundred metres, then headed eastwards, and as it turned, there before Bernard's eyes, gigantically beautiful, was the Singery. Flood-lighted, its three hundred and twenty metres of white Carrara-surrogate gleamed with a snowy incandescence over Ludgate Hill; at each of the four corners of its helicopter platform an immense T shone crimson against the night, and from the mouths of twenty-four vast golden trumpets rumbled a solemn synthetic music.
"Damn, I'm late," Bernard said to himself as he first caught sight of Big Henry, the Singery clock. And sure enough, as he was paying off his cab, Big Henry sounded the hour. "Ford," sang out an immense bass voice from all the golden trumpets. "Ford, Ford, Ford... " Nine times. Bernard ran for the lift.
The great auditorium for Ford's Day celebrations and other massed Community Sings was at the bottom of the building. Above it, a hundred to each floor, were the seven thousand rooms used by Solidarity Groups for their fortnight services. Bernard dropped down to floor thirty-three, hurried along the corridor, stood hesitating for a moment outside Room 3210, then, having wound himself up, opened the door and walked in.
Thank Ford! he was not the last. Three chairs of the twelve arranged round the circular table were still unoccupied. He slipped into the nearest of them as inconspicuously as he could and prepared to frown at the yet later comers whenever they should arrive.
Turning towards him, "What were you playing this afternoon?" the girl on his left enquired. "Obstacle, or Electro-magnetic?"
Bernard looked at her and blushingly had to admit that he had been playing neither. Morgana stared at him with astonishment. There was an awkward silence.
Then pointedly she turned away and addressed herself to the more sporting man on her left.
"A good beginning for a Solidarity Service," thought Bernard miserably, and foresaw for himself yet another failure to achieve atonement. If only he had given himself time to look around instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead of which he had gone and blindly planted himself next to Morgana. Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers-that eyebrow, rather-for they met above the nose. Ford! And on his right was Clara Deterding. True, Clara's eyebrows didn't meet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large... And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took the seat between them.
The last arrival was Sarojini Engels.
"You're late," said the President of the Group severely. "Don't let it happen again."
Sarojini apologized and slid into her place between Jim Bokanovsky and Herbert Bakunin. The group was now complete, the solidarity circle perfect and without flaw. Man, woman, man, in a ring of endless alternation round the table. Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being.
The President stood up, made the sign of the T and, switching on the synthetic music, let loose the soft indefatigable beating of drums and a choir of instruments-near-wind and super-string-that plangently repeated and repeated the brief and unescapably haunting melody of the first Solidarity Hymn. Again, again-and it was not the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was the midriff; the wail and clang of those recurring harmonies haunted, not the mind, but the yearning bowels of compassion.
The President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, "I drink to my annihilation," twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung.
"Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one,
 Like drops within the Social River,
Oh, make us now together run
 As swiftly as thy shining Flivver."
Twelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. "I drink to the Greater Being" was now the formula. All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drums beat. The crying and clashing of the harmonies were an obsession in the melted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung.
"Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,
 Annihilating Twelve-in-One!
We long to die, for when we end,
 Our larger life has but begun."
Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted. When Morgana Rothschild turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beam back. But the eyebrow, that black two-in-one-alas, it was still there; he couldn't ignore it, couldn't, however hard he tried. The melting hadn't gone far enough. Perhaps if he had been sitting between Fifi and Joanna... For the third time the loving cup went round; "I drink to the imminence of His Coming," said Morgana Rothschild, whose turn it happened to be to initiate the circular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank and passed the cup to Bernard. "I drink to the imminence of His Coming," he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to Clara Deterding. "It'll be a failure again," he said to himself. "I know it will." But he went on doing his best to beam.
The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, the President gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the third Solidarity Hymn.
"Feel how the Greater Being comes!
 Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!
Melt in the music of the drums!
 For I am you and you are I."
As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an ever intenser excitement. The sense of the Coming's imminence was like an electric tension in the air. The President switched off the music and, with the final note of the final stanza, there was absolute silence-the silence of stretched expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. The President reached out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious, supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slowly, "Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford," it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them, as though with an independent life. "Ford!" they were melting, "Ford!" dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly, startlingly. "Listen!" trumpeted the voice. "Listen!" They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. "The feet of the Greater Being," it went on, and repeated the words: "The feet of the Greater Being." The whisper almost expired. "The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs." And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearing point. The feet of the Greater Being-oh, they heard them, they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, coming nearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Her eyes staring, her lips parted. Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet.
"I hear him," she cried. "I hear him."
"He's coming," shouted Sarojini Engels.
"Yes, he's coming, I hear him." Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.
"Oh, oh, oh!" Joanna inarticulately testified.
"He's coming!" yelled Jim Bokanovsky.
The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released a delirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.
"Oh, he's coming!" screamed Clara Deterding. "Aie!" and it was as though she were having her throat cut.
Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: "I hear him; He's coming." But it wasn't true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody-in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.
Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. "I hear Him, I hear Him coming." The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. "Orgy-porgy," it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo:
"Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at 0ne with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release."
"Orgy-porgy," the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, "Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls... " And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade-to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. "Orgy-porgy... " In their blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. "Orgy-porgy... " Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded-circle enclosing circle-the table and its planetary chairs. "Orgy-porgy... " Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.
They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven. The night was calm and warm.
"Wasn't it wonderful?" said Fifi Bradlaugh. "Wasn't it simply wonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement-for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. "Didn't you think it was wonderful?" she insisted, looking into Bernard's face with those supernaturally shining eyes.
"Yes, I thought it was wonderful," he lied and looked away; the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began-more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Morgana's embrace-much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps, perhaps it was his own fault. "Quite wonderful," he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana's eyebrow.
Chapter Six
§ 1
Odd, odd, odd, was Lenina's verdict on Bernard Marx. So odd, indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she had wondered more than once whether she shouldn't change her mind about the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to the North Pole with Benito Hoover. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel too hopelessly old-fashioned-no television laid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and not more than twenty-five Escalator-Squash Courts for over two hundred guests. No, decidedly she couldn't face the North Pole again. Added to which, she had only been to America once before. And even then, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York-had it been with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? She couldn't remember. Anyhow, it was of absolutely no importance. The prospect of flying West again, and for a whole week, was very inviting. Moreover, for at least three days of that week they would be in the Savage Reservation. Not more than half a dozen people in the whole Centre had ever been inside a Savage Reservation. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Bernard was one of the few men she knew entitled to a permit. For Lenina, the opportunity was unique. And yet, so unique also was Bernard's oddness that she had hesitated to take it, had actually thought of risking the Pole again with funny old Benito. At least Benito was normal. Whereas Bernard... 
"Alcohol in his blood-surrogate," was Fanny's explanation of every eccentricity. But Henry, with whom, one evening when they were in bed together, Lenina had rather anxiously discussed her new lover, Henry had compared poor Bernard to a rhinoceros.
"You can't teach a rhinoceros tricks," he had explained in his brief and vigorous style. "Some men are almost rhinoceroses; they don't respond properly to conditioning. Poor Devils! Bernard's one of them. Luckily for him, he's pretty good at his job. Otherwise the Director would never have kept him. However," he added consolingly, "I think he's pretty harmless."
Pretty harmless, perhaps; but also pretty disquieting. That mania, to start with, for doing things in private. Which meant, in practice, not doing anything at all. For what was there that one could do in private. Yes, what was there? Precious little. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly fine. Lenina had suggested a swim at Toquay Country Club followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. But Bernard thought there would be too much of a crowd. Then what about a round of Electro-magnetic Golf at St. Andrew's? But again, no: Bernard considered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time.
"Then what's time for?" asked Lenina in some astonishment.
Apparently, for going walks in the Lake District; for that was what he now proposed. Land on the top of Skiddaw and walk for a couple of hours in the heather. "Alone with you, Lenina."
"But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night."
Bernard blushed and looked away. "I meant, alone for talking," he mumbled.
"Talking? But what about?" Walking and talking-that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.
In the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to fly over to Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women's Heavyweight Wrestling Championship.
"In a crowd," he grumbled. "As usual." He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk to Lenina's friends ; and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed upon him. "I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly."
"A gramme in time saves nine," said Lenina, producing a bright treasure of sleep-taught wisdom. Bernard pushed away the proffered glass impatiently.
"Now don't lose your temper," she said. "Remember one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments."
"Oh, for Ford's sake, be quiet!" he shouted.
Lenina shrugged her shoulders. "A gramme is always better than a damn," she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself.
On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screws within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken a change for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, the sky was cloudy.
"Look," he commanded.
"But it's horrible," said Lenina, shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. "Let's turn on the radio. Quick!" She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random.
"... skies are blue inside of you," sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, "the weather's always... "
Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched off the current.
"I want to look at the sea in peace," he said. "One can't even look with that beastly noise going on."
"But it's lovely. And I don't want to look."
"But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though... " he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Lenina?"
But Lenina was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," she kept repeating. "And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons... "
"Yes, I know," said Bernard derisively. "'Even Epsilons are useful'! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren't!"
Lenina was shocked by his blasphemy. "Bernard!" She protested in a voice of amazed distress. "How can you?"
In a different key, "How can I?" he repeated meditatively. "No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather-because, after all, I know quite well why I can't-what would it be like if I could, if I were free-not enslaved by my conditioning."
"But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things."
"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"
"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."
He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way."
"I don't know what you mean," she repeated. Then, turning to him, "Oh, do let's go back, Bernard," she besought; "I do so hate it here."
"Don't you like being with me?"
"But of course, Bernard. It's this horrible place."
"I thought we'd be more... more together here-with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?"
"I don't understand anything," she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. "Nothing. Least of all," she continued in another tone "why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly," she repeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was meant to be an inviting and voluptuous cajolery.
He looked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and very grave-looked at her intently. After a few seconds Lenina's eyes flinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh, tried to think of something to say and couldn't. The silence prolonged itself.
When Bernard spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice. "All right then," he said, "we'll go back." And stepping hard on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up into the sky. At four thousand he started his propeller. They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then, suddenly, Bernard began to laugh. Rather oddly, Lenina thought, but still, it was laughter.
"Feeling better?" she ventured to ask.
For answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and, slipping his arm around her, began to fondle her breasts.
"Thank Ford," she said to herself, "he's all right again."
Half an hour later they were back in his rooms. Bernard swallowed four tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on the radio and television and began to undress.
"Well," Lenina enquired, with significant archness when they met next afternoon on the roof, "did you think it was fun yesterday?"
Bernard nodded. They climbed into the plane. A little jolt, and they were off.
"Every one says I'm awfully pneumatic," said Lenina reflectively, patting her own legs.
"Awfully." But there was an expression of pain in Bernard's eyes. "Like meat," he was thinking.
She looked up with a certain anxiety. "But you don't think I'm too plump, do you?"
He shook his head. Like so much meat.
"You think I'm all right." Another nod. "In every way?"
"Perfect," he said aloud. And inwardly. "She thinks of herself that way. She doesn't mind being meat."
Lenina smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction was premature.
"All the same," he went on, after a little pause, "I still rather wish it had all ended differently."
"Differently?" Were there other endings?
"I didn't want it to end with our going to bed," he specified.
Lenina was astonished.
"Not at once, not the first day."
"But then what... ?"
He began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerous nonsense. Lenina did her best to stop the ears of her mind; but every now and then a phrase would insist on becoming audible. "... to try the effect of arresting my impulses," she heard him say. The words seemed to touch a spring in her mind.
"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day," she said gravely.
"Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half," was all his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. "I want to know what passion is," she heard him saying. "I want to feel something strongly."
"When the individual feels, the community reels," Lenina pronounced.
"Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?"
"Bernard!"
But Bernard remained unabashed.
"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he went on. "Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."
"Our Ford loved infants."
Ignoring the interruption. "It suddenly struck me the other day," continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be an adult all the time."
"I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.
"I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed together yesterday-like infants-instead of being adults and waiting."
"But it was fun," Lenina insisted. "Wasn't it?"
"Oh, the greatest fun," he answered, but in a voice so mournful, with an expression so profoundly miserable, that Lenina felt all her triumph suddenly evaporate. Perhaps he had found her too plump, after all.
"I told you so," was all that Fanny said, when Lenina came and made her confidences. "It's the alcohol they put in his surrogate."
"All the same," Lenina insisted. "I do like him. He has such awfully nice hands. And the way he moves his shoulders-that's very attractive." She sighed. "But I wish he weren't so odd."
§ 2
Halting for a moment outside the door of the Director's room, Bernard drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, bracing himself to meet the dislike and disapproval which he was certain of finding within. He knocked and entered.
"A permit for you to initial, Director," he said as airily as possible, and laid the paper on the writing-table.
The Director glanced at him sourly. But the stamp of the World Controller's Office was at the head of the paper and the signature of Mustapha Mond, bold and black, across the bottom. Everything was perfectly in order. The director had no choice. He pencilled his initials-two small pale letters abject at the feet of Mustapha Mond-and was about to return the paper without a word of comment or genial Ford-speed, when his eye was caught by something written in the body of the permit.
"For the New Mexican Reservation?" he said, and his tone, the face he lifted to Bernard, expressed a kind of agitated astonishment.
Surprised by his surprise, Bernard nodded. There was a silence.
The Director leaned back in his chair, frowning. "How long ago was it?" he said, speaking more to himself than to Bernard. "Twenty years, I suppose. Nearer twenty-five. I must have been your age... " He sighed and shook his head.
Bernard felt extremely uncomfortable. A man so conventional, so scrupulously correct as the Director-and to commit so gross a solecism! lt made him want to hide his face, to run out of the room. Not that he himself saw anything intrinsically objectionable in people talking about the remote past; that was one of those hypnopædic prejudices he had completely got rid of. What made him feel shy was the knowledge that the Director disapproved-disapproved and yet had been betrayed into doing the forbidden thing. Under what inward compulsion? Through his discomfort Bernard eagerly listened.
"I had the same idea as you," the Director was saying. "Wanted to have a look at the savages. Got a permit for New Mexico and went there for my summer holiday. With the girl I was having at the moment. She was a Beta-Minus, and I think", "I think she had yellow hair. Anyhow she was pneumatic, particularly pneumatic; I remember that. Well, we went there, and we looked at the savages, and we rode about on horses and all that. And then-it was almost the last day of my leave-then... well, she got lost. We'd gone riding up one of those revolting mountains, and it was horribly hot and oppressive, and after lunch we went to sleep. Or at least I did. She must have gone for a walk, alone. At any rate, when I woke up, she wasn't there. And the most frightful thunderstorm I've ever seen was just bursting on us. And it poured and roared and flashed; and the horses broke loose and ran away; and I fell down, trying to catch them, and hurt my knee, so that I could hardly walk. Still, I searched and I shouted and I searched. But there was no sign of her. Then I thought she must have gone back to the rest-house by herself. So I crawled down into the valley by the way we had come. My knee was agonizingly painful, and I'd lost my soma. It took me hours. I didn't get back to the rest-house till after midnight. And she wasn't there; she wasn't there," the Director repeated. There was a silence. "Well," he resumed at last, "the next day there was a search. But we couldn't find her. She must have fallen into a gully somewhere; or been eaten by a mountain lion. Ford knows. Anyhow it was horrible. It upset me very much at the time. More than it ought to have done, I dare say. Because, after all, it's the sort of accident that might have happened to any one; and, of course, the social body persists although the component cells may change." But this sleep-taught consolation did not seem to be very effective. Shaking his head, "I actually dream about it sometimes," the Director went on in a low voice. "Dream of being woken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone; dream of searching and searching for her under the trees." He lapsed into the silence of reminiscence.
"You must have had a terrible shock," said Bernard, almost enviously.
At the sound of his voice the Director started into a guilty realization of where he was; shot a glance at Bernard, and averting his eyes, blushed darkly; looked at him again with sudden suspicion and, angrily on his dignity, "Don't imagine," he said, "that I'd had any indecorous relation with the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing long-drawn. It was all perfectly healthy and normal." He handed Bernard the permit. "I really don't know why I bored you with this trivial anecdote." Furious with himself for having given away a discreditable secret, he vented his rage on Bernard. The look in his eyes was now frankly malignant. "And I should like to take this opportunity, Mr. Marx," he went on, "of saying that I'm not at all pleased with the reports I receive of your behaviour outside working hours. You may say that this is not my business. But it is. I have the good name of the Centre to think of. My workers must be above suspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. Alphas are so conditioned that they do not have to be infantile in their emotional behaviour. But that is all the more reason for their making a special effort to conform. lt is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination. And so, Mr. Marx, I give you fair warning." The Director's voice vibrated with an indignation that had now become wholly righteous and impersonal-was the expression of the disapproval of Society itself. "If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre-preferably to Iceland. Good morning." And swivelling round in his chair, he picked up his pen and began to write.
"That'll teach him," he said to himself. But he was mistaken. For Bernard left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the thought that he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the intoxicating consciousness of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution left him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was the greater for his not for a moment really believing that he would be called upon to face anything at all. People simply weren't transferred for things like that. Iceland was just a threat. A most stimulating and life-giving threat. Walking along the corridor, he actually whistled.
Heroic was the account he gave that evening of his interview with the D.H.C. "Whereupon," it concluded, "I simply told him to go to the Bottomless Past and marched out of the room. And that was that." He looked at Helmholtz Watson expectantly, awaiting his due reward of sympathy, encouragement, admiration. But no word came. Helmholtz sat silent, staring at the floor.
He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the only man of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Bernard which he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things-just because he liked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continued to stare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turned away.
§ 3
The journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but flew into a favourable air current at Longitude 95 West, and was able to land at Santa Fé less than forty seconds behind schedule time.
"Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. Not so bad," Lenina conceded.
They slept that night at Santa Fé. The hotel was excellent-incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racket Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.
"But it sounds simply too lovely," cried Lenina. "I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts... "
"There won't be any in the Reservation," Bernard warned her. "And no scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feel you can't stand it, stay here till I come back."
Lenina was quite offended. "Of course I can stand it. I only said it was lovely here because... well, because progress is lovely, isn't it?"
"Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen," said Bernard wearily, as though to himself.
"What did you say?"
"I said that progress was lovely. That's why you mustn't come to the Reservation unless you really want to."
"But I do want to."
"Very well, then," said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.
Their permit required the signature of the Warden of the Reservation, at whose office next morning they duly presented themselves. An Epsilon-Plus negro porter took in Bernard's card, and they were admitted almost immediately.
The Warden was a blond and brachycephalic Alpha-Minus, short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice, very well adapted to the utterance of hypnopædic wisdom. He was a mine of irrelevant information and unasked-for good advice. Once started, he went on and on-boomingly.
"... five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by a high-tension wire fence."
At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenly remembered that he had left the Eau de Cologne tap in his bathroom wide open and running.
"... supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electric station."
"Cost me a fortune by the time I get back." With his mind's eye, Bernard saw the needle on the scent meter creeping round and round, antlike, indefatigable. "Quickly telephone to Helmholtz Watson."
"... upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts."
"You don't say so," said Lenina politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention.
"To touch the fence is instant death," pronounced the Warden solemnly. "There is no escape from a Savage Reservation."
The word "escape" was suggestive. "Perhaps," said Bernard, half rising, "we ought to think of going." The little black needle was scurrying, an insect, nibbling through time, eating into his money.
"No escape," repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned Bernard had no choice but to obey. "Those who are born in the Reservation-and remember, my dear young lady," he added, leering obscenely at Lenina, and speaking in an improper whisper, "remember that, in the Reservation, children still are born, yes, actually born, revolting as that may seem... " "Those, I repeat who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there."
Destined to die... A decilitre of Eau de Cologne every minute. Six litres an hour. "Perhaps," Bernard tried again, "we ought... "
Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger. "You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply"-triumphantly-"I reply that we do not know. We can only guess."
"You don't say so."
"My dear young lady, I do say so."
Six times twenty-four-no, it would be nearer six times thirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But inexorably the booming continued.
"... about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds... absolute savages... our inspectors occasionally visit... otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world... still preserve their repulsive habits and customs... marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families... no conditioning... monstrous superstitions... Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship... extinct languages, such as Zuñi and Spanish and Athapascan... pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals... infectious diseases... priests... venomous lizards... "
"You don't say so?"
They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone. Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on to Helmholtz Watson. "We might be among the savages already," he complained. "Damned incompetence!"
"Have a gramme," suggested Lenina.
He refused, preferring his anger. And at last, thank Ford, he was through and, yes, it was Helmholtz; Helmholtz, to whom he explained what had happened, and who promised to go round at once, at once, and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public, yesterday evening... 
"What? He's looking out for some one to take my place?" Bernard's voice was agonized. "So it's actually decided? Did he mention Iceland? You say he did? Ford! Iceland... " He hung up the receiver and turned back to Lenina. His face was pale, his expression utterly dejected.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"The matter?" He dropped heavily into a chair. "I'm going to be sent to Iceland."
Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as a week ago, in the Director's office, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. The Director's threats had actually elated him, made him feel larger than life. But that, as he now realized, was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously, he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.
He raged against himself-what a fool!-against the Director-how unfair not to give him that other chance, that other chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland... 
Lenina shook her head. "Was and will make me ill," she quoted, "I take a gramme and only am."
In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later roots and fruits were abolished; the flower of the present rosily blossomed. A message from the porter announced that, at the Warden's orders, a Reservation Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once. An octoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted and proceeded to recite the morning's programme.
A bird's-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages would probably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night.
They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes later they were crossing the frontier that separated civilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa, the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose. And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires.
"They never learn," said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing down at the skeletons on the ground below them. "And they never will learn," he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored a personal triumph over the electrocuted animals.
Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep, and sleeping was carried over Taos and Tesuque; over Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque, over Sia and Cochiti, over Laguna and Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, over Zuñi and Cibola and Ojo Caliente, and woke at last to find the machine standing on the ground, Lenina carrying the suit-cases into a small square house, and the Gamma-green octoroon talking incomprehensibly with a young Indian.
"Malpais," explained the pilot, as Bernard stepped out. "This is the rest-house. And there's a dance this afternoon at the pueblo. He'll take you there." He pointed to the sullen young savage. "Funny, I expect." He grinned. "Everything they do is funny." And with that he climbed into the plane and started up the engines. "Back to-morrow. And remember," he added reassuringly to Lenina, "they're perfectly tame; savages won't do you any harm. They've got enough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustn't play any tricks." Still laughing, he threw the helicopter screws into gear, accelerated, and was gone.
Chapter Seven
The mesa was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloured dust. The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green-the river and its fields. On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.
"Queer," said Lenina. "Very queer." It was her ordinary word of condemnation. "I don't like it. And I don't like that man." She pointed to the Indian guide who had been appointed to take them up to the pueblo. Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked along before them, was hostile, sullenly contemptuous.
"Besides," she lowered her voice, "he smells."
Bernard did not attempt to deny it. They walked on.
Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and were pulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement of blood. Up there, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten. Their feet fell in with the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened their pace. Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship towered over them, three hundred feet to the gunwale.
"I wish we could have brought the plane," said Lenina, looking up resentfully at the blank impending rock-face. "I hate walking. And you feel so small when you're on the ground at the bottom of a hill."
They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, rounded a projection, and there, in a water-worn ravine, was the way up the companion ladder. They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gully. Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to be beating only just round the corner.
When they were half-way up, an eagle flew past so close to them that the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces. In a crevice of the rock lay a pile of bones. It was all oppressively queer, and the Indian smelt stronger and stronger. They emerged at last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of the mesa was a flat deck of stone.
"Like the Charing-T Tower," was Lenina's comment. But she was not allowed to enjoy her discovery of this reassuring resemblance for long. A padding of soft feet made them turn round. Naked from throat to navel, their dark brown bodies painted with white lines, their faces inhuman with daubings of scarlet, black and ochre, two Indians came running along the path. Their black hair was braided with fox fur and red flannel. Cloaks of turkey feathers fluttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudily round their heads. With every step they took came the clink and rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklaces of bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word, running quietly in their deerskin moccasins. One of them was holding a feather brush; the other carried, in either hand, what looked at a distance like three or four pieces of thick rope. One of the ropes writhed uneasily, and suddenly Lenina saw that they were snakes.
The men came nearer and nearer; their dark eyes looked at her, but without giving any sign of recognition, any smallest sign that they had seen her or were aware of her existence. The writhing snake hung limp again with the rest. The men passed.
"I don't like it," said Lenina. "I don't like it."
She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose.
"But how can they live like this?" she broke out in a voice of indignant incredulity. 
Bernard shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Anyhow," he said, "they've been doing it for the last five or six thousand years. So I suppose they must be used to it by now."
"But cleanliness is next to fordliness," she insisted.
"Yes, and civilization is sterilization," Bernard went on, concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopædic lesson in elementary hygiene. "But these people have never heard of Our Ford, and they aren't civilized. So there's no point in... "
"Oh!" She gripped his arm. "Look."
An almost naked Indian was very slowly climbing down the ladder from the first-floor terrace of a neighboring house-rung after rung, with the tremulous caution of extreme old age. His face was profoundly wrinkled and black, like a mask of obsidian. The toothless mouth had fallen in. At the corners of the lips, and on each side of the chin, a few long bristles gleamed almost white against the dark skin. The long unbraided hair hung down in grey wisps round his face. His body was bent and emaciated to the bone, almost fleshless. Very slowly he came down, pausing at each rung before he ventured another step.
"What's the matter with him?" whispered Lenina. Her eyes were wide with horror and amazement.
"He's old, that's all," Bernard answered as carelessly as he could. He too was startled; but he made an effort to seem unmoved.
"Old?" she repeated. "But the Director's old; lots of people are old; they're not like that."
"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't look like that. Partly," he added, "because most of them die long before they reach this old creature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end."
But Lenina was not listening. She was watching the old man. Slowly, slowly he came down. His feet touched the ground. He turned. In their deep-sunken orbits his eyes were still extraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long moment expressionlessly, without surprise, as though she had not been there at all. Then slowly, with bent back the old man hobbled past them and was gone.
"But it's terrible," Lenina whispered. "It's awful. We ought not to have come here." She felt in her pocket for her soma-only to discover that, by some unprecedented oversight, she had left the bottle down at the rest-house. Bernard's pockets were also empty.
Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided. They came crowding in on her thick and fast. The spectacle of two young women giving breast to their babies made her blush and turn away her face. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life. And what made it worse was that, instead of tactfully ignoring it, Bernard proceeded to make open comments on this revoltingly viviparous scene. Ashamed, now that the effects of the soma had worn off, of the weakness he had displayed that morning in the hotel, he went out of his way to show himself strong and unorthodox.
"What a wonderfully intimate relationship," he said, deliberately outrageous. "And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you've missed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own.... "
"Bernard! How can you?" The passage of an old woman with ophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from her indignation.
"Let's go away," she begged. "I don't like it."
But at this moment their guide came back and, beckoning them to follow, led the way down the narrow street between the houses. They rounded a corner. A dead dog was lying on a rubbish heap; a woman with a goitre was looking for lice in the hair of a small girl. Their guide halted at the foot of a ladder, raised his hand perpendicularly, then darted it horizontally forward. They did what he mutely commanded-climbed the ladder and walked through the doorway, to which it gave access, into a long narrow room, rather dark and smelling of smoke and cooked grease and long-worn, long-unwashed clothes. At the further end of the room was another doorway, through which came a shaft of sunlight and the noise, very loud and close, of the drums.
They stepped across the threshold and found themselves on a wide terrace. Below them, shut in by the tall houses, was the village square, crowded with Indians. Bright blankets, and feathers in black hair, and the glint of turquoise, and dark skins shining with heat. Lenina put her handkerchief to her nose again. In the open space at the centre of the square were two circular platforms of masonry and trampled clay-the roofs, it was evident, of underground chambers; for in the centre of each platform was an open hatchway, with a ladder emerging from the lower darkness. A sound of subterranean flute playing came up and was almost lost in the steady remorseless persistence of the drums.
Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more completely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford's Day celebrations. "Orgy-porgy," she whispered to herself. These drums beat out just the same rhythms.
There was a sudden startling burst of singing-hundreds of male voices crying out fiercely in harsh metallic unison. A few long notes and silence, the thunderous silence of the drums; then shrill, in a neighing treble, the women's answer. Then again the drums; and once more the men's deep savage affirmation of their manhood.
Queer-yes. The place was queer, so was the music, so were the clothes and the goitres and the skin diseases and the old people. But the performance itself-there seemed to be nothing specially queer about that.
"It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing," she told Bernard.
But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of that innocuous function. For suddenly there had swarmed up from those round chambers underground a ghastly troop of monsters. Hideously masked or painted out of all semblance of humanity, they had tramped out a strange limping dance round the square; round and again round, singing as they went, round and round-each time a little faster; and the drums had changed and quickened their rhythm, so that it became like the pulsing of fever in the ears; and the crowd had begun to sing with the dancers, louder and louder; and first one woman had shrieked, and then another and another, as though they were being killed; and then suddenly the leader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a big wooden chest which was standing at one end of the square, raised the lid and pulled out a pair of black snakes. A great yell went up from the crowd, and all the other dancers ran towards him with out-stretched hands. He tossed the snakes to the first-comers, then dipped back into the chest for more. More and more, black snakes and brown and mottled-he flung them out. And then the dance began again on a different rhythm. Round and round they went with their snakes, snakily, with a soft undulating movement at the knees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave a signal, and one after another, all the snakes were flung down in the middle of the square; an old man came up from underground and sprinkled them with corn meal, and from the other hatchway came a woman and sprinkled them with water from a black jar. Then the old man lifted his hand and, startlingly, terrifyingly, there was absolute silence. The drums stopped beating, life seemed to have come to an end. The old man pointed towards the two hatchways that gave entrance to the lower world. And slowly, raised by invisible hands from below, there emerged from the one a painted image of an eagle, from the other that of a man, naked, and nailed to a cross. They hung there, seemingly self-sustained, as though watching. The old man clapped his hands. Naked but for a white cotton breech-cloth, a boy of about eighteen stepped out of the crowd and stood before him, his hands crossed over his chest, his head bowed. The old man made the sign of the cross over him and turned away. Slowly, the boy began to walk round the writhing heap of snakes. He had completed the first circuit and was half-way through the second when, from among the dancers, a tall man wearing the mask of a coyote and holding in his hand a whip of plaited leather, advanced towards him. The boy moved on as though unaware of the other's existence. The coyote-man raised his whip, there was a long moment of expectancy, then a swift movement, the whistle of the lash and its loud flat-sounding impact on the flesh. The boy's body quivered; but he made no sound, he walked on at the same slow, steady pace. The coyote struck again, again; and at every blow at first a gasp, and then a deep groan went up from the crowd. The boy walked. Twice, thrice, four times round he went. The blood was streaming. Five times round, six times round. Suddenly Lenina covered her face shish her hands and began to sob. "Oh, stop them, stop them!" she implored. But the whip fell and fell inexorably. Seven times round. Then all at once the boy staggered and, still without a sound, pitched forward on to his face. Bending over him, the old man touched his back with a long white feather, held it up for a moment, crimson, for the people to see then shook it thrice over the snakes. A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out again into a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout. The dancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out of the square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran after them. A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, prone where he had fallen, quite still. Three old women came out of one of the houses, and with some difficulty lifted him and carried him in. The eagle and the man on the cross kept guard for a little while over the empty pueblo; then, as though they had seen enough, sank slowly down through their hatchways, out of sight, into the nether world.
Lenina was still sobbing. "Too awful," she kept repeating, and all Bernard's consolations were in vain. "Too awful! That blood!" She shuddered. "Oh, I wish I had my soma."
There was the sound of feet in the inner room.
Lenina did not move, but sat with her face in her hands, unseeing, apart. Only Bernard turned round.
The dress of the young man who now stepped out on to the terrace was Indian; but his plaited hair was straw-coloured, his eyes a pale blue, and his skin a white skin, bronzed.
"Hullo. Good-morrow," said the stranger, in faultless but peculiar English. "You're civilized, aren't you? You come from the Other Place, outside the Reservation?"
"Who on earth... ?" Bernard began in astonishment.
The young man sighed and shook his head. "A most unhappy gentleman." And, pointing to the bloodstains in the centre of the square, "Do you see that damned spot?" he asked in a voice that trembled with emotion.
"A gramme is better than a damn," said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. "I wish I had my soma!"
"I ought to have been there," the young man went on. "Why wouldn't they let me be the sacrifice? I'd have gone round ten times-twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me. The multitudinous seas incarnadine." He flung out his arms in a lavish gesture; then, despairingly, let them fall again. "But they wouldn't let me. They disliked me for my complexion. It's always been like that. Always." Tears stood in the young man's eyes; he was ashamed and turned away.
Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation of soma. She uncovered her face and, for the first time, looked at the stranger. "Do you mean to say that you wanted to be hit with that whip?"
Still averted from her, the young man made a sign of affirmation. "For the sake of the pueblo-to make the rain come and the corn grow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that I can bear pain without crying out. Yes," and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud squaring of the shoulders, a proud, defiant lifting of the chin "to show that I'm a man... Oh!" He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the colour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn and permanently waved, and whose expression was one of benevolent interest. Lenina was smiling at him; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a really beautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man's face; he dropped his eyes, raised them again for a moment only to find her still smiling at him, and was so much overcome that he had to turn away and pretend to be looking very hard at something on the other side of the square.
Bernard's questions made a diversion. Who? How? When? From where? Keeping his eyes fixed on Bernard's face He must have flown away, back to the Other Place, away without her-a bad, unkind, unnatural man.
"And so I was born in Malpais," he concluded. "In Malpais." And he shook his head.
The squalor of that little house on the outskirts of the pueblo!
A space of dust and rubbish separated it from the village. Two famine-stricken dogs were nosing obscenely in the garbage at its door. Inside, when they entered, the twilight stank and was loud with flies.
"Linda!" the young man called.
From the inner room a rather hoarse female voice said, "Coming."
They waited. In bowls on the floor were the remains of a meal, perhaps of several meals.
The door opened. A very stout blonde squaw stepped across the threshold and stood looking at the strangers staring incredulously, her mouth open. Lenina noticed with disgust that two of the front teeth were missing. And the colour of the ones that remained... She shuddered. It was worse than the old man. So fat. And all the lines in her face, the flabbiness, the wrinkles. And the sagging cheeks, with those purplish blotches. And the red veins on her nose, the bloodshot eyes. And that neck-that neck; and the blanket she wore over her head-ragged and filthy. And under the brown sack-shaped tunic those enormous breasts, the bulge of the stomach, the hips. Oh, much worse than the old man, much worse! And suddenly the creature burst out in a torrent of speech, rushed at her with outstretched arms and-Ford! Ford! it was too revolting, in another moment she'd be sick-pressed her against the bulge, the bosom, and began to kiss her. Ford! to kiss, slobberingly, and smelt too horrible, obviously never had a bath, and simply reeked of that beastly stuff that was put into Delta and Epsilon bottles, positively stank of alcohol. She broke away as quickly as she could.
A blubbered and distorted face confronted her; the creature was crying.
"Oh, my dear, my dear." The torrent of words flowed sobbingly. "If you knew how glad-after all these years! A civilized face. Yes, and civilized clothes. Because I thought I should never see a piece of real acetate silk again." She fingered the sleeve of Lenina's shirt. The nails were black. "And those adorable viscose velveteen shorts! Do you know, dear, I've still got my old clothes, the ones I came in, put away in a box. I'll show them you afterwards. Though, of course, the acetate has all gone into holes. But such a lovely white bandolier-though I must say your green morocco is even lovelier. Not that it did me much good, that bandolier." Her tears began to flow again. "I suppose John told you. What I had to suffer-and not a gramme of soma to be had. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Popé used to bring it. Popé is a boy I used to know. But it makes you feel so bad afterwards. the mescal does, and you're sick with the peyotl; besides it always made that awful feeling of being ashamed much worse the next day. And I was so ashamed. Just think of it: me, a Beta-having a baby: put yourself in my place." he tried to kill poor Waihusiwa-or was it Popé?-just because I used to have them sometimes. Because I never could make him understand that that was what civilized people ought to do. Being mad's infectious I believe. Anyhow, John seems to have caught it from the Indians. Because, of course, he was with them a lot. Even though they always were so beastly to him and wouldn't let him do all the things the other boys did. Which was a good thing in a way, because it made it easier for me to condition him a little. Though you've no idea how difficult that is. There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world-well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?"
Chapter Eight
Outside, in the dust and among the garbage, Bernard and John were walking slowly up and down.
"So hard for me to realize," Bernard was saying, "to reconstruct. As though we were living on different planets, in different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, and gods, and old age, and disease... " He shook his head. "It's almost inconceivable. I shall never understand, unless you explain."
"Explain what?"
"This." He indicated the pueblo. "That." And it was the little house outside the village. "Everything. All your life."
"But what is there to say?"
"From the beginning. As far back as you can remember."
"As far back as I can remember." John frowned. There was a long silence.
It was very hot. They had eaten a lot of tortillas and sweet corn. Linda said, "Come and lie down, Baby." They lay down together in the big bed. "Sing," and Linda sang. Sang "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T" and "Bye Baby Banting, soon you'll need decanting." Her voice got fainter and fainter... 
There was a loud noise, and he woke with a start. A man was saying something to Linda, and Linda was laughing. She had pulled the blanket up to her chin, but the man pulled it down again. His hair was like two black ropes, and round his arm was a lovely silver bracelet with blue stones in it. He liked the bracelet; but all the same, he was frightened; he hid his face against Linda's body. Linda put her hand on him and he felt safer. In those other words he did not understand so well, she said to the man, "Not with John here." The man looked at him, then again at Linda, and said a few words in a soft voice. Linda said, "No." But the man bent over the bed towards him and his face was huge, terrible; the black ropes of hair touched the blanket. "No," Linda said again, and he felt her hand squeezing him more tightly. "No, no!" But the man took hold of one of his arms, and it hurt. He screamed. The man put up his other hand and lifted him up. Linda was still holding him, still saying, "No, no." The man said something short and angry, and suddenly her hands were gone. "Linda, Linda." He kicked and wriggled; but the man carried him across to the door, opened it, put him down on the floor in the middle of the other room, and went away, shutting the door behind him. He got up, he ran to the door. Standing on tiptoe he could just reach the big wooden latch. He lifted it and pushed; but the door wouldn't open. "Linda," he shouted. She didn't answer.
He remembered a huge room, rather dark; and there were big wooden things with strings fastened to them, and lots of women standing round them-making blankets, Linda said. Linda told him to sit in the corner with the other children, while she went and helped the women. He played with the little boys for a long time. Suddenly people started talking very loud, and there were the women pushing Linda away, and Linda was crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He asked her why they were angry. "Because I broke something," she said. And then she got angry too. "How should I know how to do their beastly weaving?" she said. "Beastly savages." He asked her what savages were. When they got back to their house, Popé was waiting at the door, and he came in with them. He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked like water; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smell that burnt your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank some and Popé drank some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked very loud; and then she and Popé went into the other room. When Popé went away, he went into the room. Linda was in bed and so fast asleep that he couldn't wake her.
Popé used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd was called mescal; but Linda said it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards. He hated Popé. He hated them all-all the men who came to see Linda. One afternoon, when he had been playing with the other children-it was cold, he remembered, and there was snow on the mountains-he came back to the house and heard angry voices in the bedroom. They were women's voices, and they said words he didn't understand, but he knew they were dreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset; he heard people moving about quickly, and there was another crash and then a noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; then Linda screamed. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she said. He ran in. There were three women in dark blankets. Linda was on the bed. One of the women was holding her wrists. Another was lying across her legs, so that she couldn't kick. The third was hitting her with a whip. Once, twice, three times; and each time Linda screamed. Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the woman's blanket. "Please, please." With her free hand she held him away. The whip came down again, and again Linda screamed. He caught hold of the woman's enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with all his might. She cried out, wrenched her hand free, and gave him such a push that he fell down. While he was lying on the ground she hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt-like fire. The whip whistled again, fell. But this time it was Linda who screamed.
"But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?'' he asked that night. He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly. But he was also crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little boy and couldn't do anything against them. Linda was crying too. She was grown up, but she wasn't big enough to fight against three of them. It wasn't fair for her either. "Why did they want to hurt you, Linda?"
"I don't know. How should I know?" It was difficult to hear what she said, because she was lying on her stomach and her face was in the pillow. "They say those men are their men," she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she seemed to be talking with some one inside herself. A long talk which she didn't understand; and in the end she started crying louder than ever.
"Oh, don't cry, Linda. Don't cry."
He pressed himself against her. He put his arm round her neck. Linda cried out. "Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!" and she pushed him away, hard. His head banged against the wall. "Little idiot!" she shouted; and then, suddenly, she began to slap him. Slap, slap... 
"Linda," he cried out. "Oh, mother, don't!"
"I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother."
"But, Linda... Oh!" She slapped him on the cheek.
"Turned into a savage," she shouted. "Having young ones like an animal... If it hadn't been for you, I might have gone to the Inspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful."
He saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted his arm to guard his face. "Oh, don't, Linda, please don't."
"Little beast!" She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.
"Don't, Linda." He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.
But she didn't hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissed him again and again.
Sometimes, for several days, Linda didn't get up at all. She lay in bed and was sad. Or else she drank the stuff that Popé brought and laughed a great deal and went to sleep. Sometimes she was sick. Often she forgot to wash him, and there was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she found those little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed.
The happiest times were when she told him about the Other Place. "And you really can go flying, whenever you like?"
"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was happening at the other side of the world, and babies in lovely clean bottles-everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all-and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every day.... He listened by the hour. And sometimes, when he and the other children were tired with too much playing, one of the old men of the pueblo would talk to them, in those other words, of the great Transformer of the World, and of the long fight between Right Hand and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona, who made a great fog by thinking in the night, and then made the whole world out of the fog; of Earth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who makes herself young again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle and Our Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him for being told in the other words and so not fully understood. Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.
Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point their fingers at him. In the strange other words they said that Linda was bad; they called her names he did not understand, but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a song about her, again and again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a sharp stone cut his cheek. The blood wouldn't stop; he was covered with blood.
Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the wall-an animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When he knew how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened her big wooden box and pulled out from under those funny little red trousers she never wore a thin little book. He had often seen it before. "When you're bigger," she had said, "you can read it." Well, now he was big enough. He was proud. "I'm afraid you won't find it very exciting," she said. "But it's the only thing I have." She sighed. "If only you could see the lovely reading machines we used to have in London!" He began reading. The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers. It took him a quarter of an hour to read the title alone. He threw the book on the floor. "Beastly, beastly book!" he said, and began to cry.
The boys still sang their horrible song about Linda. Sometimes, too, they laughed at him for being so ragged. When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them and got new ones. "Rags, rags!" the boys used to shout at him. "But I can read," he said to himself, "and they can't. They don't even know what reading is." It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he didn't mind when they made fun of him. He asked Linda to give him the book again.
The more the boys pointed and sang, the harder he read. Soon he could read all the words quite well. Even the longest. But what did they mean? He asked Linda; but even when she could answer it didn't seem to make it very clear, And generally she couldn't answer at all.
"What are chemicals?" he would ask.
"Oh, stuff like magnesium salts, and alcohol for keeping the Deltas and Epsilons small and backward, and calcium carbonate for bones, and all that sort of thing."
"But how do you make chemicals, Linda? Where do they come from?"
"Well, I don't know. You get them out of bottles. And when the bottles are empty, you send up to the Chemical Store for more. It's the Chemical Store people who make them, I suppose. Or else they send to the factory for them. I don't know. I never did any chemistry. My job was always with the embryos. It was the same with everything else he asked about. Linda never seemed to know. The old men of the pueblo had much more definite answers.
"The seed of men and all creatures, the seed of the sun and the seed of earth and the seed of the sky-Awonawilona made them all out of the Fog of Increase. Now the world has four wombs; and he laid the seeds in the lowest of the four wombs. And gradually the seeds began to grow... "
One day he came home and found a book that he had never seen before lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Linda was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinking mescal out of a cup. "Popé brought it," she said. Her voice was thick and hoarse like somebody else's voice. "It was lying in one of the chests of the Antelope Kiva. It's supposed to have been there for hundreds of years. I expect it's true, because I looked at it, and it seemed to be full of nonsense. Uncivilized. Still, it'll be good enough for you to practice your reading on." She took a last sip, set the cup down on the floor beside the bed, turned over on her side, hiccoughed once or twice and went to sleep.
He opened the book at random.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty... 
The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried; like old Mitsima saying magic over his feathers and his carved sticks and his bits of bone and stone-kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwe silokwe. Kiai silu silu, tsithl-but better than Mitsima's magic, because it meant more, because it talked to him, talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic, about Linda; about Linda lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed; about Linda and Popé, Linda and Popé.
He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew. But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Popé before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken -they gave him a reason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Popé himself more real.
One day, when he came in from playing, the door of the inner room was open, and he saw them lying together on the bed, asleep-white Linda and Popé almost black beside her, with one arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand on her breast, and one of the plaits of his long hair lying across her throat, like a black snake trying to strangle her. Popé's gourd and a cup were standing on the floor near the bed. Linda was snoring.
His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy. He leaned against the wall to steady himself. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous... Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head. From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam and darkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. "I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll kill him," he kept saying. And suddenly there were more words.
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed... 
The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders. He stepped back in the outer room. "When he is drunk asleep... " The knife for the meat was lying on the floor near the fireplace. He picked it up and tiptoed to the door again. "When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep... " He ran across the room and stabbed-oh, the blood!-stabbed again, as Popé heaved out of his sleep, lifted his hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, held and-oh, oh!-twisted. He couldn't move, he was trapped, and there were Popé's small black eyes, very close, staring into his own. He looked away. There were two cuts on Popé's left shoulder. "Oh, look at the blood!" Linda was crying. "Look at the blood!" She had never been able to bear the sight of blood. Popé lifted his other hand-to strike him, he thought. He stiffened to receive the blow. But the hand only took him under the chin and turned his face, so that he had to look again into Popé's eyes. For a long time, for hours and hours. And suddenly-he couldn't help it-he began to cry. Popé burst out laughing. "Go," he said, in the other Indian words. "Go, my brave Ahaiyuta." He ran out into the other room to hide his tears.
"You are fifteen," said old Mitsima, in the Indian words. "Now I may teach you to work the clay."
Squatting by the river, they worked together.
"First of all," said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wetted clay between his hands, "we make a little moon." The old man squeezed the lump into a disk, then bent up the edges, the moon became a shallow cup.
Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man's delicate gestures.
"A moon, a cup, and now a snake." Mitsima rolled out another piece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, trooped it into a circle and pressed it on to the rim of the cup. "Then another snake. And another. And another." Round by round, Mitsima built up the sides of the pot; it was narrow, it bulged, it narrowed again towards the neck. Mitsima squeezed and patted, stroked and scraped; and there at last it stood, in shape the familiar water pot of Malpais, but creamy white instead of black, and still soft to the touch. The crooked parody of Mitsima's, his own stood beside it. Looking at the two pots, he had to laugh.
"But the next one will be better," he said, and began to moisten another piece of clay.
To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power-this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. "A, B, C, Vitamin D," he sang to himself as he worked. "The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea." And Mitsima also sang-a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness.
"Next winter," said old Mitsima, "I will teach you to make the bow."
He stood for a long time outside the house, and at last the ceremonies within were finished. The door opened; they came out. Kothlu came first, his right hand out-stretched and tightly closed, as though over some precious jewel. Her clenched hand similarly outstretched, Kiakimé followed. They walked in silence, and in silence, behind them, came the brothers and sisters and cousins and all the troop of old people.
They walked out of the pueblo, across the mesa. At the edge of the cliff they halted, facing the early morning sun. Kothlu opened his hand. A pinch of corn meal lay white on the palm; he breathed on it, murmured a few words, then threw it, a handful of white dust, towards the sun. Kiakimé did the same. Then Khakimé's father stepped forward, and holding up a feathered prayer stick, made a long prayer, then threw the stick after the corn meal.
"It is finished," said old Mitsima in a loud voice. "They are married."
"Well," said Linda, as they turned away, "all I can say is, it does seem a lot of fuss to make about so little. In civilized countries, when a boy wants to have a girl, he just... But where are you going, John?"
He paid no attention to her calling, but ran on, away, away, anywhere to be by himself.
It is finished Old Mitsima's words repeated themselves in his mind. Finished, finished... In silence and from a long way off, but violently, desperately, hopelessly, he had loved Kiakimé. And now it was finished. He was sixteen.
At the full moon, in the Antelope Kiva, secrets would be told, secrets would be done and borne. They would go down, boys, into the kiva and come out again, men. The boys were all afraid and at the same time impatient. And at last it was the day. The sun went down, the moon rose. He went with the others. Men were standing, dark, at the entrance to the kiva; the ladder went down into the red lighted depths. Already the leading boys had begun to climb down. Suddenly, one of the men stepped forward, caught him by the arm, and pulled him out of the ranks. He broke free and dodged back into his place among the others. This time the man struck him, pulled his hair. "Not for you, white-hair!" "Not for the son of the she-dog," said one of the other men. The boys laughed. "Go!" And as he still hovered on the fringes of the group, "Go!" the men shouted again. One of them bent down, took a stone, threw it. "Go, go, go!" There was a shower of stones. Bleeding, he ran away into the darkness. From the red-lit kiva came the noise of singing. The last of the boys had climbed down the ladder. He was all alone.
All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of the precipice he sat down. The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, one little jump.... He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow... 
He had discovered Time and Death and God.
"Alone, always alone," the young man was saying.
The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind. Alone, alone... "So am I," he said, on a gush of confidingness. "Terribly alone."
"Are you?" John looked surprised. "I thought that in the Other Place... I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever alone there."
Bernard blushed uncomfortably. "You see," he said, mumbling and with averted eyes, "I'm rather different from most people, I suppose. If one happens to be decanted different... "
"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded. "If one's different, one's bound to be lonely. They're beastly to one. Do you know, they shut me out of absolutely everything? When the other boys were sent out to spend the night on the mountains-you know, when you have to dream which your sacred animal is-they wouldn't let me go with the others; they wouldn't tell me any of the secrets. I did it by myself, though," he added. "Didn't eat anything for five days and then went out one night alone into those mountains there." He pointed.
Patronizingly, Bernard smiled. "And did you dream of anything?" he asked.
The other nodded. "But I mustn't tell you what." He was silent for a little; then, in a low voice, "Once," he went on, "I did something that none of the others did: I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the Cross."
"What on earth for?"
"I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hanging there in the sun... "
"But why?"
"Why? Well... " He hesitated. "Because I felt I ought to. If Jesus could stand it. And then, if one has done something wrong... Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason."
"It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness," said Bernard. But on second thoughts he decided that there was, after all, some sense in it. Better than taking soma... 
"I fainted after a time," said the young man. "Fell down on my face. Do you see the mark where I cut myself?" He lifted the thick yellow hair from his forehead. The scar showed, pale and puckered, on his right temple.
Bernard looked, and then quickly, with a little shudder, averted his eyes. His conditioning had made him not so much pitiful as profoundly squeamish. The mere suggestion of illness or wounds was to him not only horrifying, but even repulsive and rather disgusting. Like dirt, or deformity, or old age. Hastily he changed the subject.
"I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?" he asked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy he had been secretly elaborating ever since, in the little house, he had realized who the "father" of this young savage must be. "Would you like that?"
The young man's face lit up. "Do you really mean it?"
"Of course; if I can get permission, that is."
"Linda too?"
"Well... " He hesitated doubtfully. That revolting creature! No, it was impossible. Unless, unless... It suddenly occurred to Bernard that her very revoltingness might prove an enormous asset. "But of course!" he cried, making up for his first hesitations with an excess of noisy cordiality.
The young man drew a deep breath. "To think it should be coming true-what I've dreamt of all my life. Do you remember what Miranda says?"
"Who's Miranda?"
But the young man had evidently not heard the question. "O wonder!" he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!" The flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking of Lenina, of an angel in bottle-green viscose, lustrous with youth and skin food, plump, benevolently smiling. His voice faltered. "O brave new world," he began, then-suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper.
"Are you married to her?" he asked.
"Am I what?"
"Married. You know-for ever. They say 'for ever' in the Indian words; it can't be broken."
"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help laughing.
John also laughed, but for another reason-laughed for pure joy.
"O brave new world," he repeated. "O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once."
"You have a most peculiar way of talking sometimes," said Bernard, staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment. "And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?"
Chapter Nine
Lenina felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again.
Bernard meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark. It was long after midnight before he fell asleep. Long after midnight; but his insomnia had not been fruitless; he had a plan.
Punctually, on the following morning, at ten o'clock, the green-uniformed octoroon stepped out of his helicopter. Bernard was waiting for him among the agaves.
"Miss Crowne's gone on soma-holiday," he explained. "Can hardly be back before five. Which leaves us seven hours."
He could fly to Santa Fé, do all the business he had to do, and be in Malpais again long before she woke up.
"She'll be quite safe here by herself?"
"Safe as helicopters," the octoroon assured him.
They climbed into the machine and started off at once. At ten thirty-four they landed on the roof of the Santa Fé Post Office; at ten thirty-seven Bernard had got through to the World Controller's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-seven he was speaking to his fordship's fourth personal secretary; at ten forty-four he was repeating his story to the first secretary, and at ten forty-seven and a half it was the deep, resonant voice of Mustapha Mond himself that sounded in his ears.
"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that your fordship might find the matter of sufficient scientific interest... "
"Yes, I do find it of sufficient scientific interest," said the deep voice. "Bring these two individuals back to London with you."
"Your fordship is aware that I shall need a special permit... "
"The necessary orders," said Mustapha Mond, "are being sent to the Warden of the Reservation at this moment. You will proceed at once to the Warden's Office. Good-morning, Mr. Marx."
There was silence. Bernard hung up the receiver and hurried up to the roof.
"Warden's Office," he said to the Gamma-green octoroon.
At ten fifty-four Bernard was shaking hands with the Warden.
"Delighted, Mr. Marx, delighted." His boom was deferential. "We have just received special orders... "
"I know," said Bernard, interrupting him. "I was talking to his fordship on the phone a moment ago." His bored tone implied that he was in the habit of talking to his fordship every day of the week. He dropped into a chair. "If you'll kindly take all the necessary steps as soon as possible. As soon as possible," he emphatically repeated. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
At eleven three he had all the necessary papers in his pocket.
"So long," he said patronizingly to the Warden, who had accompanied him as far as the lift gates. "So long."
He walked across to the hotel, had a bath, a vibro-vac massage, and an electrolytic shave, listened in to the morning's news, looked in for half an hour on the televisor, ate a leisured luncheon, and at half-past two flew back with the octoroon to Malpais.
The young man stood outside the rest-house.
"Bernard," he called. "Bernard!" There was no answer.
Noiseless on his deerksin moccasins, he ran up the steps and tried the door. The door was locked.
They were gone! Gone! It was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to him. She had asked him to come and see them, and now they were gone. He sat down on the steps and cried.
Half an hour later it occurred to him to look through the window. The first thing he saw was a green suit-case, with the initials L.C. painted on the lid. Joy flared up like fire within him. He picked up a stone. The smashed glass tinkled on the floor. A moment later he was inside the room. He opened the green suit-case; and all at once he was breathing Lenina's perfume, filling his lungs with her essential being. His heart beat wildly; for a moment he was almost faint. Then, bending over the precious box, he touched, he lifted into the light, he examined. The zippers on Lenina's spare pair of viscose velveteen shorts were at first a puzzle, then solved, a delight. Zip, and then zip; zip, and then zip; he was enchanted. Her green slippers were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He unfolded a pair of zippicamiknicks, blushed, put them hastily away again; but kissed a perfumed acetate handkerchief and wound a scarf round his neck. Opening a box, he spilt a cloud of scented powder. His hands were floury with the stuff. He wiped them on his chest, on his shoulders, on his bare arms. Delicious perfume! He shut his eyes; he rubbed his cheek against his own powdered arm. Touch of smooth skin against his face, scent in his nostrils of musky dust-her real presence. "Lenina," he whispered. "Lenina!"
A noise made him start, made him guiltily turn. He crammed up his thieveries into the suit-case and shut the lid; then listened again, looked. Not a sign of life, not a sound. And yet he had certainly heard something-something like a sigh, something like the creak of a board. He tiptoed to the door and, cautiously opening it, found himself looking on to a broad landing. On the opposite side of the landing was another door, ajar. He stepped out, pushed, peeped.
There, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pair of pink one-piece zippyjamas, lay Lenina, fast asleep and so beautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childish with her pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustful in the helplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, that the tears came to his eyes.
With an infinity of quite unnecessary precautions-for nothing short of a pistol shot could have called Lenina back from her soma-holiday before the appointed time-he entered the room, he knelt on the floor beside the bed. He gazed, he clasped his hands, his lips moved. "Her eyes," he murmured,
"Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet's down is harsh... "
A fly buzzed round her; he waved it away. "Flies," he remembered,
"On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin."
Very slowly, with the hesitating gesture of one who reaches forward to stroke a shy and possibly rather dangerous bird, he put out his hand. It hung there trembling, within an inch of those limp fingers, on the verge of contact. Did he dare? Dare to profane with his unworthiest hand that... No, he didn't. The bird was too dangerous. His hand dropped back. How beautiful she was! How beautiful!
Then suddenly he found himself reflecting that he had only to take hold of the zipper at her neck and give one long, strong pull... He shut his eyes, he shook his head with the gesture of a dog shaking its ears as it emerges from the water. Detestable thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty... 
There was a humming in the air. Another fly trying to steal immortal blessings? A wasp? He looked, saw nothing. The humming grew louder and louder, localized itself as being outside the shuttered windows. The plane! In a panic, he scrambled to his feet and ran into the other room, vaulted through the open window, and hurrying along the path between the tall agaves was in time to receive Bernard Marx as he climbed out of the helicopter.
Chapter Ten
The hands of all the four thousand electric clocks in all the Bloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms marked twenty-seven minutes past two. "This hive of industry," as the Director was fond of calling it, was in the full buzz of work. Every one was busy, everything in ordered motion. Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding, dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up into whole populations of separate embryos. From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.
The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down. On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time. From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.
Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the little boys and girls who were still young enough to need an afternoon sleep were as busy as every one else, though they did not know it, listening unconsciously to hypnopædic lessons in hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousness and the toddler's love-life. Above these again were the playrooms where, the weather having turned to rain, nine hundred older children were amusing themselves with bricks and clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.
Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles! But the Director's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room with Henry Foster, was grave, wooden with severity.
"A public example," he was saying. "In this room, because it contains more high-caste workers than any other in the Centre. I have told him to meet me here at half-past two."
"He does his work very well," put in Henry, with hypocritical generosity.
"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual-and, after all, what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the greatest ease-as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Society itself," he repeated. "Ah, but here he comes."
Bernard had entered the room and was advancing between the rows of fertilizers towards them. A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness. The voice in which he said, "Good-morning, Director," was absurdly too loud; that in which, correcting his mistake, he said, "You asked me to come and speak to you here," ridiculously soft, a squeak.
"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the Director portentously. "I did ask you to come to me here. You returned from your holiday last night, I understand."
"Yes," Bernard answered.
"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the "s." Then, suddenly raising his voice, "Ladies and gentlemen," he trumpeted, "ladies and gentlemen."
The singing of the girls over their test-tubes, the preoccupied whistling of the Microscopists, suddenly ceased. There was a profound silence; every one looked round.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Director repeated once more, "excuse me for thus interrupting your labours. A painful duty constrains me. The security and stability of Society are in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. This man," he pointed accusingly at Bernard, "this man who stands before you here, this Alpha-Plus to whom so much has been given, and from whom, in consequence, so much must be expected, this colleague of yours-or should I anticipate and say this ex-colleague?-has grossly betrayed the trust imposed in him. By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, 'even as a little infant,'", "he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference to a Subcentre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed from any important Centre of population. In Iceland he will have small opportunity to lead others astray by his unfordly example." The Director paused; then, folding his arms, he turned impressively to Bernard. "Marx," he said, "can you show any reason why I should not now execute the judgment passed upon you?"
"Yes, I can," Bernard answered in a very loud voice.
Somewhat taken aback, but still majestically, "Then show it," said the Director.
"Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment." Bernard hurried to the door and threw it open. "Come in," he commanded, and the reason came in and showed itself.
There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a young girl screamed; standing on a chair to get a better view some one upset two test-tubes full of spermatozoa. Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster of middle-agedness, Linda advanced into the room, coquettishly smiling her broken and discoloured smile, and rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be a voluptuous undulation, her enormous haunches. Bernard walked beside her.
"There he is," he said, pointing at the Director.
"Did you think I didn't recognize him?" Linda asked indignantly; then, turning to the Director, "Of course I knew you; Tomakin, I should have known you anywhere, among a thousand. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Don't you remember? Don't you remember, Tomakin? Your Linda." She stood looking at him, her head on one side, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively, in face of the Director's expression of petrified disgust, less and less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out. "Don't you remember, Tomakin?" she repeated in a voice that trembled. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. The blotched and sagging face twisted grotesquely into the grimace of extreme grief. "Tomakin!" She held out her arms. Some one began to titter.
"What's the meaning," began the Director, "of this monstrous... "
"Tomakin!" She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her, threw her arms round his neck, hid her face on his chest.
A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.
"... this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.
Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace. Desperately she clung. "But I'm Linda, I'm Linda."' The laughter drowned her voice. "You made me have a baby," she screamed above the uproar. There was a sudden and appalling hush; eyes floated uncomfortably, not knowing where to look. The Director went suddenly pale, stopped struggling and stood, his hands on her wrists, staring down at her, horrified. "Yes, a baby-and I was its mother." She flung the obscenity like a challenge into the outraged silence; then, suddenly breaking away from him, ashamed, ashamed, covered her face with her hands, sobbing. "It wasn't my fault, Tomakin. Because I always did my drill, didn't I? Didn't I? Always... I don't know how... If you knew how awful, Tomakin... But he was a comfort to me, all the same." Turning towards the door, "John!" she called. "John!"
He came in at once, paused for a moment just inside the door, looked round, then soft on his moccasined feet strode quickly across the room, fell on his knees in front of the Director, and said in a clear voice: "My father!"
The word ; the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension. Laughter broke out, enormous, almost hysterical, peal after peal, as though it would never stop. My father-and it was the Director! My father! Oh Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. The whooping and the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed on the point of disintegration, tears were streaming. Six more test-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My father!
Pale, wild-eyed, the Director glared about him in an agony of bewildered humiliation.
My father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dying away, broke out again more loudly than ever. He put his hands over his ears and rushed out of the room.
Chapter Eleven
After the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-caste London was wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning-or rather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot inside the Centre again-had flopped down and called him -you simply couldn't look at her without feeling sick, yes, positively sick. So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.
"Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctor confided to Bernard. "One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can't."
Surprisingly, as every one thought, John raised objections.
"But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?"
"In one sense, yes," Dr. Shaw admitted. "But in another we're actually lengthening it." The young man stared, uncomprehending. "Soma may make you lose a few years in time," the doctor went on. "But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity."
John began to understand. "Eternity was in our lips and eyes," he murmured.
"Eh?"
"Nothing."
"Of course," Dr. Shaw went on, "you can't allow people to go popping off into eternity if they've got any serious work to do. But as she hasn't got any serious work... "
"All the same," John persisted, "I don't believe it's right."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Well, of course, if you prefer to have her screaming mad all the time... "
In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand-there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent-was the sun, was a million saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.
"No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw had concluded, "to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in." He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.
It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was only through Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his blood-surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. Henry Foster went out of his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came out and cadged almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Bernard's evening parties. As for the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.
"Bernard's asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday," Fanny announced triumphantly.
"I'm so glad," said Lenina. "And now you must admit that you were wrong about Bernard. Don't you think he's really rather sweet?"
Fanny nodded. "And I must say," she said, "I was quite agreeably surprised."
The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskification-the list of Bernard's notabilities was interminable.
"And I had six girls last week," he confided to Helmholtz Watson. "One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if I'd had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious... "
Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomily disapproving that Bernard was offended.
"You're envious," he said.
Helmholtz shook his head. "I'm rather sad, that's all," he answered.
Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to Helmholtz again.
The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. "That young man will come to a bad end," they said, prophesying the more confidently in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end was bad. "He won't find another Savage to help him out a second time," they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And because they were polite, Bernard felt positively gigantic-gigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air.
"Lighter than air," said Bernard, pointing upwards.
Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the Weather Department's captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.
"... the said Savage," so ran Bernard's instructions, "to be shown civilized life in all its aspects.... "
He was being shown a bird's-eye view of it at present, a bird's-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of the talking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.
The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers alighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin-the stewards.
"Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour," said the Station Master impressively. "What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?"
John thought it very nice. "Still," he said, "Ariel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes."
"The Savage," wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, "shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m-."
"Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls 'the soul,' which he persists in regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment, whereas, as I tried to point out to him... "
The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the page in search of something more interestingly concrete, when his eye was caught by a series of quite extraordinary phrases. "... though I must admit," he read, "that I agree with the Savage in finding civilized infantility too easy or, as he puts it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawing your fordship's attention to... "
Mustapha Mond's anger gave place almost at once to mirth. The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him-him-about the social order was really too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. "I ought to give him a lesson," he said to himself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For the moment, at any rate, the lesson would not be given.
It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof itself by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into the factory.
"Each process," explained the Human Element Manager, "is carried out, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group."
And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within 20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cutting screws. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two low work-tables faced one another; between them crawled the conveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blonde heads were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-seven snubs by forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-seven prognathous chins. The completed mechanisms were inspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma green, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed male Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries by sixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.
"O brave new world... " By some malice of his memory the Savage found himself repeating Miranda's words. "O brave new world that has such people in it."
"And I assure you," the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, "we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find... "
But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.
"The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because of the woman Linda, his m-, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m-'s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her-an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses."
At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton's Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.
"Do you have many twins here?" the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.
"Oh, no," the Provost answered. "Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult of course. But as they'll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can't be helped." He sighed.
Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. "If you're free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening," he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, "He's curious, you know," Bernard added. "Quaint."
Miss Keate smiled ; said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost opened a door.
Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John a trifle bewildered.
"What is elementary relativity?" he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go to some other classroom.
From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, "One, two, three, four," and then, with a weary impatience, "As you were."
"Malthusian Drill," explained the Head Mistress. "Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. I'm a freemartin myself." She smiled at Bernard. "But we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling."
In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that "a savage reservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing." A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, the Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even the amplified record of their groans.
"But why do they laugh?" asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment.
"Why?" The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face. "Why? But because it's so extraordinarily funny."
In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in his new importance, he put his arm around the Head Mistress's waist. It yielded, willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked open again.
"Perhaps we had better go on," said Miss Keate, and moved towards the door.
"And this," said the Provost a moment later, "is Hypnopædic Control Room."
Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the paper sound-track rolls on which the various hypnopædic lessons were printed.
"You slip the roll in here," explained Bernard, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, "press down this switch... "
"No, that one," corrected the Provost, annoyed.
"That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light impulses into sound waves, and... "
"And there you are," Dr. Gaffney concluded.
"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.
"Certainly not," said the Head Mistress, blushing.
"Our library," said Dr. Gaffney, "contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don't encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements."
Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.
"Just returned," explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, "from the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course."
"Like any other physiological process," put in the Head Mistress professionally.
Eight o'clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.
On their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporation's factory at Brentford.
"Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?" asked Bernard.
The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station-seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and women moved slowly forward.
"What's in those" "those caskets?" the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum. "They get it after their work's over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays."
He took John's arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.
Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.
"You seem very pleased with yourself," said Fanny.
"I am pleased," she answered. Zip! "Bernard rang up half an hour ago." Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. "He has an unexpected engagement." Zip! "Asked me if I'd take the Savage to the feelies this evening. I must fly." She hurried away towards the bathroom.
"She's a lucky girl," Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.
There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merely stating a fact. Lenina was lucky; lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage's immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the moment's supremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the Young Women's Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphroditeum Club? Had she not already appeared in the Feelytone News-visibly, audibly and tactually appeared to countless millions all over the planet?
Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller's Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, and another with the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of the Internal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.
"It's wonderful, of course. And yet in a way," she had confessed to Fanny, "I feel as though I were getting something on false pretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want to know is what it's like to make love to a Savage. And I have to say I don't know." She shook her head. "Most of the men don't believe me, of course. But it's true. I wish it weren't," she added sadly and sighed. "He's terribly good-looking; don't you think so?"
"But doesn't he like you?" asked Fanny.
"Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn't. He always does his best to avoid me; goes out of the room when I come in; won't touch me; won't even look at me. But sometimes if I turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; and then-well, you know how men look when they like you."
Yes, Fanny knew.
"I can't make it out," said Lenina.
She couldn't make it out; and not only was bewildered; was also rather upset.
"Because, you see, Fanny, I like him."
Liked him more and more. Well, now there'd be a real chance, she thought, as she scented herself after her bath. Dab, dab, dab-a real chance. Her high spirits overflowed in a song.
"Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma;
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love's as good as soma."
The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio-rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all the singers in history, once piercingly gave utterance.
Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened. It was now the turn also for eyes and skin.
The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER. AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.
"Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair," whispered Lenina. "Otherwise you won't get any of the feely effects."
The Savage did as he was told.
Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.
The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed "Oo-ooh"; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: "Aa-aah." "Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!" the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. "Ooh... "
The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and Aahs, the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus of ow's and aie's went up from the audience.
The concussion knocked all the negro's conditioning into a cocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social tête-à-tête with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and, amid a blare of saxophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quiet, quite still.
But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights had gone up, while they were shuffling slowly along with the crowd towards the lifts, its ghost still fluttered against her lips, still traced fine shuddering roads of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.
"I don't think you ought to see things like that," he said, making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapse from perfection.
"Things like what, John?"
"Like this horrible film."
"Horrible?" Lenina was genuinely astonished. "But I thought it was lovely."
"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean." Why was he so queer? Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?
In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced, obedient to laws that had long since ceased to run, he sat averted and in silence. Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at some taut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervous start.
The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina's apartment house. "At last," she thought exultantly as she stepped out of the cab. At last-even though he had been so queer just now. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her hand mirror. At last. Yes, her nose was a bit shiny. She shook the loose powder from her puff. While he was paying off the taxi-there would just be time. She rubbed at the shininess, thinking: "He's terribly good-looking. No need for him to be shy like Bernard. And yet... Any other man would have done it long ago. Well, now at last." That fragment of a face in the little round mirror suddenly smiled at her.
"Good-night," said a strangled voice behind her. Lenina wheeled round. He was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes fixed, staring; had evidently been staring all this time while she was powdering her nose, waiting-but what for? or hesitating, trying to make up his mind, and all the time thinking, thinking-she could not imagine what extraordinary thoughts. "Good-night, Lenina," he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt to smile.
"But, John... I thought you were... I mean, aren't you?... "
He shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver. The cab shot up into the air.
Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage could see Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure rushed away from him; the diminishing square of the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness.
Five minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-place he took out his mouse-nibbled volume, turned with religious care its stained and crumbled pages, and began to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was like the hero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter-a black man.
Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. One gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been more than a one-gramme affliction. But if she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook out three half-gramme tablets.
Chapter Twelve
Bernard had to shout through the locked door; the Savage would not open.
"But everybody's there, waiting for you."
"Let them wait," came back the muffled voice through the door.
"But you know quite well, John" "I asked them on purpose to meet you."
"You ought to have asked me first whether I wanted to meet them."
"But you always came before, John."
"That's precisely why I don't want to come again."
"Just to please me," Bernard bellowingly wheedled. "Won't you come to please me?"
"No."
"Do you seriously mean it?"
"Yes."
Despairingly, "But what shall I do?" Bernard wailed.
"Go to hell!" bawled the exasperated voice from within.
"But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is there to-night." Bernard was almost in tears.
"Ai yaa tákwa!" It was only in Zuñi that the Savage could adequately express what he felt about the Arch-Community-Songster. "Háni!" he added as an after-thought; and then: "Sons éso tse-ná." And he spat on the ground, as Popé might have done.
In the end Bernard had to slink back, diminished, to his rooms and inform the impatient assembly that the Savage would not be appearing that evening. The news was received with indignation. The men were furious at having been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions. The higher their position in the hierarchy, the deeper their resentment.
"To play such a joke on me," the Arch-Songster kept repeating, "on me!"
As for the women, they indignantly felt that they had been had on false pretences-had by a wretched little man who had had alcohol poured into his bottle by mistake-by a creature with a Gamma-Minus physique. It was an outrage, and they said so, more and more loudly. The Head Mistress of Eton was particularly scathing.
Lenina alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those who surrounded her by an emotion which they did not share. She had come to the party filled with a strange feeling of anxious exultation. "In a few minutes," she had said to herself, as she entered the room, "I shall be seeing him, talking to him, telling him" "that I like him-more than anybody I've ever known. And then perhaps he'll say... "
What would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks.
"Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies? So queer. And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does rather like me. I'm sure... "
It was at this moment that Bernard had made his announcement; the Savage wasn't coming to the party.
Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced at the beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment-a sense of dreadful emptiness, a breathless apprehension, a nausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.
"Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me," she said to herself. And at once this possibility became an established certainty: John had refused to come because he didn't like her. He didn't like her.... 
"It really is a bit too thick," the Head Mistress of Eton was saying to the Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation. "When I think that I actually... "
"Yes," came the voice of Fanny Crowne, "it's absolutely true about the alcohol. Some one I know knew some one who was working in the Embryo Store at the time. She said to my friend, and my friend said to me... "
"Too bad, too bad," said Henry Foster, sympathizing with the Arch-Community-Songster. "It may interest you to know that our ex-Director was on the point of transferring him to Iceland."
Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard's happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate. They duly ate, but ignored him; drank and were either rude to his face or talked to one another about him, loudly and offensively, as though he had not been there.
"And now, my friends," said the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury, in that beautiful ringing voice with which he led the proceedings at Ford's Day Celebrations, "Now, my friends, I think perhaps the time has come... " He rose, put down his glass, brushed from his purple viscose waistcoat the crumbs of a considerable collation, and walked towards the door.
Bernard darted forward to intercept him.
"Must you really, Arch-Songster?... It's very early still. I'd hoped you would... "
Yes, what hadn't he hoped, when Lenina confidentially told him that the Arch-Community-Songster would accept an invitation if it were sent. "He's really rather sweet, you know." And she had shown Bernard the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songster had given her as a memento of the week-end she had spent at Lambeth. To meet the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury and Mr. Savage. Bernard had proclaimed his triumph on every invitation card. But the Savage had chosen this evening of all evenings to lock himself up in his room, to shout "Háni!" and even "Sons éso tse-ná!" What should have been the crowning moment of Bernard's whole career had turned out to be the moment of his greatest humiliation.
"I'd so much hoped... " he stammeringly repeated, looking up at the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.
"My young friend," said the Arch-Community-Songster in a tone of loud and solemn severity; there was a general silence. "Let me give you a word of advice." He wagged his finger at Bernard. "Before it's too late. A word of good advice." "Mend your ways, my young friend, mend your ways." He made the sign of the T over him and turned away. "Lenina, my dear," he called in another tone. "Come with me."
Obediently, but unsmiling and without elation, Lenina walked after him, out of the room. The other guests followed at a respectful interval. The last of them slammed the door. Bernard was all alone.
Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets of soma.
Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.
Lenina and the Arch-Community-Songster stepped out on to the roof of Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, my young friend-I mean, Lenina," called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the lift gates. Lenina, who had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped her eyes and came hurrying across the roof to rejoin him.
"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." He underlined the words. "The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose-well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness!"
With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John was softly declaiming to vacancy:
"Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear... "
The golden T lay shining on Lenina's bosom. Sportively, the Arch-Community-Songster caught hold of it, sportively he pulled, pulled. "I think," said Lenina suddenly, breaking a long silence, "I'd better take a couple of grammes of soma."
Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click... And it was morning. Bernard was back among the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.
To this deflated Bernard the Savage showed himself unexpectedly sympathetic.
"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, when Bernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you remember when we first talked together? Outside the little house. You're like what you were then."
"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."
"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here."
"I like that," said Bernard bitterly. "When it's you who were the cause of it all. Refusing to come to my party and so turning them all against me!" He knew that what he was saying was absurd in its injustice; he admitted inwardly, and at last even aloud, the truth of all that the Savage now said about the worthlessness of friends who could be turned upon so slight a provocation into persecuting enemies. But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance against the Arch-Community-Songster was useless; there was no possibility of being revenged on the Chief Bottler or the Assistant Predestinator. As a victim, the Savage possessed, for Bernard, this enormous superiority over the others: that he was accessible. One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in his prosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve. Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity-a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz's character. It was the Helmholtz of daily life who forgot and forgave, not the Helmholtz of a half-gramme holiday. Bernard was duly grateful.
At their first meeting after the estrangement, Bernard poured out the tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. It was not till some days later that he learned, to his surprise and with a twinge of shame, that he was not the only one who had been in trouble. Helmholtz had also come into conflict with Authority.
"It was over some rhymes," he explained. "I was giving my usual course of Advanced Emotional Engineering for Third Year Students. Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is about rhymes. 'On the Use of Rhymes in Moral Propaganda and Advertisement,' to be precise. I always illustrate my lecture with a lot of technical examples. This time I thought I'd give them one I'd just written myself. Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist it." He laughed. "I was curious to see what their reactions would be. Besides," he added more gravely, "I wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as I'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!" He laughed again. "What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. l'm a marked man."
"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.
"They were about being alone."
Bernard's eyebrows went up.
"I'll recite them to you, if you like." And Helmholtz began:
"Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been:... 
All silences rejoice,
Weep,
Speak-but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absence of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly?
Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the Principal."
"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against all their sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitude."
"I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be."
"Well, you've seen now."
Helmholtz only laughed. "I feel," he said, after a silence, as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me-that extra, latent power. Something seems to be coming to me." In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy.
Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. So cordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy. In all these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacy with the Savage as Helmholtz immediately achieved. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes resentfully wishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and took soma to keep himself from feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful; and between the soma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals. The odious sentiment kept on returning.
At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited his rhymes on Solitude.
"What do you think of them?" he asked when he had done.
The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer; and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read:
"Let the bird of loudest lay
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be... "
Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "sole Arabian tree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled with sudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at "defunctive music" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Savage read on:
"Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd
Reason in itself confounded
Saw division grow together... "
"Orgy-porgy!" said Bernard, interrupting the reading with a loud, unpleasant laugh. "It's just a Solidarity Service hymn." He was revenging himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.
In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated this little act of vengeance. It was simple and, since both Helmholtz and the Savage were dreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement of a favourite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to kick him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet, strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful of all, came from Helmholtz himself.
The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud-reading with an intense and quivering passion. Helmholtz had listened to the scene of the lovers' first meeting with a puzzled interest. The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its poetry; but the sentiments expressed had made him smile. Getting into such a state about having a girl-it seemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbal detail, what a superb piece of emotional engineering! "That old fellow," he said, "he makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly." The Savage smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Helmholtz had been restless throughout the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O sweet my mother, cast me not away:
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies... "
when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.
The mother and father and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face-quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.
"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don't know."
Chapter Thirteen
Henry Foster loomed up through the twilight of the Embryo Store.
"Like to come to a feely this evening?"
Lenina shook her head without speaking.
"Going out with some one else?" It interested him to know which of his friends was being had by which other. "Is it Benito?" he questioned.
She shook her head again.
Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. "You're not feeling ill, are you?" he asked, a trifle anxiously, afraid that she might be suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases.
Yet once more Lenina shook her head.
"Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor," said Henry. "A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away," he added heartily, driving home his hypnopædic adage with a clap on the shoulder. "Perhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute," he suggested. "Or else an extra-strong V.P.S. treatment. Sometimes, you know, the standard passion surrogate isn't quite... "
"Oh, for Ford's sake," said Lenina, breaking her stubborn silence, "shut up!" And she turned back to her neglected embryos.
A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadn't been on the point of crying. As though she hadn't got enough V. P. of her own! She sighed profoundly as she refilled her syringe. "John," she murmured to herself, "John... " Then "My Ford," she wondered, "have I given this one its sleeping sickness injection, or haven't I?" She simply couldn't remember. In the end, she decided not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down the line to the next bottle.
Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, a promising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis-the first case for over half a century. Sighing, Lenina went on with her work.
An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energetically protesting. "But it's absurd to let yourself get into a state like this. Simply absurd," she repeated. "And what about? A man-one man."
"But he's the one I want."
"As though there weren't millions of other men in the world."
"But I don't want them."
"How can you know till you've tried?"
"I have tried."
"But how many?" asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously. "One, two?"
"Dozens. But," shaking her head, "it wasn't any good," she added.
"Well, you must persevere," said Fanny sententiously. But it was obvious that her confidence in her own prescriptions had been shaken. "Nothing can be achieved without perseverance."
"But meanwhile... "
"Don't think of him."
"I can't help it."
"Take soma, then."
"I do."
"Well, go on."
"But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him."
"Well, if that's the case," said Fanny, with decision, "why don't you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no."
"But if you knew how terribly queer he was!"
"All the more reason for taking a firm line."
"It's all very well to say that."
"Don't stand any nonsense. Act." Fanny's voice was a trumpet; she might have been a Y.W.F.A. lecturer giving an evening talk to adolescent Beta-Minuses. "Yes, act-at once. Do it now."
"I'd be scared," said Lenina
"Well, you've only got to take half a gramme of soma first. And now I'm going to have my bath." She marched off, trailing her towel.
The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz would come that afternoon, jumped up and ran to the door.
"I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz," he shouted as he opened.
On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit, and with a round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear, stood Lenina.
"Oh!" said the Savage, as though some one had struck him a heavy blow.
Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears and her embarrassments. "Hullo, John," she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down. There was a long silence.
"You don't seem very glad to see me, John," she said at last.
"Not glad?" The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina's hand, reverently kissed it. "Not glad? Oh, if you only knew," he whispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, "Admired Lenina," he went on, "indeed the top of admiration, worth what's dearest in the world." She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. "Oh, you so perfect" "of every creature's best." Still nearer. The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. "That's why," he said speaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first... I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something."
"Why should you think it necessary... " Lenina began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips-only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all-well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one's blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.
"At Malpais," the Savage was incoherently mumbling, "you had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion-I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf."
"There aren't any lions in England," Lenina almost snapped.
"And even if there were," the Savage added, with sudden contemptuous resentment, "people would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldn't do that, Lenina." He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, "I'll do anything," he went on, more and more incoherently. "Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful-you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That's what I feel. I mean I'd sweep the floor if you wanted."
"But we've got vacuum cleaners here," said Lenina in bewilderment. "It isn't necessary."
"No, of course it isn't necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I'd like to undergo something nobly. Don't you see?"
"But if there are vacuum cleaners... "
"That's not the point."
"And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them," she went on, "well, really, why?"
"Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I... "
"And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions... "
"To show how much... "
"Or lions with being glad to see me... " She was getting more and more exasperated.
"How much I love you, Lenina," he brought out almost desperately.
An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Lenina's cheeks. "Do you mean it, John?"
"But I hadn't meant to say so," cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. "Not until... Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married."
"Get what?" The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?
"For always. They make a promise to live together for always."
"What a horrible idea!" Lenina was genuinely shocked.
"Outliving beauty's outward with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays."
"What?"
"It's like that in Shakespeare too. 'If thou cost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite... '"
"For Ford's sake, John, talk sense. I can't understand a word you say. First it's vacuum cleaners; then it's knots. You're driving me crazy." She jumped up and, as though afraid that he might run away from her physically, as well as with his mind, caught him by the wrist. "Answer me this question: do you really like me, or don't you?"
There was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, "I love you more than anything in the world," he said.
"Then why on earth didn't you say so?" she cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist. "Instead of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks."
She released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.
"If I didn't like you so much," she said, "I'd be furious with you."
And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereoscopic blonde and anh! the more than real blackamoor. Horror, horror, horror... he fired to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace.
"Why didn't you say so?" she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.
"The murkiest den, the most opportune place", "the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust. Never, never!" he resolved.
"You silly boy!" she was saying. "I wanted you so much. And if you wanted me too, why didn't you?... "
"But, Lenina... " he began protesting; and as she immediately untwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken.
"Lenina!" he repeated apprehensively.
She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailor's blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensed into a too, too solid certainty. "Lenina, what are you doing?"
Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shell pink. The Arch-Community-Songster's golden T dangled at her breast.
"For those milk paps that through the window bars bore at men's eyes...." The singing, thundering, magical words made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, but how piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution. "The strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood. Be more abstemious, or else... "
Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor.
Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. "Darling. Darling! If only you'd said so before!" She held out her arms.
But instead of also saying "Darling!" and holding out his arms, the Savage retreated in terror, flapping his hands at her as though he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerous animal. Four backwards steps, and he was brought to bay against the wall.
"Sweet!" said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. "Put your arms round me," she commanded. "Hug me till you drug me, honey." She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. "Kiss me"; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, "Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly... "
The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.
"Ow, you're hurting me, you're... oh!" She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face-no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, "But what is it, John?" she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. "What is it?" she almost screamed.
And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. "Whore!" he shouted "Whore! Impudent strumpet!"
"Oh, don't, do-on't," she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.
"Whore!"
"Plea-ease."
"Damned whore!"
"A gra-amme is be-etter... " she began.
The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. "Go," he shouted, standing over her menacingly, "get out of my sight or I'll kill you." He clenched his fists.
Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. "No, please don't, John... "
"Hurry up. Quick!"
One arm still raised, and following his every movement with a terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.
The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol shot.
"Ow!" Lenina bounded forward.
Safely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to take stock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she twisted her head. Looking over her left shoulder she could see the imprint of an open hand standing out distinct and crimson on the pearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed the wounded spot.
Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up and down, marching, marching to the drums and music of magical words. "The wren goes to't and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight." Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears. "The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiend's. There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pain, pain! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination."
"John!" ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom. "John!"
"O thou weed, who are so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write 'whore' upon? Heaven stops the nose at it... "
But her perfume still hung about him, his jacket was white with the powder that had scented her velvety body. "Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet." The inexorable rhythm beat itself out. "Impudent... "
"John, do you think I might have my clothes?"
He picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, the zippicamiknicks.
"Open!" he ordered, kicking the door.
"No, I won't." The voice was frightened and defiant.
"Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?"
"Push them through the ventilator over the door."
He did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacing of the room. "Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet. The devil Luxury with his fat rump and potato finger... "
"John."
He would not answer. "Fat rump and potato finger."
"John."
"What is it?" he asked gruffly.
"I wonder if you'd mind giving me my Malthusian belt."
Lenina sat, listening to the footsteps in the other room, wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to go tramping up and down like that; whether she would have to wait until he left the flat; or if it would be safe, after allowing his madness a reasonable time to subside, to open the bathroom door and make a dash for it.
She was interrupted in the midst of these uneasy speculations by the sound of the telephone bell ringing in the other room. Abruptly the tramping ceased. She heard the voice of the Savage parleying with silence.
"Hullo."
.....
"Yes."
.....
"If I do not usurp myself, I am."
.....
"Yes, didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking."
.....
"What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me."
.....
"But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once... "
.....
"Not in her rooms any more? Where has she been taken?"
.....
"Oh, my God! What's the address?"
.....
"Three Park Lane-is that it? Three? Thanks."
Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver, then hurrying steps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was he really gone?
With an infinity of precautions she opened the door a quarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view of emptiness; opened a little further, and put her whole head out; finally tiptoed into the room; stood for a few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening, listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran. It was not till she was in the lift and actually dropping down the well that she began to feel herself secure.
Chapter Fourteen
The Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles. As the Savage stepped out of his taxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from the roof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium. At the lift gates the presiding porter gave him the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81 on the seventeenth floor.
It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and containing twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying in company-in company and with all the modern conveniences. The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed. "We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here-something between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning."
"Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring these polite explanations.
The nurse was offended. "You are in a hurry," she said.
"Is there any hope?" he asked.
"You mean, of her not dying?" "You're not feeling ill, are you?"
He shook his head. "She's my mother," he said in a scarcely audible voice.
The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; then quickly looked away. From throat to temple she was all one hot blush.
"Take me to her," said the Savage, making an effort to speak in an ordinary tone.
Still blushing, she led the way down the ward. Faces still fresh and unwithered turned as they passed. Their progress was followed by the blank, incurious eyes of second infancy. The Savage shuddered as he looked.
Linda was lying in the last of the long row of beds, next to the wall. Propped up on pillows, she was watching the Semi-finals of the South American Riemann-Surface Tennis Championship, which were being played in silent and diminished reproduction on the screen of the television box at the foot of the bed. Hither and thither across their square of illuminated glass the little figures noiselessly darted, like fish in an aquarium-the silent but agitated inhabitants of another world.
Linda looked on, vaguely and uncomprehendingly smiling. Her pale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness. Every now and then her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she seemed to be dozing. Then with a little start she would wake up again-wake up to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hug me till you drug me, honey," to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing through the ventilator above her head-would wake to these things, or rather to a dream of which these things, transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile contentment.
"Well, I must go," said the nurse. "I've got my batch of children coming. Besides, there's Number 3." She pointed up the ward. "Might go off any minute now. Well, make yourself comfortable." She walked briskly away.
The Savage sat down beside the bed.
"Linda," he whispered, taking her hand.
At the sound of her name, she turned. Her vague eyes brightened with recognition. She squeezed his hand, she smiled, her lips moved; then quite suddenly her head fell forward. She was asleep. He sat watching her-seeking through the tired flesh, seeking and finding that young, bright face which had stooped over his childhood in Malpais, remembering her voice, her movements, all the events of their life together. "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury T... " How beautiful her singing had been! And those childish rhymes, how magically strange and mysterious!
A, B, C, vitamin D:
The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea.
He felt the hot tears welling up behind his eyelids as he recalled the words and Linda's voice as she repeated them. And then the reading lessons: The tot is in the pot, the cat is on the mat; and the Elementary Instructions for Beta Workers in the Embryo Store. And long evenings by the fire or, in summertime, on the roof of the little house, when she told him those stories about the Other Place, outside the Reservation: that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with the reality of this real London, these actual civilized men and women.
A sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and, after hastily brushing away the tears, look round. What seemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came-a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated face-for there was only one between the lot of them-puggishly stared, all nostrils and pale goggling eyes. Their uniform was khaki. All their mouths hung open. Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, it seemed, the ward was maggoty with them. They swarmed between the beds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into the television boxes, made faces at the patients.
Linda astonished and rather alarmed them. A group stood clustered at the foot of her bed, staring with the frightened and stupid curiosity of animals suddenly confronted by the unknown.
"Oh, look, look!" They spoke in low, scared voices. "Whatever is the matter with her? Why is she so fat?"
They had never seen a face like hers before-had never seen a face that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased to be slim and upright. All these moribund sexagenarians had the appearance of childish girls. At forty-four, Linda seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility.
"Isn't she awful?" came the whispered comments. "Look at her teeth!"
Suddenly from under the bed a pug-faced twin popped up between John's chair and the wall, and began peering into Linda's sleeping face.
"I say... " he began; but the sentence ended prematurely in a squeal. The Savage had seized him by the collar, lifted him clear over the chair and, with a smart box on the ears, sent him howling away.
His yells brought the Head Nurse hurrying to the rescue.
"What have you been doing to him?" she demanded fiercely. "I won't have you striking the children."
"Well then, keep them away from this bed." The Savage's voice was trembling with indignation. "What are these filthy little brats doing here at all? It's disgraceful!"
"Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're being death-conditioned. And I tell you," she warned him truculently, "if I have any more of your interference with their conditioning, I'll send for the porters and have you thrown out."
The Savage rose to his feet and took a couple of steps towards her. His movements and the expression on his face were so menacing that the nurse fell back in terror. With a great effort he checked himself and, without speaking, turned away and sat down again by the bed.
Reassured, but with a dignity that was a trifle shrill and uncertain, "I've warned you," said the nurse, "I've warned you," said the nurse, "so mind." Still, she led the too inquisitive twins away and made them join in the game of hunt-the-zipper, which had been organized by one of her colleagues at the other end of the room.
"Run along now and have your cup of caffeine solution, dear," she said to the other nurse. The exercise of authority restored her confidence, made her feel better. "Now children!" she called.
Linda had stirred uneasily, had opened her eyes for a moment, looked vaguely around, and then once more dropped off to sleep. Sitting beside her, the Savage tried hard to recapture his mood of a few minutes before. "A, B, C, vitamin D," he repeated to himself, as though the words were a spell that would restore the dead past to life. But the spell was ineffective. Obstinately the beautiful memories refused to rise; there was only a hateful resurrection of jealousies and uglinesses and miseries. Popé with the blood trickling down from his cut shoulder; and Linda hideously asleep, and the flies buzzing round the spilt mescal on the floor beside the bed; and the boys calling those names as she passed.... Ah, no, no! He shut his eyes, he shook his head in strenuous denial of these memories. "A, B, C, vitamin D... " He tried to think of those times when he sat on her knees and she put her arms about him and sang, over and over again, rocking him, rocking him to sleep. "A, B, C, vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D... "
The Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave place, in the scent-circulating system, to an intense patchouli. Linda stirred, woke up, stared for a few seconds bewilderly at the Semi-finalists, then, lifting her face, sniffed once or twice at the newly perfumed air and suddenly smiled-a smile of childish ecstasy.
"Popé!" she murmured, and closed her eyes. "Oh, I do so like it, I do... " She sighed and let herself sink back into the pillows.
"But, Linda!" The Savage spoke imploringly, "Don't you know me?" He had tried so hard, had done his very best; why wouldn't she allow him to forget? He squeezed her limp hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories-back into the present, back into reality: the appalling present, the awful reality-but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful. "Don't you know me, Linda?"
He felt the faint answering pressure of her hand. The tears started into his eyes. He bent over her and kissed her.
Her lips moved. "Popé!" she whispered again, and it was as though he had had a pailful of ordure thrown in his face.
Anger suddenly boiled up in him. Balked for the second time, the passion of his grief had found another outlet, was transformed into a passion of agonized rage.
"But I'm John!" he shouted. "I'm John!" And in his furious misery he actually caught her by the shoulder and shook her.
Linda's eyes fluttered open; she saw him, knew him-"John!"-but situated the real face, the real and violent hands, in an imaginary world-among the inward and private equivalents of patchouli and the Super-Wurlitzer, among the transfigured memories and the strangely transposed sensations that constituted the universe of her dream. She knew him for John, her son, but fancied him an intruder into that paradisal Malpais where she had been spending her soma-holiday with Popé. He was angry because she liked Popé, he was shaking her because Popé was there in the bed-as though there were something wrong, as though all civilized people didn't do the same. "Every one belongs to every... " Her voice suddenly died into an almost inaudible breathless croaking. Her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effort to fill her lungs with air. But it was as though she had forgotten how to breathe. She tried to cry out-but no sound came; only the terror of her staring eyes revealed what she was suffering. Her hands went to her throat, then clawed at the air-the air she could no longer breathe, the air that, for her, had ceased to exist.
The Savage was on his feet, bent over her. "What is it, Linda? What is it?" His voice was imploring; it was as though he were begging to be reassured.
The look she gave him was charged with an unspeakable terror-with terror and, it seemed to him, reproach.
She tried to raise herself in bed, but fell back on to the pillows. Her face was horribly distorted, her lips blue.
The Savage turned and ran up the ward.
"Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Quick!"
Standing in the centre of a ring of zipper-hunting twins, the Head Nurse looked round. The first moment's astonishment gave place almost instantly to disapproval. "Don't shout! Think of the little ones," she said, frowning. "You might decondition... But what are you doing?" He had broken through the ring. "Be careful!" A child was yelling.
"Quick, quick!" He caught her by the sleeve, dragged her after him. "Quick! Something's happened. I've killed her."
By the time they were back at the end of the ward Linda was dead.
The Savage stood for a moment in frozen silence, then fell on his knees beside the bed and, covering his face with his hands, sobbed uncontrollably.
The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure by the bed at the twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and were staring from the other end of the ward, staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enacted round Bed 20. Should she speak to him? try to bring him back to a sense of decency? remind him of where he was? of what fatal mischief he might do to these poor innocents? Undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry-as though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that! It might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirely wrong, the utterly anti-social way.
She stepped forward, she touched him on the shoulder. "Can't you behave?" she said in a low, angry voice. But, looking around, she saw that half a dozen twins were already on their feet and advancing down the ward. The circle was disintegrating. In another moment... No, the risk was too great; the whole Group might be put back six or seven months in its conditioning. She hurried back towards her menaced charges.
"Now, who wants a chocolate éclair?" she asked in a loud, cheerful tone.
"Me!" yelled the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20 was completely forgotten.
"Oh, God, God, God... " the Savage kept repeating to himself. In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was the one articulate word. "God!" he whispered it aloud. "God... "
"Whatever is he saying?" said a voice, very near, distinct and shrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer.
The Savage violently started and, uncovering his face, looked round. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of a long éclair in his right hand, and their identical faces variously smeared with liquid chocolate, were standing in a row, puggily goggling at him.
They met his eyes and simultaneously grinned. One of them pointed with his éclair butt.
"Is she dead?" he asked.
The Savage stared at them for a moment in silence. Then in silence he rose to his feet, in silence slowly walked towards the door.
"Is she dead?" repeated the inquisitive twin trotting at his side.
The Savage looked down at him and still without speaking pushed him away. The twin fell on the floor and at once began to howl. The Savage did not even look round.
Chapter Fifteen
The menial staff of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying consisted of one hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided into two Bokanovsky Groups of eighty-four red headed female and seventy-eight dark dolychocephalic male twins, respectively. At six, when their working day was over, the two Groups assembled in the vestibule of the Hospital and were served by the Deputy Sub-Bursar with their soma ration.
From the lift the Savage stepped out into the midst of them. But his mind was elsewhere-with death, with his grief, and his remorse; mechanicaly, without consciousness of what he was doing, he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.
"Who are you pushing? Where do you think you're going?"
High, low, from a multitude of separate throats, only two voices squeaked or growled. Repeated indefinitely, as though by a train of mirrors, two faces, one a hairless and freckled moon haloed in orange, the other a thin, beaked bird-mask, stubbly with two days' beard, turned angrily towards him. Their words and, in his ribs, the sharp nudging of elbows, broke through his unawareness. He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw-knew it, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness. Twins, twins.... Like maggots they had swarmed defilingly over the mystery of Linda's death. Maggots again, but larger, full grown, they now crawled across his grief and his repentance. He halted and, with bewildered and horrified eyes, stared round him at the khaki mob, in the midst of which, overtopping it by a full head, he stood. "How many goodly creatures are there here!" The singing words mocked him derisively. "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world... "
"Soma distribution!" shouted a loud voice. "In good order, please. Hurry up there."
A door had been opened, a table and chair carried into the vestibule. The voice was that of a jaunty young Alpha, who had entered carrying a black iron cash-box. A murmur of satisfaction went up from the expectant twins. They forgot all about the Savage. Their attention was now focused on the black cash-box, which the young man had placed on the table, and was now in process of unlocking. The lid was lifted.
"Oo-oh!" said all the hundred and sixty-two simultaneously, as though they were looking at fireworks.
The young man took out a handful of tiny pill-boxes. "Now," he said peremptorily, "step forward, please. One at a time, and no shoving."
One at a time, with no shoving, the twins stepped forward. First two males, then a female, then another male, then three females, then... 
The Savage stood looking on. "O brave new world, O brave new world... " In his mind the singing words seemed to change their tone. They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. "O brave new world!" Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. "O brave new world!" It was a challenge, a command.
"No shoving there now!" shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in a fury. He slammed down he lid of his cash-box. "I shall stop the distribution unless I have good behaviour."
The Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and then were still. The threat had been effective. Deprivation of soma-appalling thought!
"That's better," said the young man, and reopened his cash-box.
Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back.
"Now," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar.
Another khaki female stepped forward.
"Stop!" called the Savage in a loud and ringing voice. "Stop!"
He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at him with astonishment.
"Ford!" said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, below his breath. "It's the Savage." He felt scared.
"Listen, I beg of you," cried the Savage earnestly. "Lend me your ears... " He had never spoken in public before, and found it very difficult to express what he wanted to say. "Don't take that horrible stuff. It's poison, it's poison."
"I say, Mr. Savage," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smiling propitiatingly. "Would you mind letting me... "
"Poison to soul as well as body."
"Yes, but let me get on with my distribution, won't you? There's a good fellow." With the cautious tenderness of one who strokes a notoriously vicious animal, he patted the Savage's arm. "Just let me... "
"Never!" cried the Savage.
"But look here, old man... "
"Throw it all away, that horrible poison."
The words "Throw it all away" pierced through the enfolding layers of incomprehension to the quick of the Delta's consciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.
"I come to bring you freedom," said the Savage, turning back towards the twins. "I come... "
The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of the vestibule and was looking up a number in the telephone book.
"Not in his own rooms," Bernard summed up. "Not in mine, not in yours. Not at the Aphroditaum; not at the Centre or the College. Where can he have got to?"
Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from their work expecting to find the Savage waiting for them at one or other of the usual meeting-places, and there was no sign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant to nip across to Biarritz in Helmholtz's four-seater sporticopter. They'd be late for dinner if he didn't come soon.
"We'll give him five more minutes," said Helmholtz. "If he doesn't turn up by then, we'll... "
The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver. "Hullo. Speaking." Then, after a long interval of listening, "Ford in Flivver!" he swore. "I'll come at once."
"What is it?" Bernard asked.
"A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital," said Helmholtz. "The Savage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it's urgent. Will you come with me?"
Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.
"But do you like being slaves?" the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. "Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking," he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. "Yes, puking!" he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty-all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. "Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?" Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. "Don't you?" he repeated, but got no answer to his question. "Very well then," he went on grimly. "I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.
For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.
"He's mad," whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes. "They'll kill him. They'll... " A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Savage. "Ford help him!" said Bernard, and averted his eyes.
"Ford helps those who help themselves." And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd.
"Free, free!" the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. "Free!" And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side-"Good old Helmholtz!"-also punching-"Men at last!"-and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. "Yes, men! men!" and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. "You're free!"
Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.
Hesitant on the fringes of the battle. "They're done for," said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision-thinking that they might be killed if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if he did-when, goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police.
Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted "Help!" several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping. "Help! Help! HELP!"
The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful anæsthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters.
"Quick, quick!" yelled Bernard. "They'll be killed if you don't hurry. They'll... Oh!" Annoyed by his chatter, one of the policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Bernard stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly-water: he tumbled in a heap on the floor.
Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two. Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, "My friends, my friends!" said the Voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, "what is the meaning of this? Why aren't you all being happy and good together? Happy and good," the Voice repeated. "At peace, at peace." It trembled, sank into a whisper and momentarily expired. "Oh, I do want you to be happy," it began, with a yearning earnestness. "I do so want you to be good! Please, please be good and... "
Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another-half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace. Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying. A fresh supply of pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary; a new distribution was hastily made and, to the sound of the Voice's richly affectionate, baritone valedictions, the twins dispersed, blubbering as though their hearts would break. "Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you! Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you. Good-bye my dearest, dearest... "
When the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switched off the current. The angelic Voice fell silent.
"Will you come quietly?" asked the Sergeant, "or must we anæsthetize?" He pointed his water pistol menacingly.
"Oh, we'll come quietly," the Savage answered, dabbing alternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten left hand.
Still keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding nose Helmholtz nodded in confirmation.
Awake and having recovered the use of his legs, Bernard had chosen this moment to move as inconspicuously as he could towards the door.
"Hi, you there," called the Sergeant, and a swine-masked policeman hurried across the room and laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.
Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence. Escaping? He hadn't dreamed of such a thing. "Though what on earth you want me for," he said to the Sergeant, "I really can't imagine."
"You're a friend of the prisoner's, aren't you?"
"Well... " said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldn't deny it. "Why shouldn't I be?" he asked.
"Come on then," said the Sergeant, and led the way towards the door and the waiting police car.
Chapter Sixteen
The room into which the three were ushered was the Controller's study.
"His fordship will be down in a moment." The Gamma butler left them to themselves.
Helmholtz laughed aloud.
"It's more like a caffeine-solution party than a trial," he said, and let himself fall into the most luxurious of the pneumatic arm-chairs. "Cheer up, Bernard," he added, catching sight of his friend's green unhappy face. But Bernard would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers.
The Savage meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room, peering with a vague superficial inquisitiveness at the books in the shelves, at the sound-track rolls and reading machine bobbins in their numbered pigeon-holes. On the table under the window lay a massive volume bound in limp black leather-surrogate, and stamped with large golden T's. He picked it up and opened it. MY LIFE AND WORK, BY OUR FORD. The book had been published at Detroit by the Society for the Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. Idly he turned the pages, read a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had just come to the conclusion that the book didn't interest him, when the door opened, and the Resident World Controller for Western Europe walked briskly into the room.
Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Savage," he said.
The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. "No." He shook his head.
Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didn't like civilization-said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller-it was terrible. "But, John," he began. A look from Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence.
"Of course," the Savage went on to admit, "there are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance... "
"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears and sometimes voices."
The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you read it too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England."
"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard. "Which I'm afraid you can't do."
Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.
"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.
The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here."
"Even when they're beautiful?"
"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones."
"But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there's nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing." He made a grimace. "Goats and monkeys!" Only in Othello's word could he find an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred.
"Nice tame animals, anyhow," the Controller murmured parenthetically.
"Why don't you let them see Othello instead?"
"I've told you; it's old. Besides, they couldn't understand it."
Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. "Well then," he said, after a pause, "something new that's like Othello, and that they could understand."
"That's what we've all been wanting to write," said Helmholtz, breaking a long silence.
"And it's what you never will write," said the Controller. "Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello."
"Why not?"
"Yes, why not?" Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgetting the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignored him. "Why not?"
"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Savage. Liberty!" He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!"
The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies."
"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."
"But they don't mean anything."
"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience."
"But they're... they're told by an idiot."
The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers... "
"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say... "
"Precisely. But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel-works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation."
The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."
"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."
"I suppose not," said the Savage after a silence. "But need it be quite so bad as those twins?" He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Linda's bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. "Horrible!"
"But how useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, they're the foundation on which everything else is built. They're the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course." The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond's oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.
"I was wondering," said the Savage, "why you had them at all-seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you're about it?"
Mustapha Mond laughed. "Because we have no wish to have our throats cut," he answered. "We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas-that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!" he repeated.
The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.
"It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work-go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized-but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle-an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It's obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing."
"What was that?" asked the Savage.
Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen."
The Savage sighed, profoundly.
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg-eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example." He pointed.
"In spite of that awful work?"
"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes-because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science."
Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what it exactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the old men of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Linda he had only gathered the vaguest hints: science was something you made helicopters with, some thing that caused you to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that prevented you from being wrinkled and losing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take the Controller's meaning.
"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled."
"What?" said Helmholtz, in astonishment. "But we're always saying that science is everything. It's a hypnopædic platitude."
"Three times a week between thirteen and seventeen," put in Bernard.
"And all the science propaganda we do at the College... "
"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good-good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact." He was silent.
"What happened?" asked Helmholtz Watson.
The Controller sighed. "Very nearly what's going to happen to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to an island."
The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity. "Send me to an island?" He jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. "You can't send me. I haven't done anything. lt was the others. I swear it was the others." He pointed accusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage. "Oh, please don't send me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what I ought to do. Give me another chance. Please give me another chance." The tears began to flow. "I tell you, it's their fault," he sobbed. "And not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship, please... " And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to make him get up; but Bernard persisted in his grovelling; the stream of words poured out inexhaustibly. In the end the Controller had to ring for his fourth secretary.
"Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him."
The fourth secretary went out and returned with three green-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing. Bernard was carried out.
"One would think he was going to have his throat cut," said the Controller, as the door closed. "Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."
Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?"
"Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "I was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let the science go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "I rather regret the science. Happiness is a hard master-particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth." He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a brisker tone, "Well, duty's duty. One can't consult one's own preference. I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison; even the primitive matriarchies weren't steadier than we are. Thanks, l repeat, to science. But we can't allow science to undo its own good work. That's why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches-that's why I almost got sent to an island. We don't allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged. It's curious," he went on after a little pause, "to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everytung, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled-after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson-paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too."
"But you didn't go to an island," said the Savage, breaking a long silence.
The Controller smiled. "That's how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people's-not mine. It's lucky," he added, after a pause, "that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose. By the way, Mr. Watson, would you like a tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something rather more bracing?"
Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like a thoroughly bad climate," he answered. "I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example... "
The Controller nodded his approbation. "I like your spirit, Mr. Watson. I like it very much indeed. As much as I officially disapprove of it." He smiled. "What about the Falkland Islands?"
"Yes, I think that will do," Helmholtz answered. "And now, if you don't mind, I'll go and see how poor Bernard's getting on."
Chapter Seventeen
Art, science-you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone. "Anything else?"
"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to be something called God-before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."
"Well... " The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.
The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness within, "It's a subject," he said, "that has always had a great interest for me." He pulled out a thick black volume. "You've never read this, for example."
The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page.
"Nor this." It was a small book and had lost its cover.
"The Imitation of Christ."
"Nor this." He handed out another volume.
"The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James."
"And I've got plenty more," Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library-to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.
"But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?" asked the Savage indignantly. "Why don't you give them these books about God?"
"For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now."
"But God doesn't change."
"Men do, though."
"What difference does that make?"
"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He got up again and walked to the safe. "There was a man called Cardinal Newman," he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimed parenthetically, "was a kind of Arch-Community-Songster."
"'I Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.' I've read about them in Shakespeare."
"Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book." He pulled it out. "And while I'm about it I'll take this one too. It's by a man called Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know what that was."
"A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth," said the Savage promptly.
"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said." He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. "'We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way-to depend on no one-to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man-that it is an unnatural state-will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end... '" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this", "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"
"Then you think there is no God?"
"No, I think there quite probably is one."
"Then why?... "
Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now... "
"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.
"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all."
"That's your fault."
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked it... "
The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"
"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.
"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone-quite alone, in the night, thinking about death... "
"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it."
The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone.
"Do you remember that bit in King Lear?" said the Savage at last. "'The gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us; the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes,' and Edmund answers-you remember, he's wounded, he's dying-'Thou hast spoken right; 'tis true. The wheel has come full circle; I am here.' What about that now? Doesn't there seem to be a God managing things, punishing, rewarding?"
"Well, does there?" questioned the Controller in his turn. "You can indulge in any number of pleasant vices with a freemartin and run no risks of having your eyes put out by your son's mistress. 'The wheel has come full circle; I am here.' But where would Edmund be nowadays? Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his arm round a girl's waist, sucking away at his sex-hormone chewing-gum and looking at the feelies. The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men."
"Are you sure?" asked the Savage. "Are you quite sure that the Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just as heavily punished as the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just. Haven't they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?"
"Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy."
"But value dwells not in particular will," said the Savage. "It holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious of itself as in the prizer."
"Come, come," protested Mustapha Mond, "that's going rather far, isn't it?"
"If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. I've seen it with the Indians."
"l'm sure you have," said Mustapha Mond. "But then we aren't Indians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bear anything that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things-Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own."
"What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you'd have a reason for self-denial."
"But industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning."
"You'd have a reason for chastity!" said the Savage, blushing a little as he spoke the words.
"But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices."
"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God... "
"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended-there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your mortality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is."
"But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othello said? 'If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.' There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Mátaski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could-he got the girl."
"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "you can have girls without hoeing for them, and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago."
The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them... But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy."
He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of singing lights and perfumed caresses-floated away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday-on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world... 
"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here."
"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God-though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"
"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."
"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."
"V.P.S.?"
"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
Chapter Eighteen
The door was ajar; they entered.
"John!"
From the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.
"Is there anything the matter?" Helmholtz called.
There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice; there was silence. Then, with a click the bathroom door opened and, very pale, the Savage emerged.
"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill, John!"
"Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard.
The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization."
"What?"
"It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness."
"Yes, but what exactly?... I mean, just now you were... "
"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustard and warm water."
The others stared at him in astonishment. "Do you mean to say that you were doing it on purpose?" asked Bernard.
"That's how the Indians always purify themselves." He sat down and, sighing, passed his hand across his forehead. "I shall rest for a few minutes," he said. "I'm rather tired."
"Well, I'm not surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence, "We've come to say good-bye," he went on in another tone. "We're off to-morrow morning."
"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savage remarked a new expression of determined resignation. "And by the way, John," he continued, leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to say how sorry I am about everything that happened yesterday." He blushed. "How ashamed," he went on, in spite of the unsteadiness of his voice, "how really... "
The Savage cut him short and, taking his hand, affectionately pressed it.
"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after a little pause. "If it hadn't been for him, I should... "
"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.
There was a silence. In spite of their sadness-because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another-the three young men were happy.
"I went to see the Controller this morning," said the Savage at last.
"What for?"
"To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you."
"And what did he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.
The Savage shook his head. "He wouldn't let me."
"Why not?"
"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned," the Savage added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go on being experimented with. Not for all the Controllers in the world. l shall go away to-morrow too."
"But where?" the others asked in unison.
The Savage shrugged his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care. So long as I can be alone."
From Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley to Godalming, then, over Milford and Witley, proceeded to Haslemere and on through Petersfield towards Portsmouth. Roughly parallel to it, the upline passed over Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead there were points where the two lines were not more than six or seven kilometres apart. The distance was too small for careless flyers-particularly at night and when they had taken half a gramme too much. There had been accidents. Serious ones. It had been decided to deflect the upline a few kilometres to the west. Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above them were silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Bordon and Farnham that the helicopters now ceaselessly hummed and roared.
The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-house which stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. The building was of ferro-concrete and in excellent condition-almost too comfortable the Savage had thought when he first explored the place, almost too civilizedly luxurious. He pacified his conscience by promising himself a compensatingly harder self-discipline, purifications the more complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitage was, deliberately, a sleepless one. He spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness, now in Zuñi to Awonawilona, now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian animal, the eagle. From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched teeth, "Oh, forgive me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again and again, till he was on the point of fainting from the pain.
When morning came, he felt he had earned the right to inhabit the lighthouse; yet, even though there still was glass in most of the windows, even though the view from the platform was so fine. For the very reason why he had chosen the lighthouse had become almost instantly a reason for going somewhere else. He had decided to live there because the view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point, he seemed to be looking out on to the incarnation of a divine being. But who was he to be pampered with the daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be living in the visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in was some filthy sty, some blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still aching after his long night of pain, but for that very reason inwardly reassured, he climbed up to the platform of his tower, he looked out over the bright sunrise world which he had regained the right to inhabit. On the north the view was bounded by the long chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, from behind whose eastern extremity rose the towers of the seven skyscrapers which constituted Guildford. Seeing them, the Savage made a grimace; but he was to become reconciled to them in course of time; for at night they twinkled gaily with geometrical constellations, or else, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.
In the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hill on which the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest little village nine stories high, with silos, a poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory. On the other side of the lighthouse, towards the South, the ground fell away in long slopes of heather to a chain of ponds.
Beyond them, above the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-story tower of Elstead. Dim in the hazy English air, Hindhead and Selborne invited the eye into a blue romantic distance. But it was not alone the distance that had attracted the Savage to his lighthouse; the near was as seductive as the far. The woods, the open stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, the shining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of rushes-these were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the American desert, astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole days passed during which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only a quarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the hills of Malpais were hardly more deserted than this Surrey heath. The crowds that daily left London, left it only to play Electro-magnetic Golf or Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearest Riemann-surfaces were at Guildford. Flowers and a landscape were the only attractions here. And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came. During the first days the Savage lived alone and undisturbed.
Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had received for his personal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he had bought four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools, matches, some pots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour. "No, not synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute," he had insisted. "Even though it is more nourishing." But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman's persuasion. Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness. Loathesome civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he were starving. "That'll teach them," he thought vindictively. It would also teach him.
He counted his money. The little that remained would be enough, he hoped, to tide him over the winter. By next spring, his garden would be producing enough to make him independent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there would always be game. He had seen plenty of rabbits, and there were waterfowl on the ponds. He set to work at once to make a bow and arrows.
There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, a whole copse full of beautifully straight hazel saplings. He began by felling a young ash, cut out six feet of unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away the white wood, as old Mitsima had taught him, until he had a stave of his own height, stiff at the thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips. The work gave him an intense pleasure. After those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience.
He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start that he was singing-singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember-poor Linda, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing.... 
He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water to boil on the fire.
Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elstead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young man standing 0utside the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood. The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the road and, with his two companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two three-they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve... 
"Ford!" whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.
"Fordey!" they said.
Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the reporters came.
Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.
"Good-morning, Mr. Savage," he said. "I am the representative of The Hourly Radio."
Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.
"I beg your pardon," said the reporter, with genuine compunction. "I had no intention... " He touched his hat-the aluminum stove-pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. "Excuse my not taking it off," he said. "It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly... "
"What do you want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporter returned his most ingratiating smile.
"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested... " He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. "Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage." And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled round his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminum hat; touched a spring on the crown-and antennæ shot up into the air; touched another spring on the peak of the brim-and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat-and from within came a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right-and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and cackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. "Hullo," he said to the microphone, "hullo, hullo... " A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. "Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at the Savage with another of those winning smiles of his. "Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London "We're all crazy to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. 'What I think of the Civilized Girl.' Just a few words, a very few... "
The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more-five words, the same as those he had said to Bernard about the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. "Háni! Sons éso tse-ná!" And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round, aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.
Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets of London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED BY MYSTERY SAVAGE," ran the headlines on the front page. "SENSATION IN SURREY."
"Sensation even in London," thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.
Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx, four other reporters, representing the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon at the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing violence.
From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benighted fool!" shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why don't you take soma?"
"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.
The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. "Evil's an unreality if you take a couple of grammes."
"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.
"Pain's a delusion."
"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.
The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.
After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It pierced the aluminum floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming, the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but for the larks, silent.
The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying "Sweet!" and "Put your arms round me!"-in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina... No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had sworn to remember. But it was still the presence of Lenina that haunted him. Lenina whom he had promised to forget. Even through the stab and sting of the juniper needles, his wincing flesh was aware of her, unescapably real. "Sweet, sweet... And if you wanted me too, why didn't you... "
The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand against the arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ran back to the house, seized it, whirled it. The knotted cords bit into his flesh.
"Strumpet! Strumpet!" he shouted at every blow as though it were Lenina, white, warm, scented, infamous Lenina that he was dogging thus. "Strumpet!" And then, in a voice of despair, "Oh, Linda, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm... No, no, you strumpet, you strumpet!"
From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big game photographer had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now me great moment had come-the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding. "Splendid," he said to himself, as the Savage started his astonishing performance. "Splendid!" He kept his telescopic cameras carefully aimed-glued to their moving objective; clapped on a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up.
"Well, that was grand!" he said to himself when it was all over. "Really grand!" He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale's Love-Life-and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released and could be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe.
The effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release John's rustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.
He was digging in his garden-digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death-and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last... He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true-truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams?... 
A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities of death and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glandular petite beurres. And every moment-for across the Hog's Back the stream of traffic now flowed unceasingly-their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.
The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his senses.
From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain-and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.
"Go away!" he shouted.
The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. "Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!" And through the babel he heard cries of: "Whip, whip, the whip!"
Acting on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round.
"Why don't you leave me alone?" There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.
"Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, if the Savage were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. "They're really very good, you know," he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitiation. "And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young."
The Savage ignored his offer. "What do you want with me?" he asked, turning from one grinning face to another. "What do you want with me?"
"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do the whipping stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt."
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip," shouted a group at the end of the line. "We-want-the whip."
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. "We-want-the whip."
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog's Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were turned off: "We-want-the whip; we-want-the whip," broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.
At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale.
The young woman stood, smiling at him-an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
"We-want-the whip! We-want-the whip!"
The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward.
"We-want-the whip! We-want... "
And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.
"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. "Fitchew!" Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.
Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. "Henry, Henry!" she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm's way behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.
"Fry, lechery, fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.
Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.
"Oh, the flesh!" The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended. "Kill it, kill it!"
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.
"Kill it, kill it, kill it... " The Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in a moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy... 
It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered-everything.
"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.
That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.
"Savage!" called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. "Mr. Savage!"
There was no answer.
The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
"Mr. Savage!"
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east.

Jerome David Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
TO MY MOTHER
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all-I'm not saying that-but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds. They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.
Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them.
There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something. Old Selma Thurmer-she was the headmaster's daughter-showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
The reason I was standing way up on Thomsen Hill, instead of down at the game, was because I'd just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't all my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way.
The other reason I wasn't down at the game was because I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I figured I probably wouldn't see him again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note saying he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to Pencey.
I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I wasn't supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself-especially around midterms, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer-but I didn't do it. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.
Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch's teat, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has-I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad goodby, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
I was lucky. All of a sudden I thought of something that helped make me know I was getting the hell out. I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building. They were nice guys, especially Tichener. It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway. It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing. Finally we had to. This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambesi, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one-at least, most of the time I can. As soon as I got it, I turned around and started running down the other side of the hill, toward old Spencer's house. He didn't live on the campus. He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue.
I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing-that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy, though.
Anyway, as soon as I got my breath back I ran across Route 204. It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down. I don't even know what I was running for-I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer's house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all. "C'mon, c'mon," I said right out loud, almost, "somebody open the door." Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened it. They didn't have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn't have too much dough.
"Holden!" Mrs. Spencer said. "How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?" I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.
Boy, did I get in that house fast. "How are you, Mrs. Spencer?" I said. "How's Mr. Spencer?"
"Let me take your coat, dear," she said. She didn't hear me ask her how Mr. Spencer was. She was sort of deaf.
She hung up my coat in the hall closet, and I sort of brushed my hair back with my hand. I wear a crew cut quite frequently and I never have to comb it much. "How've you been, Mrs. Spencer?" I said again, only louder, so she'd hear me.
"I've been just fine, Holden." She closed the closet door. "How have you been?" The way she asked me, I knew right away old Spencer'd told her I'd been kicked out.
"Fine," I said. "How's Mr. Spencer? He over his grippe yet?"
"Over it! Holden, he's behaving like a perfect-I don't know what... He's in his room, dear. Go right in."
They each had their own room and all. They were both around seventy years old, or even more than that. They got a bang out of things, though-in a half-assed way, of course. I know that sounds mean to say, but I don't mean it mean. I just mean that I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, and if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for. I mean he was all stooped over, and he had very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That's awful, in my opinion. But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn't doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer'd bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer'd got a big bang out of buying it. That's what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.
His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in a big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket I just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked. "Who's that?" he yelled. "Caulfield? Come in, boy." He was always yelling, outside class. It got on your nerves sometimes.
The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white and unhairy. "Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot." He'd written me this note asking me to stop by and say good-by before vacation started, on account of I wasn't coming back. "You didn't have to do all that. I'd have come over to say good-by anyway."
"Have a seat there, boy," old Spencer said. He meant the bed.
I sat down on it. "How's your grippe, sir?"
"M'boy, if I felt any better I'd have to send for the doctor," old Spencer said. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a madman. Then he finally straightened himself out and said, "Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said. Boy, his bed was like a rock.
He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would. "So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't know his ass from his elbow.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh... well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right-I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. "Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?" old Spencer asked me.
"He said he was going to write them Monday."
"Have you yourself communicated with them?"
"No, sir, I haven't communicated with them, because I'll probably see them Wednesday night when I get home."
"And how do you think they'll take the news?"
"Well... they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "They really will. This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head-the right side-is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am-I really do-but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
Old Spencer started nodding again. He also started picking his nose. He made out like he was only pinching it, but he was really getting the old thumb right in there. I guess he thought it was all right to do because it was only me that was in the room. I didn't care, except that it's pretty disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose.
Then he said, "I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They're grand people."
"Yes, they are. They're very nice."
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Then all of a sudden old Spencer looked like he had something very good, something sharp as a tack, to say to me. He sat up more in his chair and sort of moved around. It was a false alarm, though. All he did was lift the Atlantic Monthly off his lap and try to chuck it on the bed, next to me. He missed. It was only about two inches away, but he missed anyway. I got up and picked it up and put it down on the bed. All of a sudden then, I wanted to get the hell out of the room. I could feel a terrific lecture coming on. I didn't mind the idea so much, but I didn't feel like being lectured to and smell Vicks Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. I really didn't.
It started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you carry this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four." I moved my ass a little bit on the bed. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on. "I passed English all right," I said, "because I had all that Beowulf and Lord Randal My Son stuff when I was at the Whooton School. I mean I didn't have to do any work in English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while."
He wasn't even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said something.
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn't help it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said-very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please."
It was a very dirty trick, but I went over and brought it over to him-I didn't have any alternative or anything. Then I sat down on his cement bed again. Boy, you can't imagine how sorry I was getting that I'd stopped by to say good-by to him.
He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. "We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere. I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick. The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER. That is all I know about the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything else except English anyway.
Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it-I really wouldn't. In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.
"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said. I wished to hell he'd stop calling me "boy" all the time.
He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It's boring to do that every two minutes.
"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."
Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
I'm lucky, though. I mean I could shoot the old bull to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. It's funny. You don't have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher. All of a sudden, though, he interrupted me while I was shooting the bull. He was always interrupting you.
"How do you feel about all this, boy? I'd be very interested to know. Very interested."
"You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?" I said. I sort of wished he'd cover up his bumpy chest. It wasn't such a beautiful view.
"If I'm not mistaken, I believe you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." He didn't say it just sarcastic, but sort of nasty, too.
"I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," I told him. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just quit, sort of."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Why? Oh, well it's a long story, sir. I mean it's pretty complicated." I didn't feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn't have understood it anyway. It wasn't up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn't hear him. I was thinking about old Haas. "What, sir?" I said.
"Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?"
"Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure... but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I guess it hasn't really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I'm doing right now is thinking about going home Wednesday. I'm a moron."
"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"
"Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess."
"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late."
I didn't like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing. "I guess I will," I said.
"I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides of the pole, that's all. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do." I got up from the bed then. Boy, I couldn't've sat there another ten minutes to save my life. "The thing is, though, I have to get going now. I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get to take home with me. I really do." He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his face. I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. But I just couldn't hang around there any longer, the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, and the way he kept missing the bed whenever he chucked something at it, and his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place. "Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
"I don't know, boy. I don't know."
I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.
"Wouldn't you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs. Spencer would be-"
"I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir."
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
"I'll drop you a line, sir. Take care of your grippe, now."
"Good-by, boy."
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me, I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym and get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing after him. The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive-that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, be made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God-talk to Him and all-wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs. The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, then all of a sudden this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn't say anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the new dorms.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back-very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, He just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all. I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I'd only read about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains. Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that roomed right next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was probably the only guy in the whole dorm, besides me, that wasn't down at the game. He hardly ever went anywhere. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley." Not even Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack." If he ever gets married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley." He was one of these very, very tall, round-shouldered guys-he was about six four-with lousy teeth. The whole time he roomed next to me, I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful, and he damn near made you sick if you saw him in the dining room with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.
I could feel him standing on the shower ledge, right behind my chair, taking a look to see if Stradlater was around. He hated Stradlater's guts and he never came in the room if Stradlater was around. He hated everybody's guts, damn near.
He came down off the shower ledge and came in the room. "Hi," he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake.
"Hi," I said, but I didn't look up from my book. With a guy like Ackley, if you looked up from your book you were a goner. You were a goner anyway, but not as quick if you didn't look up right away.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did, picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. "How was the fencing?" he said. He just wanted me to quit reading and enjoying myself. He didn't give a damn about the fencing. "We win, or what?" he said.
"Nobody won," I said. Without looking up, though.
"What?" he said. He always made you say everything twice.
"Nobody won," I said. I sneaked a look to see what he was fiddling around with on my chiffonier. He was looking at this picture of this girl I used to go around with in New York, Sally Hayes. He must've picked up that goddam picture and looked at it at least five thousand times since I got it. He always put it back in the wrong place, too, when he was finished. He did it on purpose. You could tell.
"Nobody won," he said. "How come?"
"I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway." I still didn't look up at him.
"On the subway, for Chrissake! Ya lost them, ya mean?"
"We got on the wrong subway. I had to keep getting up to look at a goddam map on the wall."
He came over and stood right in my light. "Hey," I said. "I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddam hint. Not him, though. "Think they'll make ya pay for em?" he said.
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. How 'bout sitting down or something, Ackley kid? You're right in my goddam light." He didn't like it when you called him "Ackley kid." He was always telling me I was a goddam kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him "Ackley kid."
He kept standing there. He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him to. He'd do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you asked him to. "What the hellya reading?" he said.
"Goddam book."
He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name of it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific." I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood. He didn't get it, though. He started walking around the room again, picking up all my personal stuff, and Stradlater's. Finally, I put my book down on the floor. You couldn't read anything with a guy like Ackley around. It was impossible.
I slid way the hell down in my chair and watched old Ackley making himself at home. I was feeling sort of tired from the trip to New York and all, and I started yawning. Then I started horsing around a little bit. Sometimes I horse around quite a lot, just to keep from getting bored. What I did was, I pulled the old peak of my hunting hat around to the front, then pulled it way down over my eyes. That way, I couldn't see a goddam thing. "I think I'm going blind," I said in this very hoarse voice. "Mother darling, everything's getting so dark in here."
"You're nuts. I swear to God," Ackley said.
"Mother darling, give me your hand, Why won't you give me your hand?"
"For Chrissake, grow up."
I started groping around in front of me, like a blind guy, but without getting up or anything. I kept saying, "Mother darling, why won't you give me your hand?" I was only horsing around, naturally. That stuff gives me a bang sometimes. Besides, I know it annoyed hell out of old Ackley. He always brought out the old sadist in me. I was pretty sadistic with him quite often. Finally, I quit, though. I pulled the peak around to the back again, and relaxed.
"Who belongsa this?" Ackley said. He was holding my roommate's knee supporter up to show me. That guy Ackley'd pick up anything. He'd even pick up your jock strap or something. I told him it was Stradlater's. So he chucked it on Stradlater's bed. He got it off Stradlater's chiffonier, so he chucked it on the bed.
He came over and sat down on the arm of Stradlater's chair. He never sat down in a chair. Just always on the arm. "Where the hellja get that hat?" he said.
"New York."
"How much?"
"A buck."
"You got robbed." He started cleaning his goddam fingernails with the end of a match. He was always cleaning his fingernails. It was funny, in a way. His teeth were always mossy-looking, and his ears were always dirty as hell, but he was always cleaning his fingernails. I guess he thought that made him a very neat guy. He took another look at my hat while he was cleaning them. "Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake," he said. "That's a deer shooting hat."
"Like hell it is." I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. "This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."
"Your folks know you got kicked out yet?"
"Nope."
"Where the hell's Stradlater at, anyway?"
"Down at the game. He's got a date." I yawned. I was yawning all over the place. For one thing, the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. At Pencey, you either froze to death or died of the heat.
"The great Stradlater," Ackley said. "-Hey. Lend me your scissors a second, willya? Ya got 'em handy?"
"No. I packed them already. They're way in the top of the closet."
"Get 'em a second, willya?" Ackley said, "I got this hangnail I want to cut off."
He didn't care if you'd packed something or not and had it way in the top of the closet. I got them for him though. I nearly got killed doing it, too. The second I opened the closet door, Stradlater's tennis racket-in its wooden press and all-fell right on my head. It made a big clunk, and it hurt like hell. It damn near killed old Ackley, though. He started laughing in this very high falsetto voice. He kept laughing the whole time I was taking down my suitcase and getting the scissors out for him. Something like that-a guy getting hit on the head with a rock or something-tickled the pants off Ackley. "You have a damn good sense of humor, Ackley kid," I told him. "You know that?" I handed him the scissors. "Lemme be your manager. I'll get you on the goddam radio." I sat down in my chair again, and he started cutting his big horny-looking nails. "How 'bout using the table or something?" I said. "Cut 'em over the table, willya? I don't feel like walking on your crumby nails in my bare feet tonight." He kept right on cutting them over the floor, though. What lousy manners. I mean it.
"Who's Stradlater's date?" he said. He was always keeping tabs on who Stradlater was dating, even though he hated Stradlater's guts.
"I don't know. Why?"
"No reason. Boy, I can't stand that sonuvabitch. He's one sonuvabitch I really can't stand."
"He's crazy about you. He told me he thinks you're a goddam prince," I said. I call people a "prince" quite often when I'm horsing around. It keeps me from getting bored or something.
"He's got this superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I just can't stand the sonuvabitch. You'd think he-"
"Do you mind cutting your nails over the table, hey?" I said. "I've asked you about fifty-"
"He's got this goddam superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I don't even think the sonuvabitch is intelligent. He thinks he is. He thinks he's about the most-"
"Ackley! For Chrissake. Willya please cut your crumby nails over the table? I've asked you fifty times."
He started cutting his nails over the table, for a change. The only way he ever did anything was if you yelled at him.
I watched him for a while. Then I said, "The reason you're sore at Stradlater is because he said that stuff about brushing your teeth once in a while. He didn't mean to insult you, for cryin' out loud. He didn't say it right or anything, but he didn't mean anything insulting. All he meant was you'd look better and feel better if you sort of brushed your teeth once in a while."
"I brush my teeth. Don't gimme that."
"No, you don't. I've seen you, and you don't," I said. I didn't say it nasty, though. I felt sort of sorry for him, in a way. I mean it isn't too nice, naturally, if somebody tells you you don't brush your teeth. "Stradlater's all right. He's not too bad," I said. "You don't know him, thats the trouble."
"I still say he's a sonuvabitch. He's a conceited sonuvabitch."
"He's conceited, but he's very generous in some things. He really is," I said. "Look. Suppose, for instance, Stradlater was wearing a tie or something that you liked. Say he had a tie on that you liked a helluva lot-I'm just giving you an example, now. You know what he'd do? He'd probably take it off and give it ta you. He really would. Or-you know what he'd do? He'd leave it on your bed or something. But he'd give you the goddam tie. Most guys would probably just-"
"Hell," Ackley said. "If I had his dough, I would, too."
"No, you wouldn't." I shook my head. "No, you wouldn't, Ackley kid. If you had his dough, you'd be one of the biggest-"
"Stop calling me ‘Ackley kid,' God damn it. I'm old enough to be your lousy father."
"No, you're not." Boy, he could really be aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen. "In the first place, I wouldn't let you in my goddam family," I said.
"Well, just cut out calling me-"
All of a sudden the door opened, and old Stradlater barged in, in a big hurry. He was always in a big hurry. Everything was a very big deal. He came over to me and gave me these two playful as hell slaps on both cheeks-which is something that can be very annoying. "Listen," he said. "You going out anywheres special tonight?"
"I don't know. I might. What the hell's it doing out-snowing?" He had snow all over his coat.
"Yeah. Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how 'bout lending me your hound's-tooth jacket?"
"Who won the game?" I said.
"It's only the half. We're leaving," Stradlater said. "No kidding, you gonna use your hound's-tooth tonight or not? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
"No, but I don't want you stretching it with your goddam shoulders and all," I said. We were practically the same heighth, but he weighed about twice as much as I did. He had these very broad shoulders.
"I won't stretch it." He went over to the closet in a big hurry. "How'sa boy, Ackley?" he said to Ackley. He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phony kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.
Ackley just sort of grunted when he said "How'sa boy?" He wouldn't answer him, but he didn't have guts enough not to at least grunt. Then he said to me, "I think I'll get going. See ya later."
"Okay," I said. He never exactly broke your heart when he went back to his own room.
Old Stradlater started taking off his coat and tie and all. "I think maybe I'll take a fast shave," he said. He had a pretty heavy beard. He really did.
"Where's your date?" I asked him.
"She's waiting in the Annex." He went out of the room with his toilet kit and towel under his arm. No shirt on or anything. He always walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build. He did, too. I have to admit it.
I didn't have anything special to do, so I went down to the can and chewed the rag with him while he was shaving. We were the only ones in the can, because everybody was still down at the game. It was hot as hell and the windows were all steamy. There were about ten washbowls, all right against the wall. Stradlater had the middle one. I sat down on the one right next to him and started turning the cold water on and off-this nervous habit I have. Stradlater kept whistling "Song of India" while he shaved. He had one of those very piercing whistles that are practically never in tune, and he always picked out some song that's hard to whistle even if you're a good whistler, like "Song of India" or "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue." He could really mess a song up.
You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, you should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did. The reason he fixed himself up to look good was because he was madly in love with himself. He thought he was the handsomest guy in the Western Hemisphere. He was pretty handsome, too-I'll admit it. But he was mostly the kind of a handsome guy that if your parents saw his picture in your Year Book, they'd right away say, "Who's this boy?" I mean he was mostly a Year Book kind of handsome guy. I knew a lot of guys at Pencey I thought were a lot handsomer than Stradlater, but they wouldn't look handsome if you saw their pictures in the Year Book. They'd look like they had big noses or their ears stuck out. I've had that experience frequently.
Anyway, I was sitting on the washbowl next to where Stradlater was shaving, sort of turning the water on and off. I still had my red hunting hat on, with the peak around to the back and all. I really got a bang out of that hat.
"Hey," Stradlater said. "Wanna do me a big favor?"
"What?" I said. Not too enthusiastic. He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.
"You goin' out tonight?" he said.
"I might. I might not. I don't know. Why?"
"I got about a hundred pages to read for history for Monday," he said. "How 'bout writing a composition for me, for English? I'll be up the creek if I don't get the goddam thing in by Monday, the reason I ask. How 'bout it?"
It was very ironical. It really was.
"I'm the one that's flunking out of the goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition," I said.
"Yeah, I know. The thing is, though, I'll be up the creek if I don't get it in. Be a buddy. Be a buddyroo. Okay?"
I didn't answer him right away. Suspense is good for some bastards like Stradlater.
"What on?" I said.
"Anything. Anything descriptive. A room. Or a house. Or something you once lived in or something- you know. Just as long as it's descriptive as hell." He gave out a big yawn while he said that. Which is something that gives me a royal pain in the ass. I mean if somebody yawns right while they're asking you to do them a goddam favor. "Just don't do it too good, is all," he said. "That sonuvabitch Hartzell thinks you're a hot-shot in English, and he knows you're my roommate. So I mean don't stick all the commas and stuff in the right place."
That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. He was a little bit like Ackley, that way. I once sat next to Ackley at this basketball game. We had a terrific guy on the team, Howie Coyle, that could sink them from the middle of the floor, without even touching the backboard or anything. Ackley kept saying, the whole goddam game, that Coyle had a perfect build for basketball. God, how I hate that stuff.
I got bored sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can't really tap-dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap-dancing. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them. Old Stradlater watched me in the mirror while he was shaving. All I need's an audience. I'm an exhibitionist. "I'm the goddam Governor's son," I said. I was knocking myself out. Tap-dancing all over the place. "He doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go to Oxford. But it's in my goddam blood, tap-dancing." Old Stradlater laughed. He didn't have too bad a sense of humor. "It's the opening night of the Ziegfeld Follies." I was getting out of breath. I have hardly any wind at all. "The leading man can't go on. He's drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that's who. The little ole goddam Governor's son."
"Where'dja get that hat?" Stradlater said. He meant my hunting hat. He'd never seen it before.
I was out of breath anyway, so I quit horsing around. I took off my hat and looked at it for about the ninetieth time. "I got it in New York this morning. For a buck. Ya like it?"
Stradlater nodded. "Sharp," he said. He was only flattering me, though, because right away he said, "Listen. Are ya gonna write that composition for me? I have to know."
"If I get the time, I will. If I don't, I won't," I said. I went over and sat down at the washbowl next to him again. "Who's your date?" I asked him. "Fitzgerald?"
"Hell, no! I told ya. I'm through with that pig."
"Yeah? Give her to me, boy. No kidding. She's my type."
"Take her... She's too old for you."
All of a sudden-for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around-I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson. That's a wrestling hold, in case you don't know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. So I did it. I landed on him like a goddam panther.
"Cut it out, Holden, for Chrissake!" Stradlater said. He didn't feel like horsing around. He was shaving and all. "Wuddaya wanna make me do-cut my goddam head off?"
I didn't let go, though. I had a pretty good half nelson on him. "Liberate yourself from my viselike grip." I said.
"Je-sus Christ." He put down his razor, and all of a sudden jerked his arms up and sort of broke my hold on him. He was a very strong guy. I'm a very weak guy. "Now, cut out the crap," he said. He started shaving himself all over again. He always shaved himself twice, to look gorgeous. With his crumby old razor.
"Who is your date if it isn't Fitzgerald?" I asked him. I sat down on the washbowl next to him again. "That Phyllis Smith babe?"
"No. It was supposed to be, but the arrangements got all screwed up. I got Bud Thaw's girl's roommate now... Hey. I almost forgot. She knows you."
"Who does?" I said.
"My date."
"Yeah?" I said. "What's her name?" I was pretty interested.
"I'm thinking... Uh. Jean Gallagher."
Boy, I nearly dropped dead when he said that.
"Jane Gallagher," I said. I even got up from the washbowl when he said that. I damn near dropped dead. "You're damn right I know her. She practically lived right next door to me, the summer before last. She had this big damn Doberman pinscher. That's how I met her. Her dog used to keep coming over in our-"
"You're right in my light, Holden, for Chrissake," Stradlater said. "Ya have to stand right there?"
Boy, was I excited, though. I really was.
"Where is she?" I asked him. "I oughta go down and say hello to her or something. Where is she? In the Annex?"
"Yeah."
"How'd she happen to mention me? Does she go to B.M. now? She said she might go there. She said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. How'd she happen to mention me?" I was pretty excited. I really was.
"I don't know, for Chrissake. Lift up, willya? You're on my towel," Stradlater said. I was sitting on his stupid towel.
"Jane Gallagher," I said. I couldn't get over it. "Jesus H. Christ."
Old Stradlater was putting Vitalis on his hair. My Vitalis.
"She's a dancer," I said. "Ballet and all. She used to practice about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. She was worried that it might make her legs lousy-all thick and all. I used to play checkers with her all the time."
"You used to play what with her all the time?"
"Checkers."
"Checkers, for Chrissake!"
"Yeah. She wouldn't move any of her kings. What she'd do, when she'd get a king, she wouldn't move it. She'd just leave it in the back row. She'd get them all lined up in the back row. Then she'd never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row."
Stradlater didn't say anything. That kind of stuff doesn't interest most people.
"Her mother belonged to the same club we did," I said. "I used to caddy once in a while, just to make some dough. I caddy'd for her mother a couple of times. She went around in about a hundred and seventy, for nine holes."
Stradlater wasn't hardly listening. He was combing his gorgeous locks.
"I oughta go down and at least say hello to her," I said.
"Why don'tcha?"
"I will, in a minute."
He started parting his hair all over again. It took him about an hour to comb his hair.
"Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound," I said. "Skinny guy with hairy legs. I remember him. He wore shorts all the time. Jane said he was supposed to be a playwright or some goddam thing, but all I ever saw him do was booze all the time and listen to every single goddam mystery program on the radio. And run around the goddam house, naked. With Jane around, and all."
"Yeah?" Stradlater said. That really interested him. About the booze hound running around the house naked, with Jane around. Stradlater was a very sexy bastard.
"She had a lousy childhood. I'm not kidding."
That didn't interest Stradlater, though. Only very sexy stuff interested him.
"Jane Gallagher. Jesus... " I couldn't get her off my mind. I really couldn't. "I oughta go down and say hello to her, at least."
"Why the hell don'tcha, instead of keep saying it?" Stradlater said.
I walked over to the window, but you couldn't see out of it, it was so steamy from all the heat in the can.. "I'm not in the mood right now," I said. I wasn't, either. You have to be in the mood for those things. "I thought she went to Shipley. I could've sworn she went to Shipley." I walked around the can for a little while. I didn't have anything else to do. "Did she enjoy the game?" I said.
"Yeah, I guess so. I don't know."
"Did she tell you we used to play checkers all the time, or anything?"
"I don't know. For Chrissake, I only just met her," Stradlater said. He was finished combing his goddam gorgeous hair. He was putting away all his crumby toilet articles.
"Listen. Give her my regards, willya?"
"Okay," Stradlater said, but I knew he probably wouldn't. You take a guy like Stradlater, they never give your regards to people.
He went back to the room, but I stuck around in the can for a while, thinking about old Jane. Then I went back to the room, too.
Stradlater was putting on his tie, in front of the mirror, when I got there. He spent around half his goddam life in front of the mirror. I sat down in my chair and sort of watched him for a while.
"Hey," I said. "Don't tell her I got kicked out, willya?"
"Okay."
That was one good thing about Stradlater. You didn't have to explain every goddam little thing with him, the way you had to do with Ackley. Mostly, I guess, because he wasn't too interested. That's really why. Ackley, it was different. Ackley was a very nosy bastard.
He put on my hound's-tooth jacket.
"Jesus, now, try not to stretch it all over the place," I said. I'd only worn it about twice.
"I won't. Where the hell's my cigarettes?"
"On the desk." He never knew where he left anything. "Under your muffler." He put them in his coat pocket-my coat pocket.
I pulled the peak of my hunting hat around to the front all of a sudden, for a change. I was getting sort of nervous, all of a sudden. I'm quite a nervous guy. "Listen, where ya going on your date with her?" I asked him. "Ya know yet?"
"I don't know. New York, if we have time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."
I didn't like the way he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably just didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning."
"Goddam right," Stradlater said. You couldn't rile him too easily. He was too conceited. "No kidding, now. Do that composition for me," he said. He had his coat on, and he was all ready to go. "Don't knock yourself out or anything, but just make it descriptive as hell. Okay?"
I didn't answer him. I didn't feel like it. All I said was, "Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."
"Okay," Stradlater said, but I knew he wouldn't. "Take it easy, now." He banged the hell out of the room.
I sat there for about a half hour after he left. I mean I just sat in my chair, not doing anything. I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stradlater having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was.
All of a sudden, Ackley barged back in again, through the damn shower curtains, as usual. For once in my stupid life, I was really glad to see him. He took my mind off the other stuff.
He stuck around till around dinnertime, talking about all the guys at Pencey that he hated their guts, and squeezing this big pimple on his chin. He didn't even use his handkerchief. I don't even think the bastard had a handkerchief, if you want to know the truth. I never saw him use one, anyway.
We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I'll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys' parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody's mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he'd say, "Steak." What a racket. You should've seen the steaks. They were these little hard, dry jobs that you could hardly even cut. You always got these very lumpy mashed potatoes on steak night, and for dessert you got Brown Betty, which nobody ate, except maybe the little kids in the lower school that didn't know any better-and guys like Ackley that ate everything.
It was nice, though, when we got out of the dining room. There were about three inches of snow on the ground, and it was still coming down like a madman. It looked pretty as hell, and we all started throwing snowballs and horsing around all over the place. It was very childish, but everybody was really enjoying themselves.
I didn't have a date or anything, so I and this friend of mine, Mal Brossard, that was on the wrestling team, decided we'd take a bus into Agerstown and have a hamburger and maybe see a lousy movie. Neither of us felt like sitting around on our ass all night. I asked Mal if he minded if Ackley came along with us. The reason I asked was because Ackley never did anything on Saturday night, except stay in his room and squeeze his pimples or something. Mal said he didn't mind but that he wasn't too crazy about the idea. He didn't like Ackley much. Anyway, we both went to our rooms to get ready and all, and while I was putting on my galoshes and crap, I yelled over and asked old Ackley if he wanted to go to the movies. He could hear me all right through the shower curtains, but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of a guy that hates to answer you right away. Finally he came over, through the goddam curtains, and stood on the shower ledge and asked who was going besides me. He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in a goddam boat, he'd want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he'd even get in. I told him Mal Brossard was going. He said, "That bastard... All right. Wait a second." You'd think he was doing you a big favor.
It took him about five hours to get ready. While he was doing it, I went over to my window and opened it and packed a snowball with my bare hands. The snow was very good for packing. I didn't throw it at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn't throw it at anything. All I did was close the window and walk around the room with the snowball, packing it harder. A little while later, I still had it with me when I and Brossnad and Ackley got on the bus. The bus driver opened the doors and made me throw it out. I told him I wasn't going to chuck it at anybody, but he wouldn't believe me. People never believe you.
Brossard and Ackley both had seen the picture that was playing, so all we did, we just had a couple of hamburgers and played the pinball machine for a little while, then took the bus back to Pencey. I didn't care about not seeing the movie, anyway. It was supposed to be a comedy, with Cary Grant in it, and all that crap. Besides, I'd been to the movies with Brossard and Ackley before. They both laughed like hyenas at stuff that wasn't even funny. I didn't even enjoy sitting next to them in the movies.
It was only about a quarter to nine when we got back to the dorm. Old Brossard was a bridge fiend, and he started looking around the dorm for a game. Old Ackley parked himself in my room, just for a change. Only, instead of sitting on the arm of Stradlater's chair, he laid down on my bed, with his face right on my pillow and all. He started talking in this very monotonous voice, and picking at all his pimples. I dropped about a thousand hints, but I couldn't get rid of him. All he did was keep talking in this very monotonous voice about some babe he was supposed to have had sexual intercourse with the summer before. He'd already told me about it about a hundred times. Every time he told it, it was different. One minute he'd be giving it to her in his cousin's Buick, the next minute he'd be giving it to her under some boardwalk. It was all a lot of crap, naturally. He was a virgin if ever I saw one. I doubt if he ever even gave anybody a feel. Anyway, finally I had to come right out and tell him that I had to write a composition for Stradlater, and that he had to clear the hell out, so I could concentrate. He finally did, but he took his time about it, as usual. After he left, I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and my old hunting hat, and started writing the composition.
The thing was, I couldn't think of a room or a house or anything to describe the way Stradlater said he had to have. I'm not too crazy about describing rooms and houses anyway. So what I did, I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. I'll tell you what kind of red hair he had. I started playing golf when I was only ten years old. I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a sudden, I'd see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence-there was this fence that went all around the course-and he was sitting there, about a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That's the kind of red hair he had. God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner table that he just about fell off his chair. I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don't blame them. I really don't. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie. My hand still hurts me once in a while when it rains and all, and I can't make a real fist any more-not a tight one, I mean-but outside of that I don't care much. I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway.
Anyway, that's what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. Old Allie's baseball mitt. I happened to have it with me, in my suitcase, so I got it out and copied down the poems that were written on it. All I had to do was change Allie's name so that nobody would know it was my brother and not Stradlater's. I wasn't too crazy about doing it, but I couldn't think of anything else descriptive. Besides, I sort of liked writing about it. It took me about an hour, because I had to use Stradlater's lousy typewriter, and it kept jamming on me. The reason I didn't use my own was because I'd lent it to a guy down the hall.
It was around ten-thirty, I guess, when I finished it. I wasn't tired, though, so I looked out the window for a while. It wasn't snowing out any more, but every once in a while you could hear a car somewhere not being able to get started. You could also hear old Ackley snoring. Right through the goddam shower curtains you could hear him. He had sinus trouble and he couldn't breathe too hot when he was asleep. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch.
Some things are hard to remember. I'm thinking now of when Stradlater got back from his date with Jane. I mean I can't remember exactly what I was doing when I heard his goddam stupid footsteps coming down the corridor. I probably was still looking out the window, but I swear I can't remember. I was so damn worried, that's why. When I really worry about something, I don't just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don't go. I'm too worried to go. I don't want to interrupt my worrying to go. If you knew Stradlater, you'd have been worried, too. I'd double-dated with that bastard a couple of times, and I know what I'm talking about. He was unscrupulous. He really was.
Anyway, the corridor was all linoleum and all, and you could hear his goddam footsteps coming right towards the room. I don't even remember where I was sitting when he came in-at the window, or in my chair or his. I swear I can't remember.
He came in griping about how cold it was out. Then he said, "Where the hell is everybody? It's like a goddam morgue around here." I didn't even bother to answer him. If he was so goddam stupid not to realize it was Saturday night and everybody was out or asleep or home for the week end, I wasn't going to break my neck telling him. He started getting undressed. He didn't say one goddam word about Jane. Not one. Neither did I. I just watched him. All he did was thank me for letting him wear my hound's-tooth. He hung it up on a hanger and put it in the closet.
Then when he was taking off his tie, he asked me if I'd written his goddam composition for him. I told him it was over on his goddam bed. He walked over and read it while he was unbuttoning his shirt. He stood there, reading it, and sort of stroking his bare chest and stomach, with this very stupid expression on his face. He was always stroking his stomach or his chest. He was mad about himself.
All of a sudden, he said, "For Chrissake, Holden. This is about a goddam baseball glove."
"So what?" I said. Cold as hell.
"Wuddaya mean so what? I told ya it had to be about a goddam room or a house or something."
"You said it had to be descriptive. What the hell's the difference if it's about a baseball glove?"
"God damn it." He was sore as hell. He was really furious. "You always do everything backasswards." He looked at me. "No wonder you're flunking the hell out of here," he said. "You don't do one damn thing the way you're supposed to. I mean it. Not one damn thing."
"All right, give it back to me, then," I said. I went over and pulled it right out of his goddam hand. Then I tore it up.
"What the hellja do that for?" he said.
I didn't even answer him. I just threw the pieces in the wastebasket. Then I lay down on my bed, and we both didn't say anything for a long time. He got all undressed, down to his shorts, and I lay on my bed and lit a cigarette. You weren't allowed to smoke in the dorm, but you could do it late at night when everybody was asleep or out and nobody could smell the smoke. Besides, I did it to annoy Stradlater. It drove him crazy when you broke any rules. He never smoked in the dorm. It was only me.
He still didn't say one single solitary word about Jane. So finally I said, "You're back pretty goddam late if she only signed out for nine-thirty. Did you make her be late signing in?"
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, cutting his goddam toenails, when I asked him that. "Coupla minutes," he said. "Who the hell signs out for nine-thirty on a Saturday night?" God, how I hated him.
"Did you go to New York?" I said.
"Ya crazy? How the hell could we go to New York if she only signed out for nine-thirty?"
"That's tough."
He looked up at me. "Listen," he said, "if you're gonna smoke in the room, how 'bout going down to the can and do it? You may be getting the hell out of here, but I have to stick around long enough to graduate."
I ignored him. I really did. I went right on smoking like a madman. All I did was sort of turn over on my side and watched him cut his damn toenails. What a school. You were always watching somebody cut their damn toenails or squeeze their pimples or something.
"Did you give her my regards?" I asked him.
"Yeah."
The hell he did, the bastard.
"What'd she say?" I said. "Did you ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row?"
"No, I didn't ask her. What the hell ya think we did all night-play checkers, for Chrissake?"
I didn't even answer him. God, how I hated him.
"If you didn't go to New York, where'd ya go with her?" I asked him, after a little while. I could hardly keep my voice from shaking all over the place. Boy, was I getting nervous. I just had a feeling something had gone funny.
He was finished cutting his damn toenails. So he got up from the bed, in just his damn shorts and all, and started getting very damn playful. He came over to my bed and started leaning over me and taking these playful as hell socks at my shoulder. "Cut it out," I said. "Where'd you go with her if you didn't go to New York?"
"Nowhere. We just sat in the goddam car." He gave me another one of those playful stupid little socks on the shoulder.
"Cut it out," I said. "Whose car?"
"Ed Banky's."
Ed Banky was the basketball coach at Pencey. Old Stradlater was one of his pets, because he was the center on the team, and Ed Banky always let him borrow his car when he wanted it. It wasn't allowed for students to borrow faculty guys' cars, but all the athletic bastards stuck together. In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.
Stradlater kept taking these shadow punches down at my shoulder. He had his toothbrush in his hand, and he put it in his mouth. "What'd you do?" I said. "Give her the time in Ed Banky's goddam car?" My voice was shaking something awful.
"What a thing to say. Want me to wash your mouth out with soap?"
"Did you?"
"That's a professional secret, buddy."
This next part I don't remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed. I didn't connect. All I did was sort of get him on the side of the head or something. It probably hurt him a little bit, but not as much as I wanted. It probably would've hurt him a lot, but I did it with my right hand, and I can't make a good fist with that hand. On account of that injury I told you about.
Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was on the goddam floor and he was sitting on my chest, with his face all red. That is, he had his goddam knees on my chest, and he weighed about a ton. He had hold of my wrists, too, so I couldn't take another sock at him. I'd've killed him.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he kept saying, and his stupid face kept getting redder and redder.
"Get your lousy knees off my chest," I told him. I was almost bawling. I really was. "Go on, get off a me, ya crumby bastard."
He wouldn't do it, though. He kept holding onto my wrists and I kept calling him a sonuvabitch and all, for around ten hours. I can hardly even remember what all I said to him. I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
"Shut up, now, Holden," he said with his big stupid red face. "Just shut up, now."
"You don't even know if her first name is Jane or Jean, ya goddam moron!"
"Now, shut up, Holden, God damn it-I'm warning ya," he said-I really had him going. "If you don't shut up, I'm gonna slam ya one."
"Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest."
"If I letcha up, will you keep your mouth shut?"
I didn't even answer him.
He said it over again. "Holden. If I letcha up, willya keep your mouth shut?"
"Yes."
He got up off me, and I got up, too. My chest hurt like hell from his dirty knees. "You're a dirty stupid sonuvabitch of a moron," I told him.
That got him really mad. He shook his big stupid finger in my face. "Holden, God damn it, I'm warning you, now. For the last time. If you don't keep your yap shut, I'm gonna-"
"Why should I?" I said-I was practically yelling. "That's just the trouble with all you morons. You never want to discuss anything. That's the way you can always tell a moron. They never want to discuss anything intellig-"
Then he really let one go at me, and the next thing I knew I was on the goddam floor again. I don't remember if he knocked me out or not, but I don't think so. It's pretty hard to knock a guy out, except in the goddam movies. But my nose was bleeding all over the place. When I looked up old Stradlater was standing practically right on top of me. He had his goddam toilet kit under his arm. "Why the hell don'tcha shut up when I tellya to?" he said. He sounded pretty nervous. He probably was scared he'd fractured my skull or something when I hit the floor. It's too bad I didn't. "You asked for it, God damn it," he said. Boy, did he look worried.
I didn't even bother to get up. I just lay there in the floor for a while, and kept calling him a moron sonuvabitch. I was so mad, I was practically bawling.
"Listen. Go wash your face," Stradlater said. "Ya hear me?"
I told him to go wash his own moron face-which was a pretty childish thing to say, but I was mad as hell. I told him to stop off on the way to the can and give Mrs. Schmidt the time. Mrs. Schmidt was the janitor's wife. She was around sixty-five.
I kept sitting there on the floor till I heard old Stradlater close the door and go down the corridor to the can. Then I got up. I couldn't find my goddam hunting hat anywhere. Finally I found it. It was under the bed. I put it on, and turned the old peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I went over and took a look at my stupid face in the mirror. You never saw such gore in your life. I had blood all over my mouth and chin and even on my pajamas and bath robe. It partly scared me and it partly fascinated me. All that blood and all sort of made me look tough. I'd only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them. I'm not too tough. I'm a pacifist, if you want to know the truth.
I had a feeling old Ackley'd probably heard all the racket and was awake. So I went through the shower curtains into his room, just to see what the hell he was doing. I hardly ever went over to his room. It always had a funny stink in it, because he was so crumby in his personal habits.
A tiny bit of light came through the shower curtains and all from our room, and I could see him lying in bed. I knew damn well he was wide awake. "Ackley?" I said. "Y'awake?"
"Yeah."
It was pretty dark, and I stepped on somebody's shoe on the floor and damn near fell on my head. Ackley sort of sat up in bed and leaned on his arm. He had a lot of white stuff on his face, for his pimples. He looked sort of spooky in the dark. "What the hellya doing, anyway?" I said.
"Wuddaya mean what the hell am I doing? I was tryna sleep before you guys started making all that noise. What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
"Where's the light?" I couldn't find the light. I was sliding my hand all over the wall.
"Wuddaya want the light for?... Right next to your hand."
I finally found the switch and turned it on. Old Ackley put his hand up so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes.
"Jesus!" he said. "What the hell happened to you?" He meant all the blood and all.
"I had a little goddam tiff with Stradlater," I said. Then I sat down on the floor. They never had any chairs in their room. I don't know what the hell they did with their chairs. "Listen," I said, "do you feel like playing a little Canasta?" He was a Canasta fiend.
"You're still bleeding, for Chrissake. You better put something on it."
"It'll stop. Listen. Ya wanna play a little Canasta or don'tcha?"
"Canasta, for Chrissake. Do you know what time it is, by any chance?"
"It isn't late. It's only around eleven, eleven-thirty."
"Only around!" Ackley said. "Listen. I gotta get up and go to Mass in the morning, for Chrissake. You guys start hollering and fighting in the middle of the goddam-What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?"
"It's a long story. I don't wanna bore ya, Ackley. I'm thinking of your welfare," I told him. I never discussed my personal life with him. In the first place, he was even more stupid than Stradlater. Stradlater was a goddam genius next to Ackley. "Hey," I said, "is it okay if I sleep in Ely's bed tonight? He won't be back till tomorrow night, will he?" I knew damn well he wouldn't. Ely went home damn near every week end.
"I don't know when the hell he's coming back," Ackley said.
Boy, did that annoy me. "What the hell do you mean you don't know when he's coming back? He never comes back till Sunday night, does he?"
"No, but for Chrissake, I can't just tell somebody they can sleep in his goddam bed if they want to."
That killed me. I reached up from where I was sitting on the floor and patted him on the goddam shoulder. "You're a prince, Ackley kid," I said. "You know that?"
"No, I mean it-I can't just tell somebody they can sleep in-"
"You're a real prince. You're a gentleman and a scholar, kid," I said. He really was, too. "Do you happen to have any cigarettes, by any chance?-Say ‘no' or I'll drop dead."
"No, I don't, as a matter of fact. Listen, what the hell was the fight about?"
I didn't answer him. All I did was, I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.
"What the hell was the fight about, anyhow?" Ackley said, for about the fiftieth time. He certainly was a bore about that.
"About you," I said.
"About me, for Chrissake?"
"Yeah. I was defending your goddam honor. Stradlater said you had a lousy personality. I couldn't let him get away with that stuff."
That got him excited. "He did? No kidding? He did?"
I told him I was only kidding, and then I went over and laid down on Ely's bed. Boy, did I feel rotten. I felt so damn lonesome.
"This room stinks," I said. "I can smell your socks from way over here. Don'tcha ever send them to the laundry?"
"If you don't like it, you know what you can do," Ackley said. What a witty guy. "How 'bout turning off the goddam light?"
I didn't turn it off right away, though. I just kept laying there on Ely's bed, thinking about Jane and all. It just drove me stark staring mad when I thought about her and Stradlater parked somewhere in that fat-assed Ed Banky's car. Every time I thought about it, I felt like jumping out the window. The thing is, you didn't know Stradlater. I knew him. Most guys at Pencey just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time-like Ackley, for instance-but old Stradlater really did it. I was personally acquainted with at least two girls he gave the time to. That's the truth.
"Tell me the story of your fascinating life, Ackley kid," I said.
"How 'bout turning off the goddam light? I gotta get up for Mass in the morning."
I got up and turned it off, if it made him happy. Then I laid down on Ely's bed again.
"What're ya gonna do-sleep in Ely's bed?" Ackley said. He was the perfect host, boy.
"I may. I may not. Don't worry about it."
"I'm not worried about it. Only, I'd hate like hell if Ely came in all of a sudden and found some guy-"
"Relax. I'm not gonna sleep here. I wouldn't abuse your goddam hospitality."
A couple of minutes later, he was snoring like mad. I kept laying there in the dark anyway, though, trying not to think about old Jane and Stradlater in that goddam Ed Banky's car. But it was almost impossible. The trouble was, I knew that guy Stradlater's technique. That made it even worse. We once double-dated, in Ed Banky's car, and Stradlater was in the back, with his date, and I was in the front with mine. What a technique that guy had. What he'd do was, he'd start snowing his date in this very quiet, sincere voice-like as if he wasn't only a very handsome guy but a nice, sincere guy, too. I damn near puked, listening to him. His date kept saying, "No-please. Please, don't. Please." But old Stradlater kept snowing her in this Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice, and finally there'd be this terrific silence in the back of the car. It was really embarrassing. I don't think he gave that girl the time that night-but damn near. Damn near.
While I was laying there trying not to think, I heard old Stradlater come back from the can and go in our room. You could hear him putting away his crumby toilet articles and all, and opening the window. He was a fresh-air fiend. Then, a little while later, he turned off the light. He didn't even look around to see where I was at.
It was even depressing out in the street. You couldn't even hear any cars any more. I got feeling so lonesome and rotten, I even felt like waking Ackley up.
"Hey, Ackley," I said, in sort of a whisper, so Stradlater couldn't hear me through the shower curtain.
Ackley didn't hear me, though.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He still didn't hear me. He slept like a rock.
"Hey, Ackley!"
He heard that, all right.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" he said. "I was asleep, for Chrissake."
"Listen. What's the routine on joining a monastery?" I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. "Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"
"Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me just to ask me a dumb ques-"
"Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not gonna join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards."
When I said that, old Ackley sat way the hell up in bed. "Listen," he said, "I don't care what you say about me or anything, but if you start making cracks about my goddam religion, for Chrissake-"
"Relax," I said. "Nobody's making any cracks about your goddam religion." I got up off Ely's bed, and started towards the door. I didn't want to hang around in that stupid atmosphere any more. I stopped on the way, though, and picked up Ackley's hand, and gave him a big, phony handshake. He pulled it away from me. "What's the idea?" he said.
"No idea. I just want to thank you for being such a goddam prince, that's all," I said. I said it in this very sincere voice. "You're aces, Ackley kid," I said. "You know that?"
"Wise guy. Someday somebody's gonna bash your-"
I didn't even bother to listen to him. I shut the damn door and went out in the corridor.
Everybody was asleep or out or home for the week end, and it was very, very quiet and depressing in the corridor. There was this empty box of Kolynos toothpaste outside Leahy and Hoffman's door, and while I walked down towards the stairs, I kept giving it a boot with this sheep-lined slipper I had on. What I thought I'd do, I thought I might go down and see what old Mal Brossard was doing. But all of a sudden, I changed my mind. All of a sudden, I decided what I'd really do, I'd get the hell out of Pencey-right that same night and all. I mean not wait till Wednesday or anything. I just didn't want to hang around any more. It made me too sad and lonesome. So what I decided to do, I decided I'd take a room in a hotel in New York-some very inexpensive hotel and all-and just take it easy till Wednesday. Then, on Wednesday, I'd go home all rested up and feeling swell. I figured my parents probably wouldn't get old Thurmer's letter saying I'd been given the ax till maybe Tuesday or Wednesday. I didn't want to go home or anything till they got it and thoroughly digested it and all. I didn't want to be around when they first got it. My mother gets very hysterical. She's not too bad after she gets something thoroughly digested, though. Besides, I sort of needed a little vacation. My nerves were shot. They really were.
Anyway, that's what I decided I'd do. So I went back to the room and turned on the light, to start packing and all. I already had quite a few things packed. Old Stradlater didn't even wake up. I lit a cigarette and got all dressed and then I packed these two Gladstones I have. It only took me about two minutes. I'm a very rapid packer.
One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions-and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates-I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey-but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
After I got all packed, I sort of counted my dough. I don't remember exactly how much I had, but I was pretty loaded. My grandmother'd just sent me a wad about a week before. I have this grandmother that's quite lavish with her dough. She doesn't have all her marbles any more-she's old as hell-and she keeps sending me money for my birthday about four times a year. Anyway, even though I was pretty loaded, I figured I could always use a few extra bucks. You never know. So what I did was, I went down the hall and woke up Frederick Woodruff, this guy I'd lent my typewriter to. I asked him how much he'd give me for it. He was a pretty wealthy guy. He said he didn't know. He said he didn't much want to buy it. Finally he bought it, though. It cost about ninety bucks, and all he bought it for was twenty. He was sore because I'd woke him up.
When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.
It was too late to call up for a cab or anything, so I walked the whole way to the station. It wasn't too far, but it was cold as hell, and the snow made it hard for walking, and my Gladstones kept banging hell out of my legs. I sort of enjoyed the air and all, though. The only trouble was, the cold made my nose hurt, and right under my upper lip, where old Stradlater'd laid one on me. He'd smacked my lip right on my teeth, and it was pretty sore. My ears were nice and warm, though. That hat I bought had earlaps in it, and I put them on-I didn't give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway. Everybody was in the sack.
I was quite lucky when I got to the station, because I only had to wait about ten minutes for a train. While I waited, I got some snow in my hand and washed my face with it. I still had quite a bit of blood on.
Usually I like riding on trains, especially at night, with the lights on and the windows so black, and one of those guys coming up the aisle selling coffee and sandwiches and magazines. I usually buy a ham sandwich and about four magazines. If I'm on a train at night, I can usually even read one of those dumb stories in a magazine without puking. You know. One of those stories with a lot of phony, lean-jawed guys named David in it, and a lot of phony girls named Linda or Marcia that are always lighting all the goddam Davids' pipes for them. I can even read one of those lousy stories on a train at night, usually. But this time, it was different. I just didn't feel like it. I just sort of sat and not did anything. All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.
All of a sudden, this lady got on at Trenton and sat down next to me. Practically the whole car was empty, because it was pretty late and all, but she sat down next to me, instead of an empty seat, because she had this big bag with her and I was sitting in the front seat. She stuck the bag right out in the middle of the aisle, where the conductor and everybody could trip over it. She had these orchids on, like she'd just been to a big party or something. She was around forty or forty-five, I guess, but she was very good looking. Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that-although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.
Anyway, we were sitting there, and all of a sudden she said to me, "Excuse me, but isn't that a Pencey Prep sticker?" She was looking up at my suitcases, up on the rack.
"Yes, it is," I said. She was right. I did have a goddam Pencey sticker on one of my Gladstones. Very corny, I'll admit.
"Oh, do you go to Pencey?" she said. She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should've carried a goddam telephone around with her.
"Yes, I do," I said.
"Oh, how lovely! Perhaps you know my son, then, Ernest Morrow? He goes to Pencey."
"Yes, I do. He's in my class."
Her son was doubtless the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school. He was always going down the corridor, after he'd had a shower, snapping his soggy old wet towel at people's asses. That's exactly the kind of a guy he was.
"Oh, how nice!" the lady said. But not corny. She was just nice and all. "I must tell Ernest we met," she said. "May I ask your name, dear?"
"Rudolf Schmidt," I told her. I didn't feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.
"Do you like Pencey?" she asked me.
"Pencey? It's not too bad. It's not paradise or anything, but it's as good as most schools. Some of the faculty are pretty conscientious."
"Ernest just adores it."
"I know he does," I said. Then I started shooting the old crap around a little bit. "He adapts himself very well to things. He really does. I mean he really knows how to adapt himself."
"Do you think so?" she asked me. She sounded interested as hell.
"Ernest? Sure," I said. Then I watched her take off her gloves. Boy, was she lousy with rocks.
"I just broke a nail, getting out of a cab," she said. She looked up at me and sort of smiled. She had a terrifically nice smile. She really did. Most people have hardly any smile at all, or a lousy one. "Ernest's father and I sometimes worry about him," she said. "We sometimes feel he's not a terribly good mixer."
"How do you mean?"
"Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously than he should at his age."
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddam toilet seat.
I gave her a good look. She didn't look like any dope to me. She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what a bastard she was the mother of. But you can't always tell-with somebody's mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane. The thing is, though, I liked old Morrow's mother. She was all right. "Would you care for a cigarette?" I asked her.
She looked all around. "I don't believe this is a smoker, Rudolf," she said. Rudolf. That killed me.
"That's all right. We can smoke till they start screaming at us," I said. She took a cigarette off me, and I gave her a light.
She looked nice, smoking. She inhaled and all, but she didn't wolf the smoke down, the way most women around her age do. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know.
She was looking at me sort of funny. "I may be wrong but I believe your nose is bleeding, dear," she said, all of a sudden.
I nodded and took out my handkerchief. "I got hit with a snowball," I said. "One of those very icy ones." I probably would've told her what really happened, but it would've taken too long. I liked her, though. I was beginning to feel sort of sorry I'd told her my name was Rudolf Schmidt. "Old Ernie," I said. "He's one of the most popular boys at Pencey. Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
I nodded. "It really took everybody quite a long time to get to know him. He's a funny guy. A strange guy, in lots of ways-know what I mean? Like when I first met him. When I first met him, I thought he was kind of a snobbish person. That's what I thought. But he isn't. He's just got this very original personality that takes you a little while to get to know him."
Old Mrs. Morrow didn't say anything, but boy, you should've seen her. I had her glued to her seat. You take somebody's mother, all they want to hear about is what a hot-shot their son is.
Then I really started chucking the old crap around. "Did he tell you about the elections?" I asked her. "The class elections?"
She shook her head. I had her in a trance, like. I really did.
"Well, a bunch of us wanted old Ernie to be president of the class. I mean he was the unanimous choice. I mean he was the only boy that could really handle the job," I said-boy, was I chucking it. "But this other boy-Harry Fencer-was elected. And the reason he was elected, the simple and obvious reason, was because Ernie wouldn't let us nominate him. Because he's so darn shy and modest and all. He refused... Boy, he's really shy. You oughta make him try to get over that." I looked at her. "Didn't he tell you about it?"
"No, he didn't."
I nodded. "That's Ernie. He wouldn't. That's the one fault with him-he's too shy and modest. You really oughta get him to try to relax occasionally."
Right that minute, the conductor came around for old Mrs. Morrow's ticket, and it gave me a chance to quit shooting it. I'm glad I shot it for a while, though. You take a guy like Morrow that's always snapping their towel at people's asses-really trying to hurt somebody with it-they don't just stay a rat while they're a kid. They stay a rat their whole life. But I'll bet, after all the crap I shot, Mrs. Morrow'll keep thinking of him now as this very shy, modest guy that wouldn't let us nominate him for president. She might. You can't tell. Mothers aren't too sharp about that stuff.
"Would you care for a cocktail?" I asked her. I was feeling in the mood for one myself. "We can go in the club car. All right?"
"Dear, are you allowed to order drinks?" she asked me. Not snotty, though. She was too charming and all to be snotty.
"Well, no, not exactly, but I can usually get them on account of my heighth," I said. "And I have quite a bit of gray hair." I turned sideways and showed her my gray hair. It fascinated hell out of her. "C'mon, join me, why don't you?" I said. I'd've enjoyed having her.
"I really don't think I'd better. Thank you so much, though, dear," she said. "Anyway, the club car's most likely closed. It's quite late, you know." She was right. I'd forgotten all about what time it was.
Then she looked at me and asked me what I was afraid she was going to ask me. "Ernest wrote that he'd be home on Wednesday, that Christmas vacation would start on Wednesday," she said. "I hope you weren't called home suddenly because of illness in the family." She really looked worried about it. She wasn't just being nosy, you could tell.
"No, everybody's fine at home," I said. "It's me. I have to have this operation."
"Oh! I'm so sorry," she said. She really was, too. I was right away sorry I'd said it, but it was too late.
"It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain."
"Oh, no!" She put her hand up to her mouth and all. "Oh, I'll be all right and everything! It's right near the outside. And it's a very tiny one. They can take it out in about two minutes."
Then I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours.
We didn't talk too much after that. She started reading this Vogue she had with her, and I looked out the window for a while. She got off at Newark. She wished me a lot of luck with the operation and all. She kept calling me Rudolf. Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts. She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was going to South America with my grandmother. Which was really a hot one, because my grandmother hardly ever even goes out of the house, except maybe to go to a goddam matinee or something. But I wouldn't visit that sonuvabitch Morrow for all the dough in the world, even if I was desperate.
The first thing I did when I got off at Penn Station, I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz. I left my bags right outside the booth so that I could watch them, but as soon as I was inside, I couldn't think of anybody to call up. My brother D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe goes to bed around nine o'clock-so I couldn't call her up. She wouldn't've cared if I'd woke her up, but the trouble was, she wouldn't've been the one that answered the phone. My parents would be the ones. So that was out. Then I thought of giving Jane Gallagher's mother a buzz, and find out when Jane's vacation started, but I didn't feel like it. Besides, it was pretty late to call up. Then I thought of calling this girl I used to go around with quite frequently, Sally Hayes, because I knew her Christmas vacation had started already-she'd written me this long, phony letter, inviting me over to help her trim the Christmas tree Christmas Eve and all-but I was afraid her mother'd answer the phone. Her mother knew my mother, and I could picture her breaking a goddam leg to get to the phone and tell my mother I was in New York. Besides, I wasn't crazy about talking to old Mrs. Hayes on the phone. She once told Sally I was wild. She said I was wild and that I had no direction in life. Then I thought of calling up this guy that went to the Whooton School when I was there, Carl Luce, but I didn't like him much. So I ended up not calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes or so, and got my bags and walked over to that tunnel where the cabs are and got a cab.
I'm so damn absent-minded, I gave the driver my regular address, just out of habit and all-I mean I completely forgot I was going to shack up in a hotel for a couple of days and not go home till vacation started. I didn't think of it till we were halfway through the park. Then I said, "Hey, do you mind turning around when you get a chance? I gave you the wrong address. I want to go back downtown."
The driver was sort of a wise guy. "I can't turn around here, Mac. This here's a one-way. I'll have to go all the way to Ninedieth Street now."
I didn't want to start an argument. "Okay," I said. Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. "Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million.
He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. "What're ya tryna do, bud?" he said. "Kid me?"
"No-I was just interested, that's all."
He didn't say anything more, so I didn't either. Until we came out of the park at Ninetieth Street. Then he said, "All right, buddy. Where to?"
"Well, the thing is, I don't want to stay at any hotels on the East Side where I might run into some acquaintances of mine. I'm traveling incognito," I said. I hate saying corny things like "traveling incognito." But when I'm with somebody that's corny, I always act corny too. "Do you happen to know whose band's at the Taft or the New Yorker, by any chance?"
"No idear, Mac."
"Well-take me to the Edmont then," I said. "Would you care to stop on the way and join me for a cocktail? On me. I'm loaded."
"Can't do it, Mac. Sorry." He certainly was good company. Terrific personality.
We got to the Edmont Hotel, and I checked in. I'd put on my red hunting cap when I was in the cab, just for the hell of it, but I took it off before I checked in. I didn't want to look like a screwball or something. Which is really ironic. I didn't know then that the goddam hotel was full of perverts and morons. Screwballs all over the place.
They gave me this very crumby room, with nothing to look out of the window at except the other side of the hotel. I didn't care much. I was too depressed to care whether I had a good view or not. The bellboy that showed me to the room was this very old guy around sixty-five. He was even more depressing than the room was. He was one of those bald guys that comb all their hair over from the side to cover up the baldness. I'd rather be bald than do that. Anyway, what a gorgeous job for a guy around sixty-five years old. Carrying people's suitcases and waiting around for a tip. I suppose he wasn't too intelligent or anything, but it was terrible anyway.
After he left, I looked out the window for a while, with my coat on and all. I didn't have anything else to do. You'd be surprised what was going on on the other side of the hotel. They didn't even bother to pull their shades down. I saw one guy, a gray-haired, very distinguished-looking guy with only his shorts on, do something you wouldn't believe me if I told you. First he put his suitcase on the bed. Then he took out all these women's clothes, and put them on. Real women's clothes-silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, brassiere, and one of those corsets with the straps hanging down and all. Then he put on this very tight black evening dress. I swear to God. Then he started walking up and down the room, taking these very small steps, the way a woman does, and smoking a cigarette and looking at himself in the mirror. He was all alone, too. Unless somebody was in the bathroom-I couldn't see that much. Then, in the window almost right over his, I saw a man and a woman squirting water out of their mouths at each other. It probably was highballs, not water, but I couldn't see what they had in their glasses. Anyway, first he'd take a swallow and squirt it all over her, then she did it to him-they took turns, for God's sake. You should've seen them. They were in hysterics the whole time, like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. I'm not kidding, the hotel was lousy with perverts. I was probably the only normal bastard in the whole place-and that isn't saying much. I damn near sent a telegram to old Stradlater telling him to take the first train to New York. He'd have been the king of the hotel.
The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don't want it to be. For instance, that girl that was getting water squirted all over her face, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that's my big trouble. In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other's face. The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Girls aren't too much help, either, when you start trying not to get too crumby, when you start trying not to spoil anything really good. I knew this one girl, a couple of years ago, that was even crumbier than I was. Boy, was she crumby! We had a lot of fun, though, for a while, in a crumby way. Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it-the same night, as a matter of fact. I spent the whole night necking with a terrible phony named Anne Louise Sherman. Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't.
I started toying with the idea, while I kept standing there, of giving old Jane a buzz-I mean calling her long distance at B.M., where she went, instead of calling up her mother to find out when she was coming home. You weren't supposed to call students up late at night, but I had it all figured out. I was going to tell whoever answered the phone that I was her uncle. I was going to say her aunt had just got killed in a car accident and I had to speak to her immediately. It would've worked, too. The only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood. If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right.
After a while I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I was feeling pretty horny. I have to admit it. Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea. I took out my wallet and started looking for this address a guy I met at a party last summer, that went to Princeton, gave me. Finally I found it. It was all a funny color from my wallet, but you could still read it. It was the address of this girl that wasn't exactly a whore or anything but that didn't mind doing it once in a while, this Princeton guy told me. He brought her to a dance at Princeton once, and they nearly kicked him out for bringing her. She used to be a burlesque stripper or something. Anyway, I went over to the phone and gave her a buzz. Her name was Faith Cavendish, and she lived at the Stanford Arms Hotel on Sixty-fifth and Broadway. A dump, no doubt.
For a while, I didn't think she was home or something. Nobody kept answering. Then, finally, somebody picked up the phone.
"Hello?" I said. I made my voice quite deep so that she wouldn't suspect my age or anything. I have a pretty deep voice anyway.
"Hello," this woman's voice said. None too friendly, either.
"Is this Miss Faith Cavendish?"
"Who's this?" she said. "Who's calling me up at this crazy goddam hour?"
That sort of scared me a little bit. "Well, I know it's quite late," I said, in this very mature voice and all. "I hope you'll forgive me, but I was very anxious to get in touch with you." I said it suave as hell. I really did.
"Who is this?" she said.
"Well, you don't know me, but I'm a friend of Eddie Birdsell's. He suggested that if I were in town sometime, we ought to get together for a cocktail or two."
"Who? You're a friend of who?" Boy, she was a real tigress over the phone. She was damn near yelling at me.
"Edmund Birdsell. Eddie Birdsell," I said. I couldn't remember if his name was Edmund or Edward. I only met him once, at a goddam stupid party.
"I don't know anybody by that name, Jack. And if you think I enjoy bein' woke up in the middle-"
"Eddie Birdsell? From Princeton?" I said.
You could tell she was running the name over in her mind and all.
"Birdsell, Birdsell... from Princeton... Princeton College?"
"That's right," I said.
"You from Princeton College?"
"Well, approximately."
"Oh... How is Eddie?" she said. "This is certainly a peculiar time to call a person up, though. Jesus Christ."
"He's fine. He asked to be remembered to you."
"Well, thank you. Remember me to him," she said. "He's a grand person. What's he doing now?" She was getting friendly as hell, all of a sudden.
"Oh, you know. Same old stuff," I said. How the hell did I know what he was doing? I hardly knew the guy. I didn't even know if he was still at Princeton. "Look," I said. "Would you be interested in meeting me for a cocktail somewhere?"
"By any chance do you have any idea what time it is?" she said. "What's your name, anyhow, may I ask?" She was getting an English accent, all of a sudden. "You sound a little on the young side."
I laughed. "Thank you for the compliment," I said- suave as hell. "Holden Caulfield's my name." I should've given her a phony name, but I didn't think of it.
"Well, look, Mr. Cawffle. I'm not in the habit of making engagements in the middle of the night. I'm a working gal."
"Tomorrow's Sunday," I told her.
"Well, anyway. I gotta get my beauty sleep. You know how it is."
"I thought we might have just one cocktail together. It isn't too late."
"Well. You're very sweet," she said. "Where ya callin' from? Where ya at now, anyways?"
"Me? I'm in a phone booth."
"Oh," she said. Then there was this very long pause. "Well, I'd like awfully to get together with you sometime, Mr. Cawffle. You sound very attractive. You sound like a very attractive person. But it is late."
"I could come up to your place."
"Well, ordinary, I'd say grand. I mean I'd love to have you drop up for a cocktail, but my roommate happens to be ill. She's been laying here all night without a wink of sleep. She just this minute closed her eyes and all. I mean."
"Oh. That's too bad."
"Where ya stopping at? Perhaps we could get together for cocktails tomorrow."
"I can't make it tomorrow," I said. "Tonight's the only time I can make it." What a dope I was. I shouldn't've said that.
"Oh. Well, I'm awfully sorry."
"I'll say hello to Eddie for you."
"Willya do that? I hope you enjoy your stay in New York. It's a grand place."
"I know it is. Thanks. Good night," I said. Then I hung up.
Boy, I really fouled that up. I should've at least made it for cocktails or something.
It was still pretty early. I'm not sure what time it was, but it wasn't too late. The one thing I hate to do is go to bed when I'm not even tired. So I opened my suitcases and took out a clean shirt, and then I went in the bathroom and washed and changed my shirt. What I thought I'd do, I thought I'd go downstairs and see what the hell was going on in the Lavender Room. They had this night club, the Lavender Room, in the hotel.
While I was changing my shirt, I damn near gave my kid sister Phoebe a buzz, though. I certainly felt like talking to her on the phone. Somebody with sense and all. But I couldn't take a chance on giving her a buzz, because she was only a little kid and she wouldn't have been up, let alone anywhere near the phone. I thought of maybe hanging up if my parents answered, but that wouldn't've worked, either. They'd know it was me. My mother always knows it's me. She's psychic. But I certainly wouldn't have minded shooting the crap with old Phoebe for a while.
You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart. I mean she's had all A's ever since she started school. As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family. My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. I'm the only really dumb one. But you ought to see old Phoebe. She has this sort of red hair, a little bit like Allie's was, that's very short in the summertime. In the summertime, she sticks it behind her ears. She has nice, pretty little ears. In the wintertime, it's pretty long, though. Sometimes my mother braids it and sometimes she doesn't. It's really nice, though. She's only ten. She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate skinny. You'd like her. I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it's a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it's a pretty good movie. D.B. and I took her to see this French movie, The Baker's Wife, with Raimu in it. It killed her. Her favorite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddam movie by heart, because I've taken her to see it about ten times. When old Donat comes up to this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he's running away from the cops and all, Phoebe'll say right out loud in the movie-right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it-"Can you eat the herring?" She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that's really a German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Phoebe beats him to it-she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face. She's all right. You'd like her. The only trouble is, she's a little too affectionate sometimes. She's very emotional, for a child. She really is. Something else she does, she writes books all the time. Only, she doesn't finish them. They're all about some kid named Hazel Weatherfield-only old Phoebe spells it "Hazle." Old Hazle Weatherfield is a girl detective. She's supposed to be an orphan, but her old man keeps showing up. Her old man's always a "tall attractive gentleman about 20 years of age." That kills me. Old Phoebe. I swear to God you'd like her. She was smart even when she was a very tiny little kid. When she was a very tiny little kid, I and Allie used to take her to the park with us, especially on Sundays. Allie had this sailboat he used to like to fool around with on Sundays, and we used to take old Phoebe with us. She'd wear white gloves and walk right between us, like a lady and all. And when Allie and I were having some conversation about things in general, old Phoebe'd be listening. Sometimes you'd forget she was around, because she was such a little kid, but she'd let you know. She'd interrupt you all the time. She'd give Allie or I a push or something, and say, "Who? Who said that? Bobby or the lady?" And we'd tell her who said it, and she'd say, "Oh," and go right on listening and all. She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too. She's ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she still kills everybody-everybody with any sense, anyway.
Anyway, she was somebody you always felt like talking to on the phone. But I was too afraid my parents would answer, and then they'd find out I was in New York and kicked out of Pencey and all. So I just finished putting on my shirt. Then I got all ready and went down in the elevator to the lobby to see what was going on.
Except for a few pimpy-looking guys, and a few whory-looking blondes, the lobby was pretty empty. But you could hear the band playing in the Lavender Room, and so I went in there. It wasn't very crowded, but they gave me a lousy table anyway-way in the back. I should've waved a buck under the head-waiter's nose. In New York, boy, money really talks-I'm not kidding.
The band was putrid. Buddy Singer. Very brassy, but not good brassy-corny brassy. Also, there were very few people around my age in the place. In fact, nobody was around my age. They were mostly old, show-offy-looking guys with their dates. Except at the table right next to me. At the table right next to me, there were these three girls around thirty or so. The whole three of them were pretty ugly, and they all had on the kind of hats that you knew they didn't really live in New York, but one of them, the blonde one, wasn't too bad. She was sort of cute, the blonde one, and I started giving her the old eye a little bit, but just then the waiter came up for my order. I ordered a Scotch and soda, and told him not to mix it-I said it fast as hell, because if you hem and haw, they think you're under twenty-one and won't sell you any intoxicating liquor. I had trouble with him anyway, though. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but do you have some verification of your age? Your driver's license, perhaps?"
I gave him this very cold stare, like he'd insulted the hell out of me, and asked him, "Do I look like I'm under twenty-one?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but we have our-"
"Okay, okay," I said. I figured the hell with it. "Bring me a Coke." He started to go away, but I called him back. "Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?" I asked him. I asked him very nicely and all. "I can't sit in a corny place like this cold sober. Can'tcha stick a little rum in it or something?"
"I'm very sorry, sir... " he said, and beat it on me. I didn't hold it against him, though. They lose their jobs if they get caught selling to a minor. I'm a goddam minor.
I started giving the three witches at the next table the eye again. That is, the blonde one. The other two were strictly from hunger. I didn't do it crudely, though. I just gave all three of them this very cool glance and all. What they did, though, the three of them, when I did it, they started giggling like morons. They probably thought I was too young to give anybody the once-over. That annoyed hell out of me- you'd've thought I wanted to marry them or something. I should've given them the freeze, after they did that, but the trouble was, I really felt like dancing. I'm very fond of dancing, sometimes, and that was one of the times. So all of a sudden, I sort of leaned over and said, "Would any of you girls care to dance?" I didn't ask them crudely or anything. Very suave, in fact. But God damn it, they thought that was a panic, too. They started giggling some more. I'm not kidding, they were three real morons. "C'mon," I said. "I'll dance with you one at a time. All right? How 'bout it? C'mon!" I really felt like dancing.
Finally, the blonde one got up to dance with me, because you could tell I was really talking to her, and we walked out to the dance floor. The other two grools nearly had hysterics when we did. I certainly must've been very hard up to even bother with any of them.
But it was worth it. The blonde was some dancer. She was one of the best dancers I ever danced with. I'm not kidding, some of these very stupid girls can really knock you out on a dance floor. You take a really smart girl, and half the time she's trying to lead you around the dance floor, or else she's such a lousy dancer, the best thing to do is stay at the table and just get drunk with her.
"You really can dance," I told the blonde one. "You oughta be a pro. I mean it. I danced with a pro once, and you're twice as good as she was. Did you ever hear of Marco and Miranda?"
"What?" she said. She wasn't even listening to me. She was looking all around the place.
"I said did you ever hear of Marco and Miranda?"
"I don't know. No. I don't know."
"Well, they're dancers, she's a dancer. She's not too hot, though. She does everything she's supposed to, but she's not so hot anyway. You know when a girl's really a terrific dancer?"
"Wudga say?" she said. She wasn't listening to me, even. Her mind was wandering all over the place.
"I said do you know when a girl's really a terrific dancer?"
"Uh-uh."
"Well-where I have my hand on your back. If I think there isn't anything underneath my hand-no can, no legs, no feet, no anything-then the girl's really a terrific dancer."
She wasn't listening, though. So I ignored her for a while. We just danced. God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing "Just One of Those Things" and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced-I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor-but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer. I could hardly stop myself from sort of giving her a kiss on the top of her dopey head-you know- right where the part is, and all. She got sore when I did it.
"Hey! What's the idea?"
"Nothing. No idea. You really can dance," I said. "I have a kid sister that's only in the goddam fourth grade. You're about as good as she is, and she can dance better than anybody living or dead."
"Watch your language, if you don't mind."
What a lady, boy. A queen, for Chrissake.
"Where you girls from?" I asked her.
She didn't answer me, though. She was busy looking around for old Peter Lorre to show up, I guess.
"Where you girls from?" I asked her again.
"What?" she said.
"Where you girls from? Don't answer if you don't feel like it. I don't want you to strain yourself."
"Seattle, Washington," she said. She was doing me a big favor to tell me.
"You're a very good conversationalist," I told her. "You know that?"
"What?"
I let it drop. It was over her head, anyway. "Do you feel like jitterbugging a little bit, if they play a fast one? Not corny jitterbug, not jump or anything-just nice and easy. Everybody'll all sit down when they play a fast one, except the old guys and the fat guys, and we'll have plenty of room. Okay?"
"It's immaterial to me," she said. "Hey-how old are you, anyhow?"
That annoyed me, for some reason. "Oh, Christ. Don't spoil it," I said. "I'm twelve, for Chrissake. I'm big for my age."
"Listen. I toleja about that. I don't like that type language," she said. "If you're gonna use that type language, I can go sit down with my girl friends, you know."
I apologized like a madman, because the band was starting a fast one. She started jitterbugging with me- but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
They didn't invite me to sit down at their table- mostly because they were too ignorant-but I sat down anyway. The blonde I'd been dancing with's name was Bernice something-Crabs or Krebs. The two ugly ones' names were Marty and Laverne. I told them my name was Jim Steele, just for the hell of it. Then I tried to get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was practically impossible. You had to twist their arms. You could hardly tell which was the stupidest of the three of them. And the whole three of them kept looking all around the goddam room, like as if they expected a flock of goddam movie stars to come in any minute. They probably thought movie stars always hung out in the Lavender Room when they came to New York, instead of the Stork Club or El Morocco and all. Anyway, it took me about a half hour to find out where they all worked and all in Seattle. They all worked in the same insurance office. I asked them if they liked it, but do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes? I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.
I danced with them all-the whole three of them-one at a time. The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.
"Where?" she asked me-excited as hell. "Where?"
"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"
She practically stopped dancing, and started looking over everybody's heads to see if she could see him. "Oh, shoot!" she said. I'd just about broken her heart- I really had. I was sorry as hell I'd kidded her. Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.
Here's what was very funny, though. When we got back to the table, old Marty told the other two that Gary Cooper had just gone out. Boy, old Laverne and Bernice nearly committed suicide when they heard that. They got all excited and asked Marty if she'd seen him and all. Old Mart said she'd only caught a glimpse of him. That killed me.
The bar was closing up for the night, so I bought them all two drinks apiece quick before it closed, and I ordered two more Cokes for myself. The goddam table was lousy with glasses. The one ugly one, Laverne, kept kidding me because I was only drinking Cokes. She had a sterling sense of humor. She and old Marty were drinking Tom Collinses-in the middle of December, for God's sake. They didn't know any better. The blonde one, old Bernice, was drinking bourbon and water. She was really putting it away, too. The whole three of them kept looking for movie stars the whole time. They hardly talked-even to each other. Old Marty talked more than the other two. She kept saying these very corny, boring things, like calling the can the "little girls' room," and she thought Buddy Singer's poor old beat-up clarinet player was really terrific when he stood up and took a couple of ice-cold hot licks. She called his clarinet a "licorice stick." Was she corny. The other ugly one, Laverne, thought she was a very witty type. She kept asking me to call up my father and ask him what he was doing tonight. She kept asking me if my father had a date or not. Four times she asked me that-she was certainly witty. Old Bernice, the blonde one, didn't say hardly anything at all. Every time I'd ask her something, she said "What?" That can get on your nerves after a while.
All of a sudden, when they finished their drink, all three of them stood up on me and said they had to get to bed. They said they were going to get up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall. I tried to get them to stick around for a while, but they wouldn't. So we said good-by and all. I told them I'd look them up in Seattle sometime, if I ever got there, but I doubt if I ever will. Look them up, I mean.
With cigarettes and all, the check came to about thirteen bucks. I think they should've at least offered to pay for the drinks they had before I joined them-I wouldn't've let them, naturally, but they should've at least offered. I didn't care much, though. They were so ignorant, and they had those sad, fancy hats on and all. And that business about getting up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall depressed me. If somebody, some girl in an awful-looking hat, for instance, comes all the way to New York-from Seattle, Washington, for God's sake-and ends up getting up early in the morning to see the goddam first show at Radio City Music Hall, it makes me so depressed I can't stand it. I'd've bought the whole three of them a hundred drinks if only they hadn't told me that.
I left the Lavender Room pretty soon after they did. They were closing it up anyway, and the band had quit a long time ago. In the first place, it was one of those places that are very terrible to be in unless you have somebody good to dance with, or unless the waiter lets you buy real drinks instead of just Cokes. There isn't any night club in the world you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out.
All of a sudden, on my way out to the lobby, I got old Jane Gallagher on the brain again. I got her on, and I couldn't get her off. I sat down in this vomity-looking chair in the lobby and thought about her and Stradlater sitting in that goddam Ed Banky's car, and though I was pretty damn sure old Stradlater hadn't given her the time-I know old Jane like a book-I still couldn't get her off my brain. I knew her like a book. I really did. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and after I got to know her, the whole summer long we played tennis together almost every morning and golf almost every afternoon. I really got to know her quite intimately. I don't mean it was anything physical or anything-it wasn't-but we saw each other all the time. You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.
The way I met her, this Doberman pinscher she had used to come over and relieve himself on our lawn, and my mother got very irritated about it. She called up Jane's mother and made a big stink about it. My mother can make a very big stink about that kind of stuff. Then what happened, a couple of days later I saw Jane laying on her stomach next to the swimming pool, at the club, and I said hello to her. I knew she lived in the house next to ours, but I'd never conversed with her before or anything. She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day, though. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddam where her dog relieved himself. He could do it in the living room, for all I cared. Anyway, after that, Jane and I got to be friends and all. I played golf with her that same afternoon. She lost eight balls, I remember. Eight. I had a terrible time getting her to at least open her eyes when she took a swing at the ball. I improved her game immensely, though. I'm a very good golfer. If I told you what I go around in, you probably wouldn't believe me. I almost was once in a movie short, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I figured that anybody that hates the movies as much as I do, I'd be a phony if I let them stick me in a movie short.
She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She'd never met Allie or anything, because that was her first summer in Maine-before that, she went to Cape Cod-but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff.
My mother didn't like her too much. I mean my mother always thought Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or something when they didn't say hello. My mother saw them in the village a lot, because Jane used to drive to market with her mother in this LaSalle convertible they had. My mother didn't think Jane was pretty, even. I did, though. I just liked the way she looked, that's all.
I remember this one afternoon. It was the only time old Jane and I ever got close to necking, even. It was a Saturday and it was raining like a bastard out, and I was over at her house, on the porch-they had this big screened-in porch. We were playing checkers. I used to kid her once in a while because she wouldn't take her kings out of the back row. But I didn't kid her much, though. You never wanted to kid Jane too much. I think I really like it best when you can kid the pants off a girl when the opportunity arises, but it's a funny thing. The girls I like best are the ones I never feel much like kidding. Sometimes I think they'd like it if you kidded them-in fact, I know they would-but it's hard to get started, once you've known them a pretty long time and never kidded them. Anyway, I was telling you about that afternoon Jane and I came close to necking. It was raining like hell and we were out on her porch, and all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn't know him too well or anything, but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn't talk to you much unless he wanted something off you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn't answer him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares-boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her-I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over-anywhere-her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears-her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. After a while, she got up and went in and put on this red and white sweater she had, that knocked me out, and we went to a goddam movie. I asked her, on the way, if Mr. Cudahy-that was the booze hound's name-had ever tried to get wise with her. She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure, and I wouldn't've put it past that Cudahy bastard. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what's the matter.
I don't want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn't. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane's. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody's neck, they're around twenty-five or thirty and usually they're doing it to their husband or their little kid-I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl's quite young and all and she does it, it's so pretty it just about kills you.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking about while I sat in that vomity-looking chair in the lobby. Old Jane. Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky's car, it almost drove me crazy. I knew she wouldn't let him get to first base with her, but it drove me crazy anyway. I don't even like to talk about it, if you want to know the truth.
There was hardly anybody in the lobby any more. Even all the whory-looking blondes weren't around any more, and all of a sudden I felt like getting the hell out of the place. It was too depressing. And I wasn't tired or anything. So I went up to my room and put on my coat. I also took a look out the window to see if all the perverts were still in action, but the lights and all were out now. I went down in the elevator again and got a cab and told the driver to take me down to Ernie's. Ernie's is this night club in Greenwich Village that my brother D.B. used to go to quite frequently before he went out to Hollywood and prostituted himself. He used to take me with him once in a while. Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano. He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something, but he can really play the piano. He's so good he's almost corny, in fact. I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play, but sometimes you feel like turning his goddam piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays, he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you unless you're a big shot.
The cab I had was a real old one that smelled like someone'd just tossed his cookies in it. I always get those vomity kind of cabs if I go anywhere late at night. What made it worse, it was so quiet and lonesome out, even though it was Saturday night. I didn't see hardly anybody on the street. Now and then you just saw a man and a girl crossing a street, with their arms around each other's waists and all, or a bunch of hoodlumy-looking guys and their dates, all of them laughing like hyenas at something you could bet wasn't funny. New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe. But finally, after I was riding a while, the cab driver and I sort of struck up a conversation. His name was Horwitz. He was a much better guy than the other driver I'd had. Anyway, I thought maybe he might know about the ducks.
"Hey, Horwitz," I said. "You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?"
"The what?"
"The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know."
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?"
"Where who goes?"
"The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves-go south or something?"
Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. He was a very impatient-type guy. He wasn't a bad guy, though. "How the hell should I know?" he said. "How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?"
"Well, don't get sore about it," I said. He was sore about it or something.
"Who's sore? Nobody's sore."
I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. But he started it up again himself. He turned all the way around again, and said, "The fish don't go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake."
"The fish-that's different. The fish is different. I'm talking about the ducks," I said.
"What's different about it? Nothin's different about it," Horwitz said. Everything he said, he sounded sore about something. "It's tougher for the fish, the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. Use your head, for Chrissake."
I didn't say anything for about a minute. Then I said, "All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake's a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?"
Old Horwitz turned around again. "What the hellaya mean what do they do?" he yelled at me. "They stay right where they are, for Chrissake."
"They can't just ignore the ice. They can't just ignore it."
"Who's ignoring it? Nobody's ignoring it!" Horwitz said. He got so damn excited and all, I was afraid he was going to drive the cab right into a lamppost or something. "They live right in the goddam ice. It's their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter."
"Yeah? What do they eat, then? I mean if they're frozen solid, they can't swim around looking for food and all."
"Their bodies, for Chrissake-what'sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that's in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake. See what I mean?" He turned way the hell around again to look at me.
"Oh," I said. I let it drop. I was afraid he was going to crack the damn taxi up or something. Besides, he was such a touchy guy, it wasn't any pleasure discussing anything with him. "Would you care to stop off and have a drink with me somewhere?" I said.
He didn't answer me, though. I guess he was still thinking. I asked him again, though. He was a pretty good guy. Quite amusing and all.
"I ain't got no time for no liquor, bud," he said. "How the hell old are you, anyways? Why ain'tcha home in bed?"
"I'm not tired."
When I got out in front of Ernie's and paid the fare, old Horwitz brought up the fish again. He certainly had it on his mind. "Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature'd take care of you, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?"
"No, but-"
"You're goddam right they don't," Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell. He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. Everything you said made him sore.
Even though it was so late, old Ernie's was jampacked. Mostly with prep school jerks and college jerks. Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas vacation than the schools I go to. You could hardly check your coat, it was so crowded. It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. It was supposed to be something holy, for God's sake, when he sat down at the piano. Nobody's that good. About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn't see his fingers while he played-just his big old face. Big deal. I'm not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet. Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony-I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don't even think he knows any more when he's playing right or not. It isn't all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off-they'd foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance. Anyway, it made me feel depressed and lousy again, and I damn near got my coat back and went back to the hotel, but it was too early and I didn't feel much like being all alone.
They finally got me this stinking table, right up against a wall and behind a goddam post, where you couldn't see anything. It was one of those tiny little tables that if the people at the next table don't get up to let you by-and they never do, the bastards-you practically have to climb into your chair. I ordered a Scotch and soda, which is my favorite drink, next to frozen Daiquiris. If you were only around six years old, you could get liquor at Ernie's, the place was so dark and all, and besides, nobody cared how old you were. You could even be a dope fiend and nobody'd care.
I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding. At this other tiny table, right to my left, practically on top of me, there was this funny-looking guy and this funny-looking girl. They were around my age, or maybe just a little older. It was funny. You could see they were being careful as hell not to drink up the minimum too fast. I listened to their conversation for a while, because I didn't have anything else to do. He was telling her about some pro football game he'd seen that afternoon. He gave her every single goddam play in the whole game-I'm not kidding. He was the most boring guy I ever listened to. And you could tell his date wasn't even interested in the goddam game, but she was even funnier-looking than he was, so I guess she had to listen. Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes. Sometimes I can't even look at them, especially if they're with some dopey guy that's telling them all about a goddam football game. On my right, the conversation was even worse, though. On my right there was this very Joe Yale-looking guy, in a gray flannel suit and one of those flitty-looking Tattersall vests. All those Ivy League bastards look alike. My father wants me to go to Yale, or maybe Princeton, but I swear, I wouldn't go to one of those Ivy League colleges, if I was dying, for God's sake. Anyway, this Joe Yale-looking guy had a terrific-looking girl with him. Boy, she was good-looking. But you should've heard the conversation they were having. In the first place, they were both slightly crocked. What he was doing, he was giving her a feel under the table, and at the same time telling her all about some guy in his dorm that had eaten a whole bottle of aspirin and nearly committed suicide. His date kept saying to him, "How horrible... Don't, darling. Please, don't. Not here." Imagine giving somebody a feel and telling them about a guy committing suicide at the same time! They killed me.
I certainly began to feel like a prize horse's ass, though, sitting there all by myself. There wasn't anything to do except smoke and drink. What I did do, though, I told the waiter to ask old Ernie if he'd care to join me for a drink. I told him to tell him I was D.B.'s brother. I don't think he ever even gave him my message, though. Those bastards never give your message to anybody.
All of a sudden, this girl came up to me and said, "Holden Caulfield!" Her name was Lillian Simmons. My brother D.B. used to go around with her for a while. She had very big knockers.
"Hi," I said. I tried to get up, naturally, but it was some job getting up, in a place like that. She had some Navy officer with her that looked like he had a poker up his ass.
"How marvelous to see you!" old Lillian Simmons said. Strictly a phony. "How's your big brother?" That's all she really wanted to know.
"He's fine. He's in Hollywood."
"In Hollywood! How marvelous! What's he doing?"
"I don't know. Writing," I said. I didn't feel like discussing it. You could tell she thought it was a big deal, his being in Hollywood. Almost everybody does. Mostly people who've never read any of his stories. It drives me crazy, though.
"How exciting," old Lillian said. Then she introduced me to the Navy guy. His name was Commander Blop or something. He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God, I hate that stuff. "Are you all alone, baby?" old Lillian asked me. She was blocking up the whole goddam traffic in the aisle. You could tell she liked to block up a lot of traffic. This waiter was waiting for her to move out of the way, but she didn't even notice him. It was funny. You could tell the waiter didn't like her much, you could tell even the Navy guy didn't like her much, even though he was dating her. And I didn't like her much. Nobody did. You had to feel sort of sorry for her, in a way. "Don't you have a date, baby?" she asked me. I was standing up now, and she didn't even tell me to sit down. She was the type that keeps you standing up for hours. "Isn't he handsome?" she said to the Navy guy. "Holden, you're getting handsomer by the minute." The Navy guy told her to come on. He told her they were blocking up the whole aisle. "Holden, come join us," old Lillian said. "Bring your drink."
"I was just leaving," I told her. "I have to meet somebody." You could tell she was just trying to get in good with me. So that I'd tell old D.B. about it.
"Well, you little so-and-so. All right for you. Tell your big brother I hate him, when you see him."
Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
After I'd told her I had to meet somebody, I didn't have any goddam choice except to leave. I couldn't even stick around to hear old Ernie play something halfway decent. But I certainly wasn't going to sit down at a table with old Lillian Simmons and that Navy guy and be bored to death. So I left. It made me mad, though, when I was getting my coat. People are always ruining things for you.
I walked all the way back to the hotel. Forty-one gorgeous blocks. I didn't do it because I felt like walking or anything. It was more because I didn't feel like getting in and out of another taxicab. Sometimes you get tired of riding in taxicabs the same way you get tired riding in elevators. All of a sudden, you have to walk, no matter how far or how high up. When I was a kid, I used to walk all the way up to our apartment very frequently. Twelve stories.
You wouldn't even have known it had snowed at all. There was hardly any snow on the sidewalks. But it was freezing cold, and I took my red hunting hat out of my pocket and put it on-I didn't give a damn how I looked. I even put the earlaps down. I wished I knew who'd swiped my gloves at Pencey, because my hands were freezing. Not that I'd have done much about it even if I had known. I'm one of these very yellow guys. I try not to show it, but I am. For instance, if I'd found out at Pencey who'd stolen my gloves, I probably would've gone down to the crook's room and said, "Okay. How 'bout handing over those gloves?" Then the crook that had stolen them probably would've said, his voice very innocent and all, "What gloves?" Then what I probably would've done, I'd have gone in his closet and found the gloves somewhere. Hidden in his goddam galoshes or something, for instance. I'd have taken them out and showed them to the guy and said, "I suppose these are your goddam gloves?" Then the crook probably would've given me this very phony, innocent look, and said, "I never saw those gloves before in my life. If they're yours, take 'em. I don't want the goddam things." Then I probably would've just stood there for about five minutes. I'd have the damn gloves right in my hand and all, but I'd feel I ought to sock the guy in the jaw or something-break his goddam jaw. Only, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I'd just stand there, trying to look tough. What I might do, I might say something very cutting and snotty, to rile him up-instead of socking him in the jaw. Anyway if I did say something very cutting and snotty, he'd probably get up and come over to me and say, "Listen, Caulfield. Are you calling me a crook?" Then, instead of saying, "You're goddam right I am, you dirty crooked bastard!" all I probably would've said would be, "All I know is my goddam gloves were in your goddam galoshes." Right away then, the guy would know for sure that I wasn't going to take a sock at him, and he probably would've said, "Listen. Let's get this straight. Are you calling me a thief?" Then I probably would've said, "Nobody's calling anybody a thief. All I know is my gloves were in your goddam galoshes." It could go on like that for hours. Finally, though, I'd leave his room without even taking a sock at him. I'd probably go down to the can and sneak a cigarette and watch myself getting tough in the mirror. Anyway, that's what I thought about the whole way back to the hotel. It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something-it used to drive my mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. Maybe that's why I'm partly yellow. It's no excuse, though. It really isn't. What you should be is not yellow at all. If you're supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it. I'm just no good at it, though. I'd rather push a guy out the window or chop his head off with an ax than sock him in the jaw. I hate fist fights. I don't mind getting hit so much-although I'm not crazy about it, naturally-but what scares me most in a fist fight is the guy's face. I can't stand looking at the other guy's face, is my trouble. It wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something. It's a funny kind of yellowness, when you come to think of it, but it's yellowness, all right. I'm not kidding myself.
The more I thought about my gloves and my yellowness, the more depressed I got, and I decided, while I was walking and all, to stop off and have a drink somewhere. I'd only had three drinks at Ernie's, and I didn't even finish the last one. One thing I have, it's a terrific capacity. I can drink all night and not even show it, if I'm in the mood. Once, at the Whooton School, this other boy, Raymond Goldfarb, and I bought a pint of Scotch and drank it in the chapel one Saturday night, where nobody'd see us. He got stinking, but I hardly didn't even show it. I just got very cool and nonchalant. I puked before I went to bed, but I didn't really have to-I forced myself.
Anyway, before I got to the hotel, I started to go in this dumpy-looking bar, but two guys came out, drunk as hell, and wanted to know where the subway was. One of them was this very Cuban-looking guy, and he kept breathing his stinking breath in my face while I gave him directions. I ended up not even going in the damn bar. I just went back to the hotel.
The whole lobby was empty. It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. It really did. I wasn't sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead.
Then, all of a sudden, I got in this big mess.
The first thing when I got in the elevator, the elevator guy said to me, "Innarested in having a good time, fella? Or is it too late for you?"
"How do you mean?" I said. I didn't know what he was driving at or anything.
"Innarested in a little tail t'night?"
"Me?" I said. Which was a very dumb answer, but it's quite embarrassing when somebody comes right up and asks you a question like that.
"How old are you, chief?" the elevator guy said.
"Why?" I said. "Twenty-two."
"Uh huh. Well, how 'bout it? Y'innarested? Five bucks a throw. Fifteen bucks the whole night." He looked at his wrist watch. "Till noon. Five bucks a throw, fifteen bucks till noon."
"Okay," I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
"Okay what? A throw, or till noon? I gotta know."
"Just a throw."
"Okay, what room ya in?"
I looked at the red thing with my number on it, on my key. "Twelve twenty-two," I said. I was already sort of sorry I'd let the thing start rolling, but it was too late now.
"Okay. I'll send a girl up in about fifteen minutes." He opened the doors and I got out.
"Hey, is she good-looking?" I asked him. "I don't want any old bag."
"No old bag. Don't worry about it, chief."
"Who do I pay?"
"Her," he said. "Let's go, chief." He shut the doors, practically right in my face.
I went to my room and put some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time-or you're afraid they will. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat-some girl, I mean-that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddam car. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though -I don't even remember what any more. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl-a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean-she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.
Anyway, while I was putting on another clean shirt, I sort of figured this was my big chance, in a way. I figured if she was a prostitute and all, I could get in some practice on her, in case I ever get married or anything. I worry about that stuff sometimes. I read this book once, at the Whooton School, that had this very sophisticated, suave, sexy guy in it. Monsieur Blanchard was his name, I can still remember. It was a lousy book, but this Blanchard guy was pretty good. He had this big château and all on the Riviera, in Europe, and all he did in his spare time was beat women off with a club. He was a real rake and all, but he knocked women out. He said, in this one part, that a woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right. It was a very corny book-I realize that-but I couldn't get that violin stuff out of my mind anyway. In a way, that's why I sort of wanted to get some practice in, in case I ever get married. Caulfield and his Magic Violin, boy. It's corny, I realize, but it isn't too corny. I wouldn't mind being pretty good at that stuff. Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to just get her goddam brassiere off. By the time I did get it off, she was about ready to spit in my eye.
Anyway, I kept walking around the room, waiting for this prostitute to show up. I kept hoping she'd be good-looking. I didn't care too much, though. I sort of just wanted to get it over with. Finally, somebody knocked on the door, and when I went to open it, I had my suitcase right in the way and I fell over it and damn near broke my knee. I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.
When I opened the door, this prostitute was standing there. She had a polo coat on, and no hat. She was sort of a blonde, but you could tell she dyed her hair. She wasn't any old bag, though. "How do you do," I said. Suave as hell, boy.
"You the guy Maurice said?" she asked me. She didn't seem too goddam friendly.
"Is he the elevator boy?"
"Yeah," she said.
"Yes, I am. Come in, won't you?" I said. I was getting more and more nonchalant as it went along. I really was.
She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of chucked it on the bed. She had on a green dress underneath. Then she sort of sat down sideways on the chair that went with the desk in the room and started jiggling her foot up and down. She crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. She was very nervous, for a prostitute. She really was. I think it was because she was young as hell. She was around my age. I sat down in the big chair, next to her, and offered her a cigarette. "I don't smoke," she said. She had a tiny little wheeny-whiny voice. You could hardly hear her. She never said thank you, either, when you offered her something. She just didn't know any better.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jim Steele," I said.
"Ya got a watch on ya?" she said. She didn't care what the hell my name was, naturally. "Hey, how old are you, anyways?"
"Me? Twenty-two."
"Like fun you are."
It was a funny thing to say. It sounded like a real kid. You'd think a prostitute and all would say "Like hell you are" or "Cut the crap" instead of "Like fun you are."
"How old are you?" I asked her.
"Old enough to know better," she said. She was really witty. "Ya got a watch on ya?" she asked me again, and then she stood up and pulled her dress over her head.
I certainly felt peculiar when she did that. I mean she did it so sudden and all. I know you're supposed to feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn't. Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy.
"Ya got a watch on ya, hey?"
"No. No, I don't," I said. Boy, was I feeling peculiar. "What's your name?" I asked her. All she had on was this pink slip. It was really quite embarrassing. It really was.
"Sunny," she said. "Let's go, hey."
"Don't you feel like talking for a while?" I asked her. It was a childish thing to say, but I was feeling so damn peculiar. "Are you in a very big hurry?"
She looked at me like I was a madman. "What the heck ya wanna talk about?" she said.
"I don't know. Nothing special. I just thought perhaps you might care to chat for a while."
She sat down in the chair next to the desk again. She didn't like it, though, you could tell. She started jiggling her foot again-boy, she was a nervous girl.
"Would you care for a cigarette now?" I said. I forgot she didn't smoke.
"I don't smoke. Listen, if you're gonna talk, do it. I got things to do."
I couldn't think of anything to talk about, though. I thought of asking her how she got to be a prostitute and all, but I was scared to ask her. She probably wouldn't've told me anyway.
"You don't come from New York, do you?" I said finally. That's all I could think of.
"Hollywood," she said. Then she got up and went over to where she'd put her dress down, on the bed. "Ya got a hanger? I don't want to get my dress all wrinkly. It's brand-clean."
"Sure," I said right away. I was only too glad to get up and do something. I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell-I don't know why exactly.
I sat down again and tried to keep the old conversation going. She was a lousy conversationalist. "Do you work every night?" I asked her-it sounded sort of awful, after I'd said it.
"Yeah." She was walking all around the room. She picked up the menu off the desk and read it.
"What do you do during the day?"
She sort of shrugged her shoulders. She was pretty skinny. "Sleep. Go to the show." She put down the menu and looked at me. "Let's go, hey. I haven't got all-"
"Look," I said. "I don't feel very much like myself tonight. I've had a rough night. Honest to God. I'll pay you and all, but do you mind very much if we don't do it? Do you mind very much?" The trouble was, I just didn't want to do it. I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth. She was depressing. Her green dress hanging in the closet and all. And besides, I don't think I could ever do it with somebody that sits in a stupid movie all day long. I really don't think I could.
She came over to me, with this funny look on her face, like as if she didn't believe me. "What'sa matter?" she said.
"Nothing's the matter." Boy, was I getting nervous. "The thing is, I had an operation very recently."
"Yeah? Where?"
"On my wuddayacallit-my clavichord."
"Yeah? Where the hell's that?"
"The clavichord?" I said. "Well, actually, it's in the spinal canal. I mean it's quite a ways down in the spinal canal."
"Yeah?" she said. "That's tough." Then she sat down on my goddam lap. "You're cute."
She made me so nervous, I just kept on lying my head off. "I'm still recuperating," I told her.
"You look like a guy in the movies. You know. Whosis. You know who I mean. What the heck's his name?"
"I don't know," I said. She wouldn't get off my goddam lap.
"Sure you know. He was in that pitcher with Mel-vine Douglas? The one that was Mel-vine Douglas's kid brother? That falls off this boat? You know who I mean."
"No, I don't. I go to the movies as seldom as I can."
Then she started getting funny. Crude and all.
"Do you mind cutting it out?" I said. "I'm not in the mood, I just told you. I just had an operation."
She didn't get up from my lap or anything, but she gave me this terrifically dirty look. "Listen," she said. "I was sleepin' when that crazy Maurice woke me up. If you think I'm-"
"I said I'd pay you for coming and all. I really will. I have plenty of dough. It's just that I'm practically just recovering from a very serious-"
"What the heck did you tell that crazy Maurice you wanted a girl for, then? If you just had a goddam operation on your goddam wuddayacallit. Huh?"
"I thought I'd be feeling a lot better than I do. I was a little premature in my calculations. No kidding. I'm sorry. If you'll just get up a second, I'll get my wallet. I mean it."
She was sore as hell, but she got up off my goddam lap so that I could go over and get my wallet off the chiffonier. I took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to her. "Thanks a lot," I told her. "Thanks a million."
"This is a five. It costs ten."
She was getting funny, you could tell. I was afraid something like that would happen-I really was.
"Maurice said five," I told her. "He said fifteen till noon and only five for a throw."
"Ten for a throw."
"He said five. I'm sorry-I really am-but that's all I'm gonna shell out."
She sort of shrugged her shoulders, the way she did before, and then she said, very cold, "Do you mind getting me my frock? Or would it be too much trouble?" She was a pretty spooky kid. Even with that little bitty voice she had, she could sort of scare you a little bit. If she'd been a big old prostitute, with a lot of makeup on her face and all, she wouldn't have been half as spooky.
I went and got her dress for her. She put it on and all, and then she picked up her polo coat off the bed. "So long, crumb-bum," she said.
"So long," I said. I didn't thank her or anything. I'm glad I didn't.
After Old Sunny was gone, I sat in the chair for a while and smoked a couple of cigarettes. It was getting daylight outside. Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby Fallon's house. Bobby Fallon used to live quite near us in Maine-this is, years ago. Anyway, what happened was, one day Bobby and I were going over to Lake Sedebego on our bikes. We were going to take our lunches and all, and our BB guns-we were kids and all, and we thought we could shoot something with our BB guns. Anyway, Allie heard us talking about it, and he wanted to go, and I wouldn't let him. I told him he was a child. So once in a while, now, when I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house. Hurry up." It wasn't that I didn't use to take him with me when I went somewhere. I did. But that one day, I didn't. He didn't get sore about it-he never got sore about anything- but I keep thinking about it anyway, when I get very depressed.
Finally, though, I got undressed and got in bed. I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard. I used to get in quite a few arguments about it, when I was at Whooton School, with this boy that lived down the corridor, Arthur Childs. Old Childs was a Quaker and all, and he read the Bible all the time. He was a very nice kid, and I liked him, but I could never see eye to eye with him on a lot of stuff in the Bible, especially the Disciples. He kept telling me if I didn't like the Disciples, then I didn't like Jesus and all. He said that because Jesus picked the Disciples, you were supposed to like them. I said I knew He picked them, but that He picked them at random. I said He didn't have time to go around analyzing everybody. I said I wasn't blaming Jesus or anything. It wasn't His fault that He didn't have any time. I remember I asked old Childs if he thought Judas, the one that betrayed Jesus and all, went to Hell after he committed suicide. Childs said certainly. That's exactly where I disagreed with him. I said I'd bet a thousand bucks that Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. I still would, too, if I had a thousand bucks. I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all-and fast, too-but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it. Old Childs said the trouble with me was that I didn't go to church or anything. He was right about that, in a way. I don't. In the first place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our family are atheists. If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk.
Anyway, when I was in bed, I couldn't pray worth a damn. Every time I got started, I kept picturing old Sunny calling me a crumb-bum. Finally, I sat up in bed and smoked another cigarette. It tasted lousy. I must've smoked around two packs since I left Pencey.
All of a sudden, while I was laying there smoking, somebody knocked on the door. I kept hoping it wasn't my door they were knocking on, but I knew damn well it was. I don't know how I knew, but I knew. I knew who it was, too. I'm psychic.
"Who's there?" I said. I was pretty scared. I'm very yellow about those things.
They just knocked again, though. Louder.
Finally I got out of bed, with just my pajamas on, and opened the door. I didn't even have to turn the light on in the room, because it was already daylight. Old Sunny and Maurice, the pimpy elevator guy, were standing there.
"What's the matter? Wuddaya want?" I said. Boy, my voice was shaking like hell.
"Nothin' much," old Maurice said. "Just five bucks." He did all the talking for the two of them. Old Sunny just stood there next to him, with her mouth open and all.
"I paid her already. I gave her five bucks. Ask her," I said. Boy, was my voice shaking.
"It's ten bucks, chief. I tole ya that. Ten bucks for a throw, fifteen bucks till noon. I tole ya that."
"You did not tell me that. You said five bucks a throw. You said fifteen bucks till noon, all right, but I distinctly heard you-"
"Open up, chief."
"What for?" I said. God, my old heart was damn near beating me out of the room. I wished I was dressed at least. It's terrible to be just in your pajamas when something like that happens.
"Let's go, chief," old Maurice said. Then he gave me a big shove with his crumby hand. I damn near fell over on my can-he was a huge sonuvabitch. The next thing I knew, he and old Sunny were both in the room. They acted like they owned the damn place. Old Sunny sat down on the window sill. Old Maurice sat down in the big chair and loosened his collar and all-he was wearing this elevator operator's uniform. Boy, was I nervous.
"All right, chief, let's have it. I gotta get back to work."
"I told you about ten times, I don't owe you a cent. I already gave her the five-"
"Cut the crap, now. Let's have it."
"Why should I give her another five bucks?" I said. My voice was cracking all over the place. "You're trying to chisel me."
Old Maurice unbuttoned his whole uniform coat. All he had on underneath was a phony shirt collar, but no shirt or anything. He had a big fat hairy stomach. "Nobody's tryna chisel nobody," he said. "Let's have it, chief."
"No."
When I said that, he got up from his chair and started walking towards me and all. He looked like he was very, very tired or very, very bored. God, was I scared. I sort of had my arms folded, I remember. It wouldn't have been so bad, I don't think, if I hadn't had just my goddam pajamas on.
"Let's have it, chief." He came right up to where I was standing. That's all he could say. "Let's have it, chief." He was a real moron.
"No."
"Chief, you're gonna force me inna roughin' ya up a little bit. I don't wanna do it, but that's the way it looks," he said. "You owe us five bucks."
"I don't owe you five bucks," I said. "If you rough me up, I'll yell like hell. I'll wake up everybody in the hotel. The police and all." My voice was shaking like a bastard.
"Go ahead. Yell your goddam head off. Fine," old Maurice said. "Want your parents to know you spent the night with a whore? High-class kid like you?" He was pretty sharp, in his crumby way. He really was.
"Leave me alone. If you'd said ten, it'd be different. But you distinctly-"
"Are ya gonna let us have it?" He had me right up against the damn door. He was almost standing on top of me, his crumby old hairy stomach and all.
"Leave me alone. Get the hell out of my room," I said. I still had my arms folded and all. God, what a jerk I was.
Then Sunny said something for the first time. "Hey, Maurice. Want me to get his wallet?" she said. "It's right on the wutchamacallit."
"Yeah, get it."
"Leave my wallet alone!"
"I awreddy got it," Sunny said. She waved five bucks at me. "See? All I'm takin' is the five you owe me. I'm no crook."
All of a sudden I started to cry. I'd give anything if I hadn't, but I did. "No, you're no crooks," I said. "You're just stealing five-"
"Shut up," old Maurice said, and gave me a shove.
"Leave him alone, hey," Sunny said. "C'mon, hey. We got the dough he owes us. Let's go. C'mon, hey."
"I'm comin'," old Maurice said. But he didn't.
"I mean it, Maurice, hey. Leave him alone."
"Who's hurtin' anybody?" he said, innocent as hell. Then what he did, he snapped his finger very hard on my pajamas. I won't tell you where he snapped it, but it hurt like hell. I told him he was a goddam dirty moron. "What's that?" he said. He put his hand behind his ear, like a deaf guy. "What's that? What am I?"
I was still sort of crying. I was so damn mad and nervous and all. "You're a dirty moron," I said. "You're a stupid chiseling moron, and in about two years you'll be one of those scraggy guys that come up to you on the street and ask for a dime for coffee. You'll have snot all over your dirty filthy overcoat, and you'll be-"
Then he smacked me. I didn't even try to get out of the way or duck or anything. All I felt was this terrific punch in my stomach.
I wasn't knocked out or anything, though, because I remember looking up from the floor and seeing them both go out the door and shut it. Then I stayed on the floor a fairly long time, sort of the way I did with Stradlater. Only, this time I thought I was dying. I really did. I thought I was drowning or something. The trouble was, I could hardly breathe. When I did finally get up, I had to walk to the bathroom all doubled up and holding onto my stomach and all.
But I'm crazy. I swear to God I am. About halfway to the bathroom, I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts. Old Maurice had plugged me. Now I was on the way to the bathroom to get a good shot of bourbon or something to steady my nerves and help me really go into action. I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom, dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a little bit. Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I'd hold onto the banister and all, with this blood trickling out of the side of my mouth a little at a time. What I'd do, I'd walk down a few floors-holding onto my guts, blood leaking all over the place- and then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice, to leave him alone. But I'd plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft-after I'd wiped off all the finger prints and all. Then I'd crawl back to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all.
The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.
I stayed in the bathroom for about an hour, taking a bath and all. Then I got back in bed. It took me quite a while to get to sleep-I wasn't even tired-but finally I did. What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.
I didn't sleep too long, because I think it was only around ten o'clock when I woke up. I felt pretty hungry as soon as I had a cigarette. The last time I'd eaten was those two hamburgers I had with Brossard and Ackley when we went in to Agerstown to the movies. That was a long time ago. It seemed like fifty years ago. The phone was right next to me, and I started to call down and have them send up some breakfast, but I was sort of afraid they might send it up with old Maurice. If you think I was dying to see him again, you're crazy. So I just laid around in bed for a while and smoked another cigarette. I thought of giving old Jane a buzz, to see if she was home yet and all, but I wasn't in the mood.
What I did do, I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz. She went to Mary A. Woodruff, and I knew she was home because I'd had this letter from her a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't too crazy about her, but I'd known her for years. I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not. It took me years to find it out, in old Sally's case. I think I'd have found it out a lot sooner if we hadn't necked so damn much. My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I'm necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn't got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway.
Anyway, I gave her a buzz. First the maid answered. Then her father. Then she got on. "Sally?" I said.
"Yes-who is this?" she said. She was quite a little phony. I'd already told her father who it was.
"Holden Caulfield. How are ya?"
"Holden! I'm fine! How are you?"
"Swell. Listen. How are ya, anyway? I mean how's school?"
"Fine," she said. "I mean-you know."
"Swell. Well, listen. I was wondering if you were busy today. It's Sunday, but there's always one or two matinees going on Sunday. Benefits and that stuff. Would you care to go?"
"I'd love to. Grand."
Grand. If there's one word I hate, it's grand. It's so phony. For a second, I was tempted to tell her to forget about the matinee. But we chewed the fat for a while. That is, she chewed it. You couldn't get a word in edgewise. First she told me about some Harvard guy- it probably was a freshman, but she didn't say, naturally-that was rushing hell out of her. Calling her up night and day. Night and day-that killed me. Then she told me about some other guy, some West Point cadet, that was cutting his throat over her too. Big deal. I told her to meet me under the clock at the Biltmore at two o'clock, and not to be late, because the show probably started at two-thirty. She was always late. Then I hung up. She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good-looking.
After I made the date with old Sally, I got out of bed and got dressed and packed my bag. I took a look out the window before I left the room, though, to see how all the perverts were doing, but they all had their shades down. They were the heighth of modesty in the morning. Then I went down in the elevator and checked out. I didn't see old Maurice around anywhere. I didn't break my neck looking for him, naturally, the bastard.
I got a cab outside the hotel, but I didn't have the faintest damn idea where I was going. I had no place to go. It was only Sunday, and I couldn't go home till Wednesday-or Tuesday the soonest. And I certainly didn't feel like going to another hotel and getting my brains beat out. So what I did, I told the driver to take me to Grand Central Station. It was right near the Biltmore, where I was meeting Sally later, and I figured what I'd do, I'd check my bags in one of those strong boxes that they give you a key to, then get some breakfast. I was sort of hungry. While I was in the cab, I took out my wallet and sort of counted my money. I don't remember exactly what I had left, but it was no fortune or anything. I'd spent a king's ransom in about two lousy weeks. I really had. I'm a goddam spendthrift at heart. What I don't spend, I lose. Half the time I sort of even forget to pick up my change, at restaurants and night clubs and all. It drives my parents crazy. You can't blame them. My father's quite wealthy, though. I don't know how much he makes-he's never discussed that stuff with me-but I imagine quite a lot. He's a corporation lawyer. Those boys really haul it in. Another reason I know he's quite well off, he's always investing money in shows on Broadway. They always flop, though, and it drives my mother crazy when he does it. She hasn't felt too healthy since my brother Allie died. She's very nervous. That's another reason why I hated like hell for her to know I got the ax again.
After I put my bags in one of those strong boxes at the station, I went into this little sandwich bar and had breakfast. I had quite a large breakfast, for me-orange juice, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. Usually I just drink some orange juice. I'm a very light eater. I really am. That's why I'm so damn skinny. I was supposed to be on this diet where you eat a lot of starches and crap, to gain weight and all, but I didn't ever do it. When I'm out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk. It isn't much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk. H. V. Caulfield. Holden Vitamin Caulfield.
While I was eating my eggs, these two nuns with suitcases and all-I guessed they were moving to another convent or something and were waiting for a train-came in and sat down next to me at the counter. They didn't seem to know what the hell to do with their suitcases, so I gave them a hand. They were these very inexpensive-looking suitcases-the ones that aren't genuine leather or anything. It isn't important, I know, but I hate it when somebody has cheap suitcases. It sounds terrible to say it, but I can even get to hate somebody, just looking at them, if they have cheap suitcases with them. Something happened once. For a while when I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed with this boy, Dick Slagle, that had these very inexpensive suitcases. He used to keep them under the bed, instead of on the rack, so that nobody'd see them standing next to mine. It depressed holy hell out of me, and I kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him. Mine came from Mark Cross, and they were genuine cowhide and all that crap, and I guess they cost quite a pretty penny. But it was a funny thing. Here's what happened. What I did, I finally put my suitcases under my bed, instead of on the rack, so that old Slagle wouldn't get a goddam inferiority complex about it. But here's what he did. The day after I put mine under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack. The reason he did it, it took me a while to find out, was because he wanted people to think my bags were his. He really did. He was a very funny guy, that way. He was always saying snotty things about them, my suitcases, for instance. He kept saying they were too new and bourgeois. That was his favorite goddam word. He read it somewhere or heard it somewhere. Everything I had was bourgeois as hell. Even my fountain pen was bourgeois. He borrowed it off me all the time, but it was bourgeois anyway. We only roomed together about two months. Then we both asked to be moved. And the funny thing was, I sort of missed him after we moved, because he had a helluva good sense of humor and we had a lot of fun sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if he missed me, too. At first he only used to be kidding when he called my stuff bourgeois, and I didn't give a damn-it was sort of funny, in fact. Then, after a while, you could tell he wasn't kidding any more. The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs-if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. It's one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater. At least his suitcases were as good as mine.
Anyway, these two nuns were sitting next to me, and we sort of struck up a conversation. The one right next to me had one of those straw baskets that you see nuns and Salvation Army babes collecting dough with around Christmas time. You see them standing on corners, especially on Fifth Avenue, in front of the big department stores and all. Anyway, the one next to me dropped hers on the floor and I reached down and picked it up for her. I asked her if she was out collecting money for charity and all. She said no. She said she couldn't get it in her suitcase when she was packing it and she was just carrying it. She had a pretty nice smile when she looked at you. She had a big nose, and she had on those glasses with sort of iron rims that aren't too attractive, but she had a helluva kind face. "I thought if you were taking up a collection," I told her, "I could make a small contribution. You could keep the money for when you do take up a collection."
"Oh, how very kind of you," she said, and the other one, her friend, looked over at me. The other one was reading a little black book while she drank her coffee. It looked like a Bible, but it was too skinny. It was a Bible-type book, though. All the two of them were eating for breakfast was toast and coffee. That depressed me. I hate it if I'm eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee.
They let me give them ten bucks as a contribution. They kept asking me if I was sure I could afford it and all. I told them I had quite a bit of money with me, but they didn't seem to believe me. They took it, though, finally. The both of them kept thanking me so much it was embarrassing. I swung the conversation around to general topics and asked them where they were going. They said they were schoolteachers and that they'd just come from Chicago and that they were going to start teaching at some convent on 168th Street or 186th Street or one of those streets way the hell uptown. The one next to me, with the iron glasses, said she taught English and her friend taught history and American government. Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English. Books not necessarily with a lot of sexy stuff in them, but books with lovers and all in them. Take old Eustacia Vye, in The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. She wasn't too sexy or anything, but even so you can't help wondering what a nun maybe thinks about when she reads about old Eustacia. I didn't say anything, though, naturally. All I said was English was my best subject.
"Oh, really? Oh, I'm so glad!" the one with the glasses, that taught English, said. "What have you read this year? I'd be very interested to know." She was really nice.
"Well, most of the time we were on the Anglo-Saxons. Beowulf, and old Grendel, and Lord Randal My Son, and all those things. But we had to read outside books for extra credit once in a while. I read The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy, and Romeo and Juliet and Julius-"
"Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn't you just love it?" She certainly didn't sound much like a nun.
"Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn't like about it, but it was quite moving, on the whole."
"What didn't you like about it? Can you remember?" To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I discussed it with her for a while. "Well, I'm not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet," I said. "I mean I like them, but-I don't know. They get pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed than when Romeo and Juliet did. The think is, I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio gets stabbed by that other man-Juliet's cousin-what's his name?"
"Tybalt."
"That's right. Tybalt," I said-I always forget that guy's name. "It was Romeo's fault. I mean I liked him the best in the play, old Mercutio. I don't know. All those Montagues and Capulets, they're all right-especially Juliet-but Mercutio, he was-it's hard to explain. He was very smart and entertaining and all. The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed- especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all-and it's somebody else's fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault."
"What school do you go to?" she asked me. She probably wanted to get off the subject of Romeo and Juliet.
I told her Pencey, and she'd heard of it. She said it was a very good school. I let it pass, though. Then the other one, the one that taught history and government, said they'd better be running along. I took their check off them, but they wouldn't let me pay it. The one with the glasses made me give it back to her.
"You've been more than generous," she said. "You're a very sweet boy." She certainly was nice. She reminded me a little bit of old Ernest Morrow's mother, the one I met on the train. When she smiled, mostly. "We've enjoyed talking to you so much," she said.
I said I'd enjoyed talking to them a lot, too. I meant it, too. I'd have enjoyed it even more though, I think, if I hadn't been sort of afraid, the whole time I was talking to them, that they'd all of a sudden try to find out if I was a Catholic. Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic. It happens to me a lot, I know, partly because my last name is Irish, and most people of Irish descent are Catholics. As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother. But Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic even if they don't know your last name. I knew this one Catholic boy, Louis Shaney, when I was at the Whooton School. He was the first boy I ever met there. He and I were sitting in the first two chairs outside the goddam infirmary, the day school opened, waiting for our physicals, and we sort of struck up this conversation about tennis. He was quite interested in tennis, and so was I. He told me he went to the Nationals at Forest Hills every summer, and I told him I did too, and then we talked about certain hot-shot tennis players for quite a while. He knew quite a lot about tennis, for a kid his age. He really did. Then, after a while, right in the middle of the goddam conversation, he asked me, "Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?" The thing was, you could tell by the way he asked me that he was trying to find out if I was a Catholic. He really was. Not that he was prejudiced or anything, but he just wanted to know. He was enjoying the conversation about tennis and all, but you could tell he would've enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic and all. That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything-it didn't-but it sure as hell didn't do it any good. That's why I was glad those two nuns didn't ask me if I was a Catholic. It wouldn't have spoiled the conversation if they had, but it would've been different, probably. I'm not saying I blame Catholics. I don't. I'd be the same way, probably, if I was a Catholic. It's just like those suitcases I was telling you about, in a way. All I'm saying is that it's no good for a nice conversation. That's all I'm saying.
When they got up to go, the two nuns, I did something very stupid and embarrassing. I was smoking a cigarette, and when I stood up to say good-by to them, by mistake I blew some smoke in their face. I didn't mean to, but I did it. I apologized like a madman, and they were very polite and nice about it, but it was very embarrassing anyway.
After they left, I started getting sorry that I'd only given them ten bucks for their collection. But the thing was, I'd made that date to go to a matinee with old Sally Hayes, and I needed to keep some dough for the tickets and stuff. I was sorry anyway, though. Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
After I had my breakfast, it was only around noon, and I wasn't meeting old Sally till two o'clock, so I started taking this long walk. I couldn't stop thinking about those two nuns. I kept thinking about that beat-up old straw basket they went around collecting money with when they weren't teaching school. I kept trying to picture my mother or somebody, or my aunt, or Sally Hayes's crazy mother, standing outside some department store and collecting dough for poor people in a beat-up old straw basket. It was hard to picture. Not so much my mother, but those other two. My aunt's pretty charitable-she does a lot of Red Cross work and all-but she's very well-dressed and all, and when she does anything charitable she's always very well-dressed and has lipstick on and all that crap. I couldn't picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and no lipstick while she was doing it. And old Sally Hayes's mother. Jesus Christ. The only way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed her ass for her when they made a contribution. If they just dropped their dough in her basket, then walked away without saying anything to her, ignoring her and all, she'd quit in about an hour. She'd get bored. She'd hand in her basket and then go someplace swanky for lunch. That's what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It made me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.
I started walking over toward Broadway, just for the hell of it, because I hadn't been over there in years. Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open on Sunday. There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe, called "Little Shirley Beans." It was a very hard record to get. It was about a little kid that wouldn't go out of the house because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed to. I heard it at Pencey. A boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn't sell it. It was a very old, terrific record that this colored girl singer, Estelle Fletcher, made about twenty years ago. She sings it very Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn't sound at all mushy. If a white girl was singing it, she'd make it sound cute as hell, but old Estelle Fletcher knew what the hell she was doing, and it was one of the best records I ever heard. I figured I'd buy it in some store that was open on Sunday and then I'd take it up to the park with me. It was Sunday and Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays quite frequently. I knew where she hung out mostly.
It wasn't as cold as it was the day before, but the sun still wasn't out, and it wasn't too nice for walking. But there was one nice thing. This family that you could tell just came out of some church were walking right in front of me-a father, a mother, and a little kid about six years old. They looked sort of poor. The father had on one of those pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp. He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and he kept on walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more.
Broadway was mobbed and messy. It was Sunday, and only about twelve o'clock, but it was mobbed anyway. Everybody was on their way to the movies-the Paramount or the Astor or the Strand or the Capitol or one of those crazy places. Everybody was all dressed up, because it was Sunday, and that made it worse. But the worst part was that you could tell they all wanted to go to the movies. I couldn't stand looking at them. I can understand somebody going to the movies because there's nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those long, terrible lines, all the way down the block, waiting with this terrific patience for seats and all. Boy, I couldn't get off that goddam Broadway fast enough. I was lucky. The first record store I went into had a copy of "Little Shirley Beans." They charged me five bucks for it, because it was so hard to get, but I didn't care. Boy, it made me so happy all of a sudden. I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I could give it to her.
When I came out of the record store, I passed this drugstore, and I went in. I figured maybe I'd give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet. So I went in a phone booth and called her up. The only trouble was, her mother answered the phone, so I had to hang up. I didn't feel like getting involved in a long conversation and all with her. I'm not crazy about talking to girls' mothers on the phone anyway. I should've at least asked her if Jane was home yet, though. It wouldn't have killed me. But I didn't feel like it. You really have to be in the mood for that stuff.
I still had to get those damn theater tickets, so I bought a paper and looked up to see what shows were playing. On account of it was Sunday, there were only about three shows playing. So what I did was, I went over and bought two orchestra seats for I Know My Love. It was a benefit performance or something. I didn't much want to see it, but I knew old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would start drooling all over the place when I told her I had tickets for that, because the Lunts were in it and all. She liked shows that are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts and all. I don't. I don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that's fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. You take Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. I saw him in Hamlet. D.B. took Phoebe and I to see it last year. He treated us to lunch first, and then he took us. He'd already seen it, and the way he talked about it at lunch, I was anxious as hell to see it, too. But I didn't enjoy it much. I just don't see what's so marvelous about Sir Laurence Olivier, that's all. He has a terrific voice, and he's a helluva handsome guy, and he's very nice to watch when he's walking or dueling or something, but he wasn't at all the way D.B. said Hamlet was. He was too much like a goddam general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy. The best part in the whole picture was when old Ophelia's brother-the one that gets in the duel with Hamlet at the very end-was going away and his father was giving him a lot of advice. While the father kept giving him a lot of advice, old Ophelia was sort of horsing around with her brother, taking his dagger out of the holster, and teasing him and all while he was trying to look interested in the bull his father was shooting. That was nice. I got a big bang out of that. But you don't see that kind of stuff much. The only thing old Phoebe liked was when Hamlet patted this dog on the head. She thought that was funny and nice, and it was. What I'll have to do is, I'll have to read that play. The trouble with me is, I always have to read that stuff by myself. If an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute.
After I got the tickets to the Lunts' show, I took a cab up to the park. I should've taken a subway or something, because I was getting slightly low on dough, but I wanted to get off that damn Broadway as fast as I could.
It was lousy in the park. It wasn't too cold, but the sun still wasn't out, and there didn't look like there was anything in the park except dog crap and globs of spit and cigar butts from old men, and the benches all looked like they'd be wet if you sat down on them. It made you depressed, and every once in a while, for no reason, you got goose flesh while you walked. It didn't seem at all like Christmas was coming soon. It didn't seem like anything was coming. But I kept walking over to the Mall anyway, because that's where Phoebe usually goes when she's in the park. She likes to skate near the bandstand. It's funny. That's the same place I used to like to skate when I was a kid.
When I got there, though, I didn't see her around anywhere. There were a few kids around, skating and all, and two boys were playing Flys Up with a soft ball, but no Phoebe. I saw one kid about her age, though, sitting on a bench all by herself, tightening her skate. I thought maybe she might know Phoebe and could tell me where she was or something, so I went over and sat down next to her and asked her, "Do you know Phoebe Caulfield, by any chance?"
"Who?" she said. All she had on was jeans and about twenty sweaters. You could tell her mother made them for her, because they were lumpy as hell.
"Phoebe Caulfield. She lives on Seventy-first Street. She's in the fourth grade, over at-"
"You know Phoebe?"
"Yeah, I'm her brother. You know where she is?"
"She's in Miss Callon's class, isn't she?" the kid said.
"I don't know. Yes, I think she is."
"She's prob'ly in the museum, then. We went last Saturday," the kid said.
"Which museum?" I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders, sort of. "I don't know," she said. "The museum."
"I know, but the one where the pictures are, or the one where the Indians are?"
"The one where the Indians."
"Thanks a lot," I said. I got up and started to go, but then I suddenly remembered it was Sunday. "This is Sunday," I told the kid.
She looked up at me. "Oh. Then she isn't."
She was having a helluva time tightening her skate. She didn't have any gloves on or anything and her hands were all red and cold. I gave her a hand with it. Boy, I hadn't had a skate key in my hand for years. It didn't feel funny, though. You could put a skate key in my hand fifty years from now, in pitch dark, and I'd still know what it is. She thanked me and all when I had it tightened for her. She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are. I asked her if she'd care to have a hot chocolate or something with me, but she said no, thank you. She said she had to meet her friend. Kids always have to meet their friend. That kills me.
Even though it was Sunday and Phoebe wouldn't be there with her class or anything, and even though it was so damp and lousy out, I walked all the way through the park over to the Museum of Natural History. I knew that was the museum the kid with the skate key meant. I knew that whole museum routine like a book. Phoebe went to the same school I went to when I was a kid, and we used to go there all the time. We had this teacher, Miss Aigletinger, that took us there damn near every Saturday. Sometimes we looked at the animals and sometimes we looked at the stuff the Indians had made in ancient times. Pottery and straw baskets and all stuff like that. I get very happy when I think about it. Even now. I remember after we looked at all the Indian stuff, usually we went to see some movie in this big auditorium. Columbus. They were always showing Columbus discovering America, having one helluva time getting old Ferdinand and Isabella to lend him the dough to buy ships with, and then the sailors mutinying on him and all. Nobody gave too much of a damn about old Columbus, but you always had a lot of candy and gum and stuff with you, and the inside of that auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. I loved that damn museum. I remember you had to go through the Indian Room to get to the auditorium. It was a long, long room, and you were only supposed to whisper. The teacher would go first, then the class. You'd be two rows of kids, and you'd have a partner. Most of the time my partner was this girl named Gertrude Levine. She always wanted to hold your hand, and her hand was always sticky or sweaty or something. The floor was all stone, and if you had some marbles in your hand and you dropped them, they bounced like madmen all over the floor and made a helluva racket, and the teacher would hold up the class and go back and see what the hell was going on. She never got sore, though, Miss Aigletinger. Then you'd pass by this long, long Indian war canoe, about as long as three goddam Cadillacs in a row, with about twenty Indians in it, some of them paddling, some of them just standing around looking tough, and they all had war paint all over their faces. There was one very spooky guy in the back of the canoe, with a mask on. He was the witch doctor. He gave me the creeps, but I liked him anyway. Another thing, if you touched one of the paddles or anything while you were passing, one of the guards would say to you, "Don't touch anything, children," but he always said it in a nice voice, not like a goddam cop or anything. Then you'd pass by this big glass case, with Indians inside it rubbing sticks together to make a fire, and a squaw weaving a blanket. The squaw that was weaving the blanket was sort of bending over, and you could see her bosom and all. We all used to sneak a good look at it, even the girls, because they were only little kids and they didn't have any more bosom than we did. Then, just before you went inside the auditorium, right near the doors, you passed this Eskimo. He was sitting over a hole in this icy lake, and he was fishing through it. He had about two fish right next to the hole, that he'd already caught. Boy, that museum was full of glass cases. There were even more upstairs, with deer inside them drinking at water holes, and birds flying south for the winter. The birds nearest you were all stuffed and hung up on wires, and the ones in back were just painted on the wall, but they all looked like they were really flying south, and if you bent your head down and sort of looked at them upside down, they looked in an even bigger hurry to fly south. The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way-I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out. I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway. Anyway, I kept thinking about all that while I walked.
I passed by this playground and stopped and watched a couple of very tiny kids on a seesaw. One of them was sort of fat, and I put my hand on the skinny kid's end, to sort of even up the weight, but you could tell they didn't want me around, so I let them alone.
Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I wouldn't have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn't appeal to me-and here I'd walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it and all. If Phoebe'd been there, I probably would have, but she wasn't. So all I did, in front of the museum, was get a cab and go down to the Biltmore. I didn't feel much like going. I'd made that damn date with Sally, though.
I was way early when I got there, so I just sat down on one of those leather couches right near the clock in the lobby and watched the girls. A lot of schools were home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates to show up. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring-But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. When I was at Elkton Hills, I roomed for about two months with this boy, Harris Mackim. He was very intelligent and all, but he was one of the biggest bores I ever met. He had one of these very raspy voices, and he never stopped talking, practically. He never stopped talking, and what was awful was, he never said anything you wanted to hear in the first place. But he could do one thing. The sonuvabitch could whistle better than anybody I ever heard. He'd be making his bed, or hanging up stuff in the closet-he was always hanging up stuff in the closet-it drove me crazy-and he'd be whistling while he did it, if he wasn't talking in this raspy voice. He could even whistle classical stuff, but most of the time he just whistled jazz. He could take something very jazzy, like "Tin Roof Blues," and whistle it so nice and easy-right while he was hanging stuff up in the closet-that it could kill you. Naturally, I never told him I thought he was a terrific whistler. I mean you don't just go up to somebody and say, "You're a terrific whistler." But I roomed with him for about two whole months, even though he bored me till I was half crazy, just because he was such a terrific whistler, the best I ever heard. So I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.
Finally, old Sally started coming up the stairs, and I started down to meet her. She looked terrific. She really did. She had on this black coat and sort of a black beret. She hardly ever wore a hat, but that beret looked nice. The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. I'm crazy. I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it.
"Holden!" she said. "It's marvelous to see you! It's been ages." She had one of these very loud, embarrassing voices when you met her somewhere. She got away with it because she was so damn good-looking, but it always gave me a pain in the ass.
"Swell to see you," I said. I meant it, too. "How are ya, anyway?"
"Absolutely marvelous. Am I late?"
I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late-that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody. "We better hurry," I said. "The show starts at two-forty." We started going down the stairs to where the taxis are.
"What are we going to see?" she said.
"I don't know. The Lunts. It's all I could get tickets for."
"The Lunts! Oh, marvelous!" I told you she'd go mad when she heard it was for the Lunts.
We horsed around a little bit in the cab on the way over to the theater. At first she didn't want to, because she had her lipstick on and all, but I was being seductive as hell and she didn't have any alternative. Twice, when the goddam cab stopped short in traffic, I damn near fell off the seat. Those damn drivers never even look where they're going, I swear they don't. Then, just to show you how crazy I am, when we were coming out of this big clinch, I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.
"Oh, darling, I love you too," she said. Then, right in the same damn breath, she said, "Promise me you'll let your hair grow. Crew cuts are getting corny. And your hair's so lovely."
Lovely my ass.
The show wasn't as bad as some I've seen. It was on the crappy side, though. It was about five hundred thousand years in the life of this one old couple. It starts out when they're young and all, and the girl's parents don't want her to marry the boy, but she marries him anyway. Then they keep getting older and older. The husband goes to war, and the wife has this brother that's a drunkard. I couldn't get very interested. I mean I didn't care too much when anybody in the family died or anything. They were all just a bunch of actors. The husband and wife were a pretty nice old couple-very witty and all-but I couldn't get too interested in them. For one thing, they kept drinking tea or some goddam thing all through the play. Every time you saw them, some butler was shoving some tea in front of them, or the wife was pouring it for somebody. And everybody kept coming in and going out all the time-you got dizzy watching people sit down and stand up. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple, and they were very good, but I didn't like them much. They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good. When one of them got finished making a speech, the other one said something very fast right after it. It was supposed to be like people really talking and interrupting each other and all. The trouble was, it was too much like people talking and interrupting each other. They acted a little bit the way old Ernie, down in the Village, plays the piano. If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more. But anyway, they were the only ones in the show-the Lunts, I mean-that looked like they had any real brains. I have to admit it.
At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were. Some dopey movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette. I don't know his name, but he always plays the part of a guy in a war movie that gets yellow before it's time to go over the top. He was with some gorgeous blonde, and the two of them were trying to be very blasé and all, like as if he didn't even know people were looking at him. Modest as hell. I got a big bang out of it. Old Sally didn't talk much, except to rave about the Lunts, because she was busy rubbering and being charming. Then all of a sudden, she saw some jerk she knew on the other side of the lobby. Some guy in one of those very dark gray flannel suits and one of those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal. He was standing next to the wall, smoking himself to death and looking bored as hell. Old Sally kept saying, "I know that boy from somewhere." She always knew somebody, any place you took her, or thought she did. She kept saying that till I got bored as hell, and I said to her, "Why don't you go on over and give him a big soul kiss, if you know him? He'll enjoy it." She got sore when I said that. Finally, though, the jerk noticed her and came over and said hello. You should've seen the way they said hello. You'd have thought they hadn't seen each other in twenty years. You'd have thought they'd taken baths in the same bathtub or something when they were little kids. Old buddyroos. It was nauseating. The funny part was, they probably met each other just once, at some phony party. Finally, when they were all done slobbering around, old Sally introduced us. His name was George something-I don't even remember-and he went to Andover. Big, big deal. You should've seen him when old Sally asked him how he liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady's foot behind him. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. Angels. For Chrissake. Angels. That killed me. Then he and old Sally started talking about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in your life. They both kept thinking of places as fast as they could, then they'd think of somebody that lived there and mention their name. I was all set to puke when it was time to go sit down again. I really was. And then, when the next act was over, they continued their goddam boring conversation. They kept thinking of more places and more names of people that lived there. The worst part was, the jerk had one of those very phony, Ivy League voices, one of those very tired, snobby voices. He sounded just like a girl. He didn't hesitate to horn in on my date, the bastard. I even thought for a minute that he was going to get in the goddam cab with us when the show was over, because he walked about two blocks with us, but he had to meet a bunch of phonies for cocktails, he said. I could see them all sitting around in some bar, with their goddam checkered vests, criticizing shows and books and women in those tired, snobby voices. They kill me, those guys.
I sort of hated old Sally by the time we got in the cab, after listening to that phony Andover bastard for about ten hours. I was all set to take her home and all-I really was-but she said, "I have a marvelous idea!" She was always having a marvelous idea. "Listen," she said. "What time do you have to be home for dinner? I mean are you in a terrible hurry or anything? Do you have to be home any special time?"
"Me? No. No special time," I said. Truer word was never spoken, boy. "Why?"
"Let's go ice-skating at Radio City!"
That's the kind of ideas she always had.
"Ice-skating at Radio City? You mean right now?"
"Just for an hour or so. Don't you want to? If you don't want to-"
"I didn't say I didn't want to," I said. "Sure. If you want to."
"Do you mean it? Don't just say it if you don't mean it. I mean I don't give a darn, one way or the other."
Not much she didn't.
"You can rent those darling little skating skirts," old Sally said. "Jeannette Cultz did it last week."
That's why she was so hot to go. She wanted to see herself in one of those little skirts that just come down over their butt and all.
So we went, and after they gave us our skates, they gave Sally this little blue butt-twitcher of a dress to wear. She really did look damn good in it, though. I have to admit it. And don't think she didn't know it. They kept walking ahead of me, so that I'd see how cute her little ass looked. It did look pretty cute, too. I have to admit it.
The funny part was, though, we were the worst skaters on the whole goddam rink. I mean the worst. And there were some lulus, too. Old Sally's ankles kept bending in till they were practically on the ice. They not only looked stupid as hell, but they probably hurt like hell, too. I know mine did. Mine were killing me. We must've looked gorgeous. And what made it worse, there were at least a couple of hundred rubbernecks that didn't have anything better to do than stand around and watch everybody falling all over themselves.
"Do you want to get a table inside and have a drink or something?" I said to her finally.
"That's the most marvelous idea you've had all day," the said. She was killing herself. It was brutal. I really felt sorry for her.
We took off our goddam skates and went inside this bar where you can get drinks and watch the skaters in just your stocking feet. As soon as we sat down, old Sally took off her gloves, and I gave her a cigarette. She wasn't looking too happy. The waiter came up, and I ordered a Coke for her-she didn't drink-and a Scotch and soda for myself, but the sonuvabitch wouldn't bring me one, so I had a Coke, too. Then I sort of started lighting matches. I do that quite a lot when I'm in a certain mood. I sort of let them burn down till I can't hold them any more, then I drop them in the ashtray. It's a nervous habit.
Then all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, old Sally said, "Look. I have to know. Are you or aren't you coming over to help me trim the tree Christmas Eve? I have to know." She was still being snotty on account of her ankles when she was skating.
"I wrote you I would. You've asked me that about twenty times. Sure, I am."
"I mean I have to know," she said. She started looking all around the goddam room.
All of a sudden I quit lighting matches, and sort of leaned nearer to her over the table. I had quite a few topics on my mind. "Hey, Sally," I said.
"What?" she said. She was looking at some girl on the other side of the room.
"Did you ever get fed up?" I said. "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? I mean do you like school, and all that stuff?"
"It's a terrific bore."
"I mean do you hate it? I know it's a terrific bore, but do you hate it, is what I mean."
"Well, I don't exactly hate it. You always have to-"
"Well, I hate it. Boy, do I hate it," I said. "But it isn't just that. It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always-"
"Don't shout, please," old Sally said. Which was very funny, because I wasn't even shouting.
"Take cars," I said. I said it in this very quiet voice. "Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. A horse you can at least-"
"I don't know what you're even talking about," old Sally said. "You jump from one-"
"You know something?" I said. "You're probably the only reason I'm in New York right now, or anywhere. If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddam place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically."
"You're sweet," she said. But you could tell she wanted me to change the damn subject.
"You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. If you try to have a little intelligent-"
"Now, listen," old Sally said. "Lots of boys get more out of school than that."
"I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddam point," I said. "I don't get hardly anything out of anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape."
"You certainly are."
Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea.
"Look," I said. "Here's my idea. How would you like to get the hell out of here? Here's my idea. I know this guy down in Greenwich Village that we can borrow his car for a couple of weeks. He used to go to the same school I did and he still owes me ten bucks. What we could do is, tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont, and all around there, see. It's beautiful as hell up there, It really is." I was getting excited as hell, the more I thought of it, and I sort of reached over and took old Sally's goddam hand. What a goddam fool I was. "No kidding," I said. "I have about a hundred and eighty bucks in the bank. I can take it out when it opens in the morning, and then I could go down and get this guy's car. No kidding. We'll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till the dough runs out. Then, when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something. I could chop all our own wood in the wintertime and all. Honest to God, we could have a terrific time! Wuddaya say? C'mon! Wuddaya say? Will you do it with me? Please!"
"You can't just do something like that," old Sally said. She sounded sore as hell.
"Why not? Why the hell not?"
"Stop screaming at me, please," she said. Which was crap, because I wasn't even screaming at her.
"Why can'tcha? Why not?"
"Because you can't, that's all. In the first place, we're both practically children. And did you ever stop to think what you'd do if you didn't get a job when your money ran out? We'd starve to death. The whole thing's so fantastic, it isn't even-"
"It isn't fantastic. I'd get a job. Don't worry about that. You don't have to worry about that. What's the matter? Don't you want to go with me? Say so, if you don't."
"It isn't that. It isn't that at all," old Sally said. I was beginning to hate her, in a way. "We'll have oodles of time to do those things-all those things. I mean after you go to college and all, and if we should get married and all. There'll be oodles of marvelous places to go to. You're just-"
"No, there wouldn't be. There wouldn't be oodles of places to go to at all. It'd be entirely different," I said. I was getting depressed as hell again.
"What?" she said. "I can't hear you. One minute you scream at me, and the next you-"
"I said no, there wouldn't be marvelous places to go to after I went to college and all. Open your ears. It'd be entirely different. We'd have to go downstairs in elevators with suitcases and stuff. We'd have to phone up everybody and tell 'em good-by and send 'em postcards from hotels and all. And I'd be working in some office, making a lot of dough, and riding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers, and playing bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupid shorts and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty. There's always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship, and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on. It wouldn't be the same at all. You don't see what I mean at all."
"Maybe I don't! Maybe you don't, either," old Sally said. We both hated each other's guts by that time. You could see there wasn't any sense trying to have an intelligent conversation. I was sorry as hell I'd started it.
"C'mon, let's get outa here," I said. "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth."
Boy, did she hit the ceiling when I said that. I know I shouldn't've said it, and I probably wouldn't've ordinarily, but she was depressing the hell out of me. Usually I never say crude things like that to girls. Boy, did she hit the ceiling. I apologized like a madman, but she wouldn't accept my apology. She was even crying. Which scared me a little bit, because I was a little afraid she'd go home and tell her father I called her a pain in the ass. Her father was one of those big silent bastards, and he wasn't too crazy about me anyhow. He once told old Sally I was too goddam noisy.
"No kidding. I'm sorry," I kept telling her.
"You're sorry. You're sorry. That's very funny," she said. She was still sort of crying, and all of a sudden I did feel sort of sorry I'd said it.
"C'mon, I'll take ya home. No kidding."
"I can go home by myself, thank you. If you think I'd let you take me home, you're mad. No boy ever said that to me in my entire life."
The whole thing was sort of funny, in a way, if you thought about it, and all of a sudden I did something I shouldn't have. I laughed. And I have one of these very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up. It made old Sally madder than ever.
I stuck around for a while, apologizing and trying to get her to excuse me, but she wouldn't. She kept telling me to go away and leave her alone. So finally I did it. I went inside and got my shoes and stuff, and left without her. I shouldn't've, but I was pretty goddam fed up by that time.
If you want to know the truth, I don't even know why I started all that stuff with her. I mean about going away somewhere, to Massachusetts and Vermont and all. I probably wouldn't've taken her even if she'd wanted to go with me. She wouldn't have been anybody to go with. The terrible part, though, is that I meant it when I asked her. That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
When I left the skating rink I felt sort of hungry, so I went in this drugstore and had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted, and then I went in a phone booth. I thought maybe I might give old Jane another buzz and see if she was home yet. I mean I had the whole evening free, and I thought I'd give her a buzz and, if she was home yet, take her dancing or something somewhere. I never danced with her or anything the whole time I knew her. I saw her dancing once, though. She looked like a very good dancer. It was at this Fourth of July dance at the club. I didn't know her too well then, and I didn't think I ought to cut in on her date. She was dating this terrible guy, Al Pike, that went to Choate. I didn't know him too well, but he was always hanging around the swimming pool. He wore those white Lastex kind of swimming trunks, and he was always going off the high dive. He did the same lousy old half gainer all day long. It was the only dive he could do, but he thought he was very hot stuff. All muscles and no brains. Anyway, that's who Jane dated that night. I couldn't understand it. I swear I couldn't. After we started going around together, I asked her how come she could date a showoff bastard like Al Pike. Jane said he wasn't a show-off. She said he had an inferiority complex. She acted like she felt sorry for him or something, and she wasn't just putting it on. She meant it. It's a funny thing about girls. Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard-very mean, or very conceited and all-and when you mention it to the girl, she'll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn't keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion. Girls. You never know what they're going to think. I once got this girl Roberta Walsh's roommate a date with a friend of mine. His name was Bob Robinson and he really had an inferiority complex. You could tell he was very ashamed of his parents and all, because they said "he don't" and "she don't" and stuff like that and they weren't very wealthy. But he wasn't a bastard or anything. He was a very nice guy. But this Roberta Walsh's roommate didn't like him at all. She told Roberta he was too conceited-and the reason she thought he was conceited was because he happened to mention to her that he was captain of the debating team. A little thing like that, and she thought he was conceited! The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.
Anyway, I gave old Jane a buzz again, but her phone didn't answer, so I had to hang up. Then I had to look through my address book to see who the hell might be available for the evening. The trouble was, though, my address book only has about three people in it. Jane, and this man, Mr. Antolini, that was my teacher at Elkton Hills, and my father's office number. I keep forgetting to put people's names in. So what I did finally, I gave old Carl Luce a buzz. He graduated from the Whooton School after I left. He was about three years older than I was, and I didn't like him too much, but he was one of these very intellectual guys- he had the highest I.Q. of any boy at Whooton-and I thought he might want to have dinner with me somewhere and have a slightly intellectual conversation. He was very enlightening sometimes. So I gave him a buzz. He went to Columbia now, but he lived on 65th Street and all, and I knew he'd be home. When I got him on the phone, he said he couldn't make it for dinner but that he'd meet me for a drink at ten o'clock at the Wicker Bar, on 54th. I think he was pretty surprised to hear from me. I once called him a fat-assed phony.
I had quite a bit of time to kill till ten o'clock, so what I did, I went to the movies at Radio City. It was probably the worst thing I could've done, but it was near, and I couldn't think of anything else.
I came in when the goddam stage show was on. The Rockettes were kicking their heads off, the way they do when they're all in line with their arms around each other's waist. The audience applauded like mad, and some guy behind me kept saying to his wife, "You know what that is? That's precision." He killed me. Then, after the Rockettes, a guy came out in a tuxedo and roller skates on, and started skating under a bunch of little tables, and telling jokes while he did it. He was a very good skater and all, but I couldn't enjoy it much because I kept picturing him practicing to be a guy that roller-skates on the stage. It seemed so stupid. I guess I just wasn't in the right mood. Then, after him, they had this Christmas thing they have at Radio City every year. All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them-thousands of them-singing "Come All Ye Faithful!" like mad. Big deal. It's supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they were all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette or something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it-all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy that plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. I've watched that guy since I was about eight years old. My brother Allie and I, if we were with our parents and all, we used to move our seats and go way down so we could watch him. He's the best drummer I ever saw. He only gets a chance to bang them a couple of times during a whole piece, but he never looks bored when he isn't doing it. Then when he does bang them, he does it so nice and sweet, with this nervous expression on his face. One time when we went to Washington with my father, Allie sent him a postcard, but I'll bet he never got it. We weren't too sure how to address it.
After the Christmas thing was over, the goddam picture started. It was so putrid I couldn't take my eyes off it. It was about this English guy, Alec something, that was in the war and loses his memory in the hospital and all. He comes out of the hospital carrying a cane and limping all over the place, all over London, not knowing who the hell he is. He's really a duke, but he doesn't know it. Then he meets this nice, homey, sincere girl getting on a bus. Her goddam hat blows off and he catches it, and then they go upstairs and sit down and start talking about Charles Dickens. He's both their favorite author and all. He's carrying this copy of Oliver Twist and so's she. I could've puked. Anyway, they fell in love right away, on account of they're both so nuts about Charles Dickens and all, and he helps her run her publishing business. She's a publisher, the girl. Only, she's not doing so hot, because her brother's a drunkard and he spends all their dough. He's a very bitter guy, the brother, because he was a doctor in the war and now he can't operate any more because his nerves are shot, so he boozes all the time, but he's pretty witty and all. Anyway, old Alec writes a book, and this girl publishes it, and they both make a hatful of dough on it. They're all set to get married when this other girl, old Marcia, shows up. Marcia was Alec's fiancée before he lost his memory, and she recognizes him when he's in this store autographing books. She tells old Alec he's really a duke and all, but he doesn't believe her and doesn't want to go with her to visit his mother and all. His mother's blind as a bat. But the other girl, the homey one, makes him go. She's very noble and all. So he goes. But he still doesn't get his memory back, even when his great Dane jumps all over him and his mother sticks her fingers all over his face and brings him this teddy bear he used to slobber around with when he was a kid. But then, one day, some kids are playing cricket on the lawn and he gets smacked in the head with a cricket ball. Then right away he gets his goddam memory back and he goes in and kisses his mother on the forehead and all. Then he starts being a regular duke again, and he forgets all about the homey babe that has the publishing business. I'd tell you the rest of the story, but I might puke if I did. It isn't that I'd spoil it for you or anything. There isn't anything to spoil for Chrissake. Anyway, it ends up with Alec and the homey babe getting married, and the brother that's a drunkard gets his nerves back and operates on Alec's mother so she can see again, and then the drunken brother and old Marcia go for each other. It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought it was a male, I suppose, or some goddam thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself.
The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You'd have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn't. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.
After the movie was over, I started walking down to the Wicker Bar, where I was supposed to meet old Carl Luce, and while I walked I sort of thought about war and all. Those war movies always do that to me. I don't think I could stand it if I had to go to war. I really couldn't. It wouldn't be too bad if they'd just take you out and shoot you or something, but you have to stay in the Army so goddam long. That's the whole trouble. My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddam years. He was in the war, too-he landed on D-Day and all-but I really think he hated the Army worse than the war. I was practically a child at the time, but I remember when he used to come home on furlough and all, all he did was lie on his bed, practically. He hardly ever even came in the living room. Later, when he went overseas and was in the war and all, he didn't get wounded or anything and he didn't have to shoot anybody. All he had to do was drive some cowboy general around all day in a command car. He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were. I remember Allie once asked him wasn't it sort of good that he was in the war because he was a writer and it gave him a lot to write about and all. He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then he asked him who was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickinson. Allie said Emily Dickinson. I don't know too much about it myself, because I don't read much poetry, but I do know it'd drive me crazy if I had to be in the Army and be with a bunch of guys like Ackley and Stradlater and old Maurice all the time, marching with them and all. I was in the Boy Scouts once, for about a week, and I couldn't even stand looking at the back of the guy's neck in front of me. They kept telling you to look at the back of the guy's neck in front of you. I swear if there's ever another war, they better just take me out and stick me in front of a firing squad. I wouldn't object. What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That's what I can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don't see how he could like a phony book like that and still like that one by Ring Lardner, or that other one he's so crazy about, The Great Gatsby. D.B. got sore when I said that, and said I was too young and all to appreciate it, but I don't think so. I told him I liked Ring Lardner and The Great Gatsby and all. I did, too. I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
In case you don't live in New York, the Wicker Bar is in this sort of swanky hotel, the Seton Hotel. I used to go there quite a lot, but I don't any more. I gradually cut it out. It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window. They used to have these two French babes, Tina and Janine, come out and play the piano and sing about three times every night. One of them played the piano-strictly lousy-and the other one sang, and most of the songs were either pretty dirty or in French. The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the goddam microphone before she sang. She'd say, "And now we like to geeve you our impression of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of a leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet." Then, when she was all done whispering and being cute as hell, she'd sing some dopey song, half in English and half in French, and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy. If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did. The bartender was a louse, too. He was a big snob. He didn't talk to you at all hardly unless you were a big shot or a celebrity or something. If you were a big shot or a celebrity or something, then he was even more nauseating. He'd go up to you and say, with this big charming smile, like he was a helluva swell guy if you knew him, "Well! How's Connecticut?" or "How's Florida?" It was a terrible place, I'm not kidding. I cut out going there entirely, gradually.
It was pretty early when I got there. I sat down at the bar-it was pretty crowded-and had a couple of Scotch and sodas before old Luce even showed up. I stood up when I ordered them so they could see how tall I was and all and not think I was a goddam minor. Then I watched the phonies for a while. Some guy next to me was snowing hell out of the babe he was with. He kept telling her she had aristocratic hands. That killed me. The other end of the bar was full of flits. They weren't too flitty-looking-I mean they didn't have their hair too long or anything-but you could tell they were flits anyway. Finally old Luce showed up.
Old Luce. What a guy. He was supposed to be my Student Adviser when I was at Whooton. The only thing he ever did, though, was give these sex talks and all, late at night when there was a bunch of guys in his room. He knew quite a bit about sex, especially perverts and all. He was always telling us about a lot of creepy guys that go around having affairs with sheep, and guys that go around with girls' pants sewed in the lining of their hats and all. And flits and Lesbians. Old Luce knew who every flit and Lesbian in the United States was. All you had to do was mention somebody-anybody-and old Luce'd tell you if he was a flit or not. Sometimes it was hard to believe, the people he said were flits and Lesbians and all, movie actors and like that. Some of the ones he said were flits were even married, for God's sake. You'd keep saying to him, "You mean Joe Blow's a flit? Joe Blow? That big, tough guy that plays gangsters and cowboys all the time?" Old Luce'd say, "Certainly." He was always saying "Certainly." He said it didn't matter if a guy was married or not. He said half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it. He said you could turn into one practically overnight, if you had all the traits and all. He used to scare the hell out of us. I kept waiting to turn into a flit or something. The funny thing about old Luce, I used to think he was sort of flitty himself, in a way. He was always saying, "Try this for size," and then he'd goose the hell out of you while you were going down the corridor. And whenever he went to the can, he always left the goddam door open and talked to you while you were brushing your teeth or something. That stuff's sort of flitty. It really is. I've known quite a few real flits, at schools and all, and they're always doing stuff like that, and that's why I always had my doubts about old Luce. He was a pretty intelligent guy, though. He really was.
He never said hello or anything when he met you. The first thing he said when he sat down was that he could only stay a couple of minutes. He said he had a date. Then he ordered a dry Martini. He told the bartender to make it very dry, and no olive.
"Hey, I got a flit for you," I told him. "At the end of the bar. Don't look now. I been saving him for ya."
"Very funny," he said. "Same old Caulfield. When are you going to grow up?"
I bored him a lot. I really did. He amused me, though. He was one of those guys that sort of amuse me a lot.
"How's your sex life?" I asked him. He hated you to ask him stuff like that.
"Relax," he said. "Just sit back and relax, for Chrissake."
"I'm relaxed," I said. "How's Columbia? Ya like it?"
"Certainly I like it. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have gone there," he said. He could be pretty boring himself sometimes.
"What're you majoring in?" I asked him. "Perverts?" I was only horsing around.
"What're you trying to be-funny?"
"No. I'm only kidding," I said. "Listen, hey, Luce. You're one of these intellectual guys. I need your advice. I'm in a terrific-"
He let out this big groan on me. "Listen, Caulfield. If you want to sit here and have a quiet, peaceful drink and a quiet, peaceful conver-"
"All right, all right," I said. "Relax." You could tell he didn't feel like discussing anything serious with me. That's the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it. So all I did was, I started discussing topics in general with him. "No kidding, how's your sex life?" I asked him. "You still going around with that same babe you used to at Whooton? The one with the terrific-"
"Good God, no," he said.
"How come? What happened to her?"
"I haven't the faintest idea. For all I know, since you ask, she's probably the Whore of New Hampshire by this time."
"That isn't nice. If she was decent enough to let you get sexy with her all the time, you at least shouldn't talk about her that way."
"Oh, God!" old Luce said. "Is this going to be a typical Caulfield conversation? I want to know right now."
"No," I said, "but it isn't nice anyway. If she was decent and nice enough to let you-"
"Must we pursue this horrible trend of thought?"
I didn't say anything. I was sort of afraid he'd get up and leave on me if I didn't shut up. So all I did was, I ordered another drink. I felt like getting stinking drunk.
"Who're you going around with now?" I asked him. "You feel like telling me?"
"Nobody you know."
"Yeah, but who? I might know her."
"Girl lives in the Village. Sculptress. If you must know."
"Yeah? No kidding? How old is she?"
"I've never asked her, for God's sake."
"Well, around how old?"
"I should imagine she's in her late thirties," old Luce said.
"In her late thirties? Yeah? You like that?" I asked him. "You like 'em that old?" The reason I was asking was because he really knew quite a bit about sex and all. He was one of the few guys I knew that did. He lost his virginity when he was only fourteen, in Nantucket. He really did.
"I like a mature person, if that's what you mean. Certainly."
"You do? Why? No kidding, they better for sex and all?"
"Listen. Let's get one thing straight. I refuse to answer any typical Caulfield questions tonight. When in hell are you going to grow up?"
I didn't say anything for a while. I let it drop for a while. Then old Luce ordered another Martini and told the bartender to make it a lot dryer.
"Listen. How long you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?"
"Hardly. She just arrived in this country a few months ago."
"She did? Where's she from?"
"She happens to be from Shanghai."
"No kidding! She Chinese, for Chrissake?"
"Obviously."
"No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?"
"Obviously."
"Why? I'd be interested to know-I really would."
"I simply happen to find Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask."
"You do? Wuddaya mean ‘philosophy'? Ya mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China? That what you mean?"
"Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this inane conversation?"
"Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?"
"It's too involved to go into, for God's sake," old Luce said. "They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and a spiritual experience. If you think I'm-"
"So do I! So do I regard it as a wuddayacallit-a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really do. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with somebody I don't even-"
"Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice down, let's drop the whole-"
"All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking a little too loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual, and artistic and all. But what I mean is, you can't do it with everybody-every girl you neck with and all-and make it come out that way. Can you?"
"Let's drop it," old Luce said. "Do you mind?"
"All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?"
"Drop it, I said."
I was getting a little too personal. I realize that. But that was one of the annoying things about Luce. When we were at Whooton, he'd make you describe the most personal stuff that happened to you, but if you started asking him questions about himself, he got sore. These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing. They always want you to shut up when they shut up, and go back to your room when they go back to their room. When I was at Whooton old Luce used to hate it-you really could tell he did-when after he was finished giving his sex talk to a bunch of us in his room we stuck around and chewed the fat by ourselves for a while. I mean the other guys and myself. In somebody else's room. Old Luce hated that. He always wanted everybody to go back to their own room and shut up when he was finished being the big shot. The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody'd say something smarter than he had. He really amused me.
"Maybe I'll go to China. My sex life is lousy," I said.
"Naturally. Your mind is immature."
"It is. It really is. I know it," I said. "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy-I mean really sexy-with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks."
"Naturally it does, for God's sake. I told you the last time I saw you what you need."
"You mean to go to a psychoanalyst and all?" I said. That's what he'd told me I ought to do. His father was a psychoanalyst and all.
"It's up to you, for God's sake. It's none of my goddam business what you do with your life."
I didn't say anything for a while. I was thinking.
"Supposing I went to your father and had him psychoanalyze me and all," I said. "What would he do to me? I mean what would he do to me?"
"He wouldn't do a goddam thing to you. He'd simply talk to you, and you'd talk to him, for God's sake. For one thing, he'd help you to recognize the patterns of your mind."
"The what?"
"The patterns of your mind. Your mind runs in- Listen. I'm not giving an elementary course in psychoanalysis. If you're interested, call him up and make an appointment. If you're not, don't. I couldn't care less, frankly."
I put my hand on his shoulder. Boy, he amused me. "You're a real friendly bastard," I told him. "You know that?"
He was looking at his wrist watch. "I have to tear," he said, and stood up. "Nice seeing you." He got the bartender and told him to bring him his check.
"Hey," I said, just before he beat it. "Did your father ever psychoanalyze you?"
"Me? Why do you ask?"
"No reason. Did he, though? Has he?"
"Not exactly. He's helped me to adjust myself to a certain extent, but an extensive analysis hasn't been necessary. Why do you ask?"
"No reason. I was just wondering."
"Well. Take it easy," he said. He was leaving his tip and all and he was starting to go.
"Have just one more drink," I told him. "Please. I'm lonesome as hell. No kidding."
He said he couldn't do it, though. He said he was late now, and then he left.
Old Luce. He was strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly had a good vocabulary. He had the largest vocabulary of any boy at Whooton when I was there. They gave us a test.
I kept sitting there getting drunk and waiting for old Tina and Janine to come out and do their stuff, but they weren't there. A flitty-looking guy with wavy hair came out and played the piano, and then this new babe, Valencia, came out and sang. She wasn't any good, but she was better than old Tina and Janine, and at least she sang good songs. The piano was right next to the bar where I was sitting and all, and old Valencia was standing practically right next to me. I sort of gave her the old eye, but she pretended she didn't even see me. I probably wouldn't have done it, but I was getting drunk as hell. When she was finished, she beat it out of the room so fast I didn't even get a chance to invite her to join me for a drink, so I called the headwaiter over. I told him to ask old Valencia if she'd care to join me for a drink. He said he would, but he probably didn't even give her my message. People never give your message to anybody.
Boy, I sat at that goddam bar till around one o'clock or so, getting drunk as a bastard. I could hardly see straight. The one thing I did, though, I was careful as hell not to get boisterous or anything. I didn't want anybody to notice me or anything or ask how old I was. But, boy, I could hardly see straight. When I was really drunk, I started that stupid business with the bullet in my guts again. I was the only guy at the bar with a bullet in their guts. I kept putting my hand under my jacket, on my stomach and all, to keep the blood from dripping all over the place. I didn't want anybody to know I was even wounded. I was concealing the fact that I was a wounded sonuvabitch. Finally what I felt like, I felt like giving old Jane a buzz and see if she was home yet. So I paid my check and all. Then I left the bar and went out where the telephones were. I kept keeping my hand under my jacket to keep the blood from dripping. Boy, was I drunk.
But when I got inside this phone booth, I wasn't much in the mood any more to give old Jane a buzz. I was too drunk, I guess. So what I did, I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz.
I had to dial about twenty numbers before I got the right one. Boy, was I blind.
"Hello," I said when somebody answered the goddam phone. I sort of yelled it, I was so drunk.
"Who is this?" this very cold lady's voice said.
"This is me. Holden Caulfield. Lemme speaka Sally, please."
"Sally's asleep. This is Sally's grandmother. Why are you calling at this hour, Holden? Do you know what time it is?"
"Yeah. Wanna talka Sally. Very important. Put her on."
"Sally's asleep, young man. Call her tomorrow. Good night."
"Wake 'er up! Wake 'er up, hey. Attaboy."
Then there was a different voice. "Holden, this is me." It was old Sally. "What's the big idea?"
"Sally? That you?"
"Yes-stop screaming. Are you drunk?"
"Yeah. Listen. Listen, hey. I'll come over Christmas Eve. Okay? Trimma goddam tree for ya. Okay? Okay, hey, Sally?"
"Yes. You're drunk. Go to bed now. Where are you? Who's with you?"
"Sally? I'll come over and trimma tree for ya, okay? Okay, hey?"
"Yes. Go to bed now. Where are you? Who's with you?"
"Nobody. Me, myself and I." Boy was I drunk! I was even still holding onto my guts. "They got me. Rocky's mob got me. You know that? Sally, you know that?"
"I can't hear you. Go to bed now. I have to go. Call me tomorrow."
"Hey, Sally! You want me trimma tree for ya? Ya want me to? Huh?"
"Yes. Good night. Go home and go to bed."
She hung up on me.
"G'night. G'night, Sally baby. Sally sweetheart darling," I said. Can you imagine how drunk I was? I hung up too, then. I figured she probably just came home from a date. I pictured her out with the Lunts and all somewhere, and that Andover jerk. All of them swimming around in a goddam pot of tea and saying sophisticated stuff to each other and being charming and phony. I wished to God I hadn't even phoned her. When I'm drunk, I'm a madman.
I stayed in the damn phone booth for quite a while. I kept holding onto the phone, sort of, so I wouldn't pass out. I wasn't feeling too marvelous, to tell you the truth. Finally, though, I came out and went in the men's room, staggering around like a moron, and filled one of the washbowls with cold water. Then I dunked my head in it, right up to the ears. I didn't even bother to dry it or anything. I just let the sonuvabitch drip. Then I walked over to this radiator by the window and sat down on it. It was nice and warm. It felt good because I was shivering like a bastard. It's a funny thing, I always shiver like hell when I'm drunk.
I didn't have anything else to do, so I kept sitting on the radiator and counting these little white squares on the floor. I was getting soaked. About a gallon of water was dripping down my neck, getting all over my collar and tie and all, but I didn't give a damn. I was too drunk to give a damn. Then, pretty soon, the guy that played the piano for old Valencia, this very wavyhaired, flitty-looking guy, came in to comb his golden locks. We sort of struck up a conversation while he was combing it, except that he wasn't too goddam friendly.
"Hey. You gonna see that Valencia babe when you go back in the bar?" I asked him.
"It's highly probable," he said. Witty bastard. All I ever meet is witty bastards.
"Listen. Give her my compliments. Ask her if that goddam waiter gave her my message, willya?"
"Why don't you go home, Mac? How old are you, anyway?"
"Eighty-six. Listen. Give her my compliments. Okay?"
"Why don't you go home, Mac?"
"Not me. Boy, you can play that goddam piano." I told him. I was just flattering him. He played the piano stinking, if you want to know the truth. "You oughta go on the radio," I said. "Handsome chap like you. All those goddam golden locks. Ya need a manager?"
"Go home, Mac, like a good guy. Go home and hit the sack."
"No home to go to. No kidding-you need a manager?"
He didn't answer me. He just went out. He was all through combing his hair and patting it and all, so he left. Like Stradlater. All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.
When I finally got down off the radiator and went out to the hat-check room, I was crying and all. I don't know why, but I was. I guess it was because I was feeling so damn depressed and lonesome. Then, when I went out to the checkroom, I couldn't find my goddam check. The hat-check girl was very nice about it, though. She gave me my coat anyway. And my "Little Shirley Beans" record-I still had it with me and all. I gave her a buck for being so nice, but she wouldn't take it. She kept telling me to go home and go to bed. I sort of tried to make a date with her for when she got through working, but she wouldn't do it. She said she was old enough to be my mother and all. I showed her my goddam gray hair and told her I was forty-two-I was only horsing around, naturally. She was nice, though. I showed her my goddam red hunting hat, and she liked it. She made me put it on before I went out, because my hair was still pretty wet. She was all right.
I didn't feel too drunk any more when I went outside, but it was getting very cold out again, and my teeth started chattering like hell. I couldn't make them stop. I walked over to Madison Avenue and started to wait around for a bus because I didn't have hardly any money left and I had to start economizing on cabs and all. But I didn't feel like getting on a damn bus. And besides, I didn't even know where I was supposed to go. So what I did, I started walking over to the park. I figured I'd go by that little lake and see what the hell the ducks were doing, see if they were around or not, I still didn't know if they were around or not. It wasn't far over to the park, and I didn't have anyplace else special to go to-I didn't even know where I was going to sleep yet-so I went. I wasn't tired or anything. I just felt blue as hell.
Then something terrible happened just as I got in the park. I dropped old Phoebe's record. It broke into about fifty pieces. It was in a big envelope and all, but it broke anyway. I damn near cried, it made me feel so terrible, but all I did was, I took the pieces out of the envelope and put them in my coat pocket. They weren't any good for anything, but I didn't feel like just throwing them away. Then I went in the park. Boy, was it dark.
I've lived in New York all my life, and I know Central Park like the back of my hand, because I used to roller-skate there all the time and ride my bike when I was a kid, but I had the most terrific trouble finding that lagoon that night. I knew right where it was-it was right near Central Park South and all-but I still couldn't find it. I must've been drunker than I thought. I kept walking and walking, and it kept getting darker and darker and spookier and spookier. I didn't see one person the whole time I was in the park. I'm just as glad. I probably would've jumped about a mile if I had. Then, finally, I found it. What it was, it was partly frozen and partly not frozen. But I didn't see any ducks around. I walked all around the whole damn lake-I damn near fell in once, in fact-but I didn't see a single duck. I thought maybe if there were any around, they might be asleep or something near the edge of the water, near the grass and all. That's how I nearly fell in. But I couldn't find any.
Finally I sat down on this bench, where it wasn't so goddam dark. Boy, I was still shivering like a bastard, and the back of my hair, even though I had my hunting hat on, was sort of full of little hunks of ice. That worried me. I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. My grandfather from Detroit, that keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddam bus with him, and my aunts-I have about fifty aunts-and all my lousy cousins. What a mob'd be there. They all came when Allie died, the whole goddam stupid bunch of them. I have this one stupid aunt with halitosis that kept saying how peaceful he looked lying there, D.B. told me. I wasn't there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand. Anyway, I kept worrying that I was getting pneumonia, with all those hunks of ice in my hair, and that I was going to die. I felt sorry as hell for my mother and father. Especially my mother, because she still isn't over my brother Allie yet. I kept picturing her not knowing what to do with all my suits and athletic equipment and all. The only good thing, I knew she wouldn't let old Phoebe come to my goddam funeral because she was only a little kid. That was the only good part. Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I certainly don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice-twice-we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner-everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn't there. You didn't know him. If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean. It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
After a while, just to get my mind off getting pneumonia and all, I took out my dough and tried to count it in the lousy light from the street lamp. All I had was three singles and five quarters and a nickel left-boy, I spent a fortune since I left Pencey. Then what I did, I went down near the lagoon and I sort of skipped the quarters and the nickel across it, where it wasn't frozen. I don't know why I did it, but I did it. I guess I thought it'd take my mind off getting pneumonia and dying. It didn't, though.
I started thinking how old Phoebe would feel if I got pneumonia and died. It was a childish way to think, but I couldn't stop myself. She'd feel pretty bad if something like that happened. She likes me a lot. I mean she's quite fond of me. She really is. Anyway, I couldn't get that off my mind, so finally what I figured I'd do, I figured I'd better sneak home and see her, in case I died and all. I had my door key with me and all, and I figured what I'd do, I'd sneak in the apartment, very quiet and all, and just sort of chew the fat with her for a while. The only thing that worried me was our front door. It creaks like a bastard. It's a pretty old apartment house, and the superintendent's a lazy bastard, and everything creaks and squeaks. I was afraid my parents might hear me sneaking in. But I decided I'd try it anyhow.
So I got the hell out of the park, and went home. I walked all the way. It wasn't too far, and I wasn't tired or even drunk any more. It was just very cold and nobody around anywhere.
The best break I had in years, when I got home the regular night elevator boy, Pete, wasn't on the car. Some new guy I'd never seen was on the car, so I figured that if I didn't bump smack into my parents and all I'd be able to say hello to old Phoebe and then beat it and nobody'd even know I'd been around. It was really a terrific break. What made it even better, the new elevator boy was sort of on the stupid side. I told him, in this very casual voice, to take me up to the Dicksteins'. The Dicksteins were these people that had the other apartment on our floor. I'd already taken off my hunting hat, so as not to look suspicious or anything. I went in the elevator like I was in a terrific hurry.
He had the elevator doors all shut and all, and was all set to take me up, and then he turned around and said, "They ain't in. They're at a party on the fourteenth floor."
"That's all right," I said. "I'm supposed to wait for them. I'm their nephew."
He gave me this sort of stupid, suspicious look. "You better wait in the lobby, fella," he said.
"I'd like to-I really would," I said. "But I have a bad leg. I have to hold it in a certain position. I think I'd better sit down in the chair outside their door."
He didn't know what the hell I was talking about, so all he said was "Oh" and took me up. Not bad, boy. It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
I got off at our floor-limping like a bastard-and started walking over toward the Dicksteins' side. Then, when I heard the elevator doors shut, I turned around and went over to our side. I was doing all right. I didn't even feel drunk anymore. Then I took out my door key and opened our door, quiet as hell. Then, very, very carefully and all, I went inside and closed the door. I really should've been a crook.
It was dark as hell in the foyer, naturally, and naturally I couldn't turn on any lights. I had to be careful not to bump into anything and make a racket. I certainly knew I was home, though. Our foyer has a funny smell that doesn't smell like anyplace else. I don't know what the hell it is. It isn't cauliflower and it isn't perfume-I don't know what the hell it is-but you always know you're home. I started to take off my coat and hang it up in the foyer closet, but that closet's full of hangers that rattle like madmen when you open the door, so I left it on. Then I started walking very, very slowly back toward old Phoebe's room. I knew the maid wouldn't hear me because she had only one eardrum. She had this brother that stuck a straw down her ear when she was a kid, she once told me. She was pretty deaf and all. But my parents, especially my mother, she has ears like a goddam bloodhound. So I took it very, very easy when I went past their door. I even held my breath, for God's sake. You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. She's nervous as hell. Half the time she's up all night smoking cigarettes.
Finally, after about an hour, I got to old Phoebe's room. She wasn't there, though. I forgot about that. I forgot she always sleeps in D.B.'s room when he's away in Hollywood or some place. She likes it because it's the biggest room in the house. Also because it has this big old madman desk in it that D.B. bought off some lady alcoholic in Philadelphia, and this big, gigantic bed that's about ten miles wide and ten miles long. I don't know where he bought that bed. Anyway, old Phoebe likes to sleep in D.B.'s room when he's away, and he lets her. You ought to see her doing her homework or something at that crazy desk. It's almost as big as the bed. You can hardly see her when she's doing her homework. That's the kind of stuff she likes, though. She doesn't like her own room because it's too little, she says. She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What's old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing.
Anyway, I went into D.B.'s room quiet as hell, and turned on the lamp on the desk. Old Phoebe didn't even wake up. When the light was on and all, I sort of looked at her for a while. She was laying there asleep, with her face sort of on the side of the pillow. She had her mouth way open. It's funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look all right. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look all right.
I went around the room, very quiet and all, looking at stuff for a while. I felt swell, for a change. I didn't even feel like I was getting pneumonia or anything any more. I just felt good, for a change. Old Phoebe's clothes were on this chair right next to the bed. She's very neat, for a child. I mean she doesn't just throw her stuff around, like some kids. She's no slob. She had the jacket to this tan suit my mother bought her in Canada hung up on the back of the chair. Then her blouse and stuff were on the seat. Her shoes and socks were on the floor, right underneath the chair, right next to each other. I never saw the shoes before. They were new. They were these dark brown loafers, sort of like this pair I have, and they went swell with that suit my mother bought her in Canada. My mother dresses her nice. She really does. My mother has terrific taste in some things. She's no good at buying ice skates or anything like that, but clothes, she's perfect. I mean Phoebe always has some dress on that can kill you. You take most little kids, even if their parents are wealthy and all, they usually have some terrible dress on. I wish you could see old Phoebe in that suit my mother bought her in Canada. I'm not kidding.
I sat down on old D.B.'s desk and looked at the stuff on it. It was mostly Phoebe's stuff, from school and all. Mostly books. The one on top was called Arithmetic Is Fun! I sort of opened the first page and took a look at it. This is what old Phoebe had on it:
PHOEBE WEATHERFIELD CAULFIELD
4B-1
That killed me. Her middle name is Josephine, for God's sake, not Weatherfield. She doesn't like it, though. Every time I see her she's got a new middle name for herself.
The book underneath the arithmetic was a geography, and the book under the geography was a speller. She's very good in spelling. She's very good in all her subjects, but she's best in spelling. Then, under the speller, there were a bunch of notebooks. She has about five thousand notebooks. You never saw a kid with so many notebooks. I opened the one on top and looked at the first page. It had on it:
Bernice meet me at recess I have something very very important to tell you.
That was all there was on that page. The next one had on it:
Why has south eastern Alaska so many caning factories?
Because theres so much salmon
Why has it valuable forests?
because it has the right climate.
What has our government done to make
life easier for the alaskan eskimos?
look it up for tomorrow!!!
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield
Phoebe W. Caulfield
Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield, Esq.
Please pass to Shirley!!!!
Shirley you said you were sagitarius but your only taurus bring your skates when you come over to my house
I sat there on D.B.'s desk and read the whole notebook. It didn't take me long, and I can read that kind of stuff, some kid's notebook, Phoebe's or anybody's, all day and all night long. Kid's notebooks kill me. Then I lit another cigarette-it was my last one. I must've smoked about three cartons that day. Then, finally, I woke her up. I mean I couldn't sit there on that desk for the rest of my life, and besides, I was afraid my parents might barge in on me all of a sudden and I wanted to at least say hello to her before they did. So I woke her up.
She wakes up very easily. I mean you don't have to yell at her or anything. All you have to do, practically, is sit down on the bed and say, "Wake up, Phoeb," and bingo, she's awake.
"Holden!" she said right away. She put her arms around my neck and all. She's very affectionate. I mean she's quite affectionate, for a child. Sometimes she's even too affectionate. I sort of gave her a kiss, and she said, "Whenja get home?' She was glad as hell to see me. You could tell.
"Not so loud. Just now. How are ya anyway?"
"I'm fine. Did you get my letter? I wrote you a five-page-"
"Yeah-not so loud. Thanks."
She wrote me this letter. I didn't get a chance to answer it, though. It was all about this play she was in in school. She told me not to make any dates or anything for Friday so that I could come see it.
"How's the play?" I asked her. "What'd you say the name of it was?"
" ‘A Christmas Pageant for Americans." It stinks, but I'm Benedict Arnold. I have practically the biggest part," she said. Boy, was she wide-awake. She gets very excited when she tells you that stuff. "It starts out when I'm dying. This ghost comes in on Christmas Eve and asks me if I'm ashamed and everything. You know. For betraying my country and everything. Are you coming to it?" She was sitting way the hell up in the bed and all. "That's what I wrote you about. Are you?"
"Sure I'm coming. Certainly I'm coming."
"Daddy can't come. He has to fly to California," she said. Boy, was she wide-awake. It only takes her about two seconds to get wide-awake. She was sitting-sort of kneeling-way up in bed, and she was holding my goddam hand. "Listen. Mother said you'd be home Wednesday," she said. "She said Wednesday."
"I got out early. Not so loud. You'll wake everybody up."
"What time is it? They won't be home till very late, Mother said. They went to a party in Norwalk, Connecticut," old Phoebe said. "Guess what I did this afternoon! What movie I saw. Guess!"
"I don't know-Listen. Didn't they say what time they'd-"
"The Doctor," old Phoebe said. "It's a special movie they had at the Lister Foundation. Just this one day they had it-today was the only day. It was all about this doctor in Kentucky and everything that sticks a blanket over this child's face that's a cripple and can't walk. Then they send him to jail and everything. It was excellent."
"Listen a second. Didn't they say what time they'd-"
"He feels sorry for it, the doctor. That's why he sticks this blanket over her face and everything and makes her suffocate. Then they make him go to jail for life imprisonment, but this child that he stuck the blanket over its head comes to visit him all the time and thanks him for what he did. He was a mercy killer. Only, he knows he deserves to go to jail because a doctor isn't supposed to take things away from God. This girl in my class's mother took us. Alice Holmborg, She's my best friend. She's the only girl in the whole-"
"Wait a second, willya?" I said. "I'm asking you a question. Did they say what time they'd be back, or didn't they?"
"No, but not till very late. Daddy took the car and everything so they wouldn't have to worry about trains. We have a radio in it now! Except that Mother said nobody can play it when the car's in traffic."
I began to relax, sort of. I mean I finally quit worrying about whether they'd catch me home or not. I figured the hell with it. If they did, they did.
You should've seen old Phoebe. She had on these blue pajamas with red elephants on the collars. Elephants knock her out.
"So it was a good picture, huh?" I said.
"Swell, except Alice had a cold, and her mother kept asking her all the time if she felt grippy. Right in the middle of the picture. Always in the middle of something important, her mother'd lean all over me and everything and ask Alice if she felt grippy. It got on my nerves."
Then I told her about the record. "Listen, I bought you a record," I told her. "Only I broke it on the way home." I took the pieces out of my coat pocket and showed her. "I was plastered," I said.
"Gimme the pieces," she said. "I'm saving them." She took them right out of my hand and then she put them in the drawer of the night table. She kills me.
"D.B. coming home for Christmas?" I asked her.
"He may and he may not, Mother said. It all depends. He may have to stay in Hollywood and write a picture about Annapolis."
"Annapolis, for God's sake!"
"It's a love story and everything. Guess who's going to be in it! What movie star. Guess!"
"I'm not interested. Annapolis, for God's sake. What's D.B. know about Annapolis, for God's sake? What's that got to do with the kind of stories he writes?" I said. Boy, that stuff drives me crazy. That goddam Hollywood. "What'd you do to your arm?" I asked her. I noticed she had this big hunk of adhesive tape on her elbow. The reason I noticed it, her pajamas didn't have any sleeves.
"This boy, Curtis Weintraub, that's in my class, pushed me while I was going down the stairs in the park," she said. "Wanna see?" She started taking the crazy adhesive tape off her arm.
"Leave it alone. Why'd he push you down the stairs?"
"I don't know. I think he hates me," old Phoebe said. "This other girl and me, Selma Atterbury, put ink and stuff all over his windbreaker."
"That isn't nice. What are you-a child, for God's sake?"
"No, but every time I'm in the park, he follows me everywhere. He's always following me. He gets on my nerves."
"He probably likes you. That's no reason to put ink all-"
"I don't want him to like me," she said. Then she started looking at me funny. "Holden," she said, "how come you're not home Wednesday?"
"What?"
Boy, you have to watch her every minute. If you don't think she's smart, you're mad.
"How come you're not home Wednesday?" she asked me. "You didn't get kicked out or anything, did you?"
"I told you. They let us out early. They let the whole-"
"You did get kicked out! You did!" old Phoebe said. Then she hit me on the leg with her fist. She gets very fisty when she feels like it. "You did! Oh, Holden!" She had her hand on her mouth and all. She gets very emotional, I swear to God.
"Who said I got kicked out? Nobody said I-"
"You did. You did," she said. Then she smacked me again with her fist. If you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. "Daddy'll kill you!" she said. Then she flopped on her stomach on the bed and put the goddam pillow over her head. She does that quite frequently. She's a true madman sometimes.
"Cut it out, now," I said. "Nobody's gonna kill me. Nobody's gonna even-C'mon, Phoeb, take that goddam thing off your head. Nobody's gonna kill me."
She wouldn't take it off, though. You can't make her do something if she doesn't want to. All she kept saying was, "Daddy's gonna kill you." You could hardly understand her with that goddam pillow over her head.
"Nobody's gonna kill me. Use your head. In the first place, I'm going away. What I may do, I may get a job on a ranch or something for a while. I know this guy whose grandfather's got a ranch in Colorado. I may get a job out there," I said. "I'll keep in touch with you and all when I'm gone, if I go. C'mon. Take that off your head. C'mon, hey, Phoeb. Please. Please, willya?"
She wouldn't take it off, though I tried pulling it off, but she's strong as hell. You get tired fighting with her. Boy, if she wants to keep a pillow over her head, she keeps it. "Phoebe, please. C'mon outa there," I kept saying. "C'mon, hey... Hey, Weatherfield. C'mon out."
She wouldn't come out, though. You can't even reason with her sometimes. Finally, I got up and went out in the living room and got some cigarettes out of the box on the table and stuck some in my pocket. I was all out.
When I came back, she had the pillow off her head all right-I knew she would-but she still wouldn't look at me, even though she was laying on her back and all. When I came around the side of the bed and sat down again, she turned her crazy face the other way. She was ostracizing the hell out of me. Just like the fencing team at Pencey when I left all the goddam foils on the subway.
"How's old Hazel Weatherfield?" I said. "You write any new stories about her? I got that one you sent me right in my suitcase. It's down at the station. It's very good."
"Daddy'll kill you."
Boy, she really gets something on her mind when she gets something on her mind.
"No, he won't. The worst he'll do, he'll give me hell again, and then he'll send me to that goddam military school. That's all he'll do to me. And in the first place, I won't even be around. I'll be away. I'll be-I'll probably be in Colorado on this ranch."
"Don't make me laugh. You can't even ride a horse."
"Who can't? Sure I can. Certainly I can. They can teach you in about two minutes," I said. "Stop picking at that." She was picking at that adhesive tape on her arm. "Who gave you that haircut?" I asked her. I just noticed what a stupid haircut somebody gave her. It was way too short.
"None of your business," she said. She can be very snotty sometimes. She can be quite snotty. "I suppose you failed in every single subject again," she said-very snotty. It was sort of funny, too, in a way. She sounds like a goddam schoolteacher sometimes, and she's only a little child.
"No, I didn't," I said. "I passed English." Then, just for the hell of it, I gave her a pinch on the behind. It was sticking way out in the breeze, the way she was laying on her side. She has hardly any behind. I didn't do it hard, but she tried to hit my hand anyway, but she missed.
Then all of a sudden, she said, "Oh, why did you do it?" She meant why did I get the ax again. It made me sort of sad, the way she said it.
"Oh, God, Phoebe, don't ask me. I'm sick of everybody asking me that," I said. "A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw so many mean guys in your life. For instance, if you were having a bull session in somebody's room, and somebody wanted to come in, nobody'd let them in if they were some dopey, pimply guy. Everybody was always locking their door when somebody wanted to come in. And they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to get in. He kept trying to join, and they wouldn't let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. I don't even feel like talking about it. It was a stinking school. Take my word."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything, but she was listening. I could tell by the back of her neck that she was listening. She always listens when you tell her something. And the funny part is she knows, half the time, what the hell you're talking about. She really does.
I kept talking about old Pencey. I sort of felt like it.
"Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too," I said. "There was this one old guy, Mr. Spencer. His wife was always giving you hot chocolate and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But you should've seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room. He was always coming in and sitting down in the back of the room for about a half an hour. He was supposed to be incognito or something. After a while, he'd be sitting back there and then he'd start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny jokes. Old Spencer'd practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something."
"Don't swear so much."
"It would've made you puke, I swear it would," I said. "Then, on Veterans' Day. They have this day, Veterans' Day, that all the jerks that graduated from Pencey around 1776 come back and walk all over the place, with their wives and children and everybody. You should've seen this one old guy that was about fifty. What he did was, he came in our room and knocked on the door and asked us if we'd mind if he used the bathroom. The bathroom was at the end of the corridor-I don't know why the hell he asked us. You know what he said? He said he wanted to see if his initials were still in one of the can doors. What he did, he carved his goddam stupid sad old initials in one of the can doors about ninety years ago, and he wanted to see if they were still there. So my roommate and I walked him down to the bathroom and all, and we had to stand there while he looked for his initials in all the can doors. He kept talking to us the whole time, telling us how when he was at Pencey they were the happiest days of his life, and giving us a lot of advice for the future and all. Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a bad guy-he wasn't. But you don't have to be a bad guy to depress somebody-you can be a good guy and do it. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you're looking for your initials in some can door-that's all you have to do. I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been all out of breath. He was all out of breath from just climbing up the stairs, and the whole time he was looking for his initials he kept breathing hard, with his nostrils all funny and sad, while he kept telling Stradlater and I to get all we could out of Pencey. God, Phoebe! I can't explain. I just didn't like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can't explain."
Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn't hear her. She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn't hear her.
"What?" I said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that way."
"You don't like anything that's happening."
It made me even more depressed when she said that.
"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"
"Because you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."
"I do! That's where you're wrong-that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?" I said. Boy, was she depressing me.
"Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."
"One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."
The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate.
"One thing I like a lot you mean?" I asked her.
She didn't answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. "C'mon answer me," I said. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"
"You like a lot."
"All right," I said. But the trouble was, I couldn't concentrate. About all I could think of were those two nuns that went around collecting dough in those beatup old straw baskets. Especially the one with the glasses with those iron rims. And this boy I knew at Elkton Hills. There was this one boy at Elkton Hills, named James Castle, that wouldn't take back something he said about this very conceited boy, Phil Stabile. James Castle called him a very conceited guy, and one of Stabile's lousy friends went and squealed on him to Stabile. So Stabile, with about six other dirty bastards, went down to James Castle's room and went in and locked the goddam door and tried to make him take back what he said, but he wouldn't do it. So they started in on him. I won't even tell you what they did to him-it's too repulsive-but he still wouldn't take it back, old James Castle. And you should've seen him. He was a skinny little weak-looking guy, with wrists about as big as pencils. Finally, what he did, instead of taking back what he said, he jumped out the window. I was in the shower and all, and even I could hear him land outside. But I just thought something fell out the window, a radio or a desk or something, not a boy or anything. Then I heard everybody running through the corridor and down the stairs, so I put on my bathrobe and I ran downstairs too, and there was old James Castle laying right on the stone steps and all. He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him. He had on this turtleneck sweater I'd lent him. All they did with the guys that were in the room with him was expel them. They didn't even go to jail.
That was about all I could think of, though. Those two nuns I saw at breakfast and this boy James Castle I knew at Elkton Hills. The funny part is, I hardly even know James Castle, if you want to know the truth. He was one of these very quiet guys. He was in my math class, but he was way over on the other side of the room, and he hardly ever got up to recite or go to the blackboard or anything. Some guys in school hardly ever get up to recite or go to the blackboard. I think the only time I ever even had a conversation with him was that time he asked me if he could borrow this turtleneck sweater I had. I damn near dropped dead when he asked me, I was so surprised and all. I remember I was brushing my teeth, in the can, when he asked me. He said his cousin was coming in to take him for a drive and all. I didn't even know he knew I had a turtleneck sweater. All I knew about him was that his name was always right ahead of me at roll call. Cabel, R., Cabel, W., Castle, Caulfield-I can still remember it. If you want to know the truth, I almost didn't lend him my sweater. Just because I didn't know him too well.
"What?" I said to old Phoebe. She said something to me, but I didn't hear her.
"You can't even think of one thing."
"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."
"Well, do it, then."
"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and-"
"Allie's dead-You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really-"
"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake-especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything. When she can't think of anything to say, she doesn't say a goddam word.
"Anyway, I like it now," I said. "I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing-"
"That isn't anything really!"
"It is so something really! Certainly it is! Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it."
"Stop swearing. All right, name something else. Name something you'd like to be. Like a scientist. Or a lawyer or something."
"I couldn't be a scientist. I'm no good in science."
"Well, a lawyer-like Daddy and all."
"Lawyers are all right, I guess-but it doesn't appeal to me," I said. "I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't."
I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she's only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it's not too bad.
"Daddy's going to kill you. He's going to kill you," she said.
I wasn't listening, though. I was thinking about something else-something crazy. "You know what I'd like to be?" I said. "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?"
"What? Stop swearing."
"You know that song ‘If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like-"
"It's ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,' " I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
Old Phoebe didn't say anything for a long time. Then, when she said something, all she said was, "Daddy's going to kill you."
"I don't give a damn if he does," I said. I got up from the bed then, because what I wanted to do, I wanted to phone up this guy that was my English teacher at Elkton Hills, Mr. Antolini. He lived in New York now. He quit Elkton Hills. He took this job teaching English at N.Y.U. "I have to make a phone call," I told Phoebe. "I'll be right back. Don't go to sleep." I didn't want her to go to sleep while I was in the living room. I knew she wouldn't but I said it anyway, just to make sure.
While I was walking toward the door, old Phoebe said, "Holden!" and I turned around.
She was sitting way up in bed. She looked so pretty. "I'm taking belching lessons from this girl, Phyllis Margulies," she said. "Listen."
I listened, and I heard something, but it wasn't much. "Good," I said. Then I went out in the living room and called up this teacher I had, Mr. Antolini.
I made it very snappy on the phone because I was afraid my parents would barge in on me right in the middle of it. They didn't, though. Mr. Antolini was very nice. He said I could come right over if I wanted to. I think I probably woke he and his wife up, because it took them a helluva long time to answer the phone. The first thing he asked me was if anything was wrong, and I said no. I said I'd flunked out of Pencey, though. I thought I might as well tell him. He said "Good God," when I said that. He had a good sense of humor and all. He told me to come right over if I felt like it.
He was about the best teacher I ever had, Mr. Antolini. He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing your respect for him. He was the one that finally picked up that boy that jumped out the window I told you about, James Castle. Old Mr. Antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody.
When I got back to D.B.'s room, old Phoebe'd turned the radio on. This dance music was coming out. She'd turned it on low, though, so the maid wouldn't hear it. You should've seen her. She was sitting smack in the middle of the bed, outside the covers, with her legs folded like one of those Yogi guys. She was listening to the music. She kills me.
"C'mon," I said. "You feel like dancing?" I taught her how to dance and all when she was a tiny little kid. She's a very good dancer. I mean I just taught her a few things. She learned it mostly by herself. You can't teach somebody how to really dance.
"You have shoes on," she said.
"I'll take 'em off. C'mon."
She practically jumped off the bed, and then she waited while I took my shoes off, and then I danced with her for a while. She's really damn good. I don't like people that dance with little kids, because most of the time it looks terrible. I mean if you're out at a restaurant somewhere and you see some old guy take his little kid out on the dance floor. Usually they keep yanking the kid's dress up in the back by mistake, and the kid can't dance worth a damn anyway, and it looks terrible, but I don't do it out in public with Phoebe or anything. We just horse around in the house. It's different with her anyway, because she can dance. She can follow anything you do. I mean if you hold her in close as hell so that it doesn't matter that your legs are so much longer. She stays right with you. You can cross over, or do some corny dips, or even jitterbug a little, and she stays right with you. You can even tango, for God's sake.
We danced about four numbers. In between numbers she's funny as hell. She stays right in position. She won't even talk or anything. You both have to stay right in position and wait for the orchestra to start playing again. That kills me. You're not supposed to laugh or anything, either.
Anyway, we danced about four numbers, and then I turned off the radio. Old Phoebe jumped back in bed and got under the covers. "I'm improving, aren't I?" she asked me.
"And how," I said. I sat down next to her on the bed again. I was sort of out of breath. I was smoking so damn much, I had hardly any wind. She wasn't even out of breath.
"Feel my forehead," she said all of a sudden.
"Why?"
"Feel it. Just feel it once."
I felt it. I didn't feel anything, though.
"Does it feel very feverish?" she said.
"No. Is it supposed to?"
"Yes-I'm making it. Feel it again."
I felt it again, and I still didn't feel anything, but I said, "I think it's starting to, now." I didn't want her to get a goddam inferiority complex.
She nodded. "I can make it go up to over the thermoneter."
"Thermometer. Who said so?"
"Alice Holmborg showed me how. You cross your legs and hold your breath and think of something very, very hot. A radiator or something. Then your whole forehead gets so hot you can burn somebody's hand."
That killed me. I pulled my hand away from her forehead, like I was in terrific danger. "Thanks for telling me," I said.
"Oh, I wouldn't've burned your hand. I'd've stopped before it got too-Shhh!" Then, quick as hell, she sat way the hell up in bed.
She scared hell out of me when she did that. "What's the matter?" I said.
"The front door!" she said in this loud whisper. "It's them!"
I quick jumped up and ran over and turned off the light over the desk. Then I jammed out my cigarette on my shoe and put it in my pocket. Then I fanned hell out of the air, to get the smoke out-I shouldn't even have been smoking, for God's sake. Then I grabbed my shoes and got in the closet and shut the door. Boy, my heart was beating like a bastard.
I heard my mother come in the room.
"Phoebe?" she said. "Now, stop that. I saw the light, young lady."
"Hello!" I heard old Phoebe say. "I couldn't sleep. Did you have a good time?"
"Marvelous," my mother said, but you could tell she didn't mean it. She doesn't enjoy herself much when she goes out. "Why are you awake, may I ask? Were you warm enough?"
"I was warm enough, I just couldn't sleep."
"Phoebe, have you been smoking a cigarette in here? Tell me the truth, please, young lady."
"What?" old Phoebe said.
"You heard me."
"I just lit one for one second. I just took one puff. Then I threw it out the window."
"Why, may I ask?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"I don't like that, Phoebe. I don't like that at all," my mother said. "Do you want another blanket?"
"No, thanks. G'night!" old Phoebe said. She was trying to get rid of her, you could tell.
"How was the movie?" my mother said.
"Excellent. Except Alice's mother. She kept leaning over and asking her if she felt grippy during the whole entire movie. We took a taxi home."
"Let me feel your forehead."
"I didn't catch anything. She didn't have anything. It was just her mother."
"Well. Go to sleep now. How was your dinner?"
"Lousy," Phoebe said.
"You heard what your father said about using that word. What was lousy about it? You had a lovely lamb chop. I walked all over Lexington Avenue just to-"
"The lamb chop was all right, but Charlene always breathes on me whenever she puts something down. She breathes all over the food and everything. She breathes on everything."
"Well. Go to sleep. Give Mother a kiss. Did you say your prayers?"
"I said them in the bathroom. G'night!"
"Good night. Go right to sleep now. I have a splitting headache," my mother said. She gets headaches quite frequently. She really does.
"Take a few aspirins," old Phoebe said. "Holden'll be home on Wednesday, won't he?"
"So far as I know. Get under there, now. Way down."
I heard my mother go out and close the door. I waited a couple of minutes. Then I came out of the closet. I bumped smack into old Phoebe when I did it, because it was so dark and she was out of bed and coming to tell me. "I hurt you?" I said. You had to whisper now, because they were both home. "I gotta get a move on," I said. I found the edge of the bed in the dark and sat down on it and started putting on my shoes. I was pretty nervous. I admit it.
"Don't go now," Phoebe whispered. "Wait'll they're asleep!"
"No. Now. Now's the best time," I said. "She'll be in the bathroom and Daddy'll turn on the news or something. Now's the best time." I could hardly tie my shoelaces, I was so damn nervous. Not that they would've killed me or anything if they'd caught me home, but it would've been very unpleasant and all. "Where the hell are ya?" I said to old Phoebe. It was so dark I couldn't see her.
"Here." She was standing right next to me. I didn't even see her.
"I got my damn bags at the station," I said. "Listen. You got any dough, Phoeb? I'm practically broke."
"Just my Christmas dough. For presents and all. I haven't done any shopping at all yet."
"Oh." I didn't want to take her Christmas dough.
"You want some?" she said.
"I don't want to take your Christmas dough."
"I can lend you some," she said. Then I heard her over at D.B.'s desk, opening a million drawers and feeling around with her hand. It was pitch-black, it was so dark in the room. "If you go away, you won't see me in the play," she said. Her voice sounded funny when she said it.
"Yes, I will. I won't go way before that. You think I wanna miss the play?" I said. "What I'll do, I'll probably stay at Mr. Antolini's house till maybe Tuesday night. Then I'll come home. If I get a chance, I'll phone ya."
"Here," old Phoebe said. She was trying to give me the dough, but she couldn't find my hand.
"Where?"
She put the dough in my hand.
"Hey, I don't need all this," I said. "Just give me two bucks, is all. No kidding-Here." I tried to give it back to her, but she wouldn't take it.
"You can take it all. You can pay me back. Bring it to the play."
"How much is it, for God's sake?"
"Eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Sixty-five cents. I spent some."
Then, all of a sudden, I started to cry. I couldn't help it. I did it so nobody could hear me, but I did it. It scared hell out of old Phoebe when I started doing it, and she came over and tried to make me stop, but once you get started, you can't just stop on a goddam dime. I was still sitting on the edge of the bed when I did it, and she put her old arm around my neck, and I put my arm around her, too, but I still couldn't stop for a long time. I thought I was going to choke to death or something. Boy, I scared hell out of poor old Phoebe. The damn window was open and everything, and I could feel her shivering and all, because all she had on was her pajamas. I tried to make her get back in bed, but she wouldn't go. Finally I stopped. But it certainly took me a long, long time. Then I finished buttoning my coat and all. I told her I'd keep in touch with her. She told me I could sleep with her if I wanted to, but I said no, that I'd better beat it, that Mr. Antolini was waiting for me and all. Then I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes those kind of crazy hats. She didn't want to take it, but I made her. I'll bet she slept with it on. She really likes those kind of hats. Then I told her again I'd give her a buzz if I got a chance, and then I left.
It was a helluva lot easier getting out of the house than it was getting in, for some reason. For one thing, I didn't give much of a damn any more if they caught me. I really didn't. I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way.
I walked all the way downstairs, instead of taking the elevator. I went down the back stairs. I nearly broke my neck on about ten million garbage pails, but I got out all right. The elevator boy didn't even see me. He probably still thinks I'm up at the Dicksteins'.
Mr. and Mrs. Antolini had this very swanky apartment over on Sutton Place, with two steps that you go down to get in the living room, and a bar and all. I'd been there quite a few times, because after I left Elkton Hills Mr. Antoilni came up to our house for dinner quite frequently to find out how I was getting along. He wasn't married then. Then when he got married, I used to play tennis with he and Mrs. Antolini quite frequently, out at the West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, Long Island. Mrs. Antolini, belonged there. She was lousy with dough. She was about sixty years older than Mr. Antolini, but they seemed to get along quite well. For one thing, they were both very intellectual, especially Mr. Antolini except that he was more witty than intellectual when you were with him, sort of like D.B. Mrs. Antolini was mostly serious. She had asthma pretty bad. They both read all D.B.'s stories-Mrs. Antolini, too-and when D.B. went to Hollywood, Mr. Antolini phoned him up and told him not to go. He went anyway, though. Mr. Antolini said that anybody that could write like D.B. had no business going out to Hollywood. That's exactly what I said, practically.
I would have walked down to their house, because I didn't want to spend any of Phoebe's Christmas dough that I didn't have to, but I felt funny when I got outside. Sort of dizzy. So I took a cab. I didn't want to, but I did. I had a helluva time even finding a cab.
Old Mr. Antolini answered the door when I rang the bell-after the elevator boy finally let me up, the bastard. He had on his bathrobe and slippers, and he had a highball in one hand. He was a pretty sophisticated guy, and he was a pretty heavy drinker. "Holden, m'boy!" he said. "My God, he's grown another twenty inches. Fine to see you."
"How are you, Mr. Antolini? How's Mrs. Antolini?"
"We're both just dandy. Let's have that coat." He took my coat off me and hung it up. "I expected to see a day-old infant in your arms. Nowhere to turn. Snowflakes in your eyelashes." He's a very witty guy sometimes. He turned around and yelled out to the kitchen, "Lillian! How's the coffee coming?" Lillian was Mrs. Antolini's first name.
"It's all ready," she yelled back. "Is that Holden? Hello, Holden!"
"Hello, Mrs. Antolini!"
You were always yelling when you were there. That's because the both of them were never in the same room at the same time. It was sort of funny.
"Sit down, Holden," Mr. Antolini said. You could tell he was a little oiled up. The room looked like they'd just had a party. Glasses were all over the place, and dishes with peanuts in them. "Excuse the appearance of the place," he said. "We've been entertaining some Buffalo friends of Mrs. Antolini's... Some buffaloes, as a matter of fact."
I laughed, and Mrs. Antolini yelled something in to me from the kitchen, but I couldn't hear her. "What'd she say?" I asked Mr. Antolini.
"She said not to look at her when she comes in. She just arose from the sack. Have a cigarette. Are you smoking now?"
"Thanks," I said. I took a cigarette from the box he offered me. "Just once in a while. I'm a moderate smoker."
"I'll bet you are," he said. He gave me a light from this big lighter off the table. "So. You and Pencey are no longer one," he said. He always said things that way. Sometimes it amused me a lot and sometimes it didn't. He sort of did it a little bit too much. I don't mean he wasn't witty or anything-he was-but sometimes it gets on your nerves when somebody's always saying things like "So you and Pencey are no longer one." D.B. does it too much sometimes, too.
"What was the trouble?" Mr. Antolini asked me. "How'd you do in English? I'll show you the door in short order if you flunked English, you little ace composition writer."
"Oh, I passed English all right. It was mostly literature, though. I only wrote about two compositions the whole term," I said. "I flunked Oral Expression, though. They had this course you had to take, Oral Expression. That I flunked."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." I didn't feel much like going into It. I was still feeling sort of dizzy or something, and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. I really did. But you could tell he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it. "It's this course where each boy in class has to get up in class and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all. And if the boy digresses at all, you're supposed to yell ‘Digression!' at him as fast as you can. It just about drove me crazy. I got an F in it."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all."
"You don't care to have somebody stick to the point when he tells you something?"
"Oh, sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don't like them to stick too much to the point. I don't know. I guess I don't like it when somebody sticks to the point all the time. The boys that got the best marks in Oral Expression were the ones that stuck to the point all the time-I admit it. But there was this one boy, Richard Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling ‘Digression!' at him. It was terrible, because in the first place, he was a very nervous guy-I mean he was a very nervous guy-and his lips were always shaking whenever it was his time to make a speech, and you could hardly hear him if you were sitting way in the back of the room. When his lips sort of quit shaking a little bit, though, I liked his speeches better than anybody else's. He practically flunked the course, though, too. He got a D plus because they kept yelling ‘Digression!' at him all the time. For instance, he made this speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling ‘Digression!' at him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, Mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it because he hadn't told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm and all. What he did was, Richard Kinsella, he'd start telling you all about that stuff-then all of a sudden he'd start telling you about this letter his mother got from his uncle, and how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he wouldn't let anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didn't want anybody to see him with a brace on. It didn't have much to do with the farm-I admit it-but it was nice. It's nice when somebody tells you about their uncle. Especially when they start out telling you about their father's farm and then all of a sudden get more interested in their uncle. I mean it's dirty to keep yelling ‘Digression!' at him when he's all nice and excited. I don't know. It's hard to explain." I didn't feel too much like trying, either. For one thing, I had this terrific headache all of a sudden. I wished to God old Mrs. Antolini would come in with the coffee. That's something that annoys hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.
"Holden... One short, faintly stuffy, pedagogical question. Don't you think there's a time and place for everything? Don't you think if someone starts out to tell you about his father's farm, he should stick to his guns, then get around to telling you about his uncle's brace? Or, if his uncle's brace is such a provocative subject, shouldn't he have selected it in the first place as his subject-not the farm?"
I didn't feel much like thinking and answering and all. I had a headache and I felt lousy. I even had sort of a stomach-ache, if you want to know the truth.
"Yes-I don't know. I guess he should. I mean I guess he should've picked his uncle as a subject, instead of the farm, if that interested him most. But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice. You just didn't know this teacher, Mr. Vinson. He could drive you crazy sometimes, him and the goddam class. I mean he'd keep telling you to unify and simplify all the time. Some things you just can't do that to. I mean you can't hardly ever simplify and unify something just because somebody wants you to. You didn't know this guy, Mr. Vinson. I mean he was very intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn't have too much brains."
"Coffee, gentlemen, finally," Mrs. Antolini said. She came in carrying this tray with coffee and cakes and stuff on it. "Holden, don't you even peek at me. I'm a mess."
"Hello, Mrs. Antolini," I said. I started to get up and all, but Mr. Antolini got hold of my jacket and pulled me back down. Old Mrs. Antolini's hair was full of those iron curler jobs, and she didn't have any lipstick or anything on. She didn't look too gorgeous. She looked pretty old and all.
"I'll leave this right here. Just dive in, you two," she said. She put the tray down on the cigarette table, pushing all these glasses out of the way. "How's your mother, Holden?"
"She's fine, thanks. I haven't seen her too recently, but the last I-"
"Darling, if Holden needs anything, everything's in the linen closet. The top shelf. I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted," Mrs. Antolini said. She looked it, too. "Can you boys make up the couch by yourselves?"
"We'll take care of everything. You run along to bed," Mr. Antolini said. He gave Mrs. Antolini a kiss and she said good-by to me and went in the bedroom. They were always kissing each other a lot in public.
I had part of a cup of coffee and about half of some cake that was as hard as a rock. All old Mr. Antolini had was another highball, though. He makes them strong, too, you could tell. He may get to be an alcoholic if he doesn't watch his step.
"I had lunch with your dad a couple of weeks ago," he said all of a sudden. "Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't."
"You're aware, of course, that he's terribly concerned about you."
"I know it. I know he is," I said.
"Apparently before he phoned me he'd just had a long, rather harrowing letter from your latest headmaster, to the effect that you were making absolutely no effort at all. Cutting classes. Coming unprepared to all your classes. In general, being an all-around-"
"I didn't cut any classes. You weren't allowed to cut any. There were a couple of them I didn't attend once in a while, like that Oral Expression I told you about, but I didn't cut any."
I didn't feel at all like discussing it. The coffee made my stomach feel a little better, but I still had this awful headache.
Mr. Antolini lit another cigarette. He smoked like a fiend. Then he said, "Frankly, I don't know what the hell to say to you, Holden."
"I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that."
"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind... Are you listening to me?"
"Yes."
You could tell he was trying to concentrate and all.
"It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, ‘It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. "But you're wrong about that hating business. I mean about hating football players and all. You really are. I don't hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while-I admit it-but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them."
Mr. Antolini didn't say anything for a while. He got up and got another hunk of ice and put it in his drink, then he sat down again. You could tell he was thinking. I kept wishing, though, that he'd continue the conversation in the morning, instead of now, but he was hot. People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.
"All right. Listen to me a minute now... I may not word this as memorably as I'd like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight. But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think you're riding for-it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. You follow me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sure?"
"Yes."
He got up and poured some more booze in his glass. Then he sat down again. He didn't say anything for a long time.
"I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." He gave me a funny look. "If I write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?"
"Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. I still have the paper he gave me.
He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in his hand. "Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel. Here's what he-Are you still with me?"
"Yes, sure I am."
"Here's what he said: ‘The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.' "
He leaned over and handed it to me. I read it right when he gave it to me, and then I thanked him and all and put it in my pocket. It was nice of him to go to all that trouble. It really was. The thing was, though, I didn't feel much like concentrating. Boy, I felt so damn tired all of a sudden.
You could tell he wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing. "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you."
I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn't too sure what he was talking about. I was pretty sure I knew, but I wasn't too positive at the time. I was too damn tired.
"And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student-whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find, once you get past all the Mr. Vineses and their Oral Comp-"
"Mr. Vinsons," I said. He meant all the Mr. Vinsons, not all the Mr. Vineses. I shouldn't have interrupted him, though.
"All right-the Mr. Vinsons. Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer-that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it-to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." He stopped and took a big drink out of his highball. Then he started again. Boy, he was really hot. I was glad I didn't try to stop him or anything. "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with-which, unfortunately, is rarely the case-tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And-most important-nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker. Do you follow me at all?"
"Yes, sir."
He didn't say anything again for quite a while. I don't know if you've ever done it, but it's sort of hard to sit around waiting for somebody to say something when they're thinking and all. It really is. I kept trying not to yawn. It wasn't that I was bored or anything-I wasn't-but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.
"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."
Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!
Mr. Antolini just laughed, though. "C'mon," he said, and got up. "We'll fix up the couch for you."
I followed him and he went over to this closet and tried to take down some sheets and blankets and stuff that was on the top shelf, but he couldn't do it with this highball glass in his hand. So he drank it and then put the glass down on the floor and then he took the stuff down. I helped him bring it over to the couch. We both made the bed together. He wasn't too hot at it. He didn't tuck anything in very tight. I didn't care, though. I could've slept standing up I was so tired.
"How're all your women?"
"They're okay." I was being a lousy conversationalist, but I didn't feel like it.
"How's Sally?" He knew old Sally Hayes. I introduced him once.
"She's all right. I had a date with her this afternoon." Boy, it seemed like twenty years ago! "We don't have too much in common any more."
"Helluva pretty girl. What about that other girl? The one you told me about, in Maine?"
"Oh-Jane Gallagher. She's all right. I'm probably gonna give her a buzz tomorrow."
We were all done making up the couch then. "It's all yours," Mr. Antolini said. "I don't know what the hell you're going to do with those legs of yours."
"That's all right. I'm used to short beds," I said. "Thanks a lot, sir. You and Mrs. Antolini really saved my life tonight."
"You know where the bathroom is. If there's anything you want, just holler. I'll be in the kitchen for a while-will the light bother you?"
"No-heck, no. Thanks a lot."
"All right. Good night, handsome."
"G'night, sir. Thanks a lot."
He went out in the kitchen and I went in the bathroom and got undressed and all. I couldn't brush my teeth because I didn't have any toothbrush with me. I didn't have any pajamas either and Mr. Antolini forgot to lend me some. So I just went back in the living room and turned off this little lamp next to the couch, and then I got in bed with just my shorts on. It was way too short for me, the couch, but I really could've slept standing up without batting an eyelash. I laid awake for just a couple of seconds thinking about all that stuff Mr. Antolini'd told me. About finding out the size of your mind and all. He was really a pretty smart guy. But I couldn't keep my goddam eyes open, and I fell asleep.
Then something happened. I don't even like to talk about it.
I woke up all of a sudden. I don't know what time it was or anything, but I woke up. I felt something on my head, some guy's hand. Boy, it really scared hell out of me. What it was, it was Mr. Antolini's hand. What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head. Boy, I'll bet I jumped about a thousand feet.
"What the hellya doing?" I said.
"Nothing! I'm simply sitting here, admiring-"
"What're ya doing, anyway?" I said over again. I didn't know what the hell to say-I mean I was embarrassed as hell.
"How 'bout keeping your voice down? I'm simply sitting here-"
"I have to go, anyway," I said-boy, was I nervous! I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous. I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around.
"You have to go where?" Mr. Antolini said. He was trying to act very goddam casual and cool and all, but he wasn't any too goddam cool. Take my word.
"I left my bags and all at the station. I think maybe I'd better go down and get them. I have all my stuff in them."
"They'll be there in the morning. Now, go back to bed. I'm going to bed myself. What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing's the matter, it's just that all my money and stuff's in one of my bags. I'll be right back. I'll get a cab and be right back," I said. Boy, I was falling all over myself in the dark. "The thing is, it isn't mine, the money. It's my mother's, and I-"
"Don't be ridiculous, Holden. Get back in that bed. I'm going to bed myself. The money will be there safe and sound in the morn-"
"No, no kidding. I gotta get going. I really do." I was damn near all dressed already, except that I couldn't find my tie. I couldn't remember where I'd put my tie. I put on my jacket and all without it. Old Mr. Antolini was sitting now in the big chair a little ways away from me, watching me. It was dark and all and I couldn't see him so hot, but I knew he was watching me, all right. He was still boozing, too. I could see his trusty highball glass in his hand.
"You're a very, very strange boy."
"I know it," I said. I didn't even look around much for my tie. So I went without it. "Good-by, sir," I said, "Thanks a lot. No kidding."
He kept walking right behind me when I went to the front door, and when I rang the elevator bell he stayed in the damn doorway. All he said was that business about my being a "very, very strange boy" again. Strange, my ass. Then he waited in the doorway and all till the goddam elevator came. I never waited so long for an elevator in my whole goddam life. I swear.
I didn't know what the hell to talk about while I was waiting for the elevator, and he kept standing there, so I said, "I'm gonna start reading some good books. I really am." I mean you had to say something. It was very embarrassing.
"You grab your bags and scoot right on back here again. I'll leave the door unlatched."
"Thanks a lot," I said. "G'by!" The elevator was finally there. I got in and went down. Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating, too. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it.
When I got outside, it was just getting light out. It was pretty cold, too, but it felt good because I was sweating so much.
I didn't know where the hell to go. I didn't want to go to another hotel and spend all Phoebe's dough. So finally all I did was I walked over to Lexington and took the subway down to Grand Central. My bags were there and all, and I figured I'd sleep in that crazy waiting room where all the benches are. So that's what I did. It wasn't too bad for a while because there weren't many people around and I could stick my feet up. But I don't feel much like discussing it. It wasn't too nice. Don't ever try it. I mean it. It'll depress you.
I only slept till around nine o'clock because a million people started coming in the waiting room and I had to take my feet down. I can't sleep so hot if I have to keep my feet on the floor. So I sat up. I still had that headache. It was even worse. And I think I was more depressed than I ever was in my whole life.
I didn't want to, but I started thinking about old Mr. Antolini and I wondered what he'd tell Mrs. Antolini when she saw I hadn't slept there or anything. That part didn't worry me too much, though, because I knew Mr. Antolini was very smart and that he could make up something to tell her. He could tell her I'd gone home or something. That part didn't worry me much. But what did worry me was the part about how I'd woke up and found him patting me on the head and all. I mean I wondered if just maybe I was wrong about thinking he was making a flitty pass at me. I wondered if maybe he just liked to pat guys on the head when they're asleep. I mean how can you tell about that stuff for sure? You can't. I even started wondering if maybe I should've got my bags and gone back to his house, the way I'd said I would. I mean I started thinking that even if he was a flit he certainly'd been very nice to me. I thought how he hadn't minded it when I'd called him up so late, and how he'd told me to come right over if I felt like it. And how he went to all that trouble giving me that advice about finding out the size of your mind and all, and how he was the only guy that'd even gone near that boy James Castle I told you about when he was dead. I thought about all that stuff. And the more I thought about it, the more depressed I got. I mean I started thinking maybe I should've gone back to his house. Maybe he was only patting my head just for the hell of it. The more I thought about it, though, the more depressed and screwed up about it I got. What made it even worse, my eyes were sore as hell. They felt sore and burny from not getting too much sleep. Besides that, I was getting sort of a cold, and I didn't even have a goddam handkerchief with me. I had some in my suitcase, but I didn't feel like taking it out of that strong box and opening it up right in public and all.
There was this magazine that somebody'd left on the bench next to me, so I started reading it, thinking it'd make me stop thinking about Mr. Antolini and a million other things for at least a little while. But this damn article I started reading made me feel almost worse. It was all about hormones. It described how you should look, your face and eyes and all, if your hormones were in good shape, and I didn't look that way at all. I looked exactly like the guy in the article with lousy hormones. So I started getting worried about my hormones. Then I read this other article about how you can tell if you have cancer or not. It said if you had any sores in your mouth that didn't heal pretty quickly, it was a sign that you probably had cancer. I'd had this sore on the inside of my lip for about two weeks. So figured I was getting cancer. That magazine was some little cheerer upper. I finally quit reading it and went outside for a walk. I figured I'd be dead in a couple of months because I had cancer. I really did. I was even positive I would be. It certainly didn't make me feel too gorgeous. It'sort of looked like it was going to rain, but I went for this walk anyway. For one thing, I figured I ought to get some breakfast. I wasn't at all hungry, but I figured I ought to at least eat something. I mean at least get something with some vitamins in it. So I started walking way over east, where the pretty cheap restaurants are, because I didn't want to spend a lot of dough.
While I was walking, I passed these two guys that were unloading this big Christmas tree off a truck. One guy kept saying to the other guy, "Hold the sonuvabitch up! Hold it up, for Chrissake!" It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree. It was sort of funny, though, in an awful way, and I started to sort of laugh. It was about the worst thing I could've done, because the minute I started to laugh I thought I was going to vomit. I really did. I even started to, but it went away. I don't know why. I mean I hadn't eaten anything unsanitary or like that and usually I have quite a strong stomach. Anyway, I got over it, and I figured I'd feel better if I had something to eat. So I went in this very cheap-looking restaurant and had doughnuts and coffee. Only, I didn't eat the doughnuts. I couldn't swallow them too well. The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it's hard as hell to swallow. The waiter was very nice, though. He took them back without charging me. I just drank the coffee. Then I left and started walking over toward Fifth Avenue.
It was Monday and all, and pretty near Christmas, and all the stores were open. So it wasn't too bad walking on Fifth Avenue. It was fairly Christmasy. All those scraggy-looking Santa Clauses were standing on corners ringing those bells, and the Salvation Army girls, the ones that don't wear any lipstick or anything, were tinging bells too. I sort of kept looking around for those two nuns I'd met at breakfast the day before, but I didn't see them. I knew I wouldn't, because they'd told me they'd come to New York to be schoolteachers, but I kept looking for them anyway. Anyway, it was pretty Christmasy all of a sudden. A million little kids were downtown with their mothers, getting on and off buses and coming in and out of stores. I wished old Phoebe was around. She's not little enough any more to go stark staring mad in the toy department, but she enjoys horsing around and looking at the people. The Christmas before last I took her downtown shopping with me. We had a helluva time. I think it was in Bloomingdale's. We went in the shoe department and we pretended she-old Phoebe- wanted to get a pair of those very high storm shoes, the kind that have about a million holes to lace up. We had the poor salesman guy going crazy. Old Phoebe tried on about twenty pairs, and each time the poor guy had to lace one shoe all the way up. It was a dirty trick, but it killed old Phoebe. We finally bought a pair of moccasins and charged them. The salesman was very nice about it. I think he knew we were horsing around, because old Phoebe always starts giggling.
Anyway, I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue, without any tie on or anything. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard-my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him. Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner. But I kept going and all. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think-I don't remember, to tell you the truth. I know I didn't stop till I was way up in the Sixties, past the zoo and all. Then I sat down on this bench. I could hardly get my breath, and I was still sweating like a bastard. I sat there, I guess, for about an hour. Finally, what I decided I'd do, I decided I'd go away. I decided I'd never go home again and I'd never go away to another school again. I decided I'd just see old Phoebe and sort of say good-by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I'd start hitchhiking my way out West. What I'd do, I figured, I'd go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I'd bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I'd be somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody'd know me and I'd get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. They'd let me put gas and oil in their stupid cars, and they'd pay me a salary and all for it, and I'd build me a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life. I'd build it right near the woods, but not right in them, because I'd want it to be sunny as hell all the time. I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a goddam piece of paper, like everybody else. If we had any children, we'd hide them somewhere. We could buy them a lot of books and teach them how to read and write by ourselves.
I got excited as hell thinking about it. I really did. I knew the part about pretending I was a deaf-mute was crazy, but I liked thinking about it anyway. But I really decided to go out West and all. All I wanted to do first was say good-by to old Phoebe. So all of a sudden, I ran like a madman across the street-I damn near got killed doing it, if you want to know the truth-and went in this stationery store and bought a pad and pencil. I figured I'd write her a note telling her where to meet me so I could say good-by to her and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I'd take the note up to her school and get somebody in the principal's office to give it to her. But I just put the pad and pencil in my pocket and started walking fast as hell up to her school-I was too excited to write the note right in the stationery store. I walked fast because I wanted her to get the note before she went home for lunch, and I didn't have any too much time.
I knew where her school was, naturally, because I went there myself when I was a kid. When I got there, it felt funny. I wasn't sure I'd remember what it was like inside, but I did. It was exactly the same as it was when I went there. They had that same big yard inside, that was always sort of dark, with those cages around the light bulbs so they wouldn't break if they got hit with a ball. They had those same white circles painted all over the floor, for games and stuff. And those same old basketball rings without any nets-just the backboards and the rings.
Nobody was around at all, probably because it wasn't recess period, and it wasn't lunchtime yet. All I saw was one little kid, a colored kid, on his way to the bathroom. He had one of those wooden passes sticking out of his hip pocket, the same way we used to have, to show he had permission and all to go to the bathroom.
I was still sweating, but not so bad any more. I went over to the stairs and sat down on the first step and took out the pad and pencil I'd bought. The stairs had the same smell they used to have when I went there. Like somebody'd just taken a leak on them. School stairs always smell like that. Anyway, I sat there and wrote this note:
DEAR PHOEBE,
I can't wait around till Wednesday any more so I will probably hitch hike out west this afternoon. Meet me at the Museum of art near the door at quarter past 12 if you can and I will give you your Christmas dough back. I didn't spend much.
Love,
HOLDEN
Her school was practically right near the museum, and she had to pass it on her way home for lunch anyway, so I knew she could meet me all right.
Then I started walking up the stairs to the principal's office so I could give the note to somebody that would bring it to her in her classroom. I folded it about ten times so nobody'd open it. You can't trust anybody in a goddam school. But I knew they'd give it to her if I was her brother and all.
While I was walking up the stairs, though, all of a sudden I thought I was going to puke again. Only, I didn't. I sat down for a second, and then I felt better. But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-all cockeyed, naturally-what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody. But I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed. I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it. But I rubbed it out anyway, finally. Then I went on up to the principal's office.
The principal didn't seem to be around, but some old lady around a hundred years old was sitting at a typewriter. I told her I was Phoebe Caulfield's brother, in 4B-1, and I asked her to please give Phoebe the note. I said it was very important because my mother was sick and wouldn't have lunch ready for Phoebe and that she'd have to meet me and have lunch in a drugstore. She was very nice about it, the old lady. She took the note off me and called some other lady, from the next office, and the other lady went to give it to Phoebe. Then the old lady that was around a hundred years old and I shot the breeze for a while, She was pretty nice, and I told her how I'd gone there to school, too, and my brothers. She asked me where I went to school now, and I told her Pencey, and she said Pencey was a very good school. Even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have had the strength to straighten her out. Besides, if she thought Pencey was a very good school, let her think it. You hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don't like to hear it. Then, after a while, I left. It was funny. She yelled "Good luck!" at me the same way old Spencer did when I left Pencey. God, how I hate it when somebody yells "Good luck!" at me when I'm leaving somewhere. It's depressing.
I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
I looked at the clock in the recess yard, and it was only twenty to twelve, so I had quite a lot of time to kill before I met old Phoebe. But I just walked over to the museum anyway. There wasn't anyplace else to go. I thought maybe I might stop in a phone booth and give old Jane Gallagher a buzz before I started bumming my way west, but I wasn't in the mood. For one thing, I wasn't even sure she was home for vacation yet. So I just went over to the museum, and hung around.
While I was waiting around for Phoebe in the museum, right inside the doors and all, these two little kids came up to me and asked me if I knew where the mummies were. The one little kid, the one that asked me, had his pants open. I told him about it. So he buttoned them up right where he was standing talking to me-he didn't even bother to go behind a post or anything. He killed me. I would've laughed, but I was afraid I'd feel like vomiting again, so I didn't. "Where're the mummies, fella?" the kid said again. "Ya know?"
I horsed around with the two of them a little bit. "The mummies? What're they?" I asked the one kid.
"You know. The mummies-them dead guys. That get buried in them toons and all."
Toons. That killed me. He meant tombs.
"How come you two guys aren't in school?" I said.
"No school t'day," the kid that did all the talking said. He was lying, sure as I'm alive, the little bastard. I didn't have anything to do, though, till old Phoebe showed up, so I helped them find the place where the mummies were. Boy, I used to know exactly where they were, but I hadn't been in that museum in years.
"You two guys so interested in mummies?" I said.
"Yeah."
"Can't your friend talk?" I said.
"He ain't my friend. He's my brudda."
"Can't he talk?" I looked at the one that wasn't doing any talking. "Can't you talk at all?" I asked him.
"Yeah," he said. "I don't feel like it."
Finally we found the place where the mummies were, and we went in.
"You know how the Egyptians buried their dead?" I asked the one kid.
"Naa."
"Well, you should. It's very interesting. They wrapped their faces up in these cloths that were treated with some secret chemical. That way they could be buried in their tombs for thousands of years and their faces wouldn't rot or anything. Nobody knows how to do it except the Egyptians. Even modern science."
To get to where the mummies were, you had to go down this very narrow sort of hall with stones on the side that they'd taken right out of this Pharaoh's tomb and all. It was pretty spooky, and you could tell the two hot-shots I was with weren't enjoying it too much. They stuck close as hell to me, and the one that didn't talk at all practically was holding onto my sleeve. "Let's go," he said to his brother. "I seen 'em awreddy. C'mon, hey." He turned around and beat it.
"He's got a yella streak a mile wide," the other one said. "So long!" He beat it too.
I was the only one left in the tomb then. I sort of liked it, in a way. It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another "Fuck you." It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.
After I came out of the place where the mummies were, I had to go to the bathroom. I sort of had diarrhea, if you want to know the truth. I didn't mind the diarrhea part too much, but something else happened. When I was coming out of the can, right before I got to the door, I sort of passed out. I was lucky, though. I mean I could've killed myself when I hit the floor, but all I did was sort of land on my side. it was a funny thing, though. I felt better after I passed out. I really did. My arm sort of hurt, from where I fell, but I didn't feel so damn dizzy any more.
It was about ten after twelve or so then, and so I went back and stood by the door and waited for old Phoebe. I thought how it might be the last time I'd ever see her again. Any of my relatives, I mean. I figured I'd probably see them again, but not for years. I might come home when I was about thirty-five. I figured, in case somebody got sick and wanted to see me before they died, but that would be the only reason I'd leave my cabin and come back. I even started picturing how it would be when I came back. I knew my mother'd get nervous as hell and start to cry and beg me to stay home and not go back to my cabin, but I'd go anyway. I'd be casual as hell. I'd make her calm down, and then I'd go over to the other side of the living room and take out this cigarette case and light a cigarette, cool as all hell. I'd ask them all to visit me sometime if they wanted to, but I wouldn't insist or anything. What I'd do, I'd let old Phoebe come out and visit me in the summertime and on Christmas vacation and Easter vacation. And I'd let D.B. come out and visit me for a while if he wanted a nice, quiet place for his writing, but he couldn't write any movies in my cabin, only stories and books. I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me. If anybody tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay.
All of a sudden I looked at the clock in the checkroom and it was twenty-five of one. I began to get scared that maybe that old lady in the school had told that other lady not to give old Phoebe my message. I began to get scared that maybe she'd told her to burn it or something. It really scared hell out of me. I really wanted to see old Phoebe before I hit the road. I mean I had her Christmas dough and all.
Finally, I saw her. I saw her through the glass part of the door. The reason I saw her, she had my crazy hunting hat on-you could see that hat about ten miles away.
I went out the doors and started down these stone stairs to meet her. The thing I couldn't understand, she had this big suitcase with her. She was just coming across Fifth Avenue, and she was dragging this goddam big suitcase with her. She could hardly drag it. When I got up closer, I saw it was my old suitcase, the one I used to use when I was at Whooton. I couldn't figure out what the hell she was doing with it. "Hi," she said when she got up close. She was all out of breath from that crazy suitcase.
"I thought maybe you weren't coming," I said. "What the hell's in that bag? I don't need anything. I'm just going the way I am. I'm not even taking the bags I got at the station. What the hellya got in there?"
She put the suitcase down. "My clothes," she said. "I'm going with you. Can I? Okay?"
"What?" I said. I almost fell over when she said that. I swear to God I did. I got sort of dizzy and I thought I was going to pass out or something again.
"I took them down the back elevator so Charlene wouldn't see me. It isn't heavy. All I have in it is two dresses and my moccasins and my underwear and socks and some other things. Feel it. It isn't heavy. Feel it once... Can't I go with you? Holden? Can't I? Please."
"No. Shut up."
I thought I was going to pass out cold. I mean I didn't mean to tell her to shut up and all, but I thought I was going to pass out again.
"Why can't I? Please, Holden! I won't do anything- I'll just go with you, that's all! I won't even take my clothes with me if you don't want me to-I'll just take my-"
"You can't take anything. Because you're not going. I'm going alone. So shut up."
"Please, Holden. Please let me go. I'll be very, very, very-You won't even-"
"You're not going. Now, shut up! Gimme that bag," I said. I took the bag off her. I was almost all set to hit her, I thought I was going to smack her for a second. I really did.
She started to cry.
"I thought you were supposed to be in a play at school and all I thought you were supposed to be Benedict Arnold in that play and all," I said. I said it very nasty. "Whuddaya want to do? Not be in the play, for God's sake?" That made her cry even harder. I was glad. All of a sudden I wanted her to cry till her eyes practically dropped out. I almost hated her. I think I hated her most because she wouldn't be in that play any more if she went away with me.
"Come on," I said. I started up the steps to the museum again. I figured what I'd do was, I'd check the crazy suitcase she'd brought in the checkroom, and then she could get it again at three o'clock, after school. I knew she couldn't take it back to school with her. "Come on, now," I said.
She didn't go up the steps with me, though. She wouldn't come with me. I went up anyway, though, and brought the bag in the checkroom and checked it, and then I came down again. She was still standing there on the sidewalk, but she turned her back on me when I came up to her. She can do that. She can turn her back on you when she feels like it. "I'm not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying, and shut up," I said. The funny part was, she wasn't even crying when I said that. I said it anyway, though, "C'mon, now. I'll walk you back to school. C'mon, now. You'll be late."
She wouldn't answer me or anything. I sort of tried to get hold of her old hand, but she wouldn't let me. She kept turning around on me.
"Didja have your lunch? Ya had your lunch yet?" I asked her.
She wouldn't answer me. All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat-the one I gave her-and practically chucked it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me, but I didn't say anything. I just picked it up and stuck it in my coat pocket.
"Come on, hey. I'll walk you back to school," I said.
"I'm not going back to school."
I didn't know what to say when she said that. I just stood there for a couple of minutes.
"You have to go back to school. You want to be in that play, don't you? You want to be Benedict Arnold, don't you?"
"No."
"Sure you do. Certainly you do. C'mon, now, let's go," I said. "In the first place, I'm not going away anywhere, I told you. I'm going home. I'm going home as soon as you go back to school. First I'm gonna go down to the station and get my bags, and then I'm gonna go straight-"
"I said I'm not going back to school. You can do what you want to do, but I'm not going back to chool," she said. "So shut up." It was the first time she ever told me to shut up. It sounded terrible. God, it sounded terrible. It sounded worse than swearing. She still wouldn't look at me either, and every time I sort of put my hand on her shoulder or something, she wouldn't let me.
"Listen, do you want to go for a walk?" I asked her. "Do you want to take a walk down to the zoo? If I let you not go back to school this afternoon and go for walk, will you cut out this crazy stuff?"
She wouldn't answer me, so I said it over again. "If I let you skip school this afternoon and go for a little walk, will you cut out the crazy stuff? Will you go back to school tomorrow like a good girl?"
"I may and I may not," she said. Then she ran right the hell across the street, without even looking to see if any cars were coming. She's a madman sometimes.
I didn't follow her, though. I knew she'd follow me, so I started walking downtown toward the zoo, on the park side of the street, and she started walking downtown on the other goddam side of the street, She wouldn't look over at me at all, but I could tell she was probably watching me out of the corner of her crazy eye to see where I was going and all. Anyway, we kept walking that way all the way to the zoo. The only thing that bothered me was when a double-decker bus came along because then I couldn't see across the street and I couldn't see where the hell she was. But when we got to the zoo, I yelled over to her, "Phoebe! I'm going in the zoo! C'mon, now!" She wouldn't look at me, but I could tell she heard me, and when I started down the steps to the zoo I turned around and saw she was crossing the street and following me and all.
There weren't too many people in the zoo because it was sort of a lousy day, but there were a few around the sea lions' swimming pool and all. I started to go by but old Phoebe stopped and made out she was watching the sea lions getting fed-a guy was throwing fish at them-so I went back. I figured it was a good chance to catch up with her and all. I went up and sort of stood behind her and sort of put my hands on her shoulders, but she bent her knees and slid out from me-she can certainly be very snotty when she wants to. She kept standing there while the sea lions were getting fed and I stood right behind her. I didn't put my hands on her shoulders again or anything because if I had she really would've beat it on me. Kids are funny. You have to watch what you're doing.
She wouldn't walk right next to me when we left the sea lions, but she didn't walk too far away. She sort of walked on one side of the sidewalk and I walked on the other side. It wasn't too gorgeous, but it was better than having her walk about a mile away from me, like before. We went up and watched the bears, on that little hill, for a while, but there wasn't much to watch. Only one of the bears was out, the polar bear. The other one, the brown one, was in his goddam cave and wouldn't come out. All you could see was his rear end. There was a little kid standing next to me, with a cowboy hat on practically over his ears, and he kept telling his father, "Make him come out, Daddy. Make him come out." I looked at old Phoebe, but she wouldn't laugh. You know kids when they're sore at you. They won't laugh or anything.
After we left the bears, we left the zoo and crossed over this little street in the park, and then we went through one of those little tunnels that always smell from somebody's taking a leak. It was on the way to the carrousel. Old Phoebe still wouldn't talk to me or anything, but she was sort of walking next to me now. I took a hold of the belt at the back of her coat, just for the hell of it, but she wouldn't let me. She said, "Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind." She was still sore at me. But not as sore as she was before. Anyway, we kept getting closer and closer to the carrousel and you could start to hear that nutty music it always plays. It was playing "Oh, Marie!" It played that same song about fifty years ago when I was a little kid. That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs.
"I thought the carrousel was closed in the wintertime," old Phoebe said. It was the first time she practically said anything. She probably forgot she was supposed to be sore at me.
"Maybe because it's around Christmas," I said.
She didn't say anything when I said that. She probably remembered she was supposed to be sore at me.
"Do you want to go for a ride on it?" I said. I knew she probably did. When she was a tiny little kid, and Allie and D.B. and I used to go to the park with her, she was mad about the carrousel. You couldn't get her off the goddam thing.
"I'm too big," she said. I thought she wasn't going to answer me, but she did.
"No, you're not. Go on. I'll wait for ya. Go on," I said. We were right there then. There were a few kids riding on it, mostly very little kids, and a few parents were waiting around outside, sitting on the benches and all. What I did was, I went up to the window where they sell the tickets and bought old Phoebe a ticket. Then I gave it to her. She was standing right next to me. "Here," I said. "Wait a second-take the rest of your dough, too." I started giving her the rest of the dough she'd lent me.
"You keep it. Keep it for me," she said. Then she said right afterward-"Please."
That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you. I mean if it's Phoebe or somebody. That depressed the hell out of me. But I put the dough back in my pocket.
"Aren't you gonna ride, too?" she asked me. She was looking at me sort of funny. You could tell she wasn't too sore at me any more.
"Maybe I will the next time. I'll watch ya," I said. "Got your ticket?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then-I'll be on this bench right over here. I'll watch ya." I went over and sat down on this bench, and she went and got on the carrousel. She walked all around it. I mean she walked once all the way around it. Then she sat down on this big, brown, beat-up-looking old horse. Then the carrousel started, and I watched her go around and around. There were only about five or six other kids on the ride, and the song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.
When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said.
"No, I'll just watch ya. I think I'll just watch," I said. I gave her some more of her dough. "Here. Get some more tickets."
She took the dough off me. "I'm not mad at you any more," she said.
"I know. Hurry up-the thing's gonna start again."
Then all of a sudden she gave me a kiss. Then she held her hand out, and said, "It's raining. It's starting to rain."
"I know."
Then what she did-it damn near killed me-she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head.
"Don't you want it?" I said.
"You can wear it a while."
"Okay. Hurry up, though, now. You're gonna miss your ride. You won't get your own horse or anything."
She kept hanging around, though.
"Did you mean it what you said? You really aren't going away anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said. I meant it, too. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards. "Hurry up, now," I said. "The thing's starting."
She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back.
Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to God. All the parents and mothers and everybody went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they wouldn't get soaked to the skin or anything, but I stuck around on the bench for quite a while. I got pretty soaking wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way; but I got soaked anyway. I didn't care, though. I felt so damn happy all of sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there.
That's all I'm going to tell about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, and what school I'm supposed to go to next fall, after I get out of here, but I don't feel like it. I really don't. That stuff doesn't interest me too much right now.
A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going apply myself when I go back to school next September. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
D.B. isn't as bad as the rest of them, but he keeps asking me a lot of questions, too. He drove over last Saturday with this English babe that's in this new picture he's writing. She was pretty affected, but very good-looking. Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies' room way the hell down in the other wing D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
THE END

Indoor Testing and Simulation Platform for Close-distance Visual Inspection of Complex Structures using Micro Quadrotor UAV 
Abstract: 
In recent years, using drone, also known as unmanned aerial vehicle. Equipped with an onboard micro FPV camera, the visual data can be lively streamed to the host computer during flight. The functions of manual configuration and waypoints control are explicitly designed in this platform to increase its flexibility and performance on path following and debugging. To evaluate the practicability of the proposed test platform, two existing drone-based path planning algorithms are tested. The results show that even though certain level of error existed, the quality of visual data and accuracy of path following are high enough for simulating most practical inspection applications. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Inspection of complex civil infrastructures, such as bridges, dams and wind turbines, is a particular important application in civil and construction industry. The traditional methods rely on site inspector and ground equipment that are not only costly, but also full of hazards as fall from height and struck-by are two leading factors of fatalities in the field of construction. UAVs are quicker, safer and cost effective. It can easily reach areas that are inaccessible to ground vehicles and undertake tasks that are dangerous to human. 
Currently, the primary sensor used on UAV are optical sensors because of its low cost, light weight and easy to implement. The existing studies showed that with onboard camera, UAV can achieve at a high level of accuracy even for professional applications. However, in most cases, UAVs are still manually controlled by a remote operator. Thus, its application performance is highly dependent on the experience and skills of the operator. Due to the rising complexity of civil structures and its clutter environment, the human errors can easily cause unnecessary flight time or even avoidable crashes. 
Thus, automatous flight is needed to facilitate site inspection and improve the safety redundancy. In the field of robotics, autonomous inspection using ground, maritime or aerial robots has recently been applied in various applications such as submarine structure inspection. These methods developed sophisticated algorithms to generate paths that can achieve close-distance and high quality inspection. However, up to now, only few studies validate such algorithms on field tests. In many cases, the aerial inspection was restricted by the local law that special permission is required for UAV to fly at public area. For large-scale and complex civil infrastructures, directly deploying the flight test is error prone, costly, needs specific traffic control and rely on the weather conditions. 
In last years, micro UAVs are widely used by academics in various applications. Comparing to the medium and large level drones, micro UAV has the advantages of low cost of maintenance and has nearly no safety concern to its surroundings, which make it a perfect tool to testing new algorithms. Current applications of micro UAVs have been grown to many areas, such as control system design. However, until now, its applications on testing the inspection path planning algorithms of complex structures is still missing. 
Thus, to diminish the unnecessary cost and increase the efficiency of UAV inspection path planning progress, in this study, the authors present an affordable experimental platform that allows researchers to physically and digitally test their autonomous inspection ideas in an indoor environment before the expensive and time consuming outdoor tasks. Crazyflie 2.0, which is a fully open-source micro quadrotor, is selected as the test UAV in this platform. Taken a planned path as input, the platform sequentially transfers the path into waypoints and communicate with Crazyflie drivers to achieve autonomous indoor flight test. A FPV camera is mounted at the top of Crazyflie such that the visual data can be both broadcasted in the air and assessed after flight. To validate the practical value of the proposed platform, the initial results of visual representation and trajectory following of two planned paths on an arbitrary inspection target are presented. 
2. ARCHITECTURE OF THE TEST PLATFORM 
The general architecture of the proposed test platform is shown in Figure 1. The platform is developed based on the bundle of Crazyflie, which includes the Crazyflie 2.0, Crazyradio and bitcraze loco positing system. Although the accuracy of LPS is not as high as many commercial local positioning systems, the trade-off is the cost efficiency. An Xbox controller is connected to desktop to enable real-time human interaction of autonomous inspection, and a FPV camera is mounted at the top of Crazyflie as the onboard visual sensor. The selected micro FPV camera is Goqotomo GT02 with clover antenna. It can send 40 radio channels on the band of 5.8 GHz. The camera is soldered at the top of the drone's battery holder such that the power support for Crazyflie can be shared. Connected with a video receiver, the real-time visual data are lively streamed to the desktop/laptop's monitor. These attached hardware makes the total weights of Crazyflie to 37 grams but still within the range of its maximum take-off limits of 42 grams. 
3. WORKFLOW OF THE TEST PLATFORM 
Figure 2 shows the general workflow of the proposed platform. In this study, the authors assume an inspection path is given, designing specific path planning algorithms is out the scope of this research. The path is initially passed into Matlab Simulink which organizes the dataset as an array of 4D waypoints. The autonomous flight will be only initiated when the drone is taken off and the mode is switched to autonomous. This setup not only minimize the potential crashes, but also give the flexibility for human interaction during the flight such that the inspection progress can be controlled and evaluated in a timely manner. 
Another function is waypoint control. It controls when next waypoint should be sent to the micro UAV. To achieve this goal, a feedback waypoint control loop is designed. It sequentially checks whether the drone is arrived at the current waypoint by measuring if the drone's center of gravity is within a bounding box. The bounding box is a virtual cube with center located at each designed waypoint location and side length equal to 15 cm. The side length is determined by the referenced precision of LPS. Only when the drone stays in the box for more than 0.5 second, the system will confirm the drone's arrival, and then the new waypoint will be updated. This process iterates until all designed waypoints are visited. To reduce the ground effect, the authors also increase the integral parameter of z direction to 40 in the PID position controller of Crazyflie Firmware to stabilize the UAV even when it flies close to the ground.
4. APPLICATION EXAMPLE 
To validate the practical value of the proposed platform, the indoor flight tests are presented. A set of boxes located at the center of the world coordinates of LPS is used as the target of inspection. Two path planning algorithms are applied in this example:. The pre-computed inspection paths for the inspection target using both algorithms are respectively shown in Figure 4 below. Although the sampling-based method is algorithmically more efficient than the spiral path, it does not consider the dynamic constraints of UAV. The sharp orientations change between adjacent waypoints give more challenges for UAV's path following in the real world implementations. 
To implement the planned paths into the test platform, the authors set the average traveling velocity of the drone as 0.3 meters per second. The velocity is tuned by considering both the accuracy of path following and the battery constraints of the FPV embedded Crazyflie. The onboard FPV camera is set with 30 fps and 600 VTL. The inspection scenario, FPV Crazyflie set up, and FPV image views during flight are shown in Figure 5. 
Comparing the difference between the real trajectory and the planned path is critical to evaluate the accuracy and latency of the platform. The post-processed results of path following of both path planning algorithms at x/y/z dimensions are respectively plotted in Figure 6. The plots show that even though the average errors remain to be larger than 10 cm, the trajectories of both paths are highly uniform with the computed paths. It can be noticed that for both cases, the trajectories in z direction have a higher absolute error. Such difference can be caused by the vertical force induced by gravity and the errors of barometers. 
5. CONCLUSION 
In this study, the authors introduce a micro-UAV based in-door testing platform for autonomous visual inspection of complex structures. The proposed platform has many advantages over the direct field implementation which is both time consuming and costly. The platform is developed based on the original bundle of Crazyflie and LPS. To enable the visual inspection ability, a FPV camera is mounted at the top of UAV to broadcast visual images to the host computer in the air. To understand the practical value of the platform, a case study is presented to evaluate the quality of visual data and the accuracy of path followings results. The initial tests showed that the platform can provide valid visual data during inspection and the inspection trajectories are highly uniform with the computed path even though the paths are generated based on different algorithms. In the future studies, the authors will use this platform to test and evaluate different path planning results in order to achieve fully autonomous and high performance aerial inspection applications. 

Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
THE WINDOW
1
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling-all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs.
"But," said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, "it won't be fine."
Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Ramsay excited in his children's breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was, one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.
"But it may be fine-I expect it will be fine," said Mrs Ramsay, making some little twist of the reddish brown stocking she was knitting, impatiently. If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy, who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old magazines, and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about, not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows, who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden, something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how your children were,-if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How would you like that? she asked, addressing herself particularly to her daughters. So she added, rather differently, one must take them whatever comforts one can.
"It's due west," said the atheist Tansley, holding his bony fingers spread so that the wind blew through them, for he was sharing Mr Ramsay's evening walk up and down, up and down the terrace. That is to say, the wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at the Lighthouse. Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs Ramsay admitted; it was odious of him to rub this in, and make James still more disappointed; but at the same time, she would not let them laugh at him. "The atheist," they called him; "the little atheist." Rose mocked him; Prue mocked him; Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked him; even old Badger without a tooth in his head had bit him, for being the hundred and tenth young man to chase them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was ever so much nicer to be alone.
"Nonsense," said Mrs Ramsay, with great severity. Apart from the habit of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication that she asked too many people to stay, and had to lodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in particular, who were poor as churchmice, "exceptionally able," her husband said, his great admirers, and come there for a holiday. Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl-pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!-who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!
She turned with severity upon Nancy. He had not chased them, she said. He had been asked.
They must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better-her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties. She was now formidable to behold, and it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she had spoken so severely about Charles Tansley, that her daughters, Prue, Nancy, Rose-could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the as they sat at table beneath their mother's eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme courtesy, like a queen's raising from the mud to wash a beggar's dirty foot, when she admonished them so very severely about that wretched atheist who had chased them-or, speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them-in the Isle of Skye.
"There'll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow," said Charles Tansley, clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with her husband. Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and James alone and go on talking. She looked at him. He was such a miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. He couldn't play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew said. They knew what he liked best-to be for ever walking up and down, up and down, with Mr Ramsay, and saying who had won this, who had won that, who was a "first rate man" at Latin verses, who was "brilliant but I think fundamentally unsound," who was undoubtedly the "ablest fellow in Balliol," who had buried his light temporarily at Bristol or Bedford, but was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which Mr Tansley had the first pages in proof with him if Mr Ramsay would like to see them, to some branch of mathematics or philosophy saw the light of day. That was what they talked about.
She could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the other day, something about "waves mountains high." Yes, said Charles Tansley, it was a little rough. "Aren't you drenched to the skin?" she had said. "Damp, not wet through," said Mr Tansley, pinching his sleeve, feeling his socks.
But it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his face; it was not his manners. It was him-his point of view. When they talked about something interesting, people, music, history, anything, even said it was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors, then what they complained of about Charles Tansley was that until he had turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them-he was not satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries they said, and he would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did not.
Disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly the meal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr and Mrs Ramsay sought their bedrooms, their fastness in a house where there was no other privacy to debate anything, everything; Tansley's tie; the passing of the Reform Bill; sea birds and butterflies; people; while the sun poured into those attics, which a plank alone separated from each other so that every footstep could be plainly heard and the Swiss girl sobbing for her father who was dying of cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and lit up bats, flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots, beetles, and the skulls of small birds, while it drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned to the wall a smell of salt and weeds, which was in the towels too, gritty with sand from bathing.
Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very fibre of being, oh, that they should begin so early, Mrs Ramsay deplored. They were so critical, her children. They talked such nonsense. She went from the dining-room, holding James by the hand, since he would not go with the others. It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that. The real differences, she thought, standing by the drawing-room window, are enough, quite enough. She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor, high and low; the great in birth receiving from her, half grudging, some respect, for had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman whose charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her own curiosity, and become what with her untrained mind she greatly admired, an investigator, elucidating the social problem.
Insoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there, holding James by the hand. He had followed her into the drawing-room, that young man they laughed at; he was standing by the table, fidgeting with something, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things, as she knew without looking round. They had all gone-the children; Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her husband-they had all gone. So she turned with a sigh and said, "Would it bore you to come with me, Mr Tansley?"
She had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write; she would be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And, with her basket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes later, giving out a sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt, which, however, she must interrupt for a moment, as they passed the tennis lawn, to ask Mr Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so that like a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever, if he wanted anything.
For they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing. They were going to the town. "Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?" she suggested, stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His hands clasped themselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes blinked, as if he would have liked to reply kindly to these blandishments but could not, sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolence which embraced them all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolent lethargy of well-wishing; all the house; all the world; all the people in it, for he had slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops of something, which accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak of canary-yellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk white. No, nothing, he murmured.
He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs Ramsay, as they went down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with an indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet some one round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl; an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry "very beautifully, I believe," being willing to teach the boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?-and then lying, as they saw him, on the lawn.
It flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs Ramsay should tell him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuating, too, as she did the greatness of man's intellect, even in its decay, the subjection of all wives-not that she blamed the girl, and the marriage had been happy enough, she believed-to their husband's labours, she made him feel better pleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked, had they taken a cab, for example, to have paid the fare. As for her little bag, might he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried THAT herself. She did too. Yes, he felt that in her. He felt many things, something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasons which he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded, walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship, he felt capable of anything and saw himself-but what was she looking at? At a man pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals, lions, tigers... Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read it out... "will visit this town," she read. It was terribly dangerous work for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like that-his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.
"Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.
"Let's go," he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let us all go to the circus." No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it right. But why not? she wondered. What was wrong with him then? She liked him warmly, at the moment. Had they not been taken, she asked, to circuses when they were children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the very thing he wanted; had been longing all these days to say, how they did not go to circuses. It was a large family, nine brothers and sisters, and his father was a working man. "My father is a chemist, Mrs Ramsay. He keeps a shop." He himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he went without a greatcoat in winter. He could never "return hospitality" at college. He had to make things last twice the time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag; the same the old men did in the quays. He worked hard-seven hours a day; his subject was now the influence of something upon somebody-they were walking on and Mrs Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and there... dissertation... fellowship... readership... lectureship. She could not follow the ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why going to the circus had knocked him off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out, instantly, with all that about his father and mother and brothers and sisters, and she would see to it that they didn't laugh at him any more; she would tell Prue about it. What he would have liked, she supposed, would have been to say how he had gone not to the circus but to Ibsen with the Ramsays. He was an awful prig-oh yes, an insufferable bore. For, though they had reached the town now and were in the main street, with carts grinding past on the cobbles, still he went on talking, about settlements, and teaching, and working men, and helping our own class, and lectures, till she gathered that he had got back entire self-confidence, had recovered from the circus, and was about (and now again she liked him away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the whole bay spread before them and Mrs Ramsay could not help exclaiming, "Oh, how beautiful!" For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.
That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that her husband loved.
She paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here. There indeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and yellow boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was watched by ten little boys, with an air of profound contentment on his round red face gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping; imbuing the tip of his brush in some soft mound of green or pink. Since Mr Paunceforte had been there, three years before, all the pictures were like that, she said, green and grey, with lemon-coloured sailing-boats, and pink women on the beach.
But her grandmother's friends, she said, glancing discreetly as they passed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours, and then they ground them, and then they put damp cloths to keep them moist.
So Mr Tansley supposed she meant him to see that that man's picture was skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren't solid? Was that what one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.
There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the doors shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted, stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; when all at once he realised that it was this: it was this:-she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.
With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets-what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair-He had hold of her bag.
"Good-bye, Elsie," she said, and they walked up the street, she holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He had hold of her bag.
2
"No going to the Lighthouse, James," he said, as trying in deference to Mrs Ramsay to soften his voice into some semblance of geniality at least.
Odious little man, thought Mrs Ramsay, why go on saying that?
3
"Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing," she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy's hair, for her husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine, had dashed his spirits she could see. This going to the Lighthouse was a passion of his, she saw, and then, as if her husband had not said enough, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this odious little man went and rubbed it in all over again.
"Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow," she said, smoothing his hair.
All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon something like a rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles, would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out. All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they said it would be a positive tornado.
But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the picture of a rake or a mowing-machine was interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said, that the men were happily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, "How's that? How's that?" of the children playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, "I am guarding you-I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephermal as a rainbow-this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror.
They had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in one second from the tension which had gripped her to the other extreme which, as if to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, was cool, amused, and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poor Charles Tansley had been shed. That was of little account to her. If her husband required sacrifices she cheerfully offered up to him Charles Tansley, who had snubbed her little boy.
One moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waited for some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then, hearing something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in the garden, as her husband beat up and down the terrace, something between a croak and a song, she was soothed once more, assured again that all was well, and looking down at the book on her knee found the picture of a pocket knife with six blades which could only be cut out if James was very careful.
Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker, half roused, something about Stormed at with shot and shell sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear, made her turn apprehensively to see if anyone had heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she was glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Lily's picture. Lily's picture! Mrs Ramsay smiled. With her little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face, she would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously; she was an independent little creature, and Mrs Ramsay liked her for it; so, remembering her promise, she bent her head.
4
Indeed, he almost knocked her easel over, coming down upon her with his hands waving shouting out, "Boldly we rode and well," but, mercifully, he turned sharp, and rode off, to die gloriously she supposed upon the heights of Balaclava. Never was anybody at once so ridiculous and so alarming. But so long as he kept like that, waving, shouting, she was safe; he would not stand still and look at her picture. And that was what Lily Briscoe could not have endured. Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the colour, at Mrs Ramsay sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest some one should creep up, and suddenly she should find her picture looked at. But now, with all her senses quickened as they were, looking, straining, till the colour of the wall and the jacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes, she was aware of someone coming out of the house, coming towards her; but somehow divined, from the footfall, William Bankes, so that though her brush quivered, she did not, as she would have done had it been Mr Tansley, Paul Rayley, Minta Doyle, or practically anybody else, turn her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand. William Bankes stood beside her.
They had rooms in the village, and so, walking in, walking out, parting late on door-mats, had said little things about the soup, about the children, about one thing and another which made them allies; so that when he stood beside her now in his judicial way she just stood there. He just stood there. Her shoes were excellent, he observed. They allowed the toes their natural expansion. Lodging in the same house with her, he had noticed too, how orderly she was, up before breakfast and off to paint, he believed, alone: poor, presumably, and without the complexion or the allurement of Miss Doyle certainly, but with a good sense which made her in his eyes superior to that young lady. Now, for instance, when Ramsay bore down on them, shouting, gesticulating, Miss Briscoe, he felt certain, understood.
Some one had blundered.
Mr Ramsay glared at them. He glared at them without seeming to see them. That did make them both vaguely uncomfortable. Together they had seen a thing they had not been meant to see. They had encroached upon a privacy. So, Lily thought, it was probably an excuse of his for moving, for getting out of earshot, that made Mr Bankes almost immediately say something about its being chilly and suggested taking a stroll. She would come, yes. But it was with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was, since Mr Paunceforte's visit, to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself-struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself at Mrs Ramsay's knee and say to her-but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side, and said to William Bankes: "It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to give less heat," she said, looking about her, for it was bright enough, the grass still a soft deep green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, and rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue. But something moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September after all, the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge, guarded by red hot pokers like brasiers of clear burning coal, between which the blue waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.
They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then, while one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly, a film of mother of pearl.
They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity, excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting race of a sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped; shivered; let its sails drop down; and then, with a natural instinct to complete the picture, after this swift movement, both of them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some sadness-because the thing was completed partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast by a million years the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.
Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankes thought of Ramsay: thought of a road in Westmorland, thought of Ramsay striding along a road by himself hung round with that solitude which seemed to be his natural air. But this was suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remembered, by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said "Pretty-pretty," an odd illumination in to his heart, Bankes had thought it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had married. After that, what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after a time, repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they met. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished; but there, like the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the red fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality, laid up across the bay among the sandhills.
He was anxious for the sake of this friendship and perhaps too in order to clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of having dried and shrunk-for Ramsay lived in a welter of children, whereas Bankes was childless and a widower-he was anxious that Lily Briscoe should not disparage Ramsay yet should understand how things stood between them. Begun long years ago, their friendship had petered out on a Westmorland road, where the hen spread her wings before her chicks; after which Ramsay had married, and their paths lying different ways, there had been, certainly for no one's fault, some tendency, when they met, to repeat.
Yes. That was it. He finished. He turned from the view. And, turning to walk back the other way, up the drive, Mr Bankes was alive to things which would not have struck him had not those sandhills revealed to him the body of his friendship lying with the red on its lips laid up in peat-for instance, Cam, the little girl, Ramsay's youngest daughter. She was picking Sweet Alice on the bank. She was wild and fierce. She would not "give a flower to the gentleman" as the nursemaid told her. No! no! no! she would not! She clenched her fist. She stamped. And Mr Bankes felt aged and saddened and somehow put into the wrong by her about his friendship. He must have dried and shrunk.
The Ramsays were not rich, and it was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all. Eight children! To feed eight children on philosophy! Here was another of them, Jasper this time, strolling past, to have a shot at a bird, he said, nonchalantly, swinging Lily's hand like a pump-handle as he passed, which caused Mr Bankes to say, bitterly, how SHE was a favourite. There was education now to be considered he weighed Ramsay's case, commiserated him, envied him, as if he had seen him divest himself of all those glories of isolation and austerity which crowned him in youth to cumber himself definitely with fluttering wings and clucking domesticities. They gave him something-William Bankes acknowledged that; it would have been pleasant if Cam had stuck a flower in his coat or clambered in eruption; but they had also, his old friends could not but feel, destroyed something. What would a stranger think now? What did this Lily Briscoe think? Could one help noticing that habits grew on him? eccentricities, weaknesses perhaps? It was astonishing that a man of his intellect could stoop so low as he did-but that was too harsh a phrase-could depend so much as he did upon people's praise.
"Oh, but," said Lily, "think of his work!"
Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table, naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person.
Mr Bankes liked her for bidding him "think of his work." He had thought of it, often and often. Times without number, he had said, "Ramsay is one of those men who do their best work before they are forty." He had made a definite contribution to philosophy in one little book when he was only five and twenty; what came after was more or less amplification, repetition. But the number of men who make a definite contribution to anything whatsoever is very small, he said, pausing by the pear tree, well brushed, scrupulously exact, exquisitely judicial. Suddenly, as if the movement of his hand had released it, the load of her accumulated impressions of him tilted up, and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all she felt about him. That was one sensation. Then up rose in a fume the essence of his being. That was another. She felt herself transfixed by the intensity of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I respect you about salt in vegetables and the iniquity of English cooks.
How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by the pear tree, impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity. You have greatness, she continued, but Mr Ramsay has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs Ramsay to death; but he has what you have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles; he loves dogs and his children. He has eight. Mr Bankes has none. Did he not come down in two coats the other night and let Mrs Ramsay trim his hair into a pudding basin? All of this danced up and down, like a company of gnats, each separate but all marvellously controlled in an invisible elastic net-danced up and down in Lily's mind, in and about the branches of the pear tree, where still hung in effigy the scrubbed kitchen table, symbol of her profound respect for Mr Ramsay's mind, until her thought which had spun quicker and quicker exploded of its own intensity; she felt released; a shot went off close at hand, and there came, flying from its fragments, frightened, effusive, tumultuous, a flock of starlings.
"Jasper!" said Mr Bankes. They turned the way the starlings flew, over the terrace. Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in the sky they stepped through the gap in the high hedge straight into Mr Ramsay, who boomed tragically at them, "Some one had blundered!"
His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met theirs for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but then, raising his hand, half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in an agony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold for a moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if he impressed upon them his own child-like resentment of interruption, yet even in the moment of discovery was not to be routed utterly, but was determined to hold fast to something of this delicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of which he was ashamed, but in which he revelled-he turned abruptly, slammed his private door on them; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr Bankes, looking uneasily up into the sky, observed that the flock of starlings which Jasper had routed with his gun had settled on the tops of the elm trees.
5
"And even if it isn't fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay, raising her eyes to glance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed, "it will be another day. And now," she said, thinking that Lily's charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take a clever man to see it, "and now stand up, and let me measure your leg," for they might go to the Lighthouse after all, and she must see if the stocking did not need to be an inch or two longer in the leg.
Smiling, for it was an admirable idea, that had flashed upon her this very second-William and Lily should marry-she took the heather-mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth of it, and measured it against James's leg.
"My dear, stand still," she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to serve as measuring block for the Lighthouse keeper's little boy, James fidgeted purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long, was it too short? she asked.
She looked up-what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished?-and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over the floor; but then what was the point, she asked, of buying good chairs to let them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind, the rent was precisely twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his libraries and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London life of service was done-they did well enough here; and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: "For her whose wishes must be obeyed"... "The happier Helen of our days"... disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recolection-how she had stood there, how the girl had said, "At home the mountains are so beautiful," and there was no hope, no hope whatever, she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply, said to James: "Stand still. Don't be tiresome," so that he knew instantly that her severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.
The stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making allowance for the fact that Sorley's little boy would be less well grown than James.
"It's too short," she said, "ever so much too short."
Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.
But was it nothing but looks, people said? What was there behind it-her beauty and splendour? Had he blown his brains out, they asked, had he died the week before they were married-some other, earlier lover, of whom rumours reached one? Or was there nothing? nothing but an incomparable beauty which she lived behind, and could do nothing to disturb? For easily though she might have said at some moment of intimacy when stories of great passion, of love foiled, of ambition thwarted came her way how she too had known or felt or been through it herself, she never spoke. She was silent always. She knew then-she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained-falsely perhaps.
("Nature has but little clay," said Mr Bankes once, much moved by her voice on the telephone, though she was only telling him a fact about a train, "like that of which she moulded you." He saw her at the end of the line Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it seemed to be telephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemed to have joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face. Yes, he would catch the 10: 30 at Euston.
"But she's no more aware of her beauty than a child," said Mr Bankes, replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back of his house. And he thought of Mrs Ramsay as he looked at that stir among the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a deer-stalker's hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in galoshes to snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing 
Knitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head outlined absurdly by the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had tossed over the edge of the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece by Michael Angelo, Mrs Ramsay smoothed out what had been harsh in her manner a moment before, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead. "Let us find another picture to cut out," she said.
6
But what had happened?
Some one had blundered.
Starting from her musing she gave meaning to words which she had held meaningless in her mind for a long stretch of time. "Some one had blundered"-Fixing her short-sighted eyes upon her husband, who was now bearing down upon her, she gazed steadily until his closeness revealed to her that something had happened, some one had blundered. But she could not for the life of her think what.
He shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his own splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the head of his men through the valley of death, had been shattered, destroyed. Stormed at by shot and shell, boldly we rode and well, flashed through the valley of death, volleyed and thundered-straight into Lily Briscoe and William Bankes. He quivered; he shivered.
Not for the world would she have spoken to him, realising, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked James's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle James's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.
"James will have to write HIS dissertation one of these days," he added ironically, flicking his sprig.
Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son's bare leg.
She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to Sorley's little boy tomorrow, said Mrs Ramsay.
There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr Ramsay snapped out irascibly.
How did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.
The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. "Damn you," he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might.
Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west.
To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rendthe thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said.
He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked.
There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.
She was quite ready to take his word for it, she said. Only then they need not cut sandwiches-that was all. They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. Then he said, Damn you. He said, It must rain. He said, It won't rain; and instantly a Heaven of security opened before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She was not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt.
Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr Ramsay rather sheepishly prodded his son's bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day.
"Some one had blundered," he said again, striding off, up and down the terrace.
But how extraordinarily his note had changed! It was like the cuckoo; "in June he gets out of tune"; as if he were trying over, tentatively seeking, some phrase for a new mood, and having only this at hand, used it, cracked though it was. But it sounded ridiculous-"Some one had blundered"-said like that, almost as a question, without any conviction, melodiously. Mrs Ramsay could not help smiling, and soon, sure enough, walking up and down, he hummed it, dropped it, fell silent.
He was safe, he was restored to his privacy. He stopped to light his pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one raises one's eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of something on the printed page to which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, so without his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the sight of them fortified him and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to arrive at a perfectly clear understanding of the problem which now engaged the energies of his splendid mind.
It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far, far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next? After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q-R-. Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the handle of the urn, and proceeded. "Then R... " He braced himself. He clenched himself.
Qualities that would have saved a ship's company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water-endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then-what is R?
A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying-he was a failure-that R was beyond him. He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R- Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R- The lizard's eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged. The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash-the way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.
Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R.
He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after all? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, "One perhaps." One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the urn.
Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment he dwells upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and some one to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her-who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?
7
But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism but most of all he hated the twang and twitter of his father's emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped. But, no. Nothing would make Mr Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy.
Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating, and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at him. "Charles Tansley... " she said. But he must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made furtile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life-the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.
Charles Tansley thought him the greatest metaphysician of the time, she said. But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy. He must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life; was needed; not only here, but all over the world. Flashing her needles, confident, upright, she created drawing-room and kitchen, set them all aglow; bade him take his ease there, go in and out, enjoy himself. She laughed, she knitted. Standing between her knees, very stiff, James felt all her strength flaring up to be drunk and quenched by the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again, demanding sympathy.
He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence, that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.
Filled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said, at last, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that he would take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket. He went.
Immediately, Mrs Ramsey seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion, across the page of Grimm's fairy story, while there throbbed through her, like a pulse in a spring which has expanded to its full width and now gently ceases to beat, the rapture of successful creation.
Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose her and her husband, and to give to each that solace which two different notes, one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each other as they combine. Yet as the resonance died, and she turned to the Fairy Tale again, Mrs Ramsey felt not only exhausted in body ; and then to hide small daily things, and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid on them-all this diminished the entire joy, the pure joy, of the two notes sounding together, and let the sound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.
A shadow was on the page; she looked up. It was Augustus Carmichael shuffling past, precisely now, at the very moment when it was painful to be reminded of the inadequacy of human relationships, that the most perfect was flawed, and could not bear the examination which, loving her husband, with her instinct for truth, she turned upon it; when it was painful to feel herself convicted of unworthiness, and impeded in her proper function by these lies, these exaggerations,-it was at this moment when she was fretted thus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation, that Mr Carmichael shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, and some demon in her made it necessary for her to call out, as he passed, "Going indoors Mr Carmichael?"
8
He said nothing. He took opium. The children said he had stained his beard yellow with it. Perhaps. What was obvious to her was that the poor man was unhappy, came to them every year as an escape; and yet every year she felt the same thing; he did not trust her. She said, "I am going to the town. Shall I get you stamps, paper, tobacco?" and she felt him wince. He did not trust her. It was his wife's doing. She remembered that iniquity of his wife's towards him, which had made her turn to steel and adamant there, in the horrible little room in St John's Wood, when with her own eyes she had seen that odious woman turn him out of the house. He was unkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had the tiresomeness of an old man with nothing in the world to do; and she turned him out of the room. She said, in her odious way, "Now, Mrs Ramsay and I want to have a little talk together," and Mrs Ramsay could see, as if before her eyes, the innumerable miseries of his life. Had he money enough to buy tobacco? Did he have to ask her for it? half a crown? eighteenpence? Oh, she could not bear to think of the little indignities she made him suffer. And always now, her son James.
"The man's heart grew heavy," she read aloud, "and he would not go. He said to himself, 'It is not right,' and yet he went. And when he came to the sea the water was quite purple and dark blue, and grey and thick, and no longer so green and yellow, but it was still quiet. And he stood there and said-"
Mrs Ramsay could have wished that her husband had not chosen that moment to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the children playing cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he nodded; he approved; he went on. He slipped, seeing before him that hedge which had over and over again rounded some pause, signified some conclusion, seeing his wife and child, seeing again the urns with the trailing of red geraniums which had so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in the rush of reading-he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into speculation suggested by an article in THE TIMES about the number of Americans who visit Shakespeare's house every year. If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a slave class. The liftman in the Tube is an eternal necessity. The thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head. To avoid it, he would find some way of snubbing the predominance of the arts. He would argue that the world exists for the average human being; that the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life; they do not express it. Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it. Not knowing precisely why it was that he wanted to disparage Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man who stands eternally in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply from the hedge. All this would have to be dished up for the young men at Cardiff next month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely foraging and picnicking like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses, or stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes and fields of a country known to him from boyhood. It was all familiar; this turning, that stile, that cut across the fields. Hours he would spend thus, with his pipe, of an evening, thinking up and down and in and out of the old familiar lanes and commons, which were all stuck about with the history of that campaign there, the life of this statesman here, with poems and with anecdotes, with figures too, this thinker, that soldier; all very brisk and clear; but at length the lane, the field, the common, the fruitful nut-tree and the flowering hedge led him on to that further turn of the road where he dismounted always, tied his horse to a tree, and proceeded on foot alone. He reached the edge of the lawn and looked out on the bay beneath.
It was his fate, his peculiarity, whether he wished it or not, to come out thus on a spit of land which the sea is slowly eating away, and there to stand, like a desolate sea-bird, alone. It was his power, his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on-that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses, and shrunk so that not only fame kept even in that desolation a vigilance which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this guise that he inspired in William Bankes and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of gratitude for the duty it is taking upon itself of marking the channel out there in the floods alone.
"But the father of eight children has no choice." Muttering half aloud, so he broke off, turned, sighed, raised his eyes, sought the figure of his wife reading stories to his little boy, filled his pipe. He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able to contemplate it fixedly might have led to something; and found consolation in trifles so slight compared with the august theme just now before him that he was disposed to slur that comfort over, to deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes. It was true; he was for the most part happy; he had his wife; he had his children; he had promised in six weeks' time to talk "some nonsense" to the young men of Cardiff about Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and the causes of the French Revolution. But this and his pleasure in it, his glory in the phrases he made, in the ardour of youth, in his wife's beauty, in the tributes that reached him from Swansea, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton, Kidderminster, Oxford, Cambridge-all had to be deprecated and concealed under the phrase "talking nonsense," because, in effect, he had not done the thing he might have done. It was a disguise; it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like-this is what I am; and rather pitiable anddistasteful to William Bankes and Lily Briscoe, who wondered why such concealments should be necessary; why he needed always praise; why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life; how strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time.
Teaching and preaching is beyond human power, Lily suspected. If you are exalted you must somehow come a cropper. Mrs Ramsay gave him what he asked too easily. Then the change must be so upsetting, Lily said. He comes in from his books and finds us all playing games and talking nonsense. Imagine what a change from the things he thinks about, she said.
He was bearing down upon them. Now he stopped dead and stood looking in silence at the sea. Now he had turned away again.
9
Yes, Mr Bankes said, watching him go. It was a thousand pities. It was for that reason, he said, that the young don't read Carlyle. A crusty old grumbler who lost his temper if the porridge was cold, why should he preach to us? was what Mr Bankes understood that young people said nowadays. It was a thousand pities if you thought, as he did, that Carlyle was one of the great teachers of mankind. Lily was ashamed to say that she had not read Carlyle since she was at school. But in her opinion one liked Mr Ramsay all the better for thinking that if his little finger ached the whole world must come to an end. It was not THAT she minded. For who could be deceived by him? He asked you quite openly to flatter him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody. What she disliked was his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him.
"A bit of a hypocrite?" Mr Bankes suggested, looking too at Mr Ramsay's back, for was he not thinking of his friendship, and of Cam refusing to give him a flower, and of all those boys and girls, and his own house, full of comfort, but, since his wife's death, quiet rather? Of course, he had his work... All the same, he rather wished Lily to agree that Ramsay was, as he said, "a bit of a hypocrite."
Lily Briscoe went on putting away her brushes, looking up, looking down. Looking up, there he was-Mr Ramsay-advancing towards them, swinging, careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a hypocrite? she repeated. Oh, no-the most sincere of men, the truest, the best; but, looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical, he is unjust; and kept looking down, purposely, for only so could she keep steady, staying with the Ramsays. Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called "being in love" flooded them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.
Mr Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to say something criticizing Mrs Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in her way, high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr Bankes made it entirely unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was considering his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, and the white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze as Lily saw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the loves of dozens of young men. It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.
Such a rapture-for by what other name could one call it?-made Lily Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing of importance; something about Mrs Ramsay. It paled beside this "rapture," this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing so solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raised its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would no more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight, lying level across the floor.
That people should love like this, that Mr Bankes should feel this for Mrs Ramsey was helpful, was exalting. She wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women; she felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture.
She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly's wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen; never be hung even, and there was Mr Tansley whispering in her ear, "Women can't paint, women can't write... "
She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr Bankes's glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr Bankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people, an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs Ramsay listening; shaded lights and regular breathing.
Oh, but, Lily would say, there was her father; her home; even, had she dared to say it, her painting. But all this seemed so little, so virginal, against the other. Yet, as the night wore on, and white lights parted the curtains, and even now and then some bird chirped in the garden, gathering a desperate courage she would urge her own exemption from the universal law; plead for it; she liked to be alone; she liked to be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs Ramsay's simple certainty that her dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool. Then, she remembered, she had laid her head on Mrs Ramsay's lap and laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed almost hysterically at the thought of Mrs Ramsay presiding with immutable calm over destinies which she completely failed to understand. There she sat, simple, serious. She had recovered her sense of her now-this was the glove's twisted finger. But into what sanctuary had one penetrated? Lily Briscoe had looked up at last, and there was Mrs Ramsay, unwitting entirely what had caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every trace of wilfulness abolished, and in its stead, something clear as the space which the clouds at last uncover-the little space of sky which sleeps beside the moon.
Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one's perceptions, half way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock up within her some secret which certainly Lily Briscoe believed people must have for the world to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs Ramsay's knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.
Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head against Mrs Ramsay's knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom were stored up in Mrs Ramsay's heart. How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives, which were people. Mrs Ramsay rose. Lily rose. Mrs Ramsay went. For days there hung about her, as after a dream some subtle change is felt in the person one has dreamt of, more vividly than anything she said, the sound of murmuring and, as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the drawing-room window she wore, to Lily's eyes, an august shape; the shape of a dome.
This ray passed level with Mr Bankes's ray straight to Mrs Ramsay sitting reading there with James at her knee. But now while she still looked, Mr Bankes had done. He had put on his spectacles. He had stepped back. He had raised his hand. He had slightly narrowed his clear blue eyes, when Lily, rousing herself, saw what he was at, and winced like a dog who sees a hand raised to strike it. She would have snatched her picture off the easel, but she said to herself, One must. She braced herself to stand the awful trial of some one looking at her picture. One must, she said, one must. And if it must be seen, Mr Bankes was less alarming than another. But that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-three years, the deposit of each day's living mixed with something more secret than she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those days was an agony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.
Nothing could be cooler and quieter. Taking out a pen-knife, Mr Bankes tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish to indicate by the triangular purple shape, "just there"? he asked.
It was Mrs Ramsay reading to James, she said. She knew his objection-that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no attempt at likeness, she said. For what reason had she introduced them then? he asked. Why indeed?-except that if there, in that corner, it was bright, here, in this, she felt the need of darkness. Simple, obvious, commonplace, as it was, Mr Bankes was interested. Mother and child then-objects of universal veneration, and in this case the mother was famous for her beauty-might be reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow without irreverence.
But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense. There were other senses too in which one might reverence them. By a shadow here and a light there, for instance. Her tribute took that form if, as she vaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute. A mother and child might be reduced to a shadow without irreverence. A light here required a shadow there. He considered. He was interested. He took it scientifically in complete good faith. The truth was that all his prejudices were on the other side, he explained. The largest picture in his drawing-room, which painters had praised, and valued at a higher price than he had given for it, was of the cherry trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet. He had spent his honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he said. Lily must come and see that picture, he said. But now-he turned, with his glasses raised to the scientific examination of her canvas. The question being one of the relations of masses, of lights and shadows, which, to be honest, he had never considered before, he would like to have it explained-what then did she wish to make of it? And he indicated the scene before them. She looked. She could not show him what she wished to make of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush in her hand. She took up once more her old painting position with the dim eyes and the absent-minded manner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to something much more general; becoming once more under the power of that vision which she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedges and houses and mothers and children-her picture. It was a question, she remembered, how to connect this mass on the right hand with that on the left. She might do it by bringing the line of the branch across so; or break the vacancy in the foreground by an object so. But the danger was that by doing that the unity of the whole might be broken. She stopped; she did not want to bore him; she took the canvas lightly off the easel.
But it had been seen; it had been taken from her. This man had shared with her something profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr Ramsay for it and Mrs Ramsay for it and the hour and the place, crediting the world with a power which she had not suspected-that one could walk away down that long gallery not alone any more but arm in arm with somebody-the strangest feeling in the world, and the most exhilarating-she nicked the catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was necessary, and the nick seemed to surround in a circle forever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr Bankes, and that wild villain, Cam, dashing past.
10
For Cam grazed the easel by an inch; she would not stop for Mr Bankes and Lily Briscoe; though Mr Bankes, who would have liked a daughter of his own, held out his hand; she would not stop for her father, whom she grazed also by an inch; nor for her mother, who called "Cam! I want you a moment!" as she dashed past. She was off like a bird, bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom, at what directed, who could say? What, what? Mrs Ramsay pondered, watching her. It might be a vision-of a shell, of a wheelbarrow, of a fairy kingdom on the far side of the hedge; or it might be the glory of speed; no one knew. But when Mrs Ramsay called "Cam!" a second time, the projectile dropped in mid career, and Cam came lagging back, pulling a leaf by the way, to her mother.
What was she dreaming about, Mrs Ramsay wondered, seeing her engrossed, as she stood there, with some thought of her own, so that she had to repeat the message twice-ask Mildred if Andrew, Miss Doyle, and Mr Rayley have come back?-The words seemed to be dropped into a well, where, if the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily distorting that, even as they descended, one saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows what pattern on the floor of the child's mind. What message would Cam give the cook? Mrs Ramsay wondered. And indeed it was only by waiting patiently, and hearing that there was an old woman in the kitchen with very red cheeks, drinking soup out of a basin, that Mrs Ramsay at last prompted that parrot-like instinct which had picked up Mildred's words quite accurately and could now produce them, if one waited, in a colourless singsong. Shifting from foot to foot, Cam repeated the words, "No, they haven't, and I've told Ellen to clear away tea."
Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley had not come back then. That could only mean, Mrs Ramsay thought, one thing. She must accept him, or she must refuse him. This going off after luncheon for a walk, even though Andrew was with them-what could it mean? except that she had decided, rightly, Mrs Ramsay thought, to accept that good fellow, who might not be brilliant, but then, thought Mrs Ramsay, realising that James was tugging at her, to make her go on reading aloud the Fisherman and his Wife, she did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations; Charles Tansley, for instance. Anyhow it must have happened, one way or the other, by now.
But she read, "Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just daybreak, and from her bed she saw the beautiful country lying before her. Her husband was still stretching himself... "
But how could Minta say now that she would not have him? Not if she agreed to spend whole afternoons trapesing about the country alone-for Andrew would be off after his crabs-but possibly Nancy was with them. She tried to recall the sight of them standing at the hall door after lunch. There they stood, looking at the sky, wondering about the weather, and she had said, thinking partly to cover their shyness, partly to encourage them to be off, "There isn't a cloud anywhere within miles," at which she could feel little Charles Tansley, who had followed them out, snigger. But she did it on purpose. Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be certain, looking from one to the other in her mind's eye.
She read on: "Ah, wife," said the man, "why should we be King? I do not want to be King."
"Well," said the wife, "if you won't be King, I will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King."
"Come in or go out, Cam," she said, knowing that Cam was attracted only by the word "Flounder" and that in a moment she would fidget and fight with James as usual. Cam shot off. Mrs Ramsay went on reading, relieved, for she and James shared the same tastes and were comfortable together.
"And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey, and the water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and said, 'Flounder, flounder, in the sea, Come, I pray thee, here to me; For my wife, good Ilsabil, Wills not as I'd have her will.'
'Well, what does she want then?' said the Flounder. " And where were they now? Mrs Ramsay wondered, reading and thinking, quite easily, both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his Wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the melody. And when should she be told? If nothing happened, she would have to speak seriously to Minta. For she could not go trapesing about all over the country, even if Nancy were with them. However, Minta came... Yes, she came, Mrs Ramsay thought, suspecting some thorn in the tangle of this thought; and disengaging it found it to be this: a woman had once accused her of "robbing her of her daughter's affections"; something Mrs Doyle had said made her remember that charge again. Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished-that was the charge against her, and she thought it most unjust. How could she help being "like that" to look at? No one could accuse her of taking pains to impress. She was often ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she domineering, nor was she tyrannical. It was more true about hospitals and drains and the dairy. About things like that she did feel passionately, and would, if she had the chance, have liked to take people by the scruff of their necks and make them see. No hospital on the whole island. It was a disgrace. Milk delivered at your door in London positively brown with dirt. It should be made illegal. A model dairy and a hospital up here-those two things she would have liked to do, herself. But how? With all these children? When they were older, then perhaps she would have time; when they were all at school.
Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! or Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up up for the loss. When she read just now to James, "and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets," and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up and lose all that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought, were full of promise. Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one's breath away with her beauty. Andrew-even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were both wild creatures now, scampering about over the country all day long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the dresses; made everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers, anything. She did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on James's head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they awoke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They all had their little treasures... And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries-perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was "pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life-and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes-her fifty years. There it was before her-life. Life, she thought-but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed ; she was driven on, too quickly she knew, almost as if it were an escape for her too, to say that people must marry; people must have children.
Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, reviewing her conduct for the past week or two, and wondering if she had indeed put any pressure upon Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make up her mind. She was uneasy. Had she not laughed about it? Was she not forgetting again how strongly she influenced people? Marriage needed-oh, all sorts of qualities ; one-she need not name it-that was essential; the thing she had with her husband. Had they that?
"Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman," she read. "But outside a great storm scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch black, and it thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with black waves as high as church towers and mountains, and all with white foam at the top... "
She turned the page; there were only a few lines more, so that she would finish the story, though it was past bed-time. It was getting late. The light in the garden told her that; and the whitening of the flowers and something grey in the leaves conspired together, to rouse in her a feeling of anxiety. What it was about she could not think at first. Then she remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not come back. She summoned before her again the little group on the terrace in front of the hall door, standing looking up into the sky. Andrew had his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch crabs and things. That meant he would climb out on to a rock; he would be cut off. Or coming back single file on one of those little paths above the cliff one of them might slip. He would roll and then crash. It was growing quite dark.
But she did not let her voice change in the least as she finished the story, and added, shutting the book, and speaking the last words as if she had made them up herself, looking into James's eyes: "And there they are living still at this very time."
"And that's the end," she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the interest of the story died away in them, something else take its place; something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light, which at once made him gaze and marvel. Turning, she looked across the bay, and there, sure enough, coming regularly across the waves first two quick strokes and then one long steady stroke, was the light of the Lighthouse. It had been lit.
In a moment he would ask her, "Are we going to the Lighthouse?" And she would have to say, "No: not tomorrow; your father says not." Happily, Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle distracted them. But he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the Lighthouse tomorrow; and she thought, he will remember that all his life.
11
No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out-a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress-children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at-that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that-"Children don't forget, children don't forget"-which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had said it? Not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not mean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.
What brought her to say that: "We are in the hands of the Lord?" she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that. She knitted with firm composure, slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware of it, so stiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habit of sternness that when her husband passed, though he was chuckling at the thought that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog, he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her. He was irritable-he was touchy. He had lost his temper over the Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its darkness.
Always, Mrs Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over; the children were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She stopped knitting; she held the long reddish-brown stocking dangling in her hands a moment. She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call, but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that James was gone and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her. She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing to help her. And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect her.
12
She folded the green shawl about her shoulders. She took his arm. His beauty was so great, she said, beginning to speak of Kennedy the gardener, at once he was so awfully handsome, that she couldn't dismiss him. There was a ladder against the greenhouse, and little lumps of putty stuck about, for they were beginning to mend the greenhouse. Yes, but as she strolled along with her husband, she felt that that particular source of worry had been placed. She had it on the tip of her tongue to say, as they strolled, "It'll cost fifty pounds," but instead, for her heart failed her about money, she talked about Jasper shooting birds, and he said, at once, soothing her instantly, that it was natural in a boy, and he trusted he would find better ways of amusing himself before long. Her husband was so sensible, so just. And so she said, "Yes; all children go through stages," and began considering the dahlias in the big bed, and wondering what about next year's flowers, and had he heard the children's nickname for Charles Tansley, she asked. The atheist, they called him, the little atheist. "He's not a polished specimen," said Mr Ramsay. "Far from it," said Mrs Ramsay.
She supposed it was all right leaving him to his own devices, Mrs Ramsay said, wondering whether it was any use sending down bulbs; did they plant them? "Oh, he has his dissertation to write," said Mr Ramsay. She knew all about THAT, said Mrs Ramsay. He talked of nothing else. It was about the influence of somebody upon something. "Well, it's all he has to count on," said Mr Ramsay. "Pray Heaven he won't fall in love with Prue," said Mrs Ramsay. He'd disinherit her if she married him, said Mr Ramsay. He did not look at the spot about a foot or so above them. There was no harm in him, he added, and was just about to say that anyhow he was the only young man in England who admired his-when he choked it back. He would not bother her again about his books. These flowers seemed creditable, Mr Ramsay said, lowering his gaze and noticing something red, something brown. Yes, but then these she had put in with her own hands, said Mrs Ramsay. The question was, what happened if she sent bulbs down; did Kennedy plant them? It was his incurable laziness; she added, moving on. If she stood over him all day long with a spade in her hand, he did sometimes do a stroke of work. So they strolled along, towards the red-hot pokers. "You're teaching your daughters to exaggerate," said Mr Ramsay, reproving her. Her Aunt Camilla was far worse than she was, Mrs Ramsay remarked. "Nobody ever held up your Aunt Camilla as a model of virtue that I'm aware of," said Mr Ramsay. "She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw," said Mrs Ramsay. "Somebody else was that," said Mr Ramsay. Prue was going to be far more beautiful than she was, said Mrs Ramsay. He saw no trace of it, said Mr Ramsay. "Well, then, look tonight," said Mrs Ramsay. They paused. He wished Andrew could be induced to work harder. He would lose every chance of a scholarship if he didn't. "Oh, scholarships!" she said. Mr Ramsay thought her foolish for saying that, about a serious thing, like a scholarship. He should be very proud of Andrew if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn't, she answered. They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did. Suddenly she remembered those little paths on the edge of the cliffs.
Wasn't it late? she asked. They hadn't come home yet. He flicked his watch carelessly open. But it was only just past seven. He held his watch open for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what he had felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was not reasonable to be so nervous. Andrew could look after himself. Then, he wanted to tell her that when he was walking on the terrace just now-here he became uncomfortable, as if he were breaking into that solitude, that aloofness, that remoteness of hers... But she pressed him. What had he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was about going to the Lighthouse; that he was sorry he had said "Damn you." But no. He did not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering, she protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy tales to James, she said. No, they could not share that; they could not say that.
They had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-hot pokers, and there was the Lighthouse again, but she would not let herself look at it. Had she known that he was looking at her, she thought, she would not have let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind. And all the poverty, all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs Ramsay thought. The lights of the town and of the harbour and of the boats seemed like a phantom net floating there to mark something which had sunk. Well, if he could not share her thoughts, Mr Ramsay said to himself, he would be off, then, on his own. He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it was nonsense to be anxious about Andrew. When he was Andrew's age he used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a biscuit in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought that he had fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for a day's walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of Bankes and of Carmichael. He would like a little solitude. Yes, she said. It annoyed him that she did not protest. She knew that he would never do it. He was too old now to walk all day long with a biscuit in his pocket. She worried about the boys, but not about him. Years ago, before he had married, he thought, looking across the bay, as they stood between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had walked all day. He had made a meal off bread and cheese in a public house. He had worked ten hours at a stretch; an old woman just popped her head in now and again and saw to the fire. That was the country he liked best, over there; those sandhills dwindling away into darkness. One could walk all day without meeting a soul. There was not a house scarcely, not a single village for miles on end. One could worry things out alone. There were little sandy beaches where no one had been since the beginning of time. The seals sat up and looked at you. It sometimes seemed to him that in a little house out there, alone-he broke off, sighing. He had no right. The father of eight children-he reminded himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Andrew would be a better man than he had been. Prue would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit. That was a good bit of work on the whole-his eight children. They showed he did not damn the poor little universe entirely, for on an evening like this, he thought, looking at the land dwindling away, the little island seemed pathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.
"Poor little place," he murmured with a sigh.
She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.
It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessed what he was thinking-he would have written better books if he had not married.
He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.
They turned away from the view and began to walk up the path where the silver-green spear-like plants grew, arm in arm. His arm was almost like a young man's arm, Mrs Ramsay thought, thin and hard, and she thought with delight how strong he still was, though he was over sixty, and how untamed and optimistic, and how strange it was that being convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors, seemed not to depress him, but to cheer him. Was it not odd, she reflected? Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud, or saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes it was awkward- Best and brightest come away! poor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her, almost jumped out of her skin. But then, Mrs Ramsay, though instantly taking his side against all the silly Giddingses in the world, then, she thought, intimating by a little pressure on his arm that he walked up hill too fast for her, and she must stop for a moment to see whether those were fresh molehills on the bank, then, she thought, stooping down to look, a great mind like his must be different in every way from ours. All the great men she had ever known, she thought, deciding that a rabbit must have got in, were like that, and it was good for young men simply to hear him, simply to look at him. But without shooting rabbits, how was one to keep them down? she wondered. It might be a rabbit; it might be a mole. Some creature anyhow was ruining her Evening Primroses. And looking up, she saw above the thin trees the first pulse of the full-throbbing star, and wanted to make her husband look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But she stopped herself. He never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs.
At that moment, he said, "Very fine," to please her, and pretended to admire the flowers. But she knew quite well that he did not admire them, or even realise that they were there. It was only to please her... Ah, but was that not Lily Briscoe strolling along with William Bankes? She focussed her short-sighted eyes upon the backs of a retreating couple. Yes, indeed it was. Did that not mean that they would marry? Yes, it must! What an admirable idea! They must marry!
13
He had been to Amsterdam, Mr Bankes was saying as he strolled across the lawn with Lily Briscoe. He had seen the Rembrandts. He had been to Madrid. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the Prado was shut. He had been to Rome. Had Miss Briscoe never been to Rome? Oh, she should-It would be a wonderful experience for her-the Sistine Chapel; Michael Angelo; and Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been in bad health for many years, so that their sight-seeing had been on a modest scale.
She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris but only for a flying visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden; there were masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily Briscoe reflected, perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one hopelessly discontented with one's own work. Mr Bankes thought one could carry that point of view too far. We can't all be Titians and we can't all be Darwins, he said; at the same time he doubted whether you could have your Darwin and your Titian if it weren't for humble people like ourselves. Lily would have liked to pay him a compliment; you're not humble, Mr Bankes, she would have liked to have said. But he did not want compliments, Prue ran full tilt into them and caught the ball brilliantly high up in her left hand, and her mother said, "Haven't they come back yet?" whereupon the spell was broken. Mr Ramsay felt free now to laugh out loud at the thought that Hume had stuck in a bog and an old woman rescued him on condition he said the Lord's Prayer, and chuckling to himself he strolled off to his study. Mrs Ramsay, bringing Prue back into throwing catches again, from which she had escaped, asked, "Did Nancy go with them?"
14
(Certainly, Nancy had gone with them, since Minta Doyle had asked it with her dumb look, holding out her hand, as Nancy made off, after lunch, to her attic, to escape the horror of family life. She supposed she must go then. She did not want to go. She did not want to be drawn into it all. For as they walked along the road to the cliff Minta kept on taking her hand. Then she would let it go. Then she would take it again. What was it she wanted? Nancy asked herself. There was something, of course, that people wanted; for when Minta took her hand and held it, Nancy, reluctantly, saw the whole world spread out beneath her, as if it were Constantinople seen through a mist, and then, however heavy-eyed one might be, one must needs ask, "Is that Santa Sofia?"
"Is that the Golden Horn?" So Nancy asked, when Minta took her hand. "What is it that she wants? Is it that?" And what was that? Here and there emerged from the mist a pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without names. But when Minta dropped her hand, as she did when they ran down the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle, whatever it was that had protruded through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared. Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker. She wore more sensible clothes that most women. She wore very short skirts and black knickerbockers. She would jump straight into a stream and flounder across. He liked her rashness, but he saw that it would not do-she would kill herself in some idiotic way one of these days. She seemed to be afraid of nothing-except bulls. At the mere sight of a bull in a field she would throw up her arms and fly screaming, which was the very thing to enrage a bull of course. But she did not mind owning up to it in the least; one must admit that. She knew she was an awful coward about bulls, she said. She thought she must have been tossed in her perambulator when she was a baby. She didn't seem to mind what she said or did. Suddenly now she pitched down on the edge of the cliff and began to sing some song about Damn your eyes, damn your eyes.
They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out together: Damn your eyes, damn your eyes, but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the good hunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.
"Fatal," Paul agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering down, he kept quoting the guide-book about "these islands being justly celebrated for their park-like prospects and the extent and variety of their marine curiosities." But it would not do altogether, this shouting and damning your eyes, Andrew felt, picking his way down the cliff, this clapping him on the back, and calling him "old fellow" and all that; it would not altogether do. It was the worst of taking women on walks. Once on the beach they separated, he going out on to the Pope's Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks in them and letting that couple look after themselves; Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouching over the pool, she brooded.
And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach and was carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid movement right behind a rock and there-oh, heavens! in each other's arms, were Paul and Minta kissing probably. She was outraged, indignant. She and Andrew put on their shoes and stockings in dead silence without saying a thing about it. Indeed they were rather sharp with each other. She might have called him when she saw the crayfish or whatever it was, Andrew grumbled. However, they both felt, it's not our fault. They had not wanted this horrid nuisance to happen. All the same it irritated Andrew that Nancy should be a woman, and Nancy that Andrew should be a man, and they tied their shoes very neatly and drew the bows rather tight.
It was not until they had climbed right up on to the top of the cliff again that Minta cried out that she had lost her grandmother's brooch-her grandmother's brooch, the sole ornament she possessed-a weeping willow, it was took counsel briefly and decided that they would plant Rayley's stick where they had sat and come back at low tide again. There was nothing more that could be done now. If the brooch was there, it would still be there in the morning, they assured her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up to the top of the cliff. It was her grandmother's brooch; she would rather have lost anything but that, and yet Nancy felt, it might be true that she minded losing her brooch, but she wasn't crying only for that. She was crying for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she did not know what for.
They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and he comforted her, and said how famous he was for finding things. Once when he was a little boy he had found a gold watch. He would get up at daybreak and he was positive he would find it. It seemed to him that it would be almost dark, and he would be alone on the beach, and somehow it would be rather dangerous. He began telling her, however, that he would certainly find it, and she said that she would not hear of his getting up at dawn: it was lost: she knew that: she had had a presentiment when she put it on that afternoon. And secretly he resolved that he would not tell her, but he would slip out of the house at dawn when they were all asleep and if he could not find it he would go to Edinburgh and buy her another, just like it but more beautiful. He would prove what he could do. And as they came out on the hill and saw the lights of the town beneath them, the lights coming out suddenly one by one seemed like things that were going to happen to him-his marriage, his children, his house; and again he thought, as they came out on to the high road, which was shaded with high bushes, how they would retreat into solitude together, and walk on and on, he always leading her, and she pressing close to his side 
15
"Yes," said Prue, in her considering way, answering her mother's question, "I think Nancy did go with them."
16
Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs Ramsay supposed, wondering, as she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said "Come in" to a tap at the door, whether the fact that Nancy was with them made it less likely or more likely that anything would happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs Ramsay felt, very irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such a scale was not probable. They could not all be drowned. And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life.
Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to know whether she should wait dinner.
"Not for the Queen of England," said Mrs Ramsay emphatically.
"Not for the Empress of Mexico," she added, laughing at Jasper; for he shared his mother's vice: he, too, exaggerated.
And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the message, she might choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen people sitting down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever. She was now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so late; it was inconsiderate of them, and it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about them, that they should choose this very night to be out late, when, in fact, she wished the dinner to be particularly nice, since William Bankes had at last consented to dine with them; and they were having Mildred's masterpiece-BOEUF EN DAUBE. Everything depended upon things being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bayleaf, and the wine-all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting was out of the question. Yet of course tonight, of all nights, out they went, and they came in late, and things had to be sent out, things had to be kept hot; the BOEUF EN DAUBE would be entirely spoilt.
Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs Ramsay absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused her-the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time, they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again, because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition. He was a disreputable old bird, with half his wing feathers missing. He was like some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing the horn in front of a public house.
"Look!" she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph and Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite out, out, out-she could never describe it accurately enough to please herself-was one of the loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.
But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?
"Choose, dearests, choose," she said, hoping that they would make haste.
But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly, take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and Jasper, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief, and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl. Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound to suffer so. "There," she said, stopping by the window on the landing, "there they are again." Joseph had settled on another tree-top. "Don't you think they mind," she said to Jasper, "having their wings broken?" Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not seriously, for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; and they did not feel; and being his mother she lived away in another division of the world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary and Joseph. She made him laugh. But how did she know that those were Mary and Joseph? Did she think the same birds came to the same trees every night? he asked. But here, suddenly, like all grown-up people, she ceased to pay him the least attention. She was listening to a clatter in the hall.
"They've come back!" she exclaimed, and at once she felt much more annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it happened? She would go down and they would tell her-but no. They could not tell her anything, with all these people about. So she must go down and begin dinner and wait. And, like some queen who, finding her people gathered in the hall, looks down upon them, and descends among them, and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their devotion and their prostration before her she went down, and crossed the hall and bowed her head very slightly, as if she accepted what they could not say: their tribute to her beauty.
But she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have let the BOEUF EN DAUBE overboil? she wondered, pray heaven not! when the great clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of their own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and ends on their washing-tables and dressing tables, and the novels on the bed-tables, and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the dining-room for dinner.
17
But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs Ramsay, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making white circles on it. "William, sit by me," she said. "Lily," she said, wearily, "over there." They had that-Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle-she, only this-an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy-there-and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it. It's all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after another, Charles Tansley-"Sit there, please," she said-Augustus Carmichael-and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.
Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy-that was what she was thinking, this was what she was doing-ladling out soup-she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and, robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere. She forebore to look at Mr Tansley. Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving herself a little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking-one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a news-paper. And so then, she concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William Bankes-poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.
"Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for you," she said to William Bankes.
Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that strange no-man's land where to follow people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such a chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have sunk beneath the horizon.
How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily thought, and how remote. Then when she turned to William Bankes, smiling, it was as if the ship had turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and Lily thought with some amusement because she was relieved, Why does she pity him? For that was the impression she gave, when she told him that his letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying people, and the life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred by pity. And it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those misjudgments of hers that seemed to be instinctive and to arise from some need of her own rather than of other people's. He is not in the least pitiable. He has his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do. That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.
"It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one's letters," said Mr Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought, he were determined to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes; they were blue, deep set, frightening.
"Do you write many letters, Mr Tansley?" asked Mrs Ramsay, pitying him too, Lily supposed; for that was true of Mrs Ramsay-she pitied men always as if they lacked something-women never, as if they had something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did not suppose he wrote one letter a month, said Mr Tansley, shortly.
For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these condescended to by these silly women. He had been reading in his room, and now he came down and it all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they dress? He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any dress clothes. "One never gets anything worth having by post"-that was the sort of thing they were always saying. They made men say that sort of thing. Yes, it was pretty well true, he thought. They never got anything worth having from one year's end to another. They did nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women's fault. Women made civilisation impossible with all their "charm," all their silliness.
"No going to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mrs Ramsay," he said, asserting himself. He liked her; he admired her; he still thought of the man in the drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary to assert himself.
He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said? Women can't write, women can't paint-what did that matter coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters-nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?
"Oh, Mr Tansley," she said, "do take me to the Lighthouse with you. I should so love it."
She was telling lies he could see. She was saying what she did not mean to annoy him, for some reason. She was laughing at him. He was in his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He felt very rough and isolated and lonely. He knew that she was trying to tease him for some reason; she didn't want to go to the Lighthouse with him; she despised him: so did Prue Ramsay; so did they all. But he was not going to be made a fool of by women, so he turned deliberately in his chair and looked out of the window and said, all in a jerk, very rudely, it would be too rough for her tomorrow. She would be sick.
It annoyed him that she should have made him speak like that, with Mrs Ramsay listening. If only he could be alone in his room working, he thought, among his books. That was where he felt at his ease. And he had never run a penny into debt; he had never cost his father a penny since he was fifteen; he had helped them at home out of his savings; he was educating his sister. Still, he wished he had known how to answer Miss Briscoe properly; he wished it had not come out all in a jerk like that. "You'd be sick." He wished he could think of something to say to Mrs Ramsay, something which would show her that he was not just a dry prig. That was what they all thought him. He turned to her. But Mrs Ramsay was talking about people he had never heard of to William Bankes.
"Yes, take it away," she said briefly, interrupting what she was saying to William Bankes to speak to the maid. "It must have been fifteen-no, twenty years ago-that I last saw her," she was saying, turning back to him again as if she could not lose a moment of their talk, for she was absorbed by what they were saying. So he had actually heard from her this evening! And was Carrie still living at Marlow, and was everything still the same? Oh, she could remember it as if it were yesterday-on the river, feeling it as if it were yesterday-going on the river, feeling very cold. But if the Mannings made a plan they stuck to it. Never should she forget Herbert killing a wasp with a teaspoon on the bank! And it was still going on, Mrs Ramsay mused, gliding like a ghost among the chairs and tables of that drawing-room on the banks of the Thames where she had been so very, very cold twenty years ago; but now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years. Had Carrie written to him herself? she asked.
"Yes. She says they're building a new billiard room," he said. No! No! That was out of the question! Building a new billiard room! It seemed to her impossible.
Mr Bankes could not see that there was anything very odd about it. They were very well off now. Should he give her love to Carrie?
"Oh," said Mrs Ramsay with a little start, "No," she added, reflecting that she did not know this Carrie who built a new billiard room. But how strange, she repeated, to Mr Bankes's amusement, that they should be going on there still. For it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time. How eventful her own life had been, during those same years. Yet perhaps Carrie had not thought about her, either. The thought was strange and distasteful.
"People soon drift apart," said Mr Bankes, feeling, however, some satisfaction when he thought that after all he knew both the Mannings and the Ramsays. He had not drifted apart he thought, laying down his spoon and wiping his clean-shaven lips punctiliously. But perhaps he was rather unusual, he thought, in this; he never let himself get into a groove. He had friends in all circles... Mrs Ramsay had to break off here to tell the maid something about keeping food hot. That was why he preferred dining alone. All those interruptions annoyed him. Well, thought William Bankes, preserving a demeanour of exquisite courtesy and merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on the table-cloth as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and ready for use in an interval of leisure, such are the sacrifices one's friends ask of one. It would have hurt her if he had refused to come. But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would have been free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time. The children were dropping in still. "I wish one of you would run up to Roger's room," Mrs Ramsay was saying. How trifling it all is, how boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing-work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he might have been-he took a flashing bird's-eye view of his work. What a waste of time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing to him; her sitting with her little boy at the window-nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone and to take up that book. He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her side and feel nothing for her. The truth was that he did not enjoy family life. It was in this sort of state that one asked oneself, What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species? Not so very, he thought, looking at those he supposed. Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one never asked if one was occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One never had time to think about it. But here he was asking himself that sort of question, because Mrs Ramsay was giving orders to servants, and also because it had struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs Ramsay was that Carrie Manning should still exist, that friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. He reproached himself again. He was sitting beside Mrs Ramsay and he had nothing in the world to say to her.
"I'm so sorry," said Mrs Ramsy, turning to him at last. He felt rigid and barren, like a pair of boots that have been soaked and gone dry so that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must force his feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not care a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought. So he bent his head courteously in her direction.
"How you must detest dining in this bear garden," she said, making use, as she did when she was distracted, of her social manner. So, when there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is bad French; French may not contain the words that express the speaker's thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some uniformity. Replying to her in the same language, Mr Bankes said, "No, not at all," and Mr Tansley, who had no knowledge of this language, even spoke thus in words of one syllable, at once suspected its insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and he pounced on this fresh instance with joy, making a note which, one of these days, he would read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a society where one could say what one liked he would sarcastically describe "staying with the Ramsays" and what nonsense they talked. It was worth while doing it once, he would say; but not again. The women bored one so, he would say. Of course Ramsay had dished himself by marrying a beautiful woman and having eight children. It would shape itself something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck there with an empty seat beside him, nothing had shaped itself at all. It was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely, even physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What did they know about the fishing industry?
Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh-that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't write," why should I help him to relieve himself?
There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling.
"You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr Tansley?" she asked.
Mr Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life. But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Charles Tansley-a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him.
"Will you take me, Mr Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks-indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap"-when Mrs Ramsay said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment-what happens if one is not nice to that young man there-and be nice.
Judging the turn in her mood correctly-that she was friendly to him now-he was relieved of his egotism, and told her how he had been thrown out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used to fish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he had learnt to swim. One of his uncles kept the light on some rock or other off the Scottish coast, he said. He had been there with him in a storm. This was said loudly in a pause. They had to listen to him when he said that he had been with his uncle in a lighthouse in a storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe, as the conversation took this auspicious turn, and she felt Mrs Ramsay's gratitude, ah, she thought, but what haven't I paid to get it for you? She had not been sincere.
She had done the usual trick-been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere she thought. Then her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr Tansley was saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.
"But how long do they leave men on a Lighthouse?" she asked. He told her. He was amazingly well informed. And as he was grateful, and as he liked her, and as he was beginning to enjoy himself, so now, Mrs Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Mannings' drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks. He said they had built a billiard room-was it possible? Would William go on talking about the Mannings? She wanted him to. But, no-for some reason he was no longer in the mood. She tried. He did not respond. She could not force him. She was disappointed.
"The children are disgraceful," she said, sighing. He said something about punctuality being one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life.
"If at all," said Mrs Ramsay merely to fill up space, thinking what an old maid William was becoming. Conscious of his treachery, conscious of her wish to talk about something more intimate, yet out of mood for it at present, he felt come over him the disagreeableness of life, sitting there, waiting. Perhaps the others were saying something interesting? What were they saying?
That the fishing season was bad; that the men were emigrating. They were talking about wages and unemployment. The young man was abusing the government. William Bankes, thinking what a relief it was to catch on to something of this sort when private life was disagreeable, heard him say something about "one of the most scandalous acts of the present government." Lily was listening; Mrs Ramsay was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Lily felt that something was lacking; Mr Bankes felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her Mrs Ramsay felt that something was lacking. All of them bending themselves to listen thought, "Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed," for each thought, "The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all." But perhaps, thought Mr Bankes, as he looked at Mr Tansley, here is the man. One was always waiting for the man. There was always a chance. At any moment the leader might arise; the man of genius, in politics as in anything else. Probably he will be extremely disagreeable to us old fogies, thought Mr Bankes, doing his best to make allowances, for he knew by some curious physical sensation, as of nerves erect in his spine, that he was jealous, for himself partly, partly more probably for his work, for his point of view, for his science; and therefore he was not entirely open-minded or altogether fair, for Mr Tansley seemed to be saying, You have wasted your lives. You are all of you wrong. Poor old fogies, you're hopelessly behind the times. He seemed to be rather cocksure, this young man; and his manners were bad. But Mr Bankes bade himself observe, he had courage; he had ability; he was extremely well up in the facts. Probably, Mr Bankes thought, as Tansley abused the government, there is a good deal in what he says.
"Tell me now... " he said. So they argued about politics, and Lily looked at the leaf on the table-cloth; and Mrs Ramsay, leaving the argument entirely in the hands of the two men, wondered why she was so bored by this talk, and wished, looking at her husband at the other end of the table, that he would say something. One word, she said to herself. For if he said a thing, it would make all the difference. He went to the heart of things. He cared about fishermen and their wages. He could not sleep for thinking of them. It was altogether different when he spoke; one did not feel then, pray heaven Then, realising that it was because she admired him so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she felt as if somebody had been praising her husband to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over withiut realising that it was she herself who had praised him. She looked at him thinking to find this in his face; he would be looking magnificent... But not in the least! He was screwing his face up, he was scowling and frowning, and flushing with anger. What on earth was it about? she wondered. What could be the matter? Only that poor old Augustus had asked for another plate of soup-that was all. It was unthinkable, it was detestable that Augustus should be beginning his soup over again. He loathed people eating when he had finished. She saw his anger fly like a pack of hounds into his eyes, his brow, and she knew that in a moment something violent would explode, and then-thank goodness! she saw him clutch himself and clap a brake on the wheel, and the whole of his body seemed to emit sparks but not words. He sat there scowling. He had said nothing, he would have her observe. Let her give him the credit for that! But why after all should poor Augustus not ask for another plate of soup? He had merely touched Ellen's arm and said: "Ellen, please, another plate of soup," and then Mr Ramsay scowled like that.
And why not? Mrs Ramsay demanded. Surely they could let Augustus have his soup if he wanted it. He hated people wallowing in food, Mr Ramsay frowned at her. He hated everything dragging on for hours like this. But he had controlled himself, Mr Ramsay would have her observe, disgusting though the sight was. But why show it so plainly, Mrs Ramsay demanded: "Light the candles," and they jumped up instantly and went and fumbled at the sideboard.
Why could he never conceal his feelings? Mrs Ramsay wondered, and she wondered if Augustus Carmichael had noticed. Perhaps he had; perhaps he had not. She could not help respecting the composure with which he sat there, drinking his soup. If he wanted soup, he asked for soup. Whether people laughed at him or were angry with him he was the same. He did not like her, she knew that; but partly for that very reason she respected him, and looking at him, drinking soup, very large and calm in the failing light, and monumental, and contemplative, she wondered what he did feel then, and why he was always content and dignified; and she thought how devoted he was to Andrew, and would call him into his room, and Andrew said, "show him things." And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, and then he clapped his paws together when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus-he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
Now eight candles were stood down the table, and after the first stoop the flames stood upright and drew with them into visibility the long table entire, and in the middle a yellow and purple dish of fruit. What had she done with it, Mrs Ramsay wondered, for Rose's arrangement of the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune's banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus she saw that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting, to his hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers. But looking together united them.
Now all the candles were lit up, and the faces on both sides of the table were brought nearer by the candle light, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the night was now shut off by panes of glass, which, far from giving any accurate view of the outside world, rippled it so strangely that here, inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a reflection in which things waved and vanished, waterily.
Some change at once went through them all, as if this had really happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in a hollow, on an island; had their common cause against that fluidity out there. Mrs Ramsay, who had been uneasy, waiting for Paul and Minta to come in, and unable, she felt, to settle to things, now felt her uneasiness changed to expectation. For now they must come, and Lily Briscoe, trying to analyse the cause of the sudden exhilaration, compared it with that moment on the tennis lawn, when solidity suddenly vanished, and such vast spaces lay between them; and now the same effect was got by the many candles in the sparely furnished room, and the uncurtained windows, and the bright mask-like look of faces seen by candlelight. Some weight was taken off them; anything might happen, she felt. They must come now, Mrs Ramsay thought, looking at the door, and at that instant, Minta Doyle, Paul Rayley, and a maid carrying a great dish in her hands came in together. They were awfully late; they were horribly late, Minta said, as they found their way to different ends of the table.
"I lost my brooch-my grandmother's brooch," said Minta with a sound of lamentation in her voice, and a suffusion in her large brown eyes, looking down, looking up, as she sat by Mr Ramsay, which roused his chivalry so that he bantered her.
How could she be such a goose, he asked, as to scramble about the rocks in jewels?
She was by way of being terrified of him-he was so fearfully clever, and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked about George Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left the third volume of MIDDLEMARCH in the train and she never knew what happened in the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself out even more ignorant than she was, because he liked telling her she was a fool. And so tonight, directly he laughed at her, she was not frightened. Besides, she knew, directly she came into the room that the miracle had happened; she wore her golden haze. Sometimes she had it; sometimes not. She never knew why it came or why it went, or if she had it until she came into the room and then she knew instantly by the way some man looked at her. Yes, tonight she had it, tremendously; she knew that by the way Mr Ramsay told her not to be a fool. She sat beside him, smiling.
It must have happened then, thought Mrs Ramsay; they are engaged. And for a moment she felt what she had never expected to feel again-jealousy. liked these girls, these golden-reddish girls, with something flying, something a little wild and harum-scarum about them, who didn't "scrape their hair off," weren't, as he said about poor Lily Briscoe, "skimpy". There was some quality which she herself had not, some lustre, some richness, which attracted him, amused him, led him to make favourites of girls like Minta. They might cut his hair from him, plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at his work, hailing him, "Come along, Mr Ramsay; it's our turn to beat them now," and out he came to play tennis.
But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and then, when she made herself look in her glass, a little resentful that she had grown old, perhaps, by her own fault.. For herself-"Put it down there," she said, helping the Swiss girl to place gently before her the huge brown pot in which was the BOEUF EN DAUBE-for her own part, she liked her boobies. Paul must sit by her. She had kept a place for him. Really, she sometimes thought she liked the boobies best. They did not bother one with their dissertations. How much they missed, after all, these very clever men! How dried up they did become, to be sure. There was something, she thought as he sat down, very charming about Paul. His manners were delightful to her, and his sharp cut nose and his bright blue eyes. He was so considerate. Would he tell her-now that they were all talking again-what had happened?
"We went back to look for Minta's brooch," he said, sitting down by her. "We"-that was enough. She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he had said "we."
"We did this, we did that." They'll say that all their lives, she thought, and an exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she must take great care, Mrs Ramsay thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow meats and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought, This will celebrate the occasion-a curious sense rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called up in her, one profound-for what could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.
"It is a triumph," said Mr Bankes, laying his knife down for a moment. He had eaten attentively. It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of the country? he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his reverence, had returned; and she knew it.
"It is a French recipe of my grandmother's," said Mrs Ramsay, speaking with a ring of great pleasure in her voice. Of course it was French. What passes for cookery in England is an abomination in this strange, this terrifying thing, which made Paul Rayley, sitting at her side, all of a tremor, yet abstract, absorbed, silent. Mrs Ramsay, Lily felt, as she talked about the skins of vegetables, exalted that, worshipped that; held her hands over it to warm them, to protect it, and yet, having brought it all about, somehow laughed, led her victims, Lily felt, to the altar. It came over her too now-the emotion, the vibration, of love. How inconspicuous she felt herself by Paul's side! He, glowing, burning; she, aloof, satirical; he, bound for adventure; she, moored to the shore; he, ready to implore a share, if it were a disaster, in his disaster, she said shyly: "When did Minta lose her brooch?"
He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams. He shook his head. "On the beach," he said.
"I'm going to find it," he said, "I'm getting up early." This being kept secret from Minta, he lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to where she sat, laughing, beside Mr Ramsay.
Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageously her desire to help him, envisaging how in the dawn on the beach she would be the one to pounce on the brooch half-hidden by some stone, and thus herself be included among the sailors and adventurers. But what did he reply to her offer? She actually said with an emotion that she seldom let appear, "Let me come with you," and he laughed. He meant yes or no-either perhaps. But it was not his meaning-it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don't care. He turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, and Lily, looking at Minta, being charming to Mr Ramsay at the other end of the table, flinched for her exposed to these fangs, and was thankful. For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.
Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her, especially staying with the Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that's what you feel, was one; that's what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now. It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem's in the Mile End Road. Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this-love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. Well then, well then? she asked, somehow expecting the others to go on with the argument, as if in an argument like this one threw one's own little bolt which fell short obviously and left the others to carry it on. So she listened again to what they were saying in case they should throw any light upon the question of love.
"Then," said Mr Bankes, "there is that liquid the English call coffee."
"Oh, coffee!" said Mrs Ramsay. But it was much rather a question of real butter and clean milk. Speaking with warmth and eloquence, she described the iniquity of the English dairy system, and in what state milk was delivered at the door, and was about to prove her charges, for she had gone into the matter, when all round the table, beginning with Andrew in the middle, like a fire leaping from tuft to tuft of furze, her children laughed; her husband laughed; she was laughed at, fire-encircled, and forced to veil her crest, dismount her batteries, and only retaliate by displaying the as an example of what one suffered if one attacked the prejudices of the British Public.
Purposely, however, for she had it on her mind that Lily, who had helped her with Mr Tansley, was out of things, she exempted her from the rest; said "Lily anyhow agrees with me," and so drew her in, a little fluttered, a little startled. of the two, Lily at forty will be the better. There was in Lily a thread of something; a flare of something; something of her own which Mrs Ramsay liked very much indeed, but no man would, she feared. Obviously, not, unless it were a much older man, like William Bankes. But then he cared, well, Mrs Ramsay sometimes thought that he cared, since his wife's death, perhaps for her. He was not "in love" of course; it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many. Oh, but nonsense, she thought; William must marry Lily. They have so many things in common. Lily is so fond of flowers. She must arrange for them to take a long walk together.
Foolishly, she had set them opposite each other. That could be remedied tomorrow. If it were fine, they should go for a picnic. Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today, already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.
"Yes," she assured William Bankes, "there is plenty for everybody."
"Andrew," she said, "hold your plate lower, or I shall spill it." listening; could then, like a hawk which lapses suddenly from its high station, flaunt and sink on laughter easily, resting her whole weight upon what at the other end of the table her husband was saying about the square root of one thousand two hundred and fifty-three. That was the number, it seemed, on his watch.
What did it all mean? To this day she had no notion. A square root? What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes and square roots; that was what they were talking about now; on Voltaire and Madame de Stael; on the character of Napoleon; on the French system of land tenure; on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey's Memoirs: she let it uphold her and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this way and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world, so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes, or flicker them for a moment, as a child staring up from its pillow winks at the myriad layers of the leaves of a tree. Then she woke up. It was still being fabricated. William Bankes was praising the Waverly novels.
He read one of them every six months, he said. And why should that make Charles Tansley angry? He rushed in and denounced the Waverly novels when he knew nothing about it, nothing about it whatsoever, Mrs Ramsay thought, observing him rather than listening to what he said. She could see how it was from his manner-he wanted to assert himself, and so it would always be with him till he got his Professorship or married his wife, and so need not be always saying, "I-I-I." For that was what his criticism of poor Sir Walter, or perhaps it was Jane Austen, amounted to. "I-I-I." He was thinking of himself and the impression he was making, as she could tell by the sound of his voice, and his emphasis and his uneasiness. Success would be good for him. At any rate they were off again. Now she need not listen. It could not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling. So she saw them; she heard them; but whatever they said had also this quality, as if what they said was like the movement of a trout when, at the same time, one can see the ripple and the gravel, something to the right, something to the left; and the whole is held together; for whereas in active life she would be netting and separating one thing from another; she would be saying she liked the Waverly novels or had not read them; she would be urging herself forward; now she said nothing. For the moment, she hung suspended.
"Ah, but how long do you think it'll last?" said somebody. It was as if she had antennae trembling out from her, which, intercepting certain sentences, forced them upon her attention. This was one of them. She scented danger for her husband. A question like that would lead, almost certainly, to something being said which reminded him of his own failure. How long would he be read-he would think at once. William Bankes laughed, and said he attached no importance to changes in fashion. Who could tell what was going to last-in literature or indeed in anything else?
"Let us enjoy what we do enjoy," he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began that very few people liked it as much as they said they did. But, he added, there is considerable merit in some of the plays nevertheless, and Mrs Ramsay saw that it would be all right for the moment anyhow; he would laugh at Minta, and she, Mrs Ramsay saw, realising his extreme anxiety about himself, would, in her own way, see that he was taken care of, and praise him, somehow or other. But she wished it was not necessary: perhaps it was her fault that it was necessary. Anyhow, she was free now to listen to what Paul Rayley was trying to say about books one had read as a boy. They lasted, he said. He had read some of Tolstoi at school. There was one he always remembered, but he had forgotten the name. Russian names were impossible, said Mrs Ramsay. "Vronsky," said Paul. He remembered that because he always thought it such a good name for a villain. "Vronsky," said Mrs Ramsay; "Oh, ANNA KARENINA," but that did not take them very far; books were not in their line. No, Charles Tansley would put them both right in a second about books, but it was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the right thing? Am I making a good impression? that, after all, one knew more about him than about Tolstoi, whereas, what Paul said was about the thing, simply, not himself, nothing else. Like all stupid people, he had a kind of modesty too, a consideration for what you were feeling, which, once in a way at least, she found attractive. Now he was thinking, not about himself, or about Tolstoi, but whether she was cold, whether she felt a draught, whether she would like a pear.
No, she said, she did not want a pear. Indeed she had been keeping guard over the dish of fruit jealously, hoping that nobody would touch it. Her eyes had been going in and out among the curves and shadows of the fruit, among the rich purples of the lowland grapes, then over the horny ridge of the shell, putting a yellow against a purple, a curved shape against a round shape, without knowing why she did it, or why, every time she did it, she felt more and more serene; until, oh, what a pity that they should do it-a hand reached out, took a pear, and spoilt the whole thing. In sympathy she looked at Rose. She looked at Rose sitting between Jasper and Prue. How odd that one's child should do that!
How odd to see them sitting there, in a row, her children, Jasper, Rose, Prue, Andrew, almost silent, but with some joke of their own going on, she guessed, from the twitching at their lips. It was something quite apart from everything else, something they were hoarding up to laugh over in their own room. It was not about their father, she hoped. No, she thought not. What was it, she wondered, sadly rather, for it seemed to her that they would laugh when she was not there. There was all that hoarded behind those rather set, still, mask-like faces, for they did not join in easily; they were like the grown-up people. But when she looked at Prue tonight, she saw that this was not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just descending. The faintest light was on her face, as if the glow of Minta opposite, some excitement, some anticipation of happiness was reflected in her, as if the sun of the love of men and women rose over the rim of the table-cloth, and without knowing what it was she bent towards it and greeted it. She kept looking at Minta, shyly, yet curiously, so that Mrs Ramsay looked from one to the other and said, speaking to Prue in her own mind, You will be as happy as she is one of these days. You will be much happier, she added, because you are my daughter, she meant; her own daughter must be happier than other people's daughters. But dinner was over. It was time to go. They were only playing with things on their plates. She would wait until they had done laughing at some story her husband was telling. He was having a joke with Minta about a bet. Then she would get up.
She liked Charles Tansley, she thought, suddenly; she liked his laugh. She liked him for being so angry with Paul and Minta. She liked his awkwardness. There was a lot in that young man after all. And Lily, she thought, putting her napkin beside her plate, she always has some joke of her own. One need never bother about Lily. She waited. She tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. Well, were they done now? No. That story had led to another story. Her husband was in great spirits tonight, and wishing, she supposed, to make it all right with old Augustus after that scene about the soup, had drawn him in-they were telling stories about some one they had both known at college. She looked at the window in which the candle flames burnt brighter now that the panes were black, and strangely, as if they were voices at a service in a cathedral, for she did not listen to the words. The sudden bursts of laughter and then one voice speaking alone, reminded her of men and boys crying out the Latin words of a service in some Roman Catholic cathedral. She waited. Her husband spoke. He was repeating something, and she knew it was poetry from the rhythm and the ring of exultation, and melancholy in his voice: Come out and climb the garden path, Luriana Lurilee. The China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow bee.
The words sounded as if they were floating like flowers on water out there, cut off from them all, as if no one had said them, but they had come into existence of themselves.
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be Are full of trees and changing leaves.
She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said different things. She knew, without looking round, that every one at the table was listening to the voice saying: I wonder if it seems to you, Luriana, Lurilee with the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had, as if this were, at last, the natural thing to say, this were their own voice speaking.
But the voice had stopped. She looked round. She made herself get up. Augustus Carmichael had risen and, holding his table napkin so that it looked like a long white robe he stood chanting: To see the Kings go riding by Over lawn and daisy lea With their palm leaves and cedar Luriana, Lurilee, and as she passed him, he turned slightly towards her repeating the last words: Luriana, Lurilee and bowed to her as if he did her homage. Without knowing why, she felt that he liked her better than he ever had done before; and with a feeling of relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed through the door which he held open for her.
It was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.
18
As usual, Lily thought. There was always something that had to be done at that precise moment, something that Mrs Ramsay had decided for reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with every one standing about making jokes, as now, not being able to decide whether they were going into the smoking-room, into the drawing-room, up to the attics. Then one saw Mrs Ramsay in the midst of this hubbub standing there with Minta's arm in hers, bethink her, "Yes, it is time for that now," and so make off at once with an air of secrecy to do something alone. And directly she went a sort of disintegration set in; they wavered about, went different ways, Mr Bankes took Charles Tansley by the arm and went off to finish on the terrace the discussion they had begun at dinner about politics, thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening, making the weight fall in a different direction, as if, Lily thought, seeing them go, and hearing a word or two about the policy of the Labour Party, they had gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were taking their bearings; the change from poetry to politics struck her like that; so Mr Bankes and Charles Mrs Ramsay going upstairs in the lamplight alone. Where, Lily wondered, was she going so quickly?
Not that she did in fact run or hurry; she went indeed rather slowly. She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered; to detach it; separate it off; clean it of all the emotions and odds and ends of things, and so hold it before her, and bring it to the tribunal where, ranged about in conclave, sat the judges she had set up to decide these things. Is it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong? Where are we all going to? and so on. So she righted herself after the shock of the event, and quite unconsciously and incongruously, used the branches of the elm trees outside to help her to stabilise her position. Her world was changing: they were still. The event had given her a sense of movement. All must be in order. She must get that right and that right, she thought, insensibly approving of the dignity of the trees' stillness, and now again of the superb upward rise it was all one stream, and chairs, tables, maps, were hers, were theirs, it did not matter whose, and Paul and Minta would carry it on when she was dead.
She turned the handle, firmly, lest it should squeak, and went in, pursing her lips slightly, as if to remind herself that she must not speak aloud. But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance, that the precaution was not needed. The children were not asleep. It was most annoying. Mildred should be more careful. There was James wide awake and Cam sitting bolt upright, and Mildred out of bed in her bare feet, and it was almost eleven and they were all talking. What was the matter? It was that horrid skull again. She had told Mildred to move it, but Mildred, of course, had forgotten, and now there was Cam wide awake, and James wide awake quarreling when they ought to have been asleep hours ago. What had possessed Edward to send them this horrid skull? She had been so foolish as to let them nail it up there. It was nailed fast, Mildred said, and Cam couldn't go to sleep with it in the room, and James screamed if she touched it.
Then Cam must go to sleep there was always a shadow somewhere.
"But think, Cam, it's only an old pig," said Mrs Ramsay, "a nice black pig like the pigs at the farm." But Cam thought it was a horrid thing, branching at her all over the room.
"Well then," said Mrs Ramsay, "we will cover it up," and they all watched her go to the chest of drawers, and open the little drawers quickly one after another, and not seeing anything that would do, she quickly took her own shawl off and wound it round the skull, round and round and round, and then she came back to Cam and laid her head almost flat on the pillow beside Cam's and said how lovely it looked now; how the fairies would love it; it was like a bird's nest; it was like a beautiful mountain such as she had seen abroad, with valleys and flowers and bells ringing and birds singing and little goats and antelopes and... She could see the words echoing as she spoke them rhythmically in Cam's mind, and Cam was repeating after her how it was like a mountain, a bird's nest, a garden, and there were little antelopes, and her eyes were opening and shutting, and Mrs Ramsay went on speaking still more monotonously, and more rhythmically and more nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes and go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and gardens, and everything lovely, she said, raising her head very slowly and speaking more and more mechanically, until she sat upright and saw that Cam was asleep.
Now, she whispered, crossing over to his bed, James must go to sleep too, for see, she said, the boar's skull was still there; they had not touched it; quite unhurt. He made sure that the skull was still there under the shawl. But he wanted to ask her something more. Would they go to the Lighthouse tomorrow?
No, not tomorrow, she said, but soon, she promised him; the next fine day. He was very good. He lay down. She covered him up. But he would never forget, she knew, and she felt angry with Charles Tansley, with her husband, and with herself, for she had raised his hopes. Then feeling for her shawl and remembering that she had wrapped it round the boar's skull, she got up, and pulled the window down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferent chill night air and murmured good night to Mildred and left the room and let the tongue of the door slowly lengthen in the lock and went out.
She hoped he would not bang his books on the floor above their heads, she thought, still thinking how annoying Charles Tansley was. For neither of them slept well; they were excitable children, and since he said things like that about the Lighthouse, it seemed to her likely that he would knock a pile of books over, just as they were going to sleep, clumsily sweeping them off the table with his elbow. For she supposed that he had gone upstairs to work. Yet he looked so desolate; yet she would feel relieved when he went; yet she would see that he was better treated tomorrow; yet he was admirable with her husband; yet his manners certainly wanted improving; yet she liked his laugh-thinking this, as she came downstairs, she noticed that she could now see the moon itself through the staircase window-the yellow harvest moon-and turned, and they saw her, standing above them on the stairs.
"That's my mother," thought Prue. Yes; Minta should look at her; Paul Rayley should look at her. That is the thing itself, she felt, as if there were only one person like that in the world; her mother. And, from having been quite grown up, a moment before, talking with the others, she became a child again, and what they had been doing was a game, and would her mother sanction their game, or condemn it, she wondered. And thinking what a chance it was for Minta and Paul and Lily to see her, and feeling what an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her, to have her, and how she would never grow up and never leave home, she said, like a child, "We thought of going down to the beach to watch the waves."
Instantly, for no reason at all, Mrs Ramsay became like a girl of twenty, full of gaiety. A mood of revelry suddenly took possession of her. Of course they must go; of course they must go, she cried, laughing; and running down the last three or four steps quickly, she began turning from one to the other and laughing and drawing Minta's wrap round her and saying she only wished she could come too, and would they be very late, and had any of them got a watch?
"Yes, Paul has," said Minta. Paul slipped a beautiful gold watch out of a little wash-leather case to show her. And as he held it in the palm of his hand before her, he felt, "She knows all about it. I need not say anything." He was saying to her as he showed her the watch, "I've done it, Mrs Ramsay. I owe it all to you." And seeing the gold watch lying in his hand, Mrs Ramsay felt, How extraordinarily lucky Minta is! She is marrying a man who has a gold watch in a wash-leather bag!
"How I wish I could come with you!" she cried. But she was withheld by something so strong that she never even thought of asking herself what it was. Of course it was impossible for her to go with them. But she would have liked to go, had it not of her thought she went with a smile on her lips into the other room, where her husband sat reading.
19
Of course, she said to herself, coming into the room, she had to come here to get something she wanted. First she wanted to sit down in a particular chair under a particular lamp. But she wanted something more, though she did not know, could not think what it was that she wanted. She looked at her husband But not about himself. He was always uneasy about himself. That troubled her. He would always be worrying about his own books-will they be read, are they good, why aren't they better, what do people think of me? Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stockings out, and all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet.
It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book, fame-who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way with him, his truthfulness-for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I want-something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words they had said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book.
And all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so, she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all.
Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her-her husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.
Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the chapter. He felt that he had been arguing with somebody, and had got the better of him. They could not improve upon that, whatever they might say; and his own position became more secure. The lovers were fiddlesticks, he thought, collecting it all in his mind again. That's fiddlesticks, that's first-rate, he thought, putting one thing beside another. But he must read it again. He could not remember the whole shape of the thing. He had to keep his judgement in suspense. So he returned to the other thought-if young men did not care for this, naturally they did not care for him either. One ought not to complain, thought Mr Ramsay, trying to stifle his desire to complain to his wife that young men did not admire him. But he was determined; he would not bother her again. Here he looked at her reading. She looked very peaceful, reading. He liked to think that every one had taken themselves off and that he and she were alone. The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to Scott and Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel.
Mrs Ramsay raised her head and like a person in a light sleep seemed to say that if he wanted her to wake she would, she really would, but otherwise, might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a little longer? She was climbing up those branches, this way and that, laying hands on one flower and then another.
"Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose," she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddenly entire; she held it in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, here-the sonnet.
But she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on reading. You don't look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all. He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him, if that were possible, to increase Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play, she finished.
"Well?" she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
As with your shadow I with these did play, she murmured, putting the book on the table.
What had happened, she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she had seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon; Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the landing; the children being awake; Charles Tansley waking them with his books falling-oh, no, that she had invented; and Paul having a wash-leather case for his watch. Which should she tell him about?
"They're engaged," she said, beginning to knit, "Paul and Minta."
"So I guessed," he said. There was nothing very much to be said about it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with the poetry; he was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after reading about Steenie's funeral. So they sat silent. Then she became aware that she wanted him to say something.
Anything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting. Anything will do.
"How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his watch," she said, for that was the sort of joke they had together.
He snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about any engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man. Slowly it came into her head, why is it then that one wants people to marry? What was the value, the meaning of things? Do say something, she thought, wishing only to hear his voice. For the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her again. Say anything, she begged, looking at him, as if for help.
He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain to and fro, and thinking of Scott's novels and Balzac's novels. But through the crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together, involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning, now that her thoughts took a turn he disliked-towards this "pessimism" as he called it-to fidget, though he said nothing, raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.
"You won't finish that stocking tonight," he said, pointing to her stocking. That was what she wanted-the asperity in his voice reproving her. If he says it's wrong to be pessimistic probably it is wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.
"No," she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, "I shan't finish it."
And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that his look had changed. He wanted something-wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things-she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she loved him. But it was not so-it was not so. It was only that she never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat? Nothing she could do for him? Getting up, she stood at the window with the reddish-brown stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him, partly because she remembered how beautiful it often is-the sea at night. But she knew that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her. She knew that he was thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that you love me? He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having quarrelled about going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him. And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said - "Yes, you were right. It's going to be wet tomorrow. You won't be able to go." And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again. She had not said it: yet he knew.
TIME PASSES
1
"Well, we must wait for the future to show," said Mr Bankes, coming in from the terrace.
"It's almost too dark to see," said Andrew, coming up from the beach.
"One can hardly tell which is the sea and which is the land," said Prue.
"Do we leave that light burning?" said Lily as they took their coats off indoors.
"No," said Prue, "not if every one's in."
"Andrew," she called back, "just put out the light in the hall."
One by one the lamps were all extinguished, except that Mr Carmichael, who liked to lie awake a little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather longer than the rest.
2
So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, "This is he" or "This is she." Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as if sharing a joke with nothingness.
Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind the torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?
So some random light directing them with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, from some uncovered star, or wandering ship, or the Lighthouse even, with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, the little airs mounted the staircase and nosed round bedroom doors. But here surely, they must cease. Whatever else may perish and disappear, what lies here is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding lights, those fumbling airs that breathe and bend over the bed itself, here you can neither touch nor destroy. Upon which, wearily, ghostlily, as if they had feather-light fingers and the light persistency of feathers, they would look, once, on the shut eyes, and the loosely clasping fingers, and fold their garments wearily and disappear. And so, nosing, rubbing, they went to the window on the staircase, to the servants' bedrooms, to the boxes in the attics; descending, blanched the apples on the dining-room table, fumbled the petals of roses, tried the picture on the easel, brushed the mat and blew a little sand along the floor. At length, desisting, all ceased together, gathered together, all sighed together; all together gave off an aimless gust of lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied; swung wide; admitted nothing; and slammed to.
3
But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking; which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.
4
So with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in, brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped, wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left-a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes-those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.
So loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions-"Will you fade? Will you perish?"-scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain.
Nothing it seemed could break that image, corrupt that innocence, or disturb the swaying mantle of silence which, week after week, in the empty room, wove into itself the falling cries of birds, ships hooting, the drone and hum of the fields, a dog's bark, a man's shout, and folded them round the house in silence. Once only a board sprang on the landing; once in the middle of the night with a roar, with a rupture, as after centuries of quiescence, a rock rends itself from the mountain and hurtles crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl loosened and swung to and fro. Then again peace descended; and the shadow wavered; light bent to its own image in adoration on the bedroom wall; and Mrs McNab, tearing the veil of silence with hands that had stood in the wash-tub, grinding it with boots that had crunched the shingle, came as directed to open all windows, and dust the bedrooms.
5
As she lurched, at the public-house, drinking; turning over scraps in her drawers. Some cleavage of the dark there must have been, some channel in the depths of obscurity through which light enough issued to twist her face grinning in the glass and make her, turning to her job again, mumble out the old music hall song. The mystic, the visionary, walking the beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a stone, asking themselves "What am I,"
"What is this?" had suddenly an answer vouchsafed them: so that they were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs McNab continued to drink and gossip as before.
6
The Spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders. 
As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind-of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of cliff, sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely together to assemble outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which clouds for ever turn and shadows form, dreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order rules; or to resist the extraordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity, remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, which would render the possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent, the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.
And now in the heat of summer the wind sent its spies about the house again. Flies wove a web in the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane. When darkness fell, the stroke of the Lighthouse, which had laid itself with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently as if it laid its caress and lingered steathily and looked and came lovingly again. But in the very lull of this loving caress, as the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent asunder; another fold of the shawl loosened; there it hung, and swayed. Through the short summer nights and the long summer days, when the empty rooms seemed to murmur with the echoes of the fields and the hum of flies, the long streamer waved gently, swayed aimlessly; while the sun so striped and barred the rooms and filled them with yellow haze that Mrs McNab, when she broke in and lurched about, dusting, sweeping, looked like a tropical fish oaring its way through sun-lanced waters.
But slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and cracked the tea-cups. Now and again some glass tinkled in the cupboard as if a giant voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers stood inside a cupboard vibrated too. Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes in plain mid-day when the roses were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into this silence, this indifference, this integrity, the thud of something falling.
At that season those who had gone down to pace the beach and ask of the sea and sky what message they reported or what vision they affirmed had to consider among the usual tokens of divine bounty-the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, the moon rising, fishing-boats against the moon, and children making mud pies or pelting each other with handfuls of grass, something out of harmony with this jocundity and this serenity. There was the silent apparition of an ashen-coloured ship for instance, come, gone; there was a purplish stain upon the bland surface of the sea as if something had boiled and bled, invisibly, beneath. This intrusion into a scene calculated to stir the most sublime reflections and lead to the most comfortable conclusions stayed their pacing. It was difficult blandly to overlook them; to abolish their significance in the landscape; to continue, as one walked by the sea, to marvel how beauty outside mirrored beauty within.
Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, his meanness, and his torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go, to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken.
7
Night after night, summer and winter, the torment of storms, the arrow-like stillness of fine in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.
In spring the garden urns, casually filled with wind-blown plants, were gay as ever. Violets came and daffodils. But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and so terrible.
8
Thinking no harm, for the family would not come, never again, some said, and the house would be sold at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs McNab stooped and picked a bunch of flowers to take home with her. She laid them on the table while she dusted. She was fond of flowers. It was a pity to let them waste. Suppose the house were sold, handkerchiefs, bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs Ramsay as she came up the drive with the washing.
"Good-evening, Mrs McNab," she would say.
She had a pleasant way with her. The girls all liked her. But, dear, many things had changed since then ; many families had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr Andrew killed; and Miss Prue dead too, they said, with her first baby; but everyone had lost some one these years. Prices had gone up shamefully, and didn't come down again neither. She could well remember her in her grey cloak.
"Good-evening, Mrs McNab," she said, and told cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her-quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy basket all the way up from town. She could see her now, stooping over her flowers; and faint and flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at the end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her flowers, went wandering over the bedroom wall, up the dressing-table, across the wash-stand, as Mrs McNab hobbled and ambled, dusting, straightening. And cook's name now? Mildred? Marian?-some name like that. Ah, she had forgotten-she did forget things. Fiery, like all red-haired women. Many a laugh they had had. She was always welcome in the kitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things were better then than now.
She sighed; there was too much work for one woman. She wagged her head this side and that. This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp in here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they want to hang a beast's skull there? gone mouldy too. And rats in all the attics. The rain came in. But they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had gone, so the doors banged. She didn't like to be up here at dusk alone neither. It was too much for one woman, too much, too much. She creaked, she moaned. She banged the door. She turned the key in the lock, and left the house alone, shut up, locked.
9
The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-roon; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and pattered their life out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages; while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which made the whole room green in summer.
What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of nature? Mrs McNab's dream of a lady, of a child, of a plate of milk soup? It had wavered over the walls like a spot of sunlight and vanished. She had locked the door; she had gone. It was beyond the strength of one woman, she said. They never sent. They never wrote. There were things up there rotting in the drawers-it was a shame to leave them so, she said. The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked with equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw. Nothing now withstood them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.
For now had come that moment, that hesitation when dawn trembles and night pauses, when if a feather alight in the scale it will be weighed down. One feather, and the house, sinking, falling, would have turned and pitched downwards to the depths of darkness. In the ruined room, picnickers would have lit their kettles; lovers sought shelter there, lying on the bare boards; and the shepherd stored his dinner on the bricks, and the tramp slept with his coat round him to ward off the cold. Then the roof would have fallen; briars and hemlocks would have blotted out path, step and window; would have grown, unequally but lustily over the mound, until some trespasser, losing his way, could have told only by a red-hot poker among the nettles, or a scrap of china in the hemlock, that here once some one had lived; there had been a house.
If the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, the whole house would have plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of oblivion. But there was a force working; something not highly conscious; something that leered, something that lurched; something not inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting. Mrs McNab groaned; Mrs Bast creaked. They were old; they were stiff; their legs ached. They came with their brooms and pails at last; they got to work. All of a sudden, would Mrs McNab see that the house was ready, one of the young ladies wrote: would she get this done; would she get that done; all in a hurry. They might be coming for the summer; had left everything to the last; expected to find things as they had left them. Slowly and painfully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs McNab, Mrs Bast, stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them now a basin, now a cupboard; fetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-set one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons. George, Mrs Bast's son, caught the rats, and cut the grass. They had the builders. Attended with the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork, some rusty laborious birth seemed to be taking place, as the women, stooping, rising, groaning, singing, slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down in the cellars. Oh, they said, the work!
They drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes, or in the study; breaking off work at mid-day with the smudge on their faces, and their old hands clasped and cramped with the broom handles. Flopped on chairs, they contemplated now the magnificent conquest over taps and bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of books, black as ravens once, now white-stained, breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive spiders. Once more, as she felt the tea warm in her, the telescope fitted itself to Mrs McNab's eyes, and in a ring of light she saw the old gentleman, lean as a rake, wagging his head, as she came up with the washing, talking to himself, she supposed, on the lawn. He never noticed her. Some said he was dead; some said she was dead. Which was it? Mrs Bast didn't know for certain either. The young gentleman was dead. That she was sure. She had read his name in the papers.
There was the cook now, Mildred, Marian, some such name as that-a red-headed woman, quick-tempered like all her sort, but kind, too, if you knew the way with her. Many a laugh they had had together. She saved a plate of soup for Maggie; a bite of ham, sometimes; whatever was over. They lived well in those days. They had everything they wanted. There was always plenty doing, people in the house, twenty staying sometimes, and washing up till long past midnight.
Mrs Bast wondered, putting her cup down, whatever they hung that beast's skull there for? Shot in foreign parts no doubt.
It might well be, said Mrs McNab, wantoning on with her memories; they had friends in eastern countries; gentlemen staying there, ladies in evening dress; she had seen them once through the dining-room door all sitting at dinner. Twenty she dared say all in their jewellery, and she asked to stay help wash up, might be till after midnight.
Ah, said Mrs Bast, they'd find it changed. She leant out of the window. She watched her son George scything the grass. They might well ask, what had been done to it? seeing how old Kennedy was supposed to have charge of it, and then his leg got so bad after he fell from the cart; and perhaps then no one for a year, or the better part of one; and then Davie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but who should say if they were ever planted? They'd find it changed.
She watched her son scything. He was a great one for work-one of those quiet ones. Well they must be getting along with the cupboards, she supposed. They hauled themselves up.
At last, after days of labour within, of cutting and digging without, dusters were flicked from the windows, the windows were shut to, keys were turned all over the house; the front door was banged; it was finished.
And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, disevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dorbeetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonising, but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonised, and at last, in the evening, one after another silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers in the bed by the window.
10
Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm-what else was it murmuring-as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said-but what mattered if the meaning were plain? entreating the sleepers. And it all looked, Mr Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look.
Indeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs Beckwith, Mr Carmichael, and Lily Briscoe so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Lily Briscoe stirring in her sleep. She clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bold upright in bed. Awake.
THE LIGHTHOUSE
1
What does it mean then, what can it all mean? Lily Briscoe asked herself, wondering whether, since she had been left alone, it behoved her to go to the kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee or wait here. What does it mean?-a catchword that was, caught up from some book, fitting her thought loosely, for she could not, this first morning with the Ramsays, contract her feelings, could only make a phrase resound to cover the blankness of her mind until these vapours had shrunk. For really, what did she feel, come back after all these years and Mrs Ramsay dead? Nothing, nothing-nothing that she could express at all.
She had come late last night when it was all mysterious, dark. Now she was awake, at her old place at the breakfast table, but alone. It was very early too, not yet eight. There was this expedition-they were going to the Lighthouse, Mr Ramsay, Cam, and James. They should have gone already-they had to catch the tide or something. And Cam was not ready and James was not ready and Nancy had forgotten to order the sandwiches and Mr Ramsay had lost his temper and banged out of the room.
"What's the use of going now?" he had stormed.
Nancy had vanished. There he was, marching up and down the terrace in a rage. One seemed to hear doors slamming and voices calling all over the house. Now Nancy burst in, and asked, looking round the room, in a queer half dazed, half desperate way, "What does one send to the Lighthouse?" as if she were forcing herself to do what she despaired of ever being able to do.
What does one send to the Lighthouse indeed! At any other time Lily could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like Nancy's-What does one send to the Lighthouse?-opened doors in one's mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep asking, in a stupefied gape, What does one send? What does one do? Why is one sitting here, after all?
Sitting alone, was a question, as if the link that usually bound things together had been cut, and they floated up here, down there, off, anyhow. How aimless it was,, how chaotic, how unreal it was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs Ramsay dead; Andrew killed; Prue dead too-repeat it as she might, it roused no feeling in her. And we all get together in a house like this on a morning like this, she said, looking out of the window. It was a beautiful still day.
Suddenly Mr Ramsay raised his head as he passed and looked straight at her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for ever; and she pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to escape him-to escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on and like everything else this strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. Old Mr Carmichael came padding softly in, fetched his coffee, took his cup and made off to sit in the sun. The extraordinary unreality was frightening; but it was also exciting. Going to the Lighthouse. But what does one send to the Lighthouse? Perished. Alone. The grey-green light on the wall opposite. The empty places. Such were some of the parts, but how bring them together? she asked. As if any interruption would break the frail shape she was building on the table she turned her back to the window lest Mr Ramsay should see her. She must escape somewhere, be alone somewhere. Suddenly she remembered. When she had sat there last ten years ago there had been a little sprig or leaf pattern on the table-cloth, which she had looked at in a moment of revelation. There had been a problem about a foreground of a picture. Move the tree to the middle, she had said. She had never finished that picture. She would paint that picture now. It had been knocking about in her mind all these years. Where were her paints, she wondered? Her paints, yes. She had left them in the hall last night. She would start at once. She got up quickly, before Mr Ramsay turned.
She fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel with her precise old-maidish movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr Carmichael, but close enough for his protection. Yes, it must have been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago. There was the wall; the hedge; the tree. The question was of some relation between those masses. She had borne it in her mind all these years. It seemed as if the solution had come to her: she knew now what she wanted to do.
But with Mr Ramsay bearing down on her, she could do nothing. Every time he approached-he was walking up and down the terrace-ruin approached, chaos approached. She could not paint. She stooped, she turned; she took up this rag; she squeezed that tube. But all she did was to ward him off a moment. He made it impossible for her to do anything. For if she gave him the least chance, if he saw her disengaged a moment, looking his way a moment, he would be on her, saying, as he had said last night, "You find us much changed." Last night he had got up and stopped before her, and said that. Dumb and staring though they had all sat, the six children whom they used to call after the Kings and Queens of England-the Red, the Fair, the Wicked, the Ruthless-she felt how they raged under it. Kind old Mrs Beckwith said something sensible. But it was a house full of unrelated passions-she had felt that all the evening. And on top of this chaos Mr Ramsay got up, pressed her hand, and said: "You will find us much changed" and none of them had moved or had spoken; but had sat there as if they were forced to let him say it. Only James he would have flung himself tragically backwards into the bitter waters of depair. Such a gift he had for gesture. He looked like a king in exile. Doggedly James said yes. Cam stumbled more wretchedly. Yes, oh, yes, they'd both be ready, they said. And it struck her, this was tragedy-not palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits subdued. James was sixteen, Cam, seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for some one who was not there, for Mrs Ramsay, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once.
She set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel, as a barrier, frail, but she hoped sufficiently substantial to ward off Mr Ramsay and his exactingness. She did her best to look, when his back was turned, at her picture; that line there, that mass there. But it was out of the question. Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you, let him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed, he imposed himself. He changed everything. She could not see the colour; she could not see the lines; even with his back turned to her, she could only think, But he'll be down on me in a moment, demanding-something she felt she could not give him. She rejected one brush; she chose another. When would those children come? When would they all be off? she fidgeted. That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs Ramsay had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died-and had left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs Ramsay. With the brush slightly trembling in her fingers she looked at the hedge, the step, the wall. It was all Mrs Ramsay's doing. She was dead. Here was Lily, at forty-four, wasting her time, unable to do a thing, standing there, playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play at, and it was all Mrs Ramsay's fault. She was dead. The step where she used to sit was empty. She was dead.
But why repeat this over and over again? Why be always trying to bring up some feeling she had not got? There was a kind of blasphemy in it. It was all dry: all withered: all spent. They ought not to have asked her; she ought not to have come. One can't waste one's time at forty-four, she thought. She hated playing at painting. A brush, the one dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos-that one should not play with, knowingly even: she detested it. But he made her. You shan't touch your canvas, he seemed to say, bearing down on her, till you've given me what I want of you. Here he was, close upon her again, greedy, distraught. Well, thought Lily in despair, letting her right hand fall at her side, it would be simpler then to have it over. Surely, she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the self-surrender, she had seen on so many women's faces when on some occasion like this they blazed up-she could remember the look on Mrs Ramsay's face-into a rapture of sympathy, of delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human nature was capable. Here he was, stopped by her side. She would give him what she could.
2
She seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought. She looked a little skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive. He liked her. There had been some talk of her marrying William Bankes once, but nothing had come of it. His wife had been fond of her. He had been a little out of temper too at breakfast. And then, and then-this was one of those moments when an enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to approach any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.
Was anybody looking after her? he said. Had she everything she wanted?
"Oh, thanks, everything," said Lily Briscoe nervously. No; she could not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she remained stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the sea. Why, thought Mr Ramsay, should she look at the sea when I am here? She hoped it would be calm enough for them to land at the Lighthouse, she said. The Lighthouse! The Lighthouse! What's that got to do with it? he thought impatiently. Instantly, with the force of some primeval gust, there issued from him such a groan that any other woman in the whole world would have done something, said something-all except myself, thought Lily, girding at herself bitterly, who am not a woman, but a peevish, ill-tempered, dried-up old maid, presumably.
[Mr Ramsay sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her? Then he said he had a particular reason for wanting to go to the Lighthouse. His boy with a tuberculous hip, the lightkeeper's son. He sighed profoundly. He sighed significantly. All Lily wished was that this enormous flood of grief, this insatiable hunger for sympathy, this demand that she should surrender herself up to him entirely, and even so he had sorrows enough to keep her supplied for ever, should leave her, should be diverted before it swept her down in its flow.
"Such expeditions," said Mr Ramsay, scraping the ground with his toe, "are very painful." Still Lily said nothing. a moment longer.
Still she could say nothing; the whole horizon seemed swept bare of objects to talk about; could only feel, amazedly, as Mr Ramsay stood there, how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny grass and discolour it, and cast over the rubicund, drowsy, entirely contented figure of Mr Carmichael, reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil of crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity in a world of woe, were enough to provoke the most dismal thoughts of all. Look at him, he seemed to be saying, look at me; and indeed, all the time he was feeling, Think of me, think of me. Ah, could that bulk only be wafted alongside of them, Lily wished; had she only pitched her easel a yard or two closer to him; a man, any man, would staunch this effusion, would stop these lamentations. A woman, she had provoked this horror; a woman, she should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely to her discredit, sexually, to stand there dumb. One said-what did one say?-Oh, Mr Ramsay! Dear Mr Ramsay! That was what that kind old lady who sketched, Mrs Beckwith, would have said instantly, and rightly. But, no. They stood there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at ther feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet. In complete silence she stood there, grasping her paint brush.
Heaven could never be sufficiently praised! She heard sounds in the house. James and Cam must be coming. But Mr Ramsay, as if he knew that his time ran short, exerted upon her solitary figure the immense pressure of his concentrated woe; his age; his frailty: his desolation; when suddenly, tossing his head impatiently, in his annoyance-for after all, what woman could resist him?-he noticed that his boot-laces were untied. Remarkable boots they were too, Lily thought, looking down at them: sculptured; colossal; like everything that Mr Ramsay wore, from his frayed tie to his half-buttoned waistcoat, his own indisputably. She could see them walking to his room of their own accord, expressive in his absence of pathos, surliness, ill-temper, charm.
"What beautiful boots!" she exclaimed. She was ashamed of herself. To praise his boots when he asked her to solace his soul; when he had shown her his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked her to pity them, then to say, cheerfully, "Ah, but what beautiful boots you wear!" deserved, she knew, and she looked up expecting to get it in one of his sudden roars of ill-temper complete annihilation.
Instead, Mr Ramsay smiled. His pall, his draperies, his infirmities fell from him. Ah, yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in England who could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of mankind, he said. "Bootmakers make it their business," he exclaimed, "to cripple and torture the human foot." They are also the most obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her observe that she had never seen boots made quite that shape before. They were made of the finest leather in the world, also. Most leather was mere brown paper and cardboard. He looked complacently at his foot, still held in the air. They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. Her heart warmed to him. "Now let me see if you can tie a knot," he said. He poohpoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it.
Why, at this completely inappropriate moment, when he was stooping over her shoe, should she be so tormented with sympathy for him that, as she stooped too, the blood rushed to her face, and, thinking of her callousness she felt her eyes swell and tingle with tears? Thus occupied he seemed to her a figure of infinite pathos. He tied knots. He bought boots. There was no helping Mr Ramsay on the journey he was going. But now just as she wished to say something, could have said something, perhaps, here they were-Cam and James. They appeared on the terrace. They came, lagging, side by side, a serious, melancholy couple.
But why was it like THAT that they came? She could not help feeling annoyed with them; they might have come more cheerfully; they might have given him what, now that they were off, she would not have the chance of giving him. For she felt a sudden emptiness; a frustration. Her feeling had come too late; there it was ready; but he no longer needed it. He had become a very distinguished, elderly man, who had no need of her whatsoever. She felt snubbed. He slung a knapsack round his shoulders. He shared out the parcels-there were a number of them, ill tied in brown paper. He sent Cam for a cloak. He had all the appearance of a leader making ready for an expedition. Then, wheeling about, he led the way with his firm military tread, in those wonderful boots, carrying brown paper parcels, down the path, his children following him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had devoted them to some stern enterprise, and they went to it, still young enough to be drawn acquiescent in their father's wake, obediently, but with a pallor in their eyes which made her feel that they suffered something beyond their years in silence. So they passed the edge of the lawn, and it seemed to Lily that she watched a procession go, drawn on by some stress of common feeling which made it, faltering and flagging as it was, a little company bound together and strangely impressive to her. Politely, but very distantly, Mr Ramsay raised his hand and saluted her as they passed.
But what a face, she thought, immediately finding the sympathy which she had not been asked to give troubling her for expression. What had made it like that? Thinking, night after night, she supposed-about the reality of kitchen tables, she added, remembering the symbol which in her vagueness as to what Mr Ramsay did think about Andrew had given her. into that other final phase which was new to her and had, she owned, made herself ashamed of her own irritability, when it seemed as if he had shed worries and ambitions, and the hope of sympathy and the desire for praise, had entered some other region, was drawn on, as if by curiosity, in dumb colloquy, whether with himself or another, at the head of that little procession out of one's range. An extraordinary face! The gate banged.
3
So they're gone, she thought, sighing with relief and disappointment. Her sympathy seemed to be cast back on her, like a bramble sprung across her face. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her were drawn out there-it was a still day, hazy; the Lighthouse looked this morning at an immense distance; the other had fixed itself doggedly, solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her disorderly sensations, something she remembered in the relations of those lines cutting across, slicing down, and in the mass of the hedge with its green cave of blues and browns, which had stayed in her mind; which had tied a knot in her mind so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily, as she walked along the Brompton Road, as she brushed her hair, she found herself painting that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying the knot in imagination. But there was all the difference in the world between this planning airily away from the canvas and actually taking her brush and making the first mark.
She had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at Mr Ramsay's presence, and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at the wrong angle. And now that she had ut that right, and in so doing had subdued the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attention and made her remember how she was such and such a person, had such and such relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air. Where to begin?-that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made.
With a curious physical sensation, as if she were urged forward and at the same time must hold herself back, she made her first quick decisive stroke. The brush descended. It flickered brown over the white canvas; it left a running mark. A second time she did it-a third time. And so pausing and so flickering, she attained a dancing rhythmical movement, as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes another, and all were related; and so, lightly and swiftly pausing, striking, she scored her canvas with brown running nervous lines which had no sooner settled there than they enclosed before she exchanged the fluidity of life for the concentration of painting she had a few moments of nakedness when she seemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body, hesitating on some windy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all the blasts of doubt. Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants' bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.
Can't paint, can't write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed before her; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and went slower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her by what she rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr Carmichael was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and blues.
Charles Tansley used to say that, she remembered, women can't paint, can't write. Coming up behind her, he had stood close beside her, a thing she hated, as she painted her on this very spot. "Shag tobacco," he said, "fivepence an ounce," parading his poverty, his principles. something-this scene on the beach for example, this moment of friendship and liking-which survived, after all these years complete, so that she dipped into it to re-fashion her memory of him, and there it stayed in the mind affecting one almost like a work of art.
"Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all-a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs Ramsay saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs Ramsay making of the moment something permanent was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs Ramsay said. "Mrs Ramsay! Mrs Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.
All was silence. Nobody seemed yet to be stirring in the house. She looked at it there sleeping in the early sunlight with its windows green and blue with the reflected leaves. The faint thought she was thinking of Mrs Ramsay seemed in consonance with this quiet house; this smoke; this fine early morning air. Faint and unreal, it was amazingly pure and exciting. She hoped nobody would open the window or come out of the house, but that she might be left alone to go on thinking, to go on painting. She turned to her canvas. But impelled by some curiosity, driven by the discomfort of the sympathy which she held undischarged, she walked a pace or so to the end of the lawn to see whether, down there on the beach, she could see that little company setting sail. Down there among the little boats which floated, some with their sails furled, some slowly, for it was very calm moving away, there was one rather apart from the others. The sail was even now being hoisted. She decided that there in that very distant and entirely silent little boat Mr Ramsay was sitting with Cam and James. Now they had got the sail up; now after a little flagging and silence, she watched the boat take its way with deliberation past the other boats out to sea.
4
The sails flapped over their heads. The water chuckled and slapped the sides of the boat, which drowsed motionless in the sun. Now and then the sails rippled with a little breeze in them, but the ripple ran over them and ceased. The boat made no motion at all. Mr Ramsay sat in the middle of the boat. He would be impatient in a moment, James thought, and Cam thought, looking at her father, who sat in the middle of the boat between them with his legs tightly curled. He hated hanging about. Sure enough, after fidgeting a second or two, he said something sharp to Macalister's boy, who got out his oars and began to row. But their father, they knew, would never be content until they were flying along. He would keep looking for a breeze, fidgeting, saying things under his breath, which Macalister and and Macalister's boy would overhear, and they would both be made horribly uncomfortable. He had made them come. He had forced them to come. In their anger they hoped that the breeze would never rise, that he might be thwarted in every possible way, since he had forced them to come against their wills.
All the way down to the beach they had lagged behind together, though he bade them "Walk up, walk up," without speaking. Their heads were bent down, their heads were pressed down by some remorseless gale. Speak to him they could not. They must come; they must follow. They must walk behind him carrying brown paper parcels. But they vowed, in silence, as they walked, to stand by each other and carry out the great compact-to resist tyranny to the death. So there they would sit, one at one end of the boat, one at the other, in silence. They would say nothing, only look at him now and then where he sat with his legs twisted, frowning and fidgeting, and pishing and pshawing and muttering things to himself, and waiting impatiently for a breeze. And they hoped it would be calm. They hoped he would be thwarted. They hoped the whole expedition would fail, and they would have to put back, with their parcels, to the beach.
But now, when Macalister's boy had rowed a little way out, the sails slowly swung round, the boat quickened itself, flattened itself, and shot off. Instantly, as if some great strain had been relieved, Mr Ramsay uncurled his legs, took out his tobacco pouch, handed it with a little grunt to Macalister, and felt, they knew, for all they suffered, perfectly content. Now they would sail on for hours like this, and Mr Ramsay would ask old Macalister a question-about the great storm last winter probably-and old Macalister would answer it, and they would puff their pipes together, and Macalister would take a tarry rope in his fingers, tying or untying some knot, and the boy would fish, and never say a word to any one. James would be forced to keep his eye all the time on the sail. For if he forgot, then the sail puckered and shivered, and the boat slackened, and Mr Ramsay would say sharply, "Look out! Look out!" and old Macalister would turn slowly on his seat. So they heard Mr Ramsay asking some question about the great storm at Christmas. "She comes driving round the point," old Macalister said, describing the great storm last Christmas, when ten ships had been driven into the bay for shelter, and he had seen "one there, one there, one there", from his toss and his vigilance and the ring in his voice, and the little tinge of Scottish accent which came into his voice, making him seem like a peasant himself, as he questioned Macalister about the eleven ships that had been driven into the bay in a storm. Three had sunk.
He looked proudly where Macalister pointed; and Cam thought, feeling proud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there he would have launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck, Cam thought. He was so brave, he was so adventurous, Cam thought. But she remembered. There was the conpact; to resist tyranny to the death. Their grievance weighed them down. They had been forced; they had been bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloom and his authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning, come, because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Lighthouse; take part in these rites he went through for his own pleasure in memory of after him, all the pleasure of the day was spoilt.
Yes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water was sliced sharply and fell away in green cascades, in bubbles, in cataracts. Cam looked down into the foam, into the sea with all its treasure in it, and its speed hypnotised her, and the tie between her and James sagged a little. It slackened a little. She began to think, How fast it goes. Where are we going? and the movement hypnotised her, while James, with his eye fixed on the sail and on the horizon, steered grimly. But he began to think as he steered that he might escape; he might be quit of it all. They might land somewhere; and be free then. Both of them, looking at each other for a moment, had a sense of escape and exaltation, what with the speed and the change. But the breeze bred in Mr Ramsay too the same excitement, and, as old Macalister turned to fling his line overboard, he cried out aloud, "We perished," and then again, "each alone." And then with his usual spasm of repentance or shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his hand towards the shore.
"See the little house," he said pointing, wishing Cam to look. She raised herself reluctantly and looked. But which was it? She could no longer make out, there on the hillside, which was their house. All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part. Which was their house? She could not see it.
"But I beneath a rougher sea," Mr Ramsay murmured. He had found the house and so seeing it, he had also seen himself there; he had seen himself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking up and down between the urns; and he seemed to himself very old and bowed. Sitting in the boat, he bowed, he crouched himself, acting instantly his part-the part of a desolate man, widowed, bereft; and so called up before him in hosts people sympathising with him; staged for himself as he sat in the boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude and exhaustion and sorrow and then there was given him in abundance women's sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe him and sympathise with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of the exquisite pleasure women's sympathy was to him, he sighed and said gently and mournfully, But I beneath a rougher sea Was whelmed in deeper gulfs than he, so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Cam half started on her seat. It shocked her-it outraged her. The movement roused her father; and he shuddered, and broke off, exclaiming: "Look! Look!" so urgently that James also turned his head to look over his shoulder at the island. They all looked. They looked at the island.
But Cam could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths and the lawn, thick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, were gone: were rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real; the boat and the sail with its patch; Macalister with his earrings; the noise of the waves-all this was real. Thinking this, she was murmuring to herself, "We perished, each alone," for her father's words broke and broke again in her mind, when her father, seeing her gazing so vaguely, began to tease her. Didn't she know the points of the compass? he asked. Didn't she know the North from the South? Did she really think they lived right out there? And he pointed again, and showed her where their house was, there, by those trees. He wished she would try to be more accurate, he said: "Tell me-which is East, which is West?" he said, half laughing at her, half scolding her, for he could not understand the state of mind of any one, not absolutely imbecile, who did not know the points of the compass. Yet she did not know. And seeing her gazing, with her vague, now rather frightened, eyes fixed where no house was Mr Ramsay forgot his dream; how he walked up and down between the urns on the terrace; how the arms were stretched out to him. He thought, women are always like that; the vagueness of their minds is hopeless; it was a thing he had never been able to understand; but so it was. It had been so with her-his wife. They could not keep anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, did he not rather like this vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinary charm. I will make her smile at me, he thought. She looks frightened. She was so silent. He clutched his fingers, and determined that his voice and his face and all the quick expressive gestures which had been at his command making people pity him and praise him all these years should subdue themselves. He would make her smile at him. He would find some simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For, wrapped up in his work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said. There was a puppy. They had a puppy. Who was looking after the puppy today? he asked. Yes, thought James pitilessly, seeing his sister's head against the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight the tyrant alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Cam would never resist tyranny to the death, he thought grimly, watching her face, sad, sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud falls on a green hillside and hills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the hills themselves must ponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened, either in pity, or maliciously rejoicing in her dismay: so Cam now felt herself overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and wondered how to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his entreaty-forgive me, care for me; while James the lawgiver, with the tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee, said, Resist him. Fight him. He said so rightly; justly. For they must fight tyranny to the death, she thought. Of all human qualities she reverenced justice most. Her brother was most god-like, her father most suppliant. And to which did she yield, she thought, sitting between them, gazing at the shore whose points were all unknown to her, and thinking how the lawn and the terrace and the house were smoothed away now and peace dwelt there.
"Jasper," she said sullenly. He'd look after the puppy.
And what was she going to call him? her father persisted. He had had a dog when he was a little boy, called Frisk. She'll give way, James thought, as he watched a look come upon her face, a look he remembered. They look down he thought, at their knitting or something. Then suddenly they look up. There was a flash of blue, he remembered, and then somebody sitting with him laughed, surrendered, and he was very angry. It must have been his mother, he thought, sitting on a low chair, with his father standing over her. He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea, how a man had marched up and down and stopped dead, upright, over them. Meanwhile, he noticed, Cam dabbled her fingers in the water, and stared at the shore and said nothing. No, she won't give way, he thought; she's different, he thought. Well, if Cam would not answer him, he would not bother her Mr Ramsay decided, feeling in his pocket for a book. But she would answer him; she wished, passionately, to move some obstacle that lay upon her tongue and to say, Oh, yes, Frisk. I'll call him Frisk. She wanted even to say, Was that the dog that found its way over the moor alone? But try as she might, she could think of nothing to say like that, fierce and loyal to the compact, yet passing on to her father, unsuspected by James, a private token of the love she felt for him. For she thought, dabbling her hand But what remained intolerable, she thought, sitting upright, and watching Macalister's boy tug the hook out of the gills of another fish, was that crass blindness and tyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and raised bitter storms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling with rage and remembered some command of his; some insolence: "Do this,"
"Do that," his dominance: his "Submit to me."
So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen asleep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought.
5
Yes, that is their boat, Lily Briscoe decided, standing on the edge of the lawn. It was the boat with greyish-brown sails, which she saw now flatten itself upon the water and shoot off across the bay. There he sits, she thought, and the children are quite silent still. And she could not reach him either. The sympathy she had not given him weighed her down. It made it difficult for her to paint.
She had always found him difficult. She never had been able to praise him to his face, she remembered. And that reduced their relationship to something neutral, without that element of sex in it which made his manner to Minta so gallant, almost gay. He would pick a flower for her, lend her his books. But could he believe that Minta read them? She dragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the place.
"D'you remember, Mr Carmichael?" she was inclined to ask, looking at the old man. But he had pulled his hat half over his forehead; he was asleep, or he was dreaming, or he was lying there catching words, she supposed.
"D'you remember?" she felt inclined to ask him as she passed him, thinking again of Mrs Ramsay on the beach; the cask bobbing up and down; and the pages flying. Why, after all these years had that survived, ringed round, lit up, visible to the last detail, with all before it blank and all after it blank, for miles and miles?
"Is it a boat? Is it a cork?" she would say, Lily repeated, turning back, reluctantly again, to her canvas. Heaven be praised for it, the problem of space remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It glared at her. The whole mass of the picture was poised upon that weight. Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a butterfly's wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron. It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath; and a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses. And she began to lay on a red, a grey, and she began to model her way into the hollow there. At the same time, she seemed to be sitting beside Mrs Ramsay on the beach.
"Is it a boat? Is it a cask?" Mrs Ramsay said. And she began hunting round for her spectacles. And she sat, having found them, silent, looking out to sea. And Lily, painting steadily, felt as if a door had opened, and one went in and stood gazing silently about in a high cathedral-like place, very dark, very solemn. Shouts came from a world far away. Steamers vanished in stalks of smoke on the horizon. Charles threw stones and sent them skipping.
Mrs Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence, uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, Mrs Ramsay may have asked by saying them? Aren't we more expressive thus? The moment at least seemed extraordinarily fertile. She rammed a little hole in the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the perfection of the moment. It was like a drop of silver in which one dipped and illumined the darkness of the past.
Lily stepped back to get her canvas-so-into perspective. It was an odd road to be walking, this further, until at last one seemed to be on a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea. And as she dipped into the blue paint, she dipped too into the past there. Now Mrs Ramsay got up, she remembered. It was time to go back to the house-time for luncheon. And they all walked up from the beach together, she walking behind with William Bankes, and there was Minta in front of them with a hole in her stocking. How that little round hole of pink heel seemed to flaunt itself before them! How William Bankes deplored it, without, so far as she could remember, saying anything about it! It meant to him the annihilation of womanhood, and dirt and disorder, and servants leaving and beds not made at mid-day-all the things he most abhorred. He had a way of shuddering and spreading his fingers out as if to cover an unsightly object which he did now-holding his hand in front of him. And Minta walked on ahead, and presumably Paul met her and she went off with Paul in the garden.
The Rayleys, thought Lily Briscoe, squeezing her tube of green paint. She collected her impressions of the Rayleys. Their lives appeared to her in a series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Paul had come in and gone to bed early; Minta was late. There was Minta, wreathed, tinted, garish on the stairs about three o'clock in the morning. Paul came out in his pyjamas carrying a poker in case of burglars. Minta was eating a sandwich, standing half-way up by a window, in the cadaverous early morning light, and the carpet had a hole in it. But what did they say? Lily asked herself, as if by looking she could hear them. Minta went on eating her sandwich, annoyingly, while he spoke something violent, abusing her, in a mutter so as not to wake the children, the two little boys. He was withered, drawn; she flamboyant, careless. For things had worked loose after the first year or so; the marriage had turned out rather badly.
And this, Lily thought, taking the green paint on her brush, this making up scenes about them, is what we call "knowing" people, "thinking" of them, "being fond" of them! Not a word of it was true; she had made it up; but it was what she knew them by all the same. She went on tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past.
Another time, Paul said he "played chess in coffee-houses." She had built up a whole structure of imagination on that saying too. She remembered how, as he said it, she thought how he rang up the servant, and she said, "Mrs Rayley's out, sir," and he decided that he would not come home either. She saw him sitting in the corner of some lugubrious place where the smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and the waitresses got to know you, and he played chess with a little man who was in the tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Paul knew about him. And then Minta was out when he came home and then there was that scene on the stairs, when he got the poker in case of burglars and spoke so bitterly, saying she had ruined his life. At any rate when she went down to see them at a cottage near Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained. Paul took her down the garden to look at the Belgian hares which he bred, and Minta followed them, singing, and put her bare arm on his shoulder, lest he should tell her anything.
Minta was bored by hares, Lily thought. But Minta never gave herself away. She never said things like that about playing chess in coffee-houses. She was far too conscious, far too wary. But to go on with their story-they had got through the dangerous stage by now. She had been staying with them last summer some time and the car broke down and Minta had to hand him his tools. He sat on the road mending the car, and it was the way she gave him the tools-business-like, straightforward, friendly-that proved it was all right now. They were "in love" no longer; no, he had taken up with another woman, a serious woman, with her hair in a plait and a case in her hand about the taxation of land values and a capital levy. Far from breaking up the marriage, that alliance had righted it. They were excellent friends, obviously, as he sat on the road and she handed him his tools.
So that was the story of the Rayleys, Lily thought. She imagined herself telling it to Mrs Ramsay, who would be full of curiosity to know what had become of the Rayleys. She would feel a little triumphant, telling Mrs Ramsay that the marriage had not been a success.
But the dead, thought Lily, encountering some obstacle in her design which made her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, oh, the dead! she murmured, one pitied them, one brushed them aside, one had even a little contempt for them. They are at our mercy. Mrs Ramsay has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve away her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, "Marry, marry!". And one would have to say to her, It has all gone against your wishes. They're happy like that; I'm happy like this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Lily, standing there, with the sun hot on her back, summing up the Rayleys, triumphed over Mrs Ramsay, who would never know how Paul went to coffee-houses and had a mistress; how he sat on the ground and Minta handed him his tools; how she stood here painting, had never married, not even William Bankes.
Mrs Ramsay had planned it. Perhaps, had she lived, she would have compelled it. Already that summer he was "the kindest of men." He was "the first scientist of his age, my husband says." He was also "poor William-it makes me so unhappy, when I go to see him, to find nothing nice in his house-no one to arrange the flowers." So they were sent for walks together, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony that made Mrs Ramsay slip through one's fingers, that she had a scientific mind; she liked flowers; she was so exact. What was this mania of hers for marriage? Lily wondered, stepping to and fro from her easel.
She had only escaped by the skin of her teeth though, she thought. She had been looking at the table-cloth, and it had flashed upon her that she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody, and she had felt an enormous exultation. She had felt, now she could stand up to Mrs Ramsay-a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs Ramsay had over one. Do this, she said, and one did it. Even her shadow at the window with James was full of authority. She remembered how William Bankes had been shocked by her neglect of the significance of mother and son. Did she not admire their beauty? he said. But William, she remembered, had listened to her with his wise child's eyes when she explained how it was not irreverence: how a light there needed a shadow there and so on. She did not intend to disparage a subject which, they agreed, Raphael had treated divinely. She was not cynical. Quite the contrary. Thanks to his scientific mind he understood-a proof of disinterested intelligence which had pleased her and comforted her enormously. One could talk of painting then seriously to a man. Indeed, his friendship had been one of the pleasures of her life. She loved William Bankes.
They went to Hampton Court and he always left her, like the perfect gentleman he was, plenty of time to wash her hands, while he strolled by the river. That was typical of their relationship. Many things were left unsaid. Then they strolled through the courtyards, and admired, summer after summer, the proportions and the flowers, and he would tell her things, about perspective, about architecture, as they walked, and he would stop to look at a tree, or the view over the lake, and admire a child- in the spent so much time in laboratories that the world when he came out seemed to dazzle him, so that he walked slowly, lifted his hand to screen his eyes and paused, with his head thrown back, merely to breathe the air. Then he would tell her how his housekeeper was on her holiday; he must buy a new carpet for the staircase. Perhaps she would go with him to buy a new carpet for the staircase. And once something led him to talk about the Ramsays and he had said how when he first saw her she had been wearing a grey hat; she was not more than nineteen or twenty. She was astonishingly beautiful. There he stood looking down the avenue at Hampton Court as if he could see her there among the fountains.
She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William's eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering. Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. Yes, thought Lily, looking intently, I must have seen her look like that, but not in grey; nor so still, nor so young, nor so peaceful. The figure came readily enough. She was astonishingly beautiful, as William said. But beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty-it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life-froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty. But what was the look she had, Lily wondered, when she clapped her deer-stalkers's hat on her head, or ran across the grass, or scolded Kennedy, the gardener? Who could tell her? Who could help her?
Against her will she had come to the surface, and found herself half out of the picture, looking, little dazedly, as if at unreal things, at Mr Carmichael. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence. His book had fallen on to the grass.
She wanted to go straight up to him and say, "Mr Carmichael!" Then he would look up benevolently as always, from his smoky vague green eyes. But one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. "About life, about death; about Mrs Ramsay"-no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have-to want and want-how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Oh, Mrs Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness.
"What does it mean? How do you explain it all?" she wanted to say, turning to Mr Carmichael again. For the whole world seemed to have dissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep basin of reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr Carmichael spoken, for instance, a little tear would have rent the surface pool. And then? Something would emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade would be flashed. It was nonsense of course.
A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. He was an inscrutable old man, with the yellow stain on his beard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely through a world which satisfied all his wants, so that she thought he had only to put down his hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anything he wanted. She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably-how "you" and "I" and "she" pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it "remained for ever," she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself-Oh, yes!-in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?-startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Ramsay would return. "Mrs Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs Ramsay!" The tears ran down her face.
6
7
"Mrs Ramsay!" Lily cried, "Mrs Ramsay!" But nothing happened. The pain increased. That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of imbecility, she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heard her. He remained benignant, calm-if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven be praised, no one had heard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain, stop! She had not obviously taken leave of her senses. No one had seen her step off her strip of board into the waters of annihilation. She remained a skimpy old maid, holding a paint-brush.
And now slowly the pain of the want, and the bitter anger raising to her forehead a wreath of white flowers with which she went. Lily squeezed her tubes again. She attacked that problem of the hedge. It was strange how clearly she saw her, stepping with her usual quickness across fields among whose folds, purplish and soft, among whose flowers, hyacinth or lilies, she vanished. It was some trick of the painter's eye. For days after she had heard of her death she had seen her thus, putting her wreath to her forehead and going unquestioningly with her companion, a shade across the fields. The sight, the phrase, had its power to console. Wherever she happened to be, painting, here, in the country or in London, the vision would come to her, and her eyes, half closing, sought something to base her vision on. She looked down the railway carriage, the omnibus; took a line from shoulder or cheek; looked at the windows opposite; at Piccadilly, lamp-strung in the evening. All had been part of the fields of death. But always something-it might be a face, a voice, a paper boy crying STANDARD, NEWS-thrust through, snubbed her, waked her, required and got in the end an effort of attention, so that the vision must be perpetually remade. Now again, moved as she was by some instinctive need of distance and blue, she looked at the bay beneath her, making hillocks of the blue spaces, again she was roused as usual by something incongruous. There was a brown spot in the middle of the bay. It was a boat. Yes, she realised that after a second. But whose boat? Mr Ramsay's boat, she replied. Mr Ramsay; the man who had marched past her, with his hand raised, aloof, at the head of a procession, in his beautiful boots, asking her for sympathy, which she had refused. The boat was now half way across the bay.
So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. A steamer far out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed there curving and circling decoratively, as if the air were a fine gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently swaying them this way and that. And as happens sometimes when the weather is very fine, the cliffs looked as if they were conscious of the ships, and the ships looked as if they were conscious of the cliffs, as if they signalled to each other some message of their own. For sometimes quite close to the shore, the Lighthouse looked this morning in the haze an enormous distance away.
"Where are they now?" Lily thought, looking out to sea. Where was he, that very old man who had gone past her silently, holding a brown paper parcel under his arm? The boat was in the middle of the bay.
8
They don't feel a thing there, Cam thought, looking at the shore, which, rising and falling, became steadily more distant and more peaceful. Her hand cut a trail in the sea, as her mind made the green swirls and streaks into patterns and, numbed and shrouded, wandered in imagination in that underworld of waters where the pearls stuck in clusters to white sprays, where in the green light a change came over one's entire mind and one's body shone half transparent enveloped in a green cloak.
Then the eddy slackened round her hand. The rush of the water ceased; the world became full of little creaking and squeaking sounds. One heard the waves breaking and flapping against the side of the boat as if they were anchored in harbour. Everything became very close to one. For the sail, upon which James had his eyes fixed until it had become to him like a person whom he knew, sagged entirely; there they came to a stop, flapping about waiting for a breeze, in the hot sun, miles from shore, miles from the Lighthouse. Everything in the whole world seemed to stand still. The Lighthouse became immovable, and the line of the distant shore became fixed. The sun grew hotter and everybody seemed to come very close together and to feel each other's presence, which they had almost forgotten. Macalister's fishing line went plumb down into the sea. But Mr Ramsay went on reading with his legs curled under him.
He was reading a little shiny book with covers mottled like a plover's egg. Now and again, as they hung about in that horrid calm, he turned a page. And James felt that each page was turned with a peculiar gesture aimed at him; now assertively, now commandingly; now with the intention of making people pity him; and all the time, as his father read and turned one after another of those little pages, James kept dreading the moment when he would look up and speak sharply to him about something or other. Why were they lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does, James thought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart.
He had always kept this old symbol of taking a knife and striking his father to the heart. Only now, impotent rage, it was not him, that old man reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended on him-without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard, that struck and struck at you whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track down and stamp out-tyranny, despotism, he called it-making people do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak. How could any of them say, But I won't, when he said, Come to the Lighthouse. Do this. Fetch me that. The black wings spread, and the hard beak tore. And then next moment, there he sat reading his book; and he might look up-one never knew-quite reasonably. He might talk to the Macalisters. He might be pressing a sovereign into some frozen old woman's hand in the street, James thought, and he might be shouting out at some fisherman's sports; he might be waving his arms in the air with excitement. Or he might sit at the head of the table dead silent from one end of dinner to the other. Yes, thought James, while the boat slapped and dawdled there in the hot sun; there was a waste of snow and rock very lonely and austere; and there he had come to feel, quite often lately, when his father said something or did something which surprised the others, there were two pairs of footprints only; his own and his father's. They alone knew each other. What then was this terror, which the past had folded in him, peering into the heart of that forest where light and shade so chequer each other that all shape is distorted, and one blunders, now with the sun in one's eyes, now with a dark shadow, he sought an image to cool and detach and round off his feeling in a concrete shape. Suppose then that as a child sitting helpless in a perambulator, or on some one's knee, he had seen a waggon crush ignorantly and innocently, some one's foot? Suppose he had seen the foot first, in the grass, smooth, and whole; then the wheel; and the same foot, purple, crushed. But the wheel was innocent. So now, when his father came striding down the passage knocking them up early in the morning to go to the Lighthouse down it came over his foot, over Cam's foot, over anybody's foot. One sat and watched it.
But whose foot was he thinking of, and in what garden did all this happen? For one had settings for these scenes; trees that grew there; flowers; a certain light; a few figures. Everything tended to set itself in a garden where there was none of this gloom. None of this throwing of hands about; people spoke in an ordinary tone of voice. They went in and out all day long. There was an old woman gossiping in the kitchen; and the blinds were sucked in and out by the breeze; all was blowing, all was growing; and over all those plates and bowls and tall brandishing red and yellow flowers a very thin yellow veil would be drawn, like a vine leaf, at night. Things became stiller and darker at night. But the leaf-like veil was so fine, that lights lifted it, voices crinkled it; he could see through it a figure stooping, hear, coming close, going away, some dress rustling, some chain tinkling.
It was in this world that the wheel went over the person's foot. Something, he remembered, stayed flourished up in the air, something arid and sharp descended even there, like a blade, a scimitar, smiting through the leaves and flowers even of that happy world and making it shrivel and fall.
"It will rain," he remembered his father saying. "You won't be able to go to the Lighthouse."
The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now- James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it?
No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too. It was sometimes hardly to be seen across the bay. In the evening one looked up and saw the eye opening and shutting and the light seemed to reach them in that airy sunny garden where they sat.
But he pulled himself up. Whenever he said "they" or "a person," and then began hearing the rustle of some one coming, the tinkle of some one going, he became extremely sensitive to the presence of whoever might be in the room. It was his father now. The strain was acute. For in one moment if there was no breeze, his father would slap the covers of his book together, and say: "What's happening now? What are we dawdling about here for, eh?" as, once before he had brought his blade down among them on the terrace and she had gone stiff all over, and if there had been an axe handy, a knife, or anything with a sharp point he would have seized it and struck his father through the heart. She had gone stiff all over, and then, her arm slackening, so that he felt she listened to him no longer, she had risen somehow and gone away and left him there, impotent, ridiculous, sitting on the floor grasping a pair of scissors.
Not a breath of wind blew. The water chuckled and gurgled in the bottom of the boat where three or four mackerel beat their tails up and down in a pool of water not deep enough to cover them. At any moment Mr Ramsay might rouse himself, shut his book, and say something sharp; but for the moment he was reading, so that James stealthily, as if he were stealing downstairs on bare feet, afraid of waking a watchdog by a creaking board, went on thinking what was she like, where did she go that day? He began following her from room to room and at last they came to a room where in a blue light, as if the reflection came from many china dishes, she talked to somebody; he listened to her talking. She talked to a servant, saying simply whatever came into her head. She alone spoke the truth; to her alone could he speak it. That was the source of her everlasting attraction for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into one's head. But all the time he thought of her, he was conscious of his father following his thought, surveying it, making it shiver and falter. At last he ceased to think.
There he sat with his hand on the tiller in the sun, staring at the Lighthouse, powerless to move, powerless to flick off these grains of misery which settled on his mind one after another. A rope seemed to bind him there, and his father had knotted it and he could only escape by taking a knife and plunging it... But at that moment the sail swung slowly round, filled slowly out, the boat seemed to shake herself, and then to move off half conscious in her sleep, and then she woke and shot through the waves. The relief was extraordinary. They all seemed to fall away from each other again and to be the side of the boat. But his father did not rouse himself. He only raised his right hand mysteriously high in the air, and let it fall upon his knee again as if he were conducting some secret symphony.
9
10
It was like that then, the island, thought Cam, once more drawing her fingers through the waves. She had never seen it from out at sea before. It lay like that on the sea, did it, with a dent in the middle and two sharp crags, and the sea swept in there, and spread away for miles and miles on either side of the island. It was very small; shaped something like a leaf stood on end. So we took a little boat, she thought, beginning to tell herself a story of adventure about escaping from a sinking ship. But with the sea streaming through her fingers, a spray of seaweed vanishing behind them, she did not want to tell herself seriously a story; it was the sense of adventure and escape that she wanted, for she was thinking, as the boat sailed on, how her father's anger about the points of the compass, James's obstinacy about the compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped, all had passed, all had streamed away. What then came next? Where were they going? From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the adventure he was not vain, nor a tyrant and did not wish to make you pity him. Indeed, if he saw she was there, reading a book, he would ask her, as gently as any one could, Was there nothing he could give her?
Lest this should be wrong, she looked at him reading the little book with the shiny cover mottled like a plover's egg. No; it was right. Look at him now, she wanted to say aloud to James. He is a sarcastic brute, James would say. He brings the talk round to himself and his books, James would say. He is intolerably egotistical. Worst of all, he is a tyrant. But look! she said, looking at him. Look at him now. She looked at him reading the little book with his legs curled; the little book whose yellowish pages she knew, without knowing what was written on them. It was small; it was closely printed; on the fly-leaf, she knew, he had written that he had spent fifteen francs on dinner; the wine had been so much; he had given so much to the waiter; all was added up neatly at the bottom of the page. But what might be written in the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What he thought they none of them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through the bramble, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page. And she went on telling herself a story about escaping from a sinking ship, for she was safe, while he sat there; safe, as she felt herself down, and the old gentleman, lowering the paper suddenly, said something very brief over the top of it about the character of Napoleon.
She gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing its sharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on another. About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.
11
So much depends then, thought Lily Briscoe, looking at the sea which had scarcely a stain on it, which was so soft that the sails and the clouds seemed set in its blue, so much depends, she thought, upon distance: whether people are near us or far from us; for her feeling for Mr Ramsay changed as he sailed further and further across the bay. It seemed to be elongated, stretched out; he seemed to become more and more remote. He and his children seemed to be swallowed up in that blue, that distance; but here, on the lawn, close at hand, Mr Carmichael suddenly grunted. She laughed. He clawed his book up from the grass. He settled into his chair again puffing and blowing like some sea monster. That was different altogether, because he was so near. And now again all was quiet. They must be out of bed by this time, she supposed, looking at the house, but nothing appeared there. But then, she remembered, they had always made off directly a meal was over, on business of their own. It was all in keeping with this silence, this emptiness, and the unreality of the early morning hour. It was a way things had sometimes, she thought, lingering for a moment and looking at the long glittering windows and the plume of blue smoke: they became illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then. One could be at one's ease. Mercifully one need not say, very briskly, crossing the lawn to greet old Mrs Beckwith, who would be coming out to find a corner to sit in, "Oh, good-morning, Mrs Beckwith! What a lovely day! Are you going to be so bold as to sit in the sun? Jasper's hidden the chairs. Do let me find you one!" and all the rest of the usual chatter. One need not speak at all. One glided, one shook one's sails between things, beyond things. Empty it was not, but full to the brim. She seemed to be standing up to the lips in some substance, to move and float and sink in it, yes, for these waters were unfathomably deep. Into them had spilled so many lives. The Ramsays'; the children's; and all sorts of waifs and strays of things besides. A washer-woman with her basket; a rook, a red-hot poker; the purples and grey-greens of flowers: some common feeling which held the whole together.
It was some such feeling of completeness perhaps which, ten years ago, standing almost where she stood now, had made her say that she must be in love with the place. Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people, one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.
Her eyes rested on the brown speck of Mr Ramsay's sailing boat. They would be at the Lighthouse by lunch time she supposed. But the wind had freshened, and, as the sky changed slightly and the sea changed slightly and the boards altered their positions, the view, which a moment before had seemed miraculously fixed, was now unsatisfactory. The wind had blown the trail of smoke about; there was something displeasing about the placing of the ships.
The disproportion there seemed to upset some harmony in her own mind. She felt an obscure distress. It was confirmed when she turned to her picture. She had been wasting her morning. For whatever reason she could not achieve that razor edge of balance between two opposite forces; Mr Ramsay and the picture; which was necessary. There was something perhaps wrong with the design? Was it, she wondered, that the line of the wall wanted breaking, was it that the mass of the trees was too heavy? She smiled ironically; for had she not thought, when she began, that she had solved her problem?
What was the problem then? She must try to get hold of something tht evaded her. It evaded her when she thought of Mrs Ramsay; it evaded her now when she thought of her picture. Phrases came. Visions came. Beautiful pictures. Beautiful phrases. But what she wished to get hold of was that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before it has been made anything. Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh; she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel. It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on. She stared, frowning. There was the hedge, sure enough. But one got nothing by soliciting urgently. One got only a glare in the eye from looking at the line of the wall, or from thinking-she wore a grey hat. She was astonishingly beautiful. Let it come, she thought, if it will come. For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
Here on the grass, on the ground, she thought, sitting down, and examining with her brush a little colony of plantains. For the lawn was very rough. Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. The lawn was the world; they were up here together, on this exalted station, she thought, looking at old Mr Carmichael, who seemed There was some quality in her which he did not much like. It was perhaps her masterfulness, her positiveness, something matter-of-fact in her. She was so direct.
There must have been people who disliked her very much, Lily thought -People who thought her too sure, too drastic.
Also, her beauty offended people probably. How monotonous, they would say, and the same always! They preferred another type-the dark, the vivacious. Then she was weak with her husband. She let him make those scenes. Then she was reserved. Nobody knew exactly what had happened to her. And, eyes that are closing in pain have looked on you. You have been with them there.
And then Mrs Ramsay would be annoyed because somebody was late, or the butter not fresh, or the teapot chipped. And all the time she was saying that the butter was not fresh one would be thinking of Greek temples, and how beauty had been with them there in that stuffy little room. She never talked of it-she went, punctually, directly. It was her instinct to go, an instinct like the swallows for the south, the artichokes for the sun, turning her infallibly to the human race, making her nest in its heart. And this, like all instincts, was a little distressing to people who did not share it; to Mr Carmichael perhaps, to herself certainly. Some notion was in both of them about the ineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought. Her going was a reproach to them, gave a different twist to the world, so that they were led to protest, seeing their own prepossessions disappear, and clutch at them vanishing. Charles Tansley did that too: it was part of the reason why one disliked him. He upset the proportions of one's world. And what had happened to him, she wondered, idly stirring the platains with her brush. He had got his fellowship. He had married; he lived at Golder's Green.
She had gone one day into a Hall and heard him speaking during the war. He was denouncing something: he was condemning somebody. He was preaching brotherly love. And all she felt was how could he love his kind who did not know one picture from another, who had stood behind her smoking shag. She had looked at him ironically from her seat in the half-empty hall, pumping love into that chilly space, and suddenly, there was the old cask or whatever it was bobbing up and down among the waves and Mrs Ramsay looking for her spectacle case among the pebbles. "Oh, dear! What a nuisance! Lost again. Don't bother, Mr Tansley. I lose thousands every summer," at which he pressed his chin back against his collar, as if afraid to sanction such exaggeration, but could stand it in her whom he liked, and smiled very charmingly. He must have confided in her on one of those long expeditions when people got separated and walked back alone. He was educating his little sister, Mrs Ramsay had told her. It was immensely to his credit. Her own idea of him was grotesque, Lily knew well, stirring the plantains with her brush. Half one's notions of other people were, after all, grotesque. They served private purposes of one's own. He did for her instead of a whipping-boy. She found herself flagellating his lean flanks when she was out of temper. If she wanted to be serious about him she had to help herself to Mrs Ramsay's sayings, to look at him through her eyes.
She raised a little mountain for the ants to climb over. She reduced them to a frenzy of indecision by this interference in their cosmogony. Some ran this way, others that.
One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought. Among them, must be one that was stone blind to her beauty. One wanted most some secret sense, fine as air, with which to steal through keyholes and surround her where she sat knitting, talking, sitting silent in the window alone; which took to itself and treasured up like the air which held the smoke of the steamer, her thoughts, her imaginations, her desires. What did the hedge mean to her, what did the garden mean to her, what did it mean to her when a wave broke? And then what stirred and trembled in her mind when the children cried, "How's that? How's that?" cricketing? She would stop knitting for a second. She would look intent. Then she would lapse again, and suddenly Mr Ramsay stopped dead in his pacing in front of her and some curious shock passed through her and seemed to rock her in profound agitation on its breast when stopping there he stood over her and looked down at her. Lily could see him.
He stretched out his hand and raised her from her chair. It seemed somehow as if he had done it before; as if he had once bent in the same way and raised her from a boat which, lying a few inches off some island, had required that the ladies should thus be helped on shore by the gentlemen. An old-fashioned nearly, crinolines and peg-top trousers. Letting herself be helped by him, Mrs Ramsay had thought the time has come now. Yes, she would say it now. Yes, she would marry him. And she stepped slowly, quietly on shore. Probably she said one word only, letting her hand rest still in his. I will marry you, she might have said, with her hand in his; but no more. Time after time the same thrill had passed between them-obviously it had, Lily thought, smoothing a way for her ants. She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen. For in the rough and tumble of daily life, with all those children about, all those visitors, one had constantly a sense of repetition-of one thing falling where another had fallen, and so setting up an echo which chimed in the air and made it full of vibrations.
But it would be a mistake, she thought, thinking how they walked off together, arm in arm, past the greenhouse, to simplify their relationship. It was no monotony of bliss-she with her impulses and quicknesses; he with his shudders and glooms. Oh, no. The bedroom door would slam violently early in the morning. He would start from the table in a temper. He would whizz his plate through the window. Then all through the house there would be a sense of doors slamming and blinds fluttering, as if a gusty wind were blowing and people scudded about trying in a hasty way to fasten hatches and make things ship-shape. She had met Paul Rayley like that one day on the stairs. It had been an earwig, apparently. Other people might find centipedes. They had laughed and laughed.
But it tired Mrs Ramsay, it cowed her a little-the plates whizzing and the doors slamming. And there would fall between them sometimes long rigid Lily in her, half plaintive, half resentful, she seemed unable to surmount the tempest calmly, or to laugh as they laughed, but in her weariness perhaps concealed something. She brooded and sat silent. After a time he would hang stealthily about the places where she was-roaming under the window where she sat writing letters or talking, for she would take care to be busy when he passed, and evade him, and pretend not to see him. Then he would turn smooth as silk, affable, urbane, and try to win her so. Still she would hold off, and now she would assert for a brief season some of those prides and airs the due of her beauty which she was generally utterly without; would turn her head; would look so, over her shoulder, always with some Minta, Paul, or William Bankes at her side. At length, standing outside the group the very figure of a famished wolfhound, he would say her name, once only, for all the world like a wolf barking in the snow, but still she held back; and he would say it once more, and this time something in the tone would rouse her, and she would go to him, leaving them all of a sudden, and they would walk off together among the pear trees, the cabbages, and the raspberry beds. They would have it out together. But with what attitudes and with what words? Such a dignity was theirs in this relationship that, turning away, she and Paul and Minta would hide their curiosity and their discomfort, and begin picking flowers, throwing balls, chattering, until it was time for dinner, and there they were, he at one end of the table, she at the other, as usual.
"Why don't some of you take up botany?... With all those legs and arms why doesn't one of you... ?" So they would talk as usual, laughing, for some quiver, as of a blade in the air, which came and went between them as if the usual sight of the children sitting round their soup plates had freshened itself in their eyes after that hour among the pears and the cabbages. Especially, Lily thought, Mrs Ramsay would glance at Prue. She sat in the middle between brothers and sisters, always occupied, it seemed, seeing that nothing went wrong so that she scarcely spoke herself. How Prue must have blamed herself for that earwig in the milk How white she had gone when Mr Ramsay threw his plate through the window! How she drooped under those long silences between them! Anyhow, her mother now would seem to be making it up to her; assuring her that everything was well; promising her that one of these days that same happiness would be hers. She had enjoyed it for less than a year, however.
She had let the flowers fall from her basket, Lily thought, screwing up her eyes and standing back as if to look at her picture, which she was not touching, however, with all her faculties in a trance, frozen over superficially but moving underneath with extreme speed.
She let her flowers fall from her basket, scattered and tumbled them on to the grass and, reluctantly and hesitatingly, but without question or complaint-had she not the faculty of obedience to perfection?-went too. Down fields, across valleys, white, flower-strewn-that was how she would have painted it. The hills were austere. It was rocky; it was steep. The waves sounded hoarse on the stones beneath. They went, the three of them together, Mrs Ramsay walking rather fast in front, as if she expected to meet some one round the corner.
Suddenly the window at which she was looking was whitened by some light stuff behind it. At last then somebody had come into the drawing-room; somebody was sitting in the chair. For Heaven's sake, she prayed, let them sit still there and not come floundering out to talk to her. Mercifully, whoever it was stayed still inside; had settled by some stroke of luck so as to throw an odd-shaped triangular shadow over the step. It altered the composition of the picture a little. It was interesting. It might be useful. Her mood was coming back to her. One must keep on looking without for a second relaxing the intensity of emotion, the determination not to be put off, not to be bamboozled. One must hold the scene-so-in a vise and let nothing come in and spoil it. One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy. The problem might be solved after all. Ah, but what had happened? Some wave of white went over the window pane. The air must have stirred some flounce in the room. Her heart leapt at her and seized her and tortured her.
"Mrs Ramsay! Mrs Ramsay!" she cried, feeling the old horror come back-to want and want and not to have. Could she inflict that still? And then, quietly, as if she refrained, that too became part of ordinary experience, was on a level with the chair, with the table. Mrs Ramsay-it was part of her perfect goodness-sat there quite simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted her reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat.
And as if she had something she must share, yet could hardly leave her easel, so full her mind was of what she was thinking, of what she was seeing, Lily went past Mr Carmichael holding her brush to the edge of the lawn. Where was that boat now? And Mr Ramsay? She wanted him.
12
Mr Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about, extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds-that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.
He was reading very quickly, as if he were eager to get to the end. Indeed they were very close to the Lighthouse now. There it loomed up, stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks. One could see lines and creases in the rocks. One could see the windows clearly; a dab of white on one of them, and a little tuft of green on the rock. A man had come out and looked at them through a glass and gone in again. So it was like that, James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him. It confirmed some obscure feeling of his about his own character. The old ladies, he thought, thinking of the garden at home, went dragging their chairs about on the lawn. Old Mrs Beckwith, for example, was always saying how nice it was and how sweet it was and how they ought to be so proud and they ought to be so happy, but as a matter of fact, James thought, looking at the Lighthouse stood there on its rock, it's like that. He looked at his father reading fiercely with his legs curled tight. They shared that knowledge. "We are driving before a gale-we must sink," he began saying to himself, half aloud, exactly as his father said it.
Nobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Cam was tired of looking at the sea. Little bits of black cork had floated past; the fish were dead in the bottom of the boat. Still her father read, and James looked at him and she looked at him, and they vowed that they would fight tyranny to the death, and he went on reading quite unconscious of what they thought. It was thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes, with his great forehead and his great nose, holding his little mottled book firmly in front of him, he escaped. You might try to lay hands on him, but then like a bird, he spread his wings, he floated off to settle out of your reach somewhere far away on some desolate stump. She gazed at the immense expanse of the sea. The island had grown so small that it scarcely looked like a leaf any longer. It looked like the top of a rock which some wave bigger than the rest would cover. Yet in its frailty were all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms-all those innumberable things. But as, just before sleep, things simplify themselves so that only one of all the myriad details has power to assert itself, so, she felt, looking drowsily at the island, all those paths and terraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing, and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swinging rhythmically this way and that across her mind. It was a hanging garden; it was a valley, full of birds, and flowers, and antelopes... She was falling asleep.
"Come now," said Mr Ramsay, suddenly shutting his book.
Come where? To what extraordinary adventure? She woke with a start. To land somewhere, to climb somewhere? Where was he leading them? For after his immense silence the words startled them. But it was absurd. He was hungry, he said. It was time for lunch. Besides, look, he said. "There's the Lighthouse. We're almost there."
"He's doing very well," said Macalister, praising James. "He's keeping her very steady."
But his father never praised him, James thought grimly.
Mr Ramsay opened the parcel and shared out the sandwiches among them. Now he was happy, eating bread and cheese with these fishermen. He would have liked to live in a cottage and lounge about in the harbour spitting with the other old men, James thought, watching him slice his cheese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.
This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as she peeled her hard-boiled egg. Now she felt as she did in the study when the old men were reading THE TIMES. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, and I shan't fall over a precipice or be drowned, for there he is, keeping his eye on me, she thought.
At the same time they were sailing so fast along by the rocks that it was very exciting-it seemed as if they were doing two things at once; they were eating their lunch here in the sun and they were also making for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Would the water last? Would the provisions last? she asked herself, telling herself a story but knowing at the same time what was the truth.
They would soon be out of it, Mr Ramsay was saying to old Macalister; but their children would see some strange things. Macalister said he was seventy-five last March; Mr Ramsay was seventy-one. Macalister said he had never seen a doctor; he had never lost a tooth. And that's the way I'd like my children to live-Cam was sure that her father was thinking that, for he stopped her throwing a sandwich into the sea and told her, as if he were thinking of the fishermen and how they lived, that if she did not want it she should put it back in the parcel. She should not waste it. He said it so wisely, as if he knew so well all the things that happened in the world that she put it back at once, and then he gave her, from his own parcel, a gingerbread nut, as if he were a great Spanish gentleman, she thought, handing a flower to a lady at a window. He was shabby, and simple, eating bread and cheese; and yet he was leading them on a great expedition where, for all she knew, they would be drowned.
"That was where she sunk," said Macalister's boy suddenly.
Three men were drowned where we are now, the old man said. He had seen them clinging to the mast himself. And Mr Ramsay taking a look at the spot was about, James and Cam were afraid, to burst out: But I beneath a rougher sea, and if he did, they could not bear it; they would shriek aloud; they could not endure another explosion of the passion that boiled in him; but to their surprise all he said was "Ah" as if he thought to himself. But why make a fuss about that? Naturally men are drowned in a storm, but it is a perfectly straightforward affair, and the depths of the sea are only water after all. Then having lighted his pipe he took out his watch. He looked at it attentively; he made, perhaps, some mathematical calculation. At last he said, triumphantly: "Well done!" James had steered them like a born sailor.
There! Cam thought, addressing herself silently to James. You've got it at last. For she knew that this was what James had been wanting, and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not look at her or at his father or at any one. There he sat with his hand on the tiller sitting bolt upright, looking rather sulky and frowning slightly. He was so pleased that he was not going to let anybody share a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think that he was perfectly indifferent. But you've got it now, Cam thought. buoyantly on long rocking waves which handed them on from one to another with an extraordinary lilt and exhilaration beside the reef. On the left a row of rocks showed brown through the water which thinned and became greener and on one, a higher rock, a wave incessantly broke and spurted a little column of drops which fell down in a shower. One could hear the slap of the water and the patter of falling drops and a kind of hushing and hissing sound from the waves rolling and gambolling and slapping the rocks as if they were wild creatures who were perfectly free and tossed and tumbled and sported like this for ever.
Now they could see two men on the Lighthouse, watching them and making ready to meet them.
Mr Ramsay buttoned his coat, and turned up his trousers. He took the large, badly packed, brown paper parcel which Nancy had got ready and sat with it on his knee. Thus in complete readiness to land he sat looking back at the island. With his long-sighted eyes perhaps he could see the dwindled leaf-like shape standing on end on a plate of gold quite clearly. What could he see? Cam wondered. It was all a blur to her. What was he thinking now? she wondered. What was it he sought, so fixedly, so intently, so silently? They watched him, both of them, sitting bareheaded with his parcel on his knee staring and staring at the frail blue shape which seemed like the vapour of something that had burnt itself away. What do you want? they both wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it you. But he did not ask them anything. He sat and looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it; but he said nothing.
Then he put on his hat.
"Bring those parcels," he said, nodding his head at the things Nancy had done up for them to take to the Lighthouse. "The parcels for the Lighthouse men," he said. He rose and stood in the bow of the boat, very straight and tall, for all the world, James thought, as if he were saying, "There is no God," and Cam thought, as if he were leaping into space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock.
13
"He must have reached it," said Lily Briscoe aloud, feeling suddenly completely tired out. For the Lighthouse had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking of him landing there, which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost. Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he left her that morning, she had given him at last.
"He has landed," she said aloud. "It is finished." Then, surging up, puffing slightly, old Mr Carmichael stood beside her, looking like an old pagan god, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the lawn, swaying a little in his bulk and said, shading his eyes with his hand: "They will have landed," and she felt that she had been right. They had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood there as if he were spreading his hands over all the weakness and suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly and compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion, she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which, fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.
Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was-her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.

HEART OF DARKNESS
By Joseph Conrad
I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns-and even convictions. The Lawyer-the best of old fellows-had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence and affection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled-the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests-and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith-the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway-a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them-the ship; and so is their country-the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical, and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow-"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago-the other day.... Light came out of this river since-you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker-may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine-what d'ye call 'em?-trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries-a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too-used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here-the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina-and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages,-precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay-cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death-death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh, yes-he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga-perhaps too much dice, you know-coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him-all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination-you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower-"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency-the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind-as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea-something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to...."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other-then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting patiently-there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would like best to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me-and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too-and pitiful-not extraordinary in any way-not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas-a regular dose of the East-six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship-I should think the hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got tired of that game, too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and... well, we won't talk about that. But there was one yet-the biggest, the most blank, so to speak-that I had a hankering after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery-a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would a bird-a silly little bird. Then I remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water-steamboats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty as it looks, they say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then-you see-I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said 'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then-would you believe it?-I tried the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work-to get a job. Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a very high personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots of influence with,' etc. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.
"I got my appointment-of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made me the more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards, when I made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard the original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes, two black hens. Fresleven-that was the fellow's name, a Dane-thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man-I was told the chief's son-in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man-and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much about Fresleven's remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned. What became of the hens I don't know either. I should think the cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this glorious affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting right and left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me-still knitting with downcast eyes-and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red-good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river was there-fascinating-deadly-like a snake. Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with my French. Bon Voyage.
"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.
"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy-I don't know-something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again-not half, by a long way.
"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose-there must have been clerks in the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead-came from somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the Company's business, and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once. 'I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose.
"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,' he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me whether I would let him measure my head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there,' he said. 'And when they come back, too?' I asked. 'Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.' He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going out there. Famous. Interesting, too.' He gave me a searching glance, and made another note. 'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is that question in the interests of science, too?' 'It would be,' he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but...' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted. 'Every doctor should be-a little,' answered that original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you messieurs who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman coming under my observation...' I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.'... He lifted a warning forefinger.... 'Du calme, du calme.'
"One thing more remained to do-say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea-the last decent cup of tea for many days-and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me I had been represented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to how many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted creature-a piece of good fortune for the Company-a man you don't get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital-you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.
"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.
"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so on-and I left. In the street-I don't know why-a queer feeling came to me that I was an imposter. Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment-I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair. The best way I can explain it to you is by saying that, for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going to the centre of a continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the earth.
"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you-smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.' This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers-to take care of the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out there, and on we went. Every day the coast looked the same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various places-trading places-with names like Gran' Bassam, Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks-these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech-and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives-he called them enemies!-hidden out of sight somewhere.
"We gave her her letters and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher up.
"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot these government chaps-are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?' I said to him I expected to see that soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. 'The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's name?' I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the country perhaps.'
"At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. 'There's your Company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell.'
"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work going on.
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes-that's only one way of resisting-without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men-men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash-up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound-as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.
"They were dying slowly-it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now-nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air-and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young-almost a boy-but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held-there was no other movement and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck-Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge-an ornament-a charm-a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company's chief accountant, and that all the book-keeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk-life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and, later, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said modestly, 'I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books, which were in apple-pie order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle-heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days-an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. 'The groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.'
"One day he remarked, without lifting his head, 'In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added slowly, laying down his pen, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading-post, a very important one, in the true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together...' He began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that day.... He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to me, 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked, startled. 'No, not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult in the station-yard, 'When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages-hate them to the death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz' he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here'-he glanced at the deck-' is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him-with those messengers of ours you never know who may get hold of your letter-at that Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody in the Administration before long. They, above-the Council in Europe, you know-mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying finished and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-tops of the grove of death.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through the long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone, too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild-and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive-not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night-quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush-man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor-'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the Central Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'-'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure-not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid-when I think of it-to be altogether natural. Still... But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station, took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy-a smile-not a smile-I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts-nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust-just uneasiness-nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him-why? Perhaps because he was never ill... He had served three terms of three years out there... Because triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale-pompously. Jack ashore-with a difference-in externals only. This one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the routine going-that's all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause-for out there there were no external checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the station, he was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should have no entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You fancied you had seen things-but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the station's mess-room. Where he sat was the first place-the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his 'boy'-an overfed young negro from the coast-to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.
"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on-and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation was 'very grave, very grave.' There were rumours that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was... I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take to'... I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage. 'How can I tell?' I said. 'I haven't even seen the wreck yet-some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot. Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the 'affair.'
"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant. They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.
"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout man with moustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly, splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.
"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the thing had gone off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything-and collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him, later, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying to recover himself; afterwards he arose and went out-and the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two men, talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate accident.' One of the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it-eh? it is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The other man remained. He was a first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks-so I had been informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year-waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something, I don't know what-straw maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting-all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them-for something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was disease-as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by back-biting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else-as the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account-but as to effectually lifting a little finger-oh, no. By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.
"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something-in fact, pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there-putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered like mica discs-with curiosity-though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth my body was full only of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and, to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre-almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.
"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding an empty half-pint champagne bottle with the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr. Kurtz had painted this-in this very station more than a year ago-while waiting for means to go to his trading post. 'Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'
"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Every one knows that.' He was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' 'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied. 'Some even write that; and so he comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.' 'Why ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid no attention. 'Yes. Today he is chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and... but I dare-say you know what he will be in two years' time. You are of the new gang-the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. Oh, don't say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. 'Do you read the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued, severely, 'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere. 'What a row the brute makes!' said the indefatigable man with the moustaches, appearing near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression-punishment-bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager...' He noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger-agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs-go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through that dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart-its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. 'My dear sir,' said the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who will see Mr. Kurtz long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my disposition....'
"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager by and by under the present man, and I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver-over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it, too-God knows! Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it-no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would-though a man of sixty-offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies-which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world-what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see-you understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream-making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...."
He was silent for a while.
"... No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence-that which makes its truth, its meaning-its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream-alone...."
He paused again as if reflecting, then added:
"Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know...."
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.
"... Yes-I let him run on," Marlow began again, "and think what he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about 'the necessity for every man to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr. Kurtz was a 'universal genius,' but even a genius would find it easier to work with 'adequate tools-intelligent men.' He did not make bricks-why, there was a physical impossibility in the way-as I was well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the manager, it was because 'no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors.' Did I see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work-to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast-cases-piled up-burst-split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station-yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down-and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a long negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast. And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods-ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said I could see that very well, but what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets-and rivets were what really Mr. Kurtz wanted, if he had only known it. Now letters went to the coast every week.... 'My dear sir,' he cried, 'I write from dictation.' I demanded rivets. There was a way-for an intelligent man. He changed his manner; became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus; wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life,' he said; 'but you can say this only of brutes in this country. No man-you apprehend me?-no man here bears a charmed life.' He stood there for a moment in the moonlight with his delicate hooked nose set a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink, then, with a curt Good-night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit-to find out what I could do. No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work-no man does-but I like what is in the work-the chance to find yourself. Your own reality-for yourself, not for others-what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft, on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised-on account of their imperfect manners, I suppose. This was the foreman-a boiler-maker by trade-a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children, and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying. He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons. After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted, 'We shall have rivets!' He scrambled to his feet exclaiming, 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You... eh?' I don't know why we behaved like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. 'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway itself vanished, too. We stopped, and the silence driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an icthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. 'After all,' said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone, 'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed! I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't. 'They'll come in three weeks,' I said confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab.
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said Hang!-and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz. I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all and how he would set about his work when there."
II
"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching-and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager-or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's incredible.'... I became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy. 'It is unpleasant,' grunted the uncle. 'He has asked the Administration to be sent there,' said the other, 'with the idea of showing what he could do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have. Is it not frightful?' They both agreed it was frightful, then made several bizarre remarks: 'Make rain and fine weather-one man-the Council-by the nose'-bits of absurd sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about me when the uncle said, 'The climate may do away with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?' 'Yes,' answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant down the river with a note to me in these terms: "Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don't bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of with me." It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine such impudence!' 'Anything since then?' asked the other hoarsely. 'Ivory,' jerked the nephew; 'lots of it-prime sort-lots-most annoying, from him.' 'And with that?' questioned the heavy rumble. 'Invoice,' was the reply fired out, so to speak. Then silence. They had been talking about Kurtz.
"I was broad awake by this time, but, lying perfectly at ease, remained still, having no inducement to change my position. 'How did that ivory come all this way?' growled the elder man, who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempting such a thing. They were at a loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on relief, on thoughts of home-perhaps; setting his face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station. I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name, you understand, had not been pronounced once. He was 'that man.' The half-caste, who, as far as I could see, had conducted a difficult trip with great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as 'that scoundrel.' The 'scoundrel' had reported that the 'man' had been very ill-had recovered imperfectly.... The two below me moved away then a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little distance. I heard: 'Military post-doctor-two hundred miles-quite alone now-unavoidable delays-nine months-no news-strange rumours.' They approached again, just as the manager was saying, 'No one, as far as I know, unless a species of wandering trader-a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from the natives.' Who was it they were talking about now? I gathered in snatches that this was some man supposed to be in Kurtz's district, and of whom the manager did not approve. 'We will not be free from unfair competition till one of these fellows is hanged for an example,' he said. 'Certainly,' grunted the other; 'get him hanged! Why not? Anything-anything can be done in this country. That's what I say; nobody here, you understand, here, can endanger your position. And why? You stand the climate-you outlast them all. The danger is in Europe; but there before I left I took care to-' They moved off and whispered, then their voices rose again. 'The extraordinary series of delays is not my fault. I did my best.' The fat man sighed. 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he bothered me enough when he was here. "Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive you-that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it's-' Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to see how near they were-right under me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with a slender twig: his sagacious relative lifted his head. 'You have been well since you came out this time?' he asked. The other gave a start. 'Who? I? Oh! Like a charm-like a charm. But the rest-oh, my goodness! All sick. They die so quick, too, that I haven't the time to send them out of the country-it's incredible!' 'Hm'm. Just so,' grunted the uncle. 'Ah! my boy, trust to this-I say, trust to this.' I saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river-seemed to beckon with a dishonouring flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treacherous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked back at the edge of the forest, as though I had expected an answer of some sort to that black display of confidence. You know the foolish notions that come to one sometimes. The high stillness confronted these two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the passing away of a fantastic invasion.
"They swore aloud together-out of sheer fright, I believe-then pretending not to know anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The sun was low; and leaning forward side by side, they seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed behind them slowly over the tall grass without bending a single blade.
"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather excited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon. When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It was just two months from the day we left the creek when we came to the bank below Kurtz's station.
"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sand-banks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once-somewhere-far away-in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one's past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare for yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality-the reality, I tell you-fades. The inner truth is hidden-luckily, luckily. But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as it watches you fellows performing on your respective tight-ropes for-what is it? half-a-crown a tumble-"
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and I knew there was at least one listener awake besides myself.
"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of the price. And indeed what does the price matter, if the trick be well done? You do your tricks very well. And I didn't do badly either, since I managed not to sink that steamboat on my first trip. It's a wonder to me yet. Imagine a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and shivered over that business considerably, I can tell you. After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump-eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it-years after-and go hot and cold all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows-cannibals-in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all, they did not eat each other before my face: they had brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had the manager on board and three or four pilgrims with their staves-all complete. Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and the white men rushing out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange-had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell. The word ivory would ring in the air for a while-and on we went again into the silence, along empty reaches, round the still bends, between the high walls of our winding way, reverberating in hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on-which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they expected to get something. I bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz-exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. Were were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us-who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign-and no memories.
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were-No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it-this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-like yours-the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you-you so remote from the night of first ages-could comprehend. And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage-who can tell?-but truth-truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder-the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff-with his own inborn strength. Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row-is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for a howl and a dance? Well, no-I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on those leaky steam-pipes-I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook. There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of intrepidity-and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this-that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully, while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left behind, the interminable miles of silence-and we crept on, towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked wood-pile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible-not Kurtz-a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river? 'Approach cautiously.' We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above. But what-and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us look very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long ago. There remained a rude table-a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book. It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title was, An Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship, by a man Towser, Towson-some such name-Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships' chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago, luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes pencilled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere and studying it-and making notes-in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.
"I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside. I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship.
"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be this miserable trader-this intruder,' exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we had left. 'He must be English,' I said. 'It will not save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,' muttered the manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.
"The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of meddling.
"Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz's station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in daylight-not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three hours' steaming for us, and I could also see suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too, since one night more could not matter much after so many months. As we had plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought up in the middle of the stream. The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep-it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf-then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well. About three in the morning some large fish leaped, and the loud splash made me jump as though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round you like something solid. At eight or nine, perhaps, it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing little ball of the sun hanging over it-all perfectly still-and then the white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain, which we had begun to heave in, to be paid out again. Before it stopped running with a muffled rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation, soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamour, modulated in savage discords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of it made my hair stir under my cap. I don't know how it struck the others: to me it seemed as though the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and apparently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in a variety of silly attitudes, and obstinately listening to the nearly as appalling and excessive silence. 'Good God! What is the meaning-' stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims-a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks. Two others remained open-mouthed a while minute, then dashed into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and stand darting scared glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in their hands. What we could see was just the steamer we were on, her outlines blurred as though she had been on the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of water, perhaps two feet broad, around her-and that was all. The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere. Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a whisper or a shadow behind.
"I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. 'Will they attack?' whispered an awed voice. 'We will be all butchered in this fog,' murmured another. The faces twitched with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It was very curious to see the contrast of expressions of the white men and of the black fellows of our crew, who were as much strangers to that part of the river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred miles away. The whites, of course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an outrageous row. The others had an alert, naturally interested expression; but their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me. 'Aha!' I said, just for good fellowship's sake. 'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth-'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I asked; 'what would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!' he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past. They had been engaged for six months, and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defence. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on existence. Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. I must say it was paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable trading company. For the rest, the only thing to eat-though it didn't look eatable in the least-I saw in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it seemed done more for the looks of the thing than for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us-they were thirty to five-and have a good tuck-in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. They were big powerful men, with not much capacity to weigh the consequences, with courage, with strength, even yet, though their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining, one of those human secrets that baffle probability, had come into play there. I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest-not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived-in a new light, as it were-how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so-what shall I say?-so-unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time. Perhaps I had a little fever, too. One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other things-the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear-or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul-than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me-the fact dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater-when I thought of it-than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamour that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind whiteness of the fog.
"Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers as to which bank. 'Left.' 'no, no; how can you? Right, right, of course.' 'It is very serious,' said the manager's voice behind me; 'I would be desolated if anything should happen to Mr. Kurtz before we came up.' I looked at him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air-in space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we were going to-whether up or down stream, or across-till we fetched against one bank or the other-and then we wouldn't know at first which it was. Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether we drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or another. 'I authorize you to take all the risks,' he said, after a short silence. 'I refuse to take any,' I said shortly; which was just the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him. 'Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,' he said with marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it last? It was the most hopeless lookout. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. 'Will they attack, do you think?' asked the manager, in a confidential tone.
"I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons. The thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move. Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable-and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach-certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise-of the cries we had heard. They had not the fierce character boding immediate hostile intention. Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence-but more generally takes the form of apathy....
"You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile me: but I believe they thought me gone mad-with fright, maybe. I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a lookout? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it, too-choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive-it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.
"It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had just floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle of the stream. It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sand-bank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river. They were discoloured, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under the water, exactly as a man's backbone is seen running down the middle of his back under the skin. Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn't know either channel, of course. The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.
"No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water. In this shadow we steamed up-very slowly, as you may imagine. I sheered her well inshore-the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole informed me.
"One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow. On the deck, there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows. The boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern. Over the whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions. The funnel projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot-house. It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steering-wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side. All these were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door. At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute.
"I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up on the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water. At the same time the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks, were flying about-thick: they were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot-house. All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very quiet-perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at! I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the landside. That fool-helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a reined-in horse. Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes-the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening of bronze colour. The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to. 'Steer her straight,' I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. 'Keep quiet!' I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn back?' I caught sight of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag! A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now I couldn't see the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't kill a cat. The bush began to howl. Our wood-cutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no room to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank-right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.
"We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up at me; both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that, either thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side, just below the ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, after making a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid I would try to take it away from him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply-then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agitated, appeared in the doorway. 'The manager sends me-' he began in an official tone, and stopped short. 'Good God!' he said, glaring at the wounded man.
"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare it looked as though he would presently put to us some questions in an understandable language; but he died without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle. Only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you steer?' I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once I meant him to steer whether or no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. 'He is dead,' murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. 'No doubt about it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces. 'And by the way, I suppose Mr. Kurtz is dead as well by this time.'
"For the moment that was the dominant thought. There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as though I had found out I had been striving after something altogether without a substance. I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had travelled all this way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr. Kurtz. Talking with... I flung one shoe overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward to-a talk with Kurtz. I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say to myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will never shake him by the hand,' but, 'Now I will never hear him.' The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course that I did not connect him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told in all the tones of jealousy and admiration that he had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together? That was not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature, and that of all his gifts the one that stood out preeminently, that carried with it a sense of real presence, was his ability to talk, his words-the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from the heart of an impenetrable darkness.
"The other shoe went flying unto the devil-god of that river. I thought, 'By Jove! it's all over. We are too late; he has vanished-the gift has vanished, by means of some spear, arrow, or club. I will never hear that chap speak after all'-and my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of these savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.... Why do you sigh in this beastly way, somebody? Absurd? Well, absurd. Good Lord! mustn't a man ever-Here, give me some tobacco."...
There was a pause of profound stillness, then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared, worn, hollow, with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention; and as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed to retreat and advance out of the night in the regular flicker of tiny flame. The match went out.
"Absurd!" he cried. "This is the worst of trying to tell.... Here you all are, each moored with two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round another, excellent appetites, and temperature normal-you hear-normal from year's end to year's end. And you say, Absurd! Absurd be-exploded! Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes! Now I think of it, it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me. Oh, yes, I heard more than enough. And I was right, too. A voice. He was very little more than a voice. And I heard-him-it-this voice-other voices-all of them were so little more than voices-and the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices-even the girl herself-now-"
He was silent for a long time.
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he began, suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it-completely. They-the women, I mean-are out of it-should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of Mr. Kurtz saying, 'My Intended.' You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this-ah-specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball-an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and-lo!-he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes-but evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save the gifted Mr. Kurtz from his fate. We filled the steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this favour had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say, 'My ivory.' Oh, yes, I heard him. 'My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my-' everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged to him-but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible-it was not good for one either-trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land-I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?-with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums-how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude-utter solitude without a policeman-by the way of silence-utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong-too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil; the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil-I don't know which. Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place-and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!-breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. And there, don't you see? Your strength comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in-your power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure, back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough. Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain-I am trying to account to myself for-for-Mr. Kurtz-for the shade of Mr. Kurtz. This initiated wraith from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me. The original Kurtz had been educated partly in England, and-as he was good enough to say himself-his sympathies were in the right place. His mother was half-English, his father was half-French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and by and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his-let us say-nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which-as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various times-were offered up to him-do you understand?-to Mr. Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them in the nature of supernatural beings-we approach them with the might of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence-of words-of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet', as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career. I had full information about all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late helmsman awfully-I missed him even while his body was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will think it passing strange this regret for a savage who was no more account than a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see, he had done something, he had steered; for months I had him at my back-a help-an instrument. It was a kind of partnership. He steered for me-I had to look after him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory-like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter alone. He had no restraint, no restraint-just like Kurtz-a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little doorstep; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard. The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it for ever. All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies, and there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging about for I can't guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I had also heard another, and a very ominous, murmur on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of reason-though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a first-class temptation, and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
"This I did directly the simple funeral was over. We were going half-speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt-and so on-and so on. The red-haired pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at least this poor Kurtz had been properly avenged. 'Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar. And he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man! I could not help saying, 'You made a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with their eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained-and I was right-was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and began to howl at me with indignant protests.
"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the river before dark at all events, when I saw in the distance a clearing on the riverside and the outlines of some sort of building. 'What's this?' I asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. 'The station!' he cried. I edged in at once, still going half-speed.
"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long decaying building on the summit was half buried in the high grass; the large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the jungle and the woods made a background. There was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls. The rails, or whatever there had been between, had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded all that. The river-bank was clear, and on the waterside I saw a white man under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almost certain I could see movements-human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. 'We have been attacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know-I know. It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's all right. I am glad.'
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen-something funny I had seen somewhere. As I manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself, 'What does this fellow look like?' Suddenly I got it. He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over, with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow-patches on the back, patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully. I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little pug-nose up to me. 'You English?' he asked, all smiles. 'Are you?' I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened up. 'Never mind!' he cried encouragingly. 'Are we in time?' I asked. 'He is up there,' he replied, with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.
"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this. These natives are in the bush,' I said. He assured me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple people,' he added; 'well, I am glad you came. It took me all my time to keep them off.' 'But you said it was all right,' I cried. 'Oh, they meant no harm,' he said; and as I stared he corrected himself, 'Not exactly.' Then vivaciously, 'My faith, your pilot-house wants a clean-up!' In the next breath he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble. 'One good screech will do more for you than all your rifles. They are simple people,' he repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr. Kurtz?' I said. 'You don't talk with that man-you listen to him,' he exclaimed with severe exaltation. 'But now-' He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a moment he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands, shook them continuously, while he gabbled: 'Brother sailor... honour... pleasure... delight... introduce myself... Russian... son of an arch-priest... Government of Tambov... What? Tobacco! English tobacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly. Smoke? Where's a sailor that does not smoke?"
"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had run away from school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made a point of that. 'But when one is young one must see things, gather experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.' 'Here!' I interrupted. 'You can never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youthfully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-house on the coast to fit him out with stores and goods, and had started for the interior with a light heart and no more idea of what would happen to him than a baby. He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and everything. 'I am not so young as I look. I am twenty-five,' he said. 'At first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the devil,' he narrated with keen enjoyment; 'but I stuck to him, and talked and talked, till at last he got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his favourite dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few guns, and told me he hoped he would never see my face again. Good old Dutchman, Van Shuyten. I've sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so that he can't call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I don't care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my old house. Did you see?'
"I gave him Towson's book. He made as though he would kiss me, but restrained himself. 'The only book I had left, and I thought I had lost it,' he said, looking at it ecstatically. 'So many accidents happen to a man going about alone, you know. Canoes get upset sometimes-and sometimes you've got to clear out so quick when the people get angry.' He thumbed the pages. 'You made notes in Russian?' I asked. He nodded. 'I thought they were written in cipher,' I said. He laughed, then became serious. 'I had lots of trouble to keep these people off,' he said. 'Did they want to kill you?' I asked. 'Oh, no!' he cried, and checked himself. 'Why did they attack us?' I pursued. He hesitated, then said shamefacedly, 'They don't want him to go.' 'Don't they?' I said curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. 'I tell you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.' He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round."
III
"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain-why he did not instantly disappear. 'I went a little farther,' he said, 'then still a little farther-till I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick-quick-I tell you.' The glamour of youth enveloped his parti-coloured rags, his destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months-for years-his life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearances indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admiration-like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have consumed all thought of self so completely, that even while he was talking to you, you forgot that it was he-the man before your eyes-who had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.
"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. 'We talked of everything,' he said, quite transported at the recollection. 'I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything! Everything!... Of love, too.' 'Ah, he talked to you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he cried, almost passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see things-things.'
"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman of my wood-cutters, lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I assure you that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever since, you have been with him, of course?' I said.
"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken by various causes. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz through two illnesses, but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the forest. 'Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and days before he would turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth waiting for!-sometimes.' 'What was he doing? exploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh, yes, of course'; he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too-he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much-but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. 'But he had no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. 'There's a good lot of cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'To speak plainly, he raided the country,' I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He muttered something about the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little. 'They adored him,' he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know-and they had never seen anything like it-and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now-just to give you an idea-I don't mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day-but I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried 'What for?' 'Well, I had a small lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well, he wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true, too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care! But I didn't clear out. No, no. I couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, of course, till we got friendly again for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He was living for the most part in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes he would take to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be careful. This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself amongst these people-forget himself-you know.' 'Why! he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing.... I had taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in that bush, so silent, so quiet-as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill-made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask-heavy, like the closed door of a prison-they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months-getting himself adored, I suppose-and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention to all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the-what shall I say?-less material aspirations. However he had got much worse suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came up-took my chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad.' I directed my glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing-food for thought and also for vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise. I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned deliberately to the first I had seen-and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.
"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the district. I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him-some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last-only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude-and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.... I put down the glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.
"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these-say, symbols-down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl.... 'I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details would be more intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist-obviously-in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life-or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers-and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last disciple. 'Well, and you?' I said. 'I! I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to...?' His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I-I-haven't slept for the last ten nights...'
"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped downhill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling splendour, with a murky and overshadowed bend above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.
"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings-of naked human beings-with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility.
"'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped, too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonouring necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz-Kurtz-that means short in German-don't it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life-and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide-it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a long aspiration.
"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms-two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine-the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins-just a room for a bed place and a camp-stool or two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.
"He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him-factitious no doubt-to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly.
"The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.
"Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.
"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul.
"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.
"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.
"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her,' said the man of patches, nervously. 'I have been risking my life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At least it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don't understand.... No-it's too much for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.'
"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain: 'Save me!-save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save me! Why, I've had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out yet-I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions-you are interfering with me. I will return. I....'
"The manager came out. He did me the honour to take me under the arm and lead me aside. 'He is very low, very low,' he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We have done all we could for him-haven't we? But there is no disguising the fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously, cautiously-that's my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will suffer. I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory-mostly fossil. We must save it, at all events-but look how precarious the position is-and why? Because the method is unsound.' 'Do you,' said I, looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound method?"' 'Without doubt,' he exclaimed hotly. 'Don't you?'... 'No method at all,' I murmured after a while. 'Exactly,' he exulted. 'I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.' 'Oh,' said I, 'that fellow-what's his name?-the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.' He appeared confounded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief-positively for relief. 'Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with emphasis. He started, dropped on me a heavy glance, said very quietly, 'he was,' and turned his back on me. My hour of favour was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.
"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.... The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman-couldn't conceal-knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.' I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. 'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out. As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz's friend-in a way.'
"He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been 'of the same profession,' he would have kept the matter to himself without regard to consequences. 'He suspected there was an active ill-will towards him on the part of these white men that-' 'You are right,' I said, remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. 'The manager thinks you ought to be hanged.' He showed a concern at this intelligence which amused me at first. 'I had better get out of the way quietly,' he said earnestly. 'I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon find some excuse. What's to stop them? There's a military post three hundred miles from here.' 'Well, upon my word,' said I, 'perhaps you had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by.' 'Plenty,' he said. 'They are simple people-and I want nothing, you know.' He stood biting his lip, then: 'I don't want any harm to happen to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's reputation-but you are a brother seaman and-' 'All right,' said I, after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I did not know how truly I spoke.
"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made on the steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of being taken away-and then again.... But I don't understand these matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away-that you would give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an awful time of it this last month.' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is all right now.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently. 'Thanks,' said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open.' 'But quiet-eh?' he urged anxiously. 'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here-' I promised a complete discretion with great gravity. 'I have a canoe and three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between sailors-you know-good English tobacco.' At the door of the pilot-house he turned round-'I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?' He raised one leg. 'Look.' The soles were tied with knotted strings sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his pockets peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' etc., etc. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. 'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry-his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Good-bye,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him-whether it was possible to meet such a phenomenon!...
"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks, armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz was not there.
"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I didn't believe them at first-the thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What made this emotion so overpowering was-how shall I define it?-the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much that I did not raise an alarm.
"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I did not betray Mr. Kurtz-it was ordered I should never betray him-it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone-and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience.
"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail-a broad trail through the grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, 'He can't walk-he is crawling on all-fours-I've got him.' The grass was wet with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I don't know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the woods to an advanced age. Such silly things-you know. And I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart, and was pleased at its calm regularity.
"I kept to the track though-then stopped to listen. The night was very clear; a dark blue space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in which black things stood very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that night. I actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle so as to get in front of that stir, of that motion I had seen-if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as though it had been a boyish game.
"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me coming, I would have fallen over him, too, but he got up in time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct, like a vapour exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed between the trees, and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest. I had cut him off cleverly; but when actually confronting him I seemed to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was by no means over yet. Suppose he began to shout? Though he could hardly stand, there was still plenty of vigour in his voice. 'Go away-hide yourself,' he said, in that profound tone. It was very awful. I glanced back. We were within thirty yards from the nearest fire. A black figure stood up, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow. It had horns-antelope horns, I think-on its head. Some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt: it looked fiendlike enough. 'Do you know what you are doing?' I whispered. 'Perfectly,' he answered, raising his voice for that single word: it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail through a speaking-trumpet. 'If he makes a row we are lost,' I thought to myself. This clearly was not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow-this wandering and tormented thing. 'You will be lost,' I said-'utterly lost.' One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right thing, though indeed he could not have been more irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment, when the foundations of our intimacy were being laid-to endure-to endure-even to the end-even beyond.
"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely. 'Yes,' said I; 'but if you try to shout I'll smash your head with-' There was not a stick or a stone near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected myself. 'I was on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold. 'And now for this stupid scoundrel-' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any case,' I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of him, you understand-and indeed it would have been very little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell-the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness-that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head-though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too-but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him-himself-his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone, and I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling you what we said-repeating the phrases we pronounced-but what's the good? They were common everyday words-the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. Soul! If anybody ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear-concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance-barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had-for my sins, I suppose-to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it-I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. I kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped round my neck-and he was not much heavier than a child.
"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung down stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with bright red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tail-something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the responses of some satanic litany.
"We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there was more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance.
"'Do you understand this?' I asked.
"He kept on looking out past me with fiery, longing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile of indefinable meaning, appear on his colourless lips that a moment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had been torn out of him by a supernatural power.
"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark. At the sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror through that wedged mass of bodies. 'Don't! don't you frighten them away,' cried some one on deck disconsolately. I pulled the string time after time. They broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the sound. The three red chaps had fallen flat, face down on the shore, as though they had been shot dead. Only the barbarous and superb woman did not so much as flinch, and stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the sombre and glittering river.
"And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck started their little fun, and I could see nothing more for smoke.
"The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. The manager was very placid, he had no vital anxieties now, he took us both in with a comprehensive and satisfied glance: the 'affair' had come off as well as could be wished. I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of 'unsound method.' The pilgrims looked upon me with disfavour. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead. It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partnership, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy phantoms.
"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by shadowy images now-images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my station, my career, my ideas-these were the subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original Kurtz frequented the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the mould of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.
"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things. 'You show them you have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will be no limits to the recognition of your ability,' he would say. 'Of course you must take care of the motives-right motives-always.' The long reaches that were like one and the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly alike, slipped past the steamer with their multitude of secular trees looking patiently after this grimy fragment of another world, the forerunner of change, of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I looked ahead-piloting. 'Close the shutter,' said Kurtz suddenly one day; 'I can't bear to look at this.' I did so. There was a silence. 'Oh, but I will wring your heart yet!' he cried at the invisible wilderness.
"We broke down-as I had expected-and had to lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's confidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers and a photograph-the lot tied together with a shoe-string. 'Keep this for me,' he said. 'This noxious fool' 'is capable of prying into my boxes when I am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him. He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter, 'Live rightly, die, die...' I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, 'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'
"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and in other such matters. I lived in an infernal mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers, ratchet-drills-things I abominate, because I don't get on with them. I tended the little forge we fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a wretched scrap-heap-unless I had the shakes too bad to stand.
"One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to murmur, 'Oh, nonsense!' and stood over him as if transfixed.
"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror-of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision-he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
"'The horror! The horror!'
"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt:
"'Mistah Kurtz-he dead.'
"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not eat much. There was a lamp in there-light, don't you know-and outside it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course aware that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.
"And then they very nearly buried me.
"However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is-that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. He had summed up-he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth-the strange commingling of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity I remember best-a vision of greyness without form filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things-even of this pain itself. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry-much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.
"No, they did not bury me, though there is a period of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder, like a passage through some inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces so full of stupid importance. I daresay I was not very well at that time. I tottered about the streets-there were various affairs to settle-grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I admit my behaviour was inexcusable, but then my temperature was seldom normal in these days. My dear aunt's endeavours to 'nurse up my strength' seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers given me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do with it. His mother had died lately, watched over, as I was told, by his Intended. A clean-shaved man, with an official manner and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries, at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about what he was pleased to denominate certain 'documents.' I was not surprised, because I had had two rows with the manager on the subject out there. I had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that package, and I took the same attitude with the spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at last, and with much heat argued that the Company had the right to every bit of information about its 'territories.' And said he, 'Mr. Kurtz's knowledge of unexplored regions must have been necessarily extensive and peculiar-owing to his great abilities and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had been placed: therefore-' I assured him Mr. Kurtz's knowledge, however extensive, did not bear upon the problems of commerce or administration. He invoked then the name of science. 'It would be an incalculable loss if,' etc., etc. I offered him the report on the 'Suppression of Savage Customs,' with the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly, but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt. 'This is not what we had a right to expect,' he remarked. 'Expect nothing else,' I said. 'There are only private letters.' He withdrew upon some threat of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more; but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin, appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear all the details about his dear relative's last moments. Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz had been essentially a great musician. 'There was the making of an immense success,' said the man, who was an organist, I believe, with lank grey hair flowing over a greasy coat-collar. I had no reason to doubt his statement; and to this day I am unable to say what was Kurtz's profession, whether he ever had any-which was the greatest of his talents. I had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers, or else for a journalist who could paint-but even the cousin could not tell me what he had been-exactly. He was a universal genius-on that point I agreed with the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily into a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in senile agitation, bearing off some family letters and memoranda without importance. Ultimately a journalist anxious to know something of the fate of his 'dear colleague' turned up. This visitor informed me Kurtz's proper sphere ought to have been politics 'on the popular side.' He had furry straight eyebrows, bristly hair cropped short, an eyeglass on a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive, confessed his opinion that Kurtz really couldn't write a bit-'but heavens! how that man could talk. He electrified large meetings. He had faith-don't you see?-he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything-anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?' I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was an-an-extremist.' Did I not think so? I assented. Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity, 'what it was that had induced him to go out there?' 'Yes,' said I, and forthwith handed him the famous Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged 'it would do,' and took himself off with this plunder.
"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me as beautiful-I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features. She seemed ready to listen without mental reservation, without suspicion, without a thought for herself. I concluded I would go and give her back her portrait and those letters myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feeling perhaps. All that had been Kurtz's had passed out of my hands: his soul, his body, his station, his plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only his memory and his Intended-and I wanted to give that up, too, to the past, in a way-to surrender personally all that remained of him with me to that oblivion which is the last word of our common fate. I don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of what it was I really wanted. Perhaps it was an impulse of unconscious loyalty, or the fulfilment of one of those ironic necessities that lurk in the facts of human existence. I don't know. I can't tell. But I went.
"I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man's life-a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage; but before the high and ponderous door, between the tall houses of a street as still and decorous as a well-kept alley in a cemetery, I had a vision of him on the stretcher, opening his mouth voraciously, as if to devour all the earth with all its mankind. He lived then before me; he lived as much as he had ever lived-a shadow insatiable of splendid appearances, of frightful realities; a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me-the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart-the heart of a conquering darkness. It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness, an invading and vengeful rush which, it seemed to me, I would have to keep back alone for the salvation of another soul. And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those broken phrases came back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected languid manner, when he said one day, 'This lot of ivory now is really mine. The Company did not pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim it as theirs though. H'm. It is a difficult case. What do you think I ought to do-resist? Eh? I want no more than justice.'... He wanted no more than justice-no more than justice. I rang the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor, and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of the glassy panel-stare with that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, "The horror! The horror!"
"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty drawing-room with three long windows from floor to ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furniture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus. A high door opened-closed. I rose.
"She came forward, all in black, with a pale head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was in mourning. It was more than a year since his death, more than a year since the news came; she seemed as though she would remember and mourn forever. She took both my hands in hers and murmured, 'I had heard you were coming.' I noticed she was not very young-I mean not girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless, profound, confident, and trustful. She carried her sorrowful head as though she were proud of that sorrow, as though she would say, 'I-I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.' But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of Time. For her he had died only yesterday. And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that for me, too, he seemed to have died only yesterday-nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the same instant of time-his death and her sorrow-I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do you understand? I saw them together-I heard them together. She had said, with a deep catch of the breath, 'I have survived' while my strained ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with her tone of despairing regret, the summing up whisper of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down. I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she put her hand over it.... 'You knew him well,' she murmured, after a moment of mourning silence.
"'Intimacy grows quickly out there,' I said. 'I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.'
"'And you admired him,' she said. 'It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?'
"'He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily. Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went on, 'It was impossible not to-'
"'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into an appalled dumbness. 'How true! how true! But when you think that no one knew him so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'
"'You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps she did. But with every word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love.
"'You were his friend,' she went on. 'His friend,' she repeated, a little louder. 'You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you-and oh! I must speak. I want you-you who have heard his last words-to know I have been worthy of him.... It is not pride.... Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than any one on earth-he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one-no one-to-to-'
"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not even sure whether he had given me the right bundle. I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the manager examining under the lamp. And the girl talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough or something. And indeed I don't know whether he had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me some reason to infer that it was his impatience of comparative poverty that drove him out there.
"'... Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?' she was saying. 'He drew men towards him by what was best in them.' She looked at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds, full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever heard-the ripple of the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. 'But you have heard him! You know!' she cried.
"'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her-from which I could not even defend myself.
"'What a loss to me-to us!'-she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, 'To the world.' By the last gleams of twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of tears-of tears that would not fall.
"'I have been very happy-very fortunate-very proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for-for life.'
"She stood up; her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose, too.
"'And of all this,' she went on mournfully, 'of all his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains-nothing but a memory. You and I-'
"'We shall always remember him,' I said hastily.
"'No!' she cried. 'It is impossible that all this should be lost-that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing-but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too-I could not perhaps understand-but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.'
"'His words will remain,' I said.
"'And his example,' she whispered to herself. 'Men looked up to him-his goodness shone in every act. His example-'
"'True,' I said; 'his example, too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.'
"But I do not. I cannot-I cannot believe-not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never.'
"She put out her arms as if after a retreating figure, stretching them back and with clasped pale hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I live, and I shall see her, too, a tragic and familiar Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness. She said suddenly very low, 'He died as he lived.'
"'His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me, 'was in every way worthy of his life.'
"'And I was not with him,' she murmured. My anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.
"'Everything that could be done-' I mumbled.
"'Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on earth-more than his own mother, more than-himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'
"I felt like a chill grip on my chest. 'Don't,' I said, in a muffled voice.
"'Forgive me. I-I have mourned so long in silence-in silence.... You were with him-to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear....'
"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words....' I stopped in a fright.
"'Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want-I want-something-something-to-to live with.'
"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'
"'His last word-to live with,' she insisted. 'Don't you understand I loved him-I loved him-I loved him!'
"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
"'The last word he pronounced was-your name.'
"I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of unspeakable pain. 'I knew it-I was sure!'... She knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark-too dark altogether...."
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

Frankenstein
By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Letter 1
To Mrs. Saville, England
St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17-
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is forever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There-for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators- there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent forever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this labourious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose-a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good Uncle Thomas' library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father's dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet and for one year lived in a paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services.
And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.
This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs- a dress which I have already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and Archangel.
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.
Your affectionate brother,
R. Walton
Letter 2
To Mrs. Saville, England
Archangel, 28th March, 17-
How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage.
But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want *keeping*; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.
The master is a person of an excellent disposition and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be necessary, and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. I heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago he loved a young Russian lady of moderate fortune, and having amassed a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in tears, and throwing herself at his feet, entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. My generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover, instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young woman's father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my friend, who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations. 'What a noble fellow!' you will exclaim. He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command.
Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little or because I can conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate, and my voyage is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well, and it is considered as a remarkably early season, so that perhaps I may sail sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.
I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions, to 'the land of mist and snow,' but I shall kill no albatross; therefore do not be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the 'Ancient Mariner.' You will smile at my allusion, but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious-painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour-but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.
But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.
Your affectionate brother,
Robert Walton
Letter 3
To Mrs. Saville, England
July 7th, 17-
My dear Sister,
I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe- and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected.
No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter. One or two stiff gales and the springing of a leak are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record, and I shall be well content if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage.
Adieu, my dear Margaret. Be assured that for my own sake, as well as yours, I will not rashly encounter danger. I will be cool, persevering, and prudent.
But success *shall* crown my endeavours. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?
My swelling heart involuntarily pours itself out thus. But I must finish. Heaven bless my beloved sister!
R.W.
Letter 4
To Mrs. Saville, England
August 5th, 17-
So strange an accident has happened to us that I cannot forbear recording it, although it is very probable that you will see me before these papers can come into your possession.
Last Monday we were nearly surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides, scarcely leaving her the sea-room in which she floated. Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were compassed round by a very thick fog. We accordingly lay to, hoping that some change would take place in the atmosphere and weather.
About two o'clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.
This appearance excited our unqualified wonder. We were, as we believed, many hundred miles from any land; but this apparition seemed to denote that it was not, in reality, so distant as we had supposed. Shut in, however, by ice, it was impossible to follow his track, which we had observed with the greatest attention.
About two hours after this occurrence we heard the ground sea, and before night the ice broke and freed our ship. We, however, lay to until the morning, fearing to encounter in the dark those large loose masses which float about after the breaking up of the ice. I profited of this time to rest for a few hours.
In the morning, however, as soon as it was light, I went upon deck and found all the sailors busy on one side of the vessel, apparently talking to someone in the sea. It was, in fact, a sledge, like that we had seen before, which had drifted towards us in the night on a large fragment of ice. Only one dog remained alive; but there was a human being within it whom the sailors were persuading to enter the vessel. He was not, as the other traveller seemed to be, a savage inhabitant of some undiscovered island, but a European. When I appeared on deck the master said, 'Here is our captain, and he will not allow you to perish on the open sea.'
On perceiving me, the stranger addressed me in English, although with a foreign accent. 'Before I come on board your vessel,' said he, 'will you have the kindness to inform me whither you are bound?'
You may conceive my astonishment on hearing such a question addressed to me from a man on the brink of destruction and to whom I should have supposed that my vessel would have been a resource which he would not have exchanged for the most precious wealth the earth can afford. I replied, however, that we were on a voyage of discovery towards the northern pole.
Upon hearing this he appeared satisfied and consented to come on board. Good God! Margaret, if you had seen the man who thus capitulated for his safety, your surprise would have been boundless. His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition. We attempted to carry him into the cabin, but as soon as he had quitted the fresh air he fainted. We accordingly brought him back to the deck and restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he showed signs of life we wrapped him up in blankets and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen stove. By slow degrees he recovered and ate a little soup, which restored him wonderfully.
Two days passed in this manner before he was able to speak, and I often feared that his sufferings had deprived him of understanding. When he had in some measure recovered, I removed him to my own cabin and attended on him as much as my duty would permit. I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if anyone performs an act of kindness towards him or does him the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled. But he is generally melancholy and despairing, and sometimes he gnashes his teeth, as if impatient of the weight of woes that oppresses him.
When my guest was a little recovered I had great trouble to keep off the men, who wished to ask him a thousand questions; but I would not allow him to be tormented by their idle curiosity, in a state of body and mind whose restoration evidently depended upon entire repose. Once, however, the lieutenant asked why he had come so far upon the ice in so strange a vehicle.
His countenance instantly assumed an aspect of the deepest gloom, and he replied, 'To seek one who fled from me.'
'And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fashion?'
'Yes.'
'Then I fancy we have seen him, for the day before we picked you up we saw some dogs drawing a sledge, with a man in it, across the ice.'
This aroused the stranger's attention, and he asked a multitude of questions concerning the route which the demon, as he called him, had pursued. Soon after, when he was alone with me, he said, 'I have, doubtless, excited your curiosity, as well as that of these good people; but you are too considerate to make inquiries.'
'Certainly; it would indeed be very impertinent and inhuman of me to trouble you with any inquisitiveness of mine.'
'And yet you rescued me from a strange and perilous situation; you have benevolently restored me to life.'
Soon after this he inquired if I thought that the breaking up of the ice had destroyed the other sledge. I replied that I could not answer with any degree of certainty, for the ice had not broken until near midnight, and the traveller might have arrived at a place of safety before that time; but of this I could not judge.
From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger. He manifested the greatest eagerness to be upon deck to watch for the sledge which had before appeared; but I have persuaded him to remain in the cabin, for he is far too weak to sustain the rawness of the atmosphere. I have promised that someone should watch for him and give him instant notice if any new object should appear in sight.
Such is my journal of what relates to this strange occurrence up to the present day. The stranger has gradually improved in health but is very silent and appears uneasy when anyone except myself enters his cabin. Yet his manners are so conciliating and gentle that the sailors are all interested in him, although they have had very little communication with him. For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable.
I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.
I shall continue my journal concerning the stranger at intervals, should I have any fresh incidents to record.
August 13th, 17-
My affection for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence.
He is now much recovered from his illness and is continually on the deck, apparently watching for the sledge that preceded his own. Yet, although unhappy, he is not so utterly occupied by his own misery but that he interests himself deeply in the projects of others. He has frequently conversed with me on mine, which I have communicated to him without disguise. He entered attentively into all my arguments in favour of my eventual success and into every minute detail of the measures I had taken to secure it. I was easily led by the sympathy which he evinced to use the language of my heart, to give utterance to the burning ardour of my soul, and to say, with all the fervour that warmed me, how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race. As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener's countenance. At first I perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast. I paused; at length he spoke, in broken accents: 'Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!'
Such words, you may imagine, strongly excited my curiosity; but the paroxysm of grief that had seized the stranger overcame his weakened powers, and many hours of repose and tranquil conversation were necessary to restore his composure.
Having conquered the violence of his feelings, he appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion; and quelling the dark tyranny of despair, he led me again to converse concerning myself personally. He asked me the history of my earlier years. The tale was quickly told, but it awakened various trains of reflection. I spoke of my desire of finding a friend, of my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot, and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness who did not enjoy this blessing.
'I agree with you,' replied the stranger; 'we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves- such a friend ought to be-do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I-I have lost everything and cannot begin life anew.'
As he said this his countenance became expressive of a calm, settled grief that touched me to the heart. But he was silent and presently retired to his cabin.
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions seem still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery and be overwhelmed by disappointments, yet when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.
Will you smile at the enthusiasm I express concerning this divine wanderer? You would not if you saw him. You have been tutored and refined by books and retirement from the world, and you are therefore somewhat fastidious; but this only renders you the more fit to appreciate the extraordinary merits of this wonderful man. Sometimes I have endeavoured to discover what quality it is which he possesses that elevates him so immeasurably above any other person I ever knew. I believe it to be an intuitive discernment, a quick but never-failing power of judgment, a penetration into the causes of things, unequalled for clearness and precision; add to this a facility of expression and a voice whose varied intonations are soul-subduing music.
August 19, 17-
Yesterday the stranger said to me, 'You may easily perceive, Captain Walton, that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes. I had determined at one time that the memory of these evils should die with me, but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale, one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking and console you in case of failure. Prepare to hear of occurrences which are usually deemed marvellous. Were we among the tamer scenes of nature I might fear to encounter your unbelief, perhaps your ridicule; but many things will appear possible in these wild and mysterious regions which would provoke the laughter of those unacquainted with the ever-varied powers of nature; nor can I doubt but that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of the truth of the events of which it is composed.'
You may easily imagine that I was much gratified by the offered communication, yet I could not endure that he should renew his grief by a recital of his misfortunes. I felt the greatest eagerness to hear the promised narrative, partly from curiosity and partly from a strong desire to ameliorate his fate if it were in my power. I expressed these feelings in my answer.
'I thank you,' he replied, 'for your sympathy, but it is useless; my fate is nearly fulfilled. I wait but for one event, and then I shall repose in peace. I understand your feeling,' continued he, perceiving that I wished to interrupt him; 'but you are mistaken, my friend, if thus you will allow me to name you; nothing can alter my destiny; listen to my history, and you will perceive how irrevocably it is determined.'
He then told me that he would commence his narrative the next day when I should be at leisure. This promise drew from me the warmest thanks. I have resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure; but to me, who know him and who hear it from his own lips-with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day! Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within. Strange and harrowing must be his story, frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course and wrecked it-thus!
Chapter 1
I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family.
As the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Beaufort with the truest friendship and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.
Beaufort had taken effectual measures to conceal himself, and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street near the Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Beaufort had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes, but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant's house. The interval was, consequently, spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion.
His daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness, but she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing and that there was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Beaufort possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support her in her adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.
Several months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her, and she knelt by Beaufort's coffin weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care; and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.
There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. There was a sense of justice in my father's upright mind which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behaviour to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind. Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. During the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, and the change of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders, as a restorative for her weakened frame.
From Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was born at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I remained for several years their only child. Much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better-their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.
For a long time I was their only care. My mother had much desired to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring. When I was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como. Their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. This, to my mother, was more than a duty; it was a necessity, a passion-remembering what she had suffered, and how she had been relieved-for her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the afflicted. During one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. One day, when my father had gone by himself to Milan, my mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode. She found a peasant and his wife, hard working, bent down by care and labour, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.
The peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not been long married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy-one among the *schiavi ognor frementi*, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its weakness. Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known. His property was confiscated; his child became an orphan and a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles.
When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub- a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. The apparition was soon explained. With his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection. They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents' house- my more than sister-the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures.
Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, 'I have a pretty present for my Victor- tomorrow he shall have it.' And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine-mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me-my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.
Chapter 2
We were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge. She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home-the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers-she found ample scope for admiration and delight. While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.
On the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Henry Clerval was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.
No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.
My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.
Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul of Elizabeth shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become sullen in my study, through the ardour of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And Clerval-could aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Clerval? Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition.
I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterward ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, 'Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.'
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy's apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.
The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomize, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.
But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! Nor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfillment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration.
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life-the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.
It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.
Chapter 3
When I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred-an omen, as it were, of my future misery. Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper-Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. 'My children,' she said, 'my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.'
She died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever-that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized. My departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me, and above all, I desired to see my sweet Elizabeth in some degree consoled.
She indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time, when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. She forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget.
The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.
We sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word 'Farewell!' It was said, and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived; but when at morning's dawn I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there-my father again to bless me, Clerval to press my hand once more, my Elizabeth to renew her entreaties that I would write often and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend.
I threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure-I was now alone. In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends and be my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Elizabeth, and Clerval; these were 'old familiar faces,' but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent.
I had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased.
The next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors. Chance-or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment I turned my reluctant steps from my father's door-led me first to M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. 'Have you,' he said, 'really spent your time in studying such nonsense?'
I replied in the affirmative. 'Every minute,' continued M. Krempe with warmth, 'every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.'
So saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Waldman, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted.
I returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
Such were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the information which M. Krempe had given me concerning the lectures. And although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M. Waldman, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.
Partly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. His person was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: 'The ancient teachers of this science,' said he, 'promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.'
Such were the professor's words-rather let me say such the words of the fate-enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.
I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning's dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight's thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Waldman a visit. His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public, for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. I gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had given to his fellow professor. He heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Krempe had exhibited. He said that 'These were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.' I listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation, and then added that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists; I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labours. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.
'I am happy,' said M. Waldman, 'to have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.' He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave.
Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.
Chapter 4
From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation. I read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination, which modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the lectures and cultivated the acquaintance of the men of science of the university, and I found even in M. Krempe a great deal of sound sense and real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy and manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In M. Waldman I found a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism, and his instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature that banished every idea of pedantry. In a thousand ways he smoothed for me the path of knowledge and made the most abstruse inquiries clear and facile to my apprehension. My application was at first fluctuating and uncertain; it gained strength as I proceeded and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory.
As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters. Professor Krempe often asked me, with a sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on, whilst M. Waldman expressed the most heartfelt exultation in my progress. Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make. None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study; and I, who continually sought the attainment of one object of pursuit and was solely wrapped up in this, improved so rapidly that at the end of two years I made some discoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.
One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me-a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.
Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.
The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering and seemingly ineffectual light.
I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be; listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complete and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking, but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect, yet when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.
These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realize. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.
The summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow a more plentiful harvest or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I well remembered the words of my father: 'I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected.'
I knew well therefore what would be my father's feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.
I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame. A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
But I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my tale, and your looks remind me to proceed. My father made no reproach in his letters and only took notice of my science by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before. Winter, spring, and summer passed away during my labours; but I did not watch the blossom or the expanding leaves-sights which before always yielded me supreme delight-so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation. The leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a close, and now every day showed me more plainly how well I had succeeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment. Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree; the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised myself both of these when my creation should be complete.
Chapter 5
It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.
The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch- the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.
Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.
I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!
Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky.
I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:
Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew not why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew nearer I observed that it was the Swiss diligence; it stopped just where I was standing, and on the door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. 'My dear Frankenstein,' exclaimed he, 'how glad I am to see you! How fortunate that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!'
Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. 'You may easily believe,' said he, 'how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of bookkeeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in *The Vicar of Wakefield*: 'I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.' But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.'
'It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left my father, brothers, and Elizabeth.'
'Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you so seldom. By the by, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account myself. But, my dear Frankenstein,' continued he, stopping short and gazing full in my face, 'I did not before remark how very ill you appear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for several nights.'
'You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one occupation that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see; but I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an end and that I am at length free.'
I trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to allude to, the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive and walking about. I dreaded to behold this monster, but I feared still more that Henry should see him. Entreating him, therefore, to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused, and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty, and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good fortune could have befallen me, but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy and ran down to Clerval.
We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast; but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed me; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud. Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival, but when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes for which he could not account, and my loud, unrestrained, heartless laughter frightened and astonished him.
'My dear Victor,' cried he, 'what, for God's sake, is the matter? Do not laugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the cause of all this?'
'Do not ask me,' cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; '*he* can tell. Oh, save me! Save me!' I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled furiously and fell down in a fit.
Poor Clerval! What must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I was not the witness of his grief, for I was lifeless and did not recover my senses for a long, long time.
This was the commencement of a nervous fever which confined me for several months. During all that time Henry was my only nurse. I afterwards learned that, knowing my father's advanced age and unfitness for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make Elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my disorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive nurse than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he did not doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest action that he could towards them.
But I was in reality very ill, and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my words surprised Henry; he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my disturbed imagination, but the pertinacity with which I continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event.
By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses that alarmed and grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared and that the young buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was a divine spring, and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion.
'Dearest Clerval,' exclaimed I, 'how kind, how very good you are to me. This whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you promised yourself, has been consumed in my sick room. How shall I ever repay you? I feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which I have been the occasion, but you will forgive me.'
'You will repay me entirely if you do not discompose yourself, but get well as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I may speak to you on one subject, may I not?'
I trembled. One subject! What could it be? Could he allude to an object on whom I dared not even think?
'Compose yourself,' said Clerval, who observed my change of colour, 'I will not mention it if it agitates you; but your father and cousin would be very happy if they received a letter from you in your own handwriting. They hardly know how ill you have been and are uneasy at your long silence.'
'Is that all, my dear Henry? How could you suppose that my first thought would not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom I love and who are so deserving of my love?'
'If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to see a letter that has been lying here some days for you; it is from your cousin, I believe.'
Chapter 6
Clerval then put the following letter into my hands. It was from my own Elizabeth:
My dearest Cousin,
You have been ill, very ill, and even the constant letters of dear kind Henry are not sufficient to reassure me on your account. You are forbidden to write-to hold a pen; yet one word from you, dear Victor, is necessary to calm our apprehensions. For a long time I have thought that each post would bring this line, and my persuasions have restrained my uncle from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. I have prevented his encountering the inconveniences and perhaps dangers of so long a journey, yet how often have I regretted not being able to perform it myself! I figure to myself that the task of attending on your sickbed has devolved on some mercenary old nurse, who could never guess your wishes nor minister to them with the care and affection of your poor cousin. Yet that is over now: Clerval writes that indeed you are getting better. I eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon in your own handwriting.
Get well-and return to us. You will find a happy, cheerful home and friends who love you dearly. Your father's health is vigorous, and he asks but to see you, but to be assured that you are well; and not a care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance. How pleased you would be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is now sixteen and full of activity and spirit. He is desirous to be a true Swiss and to enter into foreign service, but we cannot part with him, at least until his elder brother return to us. My uncle is not pleased with the idea of a military career in a distant country, but Ernest never had your powers of application. He looks upon study as an odious fetter; his time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake. I fear that he will become an idler unless we yield the point and permit him to enter on the profession which he has selected.
Little alteration, except the growth of our dear children, has taken place since you left us. The blue lake and snow-clad mountains-they never change; and I think our placid home and our contented hearts are regulated by the same immutable laws. My trifling occupations take up my time and amuse me, and I am rewarded for any exertions by seeing none but happy, kind faces around me. Since you left us, but one change has taken place in our little household. Do you remember on what occasion Justine Moritz entered our family? Probably you do not; I will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father, but through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this, and when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our house. The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.
Justine, you may remember, was a great favourite of yours; and I recollect you once remarked that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica-she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions; I never heard one pass her lips, but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her.
When my dearest aunt died every one was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her.
One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her repentant mother. Poor girl! She wept when she quitted our house; she was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her residence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged Justine to forgive her unkindness but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter. Justine has returned to us, and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is very clever and gentle and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her mien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt.
I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eyelashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. He has already had one or two little *wives*, but Louisa Biron is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age.
Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon, married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favourite schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively, pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older than Manoir, but she is very much admired and a favourite with everybody.
I have written myself into better spirits, dear cousin; but my anxiety returns upon me as I conclude. Write, dearest Victor-one line-one word will be a blessing to us. Ten thousand thanks to Henry for his kindness, his affection, and his many letters; we are sincerely grateful. Adieu! My cousin, take care of yourself, and, I entreat you, write!
Elizabeth Lavenza
Geneva, March 18th, 17-
'Dear, dear Elizabeth!' I exclaimed when I had read her letter. 'I will write instantly and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel.' I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber.
One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment, for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the subject, but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty and changed the subject from my improvement to the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I writhed under his words yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide to him that event which was so often present to my recollection but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply.
M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh, blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. 'D-n the fellow!' cried he. 'Why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstripped us all. Ay, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster who, but a few years ago, believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the Gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance. Ay, ay,' continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, 'M. Frankenstein is modest, an excellent quality in a young man. Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval; I was myself when young; but that wears out in a very short time.'
M. Krempe had now commenced a eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.
Clerval had never sympathized in my tastes for natural science, and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me. He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the Oriental languages, as thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself. Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes towards the East as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. The Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on the same studies. Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the Orientalists. I did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement. I read merely to understand their meaning, and they well repaid my labours. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses, in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome!
Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly, for I longed to see my native town and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully, and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness.
The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt, that I might bid a personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval had always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature that I had taken among the scenes of my native country.
We passed a fortnight in these perambulations; my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow creatures and rendered me unsocial, but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature and the cheerful faces of children. Excellent friend! How sincerely did you love me and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own! A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud. I was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible burden.
Henry rejoiced in my gaiety and sincerely sympathized in my feelings; he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing; his conversation was full of imagination, and very often, in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite poems or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity.
We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon; the peasants were dancing, and everyone we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.
Chapter 7
On my return, I found the following letter from my father:-
'My dear Victor,
'You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of your return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few lines, merely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But that would be a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise, my son, when you expected a happy and glad welcome, to behold, on the contrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Victor, can I relate our misfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and griefs; and how shall I inflict pain on my long absent son? I wish to prepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now your eye skims over the page to seek the words which are to convey to you the horrible tidings.
William is dead!-that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed my heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Victor, he is murdered! I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the circumstances of the transaction.
Last Thursday, I, my niece, and your two brothers, went to walk in Plainpalais. The evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged our walk farther than usual. It was already dusk before we thought of returning; and then we discovered that William and Ernest, who had gone on before, were not to be found. We accordingly rested on a seat until they should return. Presently Ernest came, and enquired if we had seen his brother; he said, that he had been playing with him, that William had run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and afterwards waited for a long time, but that he did not return.
This account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him until night fell, when Elizabeth conjectured that he might have returned to the house. He was not there. We returned again, with torches; for I could not rest, when I thought that my sweet boy had lost himself, and was exposed to all the damps and dews of night; Elizabeth also suffered extreme anguish. About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy, whom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health, stretched on the grass livid and motionless; the print of the murderer's finger was on his neck.
He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my countenance betrayed the secret to Elizabeth. She was very earnest to see the corpse. At first I attempted to prevent her; but she persisted, and entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the victim, and clasping her hands exclaimed, 'O God! I have murdered my darling child!'
She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again lived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same evening William had teased her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that she possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and was doubtless the temptation which urged the murdered to the deed. We have no trace of him at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted; but they will not restore my beloved William!
Come, dearest Victor; you alone can console Elizabeth. She weeps continually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death; her words pierce my heart. We are all unhappy; but will not that be an additional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter? Your dear mother! Alas, Victor! I now say, Thank God she did not live to witness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling!
Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies.
Your affectionate and afflicted father,
Alphonse Frankenstein.
Geneva, May 12th, 17-.
Clerval, who had watched my countenance as I read this letter, was surprised to observe the despair that succeeded the joy I at first expressed on receiving new from my friends. I threw the letter on the table, and covered my face with my hands.
'My dear Frankenstein,' exclaimed Henry, when he perceived me weep with bitterness, 'are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has happened?'
I motioned him to take up the letter, while I walked up and down the room in the extremest agitation. Tears also gushed from the eyes of Clerval, as he read the account of my misfortune.
'I can offer you no consolation, my friend,' said he; 'your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?'
'To go instantly to Geneva: come with me, Henry, to order the horses.'
During our walk, Clerval endeavoured to say a few words of consolation; he could only express his heartfelt sympathy. 'Poor William!' said he, dear lovely child, he now sleeps with his angel mother! Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss! To die so miserably; to feel the murderer's grasp! How much more a murderer that could destroy radiant innocence! Poor little fellow! one only consolation have we; his friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest. The pang is over, his sufferings are at an end for ever. A sod covers his gentle form, and he knows no pain. He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors.'
Clerval spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words impressed themselves on my mind and I remembered them afterwards in solitude. But now, as soon as the horses arrived, I hurried into a cabriolet, and bade farewell to my friend.
My journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I longed to console and sympathise with my loved and sorrowing friends; but when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could hardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I passed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for nearly six years. How altered every thing might be during that time! One sudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little circumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations, which, although they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive. Fear overcame me; I dared no advance, dreading a thousand nameless evils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.
I remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I contemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm; and the snowy mountains, 'the palaces of nature,' were not changed. By degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my journey towards Geneva.
The road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I approached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black sides of Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blanc. I wept like a child. 'Dear mountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?'
I fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on these preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative happiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved country! who but a native can tell the delight I took in again beholding thy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake!
Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also closed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt still more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.
It was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the gates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night at Secheron, a village at the distance of half a league from the city. The sky was serene; and, as I was unable to rest, I resolved to visit the spot where my poor William had been murdered. As I could not pass through the town, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at Plainpalais. During this short voyage I saw the lightning playing on the summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm appeared to approach rapidly, and, on landing, I ascended a low hill, that I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were clouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its violence quickly increased.
I quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm increased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash over my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in Switzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The most violent storm hung exactly north of the town, over the part of the lake which lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copet. Another storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another darkened and sometimes disclosed the Mole, a peaked mountain to the east of the lake.
While I watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, 'William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!' As I said these words, I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed the fair child. He was the murderer! I could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible proof of the fact. I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have been in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the rocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Saleve, a hill that bounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit, and disappeared.
I remained motionless. The thunder ceased; but the rain still continued, and the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I resolved in my minds the events which I had until now sought to forget: the whole train of my progress toward the creation; the appearance of the works of my own hands at my bedside; its departure. Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was this his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my brother?
No one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the night, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel the inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of evil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me.
Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were open, and I hastened to my father's house. My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent.
It was about five in the morning when I entered my father's house. I told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library to attend their usual hour of rising.
Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father's desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus engaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me: 'Welcome, my dearest Victor,' said he. 'Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and delighted. You come to us now to share a misery which nothing can alleviate; yet your presence will, I hope, revive our father, who seems sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor Elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self-accusations.-Poor William! he was our darling and our pride!'
Tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother's eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and her I named my cousin.
'She most of all,' said Ernest, 'requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the murderer has been discovered-'
'The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. I saw him too; he was free last night!'
'I do not know what you mean,' replied my brother, in accents of wonder, 'but to us the discovery we have made completes our misery. No one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family, could suddenly become so capable of so frightful, so appalling a crime?'
'Justine Moritz! Poor, poor girl, is she the accused? But it is wrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, Ernest?'
'No one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have almost forced conviction upon us; and her own behaviour has been so confused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, I fear, leaves no hope for doubt. But she will be tried to-day, and you will then hear all.'
He then related that, the morning on which the murder of poor William had been discovered, Justine had been taken ill, and confined to her bed for several days. During this interval, one of the servants, happening to examine the apparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her pocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the temptation of the murderer. The servant instantly showed it to one of the others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a magistrate; and, upon their deposition, Justine was apprehended. On being charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a great measure by her extreme confusion of manner. This was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied earnestly, 'You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Justine, poor, good Justine, is innocent.'
At that instant my father entered. I saw unhappiness deeply impressed on his countenance, but he endeavoured to welcome me cheerfully; and, after we had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced some other topic than that of our disaster, had not Ernest exclaimed, 'Good God, papa! Victor says that he knows who was the murderer of poor William.'
'We do also, unfortunately,' replied my father, 'for indeed I had rather have been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and ungratitude in one I valued so highly.'
'My dear father, you are mistaken; Justine is innocent.'
'If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be tried to-day, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.'
This speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that Justine, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I had no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be brought forward strong enough to convict her. My tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar. Did any one indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world?
We were soon joined by Elizabeth. Time had altered her since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. There was the same candour, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect. She welcomed me with the greatest affection. 'Your arrival, my dear cousin,' said she, 'fills me with hope. You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless Justine. Alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? I rely on her innocence as certainly as I do upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly hard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor girl, whom I sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If she is condemned, I never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am sure she will not; and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad death of my little William.'
'She is innocent, my Elizabeth,' said I, 'and that shall be proved; fear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her acquittal.'
'How kind and generous you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made me wretched, for I knew that it was impossible: and to see every one else prejudiced in so deadly a manner rendered me hopeless and despairing.' She wept.
'Dearest niece,' said my father, 'dry your tears. If she is, as you believe, innocent, rely on the justice of our laws, and the activity with which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality.'
Chapter 8
We passed a few sad hours until eleven o'clock, when the trial was to commence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend as witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this wretched mockery of justice I suffered living torture. It was to be decided whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would cause the death of two of my fellow beings: one a smiling babe full of innocence and joy, the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every aggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror. Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.
The appearance of Justine was calm. She was dressed in mourning, and her countenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her feelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in innocence and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by thousands, for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have excited was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the imagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was tranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her confusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up her mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court she threw her eyes round it and quickly discovered where we were seated. A tear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us, but she quickly recovered herself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter guiltlessness.
The trial began, and after the advocate against her had stated the charge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined against her, which might have staggered anyone who had not such proof of her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on which the murder had been committed and towards morning had been perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she did there, but she looked very strangely and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight o'clock, and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she replied that she had been looking for the child and demanded earnestly if anything had been heard concerning him. When shown the body, she fell into violent hysterics and kept her bed for several days. The picture was then produced which the servant had found in her pocket; and when Elizabeth, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the same which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed round his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court.
Justine was called on for her defence. As the trial had proceeded, her countenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery were strongly expressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears, but when she was desired to plead, she collected her powers and spoke in an audible although variable voice.
'God knows,' she said, 'how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend that my protestations should acquit me; I rest my innocence on a plain and simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me, and I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a favourable interpretation where any circumstance appears doubtful or suspicious.'
She then related that, by the permission of Elizabeth, she had passed the evening of the night on which the murder had been committed at the house of an aunt at Chene, a village situated at about a league from Geneva. On her return, at about nine o'clock, she met a man who asked her if she had seen anything of the child who was lost. She was alarmed by this account and passed several hours in looking for him, when the gates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of the night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up the inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Most of the night she spent here watching; towards morning she believed that she slept for a few minutes; some steps disturbed her, and she awoke. It was dawn, and she quitted her asylum, that she might again endeavour to find my brother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was without her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when questioned by the market-woman was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless night and the fate of poor William was yet uncertain. Concerning the picture she could give no account.
'I know,' continued the unhappy victim, 'how heavily and fatally this one circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining it; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left to conjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been placed in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have no enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to destroy me wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no opportunity afforded him for so doing; or, if I had, why should he have stolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon?
'I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for hope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my character, and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt, I must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my innocence.'
Several witnesses were called who had known her for many years, and they spoke well of her; but fear and hatred of the crime of which they supposed her guilty rendered them timorous and unwilling to come forward. Elizabeth saw even this last resource, her excellent dispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused, when, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the court.
'I am,' said she, 'the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or rather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents ever since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged indecent in me to come forward on this occasion, but when I see a fellow creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended friends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of her character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in the same house with her, at one time for five and at another for nearly two years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable and benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Frankenstein, my aunt, in her last illness, with the greatest affection and care and afterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner that excited the admiration of all who knew her, after which she again lived in my uncle's house, where she was beloved by all the family. She was warmly attached to the child who is now dead and acted towards him like a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I believe and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for such an action; as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she had earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her, so much do I esteem and value her.'
A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth's simple and powerful appeal, but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the demon who had murdered my brother also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? I could not sustain the horror of my situation, and when I perceived that the popular voice and the countenances of the judges had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.
I passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the court; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal question, but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my visit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Justine was condemned.
I cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced sensations of horror, and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them adequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the heart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I addressed myself added that Justine had already confessed her guilt. 'That evidence,' he observed, 'was hardly required in so glaring a case, but I am glad of it, and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a criminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive.'
This was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? Had my eyes deceived me? And was I really as mad as the whole world would believe me to be if I disclosed the object of my suspicions? I hastened to return home, and Elizabeth eagerly demanded the result.
'My cousin,' replied I, 'it is decided as you may have expected; all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape. But she has confessed.'
This was a dire blow to poor Elizabeth, who had relied with firmness upon Justine's innocence. 'Alas!' said she. 'How shall I ever again believe in human goodness? Justine, whom I loved and esteemed as my sister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray? Her mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or guile, and yet she has committed a murder.'
Soon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a desire to see my cousin. My father wished her not to go but said that he left it to her own judgment and feelings to decide. 'Yes,' said Elizabeth, 'I will go, although she is guilty; and you, Victor, shall accompany me; I cannot go alone.' The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not refuse.
We entered the gloomy prison chamber and beheld Justine sitting on some straw at the farther end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested on her knees. She rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone with her, she threw herself at the feet of Elizabeth, weeping bitterly. My cousin wept also.
'Oh, Justine!' said she. 'Why did you rob me of my last consolation? I relied on your innocence, and although I was then very wretched, I was not so miserable as I am now.'
'And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also join with my enemies to crush me, to condemn me as a murderer?' Her voice was suffocated with sobs.
'Rise, my poor girl,' said Elizabeth; 'why do you kneel, if you are innocent? I am not one of your enemies, I believed you guiltless, notwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself declared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured, dear Justine, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment, but your own confession.'
'I did confess, but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain absolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my other sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do? In an evil hour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable.'
She paused, weeping, and then continued, 'I thought with horror, my sweet lady, that you should believe your Justine, whom your blessed aunt had so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a crime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear William! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven, where we shall all he happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to suffer ignominy and death.'
'Oh, Justine! Forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why did you confess? But do not mourn, dear girl. Do not fear. I will proclaim, I will prove your innocence. I will melt the stony hearts of your enemies by my tears and prayers. You shall not die! You, my playfellow, my companion, my sister, perish on the scaffold! No! No! I never could survive so horrible a misfortune.'
Justine shook her head mournfully. 'I do not fear to die,' she said; 'that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!'
During this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison room, where I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who dared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony. I gnashed my teeth and ground them together, uttering a groan that came from my inmost soul. Justine started. When she saw who it was, she approached me and said, 'Dear sir, you are very kind to visit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty?'
I could not answer. 'No, Justine,' said Elizabeth; 'he is more convinced of your innocence than I was, for even when he heard that you had confessed, he did not credit it.'
'I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest gratitude towards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my misfortune, and I feel as if I could die in peace now that my innocence is acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.'
Thus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed gained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the never-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or consolation. Elizabeth also wept and was unhappy, but hers also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish. We stayed several hours with Justine, and it was with great difficulty that Elizabeth could tear herself away. 'I wish,' cried she, 'that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this world of misery.'
Justine assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty repressed her bitter tears. She embraced Elizabeth and said in a voice of half-suppressed emotion, 'Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Elizabeth, my beloved and only friend; may heaven, in its bounty, bless and preserve you; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer! Live, and be happy, and make others so.'
And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth's heart-rending eloquence failed to move the judges from their settled conviction in the criminality of the saintly sufferer. My passionate and indignant appeals were lost upon them. And when I received their cold answers and heard the harsh, unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess!
From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. This also was my doing! And my father's woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands! Ye weep, unhappy ones, but these are not your last tears! Again shall you raise the funeral wail, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard! Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he who would spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes, who has no thought nor sense of joy except as it is mirrored also in your dear countenances, who would fill the air with blessings and spend his life in serving you- he bids you weep, to shed countless tears; happy beyond his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments!
Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.
Chapter 9
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died, she rested, and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice and make myself useful to my fellow beings. Now all was blasted; instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe.
This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had perhaps never entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation-deep, dark, deathlike solitude.
My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and habits and endeavoured by arguments deduced from the feelings of his serene conscience and guiltless life to inspire me with fortitude and awaken in me the courage to dispel the dark cloud which brooded over me. 'Do you think, Victor,' said he, 'that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother'-tears came into his eyes as he spoke- 'but is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself, for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.'
This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to hide my grief and console my friends if remorse had not mingled its bitterness, and terror its alarm, with my other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of despair and endeavour to hide myself from his view.
About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o'clock and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, I took the boat and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly-if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore-often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. I thought also of my father and surviving brother; should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?
At these moments I wept bitterly and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of abhorrence on his head and avenge the deaths of William and Justine. Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.
'When I reflect, my dear cousin,' said she, 'on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice that I read in books or heard from others as tales of ancient days or imaginary evils; at least they were remote and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Everybody believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human being, but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. But she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch.'
I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand, said, 'My dearest friend, you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance that makes me tremble. Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of rendering you happy? Ah! While we love, while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing- what can disturb our peace?'
And could not such words from her whom I fondly prized before every other gift of fortune suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart? Even as she spoke I drew near to her, as if in terror, lest at that very moment the destroyer had been near to rob me of her.
Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die, was but a type of me.
Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me, but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows. My wanderings were directed towards the valley of Chamounix. I had visited it frequently during my boyhood. Six years had passed since then: I was a wreck, but nought had changed in those savage and enduring scenes.
I performed the first part of my journey on horseback. I afterwards hired a mule, as the more sure-footed and least liable to receive injury on these rugged roads. The weather was fine; it was about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe. The weight upon my spirit was sensibly lightened as I plunged yet deeper in the ravine of Arve. The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence-and I ceased to fear or to bend before any being less almighty than that which had created and ruled the elements, here displayed in their most terrific guise. Still, as I ascended higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains, the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings.
I passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before me, and I began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. Soon after, I entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which I had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries, but I saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; I heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding aiguilles, and its tremendous dome overlooked the valley.
A tingling long-lost sense of pleasure often came across me during this journey. Some turn in the road, some new object suddenly perceived and recognized, reminded me of days gone by, and were associated with the lighthearted gaiety of boyhood. The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. Then again the kindly influence ceased to act- I found myself fettered again to grief and indulging in all the misery of reflection. Then I spurred on my animal, striving so to forget the world, my fears, and more than all, myself-or, in a more desperate fashion, I alighted and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair.
At length I arrived at the village of Chamounix. Exhaustion succeeded to the extreme fatigue both of body and of mind which I had endured. For a short space of time I remained at the window watching the pallid lightnings that played above Mont Blanc and listening to the rushing of the Arve, which pursued its noisy way beneath. The same lulling sounds acted as a lullaby to my too keen sensations; when I placed my head upon my pillow, sleep crept over me; I felt it as it came and blessed the giver of oblivion.
Chapter 10
I spent the following day roaming through the valley. I stood beside the sources of the Arveiron, which take their rise in a glacier, that with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to barricade the valley. The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glacier overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silent working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. I retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were, waited on and ministered to by the assemblance of grand shapes which I had contemplated during the day. They congregated round me; the unstained snowy mountaintop, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine, the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds- they all gathered round me and bade me be at peace.
Where had they fled when the next morning I awoke? All of soul- inspiriting fled with sleep, and dark melancholy clouded every thought. The rain was pouring in torrents, and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains, so that I even saw not the faces of those mighty friends. Still I would penetrate their misty veil and seek them in their cloudy retreats. What were rain and storm to me? My mule was brought to the door, and I resolved to ascend to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. I determined to go without a guide, for I was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene.
The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground, some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain or transversely upon other trees. The path, as you ascend nigher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre and add an air of severity to the scene. I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky and added to the melancholy impression I received from the objects around me. Alas! Why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability!
It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league; and above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, 'Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.'
As I said this I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled; a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me, but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.
'Devil,' I exclaimed, 'do you dare approach me? And do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! Or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust! And, oh! That I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!'
'I expected this reception,' said the daemon. 'All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.'
'Abhorred monster! Fiend that thou art! The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! You reproach me with your creation, come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed.'
My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.
He easily eluded me and said-
'Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.'
'Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall.'
'How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale; when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they are, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder, and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me; listen to me, and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.'
'Why do you call to my remembrance,' I rejoined, 'circumstances of which I shudder to reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched beyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you or not. Begone! Relieve me from the sight of your detested form.'
'Thus I relieve thee, my creator,' he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; 'thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon the mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to hide itself behind your snowy precipices and illuminate another world, you will have heard my story and can decide. On you it rests, whether I quit forever the neighbourhood of man and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow creatures and the author of your own speedy ruin.'
As he said this he led the way across the ice; I followed. My heart was full, and I did not answer him, but as I proceeded, I weighed the various arguments that he had used and determined at least to listen to his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my brother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion. For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock. The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend; we entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart and depressed spirits. But I consented to listen, and seating myself by the fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale.
Chapter 11
'It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep.
'It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate. Before I had quitted your apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some clothes, but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of night. I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish, nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat down and wept.
'Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens and gave me a sensation of pleasure. I started up and beheld a radiant form rise from among the trees.* I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly, but it enlightened my path, and I again went out in search of berries. I was still cold when under one of the trees I found a huge cloak, with which I covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rang in my ears, and on all sides various scents saluted me; the only object that I could distinguish was the bright moon, and I fixed my eyes on that with pleasure.
'Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had greatly lessened, when I began to distinguish my sensations from each other. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with drink and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.
'The moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened form, showed itself, while I still remained in the forest. My sensations had by this time become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light and to perceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from the herb, and by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing.
'One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! I examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be composed of wood. I quickly collected some branches, but they were wet and would not burn. I was pained at this and sat still watching the operation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near the heat dried and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this, and by touching the various branches, I discovered the cause and busied myself in collecting a great quantity of wood, that I might dry it and have a plentiful supply of fire. When night came on and brought sleep with it, I was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. I covered it carefully with dry wood and leaves and placed wet branches upon it; and then, spreading my cloak, I lay on the ground and sank into sleep.
'It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire. I uncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. I observed this also and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the embers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came again I found, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat and that the discovery of this element was useful to me in my food, for I found some of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and tasted much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees. I tried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the live embers. I found that the berries were spoiled by this operation, and the nuts and roots much improved.
'Food, however, became scarce, and I often spent the whole day searching in vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. When I found this, I resolved to quit the place that I had hitherto inhabited, to seek for one where the few wants I experienced would be more easily satisfied. In this emigration I exceedingly lamented the loss of the fire which I had obtained through accident and knew not how to reproduce it. I gave several hours to the serious consideration of this difficulty, but I was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply it, and wrapping myself up in my cloak, I struck across the wood towards the setting sun. I passed three days in these rambles and at length discovered the open country. A great fall of snow had taken place the night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the appearance was disconsolate, and I found my feet chilled by the cold damp substance that covered the ground.
'It was about seven in the morning, and I longed to obtain food and shelter; at length I perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which had doubtless been built for the convenience of some shepherd. This was a new sight to me, and I examined the structure with great curiosity. Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise, and perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared capable. His appearance, different from any I had ever before seen, and his flight somewhat surprised me. But I was enchanted by the appearance of the hut; here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was dry; and it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandemonium appeared to the demons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire. I greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd's breakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese, milk, and wine; the latter, however, I did not like. Then, overcome by fatigue, I lay down among some straw and fell asleep.
'It was noon when I awoke, and allured by the warmth of the sun, which shone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my travels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant's breakfast in a wallet I found, I proceeded across the fields for several hours, until at sunset I arrived at a village. How miraculous did this appear! the huts, the neater cottages, and stately houses engaged my admiration by turns. The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. One of the best of these I entered, but I had hardly placed my foot within the door before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village. This hovel however, joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance, but after my late dearly bought experience, I dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so low that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however, was placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and although the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an agreeable asylum from the snow and rain.
'Here, then, I retreated and lay down happy to have found a shelter, however miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more from the barbarity of man. As soon as morning dawned I crept from my kennel, that I might view the adjacent cottage and discover if I could remain in the habitation I had found. It was situated against the back of the cottage and surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig sty and a clear pool of water. One part was open, and by that I had crept in; but now I covered every crevice by which I might be perceived with stones and wood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on occasion to pass out; all the light I enjoyed came through the sty, and that was sufficient for me.
'Having thus arranged my dwelling and carpeted it with clean straw, I retired, for I saw the figure of a man at a distance, and I remembered too well my treatment the night before to trust myself in his power. I had first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day by a loaf of coarse bread, which I purloined, and a cup with which I could drink more conveniently than from my hand of the pure water which flowed by my retreat. The floor was a little raised, so that it was kept perfectly dry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably warm.
'Being thus provided, I resolved to reside in this hovel until something should occur which might alter my determination. It was indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth. I ate my breakfast with pleasure and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little water when I heard a step, and looking through a small chink, I beheld a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found cottagers and farmhouse servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited but not adorned: she looked patient yet sad. I lost sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along, seemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose countenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with an air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head and bore it to the cottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw the young man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the cottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house and sometimes in the yard.
'On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been filled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate. Through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean but very bare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. The young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch who had never beheld aught beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love. He played a sweet mournful air which I perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature; they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions.
'Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load of wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his burden, and taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the fire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage, and he showed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. She seemed pleased and went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in water, and then upon the fire. She afterwards continued her work, whilst the young man went into the garden and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots. After he had been employed thus about an hour, the young woman joined him and they entered the cottage together.
'The old man had, in the meantime, been pensive, but on the appearance of his companions he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to eat. The meal was quickly dispatched. The young woman was again occupied in arranging the cottage, the old man walked before the cottage in the sun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth. Nothing could exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures. One was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love; the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were moulded with the finest symmetry, yet his eyes and attitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. The old man returned to the cottage, and the youth, with tools different from those he had used in the morning, directed his steps across the fields.
'Night quickly shut in, but to my extreme wonder, I found that the cottagers had a means of prolonging light by the use of tapers, and was delighted to find that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the pleasure I experienced in watching my human neighbours. In the evening the young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations which I did not understand; and the old man again took up the instrument which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in the morning. So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play, but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the harmony of the old man's instrument nor the songs of the birds; I since found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science of words or letters.
'The family, after having been thus occupied for a short time, extinguished their lights and retired, as I conjectured, to rest.'
Chapter 12
'I lay on my straw, but I could not sleep. I thought of the occurrences of the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remembered too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter think it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions.
'The cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. The young woman arranged the cottage and prepared the food, and the youth departed after the first meal.
'This day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it. The young man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various laborious occupations within. The old man, whom I soon perceived to be blind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument or in contemplation. Nothing could exceed the love and respect which the younger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. They performed towards him every little office of affection and duty with gentleness, and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles.
'They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often went apart and appeared to weep. I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? They possessed a delightful house and every luxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill and delicious viands when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more, they enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging each day looks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? Did they really express pain? I was at first unable to solve these questions, but perpetual attention and time explained to me many appearances which were at first enigmatic.
'A considerable period elapsed before I discovered one of the causes of the uneasiness of this amiable family: it was poverty, and they suffered that evil in a very distressing degree. Their nourishment consisted entirely of the vegetables of their garden and the milk of one cow, which gave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely procure food to support it. They often, I believe, suffered the pangs of hunger very poignantly, especially the two younger cottagers, for several times they placed food before the old man when they reserved none for themselves.
'This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed, during the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption, but when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots which I gathered from a neighbouring wood.
'I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist their labours. I found that the youth spent a great part of each day in collecting wood for the family fire, and during the night I often took his tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home firing sufficient for the consumption of several days.
'I remember, the first time that I did this, the young woman, when she opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a great pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud voice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I observed, with pleasure, that he did not go to the forest that day, but spent it in repairing the cottage and cultivating the garden.
'By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick, and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; I learned and applied the words, 'fire,' 'milk,' 'bread,' and 'wood.' I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them several names, but the old man had only one, which was 'father.' The girl was called 'sister' or 'Agatha,' and the youth 'Felix,' 'brother,' or 'son.' I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas appropriated to each of these sounds and was able to pronounce them. I distinguished several other words without being able as yet to understand or apply them, such as 'good,' 'dearest,' unhappy.
'I spent the winter in this manner. The gentle manners and beauty of the cottagers greatly endeared them to me; when they were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys. I saw few human beings besides them, and if any other happened to enter the cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the superior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive, often endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that he called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure even upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after having listened to the exhortations of her father. It was not thus with Felix. He was always the saddest of the group, and even to my unpractised senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his friends. But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old man.
'I could mention innumerable instances which, although slight, marked the dispositions of these amiable cottagers. In the midst of poverty and want, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in the morning, before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed her path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and brought the wood from the outhouse, where, to his perpetual astonishment, he found his store always replenished by an invisible hand. In the day, I believe, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer, because he often went forth and did not return until dinner, yet brought no wood with him. At other times he worked in the garden, but as there was little to do in the frosty season, he read to the old man and Agatha.
'This reading had puzzled me extremely at first, but by degrees I discovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when he talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs for speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend these also; but how was that possible when I did not even understand the sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however, sensibly in this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of conversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavour, for I easily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become master of their language, which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure, for with this also the contrast perpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted.
'I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers-their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.
'As the sun became warmer and the light of day longer, the snow vanished, and I beheld the bare trees and the black earth. From this time Felix was more employed, and the heart-moving indications of impending famine disappeared. Their food, as I afterwards found, was coarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it. Several new kinds of plants sprang up in the garden, which they dressed; and these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced.
'The old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did not rain, as I found it was called when the heavens poured forth its waters. This frequently took place, but a high wind quickly dried the earth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been.
'My mode of life in my hovel was uniform. During the morning I attended the motions of the cottagers, and when they were dispersed in various occupations, I slept; the remainder of the day was spent in observing my friends. When they had retired to rest, if there was any moon or the night was star-light, I went into the woods and collected my own food and fuel for the cottage. When I returned, as often as it was necessary, I cleared their path from the snow and performed those offices that I had seen done by Felix. I afterwards found that these labours, performed by an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and once or twice I heard them, on these occasions, utter the words 'good spirit,' 'wonderful'; but I did not then understand the signification of these terms.
'My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the motives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to know why Felix appeared so miserable and Agatha so sad. I thought that it might be in my power to restore happiness to these deserving people. When I slept or was absent, the forms of the venerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix flitted before me. I looked upon them as superior beings who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and conciliating words, I should first win their favour and afterwards their love.
'These thoughts exhilarated me and led me to apply with fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but supple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their tones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease. It was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration.
'The pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the aspect of the earth. Men who before this change seemed to have been hid in caves dispersed themselves and were employed in various arts of cultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves began to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! Fit habitation for gods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome. My spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy.'
Chapter 13
'I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate events that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, have made me what I am.
'Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine and the skies cloudless. It surprised me that what before was desert and gloomy should now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses were gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight and a thousand sights of beauty.
'It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested from labour-the old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to him-that I observed the countenance of Felix was melancholy beyond expression; he sighed frequently, and once his father paused in his music, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his son's sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was recommencing his music when someone tapped at the door.
'It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a country-man as a guide. The lady was dressed in a dark suit and covered with a thick black veil. Agatha asked a question, to which the stranger only replied by pronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was musical but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word, Felix came up hastily to the lady, who, when she saw him, threw up her veil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her hair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were dark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular proportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a lovely pink.
'Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of sorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of ecstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes sparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I thought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by different feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held out her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously and called her, as well as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to understand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and dismissing her guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some conversation took place between him and his father, and the young stranger knelt at the old man's feet and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her and embraced her affectionately.
'I soon perceived that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds and appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood by nor herself understood the cottagers. They made many signs which I did not comprehend, but I saw that her presence diffused gladness through the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the morning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy and with smiles of delight welcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed the hands of the lovely stranger, and pointing to her brother, made signs which appeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came. Some hours passed thus, while they, by their countenances, expressed joy, the cause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I found, by the frequent recurrence of some sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she was endeavouring to learn their language; and the idea instantly occurred to me that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end. The stranger learned about twenty words at the first lesson; most of them, indeed, were those which I had before understood, but I profited by the others.
'As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they separated Felix kissed the hand of the stranger and said, 'Good night sweet Safie.' He sat up much longer, conversing with his father, and by the frequent repetition of her name I conjectured that their lovely guest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to understand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found it utterly impossible.
'The next morning Felix went out to his work, and after the usual occupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the old man, and taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly beautiful that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my eyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or dying away like a nightingale of the woods.
'When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first declined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in sweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old man appeared enraptured and said some words which Agatha endeavoured to explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that she bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.
'The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration that joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends. Safie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the knowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most of the words uttered by my protectors.
'In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods; the sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun, for I never ventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same treatment I had formerly endured in the first village which I entered.
'My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken.
'While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters as it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before me a wide field for wonder and delight.
'The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's Ruins of Empires. I should not have understood the purport of this book had not Felix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this work, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans-of their subsequent degenerating-of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.
'These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.
'Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While I listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty, of rank, descent, and noble blood.
'The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?
'I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!
'Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death-a state which I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha and the animated smiles of the charming Arabian were not for me. The mild exhortations of the old man and the lively conversation of the loved Felix were not for me. Miserable, unhappy wretch!
'Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the difference of sexes, and the birth and growth of children, how the father doted on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the older child, how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge, how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge, of brother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds.
'But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.
'I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors.'
Chapter 14
'Some time elapsed before I learned the history of my friends. It was one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding as it did a number of circumstances, each interesting and wonderful to one so utterly inexperienced as I was.
'The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence, respected by his superiors and beloved by his equals. His son was bred in the service of his country, and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction. A few months before my arrival they had lived in a large and luxurious city called Paris, surrounded by friends and possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford.
'The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a Turkish merchant and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some reason which I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. He was seized and cast into prison the very day that Safie arrived from Constantinople to join him. He was tried and condemned to death. The injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation.
'Felix had accidentally been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were uncontrollable when he heard the decision of the court. He made, at that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him and then looked around for the means. After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building, which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Muhammadan, who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix visited the grate at night and made known to the prisoner his intentions in his favour. The Turk, amazed and delighted, endeavoured to kindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. Felix rejected his offers with contempt, yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who was allowed to visit her father and who by her gestures expressed her lively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind that the captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward his toil and hazard.
'The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on the heart of Felix and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in his interests by the promise of her hand in marriage so soon as he should be conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to accept this offer, yet he looked forward to the probability of the event as to the consummation of his happiness.
'During the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for the escape of the merchant, the zeal of Felix was warmed by several letters that he received from this lovely girl, who found means to express her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old man, a servant of her father who understood French. She thanked him in the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her parent, and at the same time she gently deplored her own fate.
'I have copies of these letters, for I found means, during my residence in the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters were often in the hands of Felix or Agatha. Before I depart I will give them to you; they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present, as the sun is already far declined, I shall only have time to repeat the substance of them to you.
'Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect and an independence of spirit forbidden to the female followers of Muhammad. This lady died, but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill-suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society was enchanting to her.
'The day for the execution of the Turk was fixed, but on the night previous to it he quitted his prison and before morning was distant many leagues from Paris. Felix had procured passports in the name of his father, sister, and himself. He had previously communicated his plan to the former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the pretence of a journey and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an obscure part of Paris.
'Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons and across Mont Cenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable opportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions.
'Safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his departure, before which time the Turk renewed his promise that she should be united to his deliverer; and Felix remained with them in expectation of that event; and in the meantime he enjoyed the society of the Arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest affection. They conversed with one another through the means of an interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie sang to him the divine airs of her native country.
'The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place and encouraged the hopes of the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other plans. He loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a Christian, but he feared the resentment of Felix if he should appear lukewarm, for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer if he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they inhabited. He revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled to prolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and secretly to take his daughter with him when he departed. His plans were facilitated by the news which arrived from Paris.
'The government of France were greatly enraged at the escape of their victim and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. The plot of Felix was quickly discovered, and DeLacey and Agatha were thrown into prison. The news reached Felix and roused him from his dream of pleasure. His blind and aged father and his gentle sister lay in a noisome dungeon while he enjoyed the free air and the society of her whom he loved. This idea was torture to him. He quickly arranged with the Turk that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity for escape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a boarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian, he hastened to Paris and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the law, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.
'He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the trial took place, the result of which deprived them of their fortune and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country.
'They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and ruin, became a traitor to good feeling and honour and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance.
'Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix and rendered him, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could have endured poverty, and while this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he gloried in it; but the ingratitude of the Turk and the loss of his beloved Safie were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his soul.
'When the news reached Leghorn that Felix was deprived of his wealth and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her lover, but to prepare to return to her native country. The generous nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his tyrannical mandate.
'A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter's apartment and told her hastily that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn had been divulged and that he should speedily be delivered up to the French government; he had consequently hired a vessel to convey him to Constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. He intended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential servant, to follow at her leisure with the greater part of his property, which had not yet arrived at Leghorn.
'When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it would become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse to it. By some papers of her father which fell into her hands she heard of the exile of her lover and learnt the name of the spot where he then resided. She hesitated some time, but at length she formed her determination. Taking with her some jewels that belonged to her and a sum of money, she quitted Italy with an attendant, a native of Leghorn, but who understood the common language of Turkey, and departed for Germany.
'She arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage of De Lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. Safie nursed her with the most devoted affection, but the poor girl died, and the Arabian was left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country and utterly ignorant of the customs of the world. She fell, however, into good hands. The Italian had mentioned the name of the spot for which they were bound, and after her death the woman of the house in which they had lived took care that Safie should arrive in safety at the cottage of her lover.'
Chapter 15
'Such was the history of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply. I learned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire their virtues and to deprecate the vices of mankind.
'As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil, benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were called forth and displayed. But in giving an account of the progress of my intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the beginning of the month of August of the same year.
'One night during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood where I collected my own food and brought home firing for my protectors, I found on the ground a leathern portmanteau containing several articles of dress and some books. I eagerly seized the prize and returned with it to my hovel. Fortunately the books were written in the language, the elements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch's Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.
'I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In the Sorrows of Werter, besides the interest of its simple and affecting story, so many opinions are canvassed and so many lights thrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects that I found in it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle and domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and feelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded well with my experience among my protectors and with the wants which were forever alive in my own bosom. But I thought Werter himself a more divine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained no pretension, but it sank deep. The disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to enter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions of the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding it.
'As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure was free,' and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.
'The volume of Plutarch's Lives which I possessed contained the histories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had a far different effect upon me from the Sorrows of Werter. I learned from Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom, but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I read surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused knowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and boundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns and large assemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only school in which I had studied human nature, but this book developed new and mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of course led to admire peaceable lawgivers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus, in preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind; perhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young soldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with different sensations.
'But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.
'Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon after my arrival in the hovel I discovered some papers in the pocket of the dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had neglected them, but now that I was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was your journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences. You doubtless recollect these papers. Here they are. Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible. I sickened as I read. 'Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.'
'These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would compassionate me and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship? I resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for an interview with them which would decide my fate. I postponed this attempt for some months longer, for the importance attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest I should fail. Besides, I found that my understanding improved so much with every day's experience that I was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months should have added to my sagacity.
'Several changes, in the meantime, took place in the cottage. The presence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants, and I also found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in their labours by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine became every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade.
'I endeavoured to crush these fears and to fortify myself for the trial which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.
'Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention towards the cottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by the absence of summer. They loved and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them. The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks directed towards me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. I dared not think that they would turn them from me with disdain and horror. The poor that stopped at their door were never driven away. I asked, it is true, for greater treasures than a little food or rest: I required kindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.
'The winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken place since I awoke into life. My attention at this time was solely directed towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my protectors. I revolved many projects, but that on which I finally fixed was to enter the dwelling when the blind old man should be alone. I had sagacity enough to discover that the unnatural hideousness of my person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me. My voice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; I thought, therefore, that if in the absence of his children I could gain the good will and mediation of the old De Lacey, I might by his means be tolerated by my younger protectors.
'One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground and diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha, and Felix departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own desire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed, he took up his guitar and played several mournful but sweet airs, more sweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his countenance was illuminated with pleasure, but as he continued, thoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the instrument, he sat absorbed in reflection.
'My heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial, which would decide my hopes or realize my fears. The servants were gone to a neighbouring fair. All was silent in and around the cottage; it was an excellent opportunity; yet, when I proceeded to execute my plan, my limbs failed me and I sank to the ground. Again I rose, and exerting all the firmness of which I was master, removed the planks which I had placed before my hovel to conceal my retreat. The fresh air revived me, and with renewed determination I approached the door of their cottage.
'I knocked. 'Who is there?' said the old man. 'Come in.'
'I entered. 'Pardon this intrusion,' said I; 'I am a traveller in want of a little rest; you would greatly oblige me if you would allow me to remain a few minutes before the fire.'
''Enter,' said De Lacey, 'and I will try in what manner I can to relieve your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and as I am blind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to procure food for you.'
''Do not trouble yourself, my kind host; I have food; it is warmth and rest only that I need.'
'I sat down, and a silence ensued. I knew that every minute was precious to me, yet I remained irresolute in what manner to commence the interview, when the old man addressed me. 'By your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman; are you French?'
''No; but I was educated by a French family and understand that language only. I am now going to claim the protection of some friends, whom I sincerely love, and of whose favour I have some hopes.'
''Are they Germans?'
''No, they are French. But let us change the subject. I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.'
''Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair.'
''They are kind-they are the most excellent creatures in the world; but, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.'
''That is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot you undeceive them?'
''I am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that I feel so many overwhelming terrors. I tenderly love these friends; I have, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily kindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and it is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.'
''Where do these friends reside?'
''Near this spot.'
'The old man paused and then continued, 'If you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.'
''Excellent man! I thank you and accept your generous offer. You raise me from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid, I shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your fellow creatures.'
''Heaven forbid! Even if you were really criminal, for that can only drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am unfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent; judge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.'
''How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? From your lips first have I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall be forever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with those friends whom I am on the point of meeting.'
''May I know the names and residence of those friends?' 'I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob me of or bestow happiness on me forever. I struggled vainly for firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my remaining strength; I sank on the chair and sobbed aloud. At that moment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment to lose, but seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, 'Now is the time! Save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!'
''Great God!' exclaimed the old man. 'Who are you?'
'At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel.'
Chapter 16
'Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery.
'When night came I quitted my retreat and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils, destroying the objects that obstructed me and ranging through the wood with a staglike swiftness. Oh! What a miserable night I passed! The cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me; now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment; I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.
'But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.
'The sun rose; I heard the voices of men and knew that it was impossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours to reflection on my situation.
'The pleasant sunshine and the pure air of day restored me to some degree of tranquillity; and when I considered what had passed at the cottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my conclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that my conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable, and after much consideration I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my party.
'These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by peaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was forever acting before my eyes; the females were flying and the enraged Felix tearing me from his father's feet. I awoke exhausted, and finding that it was already night, I crept forth from my hiding-place, and went in search of food.
'When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the well-known path that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace. I crept into my hovel and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose. That hour passed, the sun mounted high in the heavens, but the cottagers did not appear. I trembled violently, apprehending some dreadful misfortune. The inside of the cottage was dark, and I heard no motion; I cannot describe the agony of this suspense.
'Presently two countrymen passed by, but pausing near the cottage, they entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country, which differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix approached with another man; I was surprised, as I knew that he had not quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover from his discourse the meaning of these unusual appearances.
''Do you consider,' said his companion to him, 'that you will be obliged to pay three months' rent and to lose the produce of your garden? I do not wish to take any unfair advantage, and I beg therefore that you will take some days to consider of your determination.'
''It is utterly useless,' replied Felix; 'we can never again inhabit your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister will never recover from their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any more. Take possession of your tenement and let me fly from this place.'
'Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion entered the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then departed. I never saw any of the family of De Lacey more.
'I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild voice of De Lacey, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night advanced I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage, and after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations.
'As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sank, and with a loud scream I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues.
'As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of the habitation, I quitted the scene and sought for refuge in the woods.
'And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated and despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the thought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you were my father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness than to him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had bestowed upon Safie, geography had not been omitted; I had learned from these the relative situations of the different countries of the earth. You had mentioned Geneva as the name of your native town, and towards this place I resolved to proceed.
'But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a southwesterly direction to reach my destination, but the sun was my only guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass through, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I did not despair. From you only could I hope for succour, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form.
'My travels were long and the sufferings I endured intense. It was late in autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided. I travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human being. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the earth was hard and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh, earth! How often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The mildness of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and bitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings.
'I generally rested during the day and travelled only when I was secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun, which bestowed such joy upon me.
'I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring. Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a cypress. I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labour, from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She was senseless, and I endeavoured by every means in my power to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood.
'This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted.
'For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder, and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge- a deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured.
'After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery which insulted my desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure.
'But my toils now drew near a close, and in two months from this time I reached the environs of Geneva.
'It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among the fields that surround it to meditate in what manner I should apply to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger and far too unhappy to enjoy the gentle breezes of evening or the prospect of the sun setting behind the stupendous mountains of Jura.
'At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection, which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came running into the recess I had chosen, with all the sportiveness of infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him and educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in this peopled earth.
'Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his face and said, 'Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.'
'He struggled violently. 'Let me go,' he cried; 'monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa.'
''Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.'
''Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a Syndic- he is M. Frankenstein-he will punish you. You dare not keep me.'
''Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy-to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.'
'The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet.
'I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, 'I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.'
'As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned; I remembered that I was forever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright.
'Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind and perish in the attempt to destroy them.
'While l was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had committed the murder, and seeking a more secluded hiding-place, I entered a barn which had appeared to me to be empty. A woman was sleeping on some straw; she was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose joy-imparting smiles are bestowed on all but me. And then I bent over her and whispered, 'Awake, fairest, thy lover is near-he who would give his life but to obtain one look of affection from thine eyes; my beloved, awake!'
'The sleeper stirred; a thrill of terror ran through me. Should she indeed awake, and see me, and curse me, and denounce the murderer? Thus would she assuredly act if her darkened eyes opened and she beheld me. The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me-not I, but she, shall suffer; the murder I have committed because I am forever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime had its source in her; be hers the punishment! Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief. I bent over her and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress. She moved again, and I fled.
'For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place, sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries forever. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.'
Chapter 17
The being finished speaking and fixed his looks upon me in the expectation of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He continued,
'You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.'
The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and as he said this I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me.
'I do refuse it,' I replied; 'and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.'
'You are in the wrong,' replied the fiend; 'and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.'
A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded-
'I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me, for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them a hundred and a hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realized. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!'
I was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of my consent, but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations, and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of feeling and continued,
'If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.'
'You propose,' replied I, 'to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell in those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only companions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile? You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot consent.'
'How inconstant are your feelings! But a moment ago you were moved by my representations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints? I swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me, that with the companion you bestow I will quit the neighbourhood of man and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil passions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy! My life will flow quietly away, and in my dying moments I shall not curse my maker.'
His words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him, but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle these sensations; I thought that as I could not sympathize with him, I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to bestow.
'You swear,' I said, 'to be harmless; but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge?'
'How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and became linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded.'
I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations; a creature who could exist in the ice caves of the glaciers and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said,
'I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe forever, and every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as I shall deliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.'
'I swear,' he cried, 'by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, and by the fire of love that burns my heart, that if you grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again. Depart to your home and commence your labours; I shall watch their progress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are ready I shall appear.'
Saying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in my sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice.
His tale had occupied the whole day, and the sun was upon the verge of the horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent towards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my heart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labour of winding among the little paths of the mountain and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced perplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of the day had produced. Night was far advanced when I came to the halfway resting-place and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars shone at intervals as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines rose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the ground; it was a scene of wonderful solemnity and stirred strange thoughts within me. I wept bitterly, and clasping my hands in agony, I exclaimed, 'Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.'
These were wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me and how I listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to consume me.
Morning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; I took no rest, but returned immediately to Geneva. Even in my own heart I could give no expression to my sensations-they weighed on me with a mountain's weight and their excess destroyed my agony beneath them. Thus I returned home, and entering the house, presented myself to the family. My haggard and wild appearance awoke intense alarm, but I answered no question, scarcely did I speak. I felt as if I were placed under a ban-as if I had no right to claim their sympathies- as if never more might I enjoy companionship with them. Yet even thus I loved them to adoration; and to save them, I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task. The prospect of such an occupation made every other circumstance of existence pass before me like a dream, and that thought only had to me the reality of life.
Chapter 18
Day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and I could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay and shrank from taking the first step in an undertaking whose immediate necessity began to appear less absolute to me. A change indeed had taken place in me; my health, which had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. My father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure, and on my return I met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart.
It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling me aside, thus addressed me,
'I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former pleasures and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still unhappy and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this, but yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all.'
I trembled violently at his exordium, and my father continued- 'I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with our dear Elizabeth as the tie of our domestic comfort and the stay of my declining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes, entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of man that what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have entirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another whom you may love; and considering yourself as bound in honour to Elizabeth, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel.'
'My dear father, reassure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union.'
'The expression of your sentiments of this subject, my dear Victor, gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast a gloom over us. But it is this gloom which appears to have taken so strong a hold of your mind that I wish to dissipate. Tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that everyday tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You are younger; yet l do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose, however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words with candour and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and sincerity.'
I listened to my father in silence and remained for some time incapable of offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of thoughts and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! To me the idea of an immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay. I was bound by a solemn promise which I had not yet fulfilled and dared not break, or if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend over me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck and bowing me to the ground? I must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with his mate before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of a union from which I expected peace.
I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to England or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father's house while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved. I knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale to thrill all connected with me with horror. I was aware also that I should often lose all self-command, all capacity of hiding the harrowing sensations that would possess me during the progress of my unearthly occupation. I must absent myself from all I loved while thus employed. Once commenced, it would quickly be achieved, and I might be restored to my family in peace and happiness. My promise fulfilled, the monster would depart forever. Or some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him and put an end to my slavery forever.
These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to visit England, but concealing the true reasons of this request, I clothed my desires under a guise which excited no suspicion, while I urged my desire with an earnestness that easily induced my father to comply. After so long a period of an absorbing melancholy that resembled madness in its intensity and effects, he was glad to find that I was capable of taking pleasure in the idea of such a journey, and he hoped that change of scene and varied amusement would, before my return, have restored me entirely to myself.
The duration of my absence was left to my own choice; a few months, or at most a year, was the period contemplated. One paternal kind precaution he had taken to ensure my having a companion. Without previously communicating with me, he had, in concert with Elizabeth, arranged that Clerval should join me at Strasbourg. This interfered with the solitude I coveted for the prosecution of my task; yet at the commencement of my journey the presence of my friend could in no way be an impediment, and truly I rejoiced that thus I should be saved many hours of lonely, maddening reflection. Nay, Henry might stand between me and the intrusion of my foe. If I were alone, would he not at times force his abhorred presence on me to remind me of my task or to contemplate its progress?
To England, therefore, I was bound, and it was understood that my union with Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return. My father's age rendered him extremely averse to delay. For myself, there was one reward I promised myself from my detested toils- one consolation for my unparalleled sufferings; it was the prospect of that day when, enfranchised from my miserable slavery, I might claim Elizabeth and forget the past in my union with her.
I now made arrangements for my journey, but one feeling haunted me which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy and unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go, and would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in itself, but soothing inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends. I was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this might happen. But through the whole period during which I was the slave of my creature I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend would follow me and exempt my family from the danger of his machinations.
It was in the latter end of September that I again quitted my native country. My journey had been my own suggestion, and Elizabeth therefore acquiesced, but she was filled with disquiet at the idea of my suffering, away from her, the inroads of misery and grief. It had been her care which provided me a companion in Clerval-and yet a man is blind to a thousand minute circumstances which call forth a woman's sedulous attention. She longed to bid me hasten my return; a thousand conflicting emotions rendered her mute as she bade me a tearful, silent farewell.
I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly knowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with me. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes, but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured.
After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed many leagues, I arrived at Strasbourg, where I waited two days for Clerval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was alive to every new scene, joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise and recommence a new day. He pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape and the appearances of the sky. 'This is what it is to live,' he cried; 'how I enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are you desponding and sorrowful!' In truth, I was occupied by gloomy thoughts and neither saw the descent of the evening star nor the golden sunrise reflected in the Rhine. And you, my friend, would be far more amused with the journal of Clerval, who observed the scenery with an eye of feeling and delight, than in listening to my reflections. I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.
We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasbourg to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage we passed many willowy islands and saw several beautiful towns. We stayed a day at Mannheim, and on the fifth from our departure from Strasbourg, arrived at Mainz. The course of the Rhine below Mainz becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards with green sloping banks and a meandering river and populous towns occupy the scene.
We travelled at the time of the vintage and heard the song of the labourers as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat, and as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to fairy-land and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. 'I have seen,' he said, 'the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean; and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled. Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man than those who pile the glacier or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country.' Clerval! Beloved friend! Even now it delights me to record your words and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the 'very poetry of nature.' His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour:-
-The sounding cataract
Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to him
An appetite; a feeling, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye.*
And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? Has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator; - has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend.
Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will proceed with my tale.
Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to post the remainder of our way, for the wind was contrary and the stream of the river was too gentle to aid us. Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery, but we arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to England. It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that I first saw the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames presented a new scene; they were flat but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort and remembered the Spanish Armada, Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich- places which I had heard of even in my country.
At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul's towering above all, and the Tower famed in English history.
Chapter 19
London was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Clerval desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time, but this was with me a secondary object; I was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers.
If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish.
But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. He was also pursuing an object he had long had in view. His design was to visit India, in the belief that he had in his knowledge of its various languages, and in the views he had taken of its society, the means of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade. In Britain only could he further the execution of his plan. He was forever busy, and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mind. I tried to conceal this as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate.
After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in Scotland who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned the beauties of his native country and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided. Clerval eagerly desired to accept this invitation, and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams and all the wondrous works with which Nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places. We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour about the end of July. I packed up my chemical instruments and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.
We quitted London on the 27th of March and remained a few days at Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of stately deer were all novelties to us.
From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted there more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him, after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of Parliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king and his companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Goring, his queen, and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city which they might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees.
I enjoyed this scene, and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind, and if I was ever overcome by ennui, the sight of what is beautiful in nature or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man could always interest my heart and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be-a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.
We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs and endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden and the field on which that patriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.
We left Oxford with regret and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next place of rest. The country in the neighbourhood of this village resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but everything is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant white Alps which always attend on the piny mountains of my native country. We visited the wondrous cave and the little cabinets of natural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner as in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name made me tremble when pronounced by Henry, and I hastened to quit Matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated.
From Derby, still journeying northwards, we passed two months in Cumberland and Westmorland. I could now almost fancy myself among the Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky streams were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. 'I could pass my life here,' said he to me; 'and among these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine.'
But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.
We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants when the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached, and we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had now neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the daemon's disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland and wreak his vengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience; if they were delayed I was miserable and overcome by a thousand fears; and when they arrived and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed me and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime.
I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so well as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle and its environs, the most delightful in the world, Arthur's Seat, St. Bernard's Well, and the Pentland Hills compensated him for the change and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.
We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrew's, and along the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us. But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and accordingly I told Clerval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland alone. 'Do you,' said I, 'enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my motions, I entreat you; leave me to peace and solitude for a short time; and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper.
Henry wished to dissuade me, but seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. 'I had rather be with you,' he said, 'in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom I do not know; hasten, then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.'
Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the mainland, which was about five miles distant.
On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession, an incident which would doubtless have occasioned some surprise had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave, so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.
In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea to listen to the waves as they roared and dashed at my feet. It was a monotonous yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky, and when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean.
In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived, but as I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days, and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work. It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands.
Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow creatures lest when alone he should come to claim his companion.
In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil that made my heart sicken in my bosom.
Chapter 20
I sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment, and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should leave my labour for the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.
Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race.
I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by the light of the moon the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress and claim the fulfillment of my promise.
As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.
I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, I sought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the gloom and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible reveries.
Several hours passed, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea; it was almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed under the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the water, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices as the fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was hardly conscious of its extreme profundity, until my ear was suddenly arrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed close to my house.
In a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one endeavoured to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a presentiment of who it was and wished to rouse one of the peasants who dwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the sensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you in vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the spot.
Presently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door opened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he approached me and said in a smothered voice, 'You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery; I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England and among the deserts of Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my hopes?'
'Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.'
'Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!'
'The hour of my irresolution is past, and the period of your power is arrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but they confirm me in a determination of not creating you a companion in vice. Shall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a daemon whose delight is in death and wretchedness? Begone! I am firm, and your words will only exasperate my rage.'
The monster saw my determination in my face and gnashed his teeth in the impotence of anger. 'Shall each man,' cried he, 'find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains-revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.'
'Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words. Leave me; I am inexorable.'
'It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding-night.'
I started forward and exclaimed, 'Villain! Before you sign my death-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe.'
I would have seized him, but he eluded me and quitted the house with precipitation. In a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across the waters with an arrowy swiftness and was soon lost amidst the waves.
All was again silent, but his words rang in my ears. I burned with rage to pursue the murderer of my peace and precipitate him into the ocean. I walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination conjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not followed him and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered him to depart, and he had directed his course towards the mainland. I shuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his insatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words-'*I will be with you on your wedding-night*.' That, then, was the period fixed for the fulfillment of my destiny. In that hour I should die and at once satisfy and extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter struggle.
The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole across me. I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily, it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. If I returned, it was to be sacrificed or to see those whom I most loved die under the grasp of a daemon whom I had myself created.
I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep into which I now sank refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rang in my ears like a death-knell; they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality.
The sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my appetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when I saw a fishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet; it contained letters from Geneva, and one from Clerval entreating me to join him. He said that he was wearing away his time fruitlessly where he was, that letters from the friends he had formed in London desired his return to complete the negotiation they had entered into for his Indian enterprise. He could not any longer delay his departure; but as his journey to London might be followed, even sooner than he now conjectured, by his longer voyage, he entreated me to bestow as much of my society on him as I could spare. He besought me, therefore, to leave my solitary isle and to meet him at Perth, that we might proceed southwards together. This letter in a degree recalled me to life, and I determined to quit my island at the expiration of two days.
Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I shuddered to reflect; I must pack up my chemical instruments, and for that purpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and I must handle those utensils the sight of which was sickening to me. The next morning, at daybreak, I summoned sufficient courage and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to collect myself and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I conveyed the instruments out of the room, but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants; and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and laying them up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night; and in the meantime I sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus.
Nothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place in my feelings since the night of the appearance of the daemon. I had before regarded my promise with a gloomy despair as a thing that, with whatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film had been taken from before my eyes and that I for the first time saw clearly. The idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur to me; the threat I had heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not reflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in my own mind that to create another like the fiend I had first made would be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness, and I banished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different conclusion.
Between two and three in the morning the moon rose; and I then, putting my basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the shore. The scene was perfectly solitary; a few boats were returning towards land, but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime and avoided with shuddering anxiety any encounter with my fellow creatures. At one time the moon, which had before been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took advantage of the moment of darkness and cast my basket into the sea; I listened to the gurgling sound as it sank and then sailed away from the spot. The sky became clouded, but the air was pure, although chilled by the northeast breeze that was then rising. But it refreshed me and filled me with such agreeable sensations that I resolved to prolong my stay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched myself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the moon, everything was obscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat as its keel cut through the waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly.
I do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I found that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high, and the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I found that the wind was northeast and must have driven me far from the coast from which I had embarked. I endeavoured to change my course but quickly found that if I again made the attempt the boat would be instantly filled with water. Thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror. I had no compass with me and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the world that the sun was of little benefit to me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic and feel all the tortures of starvation or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others; I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave. 'Fiend,' I exclaimed, 'your task is already fulfilled!' I thought of Elizabeth, of my father, and of Clerval-all left behind, on whom the monster might satisfy his sanguinary and merciless passions. This idea plunged me into a reverie so despairing and frightful that even now, when the scene is on the point of closing before me forever, I shudder to reflect on it.
Some hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the horizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze and the sea became free from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick and hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high land towards the south.
Almost spent, as I was, by fatigue and the dreadful suspense I endured for several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of warm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes.
How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed another sail with a part of my dress and eagerly steered my course towards the land. It had a wild and rocky appearance, but as I approached nearer I easily perceived the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore and found myself suddenly transported back to the neighbourhood of civilized man. I carefully traced the windings of the land and hailed a steeple which I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was in a state of extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the town, as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment. Fortunately I had money with me. As I turned the promontory I perceived a small neat town and a good harbour, which I entered, my heart bounding with joy at my unexpected escape.
As I was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails, several people crowded towards the spot. They seemed much surprised at my appearance, but instead of offering me any assistance, whispered together with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me a slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they spoke English, and I therefore addressed them in that language. 'My good friends,' said I, 'will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this town and inform me where I am?'
'You will know that soon enough,' replied a man with a hoarse voice. 'Maybe you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste, but you will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you.'
I was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a stranger, and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and angry countenances of his companions. 'Why do you answer me so roughly?' I replied. 'Surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to receive strangers so inhospitably.'
'I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be, but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.'
While this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly increase. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which annoyed and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn, but no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose from the crowd as they followed and surrounded me, when an ill-looking man approaching tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Come, sir, you must follow me to Mr. Kirwin's to give an account of yourself.'
'Who is Mr. Kirwin? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not this a free country?'
'Ay, sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr. Kirwin is a magistrate, and you are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was found murdered here last night.'
This answer startled me, but I presently recovered myself. I was innocent; that could easily be proved; accordingly I followed my conductor in silence and was led to one of the best houses in the town. I was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger, but being surrounded by a crowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical debility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little did I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm me and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death.
I must pause here, for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory of the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to my recollection.
Chapter 21
I was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old benevolent man with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however, with some degree of severity, and then, turning towards my conductors, he asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion.
About half a dozen men came forward; and, one being selected by the magistrate, he deposed that he had been out fishing the night before with his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o'clock, they observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put in for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen; they did not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a creek about two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the fishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. As he was proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something and fell at his length on the ground. His companions came up to assist him, and by the light of their lantern they found that he had fallen on the body of a man, who was to all appearance dead. Their first supposition was that it was the corpse of some person who had been drowned and was thrown on shore by the waves, but on examination they found that the clothes were not wet and even that the body was not then cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman near the spot and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore it to life. It appeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age. He had apparently been strangled, for there was no sign of any violence except the black mark of fingers on his neck.
The first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me, but when the mark of the fingers was mentioned I remembered the murder of my brother and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a mist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support. The magistrate observed me with a keen eye and of course drew an unfavourable augury from my manner.
The son confirmed his father's account, but when Daniel Nugent was called he swore positively that just before the fall of his companion, he saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the shore; and as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was the same boat in which I had just landed.
A woman deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from that part of the shore where the corpse was afterwards found.
Another woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the body into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed and rubbed it, and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite gone.
Several other men were examined concerning my landing, and they agreed that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it was very probable that I had beaten about for many hours and had been obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed. Besides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from another place, and it was likely that as I did not appear to know the shore, I might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance of the town of- from the place where I had deposited the corpse.
Mr. Kirwin, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken into the room where the body lay for interment, that it might be observed what effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was probably suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the mode of the murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted, by the magistrate and several other persons, to the inn. I could not help being struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during this eventful night; but, knowing that I had been conversing with several persons in the island I had inhabited about the time that the body had been found, I was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of the affair.
I entered the room where the corpse lay and was led up to the coffin. How can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched with horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without shuddering and agony. The examination, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses, passed like a dream from my memory when I saw the lifeless form of Henry Clerval stretched before me. I gasped for breath, and throwing myself on the body, I exclaimed, 'Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? Two I have already destroyed; other victims await their destiny; but you, Clerval, my friend, my benefactor-'
The human frame could no longer support the agonies that I endured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.
A fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death; my ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the murderer of William, of Justine, and of Clerval. Sometimes I entreated my attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was tormented; and at others I felt the fingers of the monster already grasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately, as I spoke my native language, Mr. Kirwin alone understood me; but my gestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other witnesses.
Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents; how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?
But I was doomed to live and in two months found myself as awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by jailers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon. It was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding; I had forgotten the particulars of what had happened and only felt as if some great misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when I looked around and saw the barred windows and the squalidness of the room in which I was, all flashed across my memory and I groaned bitterly.
This sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me. She was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her countenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterize that class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of persons accustomed to see without sympathizing in sights of misery. Her tone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in English, and the voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings. 'Are you better now, sir?' said she.
I replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, 'I believe I am; but if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am still alive to feel this misery and horror.'
'For that matter,' replied the old woman, 'if you mean about the gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you were dead, for I fancy it will go hard with you! However, that's none of my business; I am sent to nurse you and get you well; I do my duty with a safe conscience; it were well if everybody did the same.'
I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt languid and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.
As the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew feverish; a darkness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed me with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. The physician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them for me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the expression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second. Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer but the hangman who would gain his fee?
These were my first reflections, but I soon learned that Mr. Kirwin had shown me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison to be prepared for me ; and it was he who had provided a physician and a nurse. It is true, he seldom came to see me, for although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every human creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and miserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see that I was not neglected, but his visits were short and with long intervals.
One day, while I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my eyes half open and my cheeks livid like those in death. I was overcome by gloom and misery and often reflected I had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. At one time I considered whether I should not declare myself guilty and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than poor Justine had been. Such were my thoughts when the door of my apartment was opened and Mr. Kirwin entered. His countenance expressed sympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to mine and addressed me in French, 'I fear that this place is very shocking to you; can I do anything to make you more comfortable?'
'I thank you, but all that you mention is nothing to me; on the whole earth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving.'
'I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to one borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. But you will, I hope, soon quit this melancholy abode, for doubtless evidence can easily be brought to free you from the criminal charge.'
'That is my least concern; I am, by a course of strange events, become the most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have been, can death be any evil to me?'
'Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonizing than the strange chances that have lately occurred. You were thrown, by some surprising accident, on this shore, renowned for its hospitality, seized immediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that was presented to your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a manner and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path.'
As Mr. Kirwin said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on this retrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at the knowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some astonishment was exhibited in my countenance, for Mr. Kirwin hastened to say, 'Immediately upon your being taken ill, all the papers that were on your person were brought me, and I examined them that I might discover some trace by which I could send to your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. I found several letters, and, among others, one which I discovered from its commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote to Geneva; nearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter. But you are ill; even now you tremble; you are unfit for agitation of any kind.'
'This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event; tell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder I am now to lament?'
'Your family is perfectly well,' said Mr. Kirwin with gentleness; 'and someone, a friend, is come to visit you.'
I know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my misery and taunt me with the death of Clerval, as a new incitement for me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and cried out in agony, 'Oh! Take him away! I cannot see him; for God's sake, do not let him enter!'
Mr. Kirwin regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help regarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt and said in rather a severe tone, 'I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father would have been welcome instead of inspiring such violent repugnance.'
'My father!' cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed from anguish to pleasure. 'Is my father indeed come? How kind, how very kind! But where is he, why does he not hasten to me?'
My change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he thought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium, and now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose and quitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it.
Nothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the arrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him and cried, 'Are you, then, safe-and Elizabeth-and Ernest?'
My father calmed me with assurances of their welfare and endeavoured, by dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my desponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode of cheerfulness. 'What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!' said he, looking mournfully at the barred windows and wretched appearance of the room. 'You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to pursue you. And poor Clerval-'
The name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too great to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears.
'Alas! Yes, my father,' replied I; 'some destiny of the most horrible kind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, or surely I should have died on the coffin of Henry.'
We were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the precarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that could ensure tranquillity. Mr. Kirwin came in and insisted that my strength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the appearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I gradually recovered my health.
As my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black melancholy that nothing could dissipate. The image of Clerval was forever before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once the agitation into which these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous relapse. Alas! Why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life? It was surely that I might fulfil my destiny, which is now drawing to a close. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these throbbings and relieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust; and, in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink to rest. Then the appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present to my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless, wishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer in its ruins.
The season of the assizes approached. I had already been three months in prison, and although I was still weak and in continual danger of a relapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the country town where the court was held. Mr. Kirwin charged himself with every care of collecting witnesses and arranging my defence. I was spared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was not brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand jury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney Islands at the hour the body of my friend was found; and a fortnight after my removal I was liberated from prison.
My father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a criminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh atmosphere and permitted to return to my native country. I did not participate in these feelings, for to me the walls of a dungeon or a palace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they were the expressive eyes of Henry, languishing in death, the dark orbs nearly covered by the lids and the long black lashes that fringed them; sometimes it was the watery, clouded eyes of the monster, as I first saw them in my chamber at Ingolstadt.
My father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He talked of Geneva, which I should soon visit, of Elizabeth and Ernest; but these words only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish for happiness and thought with melancholy delight of my beloved cousin or longed, with a devouring *maladie du pays*, to see once more the blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early childhood; but my general state of feeling was a torpor in which a prison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and these fits were seldom interrupted but by paroxysms of anguish and despair. At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence I loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.
Yet one duty remained to me, the recollection of which finally triumphed over my selfish despair. It was necessary that I should return without delay to Geneva, there to watch over the lives of those I so fondly loved and to lie in wait for the murderer, that if any chance led me to the place of his concealment, or if he dared again to blast me by his presence, I might, with unfailing aim, put an end to the existence of the monstrous image which I had endued with the mockery of a soul still more monstrous. My father still desired to delay our departure, fearful that I could not sustain the fatigues of a journey, for I was a shattered wreck-the shadow of a human being. My strength was gone. I was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day preyed upon my wasted frame.
Still, as I urged our leaving Ireland with such inquietude and impatience, my father thought it best to yield. We took our passage on board a vessel bound for Havre-de-Grace and sailed with a fair wind from the Irish shores. It was midnight. I lay on the deck looking at the stars and listening to the dashing of the waves. I hailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my sight, and my pulse beat with a feverish joy when I reflected that I should soon see Geneva. The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; yet the vessel in which I was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of Ireland, and the sea which surrounded me told me too forcibly that I was deceived by no vision and that Clerval, my friend and dearest companion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I repassed, in my memory, my whole life-my quiet happiness while residing with my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for Ingolstadt. I remembered, shuddering, the mad enthusiasm that hurried me on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the night in which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of thought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly.
Ever since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking every night a small quantity of laudanum, for it was by means of this drug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the preservation of life. Oppressed by the recollection of my various misfortunes, I now swallowed double my usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by its structure peculiarly susceptible.
Chapter 22
The voyage came to an end. We landed, and proceeded to Paris. I soon found that I had overtaxed my strength and that I must repose before I could continue my journey. My father's care and attentions were indefatigable, but he did not know the origin of my sufferings and sought erroneous methods to remedy the incurable ill. He wished me to seek amusement in society. I abhorred the face of man. Oh, not abhorred! They were my brethren, my fellow beings, and I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them, as to creatures of an angelic nature and celestial mechanism. But I felt that I had no right to share their intercourse. I had unchained an enemy among them whose joy it was to shed their blood and to revel in their groans. How they would, each and all, abhor me and hunt me from the world did they know my unhallowed acts and the crimes which had their source in me!
My father yielded at length to my desire to avoid society and strove by various arguments to banish my despair. Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.
'Alas! My father,' said I, 'how little do you know me. Human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride. Justine, poor unhappy Justine, was as innocent as I, and she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause of this-I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry-they all died by my hands.'
My father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same assertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an explanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as the offspring of delirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had presented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved in my convalescence. I avoided explanation and maintained a continual silence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad, and this in itself would forever have chained my tongue. But, besides, I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hearer with consternation and make fear and unnatural horror the inmates of his breast. I checked, therefore, my impatient thirst for sympathy and was silent when I would have given the world to have confided the fatal secret. Yet, still, words like those I have recorded would burst uncontrollably from me. I could offer no explanation of them, but their truth in part relieved the burden of my mysterious woe.
Upon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded wonder, 'My dearest Victor, what infatuation is this? My dear son, I entreat you never to make such an assertion again.'
'I am not mad,' I cried energetically; 'the sun and the heavens, who have viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations. A thousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have saved their lives; but I could not, my father, indeed I could not sacrifice the whole human race.'
The conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were deranged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation and endeavoured to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as possible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in Ireland and never alluded to them or suffered me to speak of my misfortunes.
As time passed away I became more calm; misery had her dwelling in my heart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own crimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost self-violence I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which sometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world, and my manners were calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey to the sea of ice.
A few days before we left Paris on our way to Switzerland I received the following letter from Elizabeth:
My dear Friend,
It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle dated at Paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may hope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you must have suffered! I expect to see you looking even more ill than when you quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured as I have been by anxious suspense; yet I hope to see peace in your countenance and to find that your heart is not totally void of comfort and tranquillity.
Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable a year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. I would not disturb you at this period, when so many misfortunes weigh upon you, but a conversation that I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some explanation necessary before we meet.
Explanation! You may possibly say, What can Elizabeth have to explain? If you really say this, my questions are answered and all my doubts satisfied. But you are distant from me, and it is possible that you may dread and yet be pleased with this explanation; and in a probability of this being the case, I dare not any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often wished to express to you but have never had the courage to begin.
You well know, Victor, that our union had been the favourite plan of your parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and taught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take place. We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and, I believe, dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But as brother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each other without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our case? Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you by our mutual happiness, with simple truth- Do you not love another?
You have travelled; you have spent several years of your life at Ingolstadt; and I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last autumn so unhappy, flying to solitude from the society of every creature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our connection and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of your parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But this is false reasoning. I confess to you, my friend, that I love you and that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend and companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own when I declare to you that our marriage would render me eternally miserable unless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to think that, borne down as you are by the cruellest misfortunes, you may stifle, by the word 'honour,' all hope of that love and happiness which would alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so disinterested an affection for you, may increase your miseries tenfold by being an obstacle to your wishes. Ah! Victor, be assured that your cousin and playmate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this supposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one request, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to interrupt my tranquillity.
Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer tomorrow, or the next day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. My uncle will send me news of your health, and if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.
Elizabeth Lavenza
Geneva, May 18th, 17-
This letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat of the fiend-'*I will be with you on your wedding-night!*' Such was my sentence, and on that night would the daemon employ every art to destroy me and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to console my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his crimes by my death. Well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then assuredly take place, in which if he were victorious I should be at peace and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I should be a free man. Alas! What freedom? Such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, penniless, and alone, but free. Such would be my liberty except that in my Elizabeth I possessed a treasure, alas, balanced by those horrors of remorse and guilt which would pursue me until death.
Sweet and beloved Elizabeth! I read and reread her letter, and some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisiacal dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the angel's arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her happy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet, again, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed *to be with me on my wedding-night*, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if to show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore, that if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to hers or my father's happiness, my adversary's designs against my life should not retard it a single hour.
In this state of mind I wrote to Elizabeth. My letter was calm and affectionate. 'I fear, my beloved girl,' I said, 'little happiness remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is centred in you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my life and my endeavours for contentment. I have one secret, Elizabeth, a dreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with horror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only wonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of misery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place, for, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But until then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most earnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.'
In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth's letter we returned to Geneva. The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a change in her also. She was thinner and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I was.
The tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.
Elizabeth alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle voice would soothe me when transported by passion and inspire me with human feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me and for me. When reason returned, she would remonstrate and endeavour to inspire me with resignation. Ah! It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.
Soon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with Elizabeth. I remained silent.
'Have you, then, some other attachment?'
'None on earth. I love Elizabeth and look forward to our union with delight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate myself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin.'
'My dear Victor, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.'
Such were the lessons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the threat returned; nor can you wonder that, omnipotent as the fiend had yet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as invincible, and that when he had pronounced the words '*I shall be with you on your wedding-night*,' I should regard the threatened fate as unavoidable. But death was no evil to me if the loss of Elizabeth were balanced with it, and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful countenance, agreed with my father that if my cousin would consent, the ceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the seal to my fate.
Great God! If for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish intention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself forever from my native country and wandered a friendless outcast over the earth than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if possessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim.
As the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice or a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me. But I concealed my feelings by an appearance of hilarity that brought smiles and joy to the countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the everwatchful and nicer eye of Elizabeth. She looked forward to our union with placid contentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes had impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness might soon dissipate into an airy dream and leave no trace but deep and everlasting regret.
Preparations were made for the event, congratulatory visits were received, and all wore a smiling appearance. I shut up, as well as I could, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there and entered with seeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might only serve as the decorations of my tragedy. Through my father's exertions a part of the inheritance of Elizabeth had been restored to her by the Austrian government. A small possession on the shores of Como belonged to her. It was agreed that, immediately after our union, we should proceed to Villa Lavenza and spend our first days of happiness beside the beautiful lake near which it stood.
In the meantime I took every precaution to defend my person in case the fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger constantly about me and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice, and by these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the period approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be regarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for in my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty as the day fixed for its solemnization drew nearer and I heard it continually spoken of as an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent.
Elizabeth seemed happy; my tranquil demeanour contributed greatly to calm her mind. But on the day that was to fulfil my wishes and my destiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her; and perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret which I had promised to reveal to her on the following day. My father was in the meantime overjoyed and in the bustle of preparation only recognized in the melancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride.
After the ceremony was performed a large party assembled at my father's, but it was agreed that Elizabeth and I should commence our journey by water, sleeping that night at Evian and continuing our voyage on the following day. The day was fair, the wind favourable; all smiled on our nuptial embarkation.
Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the feeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along; the sun was hot, but we were sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy while we enjoyed the beauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw Mont Saleve, the pleasant banks of Montalegre, and at a distance, surmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the opposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the ambition that would quit its native country, and an almost insurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.
I took the hand of Elizabeth. 'You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! If you knew what I have suffered and what I may yet endure, you would endeavour to let me taste the quiet and freedom from despair that this one day at least permits me to enjoy.'
'Be happy, my dear Victor,' replied Elizabeth; 'there is, I hope, nothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not painted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us, but I will not listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move along and how the clouds, which sometimes obscure and sometimes rise above the dome of Mont Blanc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom. What a divine day! How happy and serene all nature appears!'
Thus Elizabeth endeavoured to divert her thoughts and mine from all reflection upon melancholy subjects. But her temper was fluctuating; joy for a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place to distraction and reverie.
The sun sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.
The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sank at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we landed, and as I touched the shore I felt those cares and fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever.
Chapter 23
It was eight o'clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the shore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn and contemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured in darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.
The wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in the west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens and was beginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight of the vulture and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene of the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that were beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended.
I had been calm during the day, but so soon as night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious and watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my bosom; every sound terrified me, but I resolved that I would sell my life dearly and not shrink from the conflict until my own life or that of my adversary was extinguished.
Elizabeth observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful silence, but there was something in my glance which communicated terror to her, and trembling, she asked, 'What is it that agitates you, my dear Victor? What is it you fear?'
'Oh! Peace, peace, my love,' replied I; 'this night, and all will be safe; but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.'
I passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife, and I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy.
She left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages of the house and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to my adversary. But I discovered no trace of him and was beginning to conjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the execution of his menaces when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room.
Great God! Why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope and the purest creature on earth? She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Everywhere I turn I see the same figure- her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this and live? Alas! Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fell senseless on the ground.
When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardour, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips.
While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.
The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats; nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form conjured up by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines.
I attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the house, but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken man, I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that I had lost.
After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct, crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around; I hung over it and joined my sad tears to theirs; all this time no distinct idea presented itself to my mind, but my thoughts rambled to various subjects, reflecting confusedly on my misfortunes and their cause. I was bewildered, in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This idea made me shudder and recalled me to action. I started up and resolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.
There were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but the wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it was hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I hired men to row and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced relief from mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any exertion. I threw down the oar, and leaning my head upon my hands, gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up, I saw scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time and which I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain had ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they had done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Elizabeth. Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine or the clouds might lower, but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.
But why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last overwhelming event? Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached their acme, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know that, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My own strength is exhausted, and I must tell, in a few words, what remains of my hideous narration.
I arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived, but the former sunk under the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable old man! His eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and their delight-his Elizabeth, his more than daughter, whom he doted on with all that affection which a man feels, who in the decline of life, having few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain. Cursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs and doomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him; the springs of existence suddenly gave way; he was unable to rise from his bed, and in a few days he died in my arms.
What then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and darkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed, I dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the friends of my youth, but I awoke and found myself in a dungeon. Melancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my miseries and situation and was then released from my prison. For they had called me mad, and during many months, as I understood, a solitary cell had been my habitation.
Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past misfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause-the monster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad into the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head.
Nor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to reflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a month after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town and told him that I had an accusation to make, that I knew the destroyer of my family, and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the apprehension of the murderer.
The magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness. 'Be assured, sir,' said he, 'no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to discover the villain.'
'I thank you,' replied I; 'listen, therefore, to the deposition that I have to make. It is indeed a tale so strange that I should fear you would not credit it were there not something in truth which, however wonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be mistaken for a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.' My manner as I thus addressed him was impressive but calm; I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death, and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life. I now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy and never deviating into invective or exclamation.
The magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I continued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes shudder with horror; at others a lively surprise, unmingled with disbelief, was painted on his countenance.
When I had concluded my narration I said, 'This is the being whom I accuse and for whose seizure and punishment I call upon you to exert your whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and hope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of those functions on this occasion.'
This address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my own auditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is given to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was called upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his incredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, 'I would willingly afford you every aid in your pursuit, but the creature of whom you speak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to defiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice and inhabit caves and dens where no man would venture to intrude? Besides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes, and no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered or what region he may now inhabit.'
'I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit, and if he has indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the chamois and destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts; you do not credit my narrative and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the punishment which is his desert.'
As I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated. 'You are mistaken,' said he. 'I will exert myself, and if it is in my power to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment proportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself described to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable; and thus, while every proper measure is pursued, you should make up your mind to disappointment.'
'That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My revenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I confess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is unspeakable when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand; I have but one resource, and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his destruction.'
I trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a frenzy in my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness which the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan magistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of devotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of madness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child and reverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.
'Man,' I cried, 'how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say.'
I broke from the house angry and disturbed and retired to meditate on some other mode of action.
Chapter 24
My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was swallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise delirium or death would have been my portion.
My first resolution was to quit Geneva forever; my country, which, when I was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became hateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few jewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed.
And now my wanderings began which are to cease but with life. I have traversed a vast portion of the earth and have endured all the hardships which travellers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet. How I have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my failing limbs upon the sandy plain and prayed for death. But revenge kept me alive; I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.
When I quitted Geneva my first labour was to gain some clue by which I might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan was unsettled, and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain what path I should pursue. As night approached I found myself at the entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father reposed. I entered it and approached the tomb which marked their graves. Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark, and the scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested observer. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the mourner.
The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to rage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed, 'By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the daemon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.'
I had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked my utterance.
I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter. Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an audible whisper, 'I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied.'
I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil eluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed.
I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped, I know not how.
Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I have ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die, left some mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw the print of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand what I have felt and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue were the least pains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good followed and directed my steps and when I most murmured would suddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Sometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me. The fare was, indeed, coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate, but I will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had invoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few drops that revived me, and vanish.
I followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the daemon generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the country chiefly collected. In other places human beings were seldom seen, and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my path. I had money with me and gained the friendship of the villagers by distributing it; or I brought with me some food that I had killed, which, after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had provided me with fire and utensils for cooking.
My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during sleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! Often, when most miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture. The spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours, of happiness that I might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage. Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth's voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying health and youth. Often, when wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends. What agonizing fondness did I feel for them! How did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! At such moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul.
What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut in stone that guided me and instigated my fury. 'My reign is not yet over'- these words were legible in one of these inscriptions- 'you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable hours must you endure until that period shall arrive.'
Scoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee, miserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I give up my search until he or I perish; and then with what ecstasy shall I join my Elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage!
As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from their hiding-places to seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice, and no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief article of maintenance.
The triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. One inscription that he left was in these words: 'Prepare! Your toils only begin; wrap yourself in furs and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred.'
My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on heaven to support me, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts, until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary of the horizon. Oh! How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the south! Covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior wildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the boundary of their toils. I did not weep, but I knelt down and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet and grapple with him.
Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs and thus traversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the fiend possessed the same advantages, but I found that, as before I had daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him, so much so that when I first saw the ocean he was but one day's journey in advance, and I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched hamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the fiend and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said, had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols, putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice or frozen by the eternal frosts.
On hearing this information I suffered a temporary access of despair. He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few of the inhabitants could long endure and which I, the native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling. After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered round and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey.
I exchanged my land-sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of the frozen ocean, and purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I departed from land.
I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution burning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard the thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction. But again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure.
By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of despondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery. Once, after the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue, died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. I strained my sight to discover what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known form within. Oh! With what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart! Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might not intercept the view I had of the daemon; but still my sight was dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed me, I wept aloud.
But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an hour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly irksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible, nor did I again lose sight of it except at the moments when for a short time some ice-rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed perceptibly gained on it, and when, after nearly two days' journey, I beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within me.
But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my hopes were suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I had ever done before. A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every moment more ominous and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind arose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake, it split and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound. The work was soon finished; in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a hideous death.
In this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died, and I myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress when I saw your vessel riding at anchor and holding forth to me hopes of succour and life. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far north and was astounded at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my sledge to construct oars, and by these means was enabled, with infinite fatigue, to move my ice raft in the direction of your ship. I had determined, if you were going southwards, still to trust myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose. I hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which I could pursue my enemy. But your direction was northwards. You took me on board when my vigour was exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships into a death which I still dread, for my task is unfulfilled.
Oh! When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? If I do, swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape, that you will seek him and satisfy my vengeance in his death. And do I dare to ask of you to undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone? No; I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear, if the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he shall not live- swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated woes and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes. He is eloquent and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but trust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendlike malice. Hear him not; call on the names of William, Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and thrust your sword into his heart. I will hover near and direct the steel aright.
Walton, in continuation.
August 26th, 17-
You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so replete with anguish. His fine and lovely eyes were now lighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow and quenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his countenance and tones and related the most horrible incidents with a tranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression of the wildest rage as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor.
His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has, then, really existence! I cannot doubt it, yet I am lost in surprise and admiration. Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation, but on this point he was impenetrable.
'Are you mad, my friend?' said he. 'Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.'
Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history; he asked to see them and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places, but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy. 'Since you have preserved my narration,' said he, 'I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity.'
Thus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale that ever imagination formed. My thoughts and every feeling of my soul have been drunk up by the interest for my guest which this tale and his own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him, yet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every hope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium; he believes that when in dreams he holds converse with his friends and derives from that communion consolation for his miseries or excitements to his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the beings themselves who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith gives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as imposing and interesting as truth.
Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without tears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall.
'When younger,' said he, 'I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents that might be useful to my fellow creatures. When I reflected on the work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a sensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of common projectors. But this thought, which supported me in the commencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the dust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. My imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were intense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea and executed the creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect without passion my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk! Oh! My friend, if you had known me as I once was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation. Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell, never, never again to rise.'
Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea.
'I thank you, Walton,' he said, 'for your kind intentions towards so miserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties and fresh affections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth? Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine dispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never eradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain conclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother can never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shown early, suspect the other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however strongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be contemplated with suspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and association, but from their own merits; and wherever I am, the soothing voice of my Elizabeth and the conversation of Clerval will be ever whispered in my ear. They are dead, and but one feeling in such a solitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But such is not my destiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence; then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and I may die.'
My beloved Sister, September 2nd
I write to you, encompassed by peril and ignorant whether I am ever doomed to see again dear England and the dearer friends that inhabit it. I am surrounded by mountains of ice which admit of no escape and threaten every moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows whom I have persuaded to be my companions look towards me for aid, but I have none to bestow. There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet my courage and hopes do not desert me. Yet it is terrible to reflect that the lives of all these men are endangered through me. If we are lost, my mad schemes are the cause.
And what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of my destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope. Oh! My beloved sister, the sickening failing of your heart-felt expectations is, in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death. But you have a husband and lovely children; you may be happy. Heaven bless you and make you so!
My unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He endeavours to fill me with hope and talks as if life were a possession which he valued. He reminds me how often the same accidents have happened to other navigators who have attempted this sea, and in spite of myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the power of his eloquence; when he speaks, they no longer despair; he rouses their energies, and while they hear his voice they believe these vast mountains of ice are mole-hills which will vanish before the resolutions of man. These feelings are transitory; each day of expectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny caused by this despair.
September 5th
A scene has just passed of such uncommon interest that, although it is highly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot forbear recording it.
We are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my unfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of desolation. Frankenstein has daily declined in health; a feverish fire still glimmers in his eyes, but he is exhausted, and when suddenly roused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent lifelessness.
I mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny. This morning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend- his eyes half closed and his limbs hanging listlessly- I was roused by half a dozen of the sailors, who demanded admission into the cabin. They entered, and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and his companions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to me to make me a requisition which, in justice, I could not refuse. We were immured in ice and should probably never escape, but they feared that if, as was possible, the ice should dissipate and a free passage be opened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage and lead them into fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They insisted, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise that if the vessel should be freed I would instantly direct my course southwards.
This speech troubled me. I had not despaired, nor had I yet conceived the idea of returning if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in possibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered, when Frankenstein, who had at first been silent, and indeed appeared hardly to have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled, and his cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. Turning towards the men, he said, 'What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you, then, so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers and terror, because at every new incident your fortitude was to be called forth and your courage exhibited, because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome. For this was it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species, your names adored as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly and returned to their warm firesides. Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.'
He spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings expressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and heroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved? They looked at one another and were unable to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire and consider of what had been said, that I would not lead them farther north if they strenuously desired the contrary, but that I hoped that, with reflection, their courage would return.
They retired and I turned towards my friend, but he was sunk in languor and almost deprived of life.
How all this will terminate, I know not, but I had rather die than return shamefully, my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my fate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never willingly continue to endure their present hardships.
September 7th
The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience.
September 12th
It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond.
September 9th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. We were in the most imminent peril, but as we could only remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest whose illness increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. The ice cracked behind us and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze sprang from the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became perfectly free. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long-continued. Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked the cause of the tumult. 'They shout,' I said, 'because they will soon return to England.'
'Do you, then, really return?'
'Alas! Yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them unwillingly to danger, and I must return.'
'Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak, but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength.' Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted.
It was long before he was restored, and I often thought that life was entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he told me that my friend had certainly not many hours to live.
His sentence was pronounced, and I could only grieve and be patient. I sat by his bed, watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near, said, 'Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blamable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature. He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work, and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue.
'Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil this task; and now that you are returning to England, you will have little chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these points, and the well balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I leave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near approach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I may still be misled by passion.
'That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in other respects, this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the only happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the beloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.'
His voice became fainter as he spoke, and at length, exhausted by his effort, he sank into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted again to speak but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes closed forever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away from his lips.
Margaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this glorious spirit? What can I say that will enable you to understand the depth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and feeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find consolation.
I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again there is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine. Good night, my sister.
Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this final and wonderful catastrophe.
I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe-gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily and endeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this destroyer. I called on him to stay.
He paused, looking on me with wonder, and again turning towards the lifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every feature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some uncontrollable passion.
'That is also my victim!' he exclaimed. 'In his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold, he cannot answer me.'
His voice seemed suffocated, and my first impulses, which had suggested to me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend in destroying his enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my eyes to his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his ugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion. 'Your repentance,' I said, 'is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.'
'And do you dream?' said the daemon. 'Do you think that I was then dead to agony and remorse? He,' he continued, pointing to the corpse, 'he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse. Think you that the groans of Clerval were music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.
'After the murder of Clerval I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken and overcome. I pitied Frankenstein; my pity amounted to horror; I abhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness, that while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me he sought his own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which I was forever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled me with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished. I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey. Yet when she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of my demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended; there is my last victim!'
I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. 'Wretch!' I said. 'It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.'
'Oh, it is not thus-not thus,' interrupted the being. 'Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
'You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous and immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.
'But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look on the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the imagination of it was conceived and long for the moment when these hands will meet my eyes, when that imagination will haunt my thoughts no more.
'Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is nearly complete. Neither yours nor any man's death is needed to consummate the series of my being and accomplish that which must be done, but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to perform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?
'Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever.
'But soon,' he cried with sad and solemn enthusiasm, 'I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.'
He sprang from the cabin window as he said this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.

Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Chapter 1
Jonathan Harker's Journal
3 May. Bistritz.-Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.
The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. I asked the waiter, and he said it was called 'paprika hendl,' and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians.
I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it.
Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country.
I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe.
I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.
In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it.
I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. 
I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then.
I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was 'mamaliga', and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call 'impletata". 
I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move.
It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?
All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear.
At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets, and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque.
The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them.
The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.
It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier-for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina-it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.
Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.
I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress-white undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, 'The Herr Englishman?'
'Yes,' I said, 'Jonathan Harker.'
She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirtsleeves, who had followed her to the door.
He went, but immediately returned with a letter:
'My friend.-Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well tonight. At three tomorrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.-Your friend, Dracula.'
4 May-I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my German.
This could not be true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least, he answered my questions exactly as if he did.
He and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of way. He mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew. When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further. It was so near the time of starting that I had no time to ask anyone else, for it was all very mysterious and not by any means comforting.
Just before I was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in a hysterical way: 'Must you go? Oh! Young Herr, must you go?' She was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which I did not know at all. I was just able to follow her by asking many questions. When I told her that I must go at once, and that I was engaged on important business, she asked again:
'Do you know what day it is?' I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again:
'Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is?'
On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:
'It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?' She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally, she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting.
It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it.
I tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go.
She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me.
I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind.
She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck and said, 'For your mother's sake,' and went out of the room.
I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck.
Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.
If this book should ever reach Mina before I do, let it bring my goodbye. Here comes the coach!
5 May. The Castle.-The gray of the morning has passed, and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed.
I am not sleepy, and, as I am not to be called till I awake, naturally I write till sleep comes.
There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly.
I dined on what they called 'robber steak'-bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in simple style of the London cat's meat!
The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable.
I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.
When I got on the coach, the driver had not taken his seat, and I saw him talking to the landlady.
They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the door-came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out.
I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were 'Ordog'-Satan, 'Pokol'-hell, 'stregoica'-witch, 'vrolok' and 'vlkoslak'-both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire. 
When we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me.
With some difficulty, I got a fellow passenger to tell me what they meant. He would not answer at first, but on learning that I was English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye.
This was not very pleasant for me, just starting for an unknown place to meet an unknown man. But everyone seemed so kind-hearted, and so sorrowful, and so sympathetic that I could not but be touched.
I shall never forget the last glimpse which I had of the inn yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the yard.
Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the boxseat,-'gotza' they call them-cracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey.
I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might not have been able to throw them off so easily. Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom-apple, plum, pear, cherry. And as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the 'Mittel Land' ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame. The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. I could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no time in reaching Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter snows. In this respect it is different from the general run of roads in the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. Of old the Hospadars would not repair them, lest the Turk should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point.
Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. Here and there seemed mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us.
'Look! Isten szek!'-'God's seat!'-and he crossed himself reverently.
As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was emphasized by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. Here and there we passed Cszeks and slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent. By the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. Here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. There were many things new to me. For instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of weeping birch, their white stems shining like silver through the delicate green of the leaves.
Now and again we passed a leiter-wagon-the ordinary peasants's cart-with its long, snakelike vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the road. On this were sure to be seated quite a group of homecoming peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the Slovaks with their coloured sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end. As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine, though in the valleys which ran deep between the spurs of the hills, as we ascended through the Pass, the dark firs stood out here and there against the background of late-lying snow. Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the Carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys. Sometimes the hills were so steep that, despite our driver's haste, the horses could only go slowly. I wished to get down and walk up them, as we do at home, but the driver would not hear of it. 'No, no,' he said. 'You must not walk here. The dogs are too fierce.' And then he added, with what he evidently meant for grim pleasantry-for he looked round to catch the approving smile of the rest-'And you may have enough of such matters before you go to sleep.' The only stop he would make was a moment's pause to light his lamps.
When it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the passengers, and they kept speaking to him, one after the other, as though urging him to further speed. He lashed the horses unmercifully with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on to further exertions. Then through the darkness I could see a sort of patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the hills. The excitement of the passengers grew greater. The crazy coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a stormy sea. I had to hold on. The road grew more level, and we appeared to fly along. Then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us. We were entering on the Borgo Pass. One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial. These were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that same strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz-the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye. Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the darkness. It was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though I asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation. This state of excitement kept on for some little time. And at last we saw before us the Pass opening out on the eastern side. There were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive sense of thunder. It seemed as though the mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous one. I was now myself looking out for the conveyance which was to take me to the Count. Each moment I expected to see the glare of lamps through the blackness, but all was dark. The only light was the flickering rays of our own lamps, in which the steam from our hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud. We could see now the sandy road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle. The passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock my own disappointment. I was already thinking what I had best do, when the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something which I could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a tone, I thought it was 'An hour less than the time.' Then turning to me, he spoke in German worse than my own.
'There is no carriage here. The Herr is not expected after all. He will now come on to Bukovina, and return tomorrow or the next day, better the next day.' Whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them up. Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves, a caleche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach. I could see from the flash of our lamps as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us.
He said to the driver, 'You are early tonight, my friend.'
The man stammered in reply, 'The English Herr was in a hurry.'
To which the stranger replied, 'That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend. I know too much, and my horses are swift.'
As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger's 'Lenore".
'Denn die Todten reiten Schnell.' 
The strange driver evidently heard the words, for he looked up with a gleaming smile. The passenger turned his face away, at the same time putting out his two fingers and crossing himself. 'Give me the Herr's luggage,' said the driver, and with exceeding alacrity my bags were handed out and put in the caleche. Then I descended from the side of the coach, as the caleche was close alongside, the driver helping me with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel. His strength must have been prodigious.
Without a word he shook his reins, the horses turned, and we swept into the darkness of the pass. As I looked back I saw the steam from the horses of the coach by the light of the lamps, and projected against it the figures of my late companions crossing themselves. Then the driver cracked his whip and called to his horses, and off they swept on their way to Bukovina. As they sank into the darkness I felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling come over me. But a cloak was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the driver said in excellent German-'The night is chill, mein Herr, and my master the Count bade me take all care of you. There is a flask of slivovitz underneath the seat, if you should require it.'
I did not take any, but it was a comfort to know it was there all the same. I felt a little strangely, and not a little frightened. I think had there been any alternative I should have taken it, instead of prosecuting that unknown night journey. The carriage went at a hard pace straight along, then we made a complete turn and went along another straight road. It seemed to me that we were simply going over and over the same ground again, and so I took note of some salient point, and found that this was so. I would have liked to have asked the driver what this all meant, but I really feared to do so, for I thought that, placed as I was, any protest would have had no effect in case there had been an intention to delay.
By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was passing, I struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch. It was within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences. I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.
Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night.
At the first howl the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and sweated as though after a runaway from sudden fright. Then, far off in the distance, from the mountains on each side of us began a louder and a sharper howling, that of wolves, which affected both the horses and myself in the same way. For I was minded to jump from the caleche and run, whilst they reared again and plunged madly, so that the driver had to use all his great strength to keep them from bolting. In a few minutes, however, my own ears got accustomed to the sound, and the horses so far became quiet that the driver was able to descend and to stand before them.
He petted and soothed them, and whispered something in their ears, as I have heard of horse-tamers doing, and with extraordinary effect, for under his caresses they became quite manageable again, though they still trembled. The driver again took his seat, and shaking his reins, started off at a great pace. This time, after going to the far side of the Pass, he suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right.
Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel. And again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed. He kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.
Suddenly, away on our left I saw a faint flickering blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment. He at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer. But while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare. Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions. He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose, it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all, and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device.
Once there appeared a strange optical effect. When he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness. Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle.
At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright. I could not see any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether. But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled. For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.
All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had some peculiar effect on them. The horses jumped about and reared, and looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to see. But the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side, and they had perforce to remain within it. I called to the coachman to come, for it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break out through the ring and to aid his approach, I shouted and beat the side of the caleche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from the side, so as to give him a chance of reaching the trap. How he came there, I know not, but I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command, and looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway. As he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still. Just then a heavy cloud passed across the face of the moon, so that we were again in darkness.
When I could see again the driver was climbing into the caleche, and the wolves disappeared. This was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move. The time seemed interminable as we swept on our way, now in almost complete darkness, for the rolling clouds obscured the moon.
We kept on ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in the main always ascending. Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.
Chapter 2
Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued
5 May.-I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight.
When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand to assist me to alight. Again I could not but notice his prodigious strength. His hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed mine if he had chosen. Then he took my traps, and placed them on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. I could see even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and weather. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the reins. The horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one of the dark openings.
I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do. Of bell or knocker there was no sign. Through these frowning walls and dark window openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate. The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor's clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor, for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful, and I am now a full-blown solicitor! I began to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if I were awake. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare to me, and I expected that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at home, with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I had now and again felt in the morning after a day of overwork. But my flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians. All I could do now was to be patient, and to wait the coming of morning.
Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
'Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!' He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said.
'Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!' The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively, 'Count Dracula?'
He bowed in a courtly way as he replied, 'I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.' As he was speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in before I could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted.
'Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available. Let me see to your comfort myself.' He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily. At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.
The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door.
'You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared.'
The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger. So making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.
I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said,
'I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup.'
I handed to him the sealed letter which Mr. Hawkins had entrusted to me. He opened it and read it gravely. Then, with a charming smile, he handed it to me to read. One passage of it, at least, gave me a thrill of pleasure.
'I must regret that an attack of gout, from which malady I am a constant sufferer, forbids absolutely any travelling on my part for some time to come. But I am happy to say I can send a sufficient substitute, one in whom I have every possible confidence. He is a young man, full of energy and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition. He is discreet and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service. He shall be ready to attend on you when you will during his stay, and shall take your instructions in all matters.'
The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper. During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had experienced.
By this time I had finished my supper, and by my host's desire had drawn up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he offered me, at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke. I had now an opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very marked physiognomy.
His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a sharp point. As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.
The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back. And with a grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace. We were both silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first dim streak of the coming dawn. There seemed a strange stillness over everything. But as I listened, I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said.
'Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!' Seeing, I suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he added, 'Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the feelings of the hunter.' Then he rose and said.
'But you must be tired. Your bedroom is all ready, and tomorrow you shall sleep as late as you will. I have to be away till the afternoon, so sleep well and dream well!' With a courteous bow, he opened for me himself the door to the octagonal room, and I entered my bedroom.
I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt. I fear. I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!
7 May.-It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the last twenty-four hours. I slept till late in the day, and awoke of my own accord. When I had dressed myself I went into the room where we had supped, and found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot by the pot being placed on the hearth. There was a card on the table, on which was written-'I have to be absent for a while. Do not wait for me. D.' I set to and enjoyed a hearty meal. When I had done, I looked for a bell, so that I might let the servants know I had finished, but I could not find one. There are certainly odd deficiencies in the house, considering the extraordinary evidences of wealth which are round me. The table service is of gold, and so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value. The curtains and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though in excellent order. I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten. But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror. There is not even a toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I could either shave or brush my hair. I have not yet seen a servant anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of wolves. Some time after I had finished my meal, I do not know whether to call it breakfast or dinner, for it was between five and six o'clock when I had it, I looked about for something to read, for I did not like to go about the castle until I had asked the Count's permission. There was absolutely nothing in the room, book, newspaper, or even writing materials, so I opened another door in the room and found a sort of library. The door opposite mine I tried, but found locked.
In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and newspapers. A table in the centre was littered with English magazines and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date. The books were of the most varied kind, history, geography, politics, political economy, botany, geology, law, all relating to England and English life and customs and manners. There were even such books of reference as the London Directory, the 'Red' and 'Blue' books, Whitaker's Almanac, the Army and Navy Lists, and it somehow gladdened my heart to see it, the Law List.
Whilst I was looking at the books, the door opened, and the Count entered. He saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that I had had a good night's rest. Then he went on.
'I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much that will interest you. These companions,' and he laid his hand on some of the books, 'have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England, and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. But alas! As yet I only know your tongue through books. To you, my friend, I look that I know it to speak.'
'But, Count,' I said, 'You know and speak English thoroughly!' He bowed gravely.
'I thank you, my friend, for your all too-flattering estimate, but yet I fear that I am but a little way on the road I would travel. True, I know the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them.'
'Indeed,' I said, 'You speak excellently.'
'Not so,' he answered. 'Well, I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me. Here I am noble. I am a Boyar. The common people know me, and I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for. I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pauses in his speaking if he hears my words, 'Ha, ha! A stranger!' I have been so long master that I would be master still, or at least that none other should be master of me. You come to me not alone as agent of my friend Peter Hawkins, of Exeter, to tell me all about my new estate in London. You shall, I trust, rest here with me a while, so that by our talking I may learn the English intonation. And I would that you tell me when I make error, even of the smallest, in my speaking. I am sorry that I had to be away so long today, but you will, I know forgive one who has so many important affairs in hand.'
Of course I said all I could about being willing, and asked if I might come into that room when I chose. He answered, 'Yes, certainly,' and added.
'You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.' I said I was sure of this, and then he went on.
'We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be.'
This led to much conversation, and as it was evident that he wanted to talk, if only for talking's sake, I asked him many questions regarding things that had already happened to me or come within my notice. Sometimes he sheered off the subject, or turned the conversation by pretending not to understand, but generally he answered all I asked most frankly. Then as time went on, and I had got somewhat bolder, I asked him of some of the strange things of the preceding night, as for instance, why the coachman went to the places where he had seen the blue flames. He then explained to me that it was commonly believed that on a certain night of the year, last night, in fact, when all evil spirits are supposed to have unchecked sway, a blue flame is seen over any place where treasure has been concealed.
'That treasure has been hidden,' he went on, 'in the region through which you came last night, there can be but little doubt. For it was the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk. Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders. In the old days there were stirring times, when the Austrian and the Hungarian came up in hordes, and the patriots went out to meet them, men and women, the aged and the children too, and waited their coming on the rocks above the passes, that they might sweep destruction on them with their artificial avalanches. When the invader was triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had been sheltered in the friendly soil.'
'But how,' said I, 'can it have remained so long undiscovered, when there is a sure index to it if men will but take the trouble to look? 'The Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely. He answered.
'Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool! Those flames only appear on one night, and on that night no man of this land will, if he can help it, stir without his doors. And, dear sir, even if he did he would not know what to do. Why, even the peasant that you tell me of who marked the place of the flame would not know where to look in daylight even for his own work. Even you would not, I dare be sworn, be able to find these places again?'
'There you are right,' I said. 'I know no more than the dead where even to look for them.' Then we drifted into other matters.
'Come,' he said at last, 'tell me of London and of the house which you have procured for me.' With an apology for my remissness, I went into my own room to get the papers from my bag. Whilst I was placing them in order I heard a rattling of china and silver in the next room, and as I passed through, noticed that the table had been cleared and the lamp lit, for it was by this time deep into the dark. The lamps were also lit in the study or library, and I found the Count lying on the sofa, reading, of all things in the world, an English Bradshaw's Guide. When I came in he cleared the books and papers from the table, and with him I went into plans and deeds and figures of all sorts. He was interested in everything, and asked me a myriad questions about the place and its surroundings. He clearly had studied beforehand all he could get on the subject of the neighbourhood, for he evidently at the end knew very much more than I did. When I remarked this, he answered.
'Well, but, my friend, is it not needful that I should? When I go there I shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan, nay, pardon me. I fall into my country's habit of putting your patronymic first, my friend Jonathan Harker will not be by my side to correct and aid me. He will be in Exeter, miles away, probably working at papers of the law with my other friend, Peter Hawkins. So!'
We went thoroughly into the business of the purchase of the estate at Purfleet. When I had told him the facts and got his signature to the necessary papers, and had written a letter with them ready to post to Mr. Hawkins, he began to ask me how I had come across so suitable a place. I read to him the notes which I had made at the time, and which I inscribe here.
'At Purfleet, on a byroad, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It was surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust.
'The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the solid stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all periods back, I should say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. I could not enter it, as I had not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with my Kodak views of it from various points. The house had been added to, but in a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must be very great. There are but few houses close at hand, one being a very large house only recently added to and formed into a private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds.'
When I had finished, he said, 'I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day, and after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead. I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young, and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken. The shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.' Somehow his words and his look did not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his smile look malignant and saturnine.
Presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to pull my papers together. He was some little time away, and I began to look at some of the books around me. One was an atlas, which I found opened naturally to England, as if that map had been much used. On looking at it I found in certain places little rings marked, and on examining these I noticed that one was near London on the east side, manifestly where his new estate was situated. The other two were Exeter, and Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.
It was the better part of an hour when the Count returned. 'Aha!' he said. 'Still at your books? Good! But you must not work always. Come! I am informed that your supper is ready.' He took my arm, and we went into the next room, where I found an excellent supper ready on the table. The Count again excused himself, as he had dined out on his being away from home. But he sat as on the previous night, and chatted whilst I ate. After supper I smoked, as on the last evening, and the Count stayed with me, chatting and asking questions on every conceivable subject, hour after hour. I felt that it was getting very late indeed, but I did not say anything, for I felt under obligation to meet my host's wishes in every way. I was not sleepy, as the long sleep yesterday had fortified me, but I could not help experiencing that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in its way, the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death die generally at the change to dawn or at the turn of the tide. Anyone who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it. All at once we heard the crow of the cock coming up with preternatural shrillness through the clear morning air.
Count Dracula, jumping to his feet, said, 'Why there is the morning again! How remiss I am to let you stay up so long. You must make your conversation regarding my dear new country of England less interesting, so that I may not forget how time flies by us,' and with a courtly bow, he quickly left me.
I went into my room and drew the curtains, but there was little to notice. My window opened into the courtyard, all I could see was the warm grey of quickening sky. So I pulled the curtains again, and have written of this day.
8 May.-I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse. But now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy. I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had never come. It may be that this strange night existence is telling on me, but would that that were all! If there were any one to talk to I could bear it, but there is no one. I have only the Count to speak with, and he-I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place. Let me be prosaic so far as facts can be. It will help me to bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me. If it does I am lost. Let me say at once how I stand, or seem to.
I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could not sleep any more, got up. I had hung my shaving glass by the window, and was just beginning to shave. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard the Count's voice saying to me, 'Good morning.' I started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me. In starting I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment. Having answered the Count's salutation, I turned to the glass again to see how I had been mistaken. This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror! The whole room behind me was displayed, but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself.
This was startling, and coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I always have when the Count is near. But at the instant I saw that the cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin. I laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some sticking plaster. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.
'Take care,' he said, 'take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous that you think in this country.' Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on, 'And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!' And opening the window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then he withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal.
When I went into the dining room, breakfast was prepared, but I could not find the Count anywhere. So I breakfasted alone. It is strange that as yet I have not seen the Count eat or drink. He must be a very peculiar man! After breakfast I did a little exploring in the castle. I went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards the South.
The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every opportunity of seeing it. The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further. Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit. The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!
Chapter 3
Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued
When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me. I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find, but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap. When, however, the conviction had come to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly, as quietly as I have ever done anything in my life, and began to think over what was best to be done. I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no definite conclusion. Of one thing only am I certain. That it is no use making my ideas known to the Count. He knows well that I am imprisoned, and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own motives for it, he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with the facts. So far as I can see, my only plan will be to keep my knowledge and my fears to myself, and my eyes open. I am, I know, either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in desperate straits, and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need, all my brains to get through.
I had hardly come to this conclusion when I heard the great door below shut, and knew that the Count had returned. He did not come at once into the library, so I went cautiously to my own room and found him making the bed. This was odd, but only confirmed what I had all along thought, that there are no servants in the house. When later I saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in the dining room, I was assured of it. For if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. This is a terrible thought, for if so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand for silence? How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me? What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?
Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort? Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try to make up my mind about it. In the meantime I must find out all I can about Count Dracula, as it may help me to understand. Tonight he may talk of himself, if I turn the conversation that way. I must be very careful, however, not to awake his suspicion.
Midnight.-I have had a long talk with the Count. I asked him a few questions on Transylvania history, and he warmed up to the subject wonderfully. In his speaking of things and people, and especially of battles, he spoke as if he had been present at them all. This he afterwards explained by saying that to a Boyar the pride of his house and name is his own pride, that their glory is his glory, that their fate is his fate. Whenever he spoke of his house he always said 'we', and spoke almost in the plural, like a king speaking. I wish I could put down all he said exactly as he said it, for to me it was most fascinating. It seemed to have in it a whole history of the country. He grew excited as he spoke, and walked about the room pulling his great white moustache and grasping anything on which he laid his hands as though he would crush it by main strength. One thing he said which I shall put down as nearly as I can, for it tells in its way the story of his race.
'We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?' He held up his arms. 'Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race, that we were proud, that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier, that the Honfoglalas was completed there? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland. Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, 'water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.' Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the 'bloody sword,' or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent? Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkeyland, who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys, and the Dracula as their heart's blood, their brains, and their swords, can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.'
It was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed. 
12 May.-Let me begin with facts, bare, meager facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt. I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them. Last evening when the Count came from his room he began by asking me questions on legal matters and on the doing of certain kinds of business. I had spent the day wearily over books, and, simply to keep my mind occupied, went over some of the matters I had been examined in at Lincoln's Inn. There was a certain method in the Count's inquiries, so I shall try to put them down in sequence. The knowledge may somehow or some time be useful to me.
First, he asked if a man in England might have two solicitors or more. I told him he might have a dozen if he wished, but that it would not be wise to have more than one solicitor engaged in one transaction, as only one could act at a time, and that to change would be certain to militate against his interest. He seemed thoroughly to understand, and went on to ask if there would be any practical difficulty in having one man to attend, say, to banking, and another to look after shipping, in case local help were needed in a place far from the home of the banking solicitor. I asked to explain more fully, so that I might not by any chance mislead him, so he said,
'I shall illustrate. Your friend and mine, Mr. Peter Hawkins, from under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at Exeter, which is far from London, buys for me through your good self my place at London. Good! Now here let me say frankly, lest you should think it strange that I have sought the services of one so far off from London instead of some one resident there, that my motive was that no local interest might be served save my wish only, and as one of London residence might, perhaps, have some purpose of himself or friend to serve, I went thus afield to seek my agent, whose labours should be only to my interest. Now, suppose I, who have much of affairs, wish to ship goods, say, to Newcastle, or Durham, or Harwich, or Dover, might it not be that it could with more ease be done by consigning to one in these ports?'
I answered that certainly it would be most easy, but that we solicitors had a system of agency one for the other, so that local work could be done locally on instruction from any solicitor, so that the client, simply placing himself in the hands of one man, could have his wishes carried out by him without further trouble.
'But,' said he, 'I could be at liberty to direct myself. Is it not so?'
'Of course,' I replied, and 'Such is often done by men of business, who do not like the whole of their affairs to be known by any one person.'
'Good!' he said, and then went on to ask about the means of making consignments and the forms to be gone through, and of all sorts of difficulties which might arise, but by forethought could be guarded against. I explained all these things to him to the best of my ability, and he certainly left me under the impression that he would have made a wonderful solicitor, for there was nothing that he did not think of or foresee. For a man who was never in the country, and who did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and acumen were wonderful. When he had satisfied himself on these points of which he had spoken, and I had verified all as well as I could by the books available, he suddenly stood up and said, 'Have you written since your first letter to our friend Mr. Peter Hawkins, or to any other?'
It was with some bitterness in my heart that I answered that I had not, that as yet I had not seen any opportunity of sending letters to anybody.
'Then write now, my young friend,' he said, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, 'write to our friend and to any other, and say, if it will please you, that you shall stay with me until a month from now.'
'Do you wish me to stay so long?' I asked, for my heart grew cold at the thought.
'I desire it much, nay I will take no refusal. When your master, employer, what you will, engaged that someone should come on his behalf, it was understood that my needs only were to be consulted. I have not stinted. Is it not so?'
What could I do but bow acceptance? It was Mr. Hawkins' interest, not mine, and I had to think of him, not myself, and besides, while Count Dracula was speaking, there was that in his eyes and in his bearing which made me remember that I was a prisoner, and that if I wished it I could have no choice. The Count saw his victory in my bow, and his mastery in the trouble of my face, for he began at once to use them, but in his own smooth, resistless way.
'I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters. It will doubtless please your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to getting home to them. Is it not so?' As he spoke he handed me three sheets of note paper and three envelopes. They were all of the thinnest foreign post, and looking at them, then at him, and noticing his quiet smile, with the sharp, canine teeth lying over the red underlip, I understood as well as if he had spoken that I should be more careful what I wrote, for he would be able to read it. So I determined to write only formal notes now, but to write fully to Mr. Hawkins in secret, and also to Mina, for to her I could write shorthand, which would puzzle the Count, if he did see it. When I had written my two letters I sat quiet, reading a book whilst the Count wrote several notes, referring as he wrote them to some books on his table. Then he took up my two and placed them with his own, and put by his writing materials, after which, the instant the door had closed behind him, I leaned over and looked at the letters, which were face down on the table. I felt no compunction in doing so for under the circumstances I felt that I should protect myself in every way I could.
One of the letters was directed to Samuel F. Billington, No. 7, The Crescent, Whitby, another to Herr Leutner, Varna. The third was to Coutts & Co., London, and the fourth to Herren Klopstock & Billreuth, bankers, Buda Pesth. The second and fourth were unsealed. I was just about to look at them when I saw the door handle move. I sank back in my seat, having just had time to resume my book before the Count, holding still another letter in his hand, entered the room. He took up the letters on the table and stamped them carefully, and then turning to me, said,
'I trust you will forgive me, but I have much work to do in private this evening. You will, I hope, find all things as you wish.' At the door he turned, and after a moment's pause said, 'Let me advise you, my dear young friend. Nay, let me warn you with all seriousness, that should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle. It is old, and has many memories, and there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely. Be warned! Should sleep now or ever overcome you, or be like to do, then haste to your own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be safe. But if you be not careful in this respect, then,' He finished his speech in a gruesome way, for he motioned with his hands as if he were washing them. I quite understood. My only doubt was as to whether any dream could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom and mystery which seemed closing around me.
Later.-I endorse the last words written, but this time there is no doubt in question. I shall not fear to sleep in any place where he is not. I have placed the crucifix over the head of my bed, I imagine that my rest is thus freer from dreams, and there it shall remain.
When he left me I went to my room. After a little while, not hearing any sound, I came out and went up the stone stair to where I could look out towards the South. There was some sense of freedom in the vast expanse, inaccessible though it was to me, as compared with the narrow darkness of the courtyard. Looking out on this, I felt that I was indeed in prison, and I seemed to want a breath of fresh air, though it were of the night. I am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me. It is destroying my nerve. I start at my own shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings. God knows that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place! I looked out over the beautiful expanse, bathed in soft yellow moonlight till it was almost as light as day. In the soft light the distant hills became melted, and the shadows in the valleys and gorges of velvety blackness. The mere beauty seemed to cheer me. There was peace and comfort in every breath I drew. As I leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where I imagined, from the order of the rooms, that the windows of the Count's own room would look out. The window at which I stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though weatherworn, was still complete. But it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. I drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out.
What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had some many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.
What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature, is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me. I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me. I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of.
15 May.-Once more I have seen the count go out in his lizard fashion. He moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a good deal to the left. He vanished into some hole or window. When his head had disappeared, I leaned out to try and see more, but without avail. The distance was too great to allow a proper angle of sight. I knew he had left the castle now, and thought to use the opportunity to explore more than I had dared to do as yet. I went back to the room, and taking a lamp, tried all the doors. They were all locked, as I had expected, and the locks were comparatively new. But I went down the stone stairs to the hall where I had entered originally. I found I could pull back the bolts easily enough and unhook the great chains. But the door was locked, and the key was gone! That key must be in the Count's room. I must watch should his door be unlocked, so that I may get it and escape. I went on to make a thorough examination of the various stairs and passages, and to try the doors that opened from them. One or two small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing to see in them except old furniture, dusty with age and moth-eaten. At last, however, I found one door at the top of the stairway which, though it seemed locked, gave a little under pressure. I tried it harder, and found that it was not really locked, but that the resistance came from the fact that the hinges had fallen somewhat, and the heavy door rested on the floor. Here was an opportunity which I might not have again, so I exerted myself, and with many efforts forced it back so that I could enter. I was now in a wing of the castle further to the right than the rooms I knew and a storey lower down. From the windows I could see that the suite of rooms lay along to the south of the castle, the windows of the end room looking out both west and south. On the latter side, as well as to the former, there was a great precipice. The castle was built on the corner of a great rock, so that on three sides it was quite impregnable, and great windows were placed here where sling, or bow, or culverin could not reach, and consequently light and comfort, impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured. To the west was a great valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged mountain fastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer rock studded with mountain ash and thorn, whose roots clung in cracks and crevices and crannies of the stone. This was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more an air of comfort than any I had seen.
The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and moth. My lamp seemed to be of little effect in the brilliant moonlight, but I was glad to have it with me, for there was a dread loneliness in the place which chilled my heart and made my nerves tremble. Still, it was better than living alone in the rooms which I had come to hate from the presence of the Count, and after trying a little to school my nerves, I found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is the nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere 'modernity' cannot kill.
Later: The morning of 16 May.-God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me, that to him alone I can look for safety, even though this be only whilst I can serve his purpose. Great God! Merciful God, let me be calm, for out of that way lies madness indeed. I begin to get new lights on certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, 'My tablets! Quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that I put it down,' etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me.
The Count's mysterious warning frightened me at the time. It frightens me more not when I think of it, for in the future he has a fearful hold upon me. I shall fear to doubt what he may say!
When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy. The Count's warning came into my mind, but I took pleasure in disobeying it. The sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider. The soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me. I determined not to return tonight to the gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. I drew a great couch out of its place near the corner, so that as I lay, I could look at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and uncaring for the dust, composed myself for sleep. I suppose I must have fallen asleep. I hope so, but I fear, for all that followed was startlingly real, so real that now sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep.
I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on.
One said, 'Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin.'
The other added, 'He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all.'
I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.
I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.
But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. The thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back. It was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring in the room he said,
'How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me.'
The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him. 'You yourself never loved. You never love!' On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear. It seemed like the pleasure of fiends.
Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper, 'Yes, I too can love. You yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! Go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.'
'Are we to have nothing tonight?' said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror. But as I looked, they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. There was no door near them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. They simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away.
Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.
Chapter 4
Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued
I awoke in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, for some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof. Of one thing I am glad. If it was that the Count carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked. He would have taken or destroyed it. As I look round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who were, who are, waiting to suck my blood.
18 May.-I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for I must know the truth. When I got to the doorway at the top of the stairs I found it closed. It had been so forcibly driven against the jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered. I could see that the bolt of the lock had not been shot, but the door is fastened from the inside. I fear it was no dream, and must act on this surmise.
19 May.-I am surely in the toils. Last night the Count asked me in the suavest tones to write three letters, one saying that my work here was nearly done, and that I should start for home within a few days, another that I was starting on the next morning from the time of the letter, and the third that I had left the castle and arrived at Bistritz. I would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present state of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the Count whilst I am so absolutely in his power. And to refuse would be to excite his suspicion and to arouse his anger. He knows that I know too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him. My only chance is to prolong my opportunities. Something may occur which will give me a chance to escape. I saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends. And he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion. I therefore pretended to fall in with his views, and asked him what dates I should put on the letters.
He calculated a minute, and then said, 'The first should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June 29.'
I know now the span of my life. God help me!
28 May.-There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to send word home. A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. These are gipsies. I have notes of them in my book. They are peculiar to this part of the world, though allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over. There are thousands of them in Hungary and Transylvania, who are almost outside all law. They attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. They are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue.
I shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have them posted. I have already spoken to them through my window to begin acquaintanceship. They took their hats off and made obeisance and many signs, which however, I could not understand any more than I could their spoken language... 
I have written the letters. Mina's is in shorthand, and I simply ask Mr. Hawkins to communicate with her. To her I have explained my situation, but without the horrors which I may only surmise. It would shock and frighten her to death were I to expose my heart to her. Should the letters not carry, then the Count shall not yet know my secret or the extent of my knowledge....
I have given the letters. I threw them through the bars of my window with a gold piece, and made what signs I could to have them posted. The man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then put them in his cap. I could do no more. I stole back to the study, and began to read. As the Count did not come in, I have written here... 
The Count has come. He sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest voice as he opened two letters, 'The Szgany has given me these, of which, though I know not whence they come, I shall, of course, take care. See!'-He must have looked at it.-'One is from you, and to my friend Peter Hawkins. The other,'-here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly,-'The other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! It is not signed. Well! So it cannot matter to us.' And he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed.
Then he went on, 'The letter to Hawkins, that I shall, of course send on, since it is yours. Your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal. Will you not cover it again?' He held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow handed me a clean envelope.
I could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence. When he went out of the room I could hear the key turn softly. A minute later I went over and tried it, and the door was locked.
When, an hour or two after, the Count came quietly into the room, his coming awakened me, for I had gone to sleep on the sofa. He was very courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that I had been sleeping, he said, 'So, my friend, you are tired? Get to bed. There is the surest rest. I may not have the pleasure of talk tonight, since there are many labours to me, but you will sleep, I pray.'
I passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. Despair has its own calms.
31 May.-This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself with some papers and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a surprise, again a shock!
Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle. I sat and pondered awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my clothes.
The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and rug. I could find no trace of them anywhere. This looked like some new scheme of villainy... 
17 June.-This morning, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed cudgelling my brains, I heard without a crackling of whips and pounding and scraping of horses' feet up the rocky path beyond the courtyard. With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots. They had also their long staves in hand. I ran to the door, intending to descend and try and join them through the main hall, as I thought that way might be opened for them. Again a shock, my door was fastened on the outside.
Then I ran to the window and cried to them. They looked up at me stupidly and pointed, but just then the 'hetman' of the Szgany came out, and seeing them pointing to my window, said something, at which they laughed.
Henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonized entreaty, would make them even look at me. They resolutely turned away. The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope. These were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved.
When they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the yard, the Slovaks were given some money by the Szgany, and spitting on it for luck, lazily went each to his horse's head. Shortly afterwards, I heard the crackling of their whips die away in the distance.
24 June.-Last night the Count left me early, and locked himself into his own room. As soon as I dared I ran up the winding stair, and looked out of the window, which opened South. I thought I would watch for the Count, for there is something going on. The Szgany are quartered somewhere in the castle and are doing work of some kind. I know it, for now and then, I hear a far-away muffled sound as of mattock and spade, and, whatever it is, it must be the end of some ruthless villainy.
I had been at the window somewhat less than half an hour, when I saw something coming out of the Count's window. I drew back and watched carefully, and saw the whole man emerge. It was a new shock to me to find that he had on the suit of clothes which I had worn whilst travelling here, and slung over his shoulder the terrible bag which I had seen the women take away. There could be no doubt as to his quest, and in my garb, too! This, then, is his new scheme of evil, that he will allow others to see me, as they think, so that he may both leave evidence that I have been seen in the towns or villages posting my own letters, and that any wickedness which he may do shall by the local people be attributed to me.
It makes me rage to think that this can go on, and whilst I am shut up here, a veritable prisoner, but without that protection of the law which is even a criminal's right and consolation.
I thought I would watch for the Count's return, and for a long time sat doggedly at the window. Then I began to notice that there were some quaint little specks floating in the rays of the moonlight. They were like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of way. I watched them with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me. I leaned back in the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy more fully the aerial gambolling.
Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating moats of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight. I felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts. Nay, my very soul was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. I was becoming hypnotised!
Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes. And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran screaming from the place.
The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.
I fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no moonlight, and where the lamp was burning brightly.
When a couple of hours had passed I heard something stirring in the Count's room, something like a sharp wail quickly suppressed. And then there was silence, deep, awful silence, which chilled me. With a beating heart, I tried the door, but I was locked in my prison, and could do nothing. I sat down and simply cried.
As I sat I heard a sound in the courtyard without, the agonised cry of a woman. I rushed to the window, and throwing it up, peered between the bars.
There, indeed, was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding her hands over her heart as one distressed with running. She was leaning against the corner of the gateway. When she saw my face at the window she threw herself forward, and shouted in a voice laden with menace, 'Monster, give me my child!'
She threw herself on her knees, and raising up her hands, cried the same words in tones which wrung my heart. Then she tore her hair and beat her breast, and abandoned herself to all the violences of extravagant emotion. Finally, she threw herself forward, and though I could not see her, I could hear the beating of her naked hands against the door.
Somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, I heard the voice of the Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. His call seemed to be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves. Before many minutes had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard.
There was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but short. Before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips.
I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child, and she was better dead.
What shall I do? What can I do? How can I escape from this dreadful thing of night, gloom, and fear?
25 June.-No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth.
I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me. Last night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first of that fatal series which is to blot out the very traces of my existence from the earth.
Let me not think of it. Action!
It has always been at night-time that I have been molested or threatened, or in some way in danger or in fear. I have not yet seen the Count in the daylight. Can it be that he sleeps when others wake, that he may be awake whilst they sleep? If I could only get into his room! But there is no possible way. The door is always locked, no way for me.
Yes, there is a way, if one dares to take it. Where his body has gone why may not another body go? I have seen him myself crawl from his window. Why should not I imitate him, and go in by his window? The chances are desperate, but my need is more desperate still. I shall risk it. At the worst it can only be death, and a man's death is not a calf's, and the dreaded Hereafter may still be open to me. God help me in my task! Goodbye, Mina, if I fail. Goodbye, my faithful friend and second father. Goodbye, all, and last of all Mina!
Same day, later.-I have made the effort, and God helping me, have come safely back to this room. I must put down every detail in order. I went whilst my courage was fresh straight to the window on the south side, and at once got outside on this side. The stones are big and roughly cut, and the mortar has by process of time been washed away between them. I took off my boots, and ventured out on the desperate way. I looked down once, so as to make sure that a sudden glimpse of the awful depth would not overcome me, but after that kept my eyes away from it. I know pretty well the direction and distance of the Count's window, and made for it as well as I could, having regard to the opportunities available. I did not feel dizzy, I suppose I was too excited, and the time seemed ridiculously short till I found myself standing on the window sill and trying to raise up the sash. I was filled with agitation, however, when I bent down and slid feet foremost in through the window. Then I looked around for the Count, but with surprise and gladness, made a discovery. The room was empty! It was barely furnished with odd things, which seemed to have never been used.
The furniture was something the same style as that in the south rooms, and was covered with dust. I looked for the key, but it was not in the lock, and I could not find it anywhere. The only thing I found was a great heap of gold in one corner, gold of all kinds, Roman, and British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money, covered with a film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground. None of it that I noticed was less than three hundred years old. There were also chains and ornaments, some jewelled, but all of them old and stained.
At one corner of the room was a heavy door. I tried it, for, since I could not find the key of the room or the key of the outer door, which was the main object of my search, I must make further examination, or all my efforts would be in vain. It was open, and led through a stone passage to a circular stairway, which went steeply down.
I descended, minding carefully where I went for the stairs were dark, being only lit by loopholes in the heavy masonry. At the bottom there was a dark, tunnel-like passage, through which came a deathly, sickly odour, the odour of old earth newly turned. As I went through the passage the smell grew closer and heavier. At last I pulled open a heavy door which stood ajar, and found myself in an old ruined chapel, which had evidently been used as a graveyard. The roof was broken, and in two places were steps leading to vaults, but the ground had recently been dug over, and the earth placed in great wooden boxes, manifestly those which had been brought by the Slovaks.
There was nobody about, and I made a search over every inch of the ground, so as not to lose a chance. I went down even into the vaults, where the dim light struggled, although to do so was a dread to my very soul. Into two of these I went, but saw nothing except fragments of old coffins and piles of dust. In the third, however, I made a discovery.
There, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count! He was either dead or asleep. I could not say which, for eyes were open and stony, but without the glassiness of death, and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their pallor. The lips were as red as ever. But there was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart.
I bent over him, and tried to find any sign of life, but in vain. He could not have lain there long, for the earthy smell would have passed away in a few hours. By the side of the box was its cover, pierced with holes here and there. I thought he might have the keys on him, but when I went to search I saw the dead eyes, and in them dead though they were, such a look of hate, though unconscious of me or my presence, that I fled from the place, and leaving the Count's room by the window, crawled again up the castle wall. Regaining my room, I threw myself panting upon the bed and tried to think.
29 June.-Today is the date of my last letter, and the Count has taken steps to prove that it was genuine, for again I saw him leave the castle by the same window, and in my clothes. As he went down the wall, lizard fashion, I wished I had a gun or some lethal weapon, that I might destroy him. But I fear that no weapon wrought along by man's hand would have any effect on him. I dared not wait to see him return, for I feared to see those weird sisters. I came back to the library, and read there till I fell asleep.
I was awakened by the Count, who looked at me as grimly as a man could look as he said, 'Tomorrow, my friend, we must part. You return to your beautiful England, I to some work which may have such an end that we may never meet. Your letter home has been despatched. Tomorrow I shall not be here, but all shall be ready for your journey. In the morning come the Szgany, who have some labours of their own here, and also come some Slovaks. When they have gone, my carriage shall come for you, and shall bear you to the Borgo Pass to meet the diligence from Bukovina to Bistritz. But I am in hopes that I shall see more of you at Castle Dracula.'
I suspected him, and determined to test his sincerity. Sincerity! It seems like a profanation of the word to write it in connection with such a monster, so I asked him point-blank, 'Why may I not go tonight?'
'Because, dear sir, my coachman and horses are away on a mission.'
'But I would walk with pleasure. I want to get away at once.'
He smiled, such a soft, smooth, diabolical smile that I knew there was some trick behind his smoothness. He said, 'And your baggage?'
'I do not care about it. I can send for it some other time.'
The Count stood up, and said, with a sweet courtesy which made me rub my eyes, it seemed so real, 'You English have a saying which is close to my heart, for its spirit is that which rules our boyars, 'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.' Come with me, my dear young friend. Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will, though sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it. Come!' With a stately gravity, he, with the lamp, preceded me down the stairs and along the hall. Suddenly he stopped. 'Hark!'
Close at hand came the howling of many wolves. It was almost as if the sound sprang up at the rising of his hand, just as the music of a great orchestra seems to leap under the baton of the conductor. After a pause of a moment, he proceeded, in his stately way, to the door, drew back the ponderous bolts, unhooked the heavy chains, and began to draw it open.
To my intense astonishment I saw that it was unlocked. Suspiciously, I looked all round, but could see no key of any kind.
As the door began to open, the howling of the wolves without grew louder and angrier. Their red jaws, with champing teeth, and their blunt-clawed feet as they leaped, came in through the opening door. I knew than that to struggle at the moment against the Count was useless. With such allies as these at his command, I could do nothing.
But still the door continued slowly to open, and only the Count's body stood in the gap. Suddenly it struck me that this might be the moment and means of my doom. I was to be given to the wolves, and at my own instigation. There was a diabolical wickedness in the idea great enough for the Count, and as the last chance I cried out, 'Shut the door! I shall wait till morning.' And I covered my face with my hands to hide my tears of bitter disappointment.
With one sweep of his powerful arm, the Count threw the door shut, and the great bolts clanged and echoed through the hall as they shot back into their places.
In silence we returned to the library, and after a minute or two I went to my own room. The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.
When I was in my room and about to lie down, I thought I heard a whispering at my door. I went to it softly and listened. Unless my ears deceived me, I heard the voice of the Count.
'Back! Back to your own place! Your time is not yet come. Wait! Have patience! Tonight is mine. Tomorrow night is yours!'
There was a low, sweet ripple of laughter, and in a rage I threw open the door, and saw without the three terrible women licking their lips. As I appeared, they all joined in a horrible laugh, and ran away.
I came back to my room and threw myself on my knees. It is then so near the end? Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Lord, help me, and those to whom I am dear!
30 June.-These may be the last words I ever write in this diary. I slept till just before the dawn, and when I woke threw myself on my knees, for I determined that if Death came he should find me ready.
At last I felt that subtle change in the air, and knew that the morning had come. Then came the welcome cockcrow, and I felt that I was safe. With a glad heart, I opened the door and ran down the hall. I had seen that the door was unlocked, and now escape was before me. With hands that trembled with eagerness, I unhooked the chains and threw back the massive bolts.
But the door would not move. Despair seized me. I pulled and pulled at the door, and shook it till, massive as it was, it rattled in its casement. I could see the bolt shot. It had been locked after I left the Count.
Then a wild desire took me to obtain the key at any risk, and I determined then and there to scale the wall again, and gain the Count's room. He might kill me, but death now seemed the happier choice of evils. Without a pause I rushed up to the east window, and scrambled down the wall, as before, into the Count's room. It was empty, but that was as I expected. I could not see a key anywhere, but the heap of gold remained. I went through the door in the corner and down the winding stair and along the dark passage to the old chapel. I knew now well enough where to find the monster I sought.
The great box was in the same place, close against the wall, but the lid was laid on it, not fastened down, but with the nails ready in their places to be hammered home.
I knew I must reach the body for the key, so I raised the lid, and laid it back against the wall. And then I saw something which filled my very soul with horror. There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half restored. For the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey. The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.
I shuddered as I bent over to touch him, and every sense in me revolted at the contact, but I had to search, or I was lost. The coming night might see my own body a banquet in a similar war to those horrid three. I felt all over the body, but no sign could I find of the key. Then I stopped and looked at the Count. There was a mocking smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless.
The very thought drove me mad. A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster. There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face. But as I did so the head turned, and the eyes fell upon me, with all their blaze of basilisk horror. The sight seemed to paralyze me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead. The shovel fell from my hand across the box, and as I pulled it away the flange of the blade caught the edge of the lid which fell over again, and hid the horrid thing from my sight. The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face, blood-stained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the nethermost hell.
I thought and thought what should be my next move, but my brain seemed on fire, and I waited with a despairing feeling growing over me. As I waited I heard in the distance a gipsy song sung by merry voices coming closer, and through their song the rolling of heavy wheels and the cracking of whips. The Szgany and the Slovaks of whom the Count had spoken were coming. With a last look around and at the box which contained the vile body, I ran from the place and gained the Count's room, determined to rush out at the moment the door should be opened. With strained ears, I listened, and heard downstairs the grinding of the key in the great lock and the falling back of the heavy door. There must have been some other means of entry, or some one had a key for one of the locked doors.
Then there came the sound of many feet tramping and dying away in some passage which sent up a clanging echo. I turned to run down again towards the vault, where I might find the new entrance, but at the moment there seemed to come a violent puff of wind, and the door to the winding stair blew to with a shock that set the dust from the lintels flying. When I ran to push it open, I found that it was hopelessly fast. I was again a prisoner, and the net of doom was closing round me more closely.
As I write there is in the passage below a sound of many tramping feet and the crash of weights being set down heavily, doubtless the boxes, with their freight of earth. There was a sound of hammering. It is the box being nailed down. Now I can hear the heavy feet tramping again along the hall, with with many other idle feet coming behind them.
The door is shut, the chains rattle. There is a grinding of the key in the lock. I can hear the key withdrawn, then another door opens and shuts. I hear the creaking of lock and bolt.
Hark! In the courtyard and down the rocky way the roll of heavy wheels, the crack of whips, and the chorus of the Szgany as they pass into the distance.
I am alone in the castle with those horrible women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!
I shall not remain alone with them. I shall try to scale the castle wall farther than I have yet attempted. I shall take some of the gold with me, lest I want it later. I may find a way from this dreadful place.
And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from the cursed spot, from this cursed land, where the devil and his children still walk with earthly feet!
At least God's mercy is better than that of those monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep, as a man. Goodbye, all. Mina!
Chapter 5
LETTER FROM MISS MINA MURRAY TO MISS LUCY WESTENRA
9 May.
My dearest Lucy,
Forgive my long delay in writing, but I have been simply overwhelmed with work. The life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying. I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air. I have been working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan's studies, and I have been practicing shorthand very assiduously. When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I am practicing very hard.
He and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad. When I am with you I shall keep a diary in the same way. I don't mean one of those two-pages-to-the-week-with-Sunday- squeezed-in-a-corner diaries, but a sort of journal which I can write in whenever I feel inclined.
I do not suppose there will be much of interest to other people, but it is not intended for them. I may show it to Jonathan some day if there is in it anything worth sharing, but it is really an exercise book. I shall try to do what I see lady journalists do, interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember conversations. I am told that, with a little practice, one can remember all that goes on or that one hears said during a day.
However, we shall see. I will tell you of my little plans when we meet. I have just had a few hurried lines from Jonathan from Transylvania. He is well, and will be returning in about a week. I am longing to hear all his news. It must be nice to see strange countries. I wonder if we, I mean Jonathan and I, shall ever see them together. There is the ten o'clock bell ringing. Goodbye.
Your loving
Mina
Tell me all the news when you write. You have not told me anything for a long time. I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY
17, Chatham Street
Wednesday
My dearest Mina,
I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent. I wrote you twice since we parted, and your last letter was only your second. Besides, I have nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you.
Town is very pleasant just now, and we go a great deal to picture-galleries and for walks and rides in the park. As to the tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who was with me at the last Pop. Someone has evidently been telling tales.
That was Mr. Holmwood. He often comes to see us, and he and Mamma get on very well together, they have so many things to talk about in common.
We met some time ago a man that would just do for you, if you were not already engaged to Jonathan. He is an excellent parti, being handsome, well off, and of good birth. He is a doctor and really clever. Just fancy! He is only nine-and twenty, and he has an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care. Mr. Holmwood introduced him to me, and he called here to see us, and often comes now. I think he is one of the most resolute men I ever saw, and yet the most calm. He seems absolutely imperturbable. I can fancy what a wonderful power he must have over his patients. He has a curious habit of looking one straight in the face, as if trying to read one's thoughts. He tries this on very much with me, but I flatter myself he has got a tough nut to crack. I know that from my glass.
Do you ever try to read your own face? I do, and I can tell you it is not a bad study, and gives you more trouble than you can well fancy if you have never tried it.
He says that I afford him a curious psychological study, and I humbly think I do. I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore. That is slang again, but never mind. Arthur says that every day.
There, it is all out, Mina, we have told all our secrets to each other since we were children. We have slept together and eaten together, and laughed and cried together, and now, though I have spoken, I would like to speak more. Oh, Mina, couldn't you guess? I love him. I am blushing as I write, for although I think he loves me, he has not told me so in words. But, oh, Mina, I love him. I love him! There, that does me good.
I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to sit, and I would try to tell you what I feel. I do not know how I am writing this even to you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the letter, and I don't want to stop, for I do so want to tell you all. Let me hear from you at once, and tell me all that you think about it. Mina, pray for my happiness.
Lucy
P.S.-I need not tell you this is a secret. Goodnight again. L.
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY
24 May
My dearest Mina,
Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter. It was so nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy.
My dear, it never rains but it pours. How true the old proverbs are. Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never had a proposal till today, not a real proposal, and today I had three. Just fancy! Three proposals in one day! Isn't it awful! I feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don't know what to do with myself. And three proposals! But, for goodness' sake, don't tell any of the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas, and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so vain! You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity. Well, I must tell you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from every one except, of course, Jonathan. You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place, certainly tell Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything. Don't you think so, dear? And I must be fair. Men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are. And women, I am afraid, are not always quite as fair as they should be.
Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch. I told you of him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic asylum man, with the strong jaw and the good forehead. He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. He had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. He spoke to me, Mina, very straightforwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said he was a brute and would not add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time, and when I shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina, I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I would be happy, and that If I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best.
Oh, Mina dear, I can't help crying, and you must excuse this letter being all blotted. Being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing out of his life. My dear, I must stop here at present, I feel so miserable, though I am so happy.
Evening.
Arthur has just gone, and I feel in better spirits than when I left off, so I can go on telling you about the day.
Well, my dear, number Two came after lunch. He is such a nice fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has such adventures. I sympathize with poor Desdemona when she had such a stream poured in her ear, even by a black man. I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him. I know now what I would do if I were a man and wanted to make a girl love me. No, I don't, for there was Mr. Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and yet... 
My dear, I am somewhat previous. Mr. Quincy P. Morris found me alone. It seems that a man always does find a girl alone. No, he doesn't, for Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him all I could, I am not ashamed to say it now. I must tell you beforehand that Mr. Morris doesn't always speak slang, that is to say, he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really well educated and has exquisite manners, but he found out that it amused me to hear him talk American slang, and whenever I was present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny things. I am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits exactly into whatever else he has to say. But this is a way slang has. I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang. I do not know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet.
Well, Mr. Morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as he could, but I could see all the same that he was very nervous. He took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly... 
'Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you quit. Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?'
Well, he did look so good humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward. So I said, as lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and that I wasn't broken to harness at all yet. Then he said that he had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, and occasion for him, I would forgive him. He really did look serious when he was saying it, and I couldn't help feeling a sort of exultation that he was number Two in one day. And then, my dear, before I could say a word he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his very heart and soul at my feet. He looked so earnest over it that I shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never earnest, because he is merry at times. I suppose he saw something in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with a sort of manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had been free... 
'Lucy, you are an honest hearted girl, I know. I should not be here speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit, right through to the very depths of your soul. Tell me, like one good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for? And if there is I'll never trouble you a hair's breadth again, but will be, if you will let me, a very faithful friend.'
My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great hearted, true gentleman. I burst into tears, I am afraid, my dear, you will think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one, and I really felt very badly.
Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it. I am glad to say that, though I was crying, I was able to look into Mr. Morris' brave eyes, and I told him out straight... 
'Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me yet that he even loves me.' I was right to speak to him so frankly, for quite a light came into his face, and he put out both his hands and took mine, I think I put them into his, and said in a hearty way... 
'That's my brave girl. It's better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world. Don't cry, my dear. If it's for me, I'm a hard nut to crack, and I take it standing up. If that other fellow doesn't know his happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal with me. Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover, it's more selfish anyhow. My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come. Won't you give me one kiss? It'll be something to keep off the darkness now and then. You can, you know, if you like, for that other good fellow, or you could not love him, hasn't spoken yet.'
That quite won me, Mina, for it was brave and sweet of him, and noble too, to a rival, wasn't it? And he so sad, so I leant over and kissed him.
He stood up with my two hands in his, and as he looked down into my face, I am afraid I was blushing very much, he said, 'Little girl, I hold your hand, and you've kissed me, and if these things don't make us friends nothing ever will. Thank you for your sweet honesty to me, and goodbye.'
He wrung my hand, and taking up his hat, went straight out of the room without looking back, without a tear or a quiver or a pause, and I am crying like a baby.
Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on? I know I would if I were free, only I don't want to be free. My dear, this quite upset me, and I feel I cannot write of happiness just at once, after telling you of it, and I don't wish to tell of the number Three until it can be all happy. Ever your loving... 
Lucy
P.S.-Oh, about number Three, I needn't tell you of number Three, need I? Besides, it was all so confused. It seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don't know what I have done to deserve it. I must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend.
Goodbye.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY 
25 May.-Ebb tide in appetite today. Cannot eat, cannot rest, so diary instead. Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty feeling. Nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing. As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing was work, I went amongst the patients. I picked out one who has afforded me a study of much interest. He is so quaint that I am determined to understand him as well as I can. Today I seemed to get nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.
I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to making myself master of the facts of his hallucination. In my manner of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty. I seemed to wish to keep him to the point of his madness, a thing which I avoid with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.
 Omnia Romae venalia sunt. Hell has its price! If there be anything behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore... 
R. M, Renfield, age 59. Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish, a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal. When duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.
LETTER, QUINCEY P. MORRIS TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMOOD
25 May.
My dear Art,
We've told yarns by the campfire in the prairies, and dressed one another's wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas, and drunk healths on the shore of Titicaca. There are more yarns to be told, and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk. Won't you let this be at my campfire tomorrow night? I have no hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a certain dinner party, and that you are free. There will only be one other, our old pal at the Korea, Jack Seward. He's coming, too, and we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine cup, and to drink a health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and best worth winning. We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand. We shall both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain pair of eyes. Come!
Yours, as ever and always,
Quincey P. Morris
TELEGRAM FROM ARTHUR HOLMWOOD TO QUINCEY P. MORRIS
26 May
Count me in every time. I bear messages which will make both your ears tingle.
Art
Chapter 6
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
24 July. Whitby.-Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent in which they have rooms. This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through which the view seems somehow further away than it really is. The valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to see down. The houses of the old town-the side away from us, are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of 'Marmion,' where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits. There is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been destroyed.
In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside them, through the churchyard, and people go and sit there all day long looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze.
I shall come and sit here often myself and work. Indeed, I am writing now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three old men who are sitting beside me. They seem to do nothing all day but sit here and talk.
The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse. A heavy seawall runs along outside of it. On the near side, the seawall makes an elbow crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then suddenly widens.
It is nice at high water, but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between banks of sand, with rocks here and there. Outside the harbour on this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp of which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse. At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on the wind.
They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask the old man about this. He is coming this way... 
He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely,
'I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk.'
I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale fishing in the old days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said,
'I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock.'
He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. The steps are a great feature on the place. They lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve. The slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them.
I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out, visiting with her mother, and as they were only duty calls, I did not go.
1 August.-I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person.
He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody. If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views.
Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock. She has got a beautiful colour since she has been here.
I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people, I think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it down.
'It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a'belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will. All them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their hands that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their gurp o' them.'
I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was 'showing off,' so I put in a word to keep him going.
'Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?'
'Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here. You come here a stranger, an' you see this kirkgarth.'
I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church.
He went on, 'And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be haped here, snod an' snog?' I assented again. 'Then that be just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these laybeds that be toom as old Dun's 'baccabox on Friday night.'
He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. 'And, my gog! How could they be otherwise? Look at that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank, read it!'
I went over and read, 'Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pirates off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, age 30.' When I came back Mr. Swales went on,
'Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered off the coast of Andres! An' you consated his body lay under! Why, I could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above,' he pointed northwards, 'or where the currants may have drifted them. There be the steans around ye. Ye can, with your young eyes, read the small print of the lies from here. This Braithwaite Lowery, I knew his father, lost in the Lively off Greenland in '20, or Andrew Woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in 1777, or John Paxton, drowned off Cape Farewell a year later, or old John Rawlings, whose grandfather sailed with me, drowned in the Gulf of Finland in '50. Do ye think that all these men will have to make a rush to Whitby when the trumpet sounds? I have me antherums aboot it! I tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin' and jostlin' one another that way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our cuts by the aurora borealis.' This was evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto.
'But,' I said, 'surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think that will be really necessary?'
'Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!'
'To please their relatives, I suppose.'
'To please their relatives, you suppose!' This he said with intense scorn. 'How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?'
He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. 'Read the lies on that thruff-stone,' he said.
The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read, 'Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July 29,1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son.'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.' Really, Mr. Swales, I don't see anything very funny in that!' She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.
'Ye don't see aught funny! Ha-ha! But that's because ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk'd, a regular lamiter he was, an' he hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put on his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that they had for scarin' crows with. 'twarn't for crows then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That's the way he fell off the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate,' he hammered it with his stick as he spoke, 'a pack of lies? And won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' ut the grees with the tompstean balanced on his hump, and asks to be took as evidence!'
I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she said, rising up, 'Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite seat, and I cannot leave it, and now I find I must go on sitting over the grave of a suicide.'
'That won't harm ye, my pretty, an' it may make poor Geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. That won't hurt ye. Why, I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't done me no harm. Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that doesn' lie there either! It'll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as a stubble-field. There's the clock, and'I must gang. My service to ye, ladies!' And off he hobbled.
Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we took hands as we sat, and she told me all over again about Arthur and their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.
The same day. I came up here alone, for I am very sad. There was no letter for me. I hope there cannot be anything the matter with Jonathan. The clock has just struck nine. I see the lights scattered all over the town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly. They run right up the Esk and die away in the curve of the valley. To my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof of the old house next to the abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of donkeys' hoofs up the paved road below. The band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a Salvation Army meeting in a back street. Neither of the bands hears the other, but up here I hear and see them both. I wonder where Jonathan is and if he is thinking of me! I wish he were here.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
5 June.-The case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I get to understand the man. He has certain qualities very largely developed, selfishness, secrecy, and purpose.
I wish I could get at what is the object of the latter. He seems to have some settled scheme of his own, but what it is I do not know. His redeeming quality is a love of animals, though, indeed, he has such curious turns in it that I sometimes imagine he is only abnormally cruel. His pets are of odd sorts.
Just now his hobby is catching flies. He has at present such a quantity that I have had myself to expostulate. To my astonishment, he did not break out into a fury, as I expected, but took the matter in simple seriousness. He thought for a moment, and then said, 'May I have three days? I shall clear them away.' Of course, I said that would do. I must watch him.
18 June.-He has turned his mind now to spiders, and has got several very big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding them his flies, and the number of the latter is becoming sensibly diminished, although he has used half his food in attracting more flies from outside to his room.
1 July.-His spiders are now becoming as great a nuisance as his flies, and today I told him that he must get rid of them.
He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must some of them, at all events. He cheerfully acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same time as before for reduction.
He disgusted me much while with him, for when a horrid blowfly, bloated with some carrion food, buzzed into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a few moments between his finger and thumb, and before I knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and ate it.
I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome, that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him. This gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one. I must watch how he gets rid of his spiders.
He has evidently some deep problem in his mind, for he keeps a little notebook in which he is always jotting down something. whole pages of it are filled with masses of figures, generally single numbers added up in batches, and then the totals added in batches again, as though he were focussing some account, as the auditors put it.
8 July.-There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration, you will have to give the wall to your conscious brother.
I kept away from my friend for a few days, so that I might notice if there were any change. Things remain as they were except that he has parted with some of his pets and got a new one.
He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it. His means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have diminished. Those that do remain, however, are well fed, for he still brings in the flies by tempting them with his food.
19 July-We are progressing. My friend has now a whole colony of sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated. When I came in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favour, a very, very great favour. And as he spoke, he fawned on me like a dog.
I asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his voice and bearing, 'A kitten, a nice, little, sleek playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and feed, and feed, and feed!'
I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how his pets went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did not care that his pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner as the flies and spiders. So I said I would see about it, and asked him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten.
His eagerness betrayed him as he answered, 'Oh, yes, I would like a cat! I only asked for a kitten lest you should refuse me a cat. No one would refuse me a kitten, would they?'
I shook my head, and said that at present I feared it would not be possible, but that I would see about it. His face fell, and I could see a warning of danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant killing. The man is an undeveloped homicidal maniac. I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will work out, then I shall know more.
10 pm.-I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner brooding. When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon it.
I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the corner where I had found him. I shall see him in the morning early.
20 July.-Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace.
I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.
11 am.-The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. 'My belief is, doctor,' he said, 'that he has eaten his birds, and that he just took and ate them raw!'
11 pm.-I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it. The thought that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the theory proved.
My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous maniac. What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps?
It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results today! Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the brain?
Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the fancy of even one lunatic, I might advance my own branch of science to a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's brain knowledge would be as nothing. If only there were a sufficient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted. A good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?
How well the man reasoned. Lunatics always do within their own scope. I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one. He has closed the account most accurately, and today begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?
To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss.
Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! Work!
If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good, unselfish cause to make me work, that would be indeed happiness.
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
26 July.-I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here. It is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time. And there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it different from writing. I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan. I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned, but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a letter from him. I had written asking him if he had heard, and he said the enclosed had just been received. It is only a line dated from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home. That is not like Jonathan. I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.
Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old habit of walking in her sleep. Her mother has spoken to me about it, and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every night.
Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.
Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that her husband, Lucy's father, had the same habit, that he would get up in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped.
Lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out her dresses and how her house is to be arranged. I sympathise with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet.
Mr. Holmwood, he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only son of Lord Godalming, is coming up here very shortly, as soon as he can leave town, for his father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is counting the moments till he comes.
She wants to take him up in the seat on the churchyard cliff and show him the beauty of Whitby. I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs her. She will be all right when he arrives.
27 July.-No news from Jonathan. I am getting quite uneasy about him, though why I should I do not know, but I do wish that he would write, if it were only a single line.
Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving about the room. Fortunately, the weather is so hot that she cannot get cold. But still, the anxiety and the perpetually being awakened is beginning to tell on me, and I am getting nervous and wakeful myself. Thank God, Lucy's health keeps up. Mr. Holmwood has been suddenly called to Ring to see his father, who has been taken seriously ill. Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but it does not touch her looks. She is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks are a lovely rose-pink. She has lost the anemic look which she had. I pray it will all last.
3 August.-Another week gone by, and no news from Jonathan, not even to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written. I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing. There is no mistake of that.
Lucy has not walked much in her sleep the last week, but there is an odd concentration about her which I do not understand, even in her sleep she seems to be watching me. She tries the door, and finding it locked, goes about the room searching for the key.
6 August.-Another three days, and no news. This suspense is getting dreadful. If I only knew where to write to or where to go to, I should feel easier. But no one has heard a word of Jonathan since that last letter. I must only pray to God for patience.
Lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well. Last night was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a storm. I must try to watch it and learn the weather signs.
Today is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds, high over Kettleness. Everything is gray except the green grass, which seems like emerald amongst it, gray earthy rock, gray clouds, tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into which the sandpoints stretch like gray figures. The sea is tumbling in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the sea-mists drifting inland. The horizon is lost in a gray mist. All vastness, the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a 'brool' over the sea that sounds like some passage of doom. Dark figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in the mist, and seem 'men like trees walking'. The fishing boats are racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old Mr. Swales. He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts his hat, that he wants to talk.
I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man. When he sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle way, 'I want to say something to you, miss.'
I could see he was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in mine and asked him to speak fully.
So he said, leaving his hand in mine, 'I'm afraid, my deary, that I must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I want ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks that be daffled, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took to makin' light of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit. But, Lord love ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't want to die if I can help it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect. And I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin' his scythe. Ye see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin' about it all at once. The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an' greet, my deary!'-for he saw that I was crying-'if he should come this very night I'd not refuse to answer his call. For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin', and death be all that we can rightly depend on. But I'm content, for it's comin' to me, my deary, and comin' quick. It may be comin' while we be lookin' and wonderin'. Maybe it's in that wind out over the sea that's bringin' with it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad hearts. Look! Look!' he cried suddenly. 'There's something in that wind and in the hoast beyont that sounds, and looks, and tastes, and smells like death. It's in the air. I feel it comin'. Lord, make me answer cheerful, when my call comes!' He held up his arms devoutly, and raised his hat. His mouth moved as though he were praying. After a few minutes' silence, he got up, shook hands with me, and blessed me, and said goodbye, and hobbled off. It all touched me, and upset me very much.
I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spyglass under his arm. He stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time kept looking at a strange ship.
'I can't make her out,' he said. 'She's a Russian, by the look of her. But she's knocking about in the queerest way. She doesn't know her mind a bit. She seems to see the storm coming, but can't decide whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here. Look there again! She is steered mighty strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand on the wheel, changes about with every puff of wind. We'll hear more of her before this time tomorrow.'
Chapter 7
CUTTING FROM 'THE DAILYGRAPH', 8 AUGUST
From a correspondent.
Whitby.
One of the greatest and suddenest storms on record has just been experienced here, with results both strange and unique. The weather had been somewhat sultry, but not to any degree uncommon in the month of August. Saturday evening was as fine as was ever known, and the great body of holiday-makers laid out yesterday for visits to Mulgrave Woods, Robin Hood's Bay, Rig Mill, Runswick, Staithes, and the various trips in the neighborhood of Whitby. The steamers Emma and Scarborough made trips up and down the coast, and there was an unusual amount of 'tripping' both to and from Whitby. The day was unusually fine till the afternoon, when some of the gossips who frequent the East Cliff churchyard, and from the commanding eminence watch the wide sweep of sea visible to the north and east, called attention to a sudden show of 'mares tails' high in the sky to the northwest. The wind was then blowing from the south-west in the mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked 'No. 2, light breeze.'
The coastguard on duty at once made report, and one old fisherman, who for more than half a century has kept watch on weather signs from the East Cliff, foretold in an emphatic manner the coming of a sudden storm. The approach of sunset was so very beautiful, so grand in its masses of splendidly coloured clouds, that there was quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old churchyard to enjoy the beauty. Before the sun dipped below the black mass of Kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky, its downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset colour, flame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold, with here and there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute blackness, in all sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal silhouettes. The experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the sketches of the 'Prelude to the Great Storm' will grace the R. A and R. I. walls in May next.
More than one captain made up his mind then and there that his 'cobble' or his 'mule', as they term the different classes of boats, would remain in the harbour till the storm had passed. The wind fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there was a dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature.
There were but few lights in sight at sea, for even the coasting steamers, which usually hug the shore so closely, kept well to seaward, and but few fishing boats were in sight. The only sail noticeable was a foreign schooner with all sails set, which was seemingly going westwards. The foolhardiness or ignorance of her officers was a prolific theme for comment whilst she remained in sight, and efforts were made to signal her to reduce sail in the face of her danger. Before the night shut down she was seen with sails idly flapping as she gently rolled on the undulating swell of the sea.
'As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.'
Shortly before ten o'clock the stillness of the air grew quite oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly heard, and the band on the pier, with its lively French air, was like a dischord in the great harmony of nature's silence. A little after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming.
Then without warning the tempest broke. With a rapidity which, at the time, seemed incredible, and even afterwards is impossible to realize, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed. The waves rose in growing fury, each over-topping its fellow, till in a very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and devouring monster. White-crested waves beat madly on the level sands and rushed up the shelving cliffs. Others broke over the piers, and with their spume swept the lanthorns of the lighthouses which rise from the end of either pier of Whitby Harbour.
The wind roared like thunder, and blew with such force that it was with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet, or clung with grim clasp to the iron stanchions. It was found necessary to clear the entire pier from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities of the night would have increased manifold. To add to the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came drifting inland. White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by.
At times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the lightning, which came thick and fast, followed by such peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm.
Some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and of absorbing interest. The sea, running mountains high, threw skywards with each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the tempest seemed to snatch at and whirl away into space. Here and there a fishing boat, with a rag of sail, running madly for shelter before the blast, now and again the white wings of a storm-tossed seabird. On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried. The officers in charge of it got it into working order, and in the pauses of onrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea. Once or twice its service was most effective, as when a fishing boat, with gunwale under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers. As each boat achieved the safety of the port there was a shout of joy from the mass of people on the shore, a shout which for a moment seemed to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush.
Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed earlier in the evening. The wind had by this time backed to the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff as they realized the terrible danger in which she now was.
Between her and the port lay the great flat reef on which so many good ships have from time to time suffered, and, with the wind blowing from its present quarter, it would be quite impossible that she should fetch the entrance of the harbour.
It was now nearly the hour of high tide, but the waves were so great that in their troughs the shallows of the shore were almost visible, and the schooner, with all sails set, was rushing with such speed that, in the words of one old salt, 'she must fetch up somewhere, if it was only in hell". Then came another rush of sea-fog, greater than any hitherto, a mass of dank mist, which seemed to close on all things like a gray pall, and left available to men only the organ of hearing, for the roar of the tempest, and the crash of the thunder, and the booming of the mighty billows came through the damp oblivion even louder than before. The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless.
The wind suddenly shifted to the northeast, and the remnant of the sea fog melted in the blast. And then, mirabile dictu, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour. The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other form could be seen on the deck at all.
A great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead man! However, all took place more quickly than it takes to write these words. The schooner paused not, but rushing across the harbour, pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel washed by many tides and many storms into the southeast corner of the pier jutting under the East Cliff, known locally as Tate Hill Pier.
There was of course a considerable concussion as the vessel drove up on the sand heap. Every spar, rope, and stay was strained, and some of the 'top-hammer' came crashing down. But, strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow on the sand.
Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones, thruffsteans or through-stones, as they call them in Whitby vernacular, actually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight.
It so happened that there was no one at the moment on Tate Hill Pier, as all those whose houses are in close proximity were either in bed or were out on the heights above. Thus the coastguard on duty on the eastern side of the harbour, who at once ran down to the little pier, was the first to climb aboard. The men working the searchlight, after scouring the entrance of the harbour without seeing anything, then turned the light on the derelict and kept it there. The coastguard ran aft, and when he came beside the wheel, bent over to examine it, and recoiled at once as though under some sudden emotion. This seemed to pique general curiosity, and quite a number of people began to run.
It is a good way round from the West Cliff by the Draw-bridge to Tate Hill Pier, but your correspondent is a fairly good runner, and came well ahead of the crowd. When I arrived, however, I found already assembled on the pier a crowd, whom the coastguard and police refused to allow to come on board. By the courtesy of the chief boatman, I was, as your correspondent, permitted to climb on deck, and was one of a small group who saw the dead seaman whilst actually lashed to the wheel.
It was no wonder that the coastguard was surprised, or even awed, for not often can such a sight have been seen. The man was simply fastened by his hands, tied one over the other, to a spoke of the wheel. Between the inner hand and the wood was a crucifix, the set of beads on which it was fastened being around both wrists and wheel, and all kept fast by the binding cords. The poor fellow may have been seated at one time, but the flapping and buffeting of the sails had worked through the rudder of the wheel and had dragged him to and fro, so that the cords with which he was tied had cut the flesh to the bone.
Accurate note was made of the state of things, and a doctor, Surgeon J. M. Caffyn, of 33, East Elliot Place, who came immediately after me, declared, after making examination, that the man must have been dead for quite two days.
In his pocket was a bottle, carefully corked, empty save for a little roll of paper, which proved to be the addendum to the log.
The coastguard said the man must have tied up his own hands, fastening the knots with his teeth. The fact that a coastguard was the first on board may save some complications later on, in the Admiralty Court, for coastguards cannot claim the salvage which is the right of the first civilian entering on a derelict. Already, however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young law student is loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already completely sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the statues of mortmain, since the tiller, as emblemship, if not proof, of delegated possession, is held in a dead hand.
It is needless to say that the dead steersman has been reverently removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward till death, a steadfastness as noble as that of the young Casabianca, and placed in the mortuary to await inquest.
Already the sudden storm is passing, and its fierceness is abating. Crowds are scattering backward, and the sky is beginning to redden over the Yorkshire wolds.
I shall send, in time for your next issue, further details of the derelict ship which found her way so miraculously into harbour in the storm.
9 August.-The sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself. It turns out that the schooner is Russian from Varna, and is called the Demeter. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a small amount of cargo, a number of great wooden boxes filled with mould.
This cargo was consigned to a Whitby solicitor, Mr. S.F. Billington, of 7, The Crescent, who this morning went aboard and took formal possession of the goods consigned to him.
The Russian consul, too, acting for the charter-party, took formal possession of the ship, and paid all harbour dues, etc.
Nothing is talked about here today except the strange coincidence. The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause of other complaint.
A good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which landed when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the S.P.C.A., which is very strong in Whitby, have tried to befriend the animal. To the general disappointment, however, it was not to be found. It seems to have disappeared entirely from the town. It may be that it was frightened and made its way on to the moors, where it is still hiding in terror.
There are some who look with dread on such a possibility, lest later on it should in itself become a danger, for it is evidently a fierce brute. Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite its master's yard. It had been fighting, and manifestly had had a savage opponent, for its throat was torn away, and its belly was slit open as if with a savage claw.
Later.-By the kindness of the Board of Trade inspector, I have been permitted to look over the log book of the Demeter, which was in order up to within three days, but contained nothing of special interest except as to facts of missing men. The greatest interest, however, is with regard to the paper found in the bottle, which was today produced at the inquest. And a more strange narrative than the two between them unfold it has not been my lot to come across.
As there is no motive for concealment, I am permitted to use them, and accordingly send you a transcript, simply omitting technical details of seamanship and supercargo. It almost seems as though the captain had been seized with some kind of mania before he had got well into blue water, and that this had developed persistently throughout the voyage. Of course my statement must be taken cum grano, since I am writing from the dictation of a clerk of the Russian consul, who kindly translated for me, time being short.
LOG OF THE 'DEMETER' Varna to Whitby
Written 18 July, things so strange happening, that I shall keep accurate note henceforth till we land.
On 6 July we finished taking in cargo, silver sand and boxes of earth. At noon set sail. East wind, fresh. Crew, five hands... two mates, cook, and myself,.
On 11 July at dawn entered Bosphorus. Boarded by Turkish Customs officers. Backsheesh. All correct. Under way at 4 p.m.
On 12 July through Dardanelles. More Customs officers and flagboat of guarding squadron. Backsheesh again. Work of officers thorough, but quick. Want us off soon. At dark passed into Archipelago.
On 13 July passed Cape Matapan. Crew dissatisfied about something. Seemed scared, but would not speak out.
On 14 July was somewhat anxious about crew. Men all steady fellows, who sailed with me before. Mate could not make out what was wrong. They only told him there was SOMETHING, and crossed themselves. Mate lost temper with one of them that day and struck him. Expected fierce quarrel, but all was quiet.
On 16 July mate reported in the morning that one of the crew, Petrofsky, was missing. Could not account for it. Took larboard watch eight bells last night, was relieved by Amramoff, but did not go to bunk. Men more downcast than ever. All said they expected something of the kind, but would not say more than there was SOMETHING aboard. Mate getting very impatient with them. Feared some trouble ahead.
On 17 July, yesterday, one of the men, Olgaren, came to my cabin, and in an awestruck way confided to me that he thought there was a strange man aboard the ship. He said that in his watch he had been sheltering behind the deckhouse, as there was a rain storm, when he saw a tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew, come up the companionway, and go along the deck forward and disappear. He followed cautiously, but when he got to bows found no one, and the hatchways were all closed. He was in a panic of superstitious fear, and I am afraid the panic may spread. To allay it, I shall today search the entire ship carefully from stem to stern.
Later in the day I got together the whole crew, and told them, as they evidently thought there was some one in the ship, we would search from stem to stern. First mate angry, said it was folly, and to yield to such foolish ideas would demoralise the men, said he would engage to keep them out of trouble with the handspike. I let him take the helm, while the rest began a thorough search, all keeping abreast, with lanterns. We left no corner unsearched. As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd corners where a man could hide. Men much relieved when search over, and went back to work cheerfully. First mate scowled, but said nothing.
22 July.-Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with sails, no time to be frightened. Men seem to have forgotten their dread. Mate cheerful again, and all on good terms. Praised men for work in bad weather. Passed Gibraltar and out through Straits. All well.
24 July.-There seems some doom over this ship. Already a hand short, and entering the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night another man lost, disappeared. Like the first, he came off his watch and was not seen again. Men all in a panic of fear, sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence.
28 July.-Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom, and the wind a tempest. No sleep for any one. Men all worn out. Hardly know how to set a watch, since no one fit to go on. Second mate volunteered to steer and watch, and let men snatch a few hours sleep. Wind abating, seas still terrific, but feel them less, as ship is steadier.
29 July.-Another tragedy. Had single watch tonight, as crew too tired to double. When morning watch came on deck could find no one except steersman. Raised outcry, and all came on deck. Thorough search, but no one found. Are now without second mate, and crew in a panic. Mate and I agreed to go armed henceforth and wait for any sign of cause.
30 July.-Last night. Rejoiced we are nearing England. Weather fine, all sails set. Retired worn out, slept soundly, awakened by mate telling me that both man of watch and steersman missing. Only self and mate and two hands left to work ship.
1 August.-Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. Had hoped when in the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere. Not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. Dare not lower, as could not raise them again. We seem to be drifting to some terrible doom. Mate now more demoralised than either of men. His stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly against himself. Men are beyond fear, working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. They are Russian, he Roumanian.
2 August, midnight.-Woke up from few minutes sleep by hearing a cry, seemingly outside my port. Could see nothing in fog. Rushed on deck, and ran against mate. Tells me he heard cry and ran, but no sign of man on watch. One more gone. Lord, help us! Mate says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland, just as he heard the man cry out. If so we are now off in the North Sea, and only God can guide us in the fog, which seems to move with us, and God seems to have deserted us.
3 August.-At midnight I went to relieve the man at the wheel and when I got to it found no one there. The wind was steady, and as we ran before it there was no yawing. I dared not leave it, so shouted for the mate. After a few seconds, he rushed up on deck in his flannels. He looked wild-eyed and haggard, and I greatly fear his reason has given way. He came close to me and whispered hoarsely, with his mouth to my ear, as though fearing the very air might hear. 'It is here. I know it now. On the watch last night I saw It, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale. It was in the bows, and looking out. I crept behind It, and gave it my knife, but the knife went through It, empty as the air.' And as he spoke he took the knife and drove it savagely into space. Then he went on, 'But It is here, and I'll find It. It is in the hold, perhaps in one of those boxes. I'll unscrew them one by one and see. You work the helm.' And with a warning look and his finger on his lip, he went below. There was springing up a choppy wind, and I could not leave the helm. I saw him come out on deck again with a tool chest and lantern, and go down the forward hatchway. He is mad, stark, raving mad, and it's no use my trying to stop him. He can't hurt those big boxes, they are invoiced as clay, and to pull them about is as harmless a thing as he can do. So here I stay and mind the helm, and write these notes. I can only trust in God and wait till the fog clears. Then, if I can't steer to any harbour with the wind that is, I shall cut down sails, and lie by, and signal for help... 
It is nearly all over now. Just as I was beginning to hope that the mate would come out calmer, for I heard him knocking away at something in the hold, and work is good for him, there came up the hatchway a sudden, startled scream, which made my blood run cold, and up on the deck he came as if shot from a gun, a raging madman, with his eyes rolling and his face convulsed with fear. 'Save me! Save me!' he cried, and then looked round on the blanket of fog. His horror turned to despair, and in a steady voice he said, 'You had better come too, captain, before it is too late. He is there! I know the secret now. The sea will save me from Him, and it is all that is left!' Before I could say a word, or move forward to seize him, he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea. I suppose I know the secret too, now. It was this madman who had got rid of the men one by one, and now he has followed them himself. God help me! How am I to account for all these horrors when I get to port? When I get to port! Will that ever be?
4 August.-Still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce, I know there is sunrise because I am a sailor, why else I know not. I dared not go below, I dared not leave the helm, so here all night I stayed, and in the dimness of the night I saw it, Him! God, forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. It was better to die like a man. To die like a sailor in blue water, no man can object. But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He, It, dare not touch. And then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. I am growing weaker, and the night is coming on. If He can look me in the face again, I may not have time to act... If we are wrecked, mayhap this bottle may be found, and those who find it may understand. If not... well, then all men shall know that I have been true to my trust. God and the Blessed Virgin and the Saints help a poor ignorant soul trying to do his duty... 
Of course the verdict was an open one. There is no evidence to adduce, and whether or not the man himself committed the murders there is now none to say. The folk here hold almost universally that the captain is simply a hero, and he is to be given a public funeral. Already it is arranged that his body is to be taken with a train of boats up the Esk for a piece and then brought back to Tate Hill Pier and up the abbey steps, for he is to be buried in the churchyard on the cliff. The owners of more than a hundred boats have already given in their names as wishing to follow him to the grave.
No trace has ever been found of the great dog, at which there is much mourning, for, with public opinion in its present state, he would, I believe, be adopted by the town. Tomorrow will see the funeral, and so will end this one more 'mystery of the sea'.
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
8 August.-Lucy was very restless all night, and I too, could not sleep. The storm was fearful, and as it boomed loudly among the chimney pots, it made me shudder. When a sharp puff came it seemed to be like a distant gun. Strangely enough, Lucy did not wake, but she got up twice and dressed herself. Fortunately, each time I awoke in time and managed to undress her without waking her, and got her back to bed. It is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as her will is thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be any, disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine of her life.
Early in the morning we both got up and went down to the harbour to see if anything had happened in the night. There were very few people about, and though the sun was bright, and the air clear and fresh, the big, grim-looking waves, that seemed dark themselves because the foam that topped them was like snow, forced themselves in through the mouth of the harbour, like a bullying man going through a crowd. Somehow I felt glad that Jonathan was not on the sea last night, but on land. But, oh, is he on land or sea? Where is he, and how? I am getting fearfully anxious about him. If I only knew what to do, and could do anything!
10 August.-The funeral of the poor sea captain today was most touching. Every boat in the harbour seemed to be there, and the coffin was carried by captains all the way from Tate Hill Pier up to the churchyard. Lucy came with me, and we went early to our old seat, whilst the cortege of boats went up the river to the Viaduct and came down again. We had a lovely view, and saw the procession nearly all the way. The poor fellow was laid to rest near our seat so that we stood on it, when the time came and saw everything.
Poor Lucy seemed much upset. She was restless and uneasy all the time, and I cannot but think that her dreaming at night is telling on her. She is quite odd in one thing. She will not admit to me that there is any cause for restlessness, or if there be, she does not understand it herself.
There is an additional cause in that poor Mr. Swales was found dead this morning on our seat, his neck being broken. He had evidently, as the doctor said, fallen back in the seat in some sort of fright, for there was a look of fear and horror on his face that the men said made them shudder. Poor dear old man!
Lucy is so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do. Just now she was quite upset by a little thing which I did not much heed, though I am myself very fond of animals.
One of the men who came up here often to look for the boats was followed by his dog. The dog is always with him. They are both quiet persons, and I never saw the man angry, nor heard the dog bark. During the service the dog would not come to its master, who was on the seat with us, but kept a few yards off, barking and howling. Its master spoke to it gently, and then harshly, and then angrily. But it would neither come nor cease to make a noise. It was in a fury, with its eyes savage, and all its hair bristling out like a cat's tail when puss is on the war path.
Finally the man too got angry, and jumped down and kicked the dog, and then took it by the scruff of the neck and half dragged and half threw it on the tombstone on which the seat is fixed. The moment it touched the stone the poor thing began to tremble. It did not try to get away, but crouched down, quivering and cowering, and was in such a pitiable state of terror that I tried, though without effect, to comfort it.
Lucy was full of pity, too, but she did not attempt to touch the dog, but looked at it in an agonised sort of way. I greatly fear that she is of too super sensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble. She will be dreaming of this tonight, I am sure. The whole agglomeration of things, the ship steered into port by a dead man, his attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads, the touching funeral, the dog, now furious and now in terror, will all afford material for her dreams.
I think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so I shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to Robin Hood's Bay and back. She ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then.
Chapter 8
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL
Same day, 11 o'clock P.M.-Oh, but I am tired! If it were not that I had made my diary a duty I should not open it tonight. We had a lovely walk. Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us. I believe we forgot everything, except of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the slate clean and give us a fresh start. We had a capital 'severe tea' at Robin Hood's Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand. I believe we should have shocked the 'New Woman' with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless them! Then we walked home with some, or rather many, stoppages to rest, and with our hearts full of a constant dread of wild bulls.
Lucy was really tired, and we intended to creep off to bed as soon as we could. The young curate came in, however, and Mrs. Westenra asked him to stay for supper. Lucy and I had both a fight for it with the dusty miller. I know it was a hard fight on my part, and I am quite heroic. I think that some day the bishops must get together and see about breeding up a new class of curates, who don't take supper, no matter how hard they may be pressed to, and who will know when girls are tired.
Lucy is asleep and breathing softly. She has more colour in her cheeks than usual, and looks, oh so sweet. If Mr. Holmwood fell in love with her seeing her only in the drawing room, I wonder what he would say if he saw her now. Some of the 'New Women' writers will some day start an idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep before proposing or accepting. But I suppose the 'New Woman' won't condescend in future to accept. She will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it too! There's some consolation in that. I am so happy tonight, because dear Lucy seems better. I really believe she has turned the corner, and that we are over her troubles with dreaming. I should be quite happy if I only knew if Jonathan... God bless and keep him.
11 August.-Diary again. No sleep now, so I may as well write. I am too agitated to sleep. We have had such an adventure, such an agonizing experience. I fell asleep as soon as I had closed my diary.... Suddenly I became broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense of fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me. The room was dark, so I could not see Lucy's bed. I stole across and felt for her. The bed was empty. I lit a match and found that she was not in the room. The door was shut, but not locked, as I had left it. I feared to wake her mother, who has been more than usually ill lately, so threw on some clothes and got ready to look for her. As I was leaving the room it struck me that the clothes she wore might give me some clue to her dreaming intention. Dressing-gown would mean house, dress outside. Dressing-gown and dress were both in their places. 'Thank God,' I said to myself, 'she cannot be far, as she is only in her nightdress.'
I ran downstairs and looked in the sitting room. Not there! Then I looked in all the other rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear chilling my heart. Finally, I came to the hall door and found it open. It was not wide open, but the catch of the lock had not caught. The people of the house are careful to lock the door every night, so I feared that Lucy must have gone out as she was. There was no time to think of what might happen. A vague over-mastering fear obscured all details.
I took a big, heavy shawl and ran out. The clock was striking one as I was in the Crescent, and there was not a soul in sight. I ran along the North Terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which I expected. At the edge of the West Cliff above the pier I looked across the harbour to the East Cliff, in the hope or fear, I don't know which, of seeing Lucy in our favourite seat.
There was a bright full moon, with heavy black, driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across. For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church and all around it. Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view, and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white. The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately, but it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.
I did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps to the pier and along by the fish-market to the bridge, which was the only way to reach the East Cliff. The town seemed as dead, for not a soul did I see. I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of poor Lucy's condition. The time and distance seemed endless, and my knees trembled and my breath came laboured as I toiled up the endless steps to the abbey. I must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty.
When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was now close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, 'Lucy! Lucy!' and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes.
Lucy did not answer, and I ran on to the entrance of the churchyard. As I entered, the church was between me and the seat, and for a minute or so I lost sight of her. When I came in view again the cloud had passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat. She was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about.
When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her, as though she felt the cold. I flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight around her neck, for I dreaded lest she should get some deadly chill from the night air, unclad as she was. I feared to wake her all at once, so, in order to have my hands free to help her, I fastened the shawl at her throat with a big safety pin. But I must have been clumsy in my anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned. When I had her carefully wrapped up I put my shoes on her feet, and then began very gently to wake her.
At first she did not respond, but gradually she became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally. At last, as time was passing fast, and for many other reasons, I wished to get her home at once, I shook her forcibly, till finally she opened her eyes and awoke. She did not seem surprised to see me, as, of course, she did not realize all at once where she was.
Lucy always wakes prettily, and even at such a time, when her body must have been chilled with cold, and her mind somewhat appalled at waking unclad in a churchyard at night, she did not lose her grace. She trembled a little, and clung to me. When I told her to come at once with me home, she rose without a word, with the obedience of a child. As we passed along, the gravel hurt my feet, and Lucy noticed me wince. She stopped and wanted to insist upon my taking my shoes, but I would not. However, when we got to the pathway outside the chruchyard, where there was a puddle of water, remaining from the storm, I daubed my feet with mud, using each foot in turn on the other, so that as we went home, no one, in case we should meet any one, should notice my bare feet.
Fortune favoured us, and we got home without meeting a soul. Once we saw a man, who seemed not quite sober, passing along a street in front of us. But we hid in a door till he had disappeared up an opening such as there are here, steep little closes, or 'wynds', as they call them in Scotland. My heart beat so loud all the time sometimes I thought I should faint. I was filled with anxiety about Lucy, not only for her health, lest she should suffer from the exposure, but for her reputation in case the story should get wind. When we got in, and had washed our feet, and had said a prayer of thankfulness together, I tucked her into bed. Before falling asleep she asked, even implored, me not to say a word to any one, even her mother, about her sleep-walking adventure.
I hesitated at first, to promise, but on thinking of the state of her mother's health, and how the knowledge of such a thing would fret her, and think too, of how such a story might become distorted, nay, infallibly would, in case it should leak out, I thought it wiser to do so. I hope I did right. I have locked the door, and the key is tied to my wrist, so perhaps I shall not be again disturbed. Lucy is sleeping soundly. The reflex of the dawn is high and far over the sea... 
Same day, noon.-All goes well. Lucy slept till I woke her and seemed not to have even changed her side. The adventure of the night does not seem to have harmed her, on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she looks better this morning than she has done for weeks. I was sorry to notice that my clumsiness with the safety-pin hurt her. Indeed, it might have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced. I must have pinched up a piece of loose skin and have transfixed it, for there are two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her nightdress was a drop of blood. When I apologised and was concerned about it, she laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it. Fortunately it cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny.
Same day, night.-We passed a happy day. The air was clear, and the sun bright, and there was a cool breeze. We took our lunch to Mulgrave Woods, Mrs. Westenra driving by the road and Lucy and I walking by the cliff-path and joining her at the gate. I felt a little sad myself, for I could not but feel how absolutely happy it would have been had Jonathan been with me. But there! I must only be patient. In the evening we strolled in the Casino Terrace, and heard some good music by Spohr and Mackenzie, and went to bed early. Lucy seems more restful than she has been for some time, and fell asleep at once. I shall lock the door and secure the key the same as before, though I do not expect any trouble tonight.
12 August.-My expectations were wrong, for twice during the night I was wakened by Lucy trying to get out. She seemed, even in her sleep, to be a little impatient at finding the door shut, and went back to bed under a sort of protest. I woke with the dawn, and heard the birds chirping outside of the window. Lucy woke, too, and I was glad to see, was even better than on the previous morning. All her old gaiety of manner seemed to have come back, and she came and snuggled in beside me and told me all about Arthur. I told her how anxious I was about Jonathan, and then she tried to comfort me. Well, she succeeded somewhat, for, though sympathy can't alter facts, it can make them more bearable.
13 August.-Another quiet day, and to bed with the key on my wrist as before. Again I awoke in the night, and found Lucy sitting up in bed, still asleep, pointing to the window. I got up quietly, and pulling aside the blind, looked out. It was brilliant moonlight, and the soft effect of the light over the sea and sky, merged together in one great silent mystery, was beautiful beyond words. Between me and the moonlight flitted a great bat, coming and going in great whirling circles. Once or twice it came quite close, but was, I suppose, frightened at seeing me, and flitted away across the harbour towards the abbey. When I came back from the window Lucy had lain down again, and was sleeping peacefully. She did not stir again all night.
14 August.-On the East Cliff, reading and writing all day. Lucy seems to have become as much in love with the spot as I am, and it is hard to get her away from it when it is time to come home for lunch or tea or dinner. This afternoon she made a funny remark. We were coming home for dinner, and had come to the top of the steps up from the West Pier and stopped to look at the view, as we generally do. The setting sun, low down in the sky, was just dropping behind Kettleness. The red light was thrown over on the East Cliff and the old abbey, and seemed to bathe everything in a beautiful rosy glow. We were silent for a while, and suddenly Lucy murmured as if to herself... 
'His red eyes again! They are just the same.' It was such an odd expression, coming apropos of nothing, that it quite startled me. I slewed round a little, so as to see Lucy well without seeming to stare at her, and saw that she was in a half dreamy state, with an odd look on her face that I could not quite make out, so I said nothing, but followed her eyes. She appeared to be looking over at our own seat, whereon was a dark figure seated alone. I was quite a little startled myself, for it seemed for an instant as if the stranger had great eyes like burning flames, but a second look dispelled the illusion. The red sunlight was shining on the windows of St. Mary's Church behind our seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the refraction and reflection to make it appear as if the light moved. I called Lucy's attention to the peculiar effect, and she became herself with a start, but she looked sad all the same. It may have been that she was thinking of that terrible night up there. We never refer to it, so I said nothing, and we went home to dinner. Lucy had a headache and went early to bed. I saw her asleep, and went out for a little stroll myself.
I walked along the cliffs to the westward, and was full of sweet sadness, for I was thinking of Jonathan. When coming home, it was then bright moonlight, so bright that, though the front of our part of the Crescent was in shadow, everything could be well seen, I threw a glance up at our window, and saw Lucy's head leaning out. I opened my handkerchief and waved it. She did not notice or make any movement whatever. Just then, the moonlight crept round an angle of the building, and the light fell on the window. There distinctly was Lucy with her head lying up against the side of the window sill and her eyes shut. She was fast asleep, and by her, seated on the window sill, was something that looked like a good-sized bird. I was afraid she might get a chill, so I ran upstairs, but as I came into the room she was moving back to her bed, fast asleep, and breathing heavily. She was holding her hand to her throat, as though to protect if from the cold.
I did not wake her, but tucked her up warmly. I have taken care that the door is locked and the window securely fastened.
She looks so sweet as she sleeps, but she is paler than is her wont, and there is a drawn, haggard look under her eyes which I do not like. I fear she is fretting about something. I wish I could find out what it is.
15 August.-Rose later than usual. Lucy was languid and tired, and slept on after we had been called. We had a happy surprise at breakfast. Arthur's father is better, and wants the marriage to come off soon. Lucy is full of quiet joy, and her mother is glad and sorry at once. Later on in the day she told me the cause. She is grieved to lose Lucy as her very own, but she is rejoiced that she is soon to have some one to protect her. Poor dear, sweet lady! She confided to me that she has got her death warrant. She has not told Lucy, and made me promise secrecy. Her doctor told her that within a few months, at most, she must die, for her heart is weakening. At any time, even now, a sudden shock would be almost sure to kill her. Ah, we were wise to keep from her the affair of the dreadful night of Lucy's sleep-walking.
17 August.-No diary for two whole days. I have not had the heart to write. Some sort of shadowy pall seems to be coming over our happiness. No news from Jonathan, and Lucy seems to be growing weaker, whilst her mother's hours are numbering to a close. I do not understand Lucy's fading away as she is doing. She eats well and sleeps well, and enjoys the fresh air, but all the time the roses in her cheeks are fading, and she gets weaker and more languid day by day. At night I hear her gasping as if for air.
I keep the key of our door always fastened to my wrist at night, but she gets up and walks about the room, and sits at the open window. Last night I found her leaning out when I woke up, and when I tried to wake her I could not.
She was in a faint. When I managed to restore her, she was weak as water, and cried silently between long, painful struggles for breath. When I asked her how she came to be at the window she shook her head and turned away.
I trust her feeling ill may not be from that unlucky prick of the safety-pin. I looked at her throat just now as she lay asleep, and the tiny wounds seem not to have healed. They are still open, and, if anything, larger than before, and the edges of them are faintly white. They are like little white dots with red centres. Unless they heal within a day or two, I shall insist on the doctor seeing about them.
LETTER, SAMUEL F. BILLINGTON & SON, SOLICITORS WHITBY, TO MESSRS. CARTER, PATERSON & CO., LONDON.
17 August
'Dear Sirs,-Herewith please receive invoice of goods sent by Great Northern Railway. Same are to be delivered at Carfax, near Purfleet, immediately on receipt at goods station King's Cross. The house is at present empty, but enclosed please find keys, all of which are labelled.
'You will please deposit the boxes, fifty in number, which form the consignment, in the partially ruined building forming part of the house and marked 'A' on rough diagrams enclosed. Your agent will easily recognize the locality, as it is the ancient chapel of the mansion. The goods leave by the train at 9:30 tonight, and will be due at King's Cross at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon. As our client wishes the delivery made as soon as possible, we shall be obliged by your having teams ready at King's Cross at the time named and forthwith conveying the goods to destination. In order to obviate any delays possible through any routine requirements as to payment in your departments, we enclose cheque herewith for ten pounds, receipt of which please acknowledge. Should the charge be less than this amount, you can return balance, if greater, we shall at once send cheque for difference on hearing from you. You are to leave the keys on coming away in the main hall of the house, where the proprietor may get them on his entering the house by means of his duplicate key.
'Pray do not take us as exceeding the bounds of business courtesy in pressing you in all ways to use the utmost expedition.
'We are, dear Sirs, 'Faithfully yours, 'SAMUEL F. BILLINGTON & SON.'
LETTER, MESSRS. CARTER, PATERSON & CO., LONDON, TO MESSRS. BILLINGTON & SON, WHITBY.
21 August.
'Dear Sirs,-'We beg to acknowledge 10 pounds received and to return cheque of 1 pound, 17s, 9d, amount of overplus, as shown in receipted account herewith. Goods are delivered in exact accordance with instructions, and keys left in parcel in main hall, as directed.
'We are, dear Sirs, 'Yours respectfully, 'Pro CARTER, PATERSON & CO.'
MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL.
18 August.-I am happy today, and write sitting on the seat in the churchyard. Lucy is ever so much better. Last night she slept well all night, and did not disturb me once.
The roses seem coming back already to her cheeks, though she is still sadly pale and wan-looking. If she were in any way anemic I could understand it, but she is not. She is in gay spirits and full of life and cheerfulness. All the morbid reticence seems to have passed from her, and she has just reminded me, as if I needed any reminding, of that night, and that it was here, on this very seat, I found her asleep.
As she told me she tapped playfully with the heel of her boot on the stone slab and said,
'My poor little feet didn't make much noise then! I daresay poor old Mr. Swales would have told me that it was because I didn't want to wake up Geordie.'
As she was in such a communicative humour, I asked her if she had dreamed at all that night.
Before she answered, that sweet, puckered look came into her forehead, which Arthur, I call him Arthur from her habit, says he loves, and indeed, I don't wonder that he does. Then she went on in a half-dreaming kind of way, as if trying to recall it to herself.
'I didn't quite dream, but it all seemed to be real. I only wanted to be here in this spot. I don't know why, for I was afraid of something, I don't know what. I remember, though I suppose I was asleep, passing through the streets and over the bridge. A fish leaped as I went by, and I leaned over to look at it, and I heard a lot of dogs howling. The whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs all howling at once, as I went up the steps. Then I had a vague memory of something long and dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very sweet and very bitter all around me at once. And then I seemed sinking into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as I have heard there is to drowning men, and then everything seemed passing away from me. My soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the air. I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under me, and then there was a sort of agonizing feeling, as if I were in an earthquake, and I came back and found you shaking my body. I saw you do it before I felt you.'
Then she began to laugh. It seemed a little uncanny to me, and I listened to her breathlessly. I did not quite like it, and thought it better not to keep her mind on the subject, so we drifted on to another subject, and Lucy was like her old self again. When we got home the fresh breeze had braced her up, and her pale cheeks were really more rosy. Her mother rejoiced when she saw her, and we all spent a very happy evening together.
19 August.-Joy, joy, joy! Although not all joy. At last, news of Jonathan. The dear fellow has been ill, that is why he did not write. I am not afraid to think it or to say it, now that I know. Mr. Hawkins sent me on the letter, and wrote himself, oh so kindly. I am to leave in the morning and go over to Jonathan, and to help to nurse him if necessary, and to bring him home. Mr. Hawkins says it would not be a bad thing if we were to be married out there. I have cried over the good Sister's letter till I can feel it wet against my bosom, where it lies. It is of Jonathan, and must be near my heart, for he is in my heart. My journey is all mapped out, and my luggage ready. I am only taking one change of dress. Lucy will bring my trunk to London and keep it till I send for it, for it may be that... I must write no more. I must keep it to say to Jonathan, my husband. The letter that he has seen and touched must comfort me till we meet.
LETTER, SISTER AGATHA, HOSPITAL OF ST. JOSEPH AND STE. MARY BUDA-PESTH, TO MISS WILLHELMINA MURRAY
12 August,
'Dear Madam.
'I write by desire of Mr. Jonathan Harker, who is himself not strong enough to write, though progressing well, thanks to God and St. Joseph and Ste. Mary. He has been under our care for nearly six weeks, suffering from a violent brain fever. He wishes me to convey his love, and to say that by this post I write for him to Mr. Peter Hawkins, Exeter, to say, with his dutiful respects, that he is sorry for his delay, and that all of his work is completed. He will require some few weeks' rest in our sanatorium in the hills, but will then return. He wishes me to say that he has not sufficient money with him, and that he would like to pay for his staying here, so that others who need shall not be wanting for help.
Believe me,
Yours, with sympathy and all blessings. Sister Agatha.'
'P.S.-My patient being asleep, I open this to let you know something more. He has told me all about you, and that you are shortly to be his wife. All blessings to you both! He has had some fearful shock, so says our doctor, and in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful, of wolves and poison and blood, of ghosts and demons, and I fear to say of what. Be careful of him always that there may be nothing to excite him of this kind for a long time to come. The traces of such an illness as his do not lightly die away. We should have written long ago, but we knew nothing of his friends, and there was nothing on him, nothing that anyone could understand. He came in the train from Klausenburg, and the guard was told by the station master there that he rushed into the station shouting for a ticket for home. Seeing from his violent demeanour that he was English, they gave him a ticket for the furthest station on the way thither that the train reached.
'Be assured that he is well cared for. He has won all hearts by his sweetness and gentleness. He is truly getting on well, and I have no doubt will in a few weeks be all himself. But be careful of him for safety's sake. There are, I pray God and St. Joseph and Ste. Mary, many, many, happy years for you both.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
19 August.-Strange and sudden change in Renfield last night. About eight o'clock he began to get excited and sniff about as a dog does when setting. The attendant was struck by his manner, and knowing my interest in him, encouraged him to talk. He is usually respectful to the attendant and at times servile, but tonight, the man tells me, he was quite haughty. Would not condescend to talk with him at all.
All he would say was, 'I don't want to talk to you. You don't count now. The master is at hand.'
The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which has seized him. If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. The combination is a dreadful one.
At nine o'clock I visited him myself. His attitude to me was the same as that to the attendant. In his sublime self-feeling the difference between myself and the attendant seemed to him as nothing. It looks like religious mania, and he will soon think that he himself is God.
These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. Oh, if men only knew!
For half an hour or more Renfield kept getting excited in greater and greater degree. I did not pretend to be watching him, but I kept strict observation all the same. All at once that shifty look came into his eyes which we always see when a madman has seized an idea, and with it the shifty movement of the head and back which asylum attendants come to know so well. He became quite quiet, and went and sat on the edge of his bed resignedly, and looked into space with lack-luster eyes.
I thought I would find out if his apathy were real or only assumed, and tried to lead him to talk of his pets, a theme which had never failed to excite his attention.
At first he made no reply, but at length said testily, 'Bother them all! I don't care a pin about them.'
'What' I said. 'You don't mean to tell me you don't care about spiders?' 
To this he answered enigmatically, 'The Bride maidens rejoice the eyes that wait the coming of the bride. But when the bride draweth nigh, then the maidens shine not to the eyes that are filled.'
He would not explain himself, but remained obstinately seated on his bed all the time I remained with him.
I am weary tonight and low in spirits. I cannot but think of Lucy, and how different things might have been. If I don't sleep at once, chloral, the modern Morpheus! I must be careful not to let it grow into a habit. No, I shall take none tonight! I have thought of Lucy, and I shall not dishonour her by mixing the two. If need be, tonight shall be sleepless.
Later.-Glad I made the resolution, gladder that I kept to it. I had lain tossing about, and had heard the clock strike only twice, when the night watchman came to me, sent up from the ward, to say that Renfield had escaped. I threw on my clothes and ran down at once. My patient is too dangerous a person to be roaming about. Those ideas of his might work out dangerously with strangers.
The attendant was waiting for me. He said he had seen him not ten minutes before, seemingly asleep in his bed, when he had looked through the observation trap in the door. His attention was called by the sound of the window being wrenched out. He ran back and saw his feet disappear through the window, and had at once sent up for me. He was only in his night gear, and cannot be far off.
The attendant thought it would be more useful to watch where he should go than to follow him, as he might lose sight of him whilst getting out of the building by the door. He is a bulky man, and couldn't get through the window.
I am thin, so, with his aid, I got out, but feet foremost, and as we were only a few feet above ground landed unhurt.
The attendant told me the patient had gone to the left, and had taken a straight line, so I ran as quickly as I could. As I got through the belt of trees I saw a white figure scale the high wall which separates our grounds from those of the deserted house.
I ran back at once, told the watchman to get three or four men immediately and follow me into the grounds of Carfax, in case our friend might be dangerous. I got a ladder myself, and crossing the wall, dropped down on the other side. I could see Renfield's figure just disappearing behind the angle of the house, so I ran after him. On the far side of the house I found him pressed close against the old iron-bound oak door of the chapel.
He was talking, apparently to some one, but I was afraid to go near enough to hear what he was saying, lest I might frighten him, and he should run off.
Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic, when the fit of escaping is upon him! After a few minutes, however, I could see that he did not take note of anything around him, and so ventured to draw nearer to him, the more so as my men had now crossed the wall and were closing him in. I heard him say... 
'I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave, and you will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped you long and afar off. Now that you are near, I await your commands, and you will not pass me by, will you, dear Master, in your distribution of good things?'
He is a selfish old beggar anyhow. He thinks of the loaves and fishes even when he believes his is in a real Presence. His manias make a startling combination. When we closed in on him he fought like a tiger. He is immensely strong, for he was more like a wild beast than a man.
I never saw a lunatic in such a paroxysm of rage before, and I hope I shall not again. It is a mercy that we have found out his strength and his danger in good time. With strength and determination like his, he might have done wild work before he was caged.
He is safe now, at any rate. Jack Sheppard himself couldn't get free from the strait waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he's chained to the wall in the padded room.
His cries are at times awful, but the silences that follow are more deadly still, for he means murder in every turn and movement.
Just now he spoke coherent words for the first time. 'I shall be patient, Master. It is coming, coming, coming!'
So I took the hint, and came too. I was too excited to sleep, but this diary has quieted me, and I feel I shall get some sleep tonight.
Chapter 9
LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA
Buda-Pesth, 24 August.
'My dearest Lucy,
'I know you will be anxious to hear all that has happened since we parted at the railway station at Whitby.
'Well, my dear, I got to Hull all right, and caught the boat to Hamburg, and then the train on here. I feel that I can hardly recall anything of the journey, except that I knew I was coming to Jonathan, and that as I should have to do some nursing, I had better get all the sleep I could. I found my dear one, oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his face has vanished. He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has happened to him for a long time past. At least, he wants me to believe so, and I shall never ask.
'He has had some terrible shock, and I fear it might tax his poor brain if he were to try to recall it. Sister Agatha, who is a good creature and a born nurse, tells me that he wanted her to tell me what they were, but she would only cross herself, and say she would never tell. That the ravings of the sick were the secrets of God, and that if a nurse through her vocation should hear them, she should respect her trust.
'She is a sweet, good soul, and the next day, when she saw I was troubled, she opened up the subject my poor dear raved about, added, 'I can tell you this much, my dear. That it was not about anything which he has done wrong himself, and you, as his wife to be, have no cause to be concerned. He has not forgotten you or what he owes to you. His fear was of great and terrible things, which no mortal can treat of.'
'I do believe the dear soul thought I might be jealous lest my poor dear should have fallen in love with any other girl. The idea of my being jealous about Jonathan! And yet, my dear, let me whisper, I felt a thrill of joy through me when I knew that no other woman was a cause for trouble. I am now sitting by his bedside, where I can see his face while he sleeps. He is waking!
'When he woke he asked me for his coat, as he wanted to get something from the pocket. I asked Sister Agatha, and she brought all his things. I saw amongst them was his notebook, and was was going to ask him to let me look at it, for I knew that I might find some clue to his trouble, but I suppose he must have seen my wish in my eyes, for he sent me over to the window, saying he wanted to be quite alone for a moment.
'Then he called me back, and he said to me very solemnly, 'Wilhelmina', I knew then that he was in deadly earnest, for he has never called me by that name since he asked me to marry him, 'You know, dear, my ideas of the trust between husband and wife. There should be no secret, no concealment. I have had a great shock, and when I try to think of what it is I feel my head spin round, and I do not know if it was real of the dreaming of a madman. You know I had brain fever, and that is to be mad. The secret is here, and I do not want to know it. I want to take up my life here, with our marriage.' For, my dear, we had decided to be married as soon as the formalities are complete. 'Are you willing, Wilhelmina, to share my ignorance? Here is the book. Take it and keep it, read it if you will, but never let me know unless, indeed, some solemn duty should come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, sane or mad, recorded here.' He fell back exhausted, and I put the book under his pillow, and kissed him. I have asked Sister Agatha to beg the Superior to let our wedding be this afternoon, and am waiting her reply... '
'She has come and told me that the Chaplain of the English mission church has been sent for. We are to be married in an hour, or as soon after as Jonathan awakes.'
'Lucy, the time has come and gone. I feel very solemn, but very, very happy. Jonathan woke a little after the hour, and all was ready, and he sat up in bed, propped up with pillows. He answered his 'I will' firmly and strong. I could hardly speak. My heart was so full that even those words seemed to choke me.
'The dear sisters were so kind. Please, God, I shall never, never forget them, nor the grave and sweet responsibilities I have taken upon me. I must tell you of my wedding present. When the chaplain and the sisters had left me alone with my husband-oh, Lucy, it is the first time I have written the words 'my husband'-left me alone with my husband, I took the book from under his pillow, and wrapped it up in white paper, and tied it with a little bit of pale blue ribbon which was round my neck, and sealed it over the knot with sealing wax, and for my seal I used my wedding ring. Then I kissed it and showed it to my husband, and told him that I would keep it so, and then it would be an outward and visible sign for us all our lives that we trusted each other, that I would never open it unless it were for his own dear sake or for the sake of some stern duty. Then he took my hand in his, and oh, Lucy, it was the first time he took his wife's hand, and said that it was the dearest thing in all the wide world, and that he would go through all the past again to win it, if need be. The poor dear meant to have said a part of the past, but he cannot think of time yet, and I shall not wonder if at first he mixes up not only the month, but the year.
'Well, my dear, what could I say? I could only tell him that I was the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to give him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love and duty for all the days of my life. And, my dear, when he kissed me, and drew me to him with his poor weak hands, it was like a solemn pledge between us.
'Lucy dear, do you know why I tell you all this? It is not only because it is all sweet to me, but because you have been, and are, very dear to me. It was my privilege to be your friend and guide when you came from the schoolroom to prepare for the world of life. I want you to see now, and with the eyes of a very happy wife, whither duty has led me, so that in your own married life you too may be all happy, as I am. My dear, please Almighty God, your life may be all it promises, a long day of sunshine, with no harsh wind, no forgetting duty, no distrust. I must not wish you no pain, for that can never be, but I do hope you will be always as happy as I am now. Goodbye, my dear. I shall post this at once, and perhaps, write you very soon again. I must stop, for Jonathan is waking. I must attend my husband!
'Your ever-loving 'Mina Harker.'
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA HARKER.
Whitby, 30 August.
'My dearest Mina,
'Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband. I wish you were coming home soon enough to stay with us here. The strong air would soon restore Jonathan. It has quite restored me. I have an appetite like a cormorant, am full of life, and sleep well. You will be glad to know that I have quite given up walking in my sleep. I think I have not stirred out of my bed for a week, that is when I once got into it at night. Arthur says I am getting fat. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Arthur is here. We have such walks and drives, and rides, and rowing, and tennis, and fishing together, and I love him more than ever. He tells me that he loves me more, but I doubt that, for at first he told me that he couldn't love me more than he did then. But this is nonsense. There he is, calling to me. So no more just at present from your loving,
'Lucy.
'P.S.-Mother sends her love. She seems better, poor dear.
'P.P.S.-We are to be married on 28 September.'
DR. SEWARDS DIARY
20 August.-The case of Renfield grows even more interesting. He has now so far quieted that there are spells of cessation from his passion. For the first week after his attack he was perpetually violent. Then one night, just as the moon rose, he grew quiet, and kept murmuring to himself. 'Now I can wait. Now I can wait.'
The attendant came to tell me, so I ran down at once to have a look at him. He was still in the strait waistcoat and in the padded room, but the suffused look had gone from his face, and his eyes had something of their old pleading. I might almost say, cringing, softness. I was satisfied with his present condition, and directed him to be relieved. The attendants hesitated, but finally carried out my wishes without protest.
It was a strange thing that the patient had humour enough to see their distrust, for, coming close to me, he said in a whisper, all the while looking furtively at them, 'They think I could hurt you! Fancy me hurting you! The fools!'
It was soothing, somehow, to the feelings to find myself disassociated even in the mind of this poor madman from the others, but all the same I do not follow his thought. Am I to take it that I have anything in common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together. Or has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well being is needful to Him? I must find out later on. Tonight he will not speak. Even the offer of a kitten or even a full-grown cat will not tempt him.
He will only say, 'I don't take any stock in cats. I have more to think of now, and I can wait. I can wait.'
After a while I left him. The attendant tells me that he was quiet until just before dawn, and that then he began to get uneasy, and at length violent, until at last he fell into a paroxysm which exhausted him so that he swooned into a sort of coma.
... Three nights has the same thing happened, violent all day then quiet from moonrise to sunrise. I wish I could get some clue to the cause. It would almost seem as if there was some influence which came and went. Happy thought! We shall tonight play sane wits against mad ones. He escaped before without our help. Tonight he shall escape with it. We shall give him a chance, and have the men ready to follow in case they are required.
23 August.-'The expected always happens.' How well Disraeli knew life. Our bird when he found the cage open would not fly, so all our subtle arrangements were for nought. At any rate, we have proved one thing, that the spells of quietness last a reasonable time. We shall in future be able to ease his bonds for a few hours each day. I have given orders to the night attendant merely to shut him in the padded room, when once he is quiet, until the hour before sunrise. The poor soul's body will enjoy the relief even if his mind cannot appreciate it. Hark! The unexpected again! I am called. The patient has once more escaped.
Later.-Another night adventure. Renfield artfully waited until the attendant was entering the room to inspect. Then he dashed out past him and flew down the passage. I sent word for the attendants to follow. Again he went into the grounds of the deserted house, and we found him in the same place, pressed against the old chapel door. When he saw me he became furious, and had not the attendants seized him in time, he would have tried to kill me. As we were holding him a strange thing happened. He suddenly redoubled his efforts, and then as suddenly grew calm. I looked round instinctively, but could see nothing. Then I caught the patient's eye and followed it, but could trace nothing as it looked into the moonlight sky, except a big bat, which was flapping its silent and ghostly way to the west. Bats usually wheel about, but this one seemed to go straight on, as if it knew where it was bound for or had some intention of its own.
The patient grew calmer every instant, and presently said, 'You needn't tie me. I shall go quietly!' Without trouble, we came back to the house. I feel there is something ominous in his calm, and shall not forget this night.
LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
Hillingham, 24 August.-I must imitate Mina, and keep writing things down. Then we can have long talks when we do meet. I wonder when it will be. I wish she were with me again, for I feel so unhappy. Last night I seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby. Perhaps it is the change of air, or getting home again. It is all dark and horrid to me, for I can remember nothing. But I am full of vague fear, and I feel so weak and worn out. When Arthur came to lunch he looked quite grieved when he saw me, and I hadn't the spirit to try to be cheerful. I wonder if I could sleep in mother's room tonight. I shall make an excuse to try.
25 August.-Another bad night. Mother did not seem to take to my proposal. She seems not too well herself, and doubtless she fears to worry me. I tried to keep awake, and succeeded for a while, but when the clock struck twelve it waked me from a doze, so I must have been falling asleep. There was a sort of scratching or flapping at the window, but I did not mind it, and as I remember no more, I suppose I must have fallen asleep. More bad dreams. I wish I could remember them. This morning I am horribly weak. My face is ghastly pale, and my throat pains me. It must be something wrong with my lungs, for I don't seem to be getting air enough. I shall try to cheer up when Arthur comes, or else I know he will be miserable to see me so.
LETTER, ARTHUR TO DR. SEWARD
'Albemarle Hotel, 31 August 'My dear Jack,
'I want you to do me a favour. Lucy is ill, that is she has no special disease, but she looks awful, and is getting worse every day. I have asked her if there is any cause, I not dare to ask her mother, for to disturb the poor lady's mind about her daughter in her present state of health would be fatal. Mrs. Westenra has confided to me that her doom is spoken, disease of the heart, though poor Lucy does not know it yet. I am sure that there is something preying on my dear girl's mind. I am almost distracted when I think of her. To look at her gives me a pang. I told her I should ask you to see her, and though she demurred at first, I know why, old fellow, she finally consented. It will be a painful task for you, I know, old friend, but it is for her sake, and I must not hesitate to ask, or you to act. You are to come to lunch at Hillingham tomorrow, two o'clock, so as not to arouse any suspicion in Mrs. Westenra, and after lunch Lucy will take an opportunity of being alone with you. I am filled with anxiety, and want to consult with you alone as soon as I can after you have seen her. Do not fail!
'Arthur.'
TELEGRAM, ARTHUR HOLMWOOD TO SEWARD
1 September
'Am summoned to see my father, who is worse. Am writing. Write me fully by tonight's post to Ring. Wire me if necessary.'
LETTER FROM DR. SEWARD TO ARTHUR HOLMWOOD
2 September
'My dear old fellow,
'With regard to Miss Westenra's health I hasten to let you know at once that in my opinion there is not any functional disturbance or any malady that I know of. At the same time, I am not by any means satisfied with her appearance. She is woefully different from what she was when I saw her last. Of course you must bear in mind that I did not have full opportunity of examination such as I should wish. Our very friendship makes a little difficulty which not even medical science or custom can bridge over. I had better tell you exactly what happened, leaving you to draw, in a measure, your own conclusions. I shall then say what I have done and propose doing.
'I found Miss Westenra in seemingly gay spirits. Her mother was present, and in a few seconds I made up my mind that she was trying all she knew to mislead her mother and prevent her from being anxious. I have no doubt she guesses, if she does not know, what need of caution there is.
'We lunched alone, and as we all exerted ourselves to be cheerful, we got, as some kind of reward for our labours, some real cheerfulness amongst us. Then Mrs. Westenra went to lie down, and Lucy was left with me. We went into her boudoir, and till we got there her gaiety remained, for the servants were coming and going.
'As soon as the door was closed, however, the mask fell from her face, and she sank down into a chair with a great sigh, and hid her eyes with her hand. When I saw that her high spirits had failed, I at once took advantage of her reaction to make a diagnosis.
'She said to me very sweetly, 'I cannot tell you how I loathe talking about myself.' I reminded her that a doctor's confidence was sacred, but that you were grievously anxious about her. She caught on to my meaning at once, and settled that matter in a word. 'Tell Arthur everything you choose. I do not care for myself, but for him!' So I am quite free.
'I could easily see that she was somewhat bloodless, but I could not see the usual anemic signs, and by the chance, I was able to test the actual quality of her blood, for in opening a window which was stiff a cord gave way, and she cut her hand slightly with broken glass. It was a slight matter in itself, but it gave me an evident chance, and I secured a few drops of the blood and have analysed them.
'The qualitative analysis give a quite normal condition, and shows, I should infer, in itself a vigorous state of health. In other physical matters I was quite satisfied that there is no need for anxiety, but as there must be a cause somewhere, I have come to the conclusion that it must be something mental.
'She complains of difficulty breathing satisfactorily at times, and of heavy, lethargic sleep, with dreams that frighten her, but regarding which she can remember nothing. She says that as a child, she used to walk in her sleep, and that when in Whitby the habit came back, and that once she walked out in the night and went to East Cliff, where Miss Murray found her. But she assures me that of late the habit has not returned.
'I am in doubt, and so have done the best thing I know of. I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world. I have asked him to come over, and as you told me that all things were to be at your charge, I have mentioned to him who you are and your relations to Miss Westenra. This, my dear fellow, is in obedience to your wishes, for I am only too proud and happy to do anything I can for her.
'Van Helsing would, I know, do anything for me for a personal reason, so no matter on what ground he comes, we must accept his wishes. He is a seemingly arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day, and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy. I tell you these facts that you may know why I have such confidence in him. I have asked him to come at once. I shall see Miss Westenra tomorrow again. She is to meet me at the Stores, so that I may not alarm her mother by too early a repetition of my call.
'Yours always.'
John Seward
LETTER, ABRAHAM VAN HELSING, MD, DPh, D. Lit, ETC, ETC, TO DR. SEWARD
2 September.
'My good Friend,
'When I received your letter I am already coming to you. By good fortune I can leave just at once, without wrong to any of those who have trusted me. Were fortune other, then it were bad for those who have trusted, for I come to my friend when he call me to aid those he holds dear. Tell your friend that when that time you suck from my wound so swiftly the poison of the gangrene from that knife that our other friend, too nervous, let slip, you did more for him when he wants my aids and you call for them than all his great fortune could do. But it is pleasure added to do for him, your friend, it is to you that I come. Have near at hand, and please it so arrange that we may see the young lady not too late on tomorrow, for it is likely that I may have to return here that night. But if need be I shall come again in three days, and stay longer if it must. Till then goodbye, my friend John.
'Van Helsing.'
LETTER, DR. SEWARD TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMWOOD
3 September
'My dear Art,
'Van Helsing has come and gone. He came on with me to Hillingham, and found that, by Lucy's discretion, her mother was lunching out, so that we were alone with her.
'Van Helsing made a very careful examination of the patient. He is to report to me, and I shall advise you, for of course I was not present all the time. He is, I fear, much concerned, but says he must think. When I told him of our friendship and how you trust to me in the matter, he said, 'You must tell him all you think. Tell him him what I think, if you can guess it, if you will. Nay, I am not jesting. This is no jest, but life and death, perhaps more.' I asked what he meant by that, for he was very serious. This was when we had come back to town, and he was having a cup of tea before starting on his return to Amsterdam. He would not give me any further clue. You must not be angry with me, Art, because his very reticence means that all his brains are working for her good. He will speak plainly enough when the time comes, be sure. So I told him I would simply write an account of our visit, just as if I were doing a descriptive special article for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH. He seemed not to notice, but remarked that the smuts of London were not quite so bad as they used to be when he was a student here. I am to get his report tomorrow if he can possibly make it. In any case I am to have a letter.
'Well, as to the visit, Lucy was more cheerful than on the day I first saw her, and certainly looked better. She had lost something of the ghastly look that so upset you, and her breathing was normal. She was very sweet to the Professor, and tried to make him feel at ease, though I could see the poor girl was making a hard struggle for it.
'I believe Van Helsing saw it, too, for I saw the quick look under his bushy brows that I knew of old. Then he began to chat of all things except ourselves and diseases and with such an infinite geniality that I could see poor Lucy's pretense of animation merge into reality. Then, without any seeming change, he brought the conversation gently round to his visit, and suavely said,
''My dear young miss, I have the so great pleasure because you are so much beloved. That is much, my dear, even were there that which I do not see. They told me you were down in the spirit, and that you were of a ghastly pale. To them I say 'Pouf!'' And he snapped his fingers at me and went on. 'But you and I shall show them how wrong they are. How can he', and he pointed at me with the same look and gesture as that with which he pointed me out in his class, on, or rather after, a particular occasion which he never fails to remind me of, 'know anything of a young ladies? He has his madmen to play with, and to bring them back to happiness, and to those that love them. It is much to do, and, oh, but there are rewards in that we can bestow such happiness. But the young ladies! He has no wife nor daughter, and the young do not tell themselves to the young, but to the old, like me, who have known so many sorrows and the causes of them. So, my dear, we will send him away to smoke the cigarette in the garden, whiles you and I have little talk all to ourselves.' I took the hint, and strolled about, and presently the professor came to the window and called me in. He looked grave, but said, 'I have made careful examination, but there is no functional cause. With you I agree that there has been much blood lost, it has been but is not. But the conditions of her are in no way anemic. I have asked her to send me her maid, that I may ask just one or two questions, that so I may not chance to miss nothing. I know well what she will say. And yet there is cause. There is always cause for everything. I must go back home and think. You must send me the telegram every day, and if there be cause I shall come again. The disease, for not to be well is a disease, interest me, and the sweet, young dear, she interest me too. She charm me, and for her, if not for you or disease, I come.'
'As I tell you, he would not say a word more, even when we were alone. And so now, Art, you know all I know. I shall keep stern watch. I trust your poor father is rallying. It must be a terrible thing to you, my dear old fellow, to be placed in such a position between two people who are both so dear to you. I know your idea of duty to your father, and you are right to stick to it. But if need be, I shall send you word to come at once to Lucy, so do not be over-anxious unless you hear from me.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
4 September.-Zoophagous patient still keeps up our interest in him. He had only one outburst and that was yesterday at an unusual time. Just before the stroke of noon he began to grow restless. The attendant knew the symptoms, and at once summoned aid. Fortunately the men came at a run, and were just in time, for at the stroke of noon he became so violent that it took all their strength to hold him. In about five minutes, however, he began to get more quiet, and finally sank into a sort of melancholy, in which state he has remained up to now. The attendant tells me that his screams whilst in the paroxysm were really appalling. I found my hands full when I got in, attending to some of the other patients who were frightened by him. Indeed, I can quite understand the effect, for the sounds disturbed even me, though I was some distance away. It is now after the dinner hour of the asylum, and as yet my patient sits in a corner brooding, with a dull, sullen, woe-begone look in his face, which seems rather to indicate than to show something directly. I cannot quite understand it.
Later.-Another change in my patient. At five o'clock I looked in on him, and found him seemingly as happy and contented as he used to be. He was catching flies and eating them, and was keeping note of his capture by making nailmarks on the edge of the door between the ridges of padding. When he saw me, he came over and apologized for his bad conduct, and asked me in a very humble, cringing way to be led back to his own room, and to have his notebook again. I thought it well to humour him, so he is back in his room with the window open. He has the sugar of his tea spread out on the window sill, and is reaping quite a harvest of flies. He is not now eating them, but putting them into a box, as of old, and is already examining the corners of his room to find a spider. I tried to get him to talk about the past few days, for any clue to his thoughts would be of immense help to me, but he would not rise. For a moment or two he looked very sad, and said in a sort of far away voice, as though saying it rather to himself than to me.
'All over! All over! He has deserted me. No hope for me now unless I do it myself!' Then suddenly turning to me in a resolute way, he said, 'Doctor, won't you be very good to me and let me have a little more sugar? I think it would be very good for me.'
'And the flies?' I said.
'Yes! The flies like it, too, and I like the flies, therefore I like it.' And there are people who know so little as to think that madmen do not argue. I procured him a double supply, and left him as happy a man as, I suppose, any in the world. I wish I could fathom his mind.
Midnight.-Another change in him. I had been to see Miss Westenra, whom I found much better, and had just returned, and was standing at our own gate looking at the sunset, when once more I heard him yelling. As his room is on this side of the house, I could hear it better than in the morning. It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul water, and to realize all the grim sternness of my own cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink. As it sank he became less and less frenzied, and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor. It is wonderful, however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him. I signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for I was anxious to see what he would do. He went straight over to the window and brushed out the crumbs of sugar. Then he took his fly box, and emptied it outside, and threw away the box. Then he shut the window, and crossing over, sat down on his bed. All this surprised me, so I asked him, 'Are you going to keep flies any more?'
'No,' said he. 'I am sick of all that rubbish!' He certainly is a wonderfully interesting study. I wish I could get some glimpse of his mind or of the cause of his sudden passion. Stop. There may be a clue after all, if we can find why today his paroxysms came on at high noon and at sunset. Can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at periods which affects certain natures, as at times the moon does others? We shall see.
TELEGRAM. SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM
'4 September.-Patient still better today.'
TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM
'5 September.-Patient greatly improved. Good appetite, sleeps naturally, good spirits, colour coming back.'
TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM
'6 September.-Terrible change for the worse. Come at once. Do not lose an hour. I hold over telegram to Holmwood till have seen you.'
Chapter 10
LETTER, DR. SEWARD TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMWOOD
6 September
'My dear Art,
'My news today is not so good. Lucy this morning had gone back a bit. There is, however, one good thing which has arisen from it. Mrs. Westenra was naturally anxious concerning Lucy, and has consulted me professionally about her. I took advantage of the opportunity, and told her that my old master, Van Helsing, the great specialist, was coming to stay with me, and that I would put her in his charge conjointly with myself. So now we can come and go without alarming her unduly, for a shock to her would mean sudden death, and this, in Lucy's weak condition, might be disastrous to her. We are hedged in with difficulties, all of us, my poor fellow, but, please God, we shall come through them all right. If any need I shall write, so that, if you do not hear from me, take it for granted that I am simply waiting for news, In haste,
'Yours ever,'
John Seward
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
7 September.-The first thing Van Helsing said to me when we met at Liverpool Street was, 'Have you said anything to our young friend, to lover of her?'
'No,' I said. 'I waited till I had seen you, as I said in my telegram. I wrote him a letter simply telling him that you were coming, as Miss Westenra was not so well, and that I should let him know if need be.'
'Right, my friend,' he said. 'Quite right! Better he not know as yet. Perhaps he will never know. I pray so, but if it be needed, then he shall know all. And, my good friend John, let me caution you. You deal with the madmen. All men are mad in some way or the other, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world. You tell not your madmen what you do nor why you do it. You tell them not what you think. So you shall keep knowledge in its place, where it may rest, where it may gather its kind around it and breed. You and I shall keep as yet what we know here, and here.' He touched me on the heart and on the forehead, and then touched himself the same way. 'I have for myself thoughts at the present. Later I shall unfold to you.'
'Why not now?' I asked. 'It may do some good. We may arrive at some decision.' He looked at me and said, 'My friend John, when the corn is grown, even before it has ripened, while the milk of its mother earth is in him, and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his gold, the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough hands, and blow away the green chaff, and say to you, 'Look! He's good corn, he will make a good crop when the time comes.' '
I did not see the application and told him so. For reply he reached over and took my ear in his hand and pulled it playfully, as he used long ago to do at lectures, and said, 'The good husbandman tell you so then because he knows, but not till then. But you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow. That is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life. See you now, friend John? I have sown my corn, and Nature has her work to do in making it sprout, if he sprout at all, there's some promise, and I wait till the ear begins to swell.' He broke off, for he evidently saw that I understood. Then he went on gravely, 'You were always a careful student, and your case book was ever more full than the rest. And I trust that good habit have not fail. Remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than memory, and we should not trust the weaker. Even if you have not kept the good practice, let me tell you that this case of our dear miss is one that may be, mind, I say may be, of such interest to us and others that all the rest may not make him kick the beam, as your people say. Take then good note of it. Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!'
When I described Lucy's symptoms, the same as before, but infinitely more marked, he looked very grave, but said nothing. He took with him a bag in which were many instruments and drugs, 'the ghastly paraphernalia of our beneficial trade,' as he once called, in one of his lectures, the equipment of a professor of the healing craft.
When we were shown in, Mrs. Westenra met us. She was alarmed, but not nearly so much as I expected to find her. Nature in one of her beneficient moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to its own terrors. Here, in a case where any shock may prove fatal, matters are so ordered that, from some cause or other, the things not personal, even the terrible change in her daughter to whom she is so attached, do not seem to reach her. It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.
I used my knowledge of this phase of spiritual pathology, and set down a rule that she should not be present with Lucy, or think of her illness more than was absolutely required. She assented readily, so readily that I saw again the hand of Nature fighting for life. Van Helsing and I were shown up to Lucy's room. If I was shocked when I saw her yesterday, I was horrified when I saw her today.
She was ghastly, chalkily pale. The red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently. Her breathing was painful to see or hear. Van Helsing's face grew set as marble, and his eyebrows converged till they almost touched over his nose. Lucy lay motionless, and did not seem to have strength to speak, so for a while we were all silent. Then Van Helsing beckoned to me, and we went gently out of the room. The instant we had closed the door he stepped quickly along the passage to the next door, which was open. Then he pulled me quickly in with him and closed the door. 'My god!' he said. 'This is dreadful. There is not time to be lost. She will die for sheer want of blood to keep the heart's action as it should be. There must be a transfusion of blood at once. Is it you or me?'
'I am younger and stronger, Professor. It must be me.'
'Then get ready at once. I will bring up my bag. I am prepared.'
I went downstairs with him, and as we were going there was a knock at the hall door. When we reached the hall, the maid had just opened the door, and Arthur was stepping quickly in. He rushed up to me, saying in an eager whisper,
'Jack, I was so anxious. I read between the lines of your letter, and have been in an agony. The dad was better, so I ran down here to see for myself. Is not that gentleman Dr. Van Helsing? I am so thankful to you, sir, for coming.'
When first the Professor's eye had lit upon him, he had been angry at his interruption at such a time, but now, as he took in his stalwart proportions and recognized the strong young manhood which seemed to emanate from him, his eyes gleamed. Without a pause he said to him as he held out his hand,
'Sir, you have come in time. You are the lover of our dear miss. She is bad, very, very bad. Nay, my child, do not go like that.' For he suddenly grew pale and sat down in a chair almost fainting. 'You are to help her. You can do more than any that live, and your courage is your best help.'
'What can I do?' asked Arthur hoarsely. 'Tell me, and I shall do it. My life is hers, and I would give the last drop of blood in my body for her.'
The Professor has a strongly humorous side, and I could from old knowledge detect a trace of its origin in his answer.
'My young sir, I do not ask so much as that, not the last!'
'What shall I do?' There was fire in his eyes, and his open nostrils quivered with intent. Van Helsing slapped him on the shoulder.
'Come!' he said. 'You are a man, and it is a man we want. You are better than me, better than my friend John.' Arthur looked bewildered, and the Professor went on by explaining in a kindly way.
'Young miss is bad, very bad. She wants blood, and blood she must have or die. My friend John and I have consulted, and we are about to perform what we call transfusion of blood, to transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him. John was to give his blood, as he is the more young and strong than me.'-Here Arthur took my hand and wrung it hard in silence.-'But now you are here, you are more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of thought. Our nerves are not so calm and our blood so bright than yours!'
Arthur turned to him and said, 'If you only knew how gladly I would die for her you would understand... ' He stopped with a sort of choke in his voice.
'Good boy!' said Van Helsing. 'In the not-so-far-off you will be happy that you have done all for her you love. Come now and be silent. You shall kiss her once before it is done, but then you must go, and you must leave at my sign. Say no word to Madame. You know how it is with her. There must be no shock, any knowledge of this would be one. Come!'
We all went up to Lucy's room. Arthur by direction remained outside. Lucy turned her head and looked at us, but said nothing. She was not asleep, but she was simply too weak to make the effort. Her eyes spoke to us, that was all.
Van Helsing took some things from his bag and laid them on a little table out of sight. Then he mixed a narcotic, and coming over to the bed, said cheerily, 'Now, little miss, here is your medicine. Drink it off, like a good child. See, I lift you so that to swallow is easy. Yes.' She had made the effort with success.
It astonished me how long the drug took to act. This, in fact, marked the extent of her weakness. The time seemed endless until sleep began to flicker in her eyelids. At last, however, the narcotic began to manifest its potency, and she fell into a deep sleep. When the Professor was satisfied, he called Arthur into the room, and bade him strip off his coat. Then he added, 'You may take that one little kiss whiles I bring over the table. Friend John, help to me!' So neither of us looked whilst he bent over her.
Van Helsing, turning to me, said, 'He is so young and strong, and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it.'
Then with swiftness, but with absolute method, Van Helsing performed the operation. As the transfusion went on, something like life seemed to come back to poor Lucy's cheeks, and through Arthur's growing pallor the joy of his face seemed absolutely to shine. After a bit I began to grow anxious, for the loss of blood was telling on Arthur, strong man as he was. It gave me an idea of what a terrible strain Lucy's system must have undergone that what weakened Arthur only partially restored her.
But the Professor's face was set, and he stood watch in hand, and with his eyes fixed now on the patient and now on Arthur. I could hear my own heart beat. Presently, he said in a soft voice, 'Do not stir an instant. It is enough. You attend him. I will look to her.'
When all was over, I could see how much Arthur was weakened. I dressed the wound and took his arm to bring him away, when Van Helsing spoke without turning round, the man seems to have eyes in the back of his head, 'The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently.' And as he had now finished his operation, he adjusted the pillow to the patient's head. As he did so the narrow black velvet band which she seems always to wear round her throat, buckled with an old diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was dragged a little up, and showed a red mark on her throat.
Arthur did not notice it, but I could hear the deep hiss of indrawn breath which is one of Van Helsing's ways of betraying emotion. He said nothing at the moment, but turned to me, saying, 'Now take down our brave young lover, give him of the port wine, and let him lie down a while. He must then go home and rest, sleep much and eat much, that he may be recruited of what he has so given to his love. He must not stay here. Hold a moment! I may take it, sir, that you are anxious of result. Then bring it with you, that in all ways the operation is successful. You have saved her life this time, and you can go home and rest easy in mind that all that can be is. I shall tell her all when she is well. She shall love you none the less for what you have done. Goodbye.'
When Arthur had gone I went back to the room. Lucy was sleeping gently, but her breathing was stronger. I could see the counterpane move as her breast heaved. By the bedside sat Van Helsing, looking at her intently. The velvet band again covered the red mark. I asked the Professor in a whisper, 'What do you make of that mark on her throat?'
'What do you make of it?'
'I have not examined it yet,' I answered, and then and there proceeded to loose the band. Just over the external jugular vein there were two punctures, not large, but not wholesome looking. There was no sign of disease, but the edges were white and worn looking, as if by some trituration. It at once occurred to me that that this wound, or whatever it was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood. But I abandoned the idea as soon as it formed, for such a thing could not be. The whole bed would have been drenched to a scarlet with the blood which the girl must have lost to leave such a pallor as she had before the transfusion.
'Well?' said Van Helsing.
'Well,' said I. 'I can make nothing of it.'
The Professor stood up. 'I must go back to Amsterdam tonight,' he said 'There are books and things there which I want. You must remain here all night, and you must not let your sight pass from her.'
'Shall I have a nurse?' I asked.
'We are the best nurses, you and I. You keep watch all night. See that she is well fed, and that nothing disturbs her. You must not sleep all the night. Later on we can sleep, you and I. I shall be back as soon as possible. And then we may begin.'
'May begin?' I said. 'What on earth do you mean?'
'We shall see!' he answered, as he hurried out. He came back a moment later and put his head inside the door and said with a warning finger held up, 'Remember, she is your charge. If you leave her, and harm befall, you shall not sleep easy hereafter!'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-CONTINUED
8 September.-I sat up all night with Lucy. The opiate worked itself off towards dusk, and she waked naturally. She looked a different being from what she had been before the operation. Her spirits even were good, and she was full of a happy vivacity, but I could see evidences of the absolute prostration which she had undergone. When I told Mrs. Westenra that Dr. Van Helsing had directed that I should sit up with her, she almost pooh-poohed the idea, pointing out her daughter's renewed strength and excellent spirits. I was firm, however, and made preparations for my long vigil. When her maid had prepared her for the night I came in, having in the meantime had supper, and took a seat by the bedside.
She did not in any way make objection, but looked at me gratefully whenever I caught her eye. After a long spell she seemed sinking off to sleep, but with an effort seemed to pull herself together and shook it off. It was apparent that she did not want to sleep, so I tackled the subject at once.
'You do not want to sleep?'
'No. I am afraid.'
'Afraid to go to sleep! Why so? It is the boon we all crave for.'
'Ah, not if you were like me, if sleep was to you a presage of horror!'
'A presage of horror! What on earth do you mean?'
'I don't know. Oh, I don't know. And that is what is so terrible. All this weakness comes to me in sleep, until I dread the very thought.'
'But, my dear girl, you may sleep tonight. I am here watching you, and I can promise that nothing will happen.'
'Ah, I can trust you!' she said.
I seized the opportunity, and said, 'I promise that if I see any evidence of bad dreams I will wake you at once.'
'You will? Oh, will you really? How good you are to me. Then I will sleep!' And almost at the word she gave a deep sigh of relief, and sank back, asleep.
All night long I watched by her. She never stirred, but slept on and on in a deep, tranquil, life-giving, health-giving sleep. Her lips were slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity of a pendulum. There was a smile on her face, and it was evident that no bad dreams had come to disturb her peace of mind.
In the early morning her maid came, and I left her in her care and took myself back home, for I was anxious about many things. I sent a short wire to Van Helsing and to Arthur, telling them of the excellent result of the operation. My own work, with its manifold arrears, took me all day to clear off. It was dark when I was able to inquire about my zoophagous patient. The report was good. He had been quite quiet for the past day and night. A telegram came from Van Helsing at Amsterdam whilst I was at dinner, suggesting that I should be at Hillingham tonight, as it might be well to be at hand, and stating that he was leaving by the night mail and would join me early in the morning.
9 September.-I was pretty tired and worn out when I got to Hillingham. For two nights I had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral exhaustion. Lucy was up and in cheerful spirits. When she shook hands with me she looked sharply in my face and said,
'No sitting up tonight for you. You are worn out. I am quite well again. Indeed, I am, and if there is to be any sitting up, it is I who will sit up with you.'
I would not argue the point, but went and had my supper. Lucy came with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, I made an excellent meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than excellent port. Then Lucy took me upstairs, and showed me a room next her own, where a cozy fire was burning.
'Now,' she said. 'You must stay here. I shall leave this door open and my door too. You can lie on the sofa for I know that nothing would induce any of you doctors to go to bed whilst there is a patient above the horizon. If I want anything I shall call out, and you can come to me at once.'
I could not but acquiesce, for I was dog tired, and could not have sat up had I tried. So, on her renewing her promise to call me if she should want anything, I lay on the sofa, and forgot all about everything.
LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
9 September.-I feel so happy tonight. I have been so miserably weak, that to be able to think and move about is like feeling sunshine after a long spell of east wind out of a steel sky. Somehow Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem to feel his presence warm about me. I suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength give love rein, and in thought and feeling he can wander where he wills. I know where my thoughts are. If only Arthur knew! My dear, my dear, your ears must tingle as you sleep, as mine do waking. Oh, the blissful rest of last night! How I slept, with that dear, good Dr. Seward watching me. And tonight I shall not fear to sleep, since he is close at hand and within call. Thank everybody for being so good to me. Thank God! Goodnight Arthur.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
10 September.-I was conscious of the Professor's hand on my head, and started awake all in a second. That is one of the things that we learn in an asylum, at any rate.
'And how is our patient?'
'Well, when I left her, or rather when she left me,' I answered.
'Come, let us see,' he said. And together we went into the room.
The blind was down, and I went over to raise it gently, whilst Van Helsing stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the bed.
As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, I heard the Professor's low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity, a deadly fear shot through my heart. As I passed over he moved back, and his exclamation of horror, 'Gott in Himmel!' needed no enforcement from his agonized face. He raised his hand and pointed to the bed, and his iron face was drawn and ashen white. I felt my knees begin to tremble.
There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness.
Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct of his life and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he put it down again softly.
'Quick!' he said. 'Bring the brandy.'
I flew to the dining room, and returned with the decanter. He wetted the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and wrist and heart. He felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonizing suspense said,
'It is not too late. It beats, though but feebly. All our work is undone. We must begin again. There is no young Arthur here now. I have to call on you yourself this time, friend John.' As he spoke, he was dipping into his bag, and producing the instruments of transfusion. I had taken off my coat and rolled up my shirt sleeve. There was no possibility of an opiate just at present, and no need of one. and so, without a moment's delay, we began the operation.
After a time, it did not seem a short time either, for the draining away of one's blood, no matter how willingly it be given, is a terrible feeling, Van Helsing held up a warning finger. 'Do not stir,' he said. 'But I fear that with growing strength she may wake, and that would make danger, oh, so much danger. But I shall precaution take. I shall give hypodermic injection of morphia.' He proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his intent.
The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.
The Professor watched me critically. 'That will do,' he said. 'Already?' I remonstrated. 'You took a great deal more from Art.' To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied,
'He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for her and for others, and the present will suffice.'
When we stopped the operation, he attended to Lucy, whilst I applied digital pressure to my own incision. I laid down, while I waited his leisure to attend to me, for I felt faint and a little sick. By and by he bound up my wound, and sent me downstairs to get a glass of wine for myself. As I was leaving the room, he came after me, and half whispered.
'Mind, nothing must be said of this. If our young lover should turn up unexpected, as before, no word to him. It would at once frighten him and enjealous him, too. There must be none. So!'
When I came back he looked at me carefully, and then said, 'You are not much the worse. Go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and rest awhile, then have much breakfast and come here to me.'
I followed out his orders, for I knew how right and wise they were. I had done my part, and now my next duty was to keep up my strength. I felt very weak, and in the weakness lost something of the amazement at what had occurred. I fell asleep on the sofa, however, wondering over and over again how Lucy had made such a retrograde movement, and how she could have been drained of so much blood with no sign any where to show for it. I think I must have continued my wonder in my dreams, for, sleeping and waking my thoughts always came back to the little punctures in her throat and the ragged, exhausted appearance of their edges, tiny though they were.
Lucy slept well into the day, and when she woke she was fairly well and strong, though not nearly so much so as the day before. When Van Helsing had seen her, he went out for a walk, leaving me in charge, with strict injunctions that I was not to leave her for a moment. I could hear his voice in the hall, asking the way to the nearest telegraph office.
Lucy chatted with me freely, and seemed quite unconscious that anything had happened. I tried to keep her amused and interested. When her mother came up to see her, she did not seem to notice any change whatever, but said to me gratefully,
'We owe you so much, Dr. Seward, for all you have done, but you really must now take care not to overwork yourself. You are looking pale yourself. You want a wife to nurse and look after you a bit, that you do!' As she spoke, Lucy turned crimson, though it was only momentarily, for her poor wasted veins could not stand for long an unwonted drain to the head. The reaction came in excessive pallor as she turned imploring eyes on me. I smiled and nodded, and laid my finger on my lips. With a sigh, she sank back amid her pillows.
Van Helsing returned in a couple of hours, and presently said to me. 'Now you go home, and eat much and drink enough. Make yourself strong. I stay here tonight, and I shall sit up with little miss myself. You and I must watch the case, and we must have none other to know. I have grave reasons. No, do not ask me. Think what you will. Do not fear to think even the most not-improbable. Goodnight.'
In the hall two of the maids came to me, and asked if they or either of them might not sit up with Miss Lucy. They implored me to let them, and when I said it was Dr. Van Helsing's wish that either he or I should sit up, they asked me quite piteously to intercede with the'foreign gentleman'. I was much touched by their kindness. Perhaps it is because I am weak at present, and perhaps because it was on Lucy's account, that their devotion was manifested. For over and over again have I seen similar instances of woman's kindness. I got back here in time for a late dinner, went my rounds, all well, and set this down whilst waiting for sleep. It is coming.
11 September.-This afternoon I went over to Hillingham. Found Van Helsing in excellent spirits, and Lucy much better. Shortly after I had arrived, a big parcel from abroad came for the Professor. He opened it with much impressment, assumed, of course, and showed a great bundle of white flowers.
'These are for you, Miss Lucy,' he said.
'For me? Oh, Dr. Van Helsing!'
'Yes, my dear, but not for you to play with. These are medicines.' Here Lucy made a wry face. 'Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or I shall point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort. Aha, my pretty miss, that bring the so nice nose all straight again. This is medicinal, but you do not know how. I put him in your window, I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well. Oh, yes! They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten. It smell so like the waters of Lethe, and of that fountain of youth that the Conquistadores sought for in the Floridas, and find him all too late.'
Whilst he was speaking, Lucy had been examining the flowers and smelling them. Now she threw them down saying, with half laughter, and half disgust,
'Oh, Professor, I believe you are only putting up a joke on me. Why, these flowers are only common garlic.'
To my surprise, Van Helsing rose up and said with all his sternness, his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting,
'No trifling with me! I never jest! There is grim purpose in what I do, and I warn you that you do not thwart me. Take care, for the sake of others if not for your own.' Then seeing poor Lucy scared, as she might well be, he went on more gently, 'Oh, little miss, my dear, do not fear me. I only do for your good, but there is much virtue to you in those so common flowers. See, I place them myself in your room. I make myself the wreath that you are to wear. But hush! No telling to others that make so inquisitive questions. We must obey, and silence is a part of obedience, and obedience is to bring you strong and well into loving arms that wait for you. Now sit still a while. Come with me, friend John, and you shall help me deck the room with my garlic, which is all the war from Haarlem, where my friend Vanderpool raise herb in his glass houses all the year. I had to telegraph yesterday, or they would not have been here.'
We went into the room, taking the flowers with us. The Professor's actions were certainly odd and not to be found in any pharmacopeia that I ever heard of. First he fastened up the windows and latched them securely. Next, taking a handful of the flowers, he rubbed them all over the sashes, as though to ensure that every whiff of air that might get in would be laden with the garlic smell. Then with the wisp he rubbed all over the jamb of the door, above, below, and at each side, and round the fireplace in the same way. It all seemed grotesque to me, and presently I said, 'Well, Professor, I know you always have a reason for what you do, but this certainly puzzles me. It is well we have no sceptic here, or he would say that you were working some spell to keep out an evil spirit.'
'Perhaps I am!' He answered quietly as he began to make the wreath which Lucy was to wear round her neck.
We then waited whilst Lucy made her toilet for the night, and when she was in bed he came and himself fixed the wreath of garlic round her neck. The last words he said to her were,
'Take care you do not disturb it, and even if the room feel close, do not tonight open the window or the door.'
'I promise,' said Lucy. 'And thank you both a thousand times for all your kindness to me! Oh, what have I done to be blessed with such friends?'
As we left the house in my fly, which was waiting, Van Helsing said, 'Tonight I can sleep in peace, and sleep I want, two nights of travel, much reading in the day between, and much anxiety on the day to follow, and a night to sit up, without to wink. Tomorrow in the morning early you call for me, and we come together to see our pretty miss, so much more strong for my 'spell' which I have work. Ho, ho!'
He seemed so confident that I, remembering my own confidence two nights before and with the baneful result, felt awe and vague terror. It must have been my weakness that made me hesitate to tell it to my friend, but I felt it all the more, like unshed tears.
Chapter 11
LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
12 September.-How good they all are to me. I quite love that dear Dr. Van Helsing. I wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers. He positively frightened me, he was so fierce. And yet he must have been right, for I feel comfort from them already. Somehow, I do not dread being alone tonight, and I can go to sleep without fear. I shall not mind any flapping outside the window. Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late, the pain of sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horrors as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams. Well, here I am tonight, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with 'virgin crants and maiden strewments.' I never liked garlic before, but tonight it is delightful! There is peace in its smell. I feel sleep coming already. Goodnight, everybody.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
13 September.-Called at the Berkeley and found Van Helsing, as usual, up to time. The carriage ordered from the hotel was waiting. The Professor took his bag, which he always brings with him now.
Let all be put down exactly. Van Helsing and I arrived at Hillingham at eight o'clock. It was a lovely morning. The bright sunshine and all the fresh feeling of early autumn seemed like the completion of nature's annual work. The leaves were turning to all kinds of beautiful colours, but had not yet begun to drop from the trees. When we entered we met Mrs. Westenra coming out of the morning room. She is always an early riser. She greeted us warmly and said,
'You will be glad to know that Lucy is better. The dear child is still asleep. I looked into her room and saw her, but did not go in, lest I should disturb her.' The Professor smiled, and looked quite jubilant. He rubbed his hands together, and said, 'Aha! I thought I had diagnosed the case. My treatment is working.'
To which she replied, 'You must not take all the credit to yourself, doctor. Lucy's state this morning is due in part to me.'
'How do you mean, ma'am?' asked the Professor.
'Well, I was anxious about the dear child in the night, and went into her room. She was sleeping soundly, so soundly that even my coming did not wake her. But the room was awfully stuffy. There were a lot of those horrible, strong-smelling flowers about everywhere, and she had actually a bunch of them round her neck. I feared that the heavy odour would be too much for the dear child in her weak state, so I took them all away and opened a bit of the window to let in a little fresh air. You will be pleased with her, I am sure.'
She moved off into her boudoir, where she usually breakfasted early. As she had spoken, I watched the Professor's face, and saw it turn ashen gray. He had been able to retain his self-command whilst the poor lady was present, for he knew her state and how mischievous a shock would be. He actually smiled on her as he held open the door for her to pass into her room. But the instant she had disappeared he pulled me, suddenly and forcibly, into the dining room and closed the door.
Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Van Helsing break down. He raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his palms together in a helpless way. Finally he sat down on a chair, and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud, dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart.
Then he raised his arms again, as though appealing to the whole universe. 'God! God! God!' he said. 'What have we done, what has this poor thing done, that we are so sore beset? Is there fate amongst us still, send down from the pagan world of old, that such things must be, and in such way? This poor mother, all unknowing, and all for the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter body and soul, and we must not tell her, we must not even warn her, or she die, then both die. Oh, how we are beset! How are all the powers of the devils against us!'
Suddenly he jumped to his feet. 'Come,' he said, 'come, we must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not. We must fight him all the same.' He went to the hall door for his bag, and together we went up to Lucy's room.
Once again I drew up the blind, whilst Van Helsing went towards the bed. This time he did not start as he looked on the poor face with the same awful, waxen pallor as before. He wore a look of stern sadness and infinite pity.
'As I expected,' he murmured, with that hissing inspiration of his which meant so much. Without a word he went and locked the door, and then began to set out on the little table the instruments for yet another operation of transfusion of blood. I had long ago recognized the necessity, and begun to take off my coat, but he stopped me with a warning hand. 'No!' he said. 'Today you must operate. I shall provide. You are weakened already.' As he spoke he took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeve.
Again the operation. Again the narcotic. Again some return of colour to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep. This time I watched whilst Van Helsing recruited himself and rested.
Presently he took an opportunity of telling Mrs. Westenra that she must not remove anything from Lucy's room without consulting him. That the flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of their odour was a part of the system of cure. Then he took over the care of the case himself, saying that he would watch this night and the next, and would send me word when to come.
After another hour Lucy waked from her sleep, fresh and bright and seemingly not much the worse for her terrible ordeal.
What does it all mean? I am beginning to wonder if my long habit of life amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain.
LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY
17 September.-Four days and nights of peace. I am getting so strong again that I hardly know myself. It is as if I had passed through some long nightmare, and had just awakened to see the beautiful sunshine and feel the fresh air of the morning around me. I have a dim half remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing, darkness in which there was not even the pain of hope to make present distress more poignant. And then long spells of oblivion, and the rising back to life as a diver coming up through a great press of water. Since, however, Dr. Van Helsing has been with me, all this bad dreaming seems to have passed away. The noises that used to frighten me out of my wits, the flapping against the windows, the distant voices which seemed so close to me, the harsh sounds that came from I know not where and commanded me to do I know not what, have all ceased. I go to bed now without any fear of sleep. I do not even try to keep awake. I have grown quite fond of the garlic, and a boxful arrives for me every day from Haarlem. Tonight Dr. Van Helsing is going away, as he has to be for a day in Amsterdam. But I need not be watched. I am well enough to be left alone.
Thank God for Mother's sake, and dear Arthur's, and for all our friends who have been so kind! I shall not even feel the change, for last night Dr. Van Helsing slept in his chair a lot of the time. I found him asleep twice when I awoke. But I did not fear to go to sleep again, although the boughs or bats or something flapped almost angrily against the window panes.
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 18 September.
THE ESCAPED WOLF PERILOUS ADVENTURE OF OUR INTERVIEWER
INTERVIEW WITH THE KEEPER IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS
After many inquiries and almost as many refusals, and perpetually using the words 'PALL MALL GAZETTE' as a sort of talisman, I managed to find the keeper of the section of the Zoological Gardens in which the wolf department is included. Thomas Bilder lives in one of the cottages in the enclosure behind the elephant house, and was just sitting down to his tea when I found him. Thomas and his wife are hospitable folk, elderly, and without children, and if the specimen I enjoyed of their hospitality be of the average kind, their lives must be pretty comfortable. The keeper would not enter on what he called business until the supper was over, and we were all satisfied. Then when the table was cleared, and he had lit his pipe, he said,
'Now, Sir, you can go on and arsk me what you want. You'll excoose me refoosin' to talk of perfeshunal subjucts afore meals. I gives the wolves and the jackals and the hyenas in all our section their tea afore I begins to arsk them questions.'
'How do you mean, ask them questions?' I queried, wishful to get him into a talkative humor.
''Ittin' of them over the 'ead with a pole is one way. Scratchin' of their ears in another, when gents as is flush wants a bit of a show-orf to their gals. I don't so much mind the fust, the 'ittin of the pole part afore I chucks in their dinner, but I waits till they've 'ad their sherry and kawffee, so to speak, afore I tries on with the ear scratchin'. Mind you,' he added philosophically, 'there's a deal of the same nature in us as in them theer animiles. Here's you a-comin' and arskin' of me questions about my business, and I that grump-like that only for your bloomin' 'arf-quid I'd 'a' seen you blowed fust 'fore I'd answer. Not even when you arsked me sarcastic like if I'd like you to arsk the Superintendent if you might arsk me questions. Without offence did I tell yer to go to 'ell?'
'You did.'
'An' when you said you'd report me for usin' obscene language that was 'ittin' me over the 'ead. But the 'arf-quid made that all right. I weren't a-goin' to fight, so I waited for the food, and did with my 'owl as the wolves and lions and tigers does. But, lor' love yer 'art, now that the old 'ooman has stuck a chunk of her tea-cake in me, an' rinsed me out with her bloomin' old teapot, and I've lit hup, you may scratch my ears for all you're worth, and won't even get a growl out of me. Drive along with your questions. I know what yer a-comin' at, that 'ere escaped wolf.'
'Exactly. I want you to give me your view of it. Just tell me how it happened, and when I know the facts I'll get you to say what you consider was the cause of it, and how you think the whole affair will end.'
'All right, guv'nor. This 'ere is about the 'ole story. That'ere wolf what we called Bersicker was one of three gray ones that came from Norway to Jamrach's, which we bought off him four years ago. He was a nice well-behaved wolf, that never gave no trouble to talk of. I'm more surprised at 'im for wantin' to get out nor any other animile in the place. But, there, you can't trust wolves no more nor women.'
'Don't you mind him, Sir!' broke in Mrs. Tom, with a cheery laugh. ''E's got mindin' the animiles so long that blest if he ain't like a old wolf 'isself! But there ain't no 'arm in 'im.'
'Well, Sir, it was about two hours after feedin' yesterday when I first hear my disturbance. I was makin' up a litter in the monkey house for a young puma which is ill. But when I heard the yelpin' and 'owlin' I kem away straight. There was Bersicker a-tearin' like a mad thing at the bars as if he wanted to get out. There wasn't much people about that day, and close at hand was only one man, a tall, thin chap, with a 'ook nose and a pointed beard, with a few white hairs runnin' through it. He had a 'ard, cold look and red eyes, and I took a sort of mislike to him, for it seemed as if it was 'im as they was hirritated at. He 'ad white kid gloves on 'is 'ands, and he pointed out the animiles to me and says, 'Keeper, these wolves seem upset at something.'
''Maybe it's you,' says I, for I did not like the airs as he give 'isself. He didn't get angry, as I 'oped he would, but he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white, sharp teeth. 'Oh no, they wouldn't like me,' 'e says.
' 'Ow yes, they would,' says I, a-imitatin'of him.'They always like a bone or two to clean their teeth on about tea time, which you 'as a bagful.'
'Well, it was a odd thing, but when the animiles see us a-talkin' they lay down, and when I went over to Bersicker he let me stroke his ears same as ever. That there man kem over, and blessed but if he didn't put in his hand and stroke the old wolf's ears too!
''Tyke care,' says I. 'Bersicker is quick.'
''Never mind,' he says. I'm used to 'em!'
''Are you in the business yourself?' I says, tyking off my 'at, for a man what trades in wolves, anceterer, is a good friend to keepers.
''Nom' says he, 'not exactly in the business, but I 'ave made pets of several.' and with that he lifts his 'at as perlite as a lord, and walks away. Old Bersicker kep' a-lookin' arter 'im till 'e was out of sight, and then went and lay down in a corner and wouldn't come hout the 'ole hevening. Well, larst night, so soon as the moon was hup, the wolves here all began a-'owling. There warn't nothing for them to 'owl at. There warn't no one near, except some one that was evidently a-callin' a dog somewheres out back of the gardings in the Park road. Once or twice I went out to see that all was right, and it was, and then the 'owling stopped. Just before twelve o'clock I just took a look round afore turnin' in, an', bust me, but when I kem opposite to old Bersicker's cage I see the rails broken and twisted about and the cage empty. And that's all I know for certing.'
'Did any one else see anything?'
'One of our gard'ners was a-comin' 'ome about that time from a 'armony, when he sees a big gray dog comin' out through the garding 'edges. At least, so he says, but I don't give much for it myself, for if he did 'e never said a word about it to his missis when 'e got 'ome, and it was only after the escape of the wolf was made known, and we had been up all night a-huntin' of the Park for Bersicker, that he remembered seein' anything. My own belief was that the 'armony 'ad got into his 'ead.'
'Now, Mr. Bilder, can you account in any way for the escape of the wolf?'
'Well, Sir,' he said, with a suspicious sort of modesty, 'I think I can, but I don't know as 'ow you'd be satisfied with the theory.'
'Certainly I shall. If a man like you, who knows the animals from experience, can't hazard a good guess at any rate, who is even to try?'
'Well then, Sir, I accounts for it this way. It seems to me that 'ere wolf escaped-simply because he wanted to get out.'
From the hearty way that both Thomas and his wife laughed at the joke I could see that it had done service before, and that the whole explanation was simply an elaborate sell. I couldn't cope in badinage with the worthy Thomas, but I thought I knew a surer way to his heart, so I said, 'Now, Mr. Bilder, we'll consider that first half-sovereign worked off, and this brother of his is waiting to be claimed when you've told me what you think will happen.'
'Right y'are, Sir,' he said briskly. 'Ye'll excoose me, I know, for a-chaffin' of ye, but the old woman her winked at me, which was as much as telling me to go on.'
'Well, I never!' said the old lady.
'My opinion is this. That 'ere wolf is a'idin' of, somewheres. The gard'ner wot didn't remember said he was a-gallopin' northward faster than a horse could go, but I don't believe him, for, yer see, Sir, wolves don't gallop no more nor dogs does, they not bein' built that way. Wolves is fine things in a storybook, and I dessay when they gets in packs and does be chivyin' somethin' that's more afeared than they is they can make a devil of a noise and chop it up, whatever it is. But, Lor' bless you, in real life a wolf is only a low creature, not half so clever or bold as a good dog, and not half a quarter so much fight in 'im. This one ain't been used to fightin' or even to providin' for hisself, and more like he's somewhere round the Park a'hidin' an' a'shiverin' of, and if he thinks at all, wonderin' where he is to get his breakfast from. Or maybe he's got down some area and is in a coal cellar. My eye, won't some cook get a rum start when she sees his green eyes a-shinin' at her out of the dark! If he can't get food he's bound to look for it, and mayhap he may chance to light on a butcher's shop in time. If he doesn't, and some nursemaid goes out walkin' or orf with a soldier, leavin' of the hinfant in the perambulator-well, then I shouldn't be surprised if the census is one babby the less. That's all.'
I was handing him the half-sovereign, when something came bobbing up against the window, and Mr. Bilder's face doubled its natural length with surprise.
'God bless me!' he said. 'If there ain't old Bersicker come back by 'isself!'
He went to the door and opened it, a most unnecessary proceeding it seemed to me. I have always thought that a wild animal never looks so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between us. A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished that idea.
After all, however, there is nothing like custom, for neither Bilder nor his wife thought any more of the wolf than I should of a dog. The animal itself was a peaceful and well-behaved as that father of all picture-wolves, Red Riding Hood's quondam friend, whilst moving her confidence in masquerade.
The whole scene was a unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos. The wicked wolf that for a half a day had paralyzed London and set all the children in town shivering in their shoes, was there in a sort of penitent mood, and was received and petted like a sort of vulpine prodigal son. Old Bilder examined him all over with most tender solicitude, and when he had finished with his penitent said,
'There, I knew the poor old chap would get into some kind of trouble. Didn't I say it all along? Here's his head all cut and full of broken glass. 'E's been a-gettin' over some bloomin' wall or other. It's a shyme that people are allowed to top their walls with broken bottles. This 'ere's what comes of it. Come along, Bersicker.'
He took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with a piece of meat that satisfied, in quantity at any rate, the elementary conditions of the fatted calf, and went off to report.
I came off too, to report the only exclusive information that is given today regarding the strange escapade at the Zoo.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY 17 September.-I was engaged after dinner in my study posting up my books, which, through press of other work and the many visits to Lucy, had fallen sadly into arrear. Suddenly the door was burst open, and in rushed my patient, with his face distorted with passion. I was thunderstruck, for such a thing as a patient getting of his own accord into the Superintendent's study is almost unknown.
Without an instant's notice he made straight at me. He had a dinner knife in his hand, and as I saw he was dangerous, I tried to keep the table between us. He was too quick and too strong for me, however, for before I could get my balance he had struck at me and cut my left wrist rather severely.
Before he could strike again, however, I got in my right hand and he was sprawling on his back on the floor. My wrist bled freely, and quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet. I saw that my friend was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time. When the attendants rushed in, and we turned our attention to him, his employment positively sickened me. He was lying on his belly on the floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my wounded wrist. He was easily secured, and to my surprise, went with the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again, 'The blood is the life! The blood is the life!'
I cannot afford to lose blood just at present. I have lost too much of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of Lucy's illness and its horrible phases is telling on me. I am over excited and weary, and I need rest, rest, rest. Happily Van Helsing has not summoned me, so I need not forego my sleep. Tonight I could not well do without it.
TELEGRAM, VAN HELSING, ANTWERP, TO SEWARD, CARFAX
17 September.-Do not fail to be at Hilllingham tonight. If not watching all the time, frequently visit and see that flowers are as placed, very important, do not fail. Shall be with you as soon as possible after arrival.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY 18 September.-Just off train to London. The arrival of Van Helsing's telegram filled me with dismay. A whole night lost, and I know by bitter experience what may happen in a night. Of course it is possible that all may be well, but what may have happened? Surely there is some horrible doom hanging over us that every possible accident should thwart us in all we try to do. I shall take this cylinder with me, and then I can complete my entry on Lucy's phonograph.
MEMORANDUM LEFT BY LUCY WESTENRA
17 September, Night.-I write this and leave it to be seen, so that no one may by any chance get into trouble through me. This is an exact record of what took place tonight. I feel I am dying of weakness, and have barely strength to write, but it must be done if I die in the doing.
I went to bed as usual, taking care that the flowers were placed as Dr. Van Helsing directed, and soon fell asleep.
I was waked by the flapping at the window, which had begun after that sleep-walking on the cliff at Whitby when Mina saved me, and which now I know so well. I was not afraid, but I did wish that Dr. Seward was in the next room, as Dr. Van Helsing said he would be, so that I might have called him. I tried to sleep, but I could not. Then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and I determined to keep awake. Perversely sleep would try to come then when I did not want it. So, as I feared to be alone, I opened my door and called out. 'Is there anybody there?' There was no answer. I was afraid to wake mother, and so closed my door again. Then outside in the shrubbery I heard a sort of howl like a dog's, but more fierce and deeper. I went to the window and looked out, but could see nothing, except a big bat, which had evidently been buffeting its wings against the window. So I went back to bed again, but determined not to go to sleep. Presently the door opened, and mother looked in. Seeing by my moving that I was not asleep, she came in and sat by me. She said to me even more sweetly and softly than her wont,
'I was uneasy about you, darling, and came in to see that you were all right.'
I feared she might catch cold sitting there, and asked her to come in and sleep with me, so she came into bed, and lay down beside me. She did not take off her dressing gown, for she said she would only stay a while and then go back to her own bed. As she lay there in my arms, and I in hers the flapping and buffeting came to the window again. She was startled and a little frightened, and cried out, 'What is that?'
I tried to pacify her, and at last succeeded, and she lay quiet. But I could hear her poor dear heart still beating terribly. After a while there was the howl again out in the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor. The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf.
Mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would help her. Amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of flowers that Dr. Van Helsing insisted on my wearing round my neck, and tore it away from me. For a second or two she sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and horrible gurgling in her throat. Then she fell over, as if struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and made me dizzy for a moment or two.
The room and all round seemed to spin round. I kept my eyes fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole myriad of little specks seems to come blowing in through the broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of dust that travellers describe when there is a simoon in the desert. I tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and dear Mother's poor body, which seemed to grow cold already, for her dear heart had ceased to beat, weighed me down, and I remembered no more for a while.
The time did not seem long, but very, very awful, till I recovered consciousness again. Somewhere near, a passing bell was tolling. The dogs all round the neighbourhood were howling, and in our shrubbery, seemingly just outside, a nightingale was singing. I was dazed and stupid with pain and terror and weakness, but the sound of the nightingale seemed like the voice of my dead mother come back to comfort me. The sounds seemed to have awakened the maids, too, for I could hear their bare feet pattering outside my door. I called to them, and they came in, and when they saw what had happened, and what it was that lay over me on the bed, they screamed out. The wind rushed in through the broken window, and the door slammed to. They lifted off the body of my dear mother, and laid her, covered up with a sheet, on the bed after I had got up. They were all so frightened and nervous that I directed them to go to the dining room and each have a glass of wine. The door flew open for an instant and closed again. The maids shrieked, and then went in a body to the dining room, and I laid what flowers I had on my dear mother's breast. When they were there I remembered what Dr. Van Helsing had told me, but I didn't like to remove them, and besides, I would have some of the servants to sit up with me now. I was surprised that the maids did not come back. I called them, but got no answer, so I went to the dining room to look for them.
My heart sank when I saw what had happened. They all four lay helpless on the floor, breathing heavily. The decanter of sherry was on the table half full, but there was a queer, acrid smell about. I was suspicious, and examined the decanter. It smelt of laudanum, and looking on the sideboard, I found that the bottle which Mother's doctor uses for her-oh! did use-was empty. What am I to do? What am I to do? I am back in the room with Mother. I cannot leave her, and I am alone, save for the sleeping servants, whom some one has drugged. Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window.
The air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the draught from the window, and the lights burn blue and dim. What am I to do? God shield me from harm this night! I shall hide this paper in my breast, where they shall find it when they come to lay me out. My dear mother gone! It is time that I go too. Goodbye, dear Arthur, if I should not survive this night. God keep you, dear, and God help me!
Chapter 12
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
18 September.-I drove at once to Hillingham and arrived early. Keeping my cab at the gate, I went up the avenue alone. I knocked gently and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy or her mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door. After a while, finding no response, I knocked and rang again, still no answer. I cursed the laziness of the servants that they should lie abed at such an hour, for it was now ten o'clock, and so rang and knocked again, but more impatiently, but still without response. Hitherto I had blamed only the servants, but now a terrible fear began to assail me. Was this desolation but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing tight round us? Was it indeed a house of death to which I had come, too late? I know that minutes, even seconds of delay, might mean hours of danger to Lucy, if she had had again one of those frightful relapses, and I went round the house to try if I could find by chance an entry anywhere.
I could find no means of ingress. Every window and door was fastened and locked, and I returned baffled to the porch. As I did so, I heard the rapid pit-pat of a swiftly driven horse's feet. They stopped at the gate, and a few seconds later I met Van Helsing running up the avenue. When he saw me, he gasped out, 'Then it was you, and just arrived. How is she? Are we too late? Did you not get my telegram?'
I answered as quickly and coherently as I could that I had only got his telegram early in the morning, and had not a minute in coming here, and that I could not make any one in the house hear me. He paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly, 'Then I fear we are too late. God's will be done!'
With his usual recuperative energy, he went on, 'Come. If there be no way open to get in, we must make one. Time is all in all to us now.'
We went round to the back of the house, where there was a kitchen window. The Professor took a small surgical saw from his case, and handing it to me, pointed to the iron bars which guarded the window. I attacked them at once and had very soon cut through three of them. Then with a long, thin knife we pushed back the fastening of the sashes and opened the window. I helped the Professor in, and followed him. There was no one in the kitchen or in the servants' rooms, which were close at hand. We tried all the rooms as we went along, and in the dining room, dimly lit by rays of light through the shutters, found four servant women lying on the floor. There was no need to think them dead, for their stertorous breathing and the acrid smell of laudanum in the room left no doubt as to their condition.
Van Helsing and I looked at each other, and as we moved away he said, 'We can attend to them later.' Then we ascended to Lucy's room. For an instant or two we paused at the door to listen, but there was no sound that we could hear. With white faces and trembling hands, we opened the door gently, and entered the room.
How shall I describe what we saw? On the bed lay two women, Lucy and her mother. The latter lay farthest in, and she was covered with a white sheet, the edge of which had been blown back by the drought through the broken window, showing the drawn, white, face, with a look of terror fixed upon it. By her side lay Lucy, with face white and still more drawn. The flowers which had been round her neck we found upon her mother's bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white and mangled. Without a word the Professor bent over the bed, his head almost touching poor Lucy's breast. Then he gave a quick turn of his head, as of one who listens, and leaping to his feet, he cried out to me, 'It is not yet too late! Quick! Quick! Bring the brandy!'
I flew downstairs and returned with it, taking care to smell and taste it, lest it, too, were drugged like the decanter of sherry which I found on the table. The maids were still breathing, but more restlessly, and I fancied that the narcotic was wearing off. I did not stay to make sure, but returned to Van Helsing. He rubbed the brandy, as on another occasion, on her lips and gums and on her wrists and the palms of her hands. He said to me, 'I can do this, all that can be at the present. You go wake those maids. Flick them in the face with a wet towel, and flick them hard. Make them get heat and fire and a warm bath. This poor soul is nearly as cold as that beside her. She will need be heated before we can do anything more.'
I went at once, and found little difficulty in waking three of the women. The fourth was only a young girl, and the drug had evidently affected her more strongly so I lifted her on the sofa and let her sleep.
The others were dazed at first, but as remembrance came back to them they cried and sobbed in a hysterical manner. I was stern with them, however, and would not let them talk. I told them that one life was bad enough to lose, and if they delayed they would sacrifice Miss Lucy. So, sobbing and crying they went about their way, half clad as they were, and prepared fire and water. Fortunately, the kitchen and boiler fires were still alive, and there was no lack of hot water. We got a bath and carried Lucy out as she was and placed her in it. Whilst we were busy chafing her limbs there was a knock at the hall door. One of the maids ran off, hurried on some more clothes, and opened it. Then she returned and whispered to us that there was a gentleman who had come with a message from Mr. Holmwood. I bade her simply tell him that he must wait, for we could see no one now. She went away with the message, and, engrossed with our work, I clean forgot all about him.
I never saw in all my experience the Professor work in such deadly earnest. I knew, as he knew, that it was a stand-up fight with death, and in a pause told him so. He answered me in a way that I did not understand, but with the sternest look that his face could wear.
'If that were all, I would stop here where we are now, and let her fade away into peace, for I see no light in life over her horizon.' He went on with his work with, if possible, renewed and more frenzied vigour.
Presently we both began to be conscious that the heat was beginning to be of some effect. Lucy's heart beat a trifle more audibly to the stethoscope, and her lungs had a perceptible movement. Van Helsing's face almost beamed, and as we lifted her from the bath and rolled her in a hot sheet to dry her he said to me, 'The first gain is ours! Check to the King!'
We took Lucy into another room, which had by now been prepared, and laid her in bed and forced a few drops of brandy down her throat. I noticed that Van Helsing tied a soft silk handkerchief round her throat. She was still unconscious, and was quite as bad as, if not worse than, we had ever seen her.
Van Helsing called in one of the women, and told her to stay with her and not to take her eyes off her till we returned, and then beckoned me out of the room.
'We must consult as to what is to be done,' he said as we descended the stairs. In the hall he opened the dining room door, and we passed in, he closing the door carefully behind him. The shutters had been opened, but the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the etiquette of death which the British woman of the lower classes always rigidly observes. The room was, therefore, dimly dark. It was, however, light enough for our purposes. Van Helsing's sternness was somewhat relieved by a look of perplexity. He was evidently torturing his mind about something, so I waited for an instant, and he spoke.
'What are we to do now? Where are we to turn for help? We must have another transfusion of blood, and that soon, or that poor girl's life won't be worth an hour's purchase. You are exhausted already. I am exhausted too. I fear to trust those women, even if they would have courage to submit. What are we to do for some one who will open his veins for her?'
'What's the matter with me, anyhow?'
The voice came from the sofa across the room, and its tones brought relief and joy to my heart, for they were those of Quincey Morris.
Van Helsing started angrily at the first sound, but his face softened and a glad look came into his eyes as I cried out, 'Quincey Morris!' and rushed towards him with outstretched hands.
'What brought you here?' I cried as our hands met.
'I guess Art is the cause.'
He handed me a telegram.-'Have not heard from Seward for three days, and am terribly anxious. Cannot leave. Father still in same condition. Send me word how Lucy is. Do not delay.-Holmwood.'
'I think I came just in the nick of time. You know you have only to tell me what to do.'
Van Helsing strode forward, and took his hand, looking him straight in the eyes as he said, 'A brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. You're a man and no mistake. Well, the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but God sends us men when we want them.'
Once again we went through that ghastly operation. I have not the heart to go through with the details. Lucy had got a terrible shock and it told on her more than before, for though plenty of blood went into her veins, her body did not respond to the treatment as well as on the other occasions. Her struggle back into life was something frightful to see and hear. However, the action of both heart and lungs improved, and Van Helsing made a sub-cutaneous injection of morphia, as before, and with good effect. Her faint became a profound slumber. The Professor watched whilst I went downstairs with Quincey Morris, and sent one of the maids to pay off one of the cabmen who were waiting.
I left Quincey lying down after having a glass of wine, and told the cook to get ready a good breakfast. Then a thought struck me, and I went back to the room where Lucy now was. When I came softly in, I found Van Helsing with a sheet or two of note paper in his hand. He had evidently read it, and was thinking it over as he sat with his hand to his brow. There was a look of grim satisfaction in his face, as of one who has had a doubt solved. He handed me the paper saying only, 'It dropped from Lucy's breast when we carried her to the bath.'
When I had read it, I stood looking at the Professor, and after a pause asked him, 'In God's name, what does it all mean? Was she, or is she, mad, or what sort of horrible danger is it?' I was so bewildered that I did not know what to say more. Van Helsing put out his hand and took the paper, saying,
'Do not trouble about it now. Forget it for the present. You shall know and understand it all in good time, but it will be later. And now what is it that you came to me to say?' This brought me back to fact, and I was all myself again.
'I came to speak about the certificate of death. If we do not act properly and wisely, there may be an inquest, and that paper would have to be produced. I am in hopes that we need have no inquest, for if we had it would surely kill poor Lucy, if nothing else did. I know, and you know, and the other doctor who attended her knows, that Mrs. Westenra had disease of the heart, and we can certify that she died of it. Let us fill up the certificate at once, and I shall take it myself to the registrar and go on to the undertaker.'
'Good, oh my friend John! Well thought of! Truly Miss Lucy, if she be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends that love her. One, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides one old man. Ah, yes, I know, friend John. I am not blind! I love you all the more for it! Now go.'
In the hall I met Quincey Morris, with a telegram for Arthur telling him that Mrs. Westenra was dead, that Lucy also had been ill, but was now going on better, and that Van Helsing and I were with her. I told him where I was going, and he hurried me out, but as I was going said,
'When you come back, Jack, may I have two words with you all to ourselves?' I nodded in reply and went out. I found no difficulty about the registration, and arranged with the local undertaker to come up in the evening to measure for the coffin and to make arrangements.
When I got back Quincey was waiting for me. I told him I would see him as soon as I knew about Lucy, and went up to her room. She was still sleeping, and the Professor seemingly had not moved from his seat at her side. From his putting his finger to his lips, I gathered that he expected her to wake before long and was afraid of fore-stalling nature. So I went down to Quincey and took him into the breakfast room, where the blinds were not drawn down, and which was a little more cheerful, or rather less cheerless, than the other rooms.
When we were alone, he said to me, 'Jack Seward, I don't want to shove myself in anywhere where I've no right to be, but this is no ordinary case. You know I loved that girl and wanted to marry her, but although that's all past and gone, I can't help feeling anxious about her all the same. What is it that's wrong with her? The Dutchman, and a fine old fellow he is, I can see that, said that time you two came into the room, that you must have another transfusion of blood, and that both you and he were exhausted. Now I know well that you medical men speak in camera, and that a man must not expect to know what they consult about in private. But this is no common matter, and whatever it is, I have done my part. Is not that so?'
'That's so,' I said, and he went on.
'I take it that both you and Van Helsing had done already what I did today. Is not that so?'
'That's so.'
'And I guess Art was in it too. When I saw him four days ago down at his own place he looked queer. I have not seen anything pulled down so quick since I was on the Pampas and had a mare that I was fond of go to grass all in a night. One of those big bats that they call vampires had got at her in the night, and what with his gorge and the vein left open, there wasn't enough blood in her to let her stand up, and I had to put a bullet through her as she lay. Jack, if you may tell me without betraying confidence, Arthur was the first, is not that so?'
As he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious. He was in a torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her intensified his pain. His very heart was bleeding, and it took all the manhood of him, and there was a royal lot of it, too, to keep him from breaking down. I paused before answering, for I felt that I must not betray anything which the Professor wished kept secret, but already he knew so much, and guessed so much, that there could be no reason for not answering, so I answered in the same phrase.
'That's so.'
'And how long has this been going on?'
'About ten days.'
'Ten days! Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of four strong men. Man alive, her whole body wouldn't hold it.' Then coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper. 'What took it out?'
I shook my head. 'That,' I said, 'is the crux. Van Helsing is simply frantic about it, and I am at my wits' end. I can't even hazard a guess. There has been a series of little circumstances which have thrown out all our calculations as to Lucy being properly watched. But these shall not occur again. Here we stay until all be well, or ill.'
Quincey held out his hand. 'Count me in,' he said. 'You and the Dutchman will tell me what to do, and I'll do it.'
When she woke late in the afternoon, Lucy's first movement was to feel in her breast, and to my surprise, produced the paper which Van Helsing had given me to read. The careful Professor had replaced it where it had come from, lest on waking she should be alarmed. Her eyes then lit on Van Helsing and on me too, and gladdened. Then she looked round the room, and seeing where she was, shuddered. She gave a loud cry, and put her poor thin hands before her pale face.
We both understood what was meant, that she had realized to the full her mother's death. So we tried what we could to comfort her. Doubtless sympathy eased her somewhat, but she was very low in thought and spirit, and wept silently and weakly for a long time. We told her that either or both of us would now remain with her all the time, and that seemed to comfort her. Towards dusk she fell into a doze. Here a very odd thing occurred. Whilst still asleep she took the paper from her breast and tore it in two. Van Helsing stepped over and took the pieces from her. All the same, however, she went on with the action of tearing, as though the material were still in her hands. Finally she lifted her hands and opened them as though scattering the fragments. Van Helsing seemed surprised, and his brows gathered as if in thought, but he said nothing.
19 September.-All last night she slept fitfully, being always afraid to sleep, and something weaker when she woke from it. The Professor and I took in turns to watch, and we never left her for a moment unattended. Quincey Morris said nothing about his intention, but I knew that all night long he patrolled round and round the house.
When the day came, its searching light showed the ravages in poor Lucy's strength. She was hardly able to turn her head, and the little nourishment which she could take seemed to do her no good. At times she slept, and both Van Helsing and I noticed the difference in her, between sleeping and waking. Whilst asleep she looked stronger, although more haggard, and her breathing was softer. Her open mouth showed the pale gums drawn back from the teeth, which looked positively longer and sharper than usual. When she woke the softness of her eyes evidently changed the expression, for she looked her own self, although a dying one. In the afternoon she asked for Arthur, and we telegraphed for him. Quincey went off to meet him at the station.
When he arrived it was nearly six o'clock, and the sun was setting full and warm, and the red light streamed in through the window and gave more colour to the pale cheeks. When he saw her, Arthur was simply choking with emotion, and none of us could speak. In the hours that had passed, the fits of sleep, or the comatose condition that passed for it, had grown more frequent, so that the pauses when conversation was possible were shortened. Arthur's presence, however, seemed to act as a stimulant. She rallied a little, and spoke to him more brightly than she had done since we arrived. He too pulled himself together, and spoke as cheerily as he could, so that the best was made of everything.
It is now nearly one o'clock, and he and Van Helsing are sitting with her. I am to relieve them in a quarter of an hour, and I am entering this on Lucy's phonograph. Until six o'clock they are to try to rest. I fear that tomorrow will end our watching, for the shock has been too great. The poor child cannot rally. God help us all.
LETTER MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA
17 September
My dearest Lucy,
'It seems an age since I heard from you, or indeed since I wrote. You will pardon me, I know, for all my faults when you have read all my budget of news. Well, I got my husband back all right. When we arrived at Exeter there was a carriage waiting for us, and in it, though he had an attack of gout, Mr. Hawkins. He took us to his house, where there were rooms for us all nice and comfortable, and we dined together. After dinner Mr. Hawkins said,
' 'My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity, and may every blessing attend you both. I know you both from children, and have, with love and pride, seen you grow up. Now I want you to make your home here with me. I have left to me neither chick nor child. All are gone, and in my will I have left you everything.' I cried, Lucy dear, as Jonathan and the old man clasped hands. Our evening was a very, very happy one.
'So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and from both my bedroom and the drawing room I can see the great elms of the cathedral close, with their great black stems standing out against the old yellow stone of the cathedral, and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and cawing and chattering and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner of rooks-and humans. I am busy, I need not tell you, arranging things and housekeeping. Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins are busy all day, for now that Jonathan is a partner, Mr. Hawkins wants to tell him all about the clients.
'How is your dear mother getting on? I wish I could run up to town for a day or two to see you, dear, but I, dare not go yet, with so much on my shoulders, and Jonathan wants looking after still. He is beginning to put some flesh on his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the long illness. Even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in a sudden way and awakes all trembling until I can coax him back to his usual placidity. However, thank God, these occasions grow less frequent as the days go on, and they will in time pass away altogether, I trust. And now I have told you my news, let me ask yours. When are you to be married, and where, and who is to perform the ceremony, and what are you to wear, and is it to be a public or private wedding? Tell me all about it, dear, tell me all about everything, for there is nothing which interests you which will not be dear to me. Jonathan asks me to send his 'respectful duty', but I do not think that is good enough from the junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker. And so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his 'love' instead. Goodbye, my dearest Lucy, and blessings on you.' Yours, Mina Harker
REPORT FROM PATRICK HENNESSEY, MD, MRCSLK, QCPI, ETC, ETC, TO JOHN SEWARD, MD
20 September
My dear Sir:
'In accordance with your wishes, I enclose report of the conditions of everything left in my charge. With regard to patient, Renfield, there is more to say. He has had another outbreak, which might have had a dreadful ending, but which, as it fortunately happened, was unattended with any unhappy results. This afternoon a carrier's cart with two men made a call at the empty house whose grounds abut on ours, the house to which, you will remember, the patient twice ran away. The men stopped at our gate to ask the porter their way, as they were strangers.
'I was myself looking out of the study window, having a smoke after dinner, and saw one of them come up to the house. As he passed the window of Renfield's room, the patient began to rate him from within, and called him all the foul names he could lay his tongue to. The man, who seemed a decent fellow enough, contented himself by telling him to 'shut up for a foul-mouthed beggar', whereon our man accused him of robbing him and wanting to murder him and said that he would hinder him if he were to swing for it. I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice, so he contented himself after looking the place over and making up his mind as to what kind of place he had got to by saying, 'Lor' bless yer, sir, I wouldn't mind what was said to me in a bloomin' madhouse. I pity ye and the guv'nor for havin' to live in the house with a wild beast like that.'
'Then he asked his way civilly enough, and I told him where the gate of the empty house was. He went away followed by threats and curses and revilings from our man. I went down to see if I could make out any cause for his anger, since he is usually such a well-behaved man, and except his violent fits nothing of the kind had ever occurred. I found him, to my astonishment, quite composed and most genial in his manner. I tried to get him to talk of the incident, but he blandly asked me questions as to what I meant, and led me to believe that he was completely oblivious of the affair. It was, I am sorry to say, however, only another instance of his cunning, for within half an hour I heard of him again. This time he had broken out through the window of his room, and was running down the avenue. I called to the attendants to follow me, and ran after him, for I feared he was intent on some mischief. My fear was justified when I saw the same cart which had passed before coming down the road, having on it some great wooden boxes. The men were wiping their foreheads, and were flushed in the face, as if with violent exercise. Before I could get up to him, the patient rushed at them, and pulling one of them off the cart, began to knock his head against the ground. If I had not seized him just at the moment, I believe he would have killed the man there and then. The other fellow jumped down and struck him over the head with the butt end of his heavy whip. It was a horrible blow, but he did not seem to mind it, but seized him also, and struggled with the three of us, pulling us to and fro as if we were kittens. You know I am no lightweight, and the others were both burly men. At first he was silent in his fighting, but as we began to master him, and the attendants were putting a strait waistcoat on him, he began to shout, 'I'll frustrate them! They shan't rob me! They shan't murder me by inches! I'll fight for my Lord and Master!' and all sorts of similar incoherent ravings. It was with very considerable difficulty that they got him back to the house and put him in the padded room. One of the attendants, Hardy, had a finger broken. However, I set it all right, and he is going on well.
'The two carriers were at first loud in their threats of actions for damages, and promised to rain all the penalties of the law on us. Their threats were, however, mingled with some sort of indirect apology for the defeat of the two of them by a feeble madman. They said that if it had not been for the way their strength had been spent in carrying and raising the heavy boxes to the cart they would have made short work of him. They gave as another reason for their defeat the extraordinary state of drouth to which they had been reduced by the dusty nature of their occupation and the reprehensible distance from the scene of their labors of any place of public entertainment. I quite understood their drift, and after a stiff glass of strong grog, or rather more of the same, and with each a sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore that they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of meeting so 'bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent. I took their names and addresses, in case they might be needed. They are as follows: Jack Smollet, of Dudding's Rents, King George's Road, Great Walworth, and Thomas Snelling, Peter Farley's Row, Guide Court, Bethnal Green. They are both in the employment of Harris & Sons, Moving and Shipment Company, Orange Master's Yard, Soho.
'I shall report to you any matter of interest occurring here, and shall wire you at once if there is anything of importance.
'Believe me, dear Sir,
'Yours faithfully,
'Patrick Hennessey.'
LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA 
18 September
'My dearest Lucy,
'Such a sad blow has befallen us. Mr. Hawkins has died very suddenly. Some may not think it so sad for us, but we had both come to so love him that it really seems as though we had lost a father. I never knew either father or mother, so that the dear old man's death is a real blow to me. Jonathan is greatly distressed. It is not only that he feels sorrow, deep sorrow, for the dear, good man who has befriended him all his life, and now at the end has treated him like his own son and left him a fortune which to people of our modest bringing up is wealth beyond the dream of avarice, but Jonathan feels it on another account. He says the amount of responsibility which it puts upon him makes him nervous. He begins to doubt himself. I try to cheer him up, and my belief in him helps him to have a belief in himself. But it is here that the grave shock that he experienced tells upon him the most. Oh, it is too hard that a sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his, a nature which enabled him by our dear, good friend's aid to rise from clerk to master in a few years, should be so injured that the very essence of its strength is gone. Forgive me, dear, if I worry you with my troubles in the midst of your own happiness, but Lucy dear, I must tell someone, for the strain of keeping up a brave and cheerful appearance to Jonathan tries me, and I have no one here that I can confide in. I dread coming up to London, as we must do that day after tomorrow, for poor Mr. Hawkins left in his will that he was to be buried in the grave with his father. As there are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief mourner. I shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few minutes. Forgive me for troubling you. With all blessings,
'Your loving
Mina Harker.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
20 September.-Only resolution and habit can let me make an entry tonight. I am too miserable, too low spirited, too sick of the world and all in it, including life itself, that I would not care if I heard this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death. And he has been flapping those grim wings to some purpose of late, Lucy's mother and Arthur's father, and now... Let me get on with my work.
I duly relieved Van Helsing in his watch over Lucy. We wanted Arthur to go to rest also, but he refused at first. It was only when I told him that we should want him to help us during the day, and that we must not all break down for want of rest, lest Lucy should suffer, that he agreed to go.
Van Helsing was very kind to him. 'Come, my child,' he said. 'Come with me. You are sick and weak, and have had much sorrow and much mental pain, as well as that tax on your strength that we know of. You must not be alone, for to be alone is to be full of fears and alarms. Come to the drawing room, where there is a big fire, and there are two sofas. You shall lie on one, and I on the other, and our sympathy will be comfort to each other, even though we do not speak, and even if we sleep.'
Arthur went off with him, casting back a longing look on Lucy's face, which lay in her pillow, almost whiter than the lawn. She lay quite still, and I looked around the room to see that all was as it should be. I could see that the Professor had carried out in this room, as in the other, his purpose of using the garlic. The whole of the window sashes reeked with it, and round Lucy's neck, over the silk handkerchief which Van Helsing made her keep on, was a rough chaplet of the same odorous flowers.
Lucy was breathing somewhat stertorously, and her face was at its worst, for the open mouth showed the pale gums. Her teeth, in the dim, uncertain light, seemed longer and sharper than they had been in the morning. In particular, by some trick of the light, the canine teeth looked longer and sharper than the rest.
I sat down beside her, and presently she moved uneasily. At the same moment there came a sort of dull flapping or buffeting at the window. I went over to it softly, and peeped out by the corner of the blind. There was a full moonlight, and I could see that the noise was made by a great bat, which wheeled around, doubtless attracted by the light, although so dim, and every now and again struck the window with its wings. When I came back to my seat, I found that Lucy had moved slightly, and had torn away the garlic flowers from her throat. I replaced them as well as I could, and sat watching her.
Presently she woke, and I gave her food, as Van Helsing had prescribed. She took but a little, and that languidly. There did not seem to be with her now the unconscious struggle for life and strength that had hitherto so marked her illness. It struck me as curious that the moment she became conscious she pressed the garlic flowers close to her. It was certainly odd that whenever she got into that lethargic state, with the stertorous breathing, she put the flowers from her, but that when she waked she clutched them close, There was no possibility of making any mistake about this, for in the long hours that followed, she had many spells of sleeping and waking and repeated both actions many times.
At six o'clock Van Helsing came to relieve me. Arthur had then fallen into a doze, and he mercifully let him sleep on. When he saw Lucy's face I could hear the hissing indraw of breath, and he said to me in a sharp whisper. 'Draw up the blind. I want light!' Then he bent down, and, with his face almost touching Lucy's, examined her carefully. He removed the flowers and lifted the silk handkerchief from her throat. As he did so he started back and I could hear his ejaculation, 'Mein Gott!' as it was smothered in his throat. I bent over and looked, too, and as I noticed some queer chill came over me. The wounds on the throat had absolutely disappeared.
For fully five minutes Van Helsing stood looking at her, with his face at its sternest. Then he turned to me and said calmly, 'She is dying. It will not be long now. It will be much difference, mark me, whether she dies conscious or in her sleep. Wake that poor boy, and let him come and see the last. He trusts us, and we have promised him.'
I went to the dining room and waked him. He was dazed for a moment, but when he saw the sunlight streaming in through the edges of the shutters he thought he was late, and expressed his fear. I assured him that Lucy was still asleep, but told him as gently as I could that both Van Helsing and I feared that the end was near. He covered his face with his hands, and slid down on his knees by the sofa, where he remained, perhaps a minute, with his head buried, praying, whilst his shoulders shook with grief. I took him by the hand and raised him up. 'Come,' I said, 'my dear old fellow, summon all your fortitude. It will be best and easiest for her.'
When we came into Lucy's room I could see that Van Helsing had, with his usual forethought, been putting matters straight and making everything look as pleasing as possible. He had even brushed Lucy's hair, so that it lay on the pillow in its usual sunny ripples. When we came into the room she opened her eyes, and seeing him, whispered softly, 'Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!'
He was stooping to kiss her, when Van Helsing motioned him back. 'No,' he whispered, 'not yet! Hold her hand, it will comfort her more.'
So Arthur took her hand and knelt beside her, and she looked her best, with all the soft lines matching the angelic beauty of her eyes. Then gradually her eyes closed, and she sank to sleep. For a little bit her breast heaved softly, and her breath came and went like a tired child's.
And then insensibly there came the strange change which I had noticed in the night. Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than ever. In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft, voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips, 'Arthur! Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me!'
Arthur bent eagerly over to kiss her, but at that instant Van Helsing, who, like me, had been startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and catching him by the neck with both hands, dragged him back with a fury of strength which I never thought he could have possessed, and actually hurled him almost across the room.
'Not on your life!' he said, 'not for your living soul and hers!' And he stood between them like a lion at bay.
Arthur was so taken aback that he did not for a moment know what to do or say, and before any impulse of violence could seize him he realized the place and the occasion, and stood silent, waiting.
I kept my eyes fixed on Lucy, as did Van Helsing, and we saw a spasm as of rage flit like a shadow over her face. The sharp teeth clamped together. Then her eyes closed, and she breathed heavily.
Very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took Van Helsing's great brown one, drawing it close to her, she kissed it. 'My true friend,' she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, 'My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!'
'I swear it!' he said solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his hand, as one who registers an oath. Then he turned to Arthur, and said to him, 'Come, my child, take her hand in yours, and kiss her on the forehead, and only once.'
Their eyes met instead of their lips, and so they parted. Lucy's eyes closed, and Van Helsing, who had been watching closely, took Arthur's arm, and drew him away.
And then Lucy's breathing became stertorous again, and all at once it ceased.
'It is all over,' said Van Helsing. 'She is dead!'
I took Arthur by the arm, and led him away to the drawing room, where he sat down, and covered his face with his hands, sobbing in a way that nearly broke me down to see.
I went back to the room, and found Van Helsing looking at poor Lucy, and his face was sterner than ever. Some change had come over her body. Death had given back part of her beauty, for her brow and cheeks had recovered some of their flowing lines. Even the lips had lost their deadly pallor. It was as if the blood, no longer needed for the working of the heart, had gone to make the harshness of death as little rude as might be.
'We thought her dying whilst she slept, And sleeping when she died.'
I stood beside Van Helsing, and said, 'Ah well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!'
He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity, 'Not so, alas! Not so. It is only the beginning!'
When I asked him what he meant, he only shook his head and answered, 'We can do nothing as yet. Wait and see.'
Chapter 13
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.
The funeral was arranged for the next succeeding day, so that Lucy and her mother might be buried together. I attended to all the ghastly formalities, and the urbane undertaker proved that his staff was afflicted, or blessed, with something of his own obsequious suavity. Even the woman who performed the last offices for the dead remarked to me, in a confidential, brother-professional way, when she had come out from the death chamber,
'She makes a very beautiful corpse, sir. It's quite a privilege to attend on her. It's not too much to say that she will do credit to our establishment!'
I noticed that Van Helsing never kept far away. This was possible from the disordered state of things in the household. There were no relatives at hand, and as Arthur had to be back the next day to attend at his father's funeral, we were unable to notify any one who should have been bidden. Under the circumstances, Van Helsing and I took it upon ourselves to examine papers, etc. He insisted upon looking over Lucy's papers himself. I asked him why, for I feared that he, being a foreigner, might not be quite aware of English legal requirements, and so might in ignorance make some unnecessary trouble.
He answered me, 'I know, I know. You forget that I am a lawyer as well as a doctor. But this is not altogether for the law. You knew that, when you avoided the coroner. I have more than him to avoid. There may be papers more, such as this.'
As he spoke he took from his pocket book the memorandum which had been in Lucy's breast, and which she had torn in her sleep.
'When you find anything of the solicitor who is for the late Mrs. Westenra, seal all her papers, and write him tonight. For me, I watch here in the room and in Miss Lucy's old room all night, and I myself search for what may be. It is not well that her very thoughts go into the hands of strangers.'
I went on with my part of the work, and in another half hour had found the name and address of Mrs. Westenra's solicitor and had written to him. All the poor lady's papers were in order. Explicit directions regarding the place of burial were given. I had hardly sealed the letter, when, to my surprise, Van Helsing walked into the room, saying,
'Can I help you friend John? I am free, and if I may, my service is to you.'
'Have you got what you looked for?' I asked.
To which he replied, 'I did not look for any specific thing. I only hoped to find, and find I have, all that there was, only some letters and a few memoranda, and a diary new begun. But I have them here, and we shall for the present say nothing of them. I shall see that poor lad tomorrow evening, and, with his sanction, I shall use some.'
When we had finished the work in hand, he said to me, 'And now, friend John, I think we may to bed. We want sleep, both you and I, and rest to recuperate. Tomorrow we shall have much to do, but for the tonight there is no need of us. Alas!'
Before turning in we went to look at poor Lucy. The undertaker had certainly done his work well, for the room was turned into a small chapelle ardente. There was a wilderness of beautiful white flowers, and death was made as little repulsive as might be. The end of the winding sheet was laid over the face. When the Professor bent over and turned it gently back, we both started at the beauty before us. The tall wax candles showing a sufficient light to note it well. All Lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that had passed, instead of leaving traces of 'decay's effacing fingers', had but restored the beauty of life, till positively I could not believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse.
The Professor looked sternly grave. He had not loved her as I had, and there was no need for tears in his eyes. He said to me, 'Remain till I return,' and left the room. He came back with a handful of wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the bed. Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth. He restored the sheet to its place, and we came away.
I was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the door, he entered, and at once began to speak.
'Tomorrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives.'
'Must we make an autopsy?' I asked.
'Yes and no. I want to operate, but not what you think. Let me tell you now, but not a word to another. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart. Ah! You a surgeon, and so shocked! You, whom I have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and death that make the rest shudder. Oh, but I must not forget, my dear friend John, that you loved her, and I have not forgotten it for is I that shall operate, and you must not help. I would like to do it tonight, but for Arthur I must not. He will be free after his father's funeral tomorrow, and he will want to see her, to see it. Then, when she is coffined ready for the next day, you and I shall come when all sleep. We shall unscrew the coffin lid, and shall do our operation, and then replace all, so that none know, save we alone.'
'But why do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge, why do it? Without such it is monstrous.'
For answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite tenderness, 'Friend John, I pity your poor bleeding heart, and I love you the more because it does so bleed. If I could, I would take on myself the burden that you do bear. But there are things that you know not, but that you shall know, and bless me for knowing, though they are not pleasant things. John, my child, you have been my friend now many years, and yet did you ever know me to do any without good cause? I may err, I am but man, but I believe in all I do. Was it not for these causes that you send for me when the great trouble came? Yes! Were you not amazed, nay horrified, when I would not let Arthur kiss his love, though she was dying, and snatched him away by all my strength? Yes! And yet you saw how she thanked me, with her so beautiful dying eyes, her voice, too, so weak, and she kiss my rough old hand and bless me? Yes! And did you not hear me swear promise to her, that so she closed her eyes grateful? Yes!
'Well, I have good reason now for all I want to do. You have for many years trust me. You have believe me weeks past, when there be things so strange that you might have well doubt. Believe me yet a little, friend John. If you trust me not, then I must tell what I think, and that is not perhaps well. And if I work, as work I shall, no matter trust or no trust, without my friend trust in me, I work with heavy heart and feel, oh so lonely when I want all help and courage that may be!' He paused a moment and went on solemnly, 'Friend John, there are strange and terrible days before us. Let us not be two, but one, that so we work to a good end. Will you not have faith in me?'
I took his hand, and promised him. I held my door open as he went away, and watched him go to his room and close the door. As I stood without moving, I saw one of the maids pass silently along the passage, she had her back to me, so did not see me, and go into the room where Lucy lay. The sight touched me. Devotion is so rare, and we are so grateful to those who show it unasked to those we love. Here was a poor girl putting aside the terrors which she naturally had of death to go watch alone by the bier of the mistress whom she loved, so that the poor clay might not be lonely till laid to eternal rest.
I must have slept long and soundly, for it was broad daylight when Van Helsing waked me by coming into my room. He came over to my bedside and said, 'You need not trouble about the knives. We shall not do it.'
'Why not?' I asked. For his solemnity of the night before had greatly impressed me.
'Because,' he said sternly, 'it is too late, or too early. See!' Here he held up the little golden crucifix.
'This was stolen in the night.'
'How stolen, 'I asked in wonder, 'since you have it now?'
'Because I get it back from the worthless wretch who stole it, from the woman who robbed the dead and the living. Her punishment will surely come, but not through me. She knew not altogether what she did, and thus unknowing, she only stole. Now we must wait.' He went away on the word, leaving me with a new mystery to think of, a new puzzle to grapple with.
The forenoon was a dreary time, but at noon the solicitor came, Mr. Marquand, of Wholeman, Sons, Marquand & Lidderdale. He was very genial and very appreciative of what we had done, and took off our hands all cares as to details. During lunch he told us that Mrs. Westenra had for some time expected sudden death from her heart, and had put her affairs in absolute order. He informed us that, with the exception of a certain entailed property of Lucy's father which now, in default of direct issue, went back to a distant branch of the family, the whole estate, real and personal, was left absolutely to Arthur Holmwood. When he had told us so much he went on,
'Frankly we did our best to prevent such a testamentary disposition, and pointed out certain contingencies that might leave her daughter either penniless or not so free as she should be to act regarding a matrimonial alliance. Indeed, we pressed the matter so far that we almost came into collision, for she asked us if we were or were not prepared to carry out her wishes. Of course, we had then no alternative but to accept. We were right in principle, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred we should have proved, by the logic of events, the accuracy of our judgment.
'Frankly, however, I must admit that in this case any other form of disposition would have rendered impossible the carrying out of her wishes. For by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have come into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived her mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no will, and a will was a practical impossibility in such a case, have been treated at her decease as under intestacy. In which case Lord Godalming, though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the world. And the inheritors, being remote, would not be likely to abandon their just rights, for sentimental reasons regarding an entire stranger. I assure you, my dear sirs, I am rejoiced at the result, perfectly rejoiced.'
He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part, in which he was officially interested, of so great a tragedy, was an object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding.
He did not remain long, but said he would look in later in the day and see Lord Godalming. His coming, however, had been a certain comfort to us, since it assured us that we should not have to dread hostile criticism as to any of our acts. Arthur was expected at five o'clock, so a little before that time we visited the death chamber. It was so in very truth, for now both mother and daughter lay in it. The undertaker, true to his craft, had made the best display he could of his goods, and there was a mortuary air about the place that lowered our spirits at once.
Van Helsing ordered the former arrangement to be adhered to, explaining that, as Lord Godalming was coming very soon, it would be less harrowing to his feelings to see all that was left of his fiancee quite alone.
The undertaker seemed shocked at his own stupidity and exerted himself to restore things to the condition in which we left them the night before, so that when Arthur came such shocks to his feelings as we could avoid were saved.
Poor fellow! He looked desperately sad and broken. Even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his much-tried emotions. He had, I knew, been very genuinely and devotedly attached to his father, and to lose him, and at such a time, was a bitter blow to him. With me he was warm as ever, and to Van Helsing he was sweetly courteous. But I could not help seeing that there was some constraint with him. The professor noticed it too, and motioned me to bring him upstairs. I did so, and left him at the door of the room, as I felt he would like to be quite alone with her, but he took my arm and led me in, saying huskily,
'You loved her too, old fellow. She told me all about it, and there was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you. I don't know how to thank you for all you have done for her. I can't think yet... '
Here he suddenly broke down, and threw his arms round my shoulders and laid his head on my breast, crying, 'Oh, Jack! Jack! What shall I do? The whole of life seems gone from me all at once, and there is nothing in the wide world for me to live for.'
I comforted him as well as I could. In such cases men do not need much expression. A grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over the shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a man's heart. I stood still and silent till his sobs died away, and then I said softly to him, 'Come and look at her.'
Together we moved over to the bed, and I lifted the lawn from her face. God! How beautiful she was. Every hour seemed to be enhancing her loveliness. It frightened and amazed me somewhat. And as for Arthur, he fell to trembling, and finally was shaken with doubt as with an ague. At last, after a long pause, he said to me in a faint whisper, 'Jack, is she really dead?'
I assured him sadly that it was so, and went on to suggest, for I felt that such a horrible doubt should not have life for a moment longer than I could help, that it often happened that after death faces become softened and even resolved into their youthful beauty, that this was especially so when death had been preceded by any acute or prolonged suffering. I seemed to quite do away with any doubt, and after kneeling beside the couch for a while and looking at her lovingly and long, he turned aside. I told him that that must be goodbye, as the coffin had to be prepared, so he went back and took her dead hand in his and kissed it, and bent over and kissed her forehead. He came away, fondly looking back over his shoulder at her as he came.
I left him in the drawing room, and told Van Helsing that he had said goodbye, so the latter went to the kitchen to tell the undertaker's men to proceed with the preparations and to screw up the coffin. When he came out of the room again I told him of Arthur's question, and he replied, 'I am not surprised. Just now I doubted for a moment myself!'
We all dined together, and I could see that poor Art was trying to make the best of things. Van Helsing had been silent all dinner time, but when we had lit our cigars he said, 'Lord... ' but Arthur interrupted him.
'No, no, not that, for God's sake! Not yet at any rate. Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to speak offensively. It is only because my loss is so recent.'
The Professor answered very sweetly, 'I only used that name because I was in doubt. I must not call you 'Mr.' and I have grown to love you, yes, my dear boy, to love you, as Arthur.'
Arthur held out his hand, and took the old man's warmly. 'Call me what you will,' he said. 'I hope I may always have the title of a friend. And let me say that I am at a loss for words to thank you for your goodness to my poor dear.' He paused a moment, and went on, 'I know that she understood your goodness even better than I do. And if I was rude or in any way wanting at that time you acted so, you remember,'-the Professor nodded-'You must forgive me.'
He answered with a grave kindness, 'I know it was hard for you to quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand, and I take it that you do not, that you cannot, trust me now, for you do not yet understand. And there may be more times when I shall want you to trust when you cannot, and may not, and must not yet understand. But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through. Then you shall bless me from first to last for your own sake, and for the sake of others, and for her dear sake to whom I swore to protect.'
'And indeed, indeed, sir,' said Arthur warmly. 'I shall in all ways trust you. I know and believe you have a very noble heart, and you are Jack's friend, and you were hers. You shall do what you like.'
The Professor cleared his throat a couple of times, as though about to speak, and finally said, 'May I ask you something now?'
'Certainly.'
'You know that Mrs. Westenra left you all her property?'
'No, poor dear. I never thought of it.'
'And as it is all yours, you have a right to deal with it as you will. I want you to give me permission to read all Miss Lucy's papers and letters. Believe me, it is no idle curiosity. I have a motive of which, be sure, she would have approved. I have them all here. I took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand might touch them, no strange eye look through words into her soul. I shall keep them, if I may. Even you may not see them yet, but I shall keep them safe. No word shall be lost, and in the good time I shall give them back to you. It is a hard thing that I ask, but you will do it, will you not, for Lucy's sake?'
Arthur spoke out heartily, like his old self, 'Dr. Van Helsing, you may do what you will. I feel that in saying this I am doing what my dear one would have approved. I shall not trouble you with questions till the time comes.'
The old Professor stood up as he said solemnly, 'And you are right. There will be pain for us all, but it will not be all pain, nor will this pain be the last. We and you too, you most of all, dear boy, will have to pass through the bitter water before we reach the sweet. But we must be brave of heart and unselfish, and do our duty, and all will be well!'
I slept on a sofa in Arthur's room that night. Van Helsing did not go to bed at all. He went to and fro, as if patroling the house, and was never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
22 September.-In the train to Exeter. Jonathan sleeping. It seems only yesterday that the last entry was made, and yet how much between then, in Whitby and all the world before me, Jonathan away and no news of him, and now, married to Jonathan, Jonathan a solicitor, a partner, rich, master of his business, Mr. Hawkins dead and buried, and Jonathan with another attack that may harm him. Some day he may ask me about it. Down it all goes. I am rusty in my shorthand, see what unexpected prosperity does for us, so it may be as well to freshen it up again with an exercise anyhow.
The service was very simple and very solemn. There were only ourselves and the servants there, one or two old friends of his from Exeter, his London agent, and a gentleman representing Sir John Paxton, the President of the Incorporated Law Society. Jonathan and I stood hand in hand, and we felt that our best and dearest friend was gone from us.
We came back to town quietly, taking a bus to Hyde Park Corner. Jonathan thought it would interest me to go into the Row for a while, so we sat down. But there were very few people there, and it was sad-looking and desolate to see so many empty chairs. It made us think of the empty chair at home. So we got up and walked down Piccadilly. Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in the old days before I went to school. I felt it very improper, for you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit. But it was Jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who saw us, and we didn't care if they did, so on we walked. I was looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in a victoria outside Guiliano's, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath, 'My God!'
I am always anxious about Jonathan, for I fear that some nervous fit may upset him again. So I turned to him quickly, and asked him what it was that disturbed him.
He was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the pretty girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us, and so I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal's. Jonathan kept staring at him, till I was afraid he would notice. I feared he might take it ill, he looked so fierce and nasty. I asked Jonathan why he was disturbed, and he answered, evidently thinking that I knew as much about it as he did, 'Do you see who it is?'
'No, dear,' I said. 'I don't know him, who is it?' His answer seemed to shock and thrill me, for it was said as if he did not know that it was me, Mina, to whom he was speaking. 'It is the man himself!'
The poor dear was evidently terrified at something, very greatly terrified. I do believe that if he had not had me to lean on and to support him he would have sunk down. He kept staring. A man came out of the shop with a small parcel, and gave it to the lady, who then drove off. The dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the carriage moved up Piccadilly he followed in the same direction, and hailed a hansom. Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to himself,
'I believe it is the Count, but he has grown young. My God, if this be so! Oh, my God! My God! If only I knew! If only I knew!' He was distressing himself so much that I feared to keep his mind on the subject by asking him any questions, so I remained silent. I drew away quietly, and he, holding my arm, came easily. We walked a little further, and then went in and sat for a while in the Green Park. It was a hot day for autumn, and there was a comfortable seat in a shady place. After a few minutes' staring at nothing, Jonathan's eyes closed, and he went quickly into a sleep, with his head on my shoulder. I thought it was the best thing for him, so did not disturb him. In about twenty minutes he woke up, and said to me quite cheerfully,
'Why, Mina, have I been asleep! Oh, do forgive me for being so rude. Come, and we'll have a cup of tea somewhere.'
He had evidently forgotten all about the dark stranger, as in his illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. I don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness. It may make or continue some injury to the brain. I must not ask him, for fear I shall do more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey abroad. The time is come, I fear, when I must open the parcel, and know what is written. Oh, Jonathan, you will, I know, forgive me if I do wrong, but it is for your own dear sake.
Later.-A sad homecoming in every way, the house empty of the dear soul who was so good to us. Jonathan still pale and dizzy under a slight relapse of his malady, and now a telegram from Van Helsing, whoever he may be. 'You will be grieved to hear that Mrs. Westenra died five days ago, and that Lucy died the day before yesterday. They were both buried today.'
Oh, what a wealth of sorrow in a few words! Poor Mrs. Westenra! Poor Lucy! Gone, gone, never to return to us! And poor, poor Arthur, to have lost such a sweetness out of his life! God help us all to bear our troubles.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-CONT.
22 September.-It is all over. Arthur has gone back to Ring, and has taken Quincey Morris with him. What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed. Van Helsing is lying down, having a rest preparatory to his journey. He goes to Amsterdam tonight, but says he returns tomorrow night, that he only wants to make some arrangements which can only be made personally. He is to stop with me then, if he can. He says he has work to do in London which may take him some time. Poor old fellow! I fear that the strain of the past week has broken down even his iron strength. All the time of the burial he was, I could see, putting some terrible restraint on himself. When it was all over, we were standing beside Arthur, who, poor fellow, was speaking of his part in the operation where his blood had been transfused to his Lucy's veins. I could see Van Helsing's face grow white and purple by turns. Arthur was saying that he felt since then as if they two had been really married, and that she was his wife in the sight of God. None of us said a word of the other operations, and none of us ever shall. Arthur and Quincey went away together to the station, and Van Helsing and I came on here. The moment we were alone in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics. He has denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was only his sense of humor asserting itself under very terrible conditions. He laughed till he cried, and I had to draw down the blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge. And then he cried, till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does. I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances, but it had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness! Then when his face grew grave and stern again I asked him why his mirth, and why at such a time. His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was logical and forceful and mysterious. He said,
'Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.' Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl. I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn. I give my time, my skill, my sleep. I let my other sufferers want that she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say 'Thud, thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same.
'There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear,'Here I am! Here I am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.'
I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as I did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him. As he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different tone,
'Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and whom she loved, and that sacred bell going 'Toll! Toll! Toll!' so sad and slow, and those holy men, with the white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the time their eyes never on the page, and all of us with the bowed head. And all for what? She is dead, so! Is it not?'
'Well, for the life of me, Professor,' I said, 'I can't see anything to laugh at in all that. Why, your expression makes it a harder puzzle than before. But even if the burial service was comic, what about poor Art and his trouble? Why his heart was simply breaking.'
'Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his bride?'
'Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him.'
'Quite so. But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then what about the others? Ho, ho! Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church's law, though no wits, all gone, even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist.'
'I don't see where the joke comes in there either!' I said, and I did not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He laid his hand on my arm, and said,
'Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust. If you could have looked into my heart then when I want to laugh, if you could have done so when the laugh arrived, if you could do so now, when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him, for he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time, maybe you would perhaps pity me the most of all.'
I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.
'Because I know!'
And now we are all scattered, and for many a long day loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her kin, a lordly death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming London, where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill, and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.
So I can finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin another. If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with different people and different themes, for here at the end, where the romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of my life-work, I say sadly and without hope, 'FINIS".
THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as 'The Kensington Horror,' or 'The Stabbing Woman,' or 'The Woman in Black.' During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a 'bloofer lady.' It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a 'bloofer lady' had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the 'bloofer lady' is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the 'bloofer lady' should be the popular role at these al fresco performances. Our correspondent naively says that even Ellen Terry could not be so winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little children pretend, and even imagine themselves, to be.
There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question, for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throat. The wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method of its own. The police of the division have been instructed to keep a sharp lookout for straying children, especially when very young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which may be about.
THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER EXTRA SPECIAL
THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR
ANOTHER CHILD INJURED
THE 'BLOOFER LADY.'
We have just received intelligence that another child, missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning under a furze bush at the Shooter's Hill side of Hampstead Heath, which is perhaps, less frequented than the other parts. It has the same tiny wound in the throat as has been noticed in other cases. It was terribly weak, and looked quite emaciated. It too, when partially restored, had the common story to tell of being lured away by the 'bloofer lady".
Chapter 14
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
23 September.-Jonathan is better after a bad night. I am so glad that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the terrible things, and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down with the responsibility of his new position. I knew he would be true to himself, and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties that come upon him. He will be away all day till late, for he said he could not lunch at home. My household work is done, so I shall take his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it.
24 September.-I hadn't the heart to write last night, that terrible record of Jonathan's upset me so. Poor dear! How he must have suffered, whether it be true or only imagination. I wonder if there is any truth in it at all. Did he get his brain fever, and then write all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to him. And yet that man we saw yesterday! He seemed quite certain of him, poor fellow! I suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back on some train of thought.
He believes it all himself. I remember how on our wedding day he said 'Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, mad or sane... ' There seems to be through it all some thread of continuity. That fearful Count was coming to London. If it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions... There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required. And if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let him be troubled or worried with it at all. If ever Jonathan quite gets over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask him questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him.
LETTER, VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER
24 September
'Dear Madam,
'I pray you to pardon my writing, in that I am so far friend as that I sent to you sad news of Miss Lucy Westenra's death. By the kindness of Lord Godalming, I am empowered to read her letters and papers, for I am deeply concerned about certain matters vitally important. In them I find some letters from you, which show how great friends you were and how you love her. Oh, Madam Mina, by that love, I implore you, help me. It is for others' good that I ask, to redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible troubles, that may be more great than you can know. May it be that I see you? You can trust me. I am friend of Dr. John Seward and of Lord Godalming. I must keep it private for the present from all. I should come to Exeter to see you at once if you tell me I am privilege to come, and where and when. I implore your pardon, Madam. I have read your letters to poor Lucy, and know how good you are and how your husband suffer. So I pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not, least it may harm. Again your pardon, and forgive me.
'VAN HELSING.'
TELEGRAM, MRS. HARKER TO VAN HELSING
25 September.-Come today by quarter past ten train if you can catch it. Can see you any time you call. 'WILHELMINA HARKER.'
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
25 September.-I cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time draws near for the visit of Dr. Van Helsing, for somehow I expect that it will throw some light upon Jonathan's sad experience, and as he attended poor dear Lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about her. That is the reason of his coming. It is concerning Lucy and her sleep-walking, and not about Jonathan. Then I shall never know the real truth now! How silly I am. That awful journal gets hold of my imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour. Of course it is about Lucy. That habit came back to the poor dear, and that awful night on the cliff must have made her ill. I had almost forgotten in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards. She must have told him of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that I knew all about it, and now he wants me to tell him what I know, so that he may understand. I hope I did right in not saying anything of it to Mrs. Westenra. I should never forgive myself if any act of mine, were it even a negative one, brought harm on poor dear Lucy. I hope too, Dr. Van Helsing will not blame me. I have had so much trouble and anxiety of late that I feel I cannot bear more just at present.
I suppose a cry does us all good at times, clears the air as other rain does. Perhaps it was reading the journal yesterday that upset me, and then Jonathan went away this morning to stay away from me a whole day and night, the first time we have been parted since our marriage. I do hope the dear fellow will take care of himself, and that nothing will occur to upset him. It is two o'clock, and the doctor will be here soon now. I shall say nothing of Jonathan's journal unless he asks me. I am so glad I have typewritten out my own journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him. It will save much questioning.
Later.-He has come and gone. Oh, what a strange meeting, and how it all makes my head whirl round. I feel like one in a dream. Can it be all possible, or even a part of it? If I had not read Jonathan's journal first, I should never have accepted even a possibility. Poor, poor, dear Jonathan! How he must have suffered. Please the good God, all this may not upset him again. I shall try to save him from it. But it may be even a consolation and a help to him, terrible though it be and awful in its consequences, to know for certain that his eyes and ears and brain did not deceive him, and that it is all true. It may be that it is the doubt which haunts him, that when the doubt is removed, no matter which, waking or dreaming, may prove the truth, he will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock. Dr. Van Helsing must be a good man as well as a clever one if he is Arthur's friend and Dr. Seward's, and if they brought him all the way from Holland to look after Lucy. I feel from having seen him that he is good and kind and of a noble nature. When he comes tomorrow I shall ask him about Jonathan. And then, please God, all this sorrow and anxiety may lead to a good end. I used to think I would like to practice interviewing. Jonathan's friend on 'The Exeter News' told him that memory is everything in such work, that you must be able to put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine some of it afterwards. Here was a rare interview. I shall try to record it verbatim.
It was half-past two o'clock when the knock came. I took my courage a deux mains and waited. In a few minutes Mary opened the door, and announced 'Dr. Van Helsing".
I rose and bowed, and he came towards me, a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods. He said to me,
'Mrs. Harker, is it not?' I bowed assent.
'That was Miss Mina Murray?' Again I assented.
'It is Mina Murray that I came to see that was friend of that poor dear child Lucy Westenra. Madam Mina, it is on account of the dead that I come.'
'Sir,' I said, 'you could have no better claim on me than that you were a friend and helper of Lucy Westenra.' And I held out my hand. He took it and said tenderly,
'Oh, Madam Mina, I know that the friend of that poor little girl must be good, but I had yet to learn... ' He finished his speech with a courtly bow. I asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about, so he at once began.
'I have read your letters to Miss Lucy. Forgive me, but I had to begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask. I know that you were with her at Whitby. She sometimes kept a diary, you need not look surprised, Madam Mina. It was begun after you had left, and was an imitation of you, and in that diary she traces by inference certain things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her. In great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so much kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember.'
'I can tell you, I think, Dr. Van Helsing, all about it.'
'Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details? It is not always so with young ladies.'
'No, doctor, but I wrote it all down at the time. I can show it to you if you like.'
'Oh, Madam Mina, I well be grateful. You will do me much favour.'
I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths, so I handed him the shorthand diary. He took it with a grateful bow, and said, 'May I read it?'
'If you wish,' I answered as demurely as I could. He opened it, and for an instant his face fell. Then he stood up and bowed.
'Oh, you so clever woman!' he said. 'I knew long that Mr. Jonathan was a man of much thankfulness, but see, his wife have all the good things. And will you not so much honour me and so help me as to read it for me? Alas! I know not the shorthand.'
By this time my little joke was over, and I was almost ashamed. So I took the typewritten copy from my work basket and handed it to him.
'Forgive me,' I said. 'I could not help it, but I had been thinking that it was of dear Lucy that you wished to ask, and so that you might not have time to wait, not on my account, but because I know your time must be precious, I have written it out on the typewriter for you.'
He took it and his eyes glistened. 'You are so good,' he said. 'And may I read it now? I may want to ask you some things when I have read.'
'By all means,' I said, 'read it over whilst I order lunch, and then you can ask me questions whilst we eat.'
He bowed and settled himself in a chair with his back to the light, and became so absorbed in the papers, whilst I went to see after lunch chiefly in order that he might not be disturbed. When I came back, I found him walking hurriedly up and down the room, his face all ablaze with excitement. He rushed up to me and took me by both hands.
'Oh, Madam Mina,' he said, 'how can I say what I owe to you? This paper is as sunshine. It opens the gate to me. I am dazed, I am dazzled, with so much light, and yet clouds roll in behind the light every time. But that you do not, cannot comprehend. Oh, but I am grateful to you, you so clever woman. Madame,' he said this very solemnly, 'if ever Abraham Van Helsing can do anything for you or yours, I trust you will let me know. It will be pleasure and delight if I may serve you as a friend, as a friend, but all I have ever learned, all I can ever do, shall be for you and those you love. There are darknesses in life, and there are lights. You are one of the lights. You will have a happy life and a good life, and your husband will be blessed in you.'
'But, doctor, you praise me too much, and you do not know me.'
'Not know you, I, who am old, and who have studied all my life men and women, I who have made my specialty the brain and all that belongs to him and all that follow from him! And I have read your diary that you have so goodly written for me, and which breathes out truth in every line. I, who have read your so sweet letter to poor Lucy of your marriage and your trust, not know you! Oh, Madam Mina, good women tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such things that angels can read. And we men who wish to know have in us something of angels' eyes. Your husband is noble nature, and you are noble too, for you trust, and trust cannot be where there is mean nature. And your husband, tell me of him. Is he quite well? Is all that fever gone, and is he strong and hearty?'
I saw here an opening to ask him about Jonathan, so I said, 'He was almost recovered, but he has been greatly upset by Mr. Hawkins death.'
He interrupted, 'Oh, yes. I know. I know. I have read your last two letters.'
I went on, 'I suppose this upset him, for when we were in town on Thursday last he had a sort of shock.'
'A shock, and after brain fever so soon! That is not good. What kind of shock was it?'
'He thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something which led to his brain fever.' And here the whole thing seemed to overwhelm me in a rush. The pity for Jonathan, the horror which he experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult. I suppose I was hysterical, for I threw myself on my knees and held up my hands to him, and implored him to make my husband well again. He took my hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me. He held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness,
'My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time for friendships, but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more than ever, and it has grown with my advancing years, the loneliness of my life. Believe me, then, that I come here full of respect for you, and you have given me hope, hope, not in what I am seeking of, but that there are good women still left to make life happy, good women, whose lives and whose truths may make good lesson for the children that are to be. I am glad, glad, that I may here be of some use to you. For if your husband suffer, he suffer within the range of my study and experience. I promise you that I will gladly do all for him that I can, all to make his life strong and manly, and your life a happy one. Now you must eat. You are overwrought and perhaps over-anxious. Husband Jonathan would not like to see you so pale, and what he like not where he love, is not to his good. Therefore for his sake you must eat and smile. You have told me about Lucy, and so now we shall not speak of it, lest it distress. I shall stay in Exeter tonight, for I want to think much over what you have told me, and when I have thought I will ask you questions, if I may. And then too, you will tell me of husband Jonathan's trouble so far as you can, but not yet. You must eat now, afterwards you shall tell me all.'
After lunch, when we went back to the drawing room, he said to me, 'And now tell me all about him.'
When it came to speaking to this great learned man, I began to fear that he would think me a weak fool, and Jonathan a madman, that journal is all so strange, and I hesitated to go on. But he was so sweet and kind, and he had promised to help, and I trusted him, so I said,
'Dr. Van Helsing, what I have to tell you is so queer that you must not laugh at me or at my husband. I have been since yesterday in a sort of fever of doubt. You must be kind to me, and not think me foolish that I have even half believed some very strange things.'
He reassured me by his manner as well as his words when he said, 'Oh, my dear, if you only know how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.'
'Thank you, thank you a thousand times! You have taken a weight off my mind. If you will let me, I shall give you a paper to read. It is long, but I have typewritten it out. It will tell you my trouble and Jonathan's. It is the copy of his journal when abroad, and all that happened. I dare not say anything of it. You will read for yourself and judge. And then when I see you, perhaps, you will be very kind and tell me what you think.'
'I promise,' he said as I gave him the papers. 'I shall in the morning, as soon as I can, come to see you and your husband, if I may.'
'Jonathan will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch with us and see him then. You could catch the quick 3:34 train, which will leave you at Paddington before eight.' He was surprised at my knowledge of the trains offhand, but he does not know that I have made up all the trains to and from Exeter, so that I may help Jonathan in case he is in a hurry.
So he took the papers with him and went away, and I sit here thinking, thinking I don't know what.
LETTER, VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER
25 September, 6 o'clock
'Dear Madam Mina,
'I have read your husband's so wonderful diary. You may sleep without doubt. Strange and terrible as it is, it is true! I will pledge my life on it. It may be worse for others, but for him and you there is no dread. He is a noble fellow, and let me tell you from experience of men, that one who would do as he did in going down that wall and to that room, aye, and going a second time, is not one to be injured in permanence by a shock. His brain and his heart are all right, this I swear, before I have even seen him, so be at rest. I shall have much to ask him of other things. I am blessed that today I come to see you, for I have learn all at once so much that again I am dazzled, dazzled more than ever, and I must think.
'Yours the most faithful,
'Abraham Van Helsing.'
LETTER, MRS. HARKER TO VAN HELSING
25 September, 6:30 P.M.
'My dear Dr. Van Helsing,
'A thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a great weight off my mind. And yet, if it be true, what terrible things there are in the world, and what an awful thing if that man, that monster, be really in London! I fear to think. I have this moment, whilst writing, had a wire from Jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 tonight from Launceston and will be here at 10:18, so that I shall have no fear tonight. Will you, therefore, instead of lunching with us, please come to breakfast at eight o'clock, if this be not too early for you? You can get away, if you are in a hurry, by the 10:30 train, which will bring you to Paddington by 2:35. Do not answer this, as I shall take it that, if I do not hear, you will come to breakfast.
'Believe me,
'Your faithful and grateful friend,
'Mina Harker.'
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
26 September.-I thought never to write in this diary again, but the time has come. When I got home last night Mina had supper ready, and when we had supped she told me of Van Helsing's visit, and of her having given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she has been about me. She showed me in the doctor's letter that all I wrote down was true. It seems to have made a new man of me. It was the doubt as to the reality of the whole thing that knocked me over. I felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful. But, now that I know, I am not afraid, even of the Count. He has succeeded after all, then, in his design in getting to London, and it was he I saw. He has got younger, and how? Van Helsing is the man to unmask him and hunt him out, if he is anything like what Mina says. We sat late, and talked it over. Mina is dressing, and I shall call at the hotel in a few minutes and bring him over.
He was, I think, surprised to see me. When I came into the room where he was, and introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned my face round to the light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny,
'But Madam Mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock.'
It was so funny to hear my wife called 'Madam Mina' by this kindly, strong-faced old man. I smiled, and said, 'I was ill, I have had a shock, but you have cured me already.'
'And how?'
'By your letter to Mina last night. I was in doubt, and then everything took a hue of unreality, and I did not know what to trust, even the evidence of my own senses. Not knowing what to trust, I did not know what to do, and so had only to keep on working in what had hitherto been the groove of my life. The groove ceased to avail me, and I mistrusted myself. Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't, you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.'
He seemed pleased, and laughed as he said, 'So! You are a physiognomist. I learn more here with each hour. I am with so much pleasure coming to you to breakfast, and, oh, sir, you will pardon praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife.'
I would listen to him go on praising Mina for a day, so I simply nodded and stood silent.
'She is one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist, and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish. And you, sir... I have read all the letters to poor Miss Lucy, and some of them speak of you, so I know you since some days from the knowing of others, but I have seen your true self since last night. You will give me your hand, will you not? And let us be friends for all our lives.'
We shook hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me quite choky.
'and now,' he said, 'may I ask you for some more help? I have a great task to do, and at the beginning it is to know. You can help me here. Can you tell me what went before your going to Transylvania? Later on I may ask more help, and of a different kind, but at first this will do.'
'Look here, Sir,' I said, 'does what you have to do concern the Count?'
'It does,' he said solemnly.
'Then I am with you heart and soul. As you go by the 10:30 train, you will not have time to read them, but I shall get the bundle of papers. You can take them with you and read them in the train.'
After breakfast I saw him to the station. When we were parting he said, 'Perhaps you will come to town if I send for you, and take Madam Mina too.'
'We shall both come when you will,' I said.
I had got him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for the train to start, he was turning them over. His eyes suddenly seemed to catch something in one of them, 'The Westminster Gazette', I knew it by the colour, and he grew quite white. He read something intently, groaning to himself, 'Mein Gott! Mein Gott! So soon! So soon!' I do not think he remembered me at the moment. Just then the whistle blew, and the train moved off. This recalled him to himself, and he leaned out of the window and waved his hand, calling out, 'Love to Madam Mina. I shall write so soon as ever I can.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
26 September.-Truly there is no such thing as finality. Not a week since I said 'Finis,' and yet here I am starting fresh again, or rather going on with the record. Until this afternoon I had no cause to think of what is done. Renfield had become, to all intents, as sane as he ever was. He was already well ahead with his fly business, and he had just started in the spider line also, so he had not been of any trouble to me. I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and from it I gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well. Quincey Morris is with him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a bubbling well of good spirits. Quincey wrote me a line too, and from him I hear that Arthur is beginning to recover something of his old buoyancy, so as to them all my mind is at rest. As for myself, I was settling down to my work with the enthusiasm which I used to have for it, so that I might fairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy left on me was becoming cicatrised.
Everything is, however, now reopened, and what is to be the end God only knows. I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows, too, but he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity. He went to Exeter yesterday, and stayed there all night. Today he came back, and almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o'clock, and thrust last night's 'Westminster Gazette' into my hand.
'What do you think of that?' he asked as he stood back and folded his arms.
I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant, but he took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being decoyed away at Hampstead. It did not convey much to me, until I reached a passage where it described small puncture wounds on their throats. An idea struck me, and I looked up.
'Well?' he said.
'It is like poor Lucy's.'
'And what do you make of it?'
'Simply that there is some cause in common. Whatever it was that injured her has injured them.' I did not quite understand his answer.
'That is true indirectly, but not directly.'
'How do you mean, Professor?' I asked. I was a little inclined to take his seriousness lightly, for, after all, four days of rest and freedom from burning, harrowing, anxiety does help to restore one's spirits, but when I saw his face, it sobered me. Never, even in the midst of our despair about poor Lucy, had he looked more stern.
'Tell me!' I said. 'I can hazard no opinion. I do not know what to think, and I have no data on which to found a conjecture.'
'Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy died of, not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me?'
'Of nervous prostration following a great loss or waste of blood.'
'And how was the blood lost or wasted?' I shook my head.
He stepped over and sat down beside me, and went on, 'You are a clever man, friend John. You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera. I suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference. No? Nor in materialization. No? Nor in astral bodies. No? Nor in the reading of thought. No? Nor in hypnotism... '
'Yes,' I said. 'Charcot has proved that pretty well.'
He smiled as he went on, 'Then you are satisfied as to it. Yes? And of course then you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of the great Charcot, alas that he is no more, into the very soul of the patient that he influence. No? Then, friend John, am I to take it that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to conclusion be a blank? No? Then tell me, for I am a student of the brain, how you accept hypnotism and reject the thought reading. Let me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been burned as wizards. There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and 'Old Parr' one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men's blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day? For, had she live one more day, we could save her. Do you know all the mystery of life and death? Do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy and can say wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others? Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps? Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come out at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins, how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?'
'Good God, Professor!' I said, starting up. 'Do you mean to tell me that Lucy was bitten by such a bat, and that such a thing is here in London in the nineteenth century?'
He waved his hand for silence, and went on, 'Can you tell me why the tortoise lives more long than generations of men, why the elephant goes on and on till he have sees dynasties, and why the parrot never die only of bite of cat of dog or other complaint? Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are men and women who cannot die? We all know, because science has vouched for the fact, that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of the world. Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it, and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and then men come and take away the unbroken seal and that there lie the Indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as before?'
Here I interrupted him. I was getting bewildered. He so crowded on my mind his list of nature's eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired. I had a dim idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he used to do in his study at Amsterdam. But he used them to tell me the thing, so that I could have the object of thought in mind all the time. But now I was without his help, yet I wanted to follow him, so I said,
'Professor, let me be your pet student again. Tell me the thesis, so that I may apply your knowledge as you go on. At present I am going in my mind from point to point as a madman, and not a sane one, follows an idea. I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a midst, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where I am going.'
'That is a good image,' he said. 'Well, I shall tell you. My thesis is this, I want you to believe.'
'To believe what?'
'To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith, 'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.'
'Then you want me not to let some previous conviction inure the receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter. Do I read your lesson aright?'
'Ah, you are my favourite pupil still. It is worth to teach you. Now that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand. You think then that those so small holes in the children's throats were made by the same that made the holes in Miss Lucy?'
'I suppose so.'
He stood up and said solemnly, 'Then you are wrong. Oh, would it were so! But alas! No. It is worse, far, far worse.'
'In God's name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?' I cried.
He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke.
'They were made by Miss Lucy!'
Chapter 15
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.
For a while sheer anger mastered me. It was as if he had during her life struck Lucy on the face. I smote the table hard and rose up as I said to him, 'Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?'
He raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his face calmed me at once. 'Would I were!' he said. 'Madness were easy to bear compared with truth like this. Oh, my friend, why, think you, did I go so far round, why take so long to tell so simple a thing? Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life? Was it because I wished to give you pain? Was it that I wanted, now so late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful death? Ah no!'
'Forgive me,' said I.
He went on, 'My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady. But even yet I do not expect you to believe. It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the 'no' of it. It is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy. Tonight I go to prove it. Dare you come with me?'
This staggered me. A man does not like to prove such a truth, Byron excepted from the category, jealousy.
'And prove the very truth he most abhorred.'
He saw my hesitation, and spoke, 'The logic is simple, no madman's logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog. If it not be true, then proof will be relief. At worst it will not harm. If it be true! Ah, there is the dread. Yet every dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief. Come, I tell you what I propose. First, that we go off now and see that child in the hospital. Dr. Vincent, of the North Hospital, where the papers say the child is, is a friend of mine, and I think of yours since you were in class at Amsterdam. He will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friends. We shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learn. And then... '
'And then?'
He took a key from his pocket and held it up. 'And then we spend the night, you and I, in the churchyard where Lucy lies. This is the key that lock the tomb. I had it from the coffin man to give to Arthur.'
My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal before us. I could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing.
We found the child awake. It had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on well. Dr, Vincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the punctures. There was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on Lucy's throat. They were smaller, and the edges looked fresher, that was all. We asked Vincent to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat, but for his own part, he was inclined to think it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of London. 'Out of so many harmless ones,' he said, 'there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant species. Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape, or even from the Zoological Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampire. These things do occur, you, know. Only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe, traced up in this direction. For a week after, the children were playing nothing but Red Riding Hood on the Heath and in every alley in the place until this 'bloofer lady' scare came along, since then it has been quite a gala time with them. Even this poor little mite, when he woke up today, asked the nurse if he might go away. When she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the 'bloofer lady'.'
'I hope,' said Van Helsing, 'that when you are sending the child home you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over it. These fancies to stray are most dangerous, and if the child were to remain out another night, it would probably be fatal. But in any case I suppose you will not let it away for some days?'
'Certainly not, not for a week at least, longer if the wound is not healed.'
Our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and the sun had dipped before we came out. When Van Helsing saw how dark it was, he said,
'There is not hurry. It is more late than I thought. Come, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way.'
We dined at 'Jack Straw's Castle' along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisy. About ten o'clock we started from the inn. It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radius. The Professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for he went on unhesitatingly, but, as for me, I was in quite a mixup as to locality. As we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of horse police going their usual suburban round. At last we reached the wall of the churchyard, which we climbed over. With some little difficulty, for it was very dark, and the whole place seemed so strange to us, we found the Westenra tomb. The Professor took the key, opened the creaky door, and standing back, politely, but quite unconsciously, motioned me to precede him. There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion. My companion followed me quickly, and cautiously drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a falling, and not a spring one. In the latter case we should have been in a bad plight. Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light. The tomb in the daytime, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim and gruesome enough, but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to browns, when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed dominance, when the time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar, and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more miserable and sordid than could have been imagined. It conveyed irresistibly the idea that life, animal life, was not the only thing which could pass away.
Van Helsing went about his work systematically. Holding his candle so that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he made assurance of Lucy's coffin. Another search in his bag, and he took out a turnscrew.
'What are you going to do?' I asked.
'To open the coffin. You shall yet be convinced.'
Straightway he began taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the lid, showing the casing of lead beneath. The sight was almost too much for me. It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst living. I actually took hold of his hand to stop him.
He only said, 'You shall see, 'and again fumbling in his bag took out a tiny fret saw. Striking the turnscrew through the lead with a swift downward stab, which made me wince, he made a small hole, which was, however, big enough to admit the point of the saw. I had expected a rush of gas from the week-old corpse. We doctors, who have had to study our dangers, have to become accustomed to such things, and I drew back towards the door. But the Professor never stopped for a moment. He sawed down a couple of feet along one side of the lead coffin, and then across, and down the other side. Taking the edge of the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the coffin, and holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to look.
I drew near and looked. The coffin was empty. It was certainly a surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but Van Helsing was unmoved. He was now more sure than ever of his ground, and so emboldened to proceed in his task. 'Are you satisfied now, friend John?' he asked.
I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as I answered him, 'I am satisfied that Lucy's body is not in that coffin, but that only proves one thing.'
'And what is that, friend John?'
'That it is not there.'
'That is good logic,' he said, 'so far as it goes. But how do you, how can you, account for it not being there?'
'Perhaps a body-snatcher,' I suggested. 'Some of the undertaker's people may have stolen it.' I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet it was the only real cause which I could suggest.
The Professor sighed. 'Ah well!' he said,' we must have more proof. Come with me.'
He put on the coffin lid again, gathered up all his things and placed them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the bag. We opened the door, and went out. Behind us he closed the door and locked it. He handed me the key, saying, 'Will you keep it? You had better be assured.'
I laughed, it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am bound to say, as I motioned him to keep it. 'A key is nothing,' I said, 'there are many duplicates, and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock of this kind.'
He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket. Then he told me to watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at the other.
I took up my place behind a yew tree, and I saw his dark figure move until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my sight.
It was a lonely vigil. Just after I had taken my place I heard a distant clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two. I was chilled and unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on such an errand and with myself for coming. I was too cold and too sleepy to be keenly observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my trust, so altogether I had a dreary, miserable time.
Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white streak, moving between two dark yew trees at the side of the churchyard farthest from the tomb. At the same time a dark mass moved from the Professor's side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards it. Then I too moved, but I had to go round headstones and railed-off tombs, and I stumbled over graves. The sky was overcast, and somewhere far off an early cock crew. A little ways off, beyond a line of scattered juniper trees, which marked the pathway to the church, a white dim figure flitted in the direction of the tomb. The tomb itself was hidden by trees, and I could not see where the figure had disappeared. I heard the rustle of actual movement where I had first seen the white figure, and coming over, found the Professor holding in his arms a tiny child. When he saw me he held it out to me, and said, 'Are you satisfied now?'
'No,' I said, in a way that I felt was aggressive.
'Do you not see the child?'
'Yes, it is a child, but who brought it here? And is it wounded?'
'We shall see,' said the Professor, and with one impulse we took our way out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child.
When we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child's throat. It was without a scratch or scar of any kind.
'Was I right?' I asked triumphantly.
'We were just in time,' said the Professor thankfully.
We had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so consulted about it. If we were to take it to a police station we should have to give some account of our movements during the night. At least, we should have had to make some statement as to how we had come to find the child. So finally we decided that we would take it to the Heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would leave it where he could not fail to find it. We would then seek our way home as quickly as we could. All fell out well. At the edge of Hampstead Heath we heard a policeman's heavy tramp, and laying the child on the pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he flashed his lantern to and fro. We heard his exclamation of astonishment, and then we went away silently. By good chance we got a cab near the 'Spainiards,' and drove to town.
I cannot sleep, so I make this entry. But I must try to get a few hours' sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon. He insists that I go with him on another expedition.
27 September.-It was two o'clock before we found a suitable opportunity for our attempt. The funeral held at noon was all completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him. We knew that we were safe till morning did we desire it, but the Professor told me that we should not want more than an hour at most. Again I felt that horrid sense of the reality of things, in which any effort of imagination seemed out of place, and I realized distinctly the perils of the law which we were incurring in our unhallowed work. Besides, I felt it was all so useless. Outrageous as it was to open a leaden coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a week were really dead, it now seemed the height of folly to open the tomb again, when we knew, from the evidence of our own eyesight, that the coffin was empty. I shrugged my shoulders, however, and rested silent, for Van Helsing had a way of going on his own road, no matter who remonstrated. He took the key, opened the vault, and again courteously motioned me to precede. The place was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how unutterably mean looking when the sunshine streamed in. Van Helsing walked over to Lucy's coffin, and I followed. He bent over and again forced back the leaden flange, and a shock of surprise and dismay shot through me.
There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her funeral. She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever, and I could not believe that she was dead. The lips were red, nay redder than before, and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom.
'Is this a juggle?' I said to him.
'Are you convinced now?' said the Professor, in response, and as he spoke he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled back the dead lips and showed the white teeth. 'See,' he went on, 'they are even sharper than before. With this and this,' and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below it, 'the little children can be bitten. Are you of belief now, friend John?'
Once more argumentative hostility woke within me. I could not accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested. So, with an attempt to argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said, 'She may have been placed here since last night.'
'Indeed? That is so, and by whom?'
'I do not know. Someone has done it.'
'And yet she has been dead one week. Most peoples in that time would not look so.'
I had no answer for this, so was silent. Van Helsing did not seem to notice my silence. At any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor triumph. He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman, raising the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the lips and examining the teeth. Then he turned to me and said,
'Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded. Here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking, oh, you start. You do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it later, and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she dies, and in trance she is UnDead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when the UnDead sleep at home,' as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was 'home', 'their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not UnDead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep.'
This turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I was accepting Van Helsing's theories. But if she were really dead, what was there of terror in the idea of killing her?
He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for he said almost joyously, 'Ah, you believe now?'
I answered, 'Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to accept. How will you do this bloody work?'
'I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body.'
It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved. And yet the feeling was not so strong as I had expected. I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of this being, this UnDead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it. Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?
I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he stood as if wrapped in thought. Presently he closed the catch of his bag with a snap, and said,
'I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best. If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this moment, what is to be done. But there are other things to follow, and things that are thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know. This is simple. She have yet no life taken, though that is of time, and to act now would be to take danger from her forever. But then we may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell him of this? If you, who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on the child's at the hospital, if you, who saw the coffin empty last night and full today with a woman who have not change only to be more rose and more beautiful in a whole week, after she die, if you know of this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how then, can I expect Arthur, who know none of those things, to believe?
'He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying. I know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea I have done things that prevent him say goodbye as he ought, and he may think that in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive, and that in most mistake of all we have killed her. He will then argue back that it is we, mistaken ones, that have killed her by our ideas, and so he will be much unhappy always. Yet he never can be sure, and that is the worst of all. And he will sometimes think that she he loved was buried alive, and that will paint his dreams with horrors of what she must have suffered, and again, he will think that we may be right, and that his so beloved was, after all, an UnDead. No! I told him once, and since then I learn much. Now, since I know it is all true, a hundred thousand times more do I know that he must pass through the bitter waters to reach the sweet. He, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him, then we can act for good all round and send him peace. My mind is made up. Let us go. You return home for tonight to your asylum, and see that all be well. As for me, I shall spend the night here in this churchyard in my own way. Tomorrow night you will come to me to the Berkeley Hotel at ten of the clock. I shall send for Arthur to come too, and also that so fine young man of America that gave his blood. Later we shall all have work to do. I come with you so far as Piccadilly and there dine, for I must be back here before the sun set.'
So we locked the tomb and came away, and got over the wall of the churchyard, which was not much of a task, and drove back to Piccadilly.
NOTE LEFT BY VAN HELSING IN HIS PORTMANTEAU, BERKELEY HOTEL DIRECTED TO JOHN SEWARD, M. D. 
27 September
'Friend John,
'I write this in case anything should happen. I go alone to watch in that churchyard. It pleases me that the UnDead, Miss Lucy, shall not leave tonight, that so on the morrow night she may be more eager. Therefore I shall fix some things she like not, garlic and a crucifix, and so seal up the door of the tomb. She is young as UnDead, and will heed. Moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out. They may not prevail on her wanting to get in, for then the UnDead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance, whatsoever it may be. I shall be at hand all the night from sunset till after sunrise, and if there be aught that may be learned I shall learn it. For Miss Lucy or from her, I have no fear, but that other to whom is there that she is UnDead, he have not the power to seek her tomb and find shelter. He is cunning, as I know from Mr. Jonathan and from the way that all along he have fooled us when he played with us for Miss Lucy's life, and we lost, and in many ways the UnDead are strong. He have always the strength in his hand of twenty men, even we four who gave our strength to Miss Lucy it also is all to him. Besides, he can summon his wolf and I know not what. So if it be that he came thither on this night he shall find me. But none other shall, until it be too late. But it may be that he will not attempt the place. There is no reason why he should. His hunting ground is more full of game than the churchyard where the UnDead woman sleeps, and the one old man watch.
'Therefore I write this in case... Take the papers that are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read them, and then find this great UnDead, and cut off his head and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the world may rest from him.
'If it be so, farewell.
'VAN HELSING.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
28 September.-It is wonderful what a good night's sleep will do for one. Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing's monstrous ideas, but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on common sense. I have no doubt that he believes it all. I wonder if his mind can have become in any way unhinged. Surely there must be some rational explanation of all these mysterious things. Is it possible that the Professor can have done it himself? He is so abnormally clever that if he went off his head he would carry out his intent with regard to some fixed idea in a wonderful way. I am loathe to think it, and indeed it would be almost as great a marvel as the other to find that Van Helsing was mad, but anyhow I shall watch him carefully. I may get some light on the mystery.
29 September.-Last night, at a little before ten o'clock, Arthur and Quincey came into Van Helsing's room. He told us all what he wanted us to do, but especially addressing himself to Arthur, as if all our wills were centred in his. He began by saying that he hoped we would all come with him too, 'for,' he said, 'there is a grave duty to be done there. You were doubtless surprised at my letter?' This query was directly addressed to Lord Godalming.
'I was. It rather upset me for a bit. There has been so much trouble around my house of late that I could do without any more. I have been curious, too, as to what you mean.
'Quincey and I talked it over, but the more we talked, the more puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm about up a tree as to any meaning about anything.'
'Me too,' said Quincey Morris laconically.
'Oh,' said the Professor, 'then you are nearer the beginning, both of you, than friend John here, who has to go a long way back before he can even get so far as to begin.'
It was evident that he recognized my return to my old doubting frame of mind without my saying a word. Then, turning to the other two, he said with intense gravity,
'I want your permission to do what I think good this night. It is, I know, much to ask, and when you know what it is I propose to do you will know, and only then how much. Therefore may I ask that you promise me in the dark, so that afterwards, though you may be angry with me for a time, I must not disguise from myself the possibility that such may be, you shall not blame yourselves for anything.'
'That's frank anyhow,' broke in Quincey. 'I'll answer for the Professor. I don't quite see his drift, but I swear he's honest, and that's good enough for me.'
'I thank you, Sir,' said Van Helsing proudly. 'I have done myself the honour of counting you one trusting friend, and such endorsement is dear to me.' He held out a hand, which Quincey took.
Then Arthur spoke out, 'Dr. Van Helsing, I don't quite like to 'buy a pig in a poke', as they say in Scotland, and if it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise. If you can assure me that what you intend does not violate either of these two, then I give my consent at once, though for the life of me, I cannot understand what you are driving at.'
'I accept your limitation,' said Van Helsing, 'and all I ask of you is that if you feel it necessary to condemn any act of mine, you will first consider it well and be satisfied that it does not violate your reservations.'
'Agreed!' said Arthur. 'That is only fair. And now that the pourparlers are over, may I ask what it is we are to do?'
'I want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard at Kingstead.'
Arthur's face fell as he said in an amazed sort of way,
'Where poor Lucy is buried?'
The Professor bowed.
Arthur went on, 'And when there?'
'To enter the tomb!'
Arthur stood up. 'Professor, are you in earnest, or is it some monstrous joke? Pardon me, I see that you are in earnest.' He sat down again, but I could see that he sat firmly and proudly, as one who is on his dignity. There was silence until he asked again, 'And when in the tomb?'
'To open the coffin.'
'This is too much!' he said, angrily rising again. 'I am willing to be patient in all things that are reasonable, but in this, this desecration of the grave, of one who... ' He fairly choked with indignation.
The Professor looked pityingly at him. 'If I could spare you one pang, my poor friend,' he said, 'God knows I would. But this night our feet must tread in thorny paths, or later, and for ever, the feet you love must walk in paths of flame!'
Arthur looked up with set white face and said, 'Take care, sir, take care!'
'Would it not be well to hear what I have to say?' said Van Helsing. 'And then you will at least know the limit of my purpose. Shall I go on?'
'That's fair enough,' broke in Morris.
After a pause Van Helsing went on, evidently with an effort, 'Miss Lucy is dead, is it not so? Yes! Then there can be no wrong to her. But if she be not dead... '
Arthur jumped to his feet, 'Good God!' he cried. 'What do you mean? Has there been any mistake, has she been buried alive?' He groaned in anguish that not even hope could soften.
'I did not say she was alive, my child. I did not think it. I go no further than to say that she might be UnDead.'
'UnDead! Not alive! What do you mean? Is this all a nightmare, or what is it?'
'There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. Believe me, we are now on the verge of one. But I have not done. May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?'
'Heavens and earth, no!' cried Arthur in a storm of passion. 'Not for the wide world will I consent to any mutilation of her dead body. Dr. Van Helsing, you try me too far. What have I done to you that you should torture me so? What did that poor, sweet girl do that you should want to cast such dishonour on her grave? Are you mad, that you speak of such things, or am I mad to listen to them? Don't dare think more of such a desecration. I shall not give my consent to anything you do. I have a duty to do in protecting her grave from outrage, and by God, I shall do it!'
Van Helsing rose up from where he had all the time been seated, and said, gravely and sternly, 'My Lord Godalming, I too, have a duty to do, a duty to others, a duty to you, a duty to the dead, and by God, I shall do it! All I ask you now is that you come with me, that you look and listen, and if when later I make the same request you do not be more eager for its fulfillment even than I am, then, I shall do my duty, whatever it may seem to me. And then, to follow your Lordship's wishes I shall hold myself at your disposal to render an account to you, when and where you will.' His voice broke a little, and he went on with a voice full of pity.
'But I beseech you, do not go forth in anger with me. In a long life of acts which were often not pleasant to do, and which sometimes did wring my heart, I have never had so heavy a task as now. Believe me that if the time comes for you to change your mind towards me, one look from you will wipe away all this so sad hour, for I would do what a man can to save you from sorrow. Just think. For why should I give myself so much labor and so much of sorrow? I have come here from my own land to do what I can of good, at the first to please my friend John, and then to help a sweet young lady, whom too, I come to love. For her, I am ashamed to say so much, but I say it in kindness, I gave what you gave, the blood of my veins. I gave it, I who was not, like you, her lover, but only her physician and her friend. I gave her my nights and days, before death, after death, and if my death can do her good even now, when she is the dead UnDead, she shall have it freely.' He said this with a very grave, sweet pride, and Arthur was much affected by it.
He took the old man's hand and said in a broken voice, 'Oh, it is hard to think of it, and I cannot understand, but at least I shall go with you and wait.'
Chapter 16
DR SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.
It was just a quarter before twelve o'clock when we got into the churchyard over the low wall. The night was dark with occasional gleams of moonlight between the dents of the heavy clouds that scudded across the sky. We all kept somehow close together, with Van Helsing slightly in front as he led the way. When we had come close to the tomb I looked well at Arthur, for I feared the proximity to a place laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him, but he bore himself well. I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to his grief. The Professor unlocked the door, and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various reasons, solved the difficulty by entering first himself. The rest of us followed, and he closed the door. He then lit a dark lantern and pointed to a coffin. Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly. Van Helsing said to me, 'You were with me here yesterday. Was the body of Miss Lucy in that coffin?'
'It was.'
The Professor turned to the rest saying, 'You hear, and yet there is no one who does not believe with me.'
He took his screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin. Arthur looked on, very pale but silent. When the lid was removed he stepped forward. He evidently did not know that there was a leaden coffin, or at any rate, had not thought of it. When he saw the rent in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness. He was still silent. Van Helsing forced back the leaden flange, and we all looked in and recoiled.
The coffin was empty!
For several minutes no one spoke a word. The silence was broken by Quincey Morris, 'Professor, I answered for you. Your word is all I want. I wouldn't ask such a thing ordinarily, I wouldn't so dishonour you as to imply a doubt, but this is a mystery that goes beyond any honour or dishonour. Is this your doing?'
'I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed or touched her. What happened was this. Two nights ago my friend Seward and I came here, with good purpose, believe me. I opened that coffin, which was then sealed up, and we found it as now, empty. We then waited, and saw something white come through the trees. The next day we came here in daytime and she lay there. Did she not, friend John?
'Yes.'
'That night we were just in time. One more so small child was missing, and we find it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves. Yesterday I came here before sundown, for at sundown the UnDead can move. I waited here all night till the sun rose, but I saw nothing. It was most probable that it was because I had laid over the clamps of those doors garlic, which the UnDead cannot bear, and other things which they shun. Last night there was no exodus, so tonight before the sundown I took away my garlic and other things. And so it is we find this coffin empty. But bear with me. So far there is much that is strange. Wait you with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things much stranger are yet to be. So,' here he shut the dark slide of his lantern, 'now to the outside.' He opened the door, and we filed out, he coming last and locking the door behind him.
Oh! But it seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror of that vault. How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing and passing, like the gladness and sorrow of a man's life. How sweet it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay. How humanizing to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great city. Each in his own way was solemn and overcome. Arthur was silent, and was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the inner meaning of the mystery. I was myself tolerably patient, and half inclined again to throw aside doubt and to accept Van Helsing's conclusions. Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery, with hazard of all he has at stake. Not being able to smoke, he cut himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew. As to Van Helsing, he was employed in a definite way. First he took from his bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was carefully rolled up in a white napkin. Next he took out a double handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty. He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands. This he then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay them into the crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb. I was somewhat puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was that he was doing. Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too were curious.
He answered, 'I am closing the tomb so that the UnDead may not enter.'
'And is that stuff you have there going to do it?'
'It is.'
'What is that which you are using?' This time the question was by Arthur. Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered.
'The Host. I brought it from Amsterdam. I have an Indulgence.'
It was an answer that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor's, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust. In respectful silence we took the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from the sight of any one approaching. I pitied the others, especially Arthur. I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this watching horror, and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the proofs, felt my heart sink within me. Never did tombs look so ghastly white. Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom. Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously. Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.
There was a long spell of silence, big, aching, void, and then from the Professor a keen 'S-s-s-s!' He pointed, and far down the avenue of yews we saw a white figure advance, a dim white figure, which held something dark at its breast. The figure stopped, and at the moment a ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds, and showed in startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of the grave. We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what we saw to be a fair-haired child. There was a pause and a sharp little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before the fire and dreams. We were starting forward, but the Professor's warning hand, seen by us as he stood behind a yew tree, kept us back. And then as we looked the white figure moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.
Van Helsing stepped out, and obedient to his gesture, we all advanced too. The four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb. Van Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide. By the concentrated light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe.
We shuddered with horror. I could see by the tremulous light that even Van Helsing's iron nerve had failed. Arthur was next to me, and if I had not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.
When Lucy, I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore her shape, saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat gives when taken unawares, then her eyes ranged over us. Lucy's eyes in form and colour, but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell fire, instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew. At that moment the remnant of my love passed into hate and loathing. Had she then to be killed, I could have done it with savage delight. As she looked, her eyes blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a voluptuous smile. Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it! With a careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast, growling over it as a dog growls over a bone. The child gave a sharp cry, and lay there moaning. There was a cold-bloodedness in the act which wrung a groan from Arthur. When she advanced to him with outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in his hands.
She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said, 'Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!'
There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.
As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell, moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.
When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing's nerves. Never did I see such baffled malice on a face, and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw out sparks of hell fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death, if looks could kill, we saw it at that moment.
And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of entry.
Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur, 'Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?'
'Do as you will, friend. Do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more.' And he groaned in spirit.
Quincey and I simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. We could hear the click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down. Coming close to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on with horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass through the interstice where scarce a knife blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring the strings of putty to the edges of the door.
When this was done, he lifted the child and said, 'Come now, my friends. We can do no more till tomorrow. There is a funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton locks the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do, but not like this of tonight. As for this little one, he is not much harmed, and by tomorrow night he shall be well. We shall leave him where the police will find him, as on the other night, and then to home.'
Coming close to Arthur, he said, 'My friend Arthur, you have had a sore trial, but after, when you look back, you will see how it was necessary. You are now in the bitter waters, my child. By this time tomorrow you will, please God, have passed them, and have drunk of the sweet waters. So do not mourn over-much. Till then I shall not ask you to forgive me.'
Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other on the way. We had left behind the child in safety, and were tired. So we all slept with more or less reality of sleep.
29 September, night.-A little before twelve o'clock we three, Arthur, Quincey Morris, and myself, called for the Professor. It was odd to notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes. Of course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the rest of us wore it by instinct. We got to the graveyard by half-past one, and strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when the gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton under the belief that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place all to ourselves. Van Helsing, instead of his little black bag, had with him a long leather one, something like a cricketing bag. It was manifestly of fair weight.
When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the Professor to the tomb. He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing it behind us. Then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit, and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck by melting their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light sufficient to work by. When he again lifted the lid off Lucy's coffin we all looked, Arthur trembling like an aspen, and saw that the corpse lay there in all its death beauty. But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy's shape without her soul. I could see even Arthur's face grow hard as he looked. Presently he said to Van Helsing, 'Is this really Lucy's body, or only a demon in her shape?'
'It is her body, and yet not it. But wait a while, and you shall see her as she was, and is.'
She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there, the pointed teeth, the blood stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to see, the whole carnal and unspirited appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy's sweet purity. Van Helsing, with his usual methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and placing them ready for use. First he took out a soldering iron and some plumbing solder, and then small oil lamp, which gave out, when lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at a fierce heat with a blue flame, then his operating knives, which he placed to hand, and last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick and about three feet long. One end of it was hardened by charring in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor's preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation. They both, however, kept their courage, and remained silent and quiet.
When all was ready, Van Helsing said, 'Before we do anything, let me tell you this. It is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the UnDead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality. They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world. For all that die from the preying of the Undead become themselves Undead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water. Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die, or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would for all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror. The career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun. Those children whose blood she sucked are not as yet so much the worse, but if she lives on, UnDead, more and more they lose their blood and by her power over them they come to her, and so she draw their blood with that so wicked mouth. But if she die in truth, then all cease. The tiny wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their play unknowing ever of what has been. But of the most blessed of all, when this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the poor lady whom we love shall again be free. Instead of working wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels. So that, my friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow that sets her free. To this I am willing, but is there none amongst us who has a better right? Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in the silence of the night when sleep is not, 'It was my hand that sent her to the stars. It was the hand of him that loved her best, the hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to choose?' Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?'
We all looked at Arthur. He saw too, what we all did, the infinite kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which would restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory. He stepped forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was as pale as snow, 'My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you. Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!'
Van Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, 'Brave lad! A moment's courage, and it is done. This stake must be driven through her. It well be a fearful ordeal, be not deceived in that, but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great. From this grim tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air. But you must not falter when once you have begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for you all the time.'
'Go on,' said Arthur hoarsely. 'Tell me what I am to do.'
'Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place to the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead, I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow, strike in God's name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the UnDead pass away.'
Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could.
Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.
The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it. The sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through the little vault.
And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over.
The hammer fell from Arthur's hand. He reeled and would have fallen had we not caught him. The great drops of sweat sprang from his forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps. It had indeed been an awful strain on him, and had he not been forced to his task by more than human considerations he could never have gone through with it. For a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look towards the coffin. When we did, however, a murmur of startled surprise ran from one to the other of us. We gazed so eagerly that Arthur rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked too, and then a glad strange light broke over his face and dispelled altogether the gloom of horror that lay upon it.
There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste. But these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.
Van Helsing came and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder, and said to him, 'And now, Arthur my friend, dear lad, am I not forgiven?'
The reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man's hand in his, and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said, 'Forgiven! God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me peace.' He put his hands on the Professor's shoulder, and laying his head on his breast, cried for a while silently, whilst we stood unmoving.
When he raised his head Van Helsing said to him, 'And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now, not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil's UnDead. She is God's true dead, whose soul is with Him!'
Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the tomb. The Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away. When the Professor locked the door he gave the key to Arthur.
Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch. There was gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy.
Before we moved away Van Helsing said, 'Now, my friends, one step of our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves. But there remains a greater task, to find out the author of all this or sorrow and to stamp him out. I have clues which we can follow, but it is a long task, and a difficult one, and there is danger in it, and pain. Shall you not all help me? We have learned to believe, all of us, is it not so? And since so, do we not see our duty? Yes! And do we not promise to go on to the bitter end?'
Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made. Then said the Professor as we moved off, 'Two nights hence you shall meet with me and dine together at seven of the clock with friend John. I shall entreat two others, two that you know not as yet, and I shall be ready to all our work show and our plans unfold. Friend John, you come with me home, for I have much to consult you about, and you can help me. Tonight I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return tomorrow night. And then begins our great quest. But first I shall have much to say, so that you may know what to do and to dread. Then our promise shall be made to each other anew. For there is a terrible task before us, and once our feet are on the ploughshare we must not draw back.'
Chapter 17
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.
When we arrived at the Berkely Hotel, Van Helsing found a telegram waiting for him.
'Am coming up by train. Jonathan at Whitby. Important news. Mina Harker.'
The Professor was delighted. 'Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina,' he said, 'pearl among women! She arrive, but I cannot stay. She must go to your house, friend John. You must meet her at the station. Telegraph her en route so that she may be prepared.'
When the wire was dispatched he had a cup of tea. Over it he told me of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker's diary at Whitby. 'Take these,' he said, 'and study them well. When I have returned you will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our inquisition. Keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure. You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience as that of today. What is here told,' he laid his hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, 'may be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another, or it may sound the knell of the UnDead who walk the earth. Read all, I pray you, with the open mind, and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for it is all important. You have kept a diary of all these so strange things, is it not so? Yes! Then we shall go through all these together when we meet.' He then made ready for his departure and shortly drove off to Liverpool Street. I took my way to Paddington, where I arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in.
The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival platforms, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty looking girl stepped up to me, and after a quick glance said, 'Dr. Seward, is it not?'
'And you are Mrs. Harker!' I answered at once, whereupon she held out her hand.
'I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy, but... ' She stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.
The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for it was a tacit answer to her own. I got her luggage, which included a typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting room and a bedroom prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.
In due time we arrived. She knew, of course, that the place was a lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a shudder when we entered.
She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study, as she had much to say. So here I am finishing my entry in my phonograph diary whilst I await her. As yet I have not had the chance of looking at the papers which Van Helsing left with me, though they lie open before me. I must get her interested in something, so that I may have an opportunity of reading them. She does not know how precious time is, or what a task we have in hand. I must be careful not to frighten her. Here she is!
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
29 September.-After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward's study. At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him talking with some one. As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I knocked at the door, and on his calling out, 'Come in,' I entered.
To my intense surprise, there was no one with him. He was quite alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the description to be a phonograph. I had never seen one, and was much interested.
'I hope I did not keep you waiting,' I said, 'but I stayed at the door as I heard you talking, and thought there was someone with you.'
'Oh,' he replied with a smile, 'I was only entering my diary.'
'Your diary?' I asked him in surprise.
'Yes,' he answered. 'I keep it in this.' As he spoke he laid his hand on the phonograph. I felt quite excited over it, and blurted out, 'Why, this beats even shorthand! May I hear it say something?'
'Certainly,' he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train for speaking. Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his face.
'The fact is,' he began awkwardly, 'I only keep my diary in it, and as it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be awkward, that is, I mean... ' He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his embarrassment.
'You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end. Let me hear how she died, for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful. She was very, very dear to me.'
To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face, 'Tell you of her death? Not for the wide world!'
'Why not?' I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me.
Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an excuse. At length, he stammered out, 'You see, I do not know how to pick out any particular part of the diary.'
Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of a child, 'that's quite true, upon my honour. Honest Indian!'
I could not but smile, at which he grimaced. 'I gave myself away that time!' he said. 'But do you know that, although I have kept the diary for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?'
By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge of that terrible Being, and I said boldly, 'Then, Dr. Seward, you had better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter.'
He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said, 'No! No! No! For all the world. I wouldn't let you know that terrible story.!'
Then it was terrible. My intuition was right! For a moment, I thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch of typewriting on the table. His eyes caught the look in mine, and without his thinking, followed their direction. As they saw the parcel he realized my meaning.
'You do not know me,' I said. 'When you have read those papers, my own diary and my husband's also, which I have typed, you will know me better. I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart in this cause. But, of course, you do not know me, yet, and I must not expect you to trust me so far.'
He is certainly a man of noble nature. Poor dear Lucy was right about him. He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and said,
'You are quite right. I did not trust you because I did not know you. But I know you now, and let me say that I should have known you long ago. I know that Lucy told you of me. She told me of you too. May I make the only atonement in my power? Take the cylinders and hear them. The first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they will not horrify you. Then you will know me better. Dinner will by then be ready. In the meantime I shall read over some of these documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things.'
He carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting room and adjusted it for me. Now I shall learn something pleasant, I am sure. For it will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which I know one side already.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
29 September.-I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without thinking. Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce dinner, so I said, 'She is possibly tired. Let dinner wait an hour,' and I went on with my work. I had just finished Mrs. Harker's diary, when she came in. She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her eyes were flushed with crying. This somehow moved me much. Of late I have had cause for tears, God knows! But the relief of them was denied me, and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened by recent tears, went straight to my heart. So I said as gently as I could, 'I greatly fear I have distressed you.'
'Oh, no, not distressed me,' she replied. 'But I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a wonderful machine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of your heart. It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be useful. I have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.'
'No one need ever know, shall ever know,' I said in a low voice. She laid her hand on mine and said very gravely, 'Ah, but they must!'
'Must! but why?' I asked.
'Because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor Lucy's death and all that led to it. Because in the struggle which we have before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all the knowledge and all the help which we can get. I think that the cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to know. But I can see that there are in your record many lights to this dark mystery. You will let me help, will you not? I know all up to a certain point, and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7 September, how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was being wrought out. Jonathan and I have been working day and night since Professor Van Helsing saw us. He is gone to Whitby to get more information, and he will be here tomorrow to help us. We need have no secrets amongst us. Working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark.'
She looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such courage and resolution in her bearing, that I gave in at once to her wishes. 'You shall,' I said, 'do as you like in the matter. God forgive me if I do wrong! There are terrible things yet to learn of. But if you have so far traveled on the road to poor Lucy's death, you will not be content, I know, to remain in the dark. Nay, the end, the very end, may give you a gleam of peace. Come, there is dinner. We must keep one another strong for what is before us. We have a cruel and dreadful task. When you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and I shall answer any questions you ask, if there be anything which you do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present.'
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
29 September.-After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study. He brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took a chair, and arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause. Then he very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might be as free as possible, and began to read. I put the forked metal to my ears and listened.
When the terrible story of Lucy's death, and all that followed, was done, I lay back in my chair powerless. Fortunately I am not of a fainting disposition. When Dr. Seward saw me he jumped up with a horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case bottle from the cupboard, gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat restored me. My brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my dear Lucy was at last at peace, I do not think I could have borne it without making a scene. It is all so wild and mysterious, and strange that if I had not known Jonathan's experience in Transylvania I could not have believed. As it was, I didn't know what to believe, and so got out of my difficulty by attending to something else. I took the cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward,
'Let me write this all out now. We must be ready for Dr. Van Helsing when he comes. I have sent a telegram to Jonathan to come on here when he arrives in London from Whitby. In this matter dates are everything, and I think that if we get all of our material ready, and have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much.
'You tell me that Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris are coming too. Let us be able to tell them when they come.'
He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to typewrite from the beginning of the seventeenth cylinder. I used manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done with the rest. It was late when I got through, but Dr. Seward went about his work of going his round of the patients. When he had finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that I did not feel too lonely whilst I worked. How good and thoughtful he is. The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.
Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the Professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at the station at Exeter, so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his newspapers, I borrowed the files of 'The Westminster Gazette' and 'The Pall Mall Gazette' and took them to my room. I remember how much the 'Dailygraph' and 'The Whitby Gazette', of which I had made cuttings, had helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count Dracula landed, so I shall look through the evening papers since then, and perhaps I shall get some new light. I am not sleepy, and the work will help to keep me quiet.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
30 September.-Mr. Harker arrived at nine o'clock. He got his wife's wire just before starting. He is uncommonly clever, if one can judge from his face, and full of energy. If this journal be true, and judging by one's own wonderful experiences, it must be, he is also a man of great nerve. That going down to the vault a second time was a remarkable piece of daring. After reading his account of it I was prepared to meet a good specimen of manhood, but hardly the quiet, businesslike gentleman who came here today.
LATER.-After lunch Harker and his wife went back to their own room, and as I passed a while ago I heard the click of the typewriter. They are hard at it. Mrs. Harker says that knitting together in chronological order every scrap of evidence they have. Harker has got the letters between the consignee of the boxes at Whitby and the carriers in London who took charge of them. He is now reading his wife's transcript of my diary. I wonder what they make out of it. Here it is... 
Strange that it never struck me that the very next house might be the Count's hiding place! Goodness knows that we had enough clues from the conduct of the patient Renfield! The bundle of letters relating to the purchase of the house were with the transcript. Oh, if we had only had them earlier we might have saved poor Lucy! Stop! That way madness lies! Harker has gone back, and is again collecting material. He says that by dinner time they will be able to show a whole connected narrative. He thinks that in the meantime I should see Renfield, as hitherto he has been a sort of index to the coming and going of the Count. I hardly see this yet, but when I get at the dates I suppose I shall. What a good thing that Mrs. Harker put my cylinders into type! We never could have found the dates otherwise.
I found Renfield sitting placidly in his room with his hands folded, smiling benignly. At the moment he seemed as sane as any one I ever saw. I sat down and talked with him on a lot of subjects, all of which he treated naturally. He then, of his own accord, spoke of going home, a subject he has never mentioned to my knowledge during his sojourn here. In fact, he spoke quite confidently of getting his discharge at once. I believe that, had I not had the chat with Harker and read the letters and the dates of his outbursts, I should have been prepared to sign for him after a brief time of observation. As it is, I am darkly suspicious. All those out-breaks were in some way linked with the proximity of the Count. What then does this absolute content mean? Can it be that his instinct is satisfied as to the vampire's ultimate triumph? Stay. He is himself zoophagous, and in his wild ravings outside the chapel door of the deserted house he always spoke of 'master'. This all seems confirmation of our idea. However, after a while I came away. My friend is just a little too sane at present to make it safe to probe him too deep with questions. He might begin to think, and then... So I came away. I mistrust these quiet moods of of his, so I have given the attendant a hint to look closely after him, and to have a strait waistcoat ready in case of need.
JOHNATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
29 September, in train to London.-When I received Mr. Billington's courteous message that he would give me any information in his power I thought it best to go down to Whitby and make, on the spot, such inquiries as I wanted. It was now my object to trace that horrid cargo of the Count's to its place in London. Later, we may be able to deal with it. Billington junior, a nice lad, met me at the station, and brought me to his father's house, where they had decided that I must spend the night. They are hospitable, with true Yorkshire hospitality, give a guest everything and leave him to do as he likes. They all knew that I was busy, and that my stay was short, and Mr. Billington had ready in his office all the papers concerning the consignment of boxes. It gave me almost a turn to see again one of the letters which I had seen on the Count's table before I knew of his diabolical plans. Everything had been carefully thought out, and done systematically and with precision. He seemed to have been prepared for every obstacle which might be placed by accident in the way of his intentions being carried out. To use an Americanism, he had 'taken no chances', and the absolute accuracy with which his instructions were fulfilled was simply the logical result of his care. I saw the invoice, and took note of it.'Fifty cases of common earth, to be used for experimental purposes'. Also the copy of the letter to Carter Paterson, and their reply. Of both these I got copies. This was all the information Mr. Billington could give me, so I went down to the port and saw the coastguards, the Customs Officers and the harbour master, who kindly put me in communication with the men who had actually received the boxes. Their tally was exact with the list, and they had nothing to add to the simple description 'fifty cases of common earth', except that the boxes were 'main and mortal heavy', and that shifting them was dry work. One of them added that it was hard lines that there wasn't any gentleman 'such like as like yourself, squire', to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a liquid form. Another put in a rider that the thirst then generated was such that even the time which had elapsed had not completely allayed it. Needless to add, I took care before leaving to lift, forever and adequately, this source of reproach.
30 September.-The station master was good enough to give me a line to his old companion the station master at King's Cross, so that when I arrived there in the morning I was able to ask him about the arrival of the boxes. He, too put me at once in communication with the proper officials, and I saw that their tally was correct with the original invoice. The opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been here limited. A noble use of them had, however, been made, and again I was compelled to deal with the result in ex post facto manner.
From thence I went to Carter Paterson's central office, where I met with the utmost courtesy. They looked up the transaction in their day book and letter book, and at once telephoned to their King's Cross office for more details. By good fortune, the men who did the teaming were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over, sending also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected with the delivery of the boxes at Carfax. Here again I found the tally agreeing exactly. The carriers' men were able to supplement the paucity of the written words with a few more details. These were, I shortly found, connected almost solely with the dusty nature of the job, and the consequent thirst engendered in the operators. On my affording an opportunity, through the medium of the currency of the realm, of the allaying, at a later period, this beneficial evil, one of the men remarked,
'That 'ere 'ouse, guv'nor, is the rummiest I ever was in. Blyme! But it ain't been touched sence a hundred years. There was dust that thick in the place that you might have slep' on it without 'urtin' of yer bones. An' the place was that neglected that yer might 'ave smelled ole Jerusalem in it. But the old chapel, that took the cike, that did! Me and my mate, we thort we wouldn't never git out quick enough. Lor', I wouldn't take less nor a quid a moment to stay there arter dark.'
Having been in the house, I could well believe him, but if he knew what I know, he would, I think have raised his terms.
Of one thing I am now satisfied. That all those boxes which arrived at Whitby from Varna in the Demeter were safely deposited in the old chapel at Carfax. There should be fifty of them there, unless any have since been removed, as from Dr. Seward's diary I fear.
Later.-Mina and I have worked all day, and we have put all the papers into order.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 September.-I am so glad that I hardly know how to contain myself. It is, I suppose, the reaction from the haunting fear which I have had, that this terrible affair and the reopening of his old wound might act detrimentally on Jonathan. I saw him leave for Whitby with as brave a face as could, but I was sick with apprehension. The effort has, however, done him good. He was never so resolute, never so strong, never so full of volcanic energy, as at present. It is just as that dear, good Professor Van Helsing said, he is true grit, and he improves under strain that would kill a weaker nature. He came back full of life and hope and determination. We have got everything in order for tonight. I feel myself quite wild with excitement. I suppose one ought to pity anything so hunted as the Count. That is just it. This thing is not human, not even a beast. To read Dr. Seward's account of poor Lucy's death, and what followed, is enough to dry up the springs of pity in one's heart.
Later.-Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris arrived earlier than we expected. Dr. Seward was out on business, and had taken Jonathan with him, so I had to see them. It was to me a painful meeting, for it brought back all poor dear Lucy's hopes of only a few months ago. Of course they had heard Lucy speak of me, and it seemed that Dr. Van Helsing, too, had been quite 'blowing my trumpet', as Mr. Morris expressed it. Poor fellows, neither of them is aware that I know all about the proposals they made to Lucy. They did not quite know what to say or do, as they were ignorant of the amount of my knowledge. So they had to keep on neutral subjects. However, I thought the matter over, and came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do would be to post them on affairs right up to date. I knew from Dr. Seward's diary that they had been at Lucy's death, her real death, and that I need not fear to betray any secret before the time. So I told them, as well as I could, that I had read all the papers and diaries, and that my husband and I, having typewritten them, had just finished putting them in order. I gave them each a copy to read in the library. When Lord Godalming got his and turned it over, it does make a pretty good pile, he said, 'Did you write all this, Mrs. Harker?'
I nodded, and he went on.
'I don't quite see the drift of it, but you people are all so good and kind, and have been working so earnestly and so energetically, that all I can do is to accept your ideas blindfold and try to help you. I have had one lesson already in accepting facts that should make a man humble to the last hour of his life. Besides, I know you loved my Lucy... '
Here he turned away and covered his face with his hands. I could hear the tears in his voice. Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out of the room. I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood. For when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly. I sat down beside him and took his hand. I hope he didn't think it forward of me, and that if he ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a thought. There I wrong him. I know he never will. He is too true a gentleman. I said to him, for I could see that his heart was breaking, 'I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what you were to her. She and I were like sisters, and now she is gone, will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble? I know what sorrows you have had, though I cannot measure the depth of them. If sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be of some little service, for Lucy's sake?'
In an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief. It seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence found a vent at once. He grew quite hysterical, and raising his open hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief. He stood up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks. I felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly. With a sob he laid his head on my shoulder and cried like a wearied child, whilst he shook with emotion.
We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother spirit is invoked. I felt this big sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of a baby that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child. I never thought at the time how strange it all was.
After a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion. He told me that for days and nights past, weary days and sleepless nights, he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely.
'I know now how I suffered,' he said, as he dried his eyes, 'but I do not know even yet, and none other can ever know, how much your sweet sympathy has been to me today. I shall know better in time, and believe me that, though I am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will grow with my understanding. You will let me be like a brother, will you not, for all our lives, for dear Lucy's sake?'
'For dear Lucy's sake,' I said as we clasped hands. 'Ay, and for your own sake,' he added, 'for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever worth the winning, you have won mine today. If ever the future should bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will not call in vain. God grant that no such time may ever come to you to break the sunshine of your life, but if it should ever come, promise me that you will let me know.'
He was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that I felt it would comfort him, so I said, 'I promise.'
As I came along the corridor I say Mr. Morris looking out of a window. He turned as he heard my footsteps. 'How is Art?' he said. Then noticing my red eyes, he went on, 'Ah, I see you have been comforting him. Poor old fellow! He needs it. No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart, and he had no one to comfort him.'
He bore his own trouble so bravely that my heart bled for him. I saw the manuscript in his hand, and I knew that when he read it he would realize how much I knew, so I said to him, 'I wish I could comfort all who suffer from the heart. Will you let me be your friend, and will you come to me for comfort if you need it? You will know later why I speak.'
He saw that I was in earnest, and stooping, took my hand, and raising it to his lips, kissed it. It seemed but poor comfort to so brave and unselfish a soul, and impulsively I bent over and kissed him. The tears rose in his eyes, and there was a momentary choking in his throat. He said quite calmly, 'Little girl, you will never forget that true hearted kindness, so long as ever you live!' Then he went into the study to his friend.
'Little girl!' The very words he had used to Lucy, and, oh, but he proved himself a friend.
Chapter 18
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
30 September.-I got home at five o'clock, and found that Godalming and Morris had not only arrived, but had already studied the transcript of the various diaries and letters which Harker had not yet returned from his visit to the carriers' men, of whom Dr. Hennessey had written to me. Mrs. Harker gave us a cup of tea, and I can honestly say that, for the first time since I have lived in it, this old house seemed like home. When we had finished, Mrs. Harker said,
'Dr. Seward, may I ask a favour? I want to see your patient, Mr. Renfield. Do let me see him. What you have said of him in your diary interests me so much!'
She looked so appealing and so pretty that I could not refuse her, and there was no possible reason why I should, so I took her with me. When I went into the room, I told the man that a lady would like to see him, to which he simply answered, 'Why?'
'She is going through the house, and wants to see every one in it,' I answered.
'Oh, very well,' he said, 'let her come in, by all means, but just wait a minute till I tidy up the place.'
His method of tidying was peculiar, he simply swallowed all the flies and spiders in the boxes before I could stop him. It was quite evident that he feared, or was jealous of, some interference. When he had got through his disgusting task, he said cheerfully, 'Let the lady come in,' and sat down on the edge of his bed with his head down, but with his eyelids raised so that he could see her as she entered. For a moment I thought that he might have some homicidal intent. I remembered how quiet he had been just before he attacked me in my own study, and I took care to stand where I could seize him at once if he attempted to make a spring at her.
She came into the room with an easy gracefulness which would at once command the respect of any lunatic, for easiness is one of the qualities mad people most respect. She walked over to him, smiling pleasantly, and held out her hand.
'Good evening, Mr. Renfield,' said she. 'You see, I know you, for Dr. Seward has told me of you.' He made no immediate reply, but eyed her all over intently with a set frown on his face. This look gave way to one of wonder, which merged in doubt, then to my intense astonishment he said, 'You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? You can't be, you know, for she's dead.'
Mrs. Harker smiled sweetly as she replied, 'Oh no! I have a husband of my own, to whom I was married before I ever saw Dr. Seward, or he me. I am Mrs. Harker.'
'Then what are you doing here?'
'My husband and I are staying on a visit with Dr. Seward.'
'Then don't stay.'
'But why not?'
I thought that this style of conversation might not be pleasant to Mrs. Harker, any more than it was to me, so I joined in, 'How did you know I wanted to marry anyone?'
His reply was simply contemptuous, given in a pause in which he turned his eyes from Mrs. Harker to me, instantly turning them back again, 'What an asinine question!'
'I don't see that at all, Mr. Renfield,' said Mrs. Harker, at once championing me.
He replied to her with as much courtesy and respect as he had shown contempt to me, 'You will, of course, understand, Mrs. Harker, that when a man is so loved and honoured as our host is, everything regarding him is of interest in our little community. Dr. Seward is loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his patients, who, being some of them hardly in mental equilibrium, are apt to distort causes and effects. Since I myself have been an inmate of a lunatic asylum, I cannot but notice that the sophistic tendencies of some of its inmates lean towards the errors of non causa and ignoratio elenche.'
I positively opened my eyes at this new development. Here was my own pet lunatic, the most pronounced of his type that I had ever met with, talking elemental philosophy, and with the manner of a polished gentleman. I wonder if it was Mrs. Harker's presence which had touched some chord in his memory. If this new phase was spontaneous, or in any way due to her unconscious influence, she must have some rare gift or power.
We continued to talk for some time, and seeing that he was seemingly quite reasonable, she ventured, looking at me questioningly as she began, to lead him to his favourite topic. I was again astonished, for he addressed himself to the question with the impartiality of the completest sanity. He even took himself as an example when he mentioned certain things.
'Why, I myself am an instance of a man who had a strange belief. Indeed, it was no wonder that my friends were alarmed, and insisted on my being put under control. I used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual entity, and that by consuming a multitude of live things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong life. At times I held the belief so strongly that I actually tried to take human life. The doctor here will bear me out that on one occasion I tried to kill him for the purpose of strengthening my vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of his life through the medium of his blood, relying of course, upon the Scriptural phrase, 'For the blood is the life.' Though, indeed, the vendor of a certain nostrum has vulgarized the truism to the very point of contempt. Isn't that true, doctor?'
I nodded assent, for I was so amazed that I hardly knew what to either think or say, it was hard to imagine that I had seen him eat up his spiders and flies not five minutes before. Looking at my watch, I saw that I should go to the station to meet Van Helsing, so I told Mrs. Harker that it was time to leave.
She came at once, after saying pleasantly to Mr. Renfield, 'Goodbye, and I hope I may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to yourself.'
To which, to my astonishment, he replied, 'Goodbye, my dear. I pray God I may never see your sweet face again. May He bless and keep you!'
When I went to the station to meet Van Helsing I left the boys behind me. Poor Art seemed more cheerful than he has been since Lucy first took ill, and Quincey is more like his own bright self than he has been for many a long day.
Van Helsing stepped from the carriage with the eager nimbleness of a boy. He saw me at once, and rushed up to me, saying, 'Ah, friend John, how goes all? Well? So! I have been busy, for I come here to stay if need be. All affairs are settled with me, and I have much to tell. Madam Mina is with you? Yes. And her so fine husband? And Arthur and my friend Quincey, they are with you, too? Good!'
As I drove to the house I told him of what had passed, and of how my own diary had come to be of some use through Mrs. Harker's suggestion, at which the Professor interrupted me.
'Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man's brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination. Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us, after tonight she must not have to do with this so terrible affair. It is not good that she run a risk so great. We men are determined, nay, are we not pledged, to destroy this monster? But it is no part for a woman. Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer, both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams. And, besides, she is young woman and not so long married, there may be other things to think of some time, if not now. You tell me she has wrote all, then she must consult with us, but tomorrow she say goodbye to this work, and we go alone.'
I agreed heartily with him, and then I told him what we had found in his absence, that the house which Dracula had bought was the very next one to my own. He was amazed, and a great concern seemed to come on him.
'Oh that we had known it before!' he said, 'for then we might have reached him in time to save poor Lucy. However, 'the milk that is spilt cries not out afterwards,'as you say. We shall not think of that, but go on our way to the end.' Then he fell into a silence that lasted till we entered my own gateway. Before we went to prepare for dinner he said to Mrs. Harker, 'I am told, Madam Mina, by my friend John that you and your husband have put up in exact order all things that have been, up to this moment.'
'Not up to this moment, Professor,' she said impulsively, 'but up to this morning.'
'But why not up to now? We have seen hitherto how good light all the little things have made. We have told our secrets, and yet no one who has told is the worse for it.'
Mrs. Harker began to blush, and taking a paper from her pockets, she said, 'Dr. Van Helsing, will you read this, and tell me if it must go in. It is my record of today. I too have seen the need of putting down at present everything, however trivial, but there is little in this except what is personal. Must it go in?'
The Professor read it over gravely, and handed it back, saying, 'It need not go in if you do not wish it, but I pray that it may. It can but make your husband love you the more, and all us, your friends, more honour you, as well as more esteem and love.' She took it back with another blush and a bright smile.
And so now, up to this very hour, all the records we have are complete and in order. The Professor took away one copy to study after dinner, and before our meeting, which is fixed for nine o'clock. The rest of us have already read everything, so when we meet in the study we shall all be informed as to facts, and can arrange our plan of battle with this terrible and mysterious enemy.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 September.-When we met in Dr. Seward's study two hours after dinner, which had been at six o'clock, we unconsciously formed a sort of board or committee. Professor Van Helsing took the head of the table, to which Dr. Seward motioned him as he came into the room. He made me sit next to him on his right, and asked me to act as secretary. Jonathan sat next to me. Opposite us were Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris, Lord Godalming being next the Professor, and Dr. Seward in the centre.
The Professor said, 'I may, I suppose, take it that we are all acquainted with the facts that are in these papers.' We all expressed assent, and he went on, 'Then it were, I think, good that I tell you something of the kind of enemy with which we have to deal. I shall then make known to you something of the history of this man, which has been ascertained for me. So we then can discuss how we shall act, and can take our measure according.
'There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples. I admit that at the first I was sceptic. Were it not that through long years I have trained myself to keep an open mind, I could not have believed until such time as that fact thunder on my ear.'See! See! I prove, I prove.' Alas! Had I known at first what now I know, nay, had I even guess at him, one so precious life had been spared to many of us who did love her. But that is gone, and we must so work, that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save. The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command, he is brute, and more than brute, he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not, he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder, he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small, and he can at times vanish and come unknown. How then are we to begin our strike to destroy him? How shall we find his where, and having found it, how can we destroy? My friends, this is much, it is a terrible task that we undertake, and there may be consequence to make the brave shudder. For if we fail in this our fight he must surely win, and then where end we? Life is nothings, I heed him not. But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him, that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. But we are face to face with duty, and in such case must we shrink? For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet in store. What say you?'
Whilst he was speaking, Jonathan had taken my hand. I feared, oh so much, that the appalling nature of our danger was overcoming him when I saw his hand stretch out, but it was life to me to feel its touch, so strong, so self reliant, so resolute. A brave man's hand can speak for itself, it does not even need a woman's love to hear its music.
When the Professor had done speaking my husband looked in my eyes, and I in his, there was no need for speaking between us.
'I answer for Mina and myself,' he said.
'Count me in, Professor,' said Mr. Quincey Morris, laconically as usual.
'I am with you,' said Lord Godalming, 'for Lucy's sake, if for no other reason.'
Dr. Seward simply nodded.
The Professor stood up and, after laying his golden crucifix on the table, held out his hand on either side. I took his right hand, and Lord Godalming his left, Jonathan held my right with his left and stretched across to Mr. Morris. So as we all took hands our solemn compact was made. I felt my heart icy cold, but it did not even occur to me to draw back. We resumed our places, and Dr. Van Helsing went on with a sort of cheerfulness which showed that the serious work had begun. It was to be taken as gravely, and in as businesslike a way, as any other transaction of life.
'Well, you know what we have to contend against, but we too, are not without strength. We have on our side power of combination, a power denied to the vampire kind, we have sources of science, we are free to act and think, and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. We have self devotion in a cause and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much.
'Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are restrict, and how the individual cannot. In fine, let us consider the limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular.
'All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions. These do not at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and death, nay of more than either life or death. Yet must we be satisfied, in the first place because we have to be, no other means is at our control, and secondly, because, after all these things, tradition and superstition, are everything. Does not the belief in vampires rest for others, though not, alas! for us, on them! A year ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst of our scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century? We even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes. Take it, then, that the vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his cure, rest for the moment on the same base. For, let me tell you, he is known everywhere that men have been. In old Greece, in old Rome, he flourish in Germany all over, in France, in India, even in the Chermosese, and in China, so far from us in all ways, there even is he, and the peoples for him at this day. He have follow the wake of the berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon, the Magyar.
'So far, then, we have all we may act upon, and let me tell you that very much of the beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own so unhappy experience. The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time, he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living. Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger, that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty.
'But he cannot flourish without this diet, he eat not as others. Even friend Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him eat, never! He throws no shadow, he make in the mirror no reflect, as again Jonathan observe. He has the strength of many of his hand, witness again Jonathan when he shut the door against the wolves, and when he help him from the diligence too. He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship arrival in Whitby, when he tear open the dog, he can be as bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at Whitby, and as friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as my friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy.
'He can come in mist which he create, that noble ship's captain proved him of this, but, from what we know, the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself.
'He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust, as again Jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small, we ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door. He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire, solder you call it. He can see in the dark, no small power this, in a world which is one half shut from the light. Ah, but hear me through.
'He can do all these things, yet he is not free. Nay, he is even more prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman in his cell. He cannot go where he lists, he who is not of nature has yet to obey some of nature's laws, why we know not. He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please. His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day.
'Only at certain times can he have limited freedom. If he be not at the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise or sunset. These things we are told, and in this record of ours we have proof by inference. Thus, whereas he can do as he will within his limit, when he have his earth-home, his coffin-home, his hell-home, the place unhallowed, as we saw when he went to the grave of the suicide at Whitby, still at other time he can only change when the time come. It is said, too, that he can only pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide. Then there are things which so afflict him that he has no power, as the garlic that we know of, and as for things sacred, as this symbol, my crucifix, that was amongst us even now when we resolve, to them he is nothing, but in their presence he take his place far off and silent with respect. There are others, too, which I shall tell you of, lest in our seeking we may need them.
'The branch of wild rose on his coffin keep him that he move not from it, a sacred bullet fired into the coffin kill him so that he be true dead, and as for the stake through him, we know already of its peace, or the cut off head that giveth rest. We have seen it with our eyes.
'Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know. But he is clever. I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record, and from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has been. He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland. If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' That mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as 'stregoica' witch, 'ordog' and 'pokol' Satan and hell, and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,'which we all understand too well. There have been from the loins of this very one great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where alone this foulness can dwell. For it is not the least of its terrors that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good, in soil barren of holy memories it cannot rest.'
Whilst they were talking Mr. Morris was looking steadily at the window, and he now got up quietly, and went out of the room. There was a little pause, and then the Professor went on.
'And now we must settle what we do. We have here much data, and we must proceed to lay out our campaign. We know from the inquiry of Jonathan that from the castle to Whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all of which were delivered at Carfax, we also know that at least some of these boxes have been removed. It seems to me, that our first step should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house beyond that wall where we look today, or whether any more have been removed. If the latter, we must trace... '
Here we were interrupted in a very startling way. Outside the house came the sound of a pistol shot, the glass of the window was shattered with a bullet, which ricochetting from the top of the embrasure, struck the far wall of the room. I am afraid I am at heart a coward, for I shrieked out. The men all jumped to their feet, Lord Godalming flew over to the window and threw up the sash. As he did so we heard Mr. Morris' voice without, 'Sorry! I fear I have alarmed you. I shall come in and tell you about it.'
A minute later he came in and said, 'It was an idiotic thing of me to do, and I ask your pardon, Mrs. Harker, most sincerely, I fear I must have frightened you terribly. But the fact is that whilst the Professor was talking there came a big bat and sat on the window sill. I have got such a horror of the damned brutes from recent events that I cannot stand them, and I went out to have a shot, as I have been doing of late of evenings, whenever I have seen one. You used to laugh at me for it then, Art.'
'Did you hit it?' asked Dr. Van Helsing.
'I don't know, I fancy not, for it flew away into the wood.' Without saying any more he took his seat, and the Professor began to resume his statement.
'We must trace each of these boxes, and when we are ready, we must either capture or kill this monster in his lair, or we must, so to speak, sterilize the earth, so that no more he can seek safety in it. Thus in the end we may find him in his form of man between the hours of noon and sunset, and so engage with him when he is at his most weak.
'And now for you, Madam Mina, this night is the end until all be well. You are too precious to us to have such risk. When we part tonight, you no more must question. We shall tell you all in good time. We are men and are able to bear, but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are.'
All the men, even Jonathan, seemed relieved, but it did not seem to me good that they should brave danger and, perhaps lessen their safety, strength being the best safety, through care of me, but their minds were made up, and though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow, I could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me.
Mr. Morris resumed the discussion, 'As there is no time to lose, I vote we have a look at his house right now. Time is everything with him, and swift action on our part may save another victim.'
I own that my heart began to fail me when the time for action came so close, but I did not say anything, for I had a greater fear that if I appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave me out of their counsels altogether. They have now gone off to Carfax, with means to get into the house.
Manlike, they had told me to go to bed and sleep, as if a woman can sleep when those she loves are in danger! I shall lie down, and pretend to sleep, lest Jonathan have added anxiety about me when he returns.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
1 October, 4 A.M.-Just as we were about to leave the house, an urgent message was brought to me from Renfield to know if I would see him at once, as he had something of the utmost importance to say to me. I told the messenger to say that I would attend to his wishes in the morning, I was busy just at the moment.
The attendant added, 'He seems very importunate, sir. I have never seen him so eager. I don't know but what, if you don't see him soon, he will have one of his violent fits.' I knew the man would not have said this without some cause, so I said, 'All right, I'll go now,' and I asked the others to wait a few minutes for me, as I had to go and see my patient.
'Take me with you, friend John,' said the Professor. 'His case in your diary interest me much, and it had bearing, too, now and again on our case. I should much like to see him, and especial when his mind is disturbed.'
'May I come also?' asked Lord Godalming.
'Me too?' said Quincey Morris. 'May I come?' said Harker. I nodded, and we all went down the passage together.
We found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more rational in his speech and manner than I had ever seen him. There was an unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything I had ever met with in a lunatic, and he took it for granted that his reasons would prevail with others entirely sane. We all five went into the room, but none of the others at first said anything. His request was that I would at once release him from the asylum and send him home. This he backed up with arguments regarding his complete recovery, and adduced his own existing sanity.
'I appeal to your friends, 'he said, 'they will, perhaps, not mind sitting in judgement on my case. By the way, you have not introduced me.'
I was so much astonished, that the oddness of introducing a madman in an asylum did not strike me at the moment, and besides, there was a certain dignity in the man's manner, so much of the habit of equality, that I at once made the introduction, 'Lord Godalming, Professor Van Helsing, Mr. Quincey Morris, of Texas, Mr. Jonathan Harker, Mr. Renfield.'
He shook hands with each of them, saying in turn, 'Lord Godalming, I had the honour of seconding your father at the Windham, I grieve to know, by your holding the title, that he is no more. He was a man loved and honoured by all who knew him, and in his youth was, I have heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronized on Derby night. Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state. Its reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold alliance to the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place as a political fable. What shall any man say of his pleasure at meeting Van Helsing? Sir, I make no apology for dropping all forms of conventional prefix. When an individual has revolutionized therapeutics by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain matter, conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to limit him to one of a class. You, gentlemen, who by nationality, by heredity, or by the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold your respective places in the moving world, I take to witness that I am as sane as at least the majority of men who are in full possession of their liberties. And I am sure that you, Dr. Seward, humanitarian and medico-jurist as well as scientist, will deem it a moral duty to deal with me as one to be considered as under exceptional circumstances. 'He made this last appeal with a courtly air of conviction which was not without its own charm.
I think we were all staggered. For my own part, I was under the conviction, despite my knowledge of the man's character and history, that his reason had been restored, and I felt under a strong impulse to tell him that I was satisfied as to his sanity, and would see about the necessary formalities for his release in the morning. I thought it better to wait, however, before making so grave a statement, for of old I knew the sudden changes to which this particular patient was liable. So I contented myself with making a general statement that he appeared to be improving very rapidly, that I would have a longer chat with him in the morning, and would then see what I could do in the direction of meeting his wishes.
This did not at all satisfy him, for he said quickly, 'But I fear, Dr. Seward, that you hardly apprehend my wish. I desire to go at once, here, now, this very hour, this very moment, if I may. Time presses, and in our implied agreement with the old scytheman it is of the essence of the contract. I am sure it is only necessary to put before so admirable a practitioner as Dr. Seward so simple, yet so momentous a wish, to ensure its fulfilment.'
He looked at me keenly, and seeing the negative in my face, turned to the others, and scrutinized them closely. Not meeting any sufficient response, he went on, 'Is it possible that I have erred in my supposition?'
'You have,' I said frankly, but at the same time, as I felt, brutally.
There was a considerable pause, and then he said slowly, 'Then I suppose I must only shift my ground of request. Let me ask for this concession, boon, privilege, what you will. I am content to implore in such a case, not on personal grounds, but for the sake of others. I am not at liberty to give you the whole of my reasons, but you may, I assure you, take it from me that they are good ones, sound and unselfish, and spring from the highest sense of duty.
'Could you look, sir, into my heart, you would approve to the full the sentiments which animate me. Nay, more, you would count me amongst the best and truest of your friends.'
Again he looked at us all keenly. I had a growing conviction that this sudden change of his entire intellectual method was but yet another phase of his madness, and so determined to let him go on a little longer, knowing from experience that he would, like all lunatics, give himself away in the end. Van Helsing was gazing at him with a look of utmost intensity, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting with the fixed concentration of his look. He said to Renfield in a tone which did not surprise me at the time, but only when I thought of it afterwards, for it was as of one addressing an equal, 'Can you not tell frankly your real reason for wishing to be free tonight? I will undertake that if you will satisfy even me, a stranger, without prejudice, and with the habit of keeping an open mind, Dr. Seward will give you, at his own risk and on his own responsibility, the privilege you seek.'
He shook his head sadly, and with a look of poignant regret on his face. The Professor went on, 'Come, sir, bethink yourself. You claim the privilege of reason in the highest degree, since you seek to impress us with your complete reasonableness. You do this, whose sanity we have reason to doubt, since you are not yet released from medical treatment for this very defect. If you will not help us in our effort to choose the wisest course, how can we perform the duty which you yourself put upon us? Be wise, and help us, and if we can we shall aid you to achieve your wish.'
He still shook his head as he said, 'Dr. Van Helsing, I have nothing to say. Your argument is complete, and if I were free to speak I should not hesitate a moment, but I am not my own master in the matter. I can only ask you to trust me. If I am refused, the responsibility does not rest with me.'
I thought it was now time to end the scene, which was becoming too comically grave, so I went towards the door, simply saying, 'Come, my friends, we have work to do. Goodnight.'
As, however, I got near the door, a new change came over the patient. He moved towards me so quickly that for the moment I feared that he was about to make another homicidal attack. My fears, however, were groundless, for he held up his two hands imploringly, and made his petition in a moving manner. As he saw that the very excess of his emotion was militating against him, by restoring us more to our old relations, he became still more demonstrative. I glanced at Van Helsing, and saw my conviction reflected in his eyes, so I became a little more fixed in my manner, if not more stern, and motioned to him that his efforts were unavailing. I had previously seen something of the same constantly growing excitement in him when he had to make some request of which at the time he had thought much, such for instance, as when he wanted a cat, and I was prepared to see the collapse into the same sullen acquiescence on this occasion.
My expectation was not realized, for when he found that his appeal would not be successful, he got into quite a frantic condition. He threw himself on his knees, and held up his hands, wringing them in plaintive supplication, and poured forth a torrent of entreaty, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, and his whole face and form expressive of the deepest emotion.
'Let me entreat you, Dr. Seward, oh, let me implore you, to let me out of this house at once. Send me away how you will and where you will, send keepers with me with whips and chains, let them take me in a strait waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to gaol, but let me go out of this. You don't know what you do by keeping me here. I am speaking from the depths of my heart, of my very soul. You don't know whom you wrong, or how, and I may not tell. Woe is me! I may not tell. By all you hold sacred, by all you hold dear, by your love that is lost, by your hope that lives, for the sake of the Almighty, take me out of this and save my soul from guilt! Can't you hear me, man? Can't you understand? Will you never learn? Don't you know that I am sane and earnest now, that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane man fighting for his soul? Oh, hear me! Hear me! Let me go, let me go, let me go!'
I thought that the longer this went on the wilder he would get, and so would bring on a fit, so I took him by the hand and raised him up.
'Come,' I said sternly, 'no more of this, we have had quite enough already. Get to your bed and try to behave more discreetly.'
He suddenly stopped and looked at me intently for several moments. Then, without a word, he rose and moving over, sat down on the side of the bed. The collapse had come, as on former occasions, just as I had expected.
When I was leaving the room, last of our party, he said to me in a quiet, well-bred voice, 'You will, I trust, Dr. Seward, do me the justice to bear in mind, later on, that I did what I could to convince you tonight.'
Chapter 19
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
1 October, 5 A.M.-I went with the party to the search with an easy mind, for I think I never saw Mina so absolutely strong and well. I am so glad that she consented to hold back and let us men do the work. Somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at all, but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such a way that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is finished, and that she can henceforth leave the rest to us. We were, I think, all a little upset by the scene with Mr. Renfield. When we came away from his room we were silent till we got back to the study.
Then Mr. Morris said to Dr. Seward, 'Say, Jack, if that man wasn't attempting a bluff, he is about the sanest lunatic I ever saw. I'm not sure, but I believe that he had some serious purpose, and if he had, it was pretty rough on him not to get a chance.'
Lord Godalming and I were silent, but Dr. Van Helsing added, 'Friend John, you know more lunatics than I do, and I'm glad of it, for I fear that if it had been to me to decide I would before that last hysterical outburst have given him free. But we live and learn, and in our present task we must take no chance, as my friend Quincey would say. All is best as they are.'
Dr. Seward seemed to answer them both in a dreamy kind of way, 'I don't know but that I agree with you. If that man had been an ordinary lunatic I would have taken my chance of trusting him, but he seems so mixed up with the Count in an indexy kind of way that I am afraid of doing anything wrong by helping his fads. I can't forget how he prayed with almost equal fervor for a cat, and then tried to tear my throat out with his teeth. Besides, he called the Count 'lord and master', and he may want to get out to help him in some diabolical way. That horrid thing has the wolves and the rats and his own kind to help him, so I suppose he isn't above trying to use a respectable lunatic. He certainly did seem earnest, though. I only hope we have done what is best. These things, in conjunction with the wild work we have in hand, help to unnerve a man.'
The Professor stepped over, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said in his grave, kindly way, 'Friend John, have no fear. We are trying to do our duty in a very sad and terrible case, we can only do as we deem best. What else have we to hope for, except the pity of the good God?'
Lord Godalming had slipped away for a few minutes, but now he returned. He held up a little silver whistle, as he remarked, 'That old place may be full of rats, and if so, I've got an antidote on call.'
Having passed the wall, we took our way to the house, taking care to keep in the shadows of the trees on the lawn when the moonlight shone out. When we got to the porch the Professor opened his bag and took out a lot of things, which he laid on the step, sorting them into four little groups, evidently one for each. Then he spoke.
'My friends, we are going into a terrible danger, and we need arms of many kinds. Our enemy is not merely spiritual. Remember that he has the strength of twenty men, and that, though our necks or our windpipes are of the common kind, and therefore breakable or crushable, his are not amenable to mere strength. A stronger man, or a body of men more strong in all than him, can at certain times hold him, but they cannot hurt him as we can be hurt by him. We must, therefore, guard ourselves from his touch. Keep this near your heart.' As he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, I being nearest to him, 'put these flowers round your neck,' here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms, 'for other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife, and for aid in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your breast, and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must not desecrate needless.'
This was a portion of Sacred Wafer, which he put in an envelope and handed to me. Each of the others was similarly equipped.
'Now,' he said, 'friend John, where are the skeleton keys? If so that we can open the door, we need not break house by the window, as before at Miss Lucy's.'
Dr. Seward tried one or two skeleton keys, his mechanical dexterity as a surgeon standing him in good stead. Presently he got one to suit, after a little play back and forward the bolt yielded, and with a rusty clang, shot back. We pressed on the door, the rusty hinges creaked, and it slowly opened. It was startlingly like the image conveyed to me in Dr. Seward's diary of the opening of Miss Westenra's tomb, I fancy that the same idea seemed to strike the others, for with one accord they shrank back. The Professor was the first to move forward, and stepped into the open door.
'In manus tuas, Domine!' he said, crossing himself as he passed over the threshold. We closed the door behind us, lest when we should have lit our lamps we should possibly attract attention from the road. The Professor carefully tried the lock, lest we might not be able to open it from within should we be in a hurry making our exit. Then we all lit our lamps and proceeded on our search.
The light from the tiny lamps fell in all sorts of odd forms, as the rays crossed each other, or the opacity of our bodies threw great shadows. I could not for my life get away from the feeling that there was someone else amongst us. I suppose it was the recollection, so powerfully brought home to me by the grim surroundings, of that terrible experience in Transylvania. I think the feeling was common to us all, for I noticed that the others kept looking over their shoulders at every sound and every new shadow, just as I felt myself doing.
The whole place was thick with dust. The floor was seemingly inches deep, except where there were recent footsteps, in which on holding down my lamp I could see marks of hobnails where the dust was cracked. The walls were fluffy and heavy with dust, and in the corners were masses of spider's webs, whereon the dust had gathered till they looked like old tattered rags as the weight had torn them partly down. On a table in the hall was a great bunch of keys, with a time-yellowed label on each. They had been used several times, for on the table were several similar rents in the blanket of dust, similar to that exposed when the Professor lifted them.
He turned to me and said, 'You know this place, Jonathan. You have copied maps of it, and you know it at least more than we do. Which is the way to the chapel?'
I had an idea of its direction, though on my former visit I had not been able to get admission to it, so I led the way, and after a few wrong turnings found myself opposite a low, arched oaken door, ribbed with iron bands.
'This is the spot,' said the Professor as he turned his lamp on a small map of the house, copied from the file of my original correspondence regarding the purchase. With a little trouble we found the key on the bunch and opened the door. We were prepared for some unpleasantness, for as we were opening the door a faint, malodorous air seemed to exhale through the gaps, but none of us ever expected such an odour as we encountered. None of the others had met the Count at all at close quarters, and when I had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of his existence in his rooms or, when he was bloated with fresh blood, in a ruined building open to the air, but here the place was small and close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul. There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler air. But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. Faugh! It sickens me to think of it. Every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness.
Under ordinary circumstances such a stench would have brought our enterprise to an end, but this was no ordinary case, and the high and terrible purpose in which we were involved gave us a strength which rose above merely physical considerations. After the involuntary shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set about our work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses.
We made an accurate examination of the place, the Professor saying as we began, 'The first thing is to see how many of the boxes are left, we must then examine every hole and corner and cranny and see if we cannot get some clue as to what has become of the rest.'
A glance was sufficient to show how many remained, for the great earth chests were bulky, and there was no mistaking them.
There were only twenty-nine left out of the fifty! Once I got a fright, for, seeing Lord Godalming suddenly turn and look out of the vaulted door into the dark passage beyond, I looked too, and for an instant my heart stood still. Somewhere, looking out from the shadow, I seemed to see the high lights of the Count's evil face, the ridge of the nose, the red eyes, the red lips, the awful pallor. It was only for a moment, for, as Lord Godalming said, 'I thought I saw a face, but it was only the shadows,' and resumed his inquiry, I turned my lamp in the direction, and stepped into the passage. There was no sign of anyone, and as there were no corners, no doors, no aperture of any kind, but only the solid walls of the passage, there could be no hiding place even for him. I took it that fear had helped imagination, and said nothing.
A few minutes later I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner, which he was examining. We all followed his movements with our eyes, for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. We all instinctively drew back. The whole place was becoming alive with rats.
For a moment or two we stood appalled, all save Lord Godalming, who was seemingly prepared for such an emergency. Rushing over to the great iron-bound oaken door, which Dr. Seward had described from the outside, and which I had seen myself, he turned the key in the lock, drew the huge bolts, and swung the door open. Then, taking his little silver whistle from his pocket, he blew a low, shrill call. It was answered from behind Dr. Seward's house by the yelping of dogs, and after about a minute three terriers came dashing round the corner of the house. Unconsciously we had all moved towards the door, and as we moved I noticed that the dust had been much disturbed. The boxes which had been taken out had been brought this way. But even in the minute that had elapsed the number of the rats had vastly increased. They seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies. The dogs dashed on, but at the threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and then, simultaneously lifting their noses, began to howl in most lugubrious fashion. The rats were multiplying in thousands, and we moved out.
Lord Godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him on the floor. The instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies. They fled before him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score, the other dogs, who had by now been lifted in the same manner, had but small prey ere the whole mass had vanished.
With their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in the air with vicious shakes. We all seemed to find our spirits rise. Whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening of the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding ourselves in the open I know not, but most certainly the shadow of dread seemed to slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost something of its grim significance, though we did not slacken a whit in our resolution. We closed the outer door and barred and locked it, and bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the house. We found nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary proportions, and all untouched save for my own footsteps when I had made my first visit. Never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even when we returned to the chapel they frisked about as though they had been rabbit hunting in a summer wood.
The morning was quickening in the east when we emerged from the front. Dr. Van Helsing had taken the key of the hall door from the bunch, and locked the door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his pocket when he had done.
'So far,' he said, 'our night has been eminently successful. No harm has come to us such as I feared might be and yet we have ascertained how many boxes are missing. More than all do I rejoice that this, our first, and perhaps our most difficult and dangerous, step has been accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina or troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and smells of horror which she might never forget. One lesson, too, we have learned, if it be allowable to argue a particulari, that the brute beasts which are to the Count's command are yet themselves not amenable to his spiritual power, for look, these rats that would come to his call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves to your going and to that poor mother's cry, though they come to him, they run pell-mell from the so little dogs of my friend Arthur. We have other matters before us, other dangers, other fears, and that monster... He has not used his power over the brute world for the only or the last time tonight. So be it that he has gone elsewhere. Good! It has given us opportunity to cry 'check' in some ways in this chess game, which we play for the stake of human souls. And now let us go home. The dawn is close at hand, and we have reason to be content with our first night's work. It may be ordained that we have many nights and days to follow, if full of peril, but we must go on, and from no danger shall we shrink.'
The house was silent when we got back, save for some poor creature who was screaming away in one of the distant wards, and a low, moaning sound from Renfield's room. The poor wretch was doubtless torturing himself, after the manner of the insane, with needless thoughts of pain.
I came tiptoe into our own room, and found Mina asleep, breathing so softly that I had to put my ear down to hear it. She looks paler than usual. I hope the meeting tonight has not upset her. I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear. I did not think so at first, but I know better now. Therefore I am glad that it is settled. There may be things which would frighten her to hear, and yet to conceal them from her might be worse than to tell her if once she suspected that there was any concealment. Henceforth our work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of the nether world. I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours, but I must be resolute, and tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight's doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened. I rest on the sofa, so as not to disturb her.
1 October, later.-I suppose it was natural that we should have all overslept ourselves, for the day was a busy one, and the night had no rest at all. Even Mina must have felt its exhaustion, for though I slept till the sun was high, I was awake before her, and had to call two or three times before she awoke. Indeed, she was so sound asleep that for a few seconds she did not recognize me, but looked at me with a sort of blank terror, as one looks who has been waked out of a bad dream. She complained a little of being tired, and I let her rest till later in the day. We now know of twenty-one boxes having been removed, and if it be that several were taken in any of these removals we may be able to trace them all. Such will, of course, immensely simplify our labor, and the sooner the matter is attended to the better. I shall look up Thomas Snelling today.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
1 October.-It was towards noon when I was awakened by the Professor walking into my room. He was more jolly and cheerful than usual, and it is quite evident that last night's work has helped to take some of the brooding weight off his mind.
After going over the adventure of the night he suddenly said, 'Your patient interests me much. May it be that with you I visit him this morning? Or if that you are too occupy, I can go alone if it may be. It is a new experience to me to find a lunatic who talk philosophy, and reason so sound.'
I had some work to do which pressed, so I told him that if he would go alone I would be glad, as then I should not have to keep him waiting, so I called an attendant and gave him the necessary instructions. Before the Professor left the room I cautioned him against getting any false impression from my patient.
'But,' he answered, 'I want him to talk of himself and of his delusion as to consuming live things. He said to Madam Mina, as I see in your diary of yesterday, that he had once had such a belief. Why do you smile, friend John?'
'Excuse me,' I said, 'but the answer is here.' I laid my hand on the typewritten matter. 'When our sane and learned lunatic made that very statement of how he used to consume life, his mouth was actually nauseous with the flies and spiders which he had eaten just before Mrs. Harker entered the room.'
Van Helsing smiled in turn. 'Good!' he said. 'Your memory is true, friend John. I should have remembered. And yet it is this very obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease such a fascinating study. Perhaps I may gain more knowledge out of the folly of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise. Who knows?'
I went on with my work, and before long was through that in hand. It seemed that the time had been very short indeed, but there was Van Helsing back in the study.
'Do I interrupt?' he asked politely as he stood at the door.
'Not at all,' I answered. 'Come in. My work is finished, and I am free. I can go with you now, if you like.'
'It is needless, I have seen him!'
'Well?'
'I fear that he does not appraise me at much. Our interview was short. When I entered his room he was sitting on a stool in the centre, with his elbows on his knees, and his face was the picture of sullen discontent. I spoke to him as cheerfully as I could, and with such a measure of respect as I could assume. He made no reply whatever. 'Don't you know me?' I asked. His answer was not reassuring. 'I know you well enough, you are the old fool Van Helsing. I wish you would take yourself and your idiotic brain theories somewhere else. Damn all thick-headed Dutchmen!' Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at all. Thus departed for this time my chance of much learning from this so clever lunatic, so I shall go, if I may, and cheer myself with a few happy words with that sweet soul Madam Mina. Friend John, it does rejoice me unspeakable that she is no more to be pained, no more to be worried with our terrible things. Though we shall much miss her help, it is better so.'
'I agree with you with all my heart,' I answered earnestly, for I did not want him to weaken in this matter. 'Mrs. Harker is better out of it. Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time, but it is no place for a woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time infallibly have wrecked her.'
So Van Helsing has gone to confer with Mrs. Harker and Harker, Quincey and Art are all out following up the clues as to the earth boxes. I shall finish my round of work and we shall meet tonight.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
1 October.-It is strange to me to be kept in the dark as I am today, after Jonathan's full confidence for so many years, to see him manifestly avoid certain matters, and those the most vital of all. This morning I slept late after the fatigues of yesterday, and though Jonathan was late too, he was the earlier. He spoke to me before he went out, never more sweetly or tenderly, but he never mentioned a word of what had happened in the visit to the Count's house. And yet he must have known how terribly anxious I was. Poor dear fellow! I suppose it must have distressed him even more than it did me. They all agreed that it was best that I should not be drawn further into this awful work, and I acquiesced. But to think that he keeps anything from me! And now I am crying like a silly fool, when I know it comes from my husband's great love and from the good, good wishes of those other strong men.
That has done me good. Well, some day Jonathan will tell me all. And lest it should ever be that he should think for a moment that I kept anything from him, I still keep my journal as usual. Then if he has feared of my trust I shall show it to him, with every thought of my heart put down for his dear eyes to read. I feel strangely sad and low-spirited today. I suppose it is the reaction from the terrible excitement.
Last night I went to bed when the men had gone, simply because they told me to. I didn't feel sleepy, and I did feel full of devouring anxiety. I kept thinking over everything that has been ever since Jonathan came to see me in London, and it all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end. Everything that one does seems, no matter how right it me be, to bring on the very thing which is most to be deplored. If I hadn't gone to Whitby, perhaps poor dear Lucy would be with us now. She hadn't taken to visiting the churchyard till I came, and if she hadn't come there in the day time with me she wouldn't have walked in her sleep. And if she hadn't gone there at night and asleep, that monster couldn't have destroyed her as he did. Oh, why did I ever go to Whitby? There now, crying again! I wonder what has come over me today. I must hide it from Jonathan, for if he knew that I had been crying twice in one morning... I, who never cried on my own account, and whom he has never caused to shed a tear, the dear fellow would fret his heart out. I shall put a bold face on, and if I do feel weepy, he shall never see it. I suppose it is just one of the lessons that we poor women have to learn... 
I can't quite remember how I fell asleep last night. I remember hearing the sudden barking of the dogs and a lot of queer sounds, like praying on a very tumultuous scale, from Mr. Renfield's room, which is somewhere under this. And then there was silence over everything, silence so profound that it startled me, and I got up and looked out of the window. All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate, so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to have a sentience and a vitality of its own. I think that the digression of my thoughts must have done me good, for when I got back to bed I found a lethargy creeping over me. I lay a while, but could not quite sleep, so I got out and looked out of the window again. The mist was spreading, and was now close up to the house, so that I could see it lying thick against the wall, as though it were stealing up to the windows. The poor man was more loud than ever, and though I could not distinguish a word he said, I could in some way recognize in his tones some passionate entreaty on his part. Then there was the sound of a struggle, and I knew that the attendants were dealing with him. I was so frightened that I crept into bed, and pulled the clothes over my head, putting my fingers in my ears. I was not then a bit sleepy, at least so I thought, but I must have fallen asleep, for except dreams, I do not remember anything until the morning, when Jonathan woke me. I think that it took me an effort and a little time to realize where I was, and that it was Jonathan who was bending over me. My dream was very peculiar, and was almost typical of the way that waking thoughts become merged in, or continued in, dreams.
I thought that I was asleep, and waiting for Jonathan to come back. I was very anxious about him, and I was powerless to act, my feet, and my hands, and my brain were weighted, so that nothing could proceed at the usual pace. And so I slept uneasily and thought. Then it began to dawn upon me that the air was heavy, and dank, and cold. I put back the clothes from my face, and found, to my surprise, that all was dim around. The gaslight which I had left lit for Jonathan, but turned down, came only like a tiny red spark through the fog, which had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room. Then it occurred to me that I had shut the window before I had come to bed. I would have got out to make certain on the point, but some leaden lethargy seemed to chain my limbs and even my will. I lay still and endured, that was all. I closed my eyes, but could still see through my eyelids. The mist grew thicker and thicker and I could see now how it came in, for I could see it like smoke, or with the white energy of boiling water, pouring in, not through the window, but through the joinings of the door. It got thicker and thicker, till it seemed as if it became concentrated into a sort of pillar of cloud in the room, through the top of which I could see the light of the gas shining like a red eye. Things began to whirl through my brain just as the cloudy column was now whirling in the room, and through it all came the scriptural words 'a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.' Was it indeed such spiritual guidance that was coming to me in my sleep? But the pillar was composed of both the day and the night guiding, for the fire was in the red eye, which at the thought gat a new fascination for me, till, as I looked, the fire divided, and seemed to shine on me through the fog like two red eyes, such as Lucy told me of in her momentary mental wandering when, on the cliff, the dying sunlight struck the windows of St. Mary's Church. Suddenly the horror burst upon me that it was thus that Jonathan had seen those awful women growing into reality through the whirling mist in the moonlight, and in my dream I must have fainted, for all became black darkness. The last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist.
I must be careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one's reason if there were too much of them. I would get Dr. Van Helsing or Dr. Seward to prescribe something for me which would make me sleep, only that I fear to alarm them. Such a dream at the present time would become woven into their fears for me. Tonight I shall strive hard to sleep naturally. If I do not, I shall tomorrow night get them to give me a dose of chloral, that cannot hurt me for once, and it will give me a good night's sleep. Last night tired me more than if I had not slept at all.
2 October 10 P.M.-Last night I slept, but did not dream. I must have slept soundly, for I was not waked by Jonathan coming to bed, but the sleep has not refreshed me, for today I feel terribly weak and spiritless. I spent all yesterday trying to read, or lying down dozing. In the afternoon, Mr. Renfield asked if he might see me. Poor man, he was very gentle, and when I came away he kissed my hand and bade God bless me. Some way it affected me much. I am crying when I think of him. This is a new weakness, of which I must be careful. Jonathan would be miserable if he knew I had been crying. He and the others were out till dinner time, and they all came in tired. I did what I could to brighten them up, and I suppose that the effort did me good, for I forgot how tired I was. After dinner they sent me to bed, and all went off to smoke together, as they said, but I knew that they wanted to tell each other of what had occurred to each during the day. I could see from Jonathan's manner that he had something important to communicate. I was not so sleepy as I should have been, so before they went I asked Dr. Seward to give me a little opiate of some kind, as I had not slept well the night before. He very kindly made me up a sleeping draught, which he gave to me, telling me that it would do me no harm, as it was very mild... I have taken it, and am waiting for sleep, which still keeps aloof. I hope I have not done wrong, for as sleep begins to flirt with me, a new fear comes, that I may have been foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking. I might want it. Here comes sleep. Goodnight.
Chapter 20
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
1 October, evening.-I found Thomas Snelling in his house at Bethnal Green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything. The very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him had proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected debauch. I learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor soul, that he was only the assistant of Smollet, who of the two mates was the responsible person. So off I drove to Walworth, and found Mr. Joseph Smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, taking a late tea out of a saucer. He is a decent, intelligent fellow, distinctly a good, reliable type of workman, and with a headpiece of his own. He remembered all about the incident of the boxes, and from a wonderful dog-eared notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptacle about the seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries in thick, half-obliterated pencil, he gave me the destinations of the boxes. There were, he said, six in the cartload which he took from Carfax and left at 197 Chicksand Street, Mile End New Town, and another six which he deposited at Jamaica Lane, Bermondsey. If then the Count meant to scatter these ghastly refuges of his over London, these places were chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he might distribute more fully. The systematic manner in which this was done made me think that he could not mean to confine himself to two sides of London. He was now fixed on the far east on the northern shore, on the east of the southern shore, and on the south. The north and west were surely never meant to be left out of his diabolical scheme, let alone the City itself and the very heart of fashionable London in the south-west and west. I went back to Smollet, and asked him if he could tell us if any other boxes had been taken from Carfax.
He replied, 'Well guv'nor, you've treated me very 'an'some', I had given him half a sovereign, 'an I'll tell yer all I know. I heard a man by the name of Bloxam say four nights ago in the 'Are an' 'Ounds, in Pincher's Alley, as 'ow he an' his mate 'ad 'ad a rare dusty job in a old 'ouse at Purfleet. There ain't a many such jobs as this 'ere, an' I'm thinkin' that maybe Sam Bloxam could tell ye summut.'
I asked if he could tell me where to find him. I told him that if he could get me the address it would be worth another half sovereign to him. So he gulped down the rest of his tea and stood up, saying that he was going to begin the search then and there.
At the door he stopped, and said, 'Look 'ere, guv'nor, there ain't no sense in me a keepin' you 'ere. I may find Sam soon, or I mayn't, but anyhow he ain't like to be in a way to tell ye much tonight. Sam is a rare one when he starts on the booze. If you can give me a envelope with a stamp on it, and put yer address on it, I'll find out where Sam is to be found and post it ye tonight. But ye'd better be up arter 'im soon in the mornin', never mind the booze the night afore.'
This was all practical, so one of the children went off with a penny to buy an envelope and a sheet of paper, and to keep the change. When she came back, I addressed the envelope and stamped it, and when Smollet had again faithfully promised to post the address when found, I took my way to home. We're on the track anyhow. I am tired tonight, and I want to sleep. Mina is fast asleep, and looks a little too pale. Her eyes look as though she had been crying. Poor dear, I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But it is best as it is. It is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business. I must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence must rest. I shall not ever enter on the subject with her under any circumstances. Indeed, It may not be a hard task, after all, for she herself has become reticent on the subject, and has not spoken of the Count or his doings ever since we told her of our decision.
2 October, evening-A long and trying and exciting day. By the first post I got my directed envelope with a dirty scrap of paper enclosed, on which was written with a carpenter's pencil in a sprawling hand, 'Sam Bloxam, Korkrans, 4 Poters Cort, Bartel Street, Walworth. Arsk for the depite.'
I got the letter in bed, and rose without waking Mina. She looked heavy and sleepy and pale, and far from well. I determined not to wake her, but that when I should return from this new search, I would arrange for her going back to Exeter. I think she would be happier in our own home, with her daily tasks to interest her, than in being here amongst us and in ignorance. I only saw Dr. Seward for a moment, and told him where I was off to, promising to come back and tell the rest so soon as I should have found out anything. I drove to Walworth and found, with some difficulty, Potter's Court. Mr. Smollet's spelling misled me, as I asked for Poter's Court instead of Potter's Court. However, when I had found the court, I had no difficulty in discovering Corcoran's lodging house.
When I asked the man who came to the door for the 'depite,' he shook his head, and said, 'I dunno 'im. There ain't no such a person 'ere. I never 'eard of 'im in all my bloomin' days. Don't believe there ain't nobody of that kind livin' 'ere or anywheres.'
I took out Smollet's letter, and as I read it it seemed to me that the lesson of the spelling of the name of the court might guide me. 'What are you?' I asked.
'I'm the depity,' he answered.
I saw at once that I was on the right track. Phonetic spelling had again misled me. A half crown tip put the deputy's knowledge at my disposal, and I learned that Mr. Bloxam, who had slept off the remains of his beer on the previous night at Corcoran's, had left for his work at Poplar at five o'clock that morning. He could not tell me where the place of work was situated, but he had a vague idea that it was some kind of a 'new-fangled ware'us,' and with this slender clue I had to start for Poplar. It was twelve o'clock before I got any satisfactory hint of such a building, and this I got at a coffee shop, where some workmen were having their dinner. One of them suggested that there was being erected at Cross Angel Street a new 'cold storage' building, and as this suited the condition of a 'new-fangled ware'us,' I at once drove to it. An interview with a surly gatekeeper and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the coin of the realm, put me on the track of Bloxam. He was sent for on my suggestion that I was willing to pay his days wages to his foreman for the privilege of asking him a few questions on a private matter. He was a smart enough fellow, though rough of speech and bearing. When I had promised to pay for his information and given him an earnest, he told me that he had made two journeys between Carfax and a house in Piccadilly, and had taken from this house to the latter nine great boxes, 'main heavy ones,' with a horse and cart hired by him for this purpose.
I asked him if he could tell me the number of the house in Piccadilly, to which he replied, 'Well, guv'nor, I forgits the number, but it was only a few door from a big white church, or somethink of the kind, not long built. It was a dusty old 'ouse, too, though nothin' to the dustiness of the 'ouse we tooked the bloomin' boxes from.'
'How did you get in if both houses were empty?'
'There was the old party what engaged me a waitin' in the 'ouse at Purfleet. He 'elped me to lift the boxes and put them in the dray. Curse me, but he was the strongest chap I ever struck, an' him a old feller, with a white moustache, one that thin you would think he couldn't throw a shadder.'
How this phrase thrilled through me!
'Why, 'e took up 'is end o' the boxes like they was pounds of tea, and me a puffin' an' a blowin' afore I could upend mine anyhow, an' I'm no chicken, neither.'
'How did you get into the house in Piccadilly?' I asked.
'He was there too. He must 'a started off and got there afore me, for when I rung of the bell he kem an' opened the door 'isself an' 'elped me carry the boxes into the 'all.'
'The whole nine?' I asked.
'Yus, there was five in the first load an' four in the second. It was main dry work, an' I don't so well remember 'ow I got 'ome.'
I interrupted him, 'Were the boxes left in the hall?'
'Yus, it was a big 'all, an' there was nothin' else in it.'
I made one more attempt to further matters. 'You didn't have any key?'
'Never used no key nor nothink. The old gent, he opened the door 'isself an' shut it again when I druv off. I don't remember the last time, but that was the beer.'
'And you can't remember the number of the house?'
'No, sir. But ye needn't have no difficulty about that. It's a 'igh 'un with a stone front with a bow on it, an' 'igh steps up to the door. I know them steps, 'avin' 'ad to carry the boxes up with three loafers what come round to earn a copper. The old gent give them shillin's, an' they seein' they got so much, they wanted more. But 'e took one of them by the shoulder and was like to throw 'im down the steps, till the lot of them went away cussin'.'
I thought that with this description I could find the house, so having paid my friend for his information, I started off for Piccadilly. I had gained a new painful experience. The Count could, it was evident, handle the earth boxes himself. If so, time was precious, for now that he had achieved a certain amount of distribution, he could, by choosing his own time, complete the task unobserved. At Piccadilly Circus I discharged my cab, and walked westward. Beyond the Junior Constitutional I came across the house described and was satisfied that this was the next of the lairs arranged by Dracula. The house looked as though it had been long untenanted. The windows were encrusted with dust, and the shutters were up. All the framework was black with time, and from the iron the paint had mostly scaled away. It was evident that up to lately there had been a large notice board in front of the balcony. It had, however, been roughly torn away, the uprights which had supported it still remaining. Behind the rails of the balcony I saw there were some loose boards, whose raw edges looked white. I would have given a good deal to have been able to see the notice board intact, as it would, perhaps, have given some clue to the ownership of the house. I remembered my experience of the investigation and purchase of Carfax, and I could not but feel that I could find the former owner there might be some means discovered of gaining access to the house.
There was at present nothing to be learned from the Piccadilly side, and nothing could be done, so I went around to the back to see if anything could be gathered from this quarter. The mews were active, the Piccadilly houses being mostly in occupation. I asked one or two of the grooms and helpers whom I saw around if they could tell me anything about the empty house. One of them said that he heard it had lately been taken, but he couldn't say from whom. He told me, however, that up to very lately there had been a notice board of 'For Sale' up, and that perhaps Mitchell, Sons, & Candy the house agents could tell me something, as he thought he remembered seeing the name of that firm on the board. I did not wish to seem too eager, or to let my informant know or guess too much, so thanking him in the usual manner, I strolled away. It was now growing dusk, and the autumn night was closing in, so I did not lose any time. Having learned the address of Mitchell, Sons, & Candy from a directory at the Berkeley, I was soon at their office in Sackville Street.
The gentleman who saw me was particularly suave in manner, but uncommunicative in equal proportion. Having once told me that the Piccadilly house, which throughout our interview he called a 'mansion,' was sold, he considered my business as concluded. When I asked who had purchased it, he opened his eyes a thought wider, and paused a few seconds before replying, 'It is sold, sir.'
'Pardon me,' I said, with equal politeness, 'but I have a special reason for wishing to know who purchased it.'
Again he paused longer, and raised his eyebrows still more. 'It is sold, sir,' was again his laconic reply.
'Surely,' I said, 'you do not mind letting me know so much.'
'But I do mind,' he answered. 'The affairs of their clients are absolutely safe in the hands of Mitchell, Sons, & Candy.'
This was manifestly a prig of the first water, and there was no use arguing with him. I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so I said, 'Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian of their confidence. I am myself a professional man.'
Here I handed him my card. 'In this instance I am not prompted by curiosity, I act on the part of Lord Godalming, who wishes to know something of the property which was, he understood, lately for sale.'
These words put a different complexion on affairs. He said, 'I would like to oblige you if I could, Mr. Harker, and especially would I like to oblige his lordship. We once carried out a small matter of renting some chambers for him when he was the honourable Arthur Holmwood. If you will let me have his lordship's address I will consult the House on the subject, and will, in any case, communicate with his lordship by tonight's post. It will be a pleasure if we can so far deviate from our rules as to give the required information to his lordship.'
I wanted to secure a friend, and not to make an enemy, so I thanked him, gave the address at Dr. Seward's and came away. It was now dark, and I was tired and hungry. I got a cup of tea at the Aerated Bread Company and came down to Purfleet by the next train.
I found all the others at home. Mina was looking tired and pale, but she made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful. It wrung my heart to think that I had had to keep anything from her and so caused her inquietude. Thank God, this will be the last night of her looking on at our conferences, and feeling the sting of our not showing our confidence. It took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of keeping her out of our grim task. She seems somehow more reconciled, or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders. I am glad we made our resolution in time, as with such a feeling as this, our growing knowledge would be torture to her.
I could not tell the others of the day's discovery till we were alone, so after dinner, followed by a little music to save appearances even amongst ourselves, I took Mina to her room and left her to go to bed. The dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me as though she would detain me, but there was much to be talked of and I came away. Thank God, the ceasing of telling things has made no difference between us.
When I came down again I found the others all gathered round the fire in the study. In the train I had written my diary so far, and simply read it off to them as the best means of letting them get abreast of my own information.
When I had finished Van Helsing said, 'This has been a great day's work, friend Jonathan. Doubtless we are on the track of the missing boxes. If we find them all in that house, then our work is near the end. But if there be some missing, we must search until we find them. Then shall we make our final coup, and hunt the wretch to his real death.'
We all sat silent awhile and all at once Mr. Morris spoke, 'Say! How are we going to get into that house?'
'We got into the other,' answered Lord Godalming quickly.
'But, Art, this is different. We broke house at Carfax, but we had night and a walled park to protect us. It will be a mighty different thing to commit burglary in Piccadilly, either by day or night. I confess I don't see how we are going to get in unless that agency duck can find us a key of some sort.'
Lord Godalming's brows contracted, and he stood up and walked about the room. By-and-by he stopped and said, turning from one to another of us, 'Quincey's head is level. This burglary business is getting serious. We got off once all right, but we have now a rare job on hand. Unless we can find the Count's key basket.'
As nothing could well be done before morning, and as it would be at least advisable to wait till Lord Godalming should hear from Mitchell's, we decided not to take any active step before breakfast time. For a good while we sat and smoked, discussing the matter in its various lights and bearings. I took the opportunity of bringing this diary right up to the moment. I am very sleepy and shall go to bed... 
Just a line. Mina sleeps soundly and her breathing is regular. Her forehead is puckered up into little wrinkles, as though she thinks even in her sleep. She is still too pale, but does not look so haggard as she did this morning. Tomorrow will, I hope, mend all this. She will be herself at home in Exeter. Oh, but I am sleepy!
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
1 October.-I am puzzled afresh about Renfield. His moods change so rapidly that I find it difficult to keep touch of them, and as they always mean something more than his own well-being, they form a more than interesting study. This morning, when I went to see him after his repulse of Van Helsing, his manner was that of a man commanding destiny. He was, in fact, commanding destiny, subjectively. He did not really care for any of the things of mere earth, he was in the clouds and looked down on all the weaknesses and wants of us poor mortals.
I thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked him, 'What about the flies these times?'
He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way, such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio, as he answered me, 'The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature. It's wings are typical of the aerial powers of the psychic faculties. The ancients did well when they typified the soul as a butterfly!'
I thought I would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so I said quickly, 'Oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it?'
His madness foiled his reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face as, shaking his head with a decision which I had but seldom seen in him.
He said, 'Oh, no, oh no! I want no souls. Life is all I want.' Here he brightened up. 'I am pretty indifferent about it at present. Life is all right. I have all I want. You must get a new patient, doctor, if you wish to study zoophagy!'
This puzzled me a little, so I drew him on. 'Then you command life. You are a god, I suppose?'
He smiled with an ineffably benign superiority. 'Oh no! Far be it from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the Deity. I am not even concerned in His especially spiritual doings. If I may state my intellectual position I am, so far as concerns things purely terrestrial, somewhat in the position which Enoch occupied spiritually!'
This was a poser to me. I could not at the moment recall Enoch's appositeness, so I had to ask a simple question, though I felt that by so doing I was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic. 'And why with Enoch?'
'Because he walked with God.'
I could not see the analogy, but did not like to admit it, so I harked back to what he had denied. 'So you don't care about life and you don't want souls. Why not?' I put my question quickly and somewhat sternly, on purpose to disconcert him.
The effort succeeded, for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into his old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon me as he replied. 'I don't want any souls, indeed, indeed! I don't. I couldn't use them if I had them. They would be no manner of use to me. I couldn't eat them or... '
He suddenly stopped and the old cunning look spread over his face, like a wind sweep on the surface of the water.
'And doctor, as to life, what is it after all? When you've got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all. I have friends, good friends, like you, Dr. Seward.' This was said with a leer of inexpressible cunning. 'I know that I shall never lack the means of life!'
I think that through the cloudiness of his insanity he saw some antagonism in me, for he at once fell back on the last refuge of such as he, a dogged silence. After a short time I saw that for the present it was useless to speak to him. He was sulky, and so I came away.
Later in the day he sent for me. Ordinarily I would not have come without special reason, but just at present I am so interested in him that I would gladly make an effort. Besides, I am glad to have anything to help pass the time. Harker is out, following up clues, and so are Lord Godalming and Quincey. Van Helsing sits in my study poring over the record prepared by the Harkers. He seems to think that by accurate knowledge of all details he will light up on some clue. He does not wish to be disturbed in the work, without cause. I would have taken him with me to see the patient, only I thought that after his last repulse he might not care to go again. There was also another reason. Renfield might not speak so freely before a third person as when he and I were alone.
I found him sitting in the middle of the floor on his stool, a pose which is generally indicative of some mental energy on his part. When I came in, he said at once, as though the question had been waiting on his lips. 'What about souls?'
It was evident then that my surmise had been correct. Unconscious cerebration was doing its work, even with the lunatic. I determined to have the matter out.
'What about them yourself?' I asked.
He did not reply for a moment but looked all around him, and up and down, as though he expected to find some inspiration for an answer.
'I don't want any souls!' He said in a feeble, apologetic way. The matter seemed preying on his mind, and so I determined to use it, to 'be cruel only to be kind.' So I said, 'You like life, and you want life?'
'Oh yes! But that is all right. You needn't worry about that!'
'But,' I asked, 'how are we to get the life without getting the soul also?'
This seemed to puzzle him, so I followed it up, 'A nice time you'll have some time when you're flying out here, with the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing and twittering and moaning all around you. You've got their lives, you know, and you must put up with their souls!'
Something seemed to affect his imagination, for he put his fingers to his ears and shut his eyes, screwing them up tightly just as a small boy does when his face is being soaped. There was something pathetic in it that touched me. It also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a child, only a child, though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white. It was evident that he was undergoing some process of mental disturbance, and knowing how his past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign to himself, I thought I would enter into his mind as well as I could and go with him
The first step was to restore confidence, so I asked him, speaking pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears, 'Would you like some sugar to get your flies around again?'
He seemed to wake up all at once, and shook his head. With a laugh he replied, 'Not much! Flies are poor things, after all!' After a pause he added, 'But I don't want their souls buzzing round me, all the same.'
'Or spiders?' I went on.
'Blow spiders! What's the use of spiders? There isn't anything in them to eat or... ' He stopped suddenly as though reminded of a forbidden topic.
'So, so!' I thought to myself, 'this is the second time he has suddenly stopped at the word 'drink'. What does it mean?'
Renfield seemed himself aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract my attention from it, 'I don't take any stock at all in such matters. 'Rats and mice and such small deer,' as Shakespeare has it, 'chicken feed of the larder' they might be called. I'm past all that sort of nonsense. You might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chopsticks, as to try to interest me about the less carnivora, when I know of what is before me.'
'I see,' I said. 'You want big things that you can make your teeth meet in? How would you like to breakfast on an elephant?'
'What ridiculous nonsense you are talking?' He was getting too wide awake, so I thought I would press him hard.
'I wonder,' I said reflectively, 'what an elephant's soul is like!'
The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his high-horse and became a child again.
'I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all!' he said. For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. 'To hell with you and your souls!' he shouted. 'Why do you plague me about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract me already, without thinking of souls?'
He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal fit, so I blew my whistle.
The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically, 'Forgive me, Doctor. I forgot myself. You do not need any help. I am so worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew the problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity, and tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait waistcoat. I want to think and I cannot think freely when my body is confined. I am sure you will understand!'
He had evidently self-control, so when the attendants came I told them not to mind, and they withdrew. Renfield watched them go. When the door was closed he said with considerable dignity and sweetness, 'Dr. Seward, you have been very considerate towards me. Believe me that I am very, very grateful to you!'
I thought it well to leave him in this mood, and so I came away. There is certainly something to ponder over in this man's state. Several points seem to make what the American interviewer calls 'a story,' if one could only get them in proper order. Here they are:
Will not mention 'drinking.'
Fears the thought of being burdened with the 'soul' of anything.
Has no dread of wanting 'life' in the future.
Despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads being haunted by their souls.
Logically all these things point one way! He has assurance of some kind that he will acquire some higher life.
He dreads the consequence, the burden of a soul. Then it is a human life he looks to!
And the assurance... ?
Merciful God! The Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of terror afoot!
Later.-I went after my round to Van Helsing and told him my suspicion. He grew very grave, and after thinking the matter over for a while asked me to take him to Renfield. I did so. As we came to the door we heard the lunatic within singing gaily, as he used to do in the time which now seems so long ago.
When we entered we saw with amazement that he had spread out his sugar as of old. The flies, lethargic with the autumn, were beginning to buzz into the room. We tried to make him talk of the subject of our previous conversation, but he would not attend. He went on with his singing, just as though we had not been present. He had got a scrap of paper and was folding it into a notebook. We had to come away as ignorant as we went in.
His is a curious case indeed. We must watch him tonight.
LETTER, MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY TO LORD GODALMING.
'1 October.
'My Lord,
'We are at all times only too happy to meet your wishes. We beg, with regard to the desire of your Lordship, expressed by Mr. Harker on your behalf, to supply the following information concerning the sale and purchase of No. 347, Piccadilly. The original vendors are the executors of the late Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield. The purchaser is a foreign nobleman, Count de Ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the purchase money in notes 'over the counter,' if your Lordship will pardon us using so vulgar an expression. Beyond this we know nothing whatever of him.
'We are, my Lord,
'Your Lordship's humble servants,
'MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
2 October.-I placed a man in the corridor last night, and told him to make an accurate note of any sound he might hear from Renfield's room, and gave him instructions that if there should be anything strange he was to call me. After dinner, when we had all gathered round the fire in the study, Mrs. Harker having gone to bed, we discussed the attempts and discoveries of the day. Harker was the only one who had any result, and we are in great hopes that his clue may be an important one.
Before going to bed I went round to the patient's room and looked in through the observation trap. He was sleeping soundly, his heart rose and fell with regular respiration.
This morning the man on duty reported to me that a little after midnight he was restless and kept saying his prayers somewhat loudly. I asked him if that was all. He replied that it was all he heard. There was something about his manner, so suspicious that I asked him point blank if he had been asleep. He denied sleep, but admitted to having 'dozed' for a while. It is too bad that men cannot be trusted unless they are watched.
Today Harker is out following up his clue, and Art and Quincey are looking after horses. Godalming thinks that it will be well to have horses always in readiness, for when we get the information which we seek there will be no time to lose. We must sterilize all the imported earth between sunrise and sunset. We shall thus catch the Count at his weakest, and without a refuge to fly to. Van Helsing is off to the British Museum looking up some authorities on ancient medicine. The old physicians took account of things which their followers do not accept, and the Professor is searching for witch and demon cures which may be useful to us later.
I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait waistcoats.
Later.-We have met again. We seem at last to be on the track, and our work of tomorrow may be the beginning of the end. I wonder if Renfield's quiet has anything to do with this. His moods have so followed the doings of the Count, that the coming destruction of the monster may be carried to him some subtle way. If we could only get some hint as to what passed in his mind, between the time of my argument with him today and his resumption of fly-catching, it might afford us a valuable clue. He is now seemingly quiet for a spell... Is he? That wild yell seemed to come from his room... 
The attendant came bursting into my room and told me that Renfield had somehow met with some accident. He had heard him yell, and when he went to him found him lying on his face on the floor, all covered with blood. I must go at once... 
Chapter 21
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
3 October.-Let me put down with exactness all that happened, as well as I can remember, since last I made an entry. Not a detail that I can recall must be forgotten. In all calmness I must proceed.
When I came to Renfield's room I found him lying on the floor on his left side in a glittering pool of blood. When I went to move him, it became at once apparent that he had received some terrible injuries. There seemed none of the unity of purpose between the parts of the body which marks even lethargic sanity. As the face was exposed I could see that it was horribly bruised, as though it had been beaten against the floor. Indeed it was from the face wounds that the pool of blood originated.
The attendant who was kneeling beside the body said to me as we turned him over, 'I think, sir, his back is broken. See, both his right arm and leg and the whole side of his face are paralysed.' How such a thing could have happened puzzled the attendant beyond measure. He seemed quite bewildered, and his brows were gathered in as he said, 'I can't understand the two things. He could mark his face like that by beating his own head on the floor. I saw a young woman do it once at the Eversfield Asylum before anyone could lay hands on her. And I suppose he might have broken his neck by falling out of bed, if he got in an awkward kink. But for the life of me I can't imagine how the two things occurred. If his back was broke, he couldn't beat his head, and if his face was like that before the fall out of bed, there would be marks of it.'
I said to him, 'Go to Dr. Van Helsing, and ask him to kindly come here at once. I want him without an instant's delay.'
The man ran off, and within a few minutes the Professor, in his dressing gown and slippers, appeared. When he saw Renfield on the ground, he looked keenly at him a moment, and then turned to me. I think he recognized my thought in my eyes, for he said very quietly, manifestly for the ears of the attendant, 'Ah, a sad accident! He will need very careful watching, and much attention. I shall stay with you myself, but I shall first dress myself. If you will remain I shall in a few minutes join you.'
The patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that he had suffered some terrible injury.
Van Helsing returned with extraordinary celerity, bearing with him a surgical case. He had evidently been thinking and had his mind made up, for almost before he looked at the patient, he whispered to me, 'Send the attendant away. We must be alone with him when he becomes conscious, after the operation.'
I said, 'I think that will do now, Simmons. We have done all that we can at present. You had better go your round, and Dr. Van Helsing will operate. Let me know instantly if there be anything unusual anywhere.'
The man withdrew, and we went into a strict examination of the patient. The wounds of the face were superficial. The real injury was a depressed fracture of the skull, extending right up through the motor area.
The Professor thought a moment and said, 'We must reduce the pressure and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be. The rapidity of the suffusion shows the terrible nature of his injury. The whole motor area seems affected. The suffusion of the brain will increase quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late.'
As he was speaking there was a soft tapping at the door. I went over and opened it and found in the corridor without, Arthur and Quincey in pajamas and slippers, the former spoke, 'I heard your man call up Dr. Van Helsing and tell him of an accident. So I woke Quincey or rather called for him as he was not asleep. Things are moving too quickly and too strangely for sound sleep for any of us these times. I've been thinking that tomorrow night will not see things as they have been. We'll have to look back, and forward a little more than we have done. May we come in?'
I nodded, and held the door open till they had entered, then I closed it again. When Quincey saw the attitude and state of the patient, and noted the horrible pool on the floor, he said softly, 'My God! What has happened to him? Poor, poor devil!'
I told him briefly, and added that we expected he would recover consciousness after the operation, for a short time, at all events. He went at once and sat down on the edge of the bed, with Godalming beside him. We all watched in patience.
'We shall wait,' said Van Helsing, 'just long enough to fix the best spot for trephining, so that we may most quickly and perfectly remove the blood clot, for it is evident that the haemorrhage is increasing.'
The minutes during which we waited passed with fearful slowness. I had a horrible sinking in my heart, and from Van Helsing's face I gathered that he felt some fear or apprehension as to what was to come. I dreaded the words Renfield might speak. I was positively afraid to think. But the conviction of what was coming was on me, as I have read of men who have heard the death watch. The poor man's breathing came in uncertain gasps. Each instant he seemed as though he would open his eyes and speak, but then would follow a prolonged stertorous breath, and he would relapse into a more fixed insensibility. Inured as I was to sick beds and death, this suspense grew and grew upon me. I could almost hear the beating of my own heart, and the blood surging through my temples sounded like blows from a hammer. The silence finally became agonizing. I looked at my companions, one after another, and saw from their flushed faces and damp brows that they were enduring equal torture. There was a nervous suspense over us all, as though overhead some dread bell would peal out powerfully when we should least expect it.
At last there came a time when it was evident that the patient was sinking fast. He might die at any moment. I looked up at the Professor and caught his eyes fixed on mine. His face was sternly set as he spoke, 'There is no time to lose. His words may be worth many lives. I have been thinking so, as I stood here. It may be there is a soul at stake! We shall operate just above the ear.'
Without another word he made the operation. For a few moments the breathing continued to be stertorous. Then there came a breath so prolonged that it seemed as though it would tear open his chest. Suddenly his eyes opened, and became fixed in a wild, helpless stare. This was continued for a few moments, then it was softened into a glad surprise, and from his lips came a sigh of relief. He moved convulsively, and as he did so, said, 'I'll be quiet, Doctor. Tell them to take off the strait waistcoat. I have had a terrible dream, and it has left me so weak that I cannot move. What's wrong with my face? It feels all swollen, and it smarts dreadfully.'
He tried to turn his head, but even with the effort his eyes seemed to grow glassy again so I gently put it back. Then Van Helsing said in a quiet grave tone, 'Tell us your dream, Mr. Renfield.'
As he heard the voice his face brightened, through its mutilation, and he said, 'That is Dr. Van Helsing. How good it is of you to be here. Give me some water, my lips are dry, and I shall try to tell you. I dreamed... '
He stopped and seemed fainting. I called quietly to Quincey, 'The brandy, it is in my study, quick!' He flew and returned with a glass, the decanter of brandy and a carafe of water. We moistened the parched lips, and the patient quickly revived.
It seemed, however, that his poor injured brain had been working in the interval, for when he was quite conscious, he looked at me piercingly with an agonized confusion which I shall never forget, and said, 'I must not deceive myself. It was no dream, but all a grim reality.' Then his eyes roved round the room. As they caught sight of the two figures sitting patiently on the edge of the bed he went on, 'If I were not sure already, I would know from them.'
For an instant his eyes closed, not with pain or sleep but voluntarily, as though he were bringing all his faculties to bear. When he opened them he said, hurriedly, and with more energy than he had yet displayed, 'Quick, Doctor, quick, I am dying! I feel that I have but a few minutes, and then I must go back to death, or worse! Wet my lips with brandy again. I have something that I must say before I die. Or before my poor crushed brain dies anyhow. Thank you! It was that night after you left me, when I implored you to let me go away. I couldn't speak then, for I felt my tongue was tied. But I was as sane then, except in that way, as I am now. I was in an agony of despair for a long time after you left me, it seemed hours. Then there came a sudden peace to me. My brain seemed to become cool again, and I realized where I was. I heard the dogs bark behind our house, but not where He was!'
As he spoke, Van Helsing's eyes never blinked, but his hand came out and met mine and gripped it hard. He did not, however, betray himself. He nodded slightly and said, 'Go on,' in a low voice.
Renfield proceeded. 'He came up to the window in the mist, as I had seen him often before, but he was solid then, not a ghost, and his eyes were fierce like a man's when angry. He was laughing with his red mouth, the sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight when he turned to look back over the belt of trees, to where the dogs were barking. I wouldn't ask him to come in at first, though I knew he wanted to, just as he had wanted all along. Then he began promising me things, not in words but by doing them.'
He was interrupted by a word from the Professor, 'How?'
'By making them happen. Just as he used to send in the flies when the sun was shining. Great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their wings. And big moths, in the night, with skull and cross-bones on their backs.'
Van Helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously, 'The Acherontia Atropos of the Sphinges, what you call the 'Death's-head Moth'?'
The patient went on without stopping, 'Then he began to whisper.'Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life. And dogs to eat them, and cats too. All lives! All red blood, with years of life in it, and not merely buzzing flies!' I laughed at him, for I wanted to see what he could do. Then the dogs howled, away beyond the dark trees in His house. He beckoned me to the window. I got up and looked out, and He raised his hands, and seemed to call out without using any words. A dark mass spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire. And then He moved the mist to the right and left, and I could see that there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red, like His only smaller. He held up his hand, and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to be saying, 'All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!' And then a red cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my eyes, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself opening the sash and saying to Him, 'Come in, Lord and Master!' The rats were all gone, but He slid into the room through the sash, though it was only open an inch wide, just as the Moon herself has often come in through the tiniest crack and has stood before me in all her size and splendour.'
His voice was weaker, so I moistened his lips with the brandy again, and he continued, but it seemed as though his memory had gone on working in the interval for his story was further advanced. I was about to call him back to the point, but Van Helsing whispered to me, 'Let him go on. Do not interrupt him. He cannot go back, and maybe could not proceed at all if once he lost the thread of his thought.'
He proceeded, 'All day I waited to hear from him, but he did not send me anything, not even a blowfly, and when the moon got up I was pretty angry with him. When he did slide in through the window, though it was shut, and did not even knock, I got mad with him. He sneered at me, and his white face looked out of the mist with his red eyes gleaming, and he went on as though he owned the whole place, and I was no one. He didn't even smell the same as he went by me. I couldn't hold him. I thought that, somehow, Mrs. Harker had come into the room.'
The two men sitting on the bed stood up and came over, standing behind him so that he could not see them, but where they could hear better. They were both silent, but the Professor started and quivered. His face, however, grew grimmer and sterner still. Renfield went on without noticing, 'When Mrs. Harker came in to see me this afternoon she wasn't the same. It was like tea after the teapot has been watered.' Here we all moved, but no one said a word.
He went on, 'I didn't know that she was here till she spoke, and she didn't look the same. I don't care for the pale people. I like them with lots of blood in them, and hers all seemed to have run out. I didn't think of it at the time, but when she went away I began to think, and it made me mad to know that He had been taking the life out of her.' I could feel that the rest quivered, as I did. But we remained otherwise still. 'So when He came tonight I was ready for Him. I saw the mist stealing in, and I grabbed it tight. I had heard that madmen have unnatural strength. And as I knew I was a madman, at times anyhow, I resolved to use my power. Ay, and He felt it too, for He had to come out of the mist to struggle with me. I held tight, and I thought I was going to win, for I didn't mean Him to take any more of her life, till I saw His eyes. They burned into me, and my strength became like water. He slipped through it, and when I tried to cling to Him, He raised me up and flung me down. There was a red cloud before me, and a noise like thunder, and the mist seemed to steal away under the door.'
His voice was becoming fainter and his breath more stertorous. Van Helsing stood up instinctively.
'We know the worst now,' he said. 'He is here, and we know his purpose. It may not be too late. Let us be armed, the same as we were the other night, but lose no time, there is not an instant to spare.'
There was no need to put our fear, nay our conviction, into words, we shared them in common. We all hurried and took from our rooms the same things that we had when we entered the Count's house. The Professor had his ready, and as we met in the corridor he pointed to them significantly as he said, 'They never leave me, and they shall not till this unhappy business is over. Be wise also, my friends. It is no common enemy that we deal with Alas! Alas! That dear Madam Mina should suffer!' He stopped, his voice was breaking, and I do not know if rage or terror predominated in my own heart.
Outside the Harkers' door we paused. Art and Quincey held back, and the latter said, 'Should we disturb her?'
'We must,' said Van Helsing grimly. 'If the door be locked, I shall break it in.'
'May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual to break into a lady's room!'
Van Helsing said solemnly, 'You are always right. But this is life and death. All chambers are alike to the doctor. And even were they not they are all as one to me tonight. Friend John, when I turn the handle, if the door does not open, do you put your shoulder down and shove. And you too, my friends. Now!'
He turned the handle as he spoke, but the door did not yield. We threw ourselves against it. With a crash it burst open, and we almost fell headlong into the room. The Professor did actually fall, and I saw across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees. What I saw appalled me. I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my neck, and my heart seemed to stand still.
The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the room was light enough to see. On the bed beside the window lay Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor. Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black. His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we all recognized the Count, in every way, even to the scar on his forehead. With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker's hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension. His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man's bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face, and the hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap into it. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion. The great nostrils of the white aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge, and the white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood dripping mouth, clamped together like those of a wild beast. With a wrench, which threw his victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned and sprang at us. But by this time the Professor had gained his feet, and was holding towards him the envelope which contained the Sacred Wafer. The Count suddenly stopped, just as poor Lucy had done outside the tomb, and cowered back. Further and further back he cowered, as we, lifting our crucifixes, advanced. The moonlight suddenly failed, as a great black cloud sailed across the sky. And when the gaslight sprang up under Quincey's match, we saw nothing but a faint vapour. This, as we looked, trailed under the door, which with the recoil from its bursting open, had swung back to its old position. Van Helsing, Art, and I moved forward to Mrs. Harker, who by this time had drawn her breath and with it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till my dying day. For a few seconds she lay in her helpless attitude and disarray. Her face was ghastly, with a pallor which was accentuated by the blood which smeared her lips and cheeks and chin. From her throat trickled a thin stream of blood. Her eyes were mad with terror. Then she put before her face her poor crushed hands, which bore on their whiteness the red mark of the Count's terrible grip, and from behind them came a low desolate wail which made the terrible scream seem only the quick expression of an endless grief. Van Helsing stepped forward and drew the coverlet gently over her body, whilst Art, after looking at her face for an instant despairingly, ran out of the room.
Van Helsing whispered to me, 'Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know the Vampire can produce. We can do nothing with poor Madam Mina for a few moments till she recovers herself. I must wake him!'
He dipped the end of a towel in cold water and with it began to flick him on the face, his wife all the while holding her face between her hands and sobbing in a way that was heart breaking to hear. I raised the blind, and looked out of the window. There was much moonshine, and as I looked I could see Quincey Morris run across the lawn and hide himself in the shadow of a great yew tree. It puzzled me to think why he was doing this. But at the instant I heard Harker's quick exclamation as he woke to partial consciousness, and turned to the bed. On his face, as there might well be, was a look of wild amazement. He seemed dazed for a few seconds, and then full consciousness seemed to burst upon him all at once, and he started up.
His wife was aroused by the quick movement, and turned to him with her arms stretched out, as though to embrace him. Instantly, however, she drew them in again, and putting her elbows together, held her hands before her face, and shuddered till the bed beneath her shook.
'In God's name what does this mean?' Harker cried out. 'Dr. Seward, Dr. Van Helsing, what is it? What has happened? What is wrong? Mina, dear what is it? What does that blood mean? My God, my God! Has it come to this!' And, raising himself to his knees, he beat his hands wildly together. 'Good God help us! Help her! Oh, help her!'
With a quick movement he jumped from bed, and began to pull on his clothes, all the man in him awake at the need for instant exertion. 'What has happened? Tell me all about it!' he cried without pausing. 'Dr. Van Helsing you love Mina, I know. Oh, do something to save her. It cannot have gone too far yet. Guard her while I look for him!'
His wife, through her terror and horror and distress, saw some sure danger to him. Instantly forgetting her own grief, she seized hold of him and cried out.
'No! No! Jonathan, you must not leave me. I have suffered enough tonight, God knows, without the dread of his harming you. You must stay with me. Stay with these friends who will watch over you!' Her expression became frantic as she spoke. And, he yielding to her, she pulled him down sitting on the bedside, and clung to him fiercely.
Van Helsing and I tried to calm them both. The Professor held up his golden crucifix, and said with wonderful calmness, 'Do not fear, my dear. We are here, and whilst this is close to you no foul thing can approach. You are safe for tonight, and we must be calm and take counsel together.'
She shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband's breast. When she raised it, his white nightrobe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in the neck had sent forth drops. The instant she saw it she drew back, with a low wail, and whispered, amidst choking sobs.
'Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.'
To this he spoke out resolutely, 'Nonsense, Mina. It is a shame to me to hear such a word. I would not hear it of you. And I shall not hear it from you. May God judge me by my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of mine anything ever come between us!'
He put out his arms and folded her to his breast. And for a while she lay there sobbing. He looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils. His mouth was set as steel.
After a while her sobs became less frequent and more faint, and then he said to me, speaking with a studied calmness which I felt tried his nervous power to the utmost.
'And now, Dr. Seward, tell me all about it. Too well I know the broad fact. Tell me all that has been.'
I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. Just as I had finished, Quincey and Godalming knocked at the door. They entered in obedience to our summons. Van Helsing looked at me questioningly. I understood him to mean if we were to take advantage of their coming to divert if possible the thoughts of the unhappy husband and wife from each other and from themselves. So on nodding acquiescence to him he asked them what they had seen or done. To which Lord Godalming answered.
'I could not see him anywhere in the passage, or in any of our rooms. I looked in the study but, though he had been there, he had gone. He had, however... ' He stopped suddenly, looking at the poor drooping figure on the bed.
Van Helsing said gravely, 'Go on, friend Arthur. We want here no more concealments. Our hope now is in knowing all. Tell freely!'
So Art went on, 'He had been there, and though it could only have been for a few seconds, he made rare hay of the place. All the manuscript had been burned, and the blue flames were flickering amongst the white ashes. The cylinders of your phonograph too were thrown on the fire, and the wax had helped the flames.'
Here I interrupted. 'Thank God there is the other copy in the safe!'
His face lit for a moment, but fell again as he went on. 'I ran downstairs then, but could see no sign of him. I looked into Renfield's room, but there was no trace there except... ' Again he paused.
'Go on,' said Harker hoarsely. So he bowed his head and moistening his lips with his tongue, added, 'except that the poor fellow is dead.'
Mrs. Harker raised her head, looking from one to the other of us she said solemnly, 'God's will be done!'
I could not but feel that Art was keeping back something. But, as I took it that it was with a purpose, I said nothing.
Van Helsing turned to Morris and asked, 'And you, friend Quincey, have you any to tell?'
'A little,' he answered. 'It may be much eventually, but at present I can't say. I thought it well to know if possible where the Count would go when he left the house. I did not see him, but I saw a bat rise from Renfield's window, and flap westward. I expected to see him in some shape go back to Carfax, but he evidently sought some other lair. He will not be back tonight, for the sky is reddening in the east, and the dawn is close. We must work tomorrow!'
He said the latter words through his shut teeth. For a space of perhaps a couple of minutes there was silence, and I could fancy that I could hear the sound of our hearts beating.
Then Van Helsing said, placing his hand tenderly on Mrs. Harker's head, 'And now, Madam Mina, poor dear, dear, Madam Mina, tell us exactly what happened. God knows that I do not want that you be pained, but it is need that we know all. For now more than ever has all work to be done quick and sharp, and in deadly earnest. The day is close to us that must end all, if it may be so, and now is the chance that we may live and learn.'
The poor dear lady shivered, and I could see the tension of her nerves as she clasped her husband closer to her and bent her head lower and lower still on his breast. Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly. After a pause in which she was evidently ordering her thoughts, she began.
'I took the sleeping draught which you had so kindly given me, but for a long time it did not act. I seemed to become more wakeful, and myriads of horrible fancies began to crowd in upon my mind. All of them connected with death, and vampires, with blood, and pain, and trouble.' Her husband involuntarily groaned as she turned to him and said lovingly, 'Do not fret, dear. You must be brave and strong, and help me through the horrible task. If you only knew what an effort it is to me to tell of this fearful thing at all, you would understand how much I need your help. Well, I saw I must try to help the medicine to its work with my will, if it was to do me any good, so I resolutely set myself to sleep. Sure enough sleep must soon have come to me, for I remember no more. Jonathan coming in had not waked me, for he lay by my side when next I remember. There was in the room the same thin white mist that I had before noticed. But I forget now if you know of this. You will find it in my diary which I shall show you later. I felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and the same sense of some presence. I turned to wake Jonathan, but found that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken the sleeping draught, and not I. I tried, but I could not wake him. This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified. Then indeed, my heart sank within me. Beside the bed, as if he had stepped out of the mist, or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure, for it had entirely disappeared, stood a tall, thin man, all in black. I knew him at once from the description of the others. The waxen face, the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin white line, the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing between, and the red eyes that I had seemed to see in the sunset on the windows of St. Mary's Church at Whitby. I knew, too, the red scar on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him. For an instant my heart stood still, and I would have screamed out, only that I was paralyzed. In the pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting whisper, pointing as he spoke to Jonathan.
''Silence! If you make a sound I shall take him and dash his brains out before your very eyes.' I was appalled and was too bewildered to do or say anything. With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so, 'First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions. You may as well be quiet. It is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!' I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim. And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!' Her husband groaned again. She clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on.
'I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon. How long this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away. I saw it drip with the fresh blood!' The remembrance seemed for a while to overpower her, and she drooped and would have sunk down but for her husband's sustaining arm. With a great effort she recovered herself and went on.
'Then he spoke to me mockingly, 'And so you, like the others, would play your brains against mine. You would help these men to hunt me and frustrate me in my design! You know now, and they know in part already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my path. They should have kept their energies for use closer to home. Whilst they played wits against me, against me who commanded nations, and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before they were born, I was countermining them. And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper. You shall be avenged in turn, for not one of them but shall minister to your needs. But as yet you are to be punished for what you have done. You have aided in thwarting me. Now you shall come to my call. When my brain says 'Come!' to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding. And to that end this!'
'With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast. When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some to the... Oh, my God! My God! What have I done? What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days. God pity me! Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril. And in mercy pity those to whom she is dear!' Then she began to rub her lips as though to cleanse them from pollution.
As she was telling her terrible story, the eastern sky began to quicken, and everything became more and more clear. Harker was still and quiet. But over his face, as the awful narrative went on, came a grey look which deepened and deepened in the morning light, till when the first red streak of the coming dawn shot up, the flesh stood darkly out against the whitening hair.
We have arranged that one of us is to stay within call of the unhappy pair till we can meet together and arrange about taking action.
Of this I am sure. The sun rises today on no more miserable house in all the great round of its daily course.
Chapter 22
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
3 October.-As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary. It is now six o'clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour and take something to eat, for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. Our best will be, God knows, required today. I must keep writing at every chance, for I dare not stop to think. All, big and little, must go down. Perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most. The teaching, big or little, could not have landed Mina or me anywhere worse than we are today. However, we must trust and hope. Poor Mina told me just now, with the tears running down her dear cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our faith is tested. That we must keep on trusting, and that God will aid us up to the end. The end! Oh my God! What end?... To work! To work!
When Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward had come back from seeing poor Renfield, we went gravely into what was to be done. First, Dr. Seward told us that when he and Dr. Van Helsing had gone down to the room below they had found Renfield lying on the floor, all in a heap. His face was all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were broken.
Dr. Seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he had heard anything. He said that he had been sitting down, he confessed to half dozing, when he heard loud voices in the room, and then Renfield had called out loudly several times, 'God! God! God!' After that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had seen him. Van Helsing asked if he had heard 'voices' or 'a voice,' and he said he could not say. That at first it had seemed to him as if there were two, but as there was no one in the room it could have been only one. He could swear to it, if required, that the word 'God' was spoken by the patient.
Dr. Seward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into the matter. The question of an inquest had to be considered, and it would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe it. As it was, he thought that on the attendant's evidence he could give a certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed. In case the coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest, necessarily to the same result.
When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full confidence. That nothing of any sort, no matter how painful, should be kept from her. She herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was pitiful to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth of despair.
'There must be no concealment,' she said. 'Alas! We have had too much already. And besides there is nothing in all the world that can give me more pain than I have already endured, than I suffer now! Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!'
Van Helsing was looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said, suddenly but quietly, 'But dear Madam Mina, are you not afraid. Not for yourself, but for others from yourself, after what has happened?'
Her face grew set in its lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion of a martyr as she answered, 'Ah no! For my mind is made up!'
'To what?' he asked gently, whilst we were all very still, for each in our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant.
Her answer came with direct simplicity, as though she was simply stating a fact, 'Because if I find in myself, and I shall watch keenly for it, a sign of harm to any that I love, I shall die!'
'You would not kill yourself?' he asked, hoarsely.
'I would. If there were no friend who loved me, who would save me such a pain, and so desperate an effort!' She looked at him meaningly as she spoke.
He was sitting down, but now he rose and came close to her and put his hand on her head as he said solemnly. 'My child, there is such an one if it were for your good. For myself I could hold it in my account with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it were best. Nay, were it safe! But my child... '
For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throat. He gulped it down and went on, 'There are here some who would stand between you and death. You must not die. You must not die by any hand, but least of all your own. Until the other, who has fouled your sweet life, is true dead you must not die. For if he is still with the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is. No, you must live! You must struggle and strive to live, though death would seem a boon unspeakable. You must fight Death himself, though he come to you in pain or in joy. By the day, or the night, in safety or in peril! On your living soul I charge you that you do not die. Nay, nor think of death, till this great evil be past.'
The poor dear grew white as death, and shook and shivered, as I have seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide. We were all silent. We could do nothing. At length she grew more calm and turning to him said sweetly, but oh so sorrowfully, as she held out her hand, 'I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me live, I shall strive to do so. Till, if it may be in His good time, this horror may have passed away from me.'
She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what we were to do. I told her that she was to have all the papers in the safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter use, and was to keep the record as she had done before. She was pleased with the prospect of anything to do, if 'pleased' could be used in connection with so grim an interest.
As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was prepared with an exact ordering of our work.
'It is perhaps well,' he said, 'that at our meeting after our visit to Carfax we decided not to do anything with the earth boxes that lay there. Had we done so, the Count must have guessed our purpose, and would doubtless have taken measures in advance to frustrate such an effort with regard to the others. But now he does not know our intentions. Nay, more, in all probability, he does not know that such a power exists to us as can sterilize his lairs, so that he cannot use them as of old.
'We are now so much further advanced in our knowledge as to their disposition that, when we have examined the house in Piccadilly, we may track the very last of them. Today then, is ours, and in it rests our hope. The sun that rose on our sorrow this morning guards us in its course. Until it sets tonight, that monster must retain whatever form he now has. He is confined within the limitations of his earthly envelope. He cannot melt into thin air nor disappear through cracks or chinks or crannies. If he go through a doorway, he must open the door like a mortal. And so we have this day to hunt out all his lairs and sterilize them. So we shall, if we have not yet catch him and destroy him, drive him to bay in some place where the catching and the destroying shall be, in time, sure.'
Here I started up for I could not contain myself at the thought that the minutes and seconds so preciously laden with Mina's life and happiness were flying from us, since whilst we talked action was impossible. But Van Helsing held up his hand warningly.
'Nay, friend Jonathan,' he said, 'in this, the quickest way home is the longest way, so your proverb say. We shall all act and act with desperate quick, when the time has come. But think, in all probable the key of the situation is in that house in Piccadilly. The Count may have many houses which he has bought. Of them he will have deeds of purchase, keys and other things. He will have paper that he write on. He will have his book of cheques. There are many belongings that he must have somewhere. Why not in this place so central, so quiet, where he come and go by the front or the back at all hours, when in the very vast of the traffic there is none to notice. We shall go there and search that house. And when we learn what it holds, then we do what our friend Arthur call, in his phrases of hunt 'stop the earths' and so we run down our old fox, so? Is it not?'
'Then let us come at once,' I cried, 'we are wasting the precious, precious time!'
The Professor did not move, but simply said, 'And how are we to get into that house in Piccadilly?'
'Any way!' I cried. 'We shall break in if need be.'
'And your police? Where will they be, and what will they say?'
I was staggered, but I knew that if he wished to delay he had a good reason for it. So I said, as quietly as I could, 'Don't wait more than need be. You know, I am sure, what torture I am in.'
'Ah, my child, that I do. And indeed there is no wish of me to add to your anguish. But just think, what can we do, until all the world be at movement. Then will come our time. I have thought and thought, and it seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all. Now we wish to get into the house, but we have no key. Is it not so?' I nodded.
'Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could not still get in. And think there was to you no conscience of the housebreaker, what would you do?'
'I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the lock for me.'
'And your police, they would interfere, would they not?'
'Oh no! Not if they knew the man was properly employed.'
'Then,' he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, 'all that is in doubt is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to whether or not that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever, oh so clever, in reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No, no, my friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty houses in this your London, or of any city in the world, and if you do it as such things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done, no one will interfere. I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar come and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice. And when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been. This was all done en regle, and in our work we shall be en regle too. We shall not go so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange. But we shall go after ten o'clock, when there are many about, and such things would be done were we indeed owners of the house.'
I could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of Mina's face became relaxed in thought. There was hope in such good counsel.
Van Helsing went on, 'When once within that house we may find more clues. At any rate some of us can remain there whilst the rest find the other places where there be more earth boxes, at Bermondsey and Mile End.'
Lord Godalming stood up. 'I can be of some use here,' he said. 'I shall wire to my people to have horses and carriages where they will be most convenient.'
'Look here, old fellow,' said Morris, 'it is a capital idea to have all ready in case we want to go horse backing, but don't you think that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a byway of Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our purpose? It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south or east. And even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we are going to.'
'Friend Quincey is right!' said the Professor. 'His head is what you call in plane with the horizon. It is a difficult thing that we go to do, and we do not want no peoples to watch us if so it may.'
Mina took a growing interest in everything and I was rejoiced to see that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the terrible experience of the night. She was very, very pale, almost ghastly, and so thin that her lips were drawn away, showing her teeth in somewhat of prominence. I did not mention this last, lest it should give her needless pain, but it made my blood run cold in my veins to think of what had occurred with poor Lucy when the Count had sucked her blood. As yet there was no sign of the teeth growing sharper, but the time as yet was short, and there was time for fear.
When we came to the discussion of the sequence of our efforts and of the disposition of our forces, there were new sources of doubt. It was finally agreed that before starting for Piccadilly we should destroy the Count's lair close at hand. In case he should find it out too soon, we should thus be still ahead of him in our work of destruction. And his presence in his purely material shape, and at his weakest, might give us some new clue.
As to the disposal of forces, it was suggested by the Professor that, after our visit to Carfax, we should all enter the house in Piccadilly. That the two doctors and I should remain there, whilst Lord Godalming and Quincey found the lairs at Walworth and Mile End and destroyed them. It was possible, if not likely, the Professor urged, that the Count might appear in Piccadilly during the day, and that if so we might be able to cope with him then and there. At any rate, we might be able to follow him in force. To this plan I strenuously objected, and so far as my going was concerned, for I said that I intended to stay and protect Mina. I thought that my mind was made up on the subject, but Mina would not listen to my objection. She said that there might be some law matter in which I could be useful. That amongst the Count's papers might be some clue which I could understand out of my experience in Transylvania. And that, as it was, all the strength we could muster was required to cope with the Count's extraordinary power. I had to give in, for Mina's resolution was fixed. She said that it was the last hope for her that we should all work together.
'As for me,' she said, 'I have no fear. Things have been as bad as they can be. And whatever may happen must have in it some element of hope or comfort. Go, my husband! God can, if He wishes it, guard me as well alone as with any one present.'
So I started up crying out, 'Then in God's name let us come at once, for we are losing time. The Count may come to Piccadilly earlier than we think.'
'Not so!' said Van Helsing, holding up his hand.
'But why?' I asked.
'Do you forget,' he said, with actually a smile, 'that last night he banqueted heavily, and will sleep late?'
Did I forget! Shall I ever... can I ever! Can any of us ever forget that terrible scene! Mina struggled hard to keep her brave countenance, but the pain overmastered her and she put her hands before her face, and shuddered whilst she moaned. Van Helsing had not intended to recall her frightful experience. He had simply lost sight of her and her part in the affair in his intellectual effort.
When it struck him what he said, he was horrified at his thoughtlessness and tried to comfort her.
'Oh, Madam Mina,' he said, 'dear, dear, Madam Mina, alas! That I of all who so reverence you should have said anything so forgetful. These stupid old lips of mine and this stupid old head do not deserve so, but you will forget it, will you not?' He bent low beside her as he spoke.
She took his hand, and looking at him through her tears, said hoarsely, 'No, I shall not forget, for it is well that I remember. And with it I have so much in memory of you that is sweet, that I take it all together. Now, you must all be going soon. Breakfast is ready, and we must all eat that we may be strong.'
Breakfast was a strange meal to us all. We tried to be cheerful and encourage each other, and Mina was the brightest and most cheerful of us. When it was over, Van Helsing stood up and said, 'Now, my dear friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise. Are we all armed, as we were on that night when first we visited our enemy's lair. Armed against ghostly as well as carnal attack?'
We all assured him.
'Then it is well. Now, Madam Mina, you are in any case quite safe here until the sunset. And before then we shall return... if... We shall return! But before we go let me see you armed against personal attack. I have myself, since you came down, prepared your chamber by the placing of things of which we know, so that He may not enter. Now let me guard yourself. On your forehead I touch this piece of Sacred Wafer in the name of the Father, the Son, and... '
There was a fearful scream which almost froze our hearts to hear. As he had placed the Wafer on Mina's forehead, it had seared it... had burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal. My poor darling's brain had told her the significance of the fact as quickly as her nerves received the pain of it, and the two so overwhelmed her that her overwrought nature had its voice in that dreadful scream.
But the words to her thought came quickly. The echo of the scream had not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sank on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasement. Pulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out.
'Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement Day.'
They all paused. I had thrown myself beside her in an agony of helpless grief, and putting my arms around held her tight. For a few minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away their eyes that ran tears silently. Then Van Helsing turned and said gravely. So gravely that I could not help feeling that he was in some way inspired, and was stating things outside himself.
'It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see fit, as He most surely shall, on the Judgement Day, to redress all wrongs of the earth and of His children that He has placed thereon. And oh, Madam Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that red scar, the sign of God's knowledge of what has been, shall pass away, and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know. For so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon us. Till then we bear our Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His Will. It may be that we are chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other through stripes and shame. Through tears and blood. Through doubts and fear, and all that makes the difference between God and man.'
There was hope in his words, and comfort. And they made for resignation. Mina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old man's hands and bent over and kissed it. Then without a word we all knelt down together, and all holding hands, swore to be true to each other. We men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of sorrow from the head of her whom, each in his own way, we loved. And we prayed for help and guidance in the terrible task which lay before us. It was then time to start. So I said farewell to Mina, a parting which neither of us shall forget to our dying day, and we set out.
To one thing I have made up my mind. If we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land alone. I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks.
We entered Carfax without trouble and found all things the same as on the first occasion. It was hard to believe that amongst so prosaic surroundings of neglect and dust and decay there was any ground for such fear as already we knew. Had not our minds been made up, and had there not been terrible memories to spur us on, we could hardly have proceeded with our task. We found no papers, or any sign of use in the house. And in the old chapel the great boxes looked just as we had seen them last.
Dr. Van Helsing said to us solemnly as we stood before him, 'And now, my friends, we have a duty here to do. We must sterilize this earth, so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant land for such fell use. He has chosen this earth because it has been holy. Thus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more holy still. It was sanctified to such use of man, now we sanctify it to God.'
As he spoke he took from his bag a screwdriver and a wrench, and very soon the top of one of the cases was thrown open. The earth smelled musty and close, but we did not somehow seem to mind, for our attention was concentrated on the Professor. Taking from his box a piece of the Sacred Wafer he laid it reverently on the earth, and then shutting down the lid began to screw it home, we aiding him as he worked.
One by one we treated in the same way each of the great boxes, and left them as we had found them to all appearance. But in each was a portion of the Host. When we closed the door behind us, the Professor said solemnly, 'So much is already done. It may be that with all the others we can be so successful, then the sunset of this evening may shine of Madam Mina's forehead all white as ivory and with no stain!'
As we passed across the lawn on our way to the station to catch our train we could see the front of the asylum. I looked eagerly, and in the window of my own room saw Mina. I waved my hand to her, and nodded to tell that our work there was successfully accomplished. She nodded in reply to show that she understood. The last I saw, she was waving her hand in farewell. It was with a heavy heart that we sought the station and just caught the train, which was steaming in as we reached the platform. I have written this in the train.
Piccadilly, 12:30 o'clock.-Just before we reached Fenchurch Street Lord Godalming said to me, 'Quincey and I will find a locksmith. You had better not come with us in case there should be any difficulty. For under the circumstances it wouldn't seem so bad for us to break into an empty house. But you are a solicitor and the Incorporated Law Society might tell you that you should have known better.'
I demurred as to my not sharing any danger even of odium, but he went on, 'Besides, it will attract less attention if there are not too many of us. My title will make it all right with the locksmith, and with any policeman that may come along. You had better go with Jack and the Professor and stay in the Green Park. Somewhere in sight of the house, and when you see the door opened and the smith has gone away, do you all come across. We shall be on the lookout for you, and shall let you in.'
'The advice is good!' said Van Helsing, so we said no more. Godalming and Morris hurried off in a cab, we following in another. At the corner of Arlington Street our contingent got out and strolled into the Green Park. My heart beat as I saw the house on which so much of our hope was centred, looming up grim and silent in its deserted condition amongst its more lively and spruce-looking neighbours. We sat down on a bench within good view, and began to smoke cigars so as to attract as little attention as possible. The minutes seemed to pass with leaden feet as we waited for the coming of the others.
At length we saw a four-wheeler drive up. Out of it, in leisurely fashion, got Lord Godalming and Morris. And down from the box descended a thick-set working man with his rush-woven basket of tools. Morris paid the cabman, who touched his hat and drove away. Together the two ascended the steps, and Lord Godalming pointed out what he wanted done. The workman took off his coat leisurely and hung it on one of the spikes of the rail, saying something to a policeman who just then sauntered along. The policeman nodded acquiescence, and the man kneeling down placed his bag beside him. After searching through it, he took out a selection of tools which he proceeded to lay beside him in orderly fashion. Then he stood up, looked in the keyhole, blew into it, and turning to his employers, made some remark. Lord Godalming smiled, and the man lifted a good sized bunch of keys. Selecting one of them, he began to probe the lock, as if feeling his way with it. After fumbling about for a bit he tried a second, and then a third. All at once the door opened under a slight push from him, and he and the two others entered the hall. We sat still. My own cigar burnt furiously, but Van Helsing's went cold altogether. We waited patiently as we saw the workman come out and bring his bag. Then he held the door partly open, steadying it with his knees, whilst he fitted a key to the lock. This he finally handed to Lord Godalming, who took out his purse and gave him something. The man touched his hat, took his bag, put on his coat and departed. Not a soul took the slightest notice of the whole transaction.
When the man had fairly gone, we three crossed the street and knocked at the door. It was immediately opened by Quincey Morris, beside whom stood Lord Godalming lighting a cigar.
'The place smells so vilely,' said the latter as we came in. It did indeed smell vilely. Like the old chapel at Carfax. And with our previous experience it was plain to us that the Count had been using the place pretty freely. We moved to explore the house, all keeping together in case of attack, for we knew we had a strong and wily enemy to deal with, and as yet we did not know whether the Count might not be in the house.
In the dining room, which lay at the back of the hall, we found eight boxes of earth. Eight boxes only out of the nine which we sought! Our work was not over, and would never be until we should have found the missing box.
First we opened the shutters of the window which looked out across a narrow stone flagged yard at the blank face of a stable, pointed to look like the front of a miniature house. There were no windows in it, so we were not afraid of being overlooked. We did not lose any time in examining the chests. With the tools which we had brought with us we opened them, one by one, and treated them as we had treated those others in the old chapel. It was evident to us that the Count was not at present in the house, and we proceeded to search for any of his effects.
After a cursory glance at the rest of the rooms, from basement to attic, we came to the conclusion that the dining room contained any effects which might belong to the Count. And so we proceeded to minutely examine them. They lay in a sort of orderly disorder on the great dining room table.
There were title deeds of the Piccadilly house in a great bundle, deeds of the purchase of the houses at Mile End and Bermondsey, notepaper, envelopes, and pens and ink. All were covered up in thin wrapping paper to keep them from the dust. There were also a clothes brush, a brush and comb, and a jug and basin. The latter containing dirty water which was reddened as if with blood. Last of all was a little heap of keys of all sorts and sizes, probably those belonging to the other houses.
When we had examined this last find, Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris taking accurate notes of the various addresses of the houses in the East and the South, took with them the keys in a great bunch, and set out to destroy the boxes in these places. The rest of us are, with what patience we can, waiting their return, or the coming of the Count.
Chapter 23
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
3 October.-The time seemed terribly long whilst we were waiting for the coming of Godalming and Quincey Morris. The Professor tried to keep our minds active by using them all the time. I could see his beneficent purpose, by the side glances which he threw from time to time at Harker. The poor fellow is overwhelmed in a misery that is appalling to see. Last night he was a frank, happy-looking man, with strong, youthful face, full of energy, and with dark brown hair. Today he is a drawn, haggard old man, whose white hair matches well with the hollow burning eyes and grief-written lines of his face. His energy is still intact. In fact, he is like a living flame. This may yet be his salvation, for if all go well, it will tide him over the despairing period. He will then, in a kind of way, wake again to the realities of life. Poor fellow, I thought my own trouble was bad enough, but his... !
The Professor knows this well enough, and is doing his best to keep his mind active. What he has been saying was, under the circumstances, of absorbing interest. So well as I can remember, here it is:
'I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster, and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance. Not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman, and alchemist. Which latter was the highest development of the science knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.
'Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death. Though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child. But he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well. And if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yet, he may be yet if we fail, the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead through Death, not Life.'
Harker groaned and said, 'And this is all arrayed against my darling! But how is he experimenting? The knowledge may help us to defeat him!'
'He has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but surely. That big child-brain of his is working. Well for us, it is as yet a child-brain. For had he dared, at the first, to attempt certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power. However, he means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow. Festina lente may well be his motto.'
'I fail to understand,' said Harker wearily. 'Oh, do be more plain to me! Perhaps grief and trouble are dulling my brain.'
The Professor laid his hand tenderly on his shoulder as he spoke, 'Ah, my child, I will be plain. Do you not see how, of late, this monster has been creeping into knowledge experimentally. How he has been making use of the zoophagous patient to effect his entry into friend John's home. For your Vampire, though in all afterwards he can come when and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked thereto by an inmate. But these are not his most important experiments. Do we not see how at the first all these so great boxes were moved by others. He knew not then but that must be so. But all the time that so great child-brain of his was growing, and he began to consider whether he might not himself move the box. So he began to help. And then, when he found that this be all right, he try to move them all alone. And so he progress, and he scatter these graves of him. And none but he know where they are hidden.
'He may have intend to bury them deep in the ground. So that only he use them in the night, or at such time as he can change his form, they do him equal well, and none may know these are his hiding place! But, my child, do not despair, this knowledge came to him just too late! Already all of his lairs but one be sterilize as for him. And before the sunset this shall be so. Then he have no place where he can move and hide. I delayed this morning that so we might be sure. Is there not more at stake for us than for him? Then why not be more careful than him? By my clock it is one hour and already, if all be well, friend Arthur and Quincey are on their way to us. Today is our day, and we must go sure, if slow, and lose no chance. See! There are five of us when those absent ones return.'
Whilst we were speaking we were startled by a knock at the hall door, the double postman's knock of the telegraph boy. We all moved out to the hall with one impulse, and Van Helsing, holding up his hand to us to keep silence, stepped to the door and opened it. The boy handed in a dispatch. The Professor closed the door again, and after looking at the direction, opened it and read aloud.
'Look out for D. He has just now, 12:45, come from Carfax hurriedly and hastened towards the South. He seems to be going the round and may want to see you: Mina.'
There was a pause, broken by Jonathan Harker's voice, 'Now, God be thanked, we shall soon meet!'
Van Helsing turned to him quickly and said, 'God will act in His own way and time. Do not fear, and do not rejoice as yet. For what we wish for at the moment may be our own undoings.'
'I care for nothing now,' he answered hotly, 'except to wipe out this brute from the face of creation. I would sell my soul to do it!'
'Oh, hush, hush, my child!' said Van Helsing. 'God does not purchase souls in this wise, and the Devil, though he may purchase, does not keep faith. But God is merciful and just, and knows your pain and your devotion to that dear Madam Mina. Think you, how her pain would be doubled, did she but hear your wild words. Do not fear any of us, we are all devoted to this cause, and today shall see the end. The time is coming for action. Today this Vampire is limit to the powers of man, and till sunset he may not change. It will take him time to arrive here, see it is twenty minutes past one, and there are yet some times before he can hither come, be he never so quick. What we must hope for is that my Lord Arthur and Quincey arrive first.'
About half an hour after we had received Mrs. Harker's telegram, there came a quiet, resolute knock at the hall door. It was just an ordinary knock, such as is given hourly by thousands of gentlemen, but it made the Professor's heart and mine beat loudly. We looked at each other, and together moved out into the hall. We each held ready to use our various armaments, the spiritual in the left hand, the mortal in the right. Van Helsing pulled back the latch, and holding the door half open, stood back, having both hands ready for action. The gladness of our hearts must have shown upon our faces when on the step, close to the door, we saw Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris. They came quickly in and closed the door behind them, the former saying, as they moved along the hall.
'It is all right. We found both places. Six boxes in each and we destroyed them all.'
'Destroyed?' asked the Professor.
'For him!' We were silent for a minute, and then Quincey said, 'There's nothing to do but to wait here. If, however, he doesn't turn up by five o'clock, we must start off. For it won't do to leave Mrs. Harker alone after sunset.'
'He will be here before long now,' said Van Helsing, who had been consulting his pocketbook. 'Nota bene, in Madam's telegram he went south from Carfax. That means he went to cross the river, and he could only do so at slack of tide, which should be something before one o'clock. That he went south has a meaning for us. He is as yet only suspicious, and he went from Carfax first to the place where he would suspect interference least. You must have been at Bermondsey only a short time before him. That he is not here already shows that he went to Mile End next. This took him some time, for he would then have to be carried over the river in some way. Believe me, my friends, we shall not have long to wait now. We should have ready some plan of attack, so that we may throw away no chance. Hush, there is no time now. Have all your arms! Be ready!' He held up a warning hand as he spoke, for we all could hear a key softly inserted in the lock of the hall door.
I could not but admire, even at such a moment, the way in which a dominant spirit asserted itself. In all our hunting parties and adventures in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always been the one to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been accustomed to obey him implicitly. Now, the old habit seemed to be renewed instinctively. With a swift glance around the room, he at once laid out our plan of attack, and without speaking a word, with a gesture, placed us each in position. Van Helsing, Harker, and I were just behind the door, so that when it was opened the Professor could guard it whilst we two stepped between the incomer and the door. Godalming behind and Quincey in front stood just out of sight ready to move in front of the window. We waited in a suspense that made the seconds pass with nightmare slowness. The slow, careful steps came along the hall. The Count was evidently prepared for some surprise, at least he feared it.
Suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room. Winning a way past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him. There was something so pantherlike in the movement, something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming. The first to act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the house. As the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eyeteeth long and pointed. But the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain. His expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him. It was a pity that we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to do. I did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything.
Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. The blow was a powerful one. Only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back saved him. A second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold fell out. The expression of the Count's face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another stroke. Instinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left hand. I felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us. It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and hellish rage, which came over the Count's face. His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound. The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area below. Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the 'ting' of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging.
We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground. He, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door. There he turned and spoke to us.
'You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!'
With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind him. A door beyond opened and shut. The first of us to speak was the Professor. Realizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall.
'We have learnt something... much! Notwithstanding his brave words, he fears us. He fears time, he fears want! For if not, why he hurry so? His very tone betray him, or my ears deceive. Why take that money? You follow quick. You are hunters of the wild beast, and understand it so. For me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he returns.'
As he spoke he put the money remaining in his pocket, took the title deeds in the bundle as Harker had left them, and swept the remaining things into the open fireplace, where he set fire to them with a match.
Godalming and Morris had rushed out into the yard, and Harker had lowered himself from the window to follow the Count. He had, however, bolted the stable door, and by the time they had forced it open there was no sign of him. Van Helsing and I tried to make inquiry at the back of the house. But the mews was deserted and no one had seen him depart.
It was now late in the afternoon, and sunset was not far off. We had to recognize that our game was up. With heavy hearts we agreed with the Professor when he said, 'Let us go back to Madam Mina. Poor, poor dear Madam Mina. All we can do just now is done, and we can there, at least, protect her. But we need not despair. There is but one more earth box, and we must try to find it. When that is done all may yet be well.'
I could see that he spoke as bravely as he could to comfort Harker. The poor fellow was quite broken down, now and again he gave a low groan which he could not suppress. He was thinking of his wife.
With sad hearts we came back to my house, where we found Mrs. Harker waiting us, with an appearance of cheerfulness which did honour to her bravery and unselfishness. When she saw our faces, her own became as pale as death. For a second or two her eyes were closed as if she were in secret prayer.
And then she said cheerfully, 'I can never thank you all enough. Oh, my poor darling!'
As she spoke, she took her husband's grey head in her hands and kissed it.
'Lay your poor head here and rest it. All will yet be well, dear! God will protect us if He so will it in His good intent.' The poor fellow groaned. There was no place for words in his sublime misery.
We had a sort of perfunctory supper together, and I think it cheered us all up somewhat. It was, perhaps, the mere animal heat of food to hungry people, for none of us had eaten anything since breakfast, or the sense of companionship may have helped us, but anyhow we were all less miserable, and saw the morrow as not altogether without hope.
True to our promise, we told Mrs. Harker everything which had passed. And although she grew snowy white at times when danger had seemed to threaten her husband, and red at others when his devotion to her was manifested she listened bravely and with calmness. When we came to the part where Harker had rushed at the Count so recklessly, she clung to her husband's arm, and held it tight as though her clinging could protect him from any harm that might come. She said nothing, however, till the narration was all done, and matters had been brought up to the present time.
Then without letting go her husband's hand she stood up amongst us and spoke. Oh, that I could give any idea of the scene. Of that sweet, sweet, good, good woman in all the radiant beauty of her youth and animation, with the red scar on her forehead, of which she was conscious, and which we saw with grinding of our teeth, remembering whence and how it came. Her loving kindness against our grim hate. Her tender faith against all our fears and doubting. And we, knowing that so far as symbols went, she with all her goodness and purity and faith, was outcast from God.
'Jonathan,' she said, and the word sounded like music on her lips it was so full of love and tenderness, 'Jonathan dear, and you all my true, true friends, I want you to bear something in mind through all this dreadful time. I know that you must fight. That you must destroy even as you destroyed the false Lucy so that the true Lucy might live hereafter. But it is not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality. You must be pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.'
As she spoke I could see her husband's face darken and draw together, as though the passion in him were shriveling his being to its core. Instinctively the clasp on his wife's hand grew closer, till his knuckles looked white. She did not flinch from the pain which I knew she must have suffered, but looked at him with eyes that were more appealing than ever.
As she stopped speaking he leaped to his feet, almost tearing his hand from hers as he spoke.
'May God give him into my hand just for long enough to destroy that earthly life of him which we are aiming at. If beyond it I could send his soul forever and ever to burning hell I would do it!'
'Oh, hush! Oh, hush in the name of the good God. Don't say such things, Jonathan, my husband, or you will crush me with fear and horror. Just think, my dear... I have been thinking all this long, long day of it... that... perhaps... some day... I, too, may need such pity, and that some other like you, and with equal cause for anger, may deny it to me! Oh, my husband! My husband, indeed I would have spared you such a thought had there been another way. But I pray that God may not have treasured your wild words, except as the heart-broken wail of a very loving and sorely stricken man. Oh, God, let these poor white hairs go in evidence of what he has suffered, who all his life has done no wrong, and on whom so many sorrows have come.'
We men were all in tears now. There was no resisting them, and we wept openly. She wept, too, to see that her sweeter counsels had prevailed. Her husband flung himself on his knees beside her, and putting his arms round her, hid his face in the folds of her dress. Van Helsing beckoned to us and we stole out of the room, leaving the two loving hearts alone with their God.
Before they retired the Professor fixed up the room against any coming of the Vampire, and assured Mrs. Harker that she might rest in peace. She tried to school herself to the belief, and manifestly for her husband's sake, tried to seem content. It was a brave struggle, and was, I think and believe, not without its reward. Van Helsing had placed at hand a bell which either of them was to sound in case of any emergency. When they had retired, Quincey, Godalming, and I arranged that we should sit up, dividing the night between us, and watch over the safety of the poor stricken lady. The first watch falls to Quincey, so the rest of us shall be off to bed as soon as we can.
Godalming has already turned in, for his is the second watch. Now that my work is done I, too, shall go to bed.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
3-4 October, close to midnight.-I thought yesterday would never end. There was over me a yearning for sleep, in some sort of blind belief that to wake would be to find things changed, and that any change must now be for the better. Before we parted, we discussed what our next step was to be, but we could arrive at no result. All we knew was that one earth box remained, and that the Count alone knew where it was. If he chooses to lie hidden, he may baffle us for years. And in the meantime, the thought is too horrible, I dare not think of it even now. This I know, that if ever there was a woman who was all perfection, that one is my poor wronged darling. I loved her a thousand times more for her sweet pity of last night, a pity that made my own hate of the monster seem despicable. Surely God will not permit the world to be the poorer by the loss of such a creature. This is hope to me. We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor. Thank God! Mina is sleeping, and sleeping without dreams. I fear what her dreams might be like, with such terrible memories to ground them in. She has not been so calm, within my seeing, since the sunset. Then, for a while, there came over her face a repose which was like spring after the blasts of March. I thought at the time that it was the softness of the red sunset on her face, but somehow now I think it has a deeper meaning. I am not sleepy myself, though I am weary... weary to death. However, I must try to sleep. For there is tomorrow to think of, and there is no rest for me until... 
Later-I must have fallen asleep, for I was awakened by Mina, who was sitting up in bed, with a startled look on her face. I could see easily, for we did not leave the room in darkness. She had placed a warning hand over my mouth, and now she whispered in my ear, 'Hush! There is someone in the corridor!' I got up softly, and crossing the room, gently opened the door.
Just outside, stretched on a mattress, lay Mr. Morris, wide awake. He raised a warning hand for silence as he whispered to me, 'Hush! Go back to bed. It is all right. One of us will be here all night. We don't mean to take any chances!'
His look and gesture forbade discussion, so I came back and told Mina. She sighed and positively a shadow of a smile stole over her poor, pale face as she put her arms round me and said softly, 'Oh, thank God for good brave men!' With a sigh she sank back again to sleep. I write this now as I am not sleepy, though I must try again.
4 October, morning.-Once again during the night I was wakened by Mina. This time we had all had a good sleep, for the grey of the coming dawn was making the windows into sharp oblongs, and the gas flame was like a speck rather than a disc of light.
She said to me hurriedly, 'Go, call the Professor. I want to see him at once.'
'Why?' I asked.
'I have an idea. I suppose it must have come in the night, and matured without my knowing it. He must hypnotize me before the dawn, and then I shall be able to speak. Go quick, dearest, the time is getting close.'
I went to the door. Dr. Seward was resting on the mattress, and seeing me, he sprang to his feet.
'Is anything wrong?' he asked, in alarm.
'No,' I replied. 'But Mina wants to see Dr. Van Helsing at once.'
'I will go,' he said, and hurried into the Professor's room.
Two or three minutes later Van Helsing was in the room in his dressing gown, and Mr. Morris and Lord Godalming were with Dr. Seward at the door asking questions. When the Professor saw Mina a smile, a positive smile ousted the anxiety of his face.
He rubbed his hands as he said, 'Oh, my dear Madam Mina, this is indeed a change. See! Friend Jonathan, we have got our dear Madam Mina, as of old, back to us today!' Then turning to her, he said cheerfully, 'And what am I to do for you? For at this hour you do not want me for nothing.'
'I want you to hypnotize me!' she said. 'Do it before the dawn, for I feel that then I can speak, and speak freely. Be quick, for the time is short!' Without a word he motioned her to sit up in bed.
Looking fixedly at her, he commenced to make passes in front of her, from over the top of her head downward, with each hand in turn. Mina gazed at him fixedly for a few minutes, during which my own heart beat like a trip hammer, for I felt that some crisis was at hand. Gradually her eyes closed, and she sat, stock still. Only by the gentle heaving of her bosom could one know that she was alive. The Professor made a few more passes and then stopped, and I could see that his forehead was covered with great beads of perspiration. Mina opened her eyes, but she did not seem the same woman. There was a far-away look in her eyes, and her voice had a sad dreaminess which was new to me. Raising his hand to impose silence, the Professor motioned to me to bring the others in. They came on tiptoe, closing the door behind them, and stood at the foot of the bed, looking on. Mina appeared not to see them. The stillness was broken by Van Helsing's voice speaking in a low level tone which would not break the current of her thoughts.
'Where are you?' The answer came in a neutral way.
'I do not know. Sleep has no place it can call its own.' For several minutes there was silence. Mina sat rigid, and the Professor stood staring at her fixedly.
The rest of us hardly dared to breathe. The room was growing lighter. Without taking his eyes from Mina's face, Dr. Van Helsing motioned me to pull up the blind. I did so, and the day seemed just upon us. A red streak shot up, and a rosy light seemed to diffuse itself through the room. On the instant the Professor spoke again.
'Where are you now?'
The answer came dreamily, but with intention. It were as though she were interpreting something. I have heard her use the same tone when reading her shorthand notes.
'I do not know. It is all strange to me!'
'What do you see?'
'I can see nothing. It is all dark.'
'What do you hear?' I could detect the strain in the Professor's patient voice.
'The lapping of water. It is gurgling by, and little waves leap. I can hear them on the outside.'
'Then you are on a ship?''
We all looked at each other, trying to glean something each from the other. We were afraid to think.
The answer came quick, 'Oh, yes!'
'What else do you hear?'
'The sound of men stamping overhead as they run about. There is the creaking of a chain, and the loud tinkle as the check of the capstan falls into the ratchet.'
'What are you doing?'
'I am still, oh so still. It is like death!' The voice faded away into a deep breath as of one sleeping, and the open eyes closed again.
By this time the sun had risen, and we were all in the full light of day. Dr. Van Helsing placed his hands on Mina's shoulders, and laid her head down softly on her pillow. She lay like a sleeping child for a few moments, and then, with a long sigh, awoke and stared in wonder to see us all around her.
'Have I been talking in my sleep?' was all she said. She seemed, however, to know the situation without telling, though she was eager to know what she had told. The Professor repeated the conversation, and she said, 'Then there is not a moment to lose. It may not be yet too late!'
Mr. Morris and Lord Godalming started for the door but the Professor's calm voice called them back.
'Stay, my friends. That ship, wherever it was, was weighing anchor at the moment in your so great Port of London. Which of them is it that you seek? God be thanked that we have once again a clue, though whither it may lead us we know not. We have been blind somewhat. Blind after the manner of men, since we can look back we see what we might have seen looking forward if we had been able to see what we might have seen! Alas, but that sentence is a puddle, is it not? We can know now what was in the Count's mind, when he seize that money, though Jonathan's so fierce knife put him in the danger that even he dread. He meant escape. Hear me, ESCAPE! He saw that with but one earth box left, and a pack of men following like dogs after a fox, this London was no place for him. He have take his last earth box on board a ship, and he leave the land. He think to escape, but no! We follow him. Tally Ho! As friend Arthur would say when he put on his red frock! Our old fox is wily. Oh! So wily, and we must follow with wile. I, too, am wily and I think his mind in a little while. In meantime we may rest and in peace, for there are between us which he do not want to pass, and which he could not if he would. Unless the ship were to touch the land, and then only at full or slack tide. See, and the sun is just rose, and all day to sunset is us. Let us take bath, and dress, and have breakfast which we all need, and which we can eat comfortably since he be not in the same land with us.'
Mina looked at him appealingly as she asked, 'But why need we seek him further, when he is gone away from us?'
He took her hand and patted it as he replied, 'Ask me nothing as yet. When we have breakfast, then I answer all questions.' He would say no more, and we separated to dress.
After breakfast Mina repeated her question. He looked at her gravely for a minute and then said sorrowfully, 'Because my dear, dear Madam Mina, now more than ever must we find him even if we have to follow him to the jaws of Hell!'
She grew paler as she asked faintly, 'Why?'
'Because,' he answered solemnly, 'he can live for centuries, and you are but mortal woman. Time is now to be dreaded, since once he put that mark upon your throat.'
I was just in time to catch her as she fell forward in a faint.
Chapter 24
DR. SEWARD'S PHONOGRAPH DIARY
SPOKEN BY VAN HELSING
This to Jonathan Harker.
You are to stay with your dear Madam Mina. We shall go to make our search, if I can call it so, for it is not search but knowing, and we seek confirmation only. But do you stay and take care of her today. This is your best and most holiest office. This day nothing can find him here.
Let me tell you that so you will know what we four know already, for I have tell them. He, our enemy, have gone away. He have gone back to his Castle in Transylvania. I know it so well, as if a great hand of fire wrote it on the wall. He have prepare for this in some way, and that last earth box was ready to ship somewheres. For this he took the money. For this he hurry at the last, lest we catch him before the sun go down. It was his last hope, save that he might hide in the tomb that he think poor Miss Lucy, being as he thought like him, keep open to him. But there was not of time. When that fail he make straight for his last resource, his last earth-work I might say did I wish double entente. He is clever, oh so clever! He know that his game here was finish. And so he decide he go back home. He find ship going by the route he came, and he go in it.
We go off now to find what ship, and whither bound. When we have discover that, we come back and tell you all. Then we will comfort you and poor Madam Mina with new hope. For it will be hope when you think it over, that all is not lost. This very creature that we pursue, he take hundreds of years to get so far as London. And yet in one day, when we know of the disposal of him we drive him out. He is finite, though he is powerful to do much harm and suffers not as we do. But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more strong together. Take heart afresh, dear husband of Madam Mina. This battle is but begun and in the end we shall win. So sure as that God sits on high to watch over His children. Therefore be of much comfort till we return.
VAN HELSING.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
4 October.-When I read to Mina, Van Helsing's message in the phonograph, the poor girl brightened up considerably. Already the certainty that the Count is out of the country has given her comfort. And comfort is strength to her. For my own part, now that his horrible danger is not face to face with us, it seems almost impossible to believe in it. Even my own terrible experiences in Castle Dracula seem like a long forgotten dream. Here in the crisp autumn air in the bright sunlight.
Alas! How can I disbelieve! In the midst of my thought my eye fell on the red scar on my poor darling's white forehead. Whilst that lasts, there can be no disbelief. Mina and I fear to be idle, so we have been over all the diaries again and again. Somehow, although the reality seem greater each time, the pain and the fear seem less. There is something of a guiding purpose manifest throughout, which is comforting. Mina says that perhaps we are the instruments of ultimate good. It may be! I shall try to think as she does. We have never spoken to each other yet of the future. It is better to wait till we see the Professor and the others after their investigations.
The day is running by more quickly than I ever thought a day could run for me again. It is now three o'clock.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
5 October, 5 P.M.-Our meeting for report. Present: Professor Van Helsing, Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Mr. Quincey Morris, Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker.
Dr. Van Helsing described what steps were taken during the day to discover on what boat and whither bound Count Dracula made his escape.
'As I knew that he wanted to get back to Transylvania, I felt sure that he must go by the Danube mouth, or by somewhere in the Black Sea, since by that way he come. It was a dreary blank that was before us. Omme Ignotum pro magnifico. And so with heavy hearts we start to find what ships leave for the Black Sea last night. He was in sailing ship, since Madam Mina tell of sails being set. These not so important as to go in your list of the shipping in the Times, and so we go, by suggestion of Lord Godalming, to your Lloyd's, where are note of all ships that sail, however so small. There we find that only one Black Sea bound ship go out with the tide. She is the Czarina Catherine, and she sail from Doolittle's Wharf for Varna, and thence to other ports and up the Danube. 'So!' said I, 'this is the ship whereon is the Count.' So off we go to Doolittle's Wharf, and there we find a man in an office. From him we inquire of the goings of the Czarina Catherine. He swear much, and he red face and loud of voice, but he good fellow all the same. And when Quincey give him something from his pocket which crackle as he roll it up, and put it in a so small bag which he have hid deep in his clothing, he still better fellow and humble servant to us. He come with us, and ask many men who are rough and hot. These be better fellows too when they have been no more thirsty. They say much of blood and bloom, and of others which I comprehend not, though I guess what they mean. But nevertheless they tell us all things which we want to know.
'They make known to us among them, how last afternoon at about five o'clock comes a man so hurry. A tall man, thin and pale, with high nose and teeth so white, and eyes that seem to be burning. That he be all in black, except that he have a hat of straw which suit not him or the time. That he scatter his money in making quick inquiry as to what ship sails for the Black Sea and for where. Some took him to the office and then to the ship, where he will not go aboard but halt at shore end of gangplank, and ask that the captain come to him. The captain come, when told that he will be pay well, and though he swear much at the first he agree to term. Then the thin man go and some one tell him where horse and cart can be hired. He go there and soon he come again, himself driving cart on which a great box. This he himself lift down, though it take several to put it on truck for the ship. He give much talk to captain as to how and where his box is to be place. But the captain like it not and swear at him in many tongues, and tell him that if he like he can come and see where it shall be. But he say 'no,' that he come not yet, for that he have much to do. Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick, with blood, for that his ship will leave the place, of blood, before the turn of the tide, with blood. Then the thin man smile and say that of course he must go when he think fit, but he will be surprise if he go quite so soon. The captain swear again, polyglot, and the thin man make him bow, and thank him, and say that he will so far intrude on his kindness as to come aboard before the sailing. Final the captain, more red than ever, and in more tongues, tell him that he doesn't want no Frenchmen, with bloom upon them and also with blood, in his ship, with blood on her also. And so, after asking where he might purchase ship forms, he departed.
'No one knew where he went 'or bloomin' well cared' as they said, for they had something else to think of, well with blood again. For it soon became apparent to all that the Czarina Catherine would not sail as was expected. A thin mist began to creep up from the river, and it grew, and grew. Till soon a dense fog enveloped the ship and all around her. The captain swore polyglot, very polyglot, polyglot with bloom and blood, but he could do nothing. The water rose and rose, and he began to fear that he would lose the tide altogether. He was in no friendly mood, when just at full tide, the thin man came up the gangplank again and asked to see where his box had been stowed. Then the captain replied that he wished that he and his box, old and with much bloom and blood, were in hell. But the thin man did not be offend, and went down with the mate and saw where it was place, and came up and stood awhile on deck in fog. He must have come off by himself, for none notice him. Indeed they thought not of him, for soon the fog begin to melt away, and all was clear again. My friends of the thirst and the language that was of bloom and blood laughed, as they told how the captain's swears exceeded even his usual polyglot, and was more than ever full of picturesque, when on questioning other mariners who were on movement up and down the river that hour, he found that few of them had seen any of fog at all, except where it lay round the wharf. However, the ship went out on the ebb tide, and was doubtless by morning far down the river mouth. She was then, when they told us, well out to sea.
'And so, my dear Madam Mina, it is that we have to rest for a time, for our enemy is on the sea, with the fog at his command, on his way to the Danube mouth. To sail a ship takes time, go she never so quick. And when we start to go on land more quick, and we meet him there. Our best hope is to come on him when in the box between sunrise and sunset. For then he can make no struggle, and we may deal with him as we should. There are days for us, in which we can make ready our plan. We know all about where he go. For we have seen the owner of the ship, who have shown us invoices and all papers that can be. The box we seek is to be landed in Varna, and to be given to an agent, one Ristics who will there present his credentials. And so our merchant friend will have done his part. When he ask if there be any wrong, for that so, he can telegraph and have inquiry made at Varna, we say 'no,' for what is to be done is not for police or of the customs. It must be done by us alone and in our own way.'
When Dr. Van Helsing had done speaking, I asked him if he were certain that the Count had remained on board the ship. He replied, 'We have the best proof of that, your own evidence, when in the hypnotic trance this morning.'
I asked him again if it were really necessary that they should pursue the Count, for oh! I dread Jonathan leaving me, and I know that he would surely go if the others went. He answered in growing passion, at first quietly. As he went on, however, he grew more angry and more forceful, till in the end we could not but see wherein was at least some of that personal dominance which made him so long a master amongst men.
'Yes, it is necessary, necessary, necessary! For your sake in the first, and then for the sake of humanity. This monster has done much harm already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the short time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small measure in darkness and not knowing. All this have I told these others. You, my dear Madam Mina, will learn it in the phonograph of my friend John, or in that of your husband. I have told them how the measure of leaving his own barren land, barren of peoples, and coming to a new land where life of man teems till they are like the multitude of standing corn, was the work of centuries. Were another of the Undead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him. With this one, all the forces of nature that are occult and deep and strong must have worked together in some wonderous way. The very place, where he have been alive, Undead for all these centuries, is full of strangeness of the geologic and chemical world. There are deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither. There have been volcanoes, some of whose openings still send out waters of strange properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify. Doubtless, there is something magnetic or electric in some of these combinations of occult forces which work for physical life in strange way, and in himself were from the first some great qualities. In a hard and warlike time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man. In him some vital principle have in strange way found their utmost. And as his body keep strong and grow and thrive, so his brain grow too. All this without that diabolic aid which is surely to him. For it have to yield to the powers that come from, and are, symbolic of good. And now this is what he is to us. He have infect you, oh forgive me, my dear, that I must say such, but it is for good of you that I speak. He infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to live, to live in your own old, sweet way, and so in time, death, which is of man's common lot and with God's sanction, shall make you like to him. This must not be! We have sworn together that it must not. Thus are we ministers of God's own wish. That the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise. And like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause.'
He paused and I said, 'But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely? Since he has been driven from England, will he not avoid it, as a tiger does the village from which he has been hunted?'
'Aha!' he said, 'your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall adopt him. Your maneater, as they of India call the tiger who has once tasted blood of the human, care no more for the other prey, but prowl unceasing till he get him. This that we hunt from our village is a tiger, too, a maneater, and he never cease to prowl. Nay, in himself he is not one to retire and stay afar. In his life, his living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on his own ground. He be beaten back, but did he stay? No! He come again, and again, and again. Look at his persistence and endurance. With the child-brain that was to him he have long since conceive the idea of coming to a great city. What does he do? He find out the place of all the world most of promise for him. Then he deliberately set himself down to prepare for the task. He find in patience just how is his strength, and what are his powers. He study new tongues. He learn new social life, new environment of old ways, the politics, the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new land and a new people who have come to be since he was. His glimpse that he have had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire. Nay, it help him to grow as to his brain. For it all prove to him how right he was at the first in his surmises. He have done this alone, all alone! From a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him. He that can smile at death, as we know him. Who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. Oh! If such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours. But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love. For the good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of God.'
After a general discussion it was determined that for tonight nothing be definitely settled. That we should all sleep on the facts, and try to think out the proper conclusions. Tomorrow, at breakfast, we are to meet again, and after making our conclusions known to one another, we shall decide on some definite cause of action... 
I feel a wonderful peace and rest tonight. It is as if some haunting presence were removed from me. Perhaps... 
My surmise was not finished, could not be, for I caught sight in the mirror of the red mark upon my forehead, and I knew that I was still unclean.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
5 October.-We all arose early, and I think that sleep did much for each and all of us. When we met at early breakfast there was more general cheerfulness than any of us had ever expected to experience again.
It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. More than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream. It was only when I caught sight of the red blotch on Mrs. Harker's forehead that I was brought back to reality. Even now, when I am gravely revolving the matter, it is almost impossible to realize that the cause of all our trouble is still existent. Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight of her trouble for whole spells. It is only now and again, when something recalls it to her mind, that she thinks of her terrible scar. We are to meet here in my study in half an hour and decide on our course of action. I see only one immediate difficulty, I know it by instinct rather than reason. We shall all have to speak frankly. And yet I fear that in some mysterious way poor Mrs. Harker's tongue is tied. I know that she forms conclusions of her own, and from all that has been I can guess how brilliant and how true they must be. But she will not, or cannot, give them utterance. I have mentioned this to Van Helsing, and he and I are to talk it over when we are alone. I suppose it is some of that horrid poison which has got into her veins beginning to work. The Count had his own purposes when he gave her what Van Helsing called 'the Vampire's baptism of blood.' Well, there may be a poison that distills itself out of good things. In an age when the existence of ptomaines is a mystery we should not wonder at anything! One thing I know, that if my instinct be true regarding poor Mrs. Harker's silences, then there is a terrible difficulty, an unknown danger, in the work before us. The same power that compels her silence may compel her speech. I dare not think further, for so I should in my thoughts dishonour a noble woman!
Later.-When the Professor came in, we talked over the state of things. I could see that he had something on his mind, which he wanted to say, but felt some hesitancy about broaching the subject. After beating about the bush a little, he said, 'Friend John, there is something that you and I must talk of alone, just at the first at any rate. Later, we may have to take the others into our confidence.'
Then he stopped, so I waited. He went on, 'Madam Mina, our poor, dear Madam Mina is changing.'
A cold shiver ran through me to find my worst fears thus endorsed. Van Helsing continued.
'With the sad experience of Miss Lucy, we must this time be warned before things go too far. Our task is now in reality more difficult than ever, and this new trouble makes every hour of the direst importance. I can see the characteristics of the vampire coming in her face. It is now but very, very slight. But it is to be seen if we have eyes to notice without prejudge. Her teeth are sharper, and at times her eyes are more hard. But these are not all, there is to her the silence now often, as so it was with Miss Lucy. She did not speak, even when she wrote that which she wished to be known later. Now my fear is this. If it be that she can, by our hypnotic trance, tell what the Count see and hear, is it not more true that he who have hypnotize her first, and who have drink of her very blood and make her drink of his, should if he will, compel her mind to disclose to him that which she know?'
I nodded acquiescence. He went on, 'Then, what we must do is to prevent this. We must keep her ignorant of our intent, and so she cannot tell what she know not. This is a painful task! Oh, so painful that it heartbreak me to think of it, but it must be. When today we meet, I must tell her that for reason which we will not to speak she must not more be of our council, but be simply guarded by us.'
He wiped his forehead, which had broken out in profuse perspiration at the thought of the pain which he might have to inflict upon the poor soul already so tortured. I knew that it would be some sort of comfort to him if I told him that I also had come to the same conclusion. For at any rate it would take away the pain of doubt. I told him, and the effect was as I expected.
It is now close to the time of our general gathering. Van Helsing has gone away to prepare for the meeting, and his painful part of it. I really believe his purpose is to be able to pray alone.
Later.-At the very outset of our meeting a great personal relief was experienced by both Van Helsing and myself. Mrs. Harker had sent a message by her husband to say that she would not join us at present, as she thought it better that we should be free to discuss our movements without her presence to embarrass us. The Professor and I looked at each other for an instant, and somehow we both seemed relieved. For my own part, I thought that if Mrs. Harker realized the danger herself, it was much pain as well as much danger averted. Under the circumstances we agreed, by a questioning look and answer, with finger on lip, to preserve silence in our suspicions, until we should have been able to confer alone again. We went at once into our Plan of Campaign.
Van Helsing roughly put the facts before us first, 'The Czarina Catherine left the Thames yesterday morning. It will take her at the quickest speed she has ever made at least three weeks to reach Varna. But we can travel overland to the same place in three days. Now, if we allow for two days less for the ship's voyage, owing to such weather influences as we know that the Count can bring to bear, and if we allow a whole day and night for any delays which may occur to us, then we have a margin of nearly two weeks.
'Thus, in order to be quite safe, we must leave here on 17th at latest. Then we shall at any rate be in Varna a day before the ship arrives, and able to make such preparations as may be necessary. Of course we shall all go armed, armed against evil things, spiritual as well as physical.'
Here Quincey Morris added, 'I understand that the Count comes from a wolf country, and it may be that he shall get there before us. I propose that we add Winchesters to our armament. I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble of that sort around. Do you remember, Art, when we had the pack after us at Tobolsk? What wouldn't we have given then for a repeater apiece!'
'Good!' said Van Helsing, 'Winchesters it shall be. Quincey's head is level at times, but most so when there is to hunt, metaphor be more dishonour to science than wolves be of danger to man. In the meantime we can do nothing here. And as I think that Varna is not familiar to any of us, why not go there more soon? It is as long to wait here as there. Tonight and tomorrow we can get ready, and then if all be well, we four can set out on our journey.'
'We four?' said Harker interrogatively, looking from one to another of us.
'Of course!' answered the Professor quickly. 'You must remain to take care of your so sweet wife!'
Harker was silent for awhile and then said in a hollow voice, 'Let us talk of that part of it in the morning. I want to consult with Mina.'
I thought that now was the time for Van Helsing to warn him not to disclose our plan to her, but he took no notice. I looked at him significantly and coughed. For answer he put his finger to his lips and turned away.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
October, afternoon.-For some time after our meeting this morning I could not think. The new phases of things leave my mind in a state of wonder which allows no room for active thought. Mina's determination not to take any part in the discussion set me thinking. And as I could not argue the matter with her, I could only guess. I am as far as ever from a solution now. The way the others received it, too puzzled me. The last time we talked of the subject we agreed that there was to be no more concealment of anything amongst us. Mina is sleeping now, calmly and sweetly like a little child. Her lips are curved and her face beams with happiness. Thank God, there are such moments still for her.
Later.-How strange it all is. I sat watching Mina's happy sleep, and I came as near to being happy myself as I suppose I shall ever be. As the evening drew on, and the earth took its shadows from the sun sinking lower, the silence of the room grew more and more solemn to me.
All at once Mina opened her eyes, and looking at me tenderly said, 'Jonathan, I want you to promise me something on your word of honour. A promise made to me, but made holily in God's hearing, and not to be broken though I should go down on my knees and implore you with bitter tears. Quick, you must make it to me at once.'
'Mina,' I said, 'a promise like that, I cannot make at once. I may have no right to make it.'
'But, dear one,' she said, with such spiritual intensity that her eyes were like pole stars, 'it is I who wish it. And it is not for myself. You can ask Dr. Van Helsing if I am not right. If he disagrees you may do as you will. Nay, more if you all agree, later you are absolved from the promise.'
'I promise!' I said, and for a moment she looked supremely happy. Though to me all happiness for her was denied by the red scar on her forehead.
She said, 'Promise me that you will not tell me anything of the plans formed for the campaign against the Count. Not by word, or inference, or implication, not at any time whilst this remains to me!' And she solemnly pointed to the scar. I saw that she was in earnest, and said solemnly, 'I promise!' and as I said it I felt that from that instant a door had been shut between us.
Later, midnight.-Mina has been bright and cheerful all the evening. So much so that all the rest seemed to take courage, as if infected somewhat with her gaiety. As a result even I myself felt as if the pall of gloom which weighs us down were somewhat lifted. We all retired early. Mina is now sleeping like a little child. It is wonderful thing that her faculty of sleep remains to her in the midst of her terrible trouble. Thank God for it, for then at least she can forget her care. Perhaps her example may affect me as her gaiety did tonight. I shall try it. Oh! For a dreamless sleep.
6 October, morning.-Another surprise. Mina woke me early, about the same time as yesterday, and asked me to bring Dr. Van Helsing. I thought that it was another occasion for hypnotism, and without question went for the Professor. He had evidently expected some such call, for I found him dressed in his room. His door was ajar, so that he could hear the opening of the door of our room. He came at once. As he passed into the room, he asked Mina if the others might come, too.
'No,' she said quite simply, 'it will not be necessary. You can tell them just as well. I must go with you on your journey.'
Dr. Van Helsing was as startled as I was. After a moment's pause he asked, 'But why?'
'You must take me with you. I am safer with you, and you shall be safer, too.'
'But why, dear Madam Mina? You know that your safety is our solemnest duty. We go into danger, to which you are, or may be, more liable than any of us from... from circumstances... things that have been.' He paused embarrassed.
As she replied, she raised her finger and pointed to her forehead. 'I know. That is why I must go. I can tell you now, whilst the sun is coming up. I may not be able again. I know that when the Count wills me I must go. I know that if he tells me to come in secret, I must by wile. By any device to hoodwink, even Jonathan.' God saw the look that she turned on me as she spoke, and if there be indeed a Recording Angel that look is noted to her ever-lasting honour. I could only clasp her hand. I could not speak. My emotion was too great for even the relief of tears.
She went on. 'You men are brave and strong. You are strong in your numbers, for you can defy that which would break down the human endurance of one who had to guard alone. Besides, I may be of service, since you can hypnotize me and so learn that which even I myself do not know.'
Dr. Van Helsing said gravely, 'Madam Mina, you are, as always, most wise. You shall with us come. And together we shall do that which we go forth to achieve.'
When he had spoken, Mina's long spell of silence made me look at her. She had fallen back on her pillow asleep. She did not even wake when I had pulled up the blind and let in the sunlight which flooded the room. Van Helsing motioned to me to come with him quietly. We went to his room, and within a minute Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris were with us also.
He told them what Mina had said, and went on. 'In the morning we shall leave for Varna. We have now to deal with a new factor, Madam Mina. Oh, but her soul is true. It is to her an agony to tell us so much as she has done. But it is most right, and we are warned in time. There must be no chance lost, and in Varna we must be ready to act the instant when that ship arrives.'
'What shall we do exactly?' asked Mr. Morris laconically.
The Professor paused before replying, 'We shall at the first board that ship. Then, when we have identified the box, we shall place a branch of the wild rose on it. This we shall fasten, for when it is there none can emerge, so that at least says the superstition. And to superstition must we trust at the first. It was man's faith in the early, and it have its root in faith still. Then, when we get the opportunity that we seek, when none are near to see, we shall open the box, and... and all will be well.'
'I shall not wait for any opportunity,' said Morris. 'When I see the box I shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a thousand men looking on, and if I am to be wiped out for it the next moment!' I grasped his hand instinctively and found it as firm as a piece of steel. I think he understood my look. I hope he did.
'Good boy,' said Dr. Van Helsing. 'Brave boy. Quincey is all man. God bless him for it. My child, believe me none of us shall lag behind or pause from any fear. I do but say what we may do... what we must do. But, indeed, indeed we cannot say what we may do. There are so many things which may happen, and their ways and their ends are so various that until the moment we may not say. We shall all be armed, in all ways. And when the time for the end has come, our effort shall not be lack. Now let us today put all our affairs in order. Let all things which touch on others dear to us, and who on us depend, be complete. For none of us can tell what, or when, or how, the end may be. As for me, my own affairs are regulate, and as I have nothing else to do, I shall go make arrangements for the travel. I shall have all tickets and so forth for our journey.'
There was nothing further to be said, and we parted. I shall now settle up all my affairs of earth, and be ready for whatever may come.
Later.-It is done. My will is made, and all complete. Mina if she survive is my sole heir. If it should not be so, then the others who have been so good to us shall have remainder.
It is now drawing towards the sunset. Mina's uneasiness calls my attention to it. I am sure that there is something on her mind which the time of exact sunset will reveal. These occasions are becoming harrowing times for us all. For each sunrise and sunset opens up some new danger, some new pain, which however, may in God's will be means to a good end. I write all these things in the diary since my darling must not hear them now. But if it may be that she can see them again, they shall be ready. She is calling to me.
Chapter 25
DR SEWARD'S DIARY
11 October, Evening.-Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this, as he says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record kept.
I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs. Harker a little before the time of sunset. We have of late come to understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar freedom. When her old self can be manifest without any controlling force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action. This mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon. At first there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened, and then the absolute freedom quickly follows. When, however, the freedom ceases the change back or relapse comes quickly, preceded only by a spell of warning silence.
Tonight, when we met, she was somewhat constrained, and bore all the signs of an internal struggle. I put it down myself to her making a violent effort at the earliest instant she could do so.
A very few minutes, however, gave her complete control of herself. Then, motioning her husband to sit beside her on the sofa where she was half reclining, she made the rest of us bring chairs up close.
Taking her husband's hand in hers, she began, 'We are all here together in freedom, for perhaps the last time! I know that you will always be with me to the end.' This was to her husband whose hand had, as we could see, tightened upon her. 'In the morning we go out upon our task, and God alone knows what may be in store for any of us. You are going to be so good to me to take me with you. I know that all that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul perhaps is lost, no, no, not yet, but is at any rate at stake, you will do. But you must remember that I am not as you are. There is a poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me, which must destroy me, unless some relief comes to us. Oh, my friends, you know as well as I do, that my soul is at stake. And though I know there is one way out for me, you must not and I must not take it!' She looked appealingly to us all in turn, beginning and ending with her husband.
'What is that way?' asked Van Helsing in a hoarse voice. 'What is that way, which we must not, may not, take?'
'That I may die now, either by my own hand or that of another, before the greater evil is entirely wrought. I know, and you know, that were I once dead you could and would set free my immortal spirit, even as you did my poor Lucy's. Were death, or the fear of death, the only thing that stood in the way I would not shrink to die here now, amidst the friends who love me. But death is not all. I cannot believe that to die in such a case, when there is hope before us and a bitter task to be done, is God's will. Therefore, I on my part, give up here the certainty of eternal rest, and go out into the dark where may be the blackest things that the world or the nether world holds!'
We were all silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a prelude. The faces of the others were set, and Harker's grew ashen grey. Perhaps, he guessed better than any of us what was coming.
She continued, 'This is what I can give into the hotch-pot.' I could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness. 'What will each of you give? Your lives I know,' she went on quickly, 'that is easy for brave men. Your lives are God's, and you can give them back to Him, but what will you give to me?' She looked again questioningly, but this time avoided her husband's face. Quincey seemed to understand, he nodded, and her face lit up. 'Then I shall tell you plainly what I want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this connection between us now. You must promise me, one and all, even you, my beloved husband, that should the time come, you will kill me.'
'What is that time?' The voice was Quincey's, but it was low and strained.
'When you shall be convinced that I am so changed that it is better that I die that I may live. When I am thus dead in the flesh, then you will, without a moment's delay, drive a stake through me and cut off my head, or do whatever else may be wanting to give me rest!'
Quincey was the first to rise after the pause. He knelt down before her and taking her hand in his said solemnly, 'I'm only a rough fellow, who hasn't, perhaps, lived as a man should to win such a distinction, but I swear to you by all that I hold sacred and dear that, should the time ever come, I shall not flinch from the duty that you have set us. And I promise you, too, that I shall make all certain, for if I am only doubtful I shall take it that the time has come!'
'My true friend!' was all she could say amid her fast-falling tears, as bending over, she kissed his hand.
'I swear the same, my dear Madam Mina!' said Van Helsing. 'And I!' said Lord Godalming, each of them in turn kneeling to her to take the oath. I followed, myself.
Then her husband turned to her wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor which subdued the snowy whiteness of his hair, and asked, 'And must I, too, make such a promise, oh, my wife?'
'You too, my dearest,' she said, with infinite yearning of pity in her voice and eyes. 'You must not shrink. You are nearest and dearest and all the world to me. Our souls are knit into one, for all life and all time. Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Their hands did not falter any the more because those that they loved implored them to slay them. It is men's duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! And oh, my dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it be at the hand of him that loves me best. Dr. Van Helsing, I have not forgotten your mercy in poor Lucy's case to him who loved.' She stopped with a flying blush, and changed her phrase, 'to him who had best right to give her peace. If that time shall come again, I look to you to make it a happy memory of my husband's life that it was his loving hand which set me free from the awful thrall upon me.'
'Again I swear!' came the Professor's resonant voice.
Mrs. Harker smiled, positively smiled, as with a sigh of relief she leaned back and said, 'And now one word of warning, a warning which you must never forget. This time, if it ever come, may come quickly and unexpectedly, and in such case you must lose no time in using your opportunity. At such a time I myself might be... nay! If the time ever come, shall be, leagued with your enemy against you.
'One more request,' she became very solemn as she said this, 'it is not vital and necessary like the other, but I want you to do one thing for me, if you will.'
We all acquiesced, but no one spoke. There was no need to speak.
'I want you to read the Burial Service.' She was interrupted by a deep groan from her husband. Taking his hand in hers, she held it over her heart, and continued. 'You must read it over me some day. Whatever may be the issue of all this fearful state of things, it will be a sweet thought to all or some of us. You, my dearest, will I hope read it, for then it will be in your voice in my memory forever, come what may!'
'But oh, my dear one,' he pleaded, 'death is afar off from you.'
'Nay,' she said, holding up a warning hand. 'I am deeper in death at this moment than if the weight of an earthly grave lay heavy upon me!'
'Oh, my wife, must I read it?' he said, before he began.
'It would comfort me, my husband!' was all she said, and he began to read when she had got the book ready.
How can I, how could anyone, tell of that strange scene, its solemnity, its gloom, its sadness, its horror, and withal, its sweetness. Even a sceptic, who can see nothing but a travesty of bitter truth in anything holy or emotional, would have been melted to the heart had he seen that little group of loving and devoted friends kneeling round that stricken and sorrowing lady. Or heard the tender passion of her husband's voice, as in tones so broken and emotional that often he had to pause, he read the simple and beautiful service from the Burial of the Dead. I cannot go on... words... and v-voices... f-fail m-me!
She was right in her instinct. Strange as it was, bizarre as it may hereafter seem even to us who felt its potent influence at the time, it comforted us much. And the silence, which showed Mrs. Harker's coming relapse from her freedom of soul, did not seem so full of despair to any of us as we had dreaded.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
15 October, Varna.-We left Charing Cross on the morning of the 12th, got to Paris the same night, and took the places secured for us in the Orient Express. We traveled night and day, arriving here at about five o'clock. Lord Godalming went to the Consulate to see if any telegram had arrived for him, whilst the rest of us came on to this hotel, 'the Odessus.' The journey may have had incidents. I was, however, too eager to get on, to care for them. Until the Czarina Catherine comes into port there will be no interest for me in anything in the wide world. Thank God! Mina is well, and looks to be getting stronger. Her colour is coming back. She sleeps a great deal. Throughout the journey she slept nearly all the time. Before sunrise and sunset, however, she is very wakeful and alert. And it has become a habit for Van Helsing to hypnotize her at such times. At first, some effort was needed, and he had to make many passes. But now, she seems to yield at once, as if by habit, and scarcely any action is needed. He seems to have power at these particular moments to simply will, and her thoughts obey him. He always asks her what she can see and hear.
She answers to the first, 'Nothing, all is dark.'
And to the second, 'I can hear the waves lapping against the ship, and the water rushing by. Canvas and cordage strain and masts and yards creak. The wind is high... I can hear it in the shrouds, and the bow throws back the foam.'
It is evident that the Czarina Catherine is still at sea, hastening on her way to Varna. Lord Godalming has just returned. He had four telegrams, one each day since we started, and all to the same effect. That the Czarina Catherine had not been reported to Lloyd's from anywhere. He had arranged before leaving London that his agent should send him every day a telegram saying if the ship had been reported. He was to have a message even if she were not reported, so that he might be sure that there was a watch being kept at the other end of the wire.
We had dinner and went to bed early. Tomorrow we are to see the Vice Consul, and to arrange, if we can, about getting on board the ship as soon as she arrives. Van Helsing says that our chance will be to get on the boat between sunrise and sunset. The Count, even if he takes the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition, and so cannot leave the ship. As he dare not change to man's form without suspicion, which he evidently wishes to avoid, he must remain in the box. If, then, we can come on board after sunrise, he is at our mercy, for we can open the box and make sure of him, as we did of poor Lucy, before he wakes. What mercy he shall get from us all will not count for much. We think that we shall not have much trouble with officials or the seamen. Thank God! This is the country where bribery can do anything, and we are well supplied with money. We have only to make sure that the ship cannot come into port between sunset and sunrise without our being warned, and we shall be safe. Judge Moneybag will settle this case, I think!
16 October.-Mina's report still the same. Lapping waves and rushing water, darkness and favouring winds. We are evidently in good time, and when we hear of the Czarina Catherine we shall be ready. As she must pass the Dardanelles we are sure to have some report.
17 October.-Everything is pretty well fixed now, I think, to welcome the Count on his return from his tour. Godalming told the shippers that he fancied that the box sent aboard might contain something stolen from a friend of his, and got a half consent that he might open it at his own risk. The owner gave him a paper telling the Captain to give him every facility in doing whatever he chose on board the ship, and also a similar authorization to his agent at Varna. We have seen the agent, who was much impressed with Godalming's kindly manner to him, and we are all satisfied that whatever he can do to aid our wishes will be done.
We have already arranged what to do in case we get the box open. If the Count is there, Van Helsing and Seward will cut off his head at once and drive a stake through his heart. Morris and Godalming and I shall prevent interference, even if we have to use the arms which we shall have ready. The Professor says that if we can so treat the Count's body, it will soon after fall into dust. In such case there would be no evidence against us, in case any suspicion of murder were aroused. But even if it were not, we should stand or fall by our act, and perhaps some day this very script may be evidence to come between some of us and a rope. For myself, I should take the chance only too thankfully if it were to come. We mean to leave no stone unturned to carry out our intent. We have arranged with certain officials that the instant the Czarina Catherine is seen, we are to be informed by a special messenger.
24 October.-A whole week of waiting. Daily telegrams to Godalming, but only the same story. 'Not yet reported.' Mina's morning and evening hypnotic answer is unvaried. Lapping waves, rushing water, and creaking masts.
TELEGRAM, OCTOBER 24TH RUFUS SMITH, LLOYD'S, LONDON, TO LORD GODALMING, CARE OF H. B. M. VICE CONSUL, VARNA
'Czarina Catherine reported this morning from Dardanelles.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
25 October.-How I miss my phonograph! To write a diary with a pen is irksome to me! But Van Helsing says I must. We were all wild with excitement yesterday when Godalming got his telegram from Lloyd's. I know now what men feel in battle when the call to action is heard. Mrs. Harker, alone of our party, did not show any signs of emotion. After all, it is not strange that she did not, for we took special care not to let her know anything about it, and we all tried not to show any excitement when we were in her presence. In old days she would, I am sure, have noticed, no matter how we might have tried to conceal it. But in this way she is greatly changed during the past three weeks. The lethargy grows upon her, and though she seems strong and well, and is getting back some of her colour, Van Helsing and I are not satisfied. We talk of her often. We have not, however, said a word to the others. It would break poor Harker's heart, certainly his nerve, if he knew that we had even a suspicion on the subject. Van Helsing examines, he tells me, her teeth very carefully, whilst she is in the hypnotic condition, for he says that so long as they do not begin to sharpen there is no active danger of a change in her. If this change should come, it would be necessary to take steps! We both know what those steps would have to be, though we do not mention our thoughts to each other. We should neither of us shrink from the task, awful though it be to contemplate. 'Euthanasia' is an excellent and a comforting word! I am grateful to whoever invented it.
It is only about 24 hours' sail from the Dardanelles to here, at the rate the Czarina Catherine has come from London. She should therefore arrive some time in the morning, but as she cannot possibly get in before noon, we are all about to retire early. We shall get up at one o'clock, so as to be ready.
25 October, Noon.-No news yet of the ship's arrival. Mrs. Harker's hypnotic report this morning was the same as usual, so it is possible that we may get news at any moment. We men are all in a fever of excitement, except Harker, who is calm. His hands are cold as ice, and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him. It will be a bad lookout for the Count if the edge of that 'Kukri' ever touches his throat, driven by that stern, ice-cold hand!
Van Helsing and I were a little alarmed about Mrs. Harker today. About noon she got into a sort of lethargy which we did not like. Although we kept silence to the others, we were neither of us happy about it. She had been restless all the morning, so that we were at first glad to know that she was sleeping. When, however, her husband mentioned casually that she was sleeping so soundly that he could not wake her, we went to her room to see for ourselves. She was breathing naturally and looked so well and peaceful that we agreed that the sleep was better for her than anything else. Poor girl, she has so much to forget that it is no wonder that sleep, if it brings oblivion to her, does her good.
Later.-Our opinion was justified, for when after a refreshing sleep of some hours she woke up, she seemed brighter and better than she had been for days. At sunset she made the usual hypnotic report. Wherever he may be in the Black Sea, the Count is hurrying to his destination. To his doom, I trust!
26 October.-Another day and no tidings of the Czarina Catherine. She ought to be here by now. That she is still journeying somewhere is apparent, for Mrs. Harker's hypnotic report at sunrise was still the same. It is possible that the vessel may be lying by, at times, for fog. Some of the steamers which came in last evening reported patches of fog both to north and south of the port. We must continue our watching, as the ship may now be signalled any moment.
27 October, Noon.-Most strange. No news yet of the ship we wait for. Mrs. Harker reported last night and this morning as usual. 'Lapping waves and rushing water,' though she added that 'the waves were very faint.' The telegrams from London have been the same, 'no further report.' Van Helsing is terribly anxious, and told me just now that he fears the Count is escaping us.
He added significantly, 'I did not like that lethargy of Madam Mina's. Souls and memories can do strange things during trance.' I was about to ask him more, but Harker just then came in, and he held up a warning hand. We must try tonight at sunset to make her speak more fully when in her hypnotic state.
28 October.-Telegram. Rufus Smith, London, to Lord Godalming, care H. B. M. Vice Consul, Varna
'Czarina Catherine reported entering Galatz at one o'clock today.'
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
28 October.-When the telegram came announcing the arrival in Galatz I do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been expected. True, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt would come. But I think we all expected that something strange would happen. The day of arrival at Varna made us individually satisfied that things would not be just as we had expected. We only waited to learn where the change would occur. None the less, however, it was a surprise. I suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we believe against ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not as we should know that they will be. Transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if it be a will-o'-the-wisp to man. Van Helsing raised his hand over his head for a moment, as though in remonstrance with the Almighty. But he said not a word, and in a few seconds stood up with his face sternly set.
Lord Godalming grew very pale, and sat breathing heavily. I was myself half stunned and looked in wonder at one after another. Quincey Morris tightened his belt with that quick movement which I knew so well. In our old wandering days it meant 'action.' Mrs. Harker grew ghastly white, so that the scar on her forehead seemed to burn, but she folded her hands meekly and looked up in prayer. Harker smiled, actually smiled, the dark, bitter smile of one who is without hope, but at the same time his action belied his words, for his hands instinctively sought the hilt of the great Kukri knife and rested there.
'When does the next train start for Galatz?' said Van Helsing to us generally.
'At 6:30 tomorrow morning!' We all started, for the answer came from Mrs. Harker.
'How on earth do you know?' said Art.
'You forget, or perhaps you do not know, though Jonathan does and so does Dr. Van Helsing, that I am the train fiend. At home in Exeter I always used to make up the time tables, so as to be helpful to my husband. I found it so useful sometimes, that I always make a study of the time tables now. I knew that if anything were to take us to Castle Dracula we should go by Galatz, or at any rate through Bucharest, so I learned the times very carefully. Unhappily there are not many to learn, as the only train tomorrow leaves as I say.'
'Wonderful woman!' murmured the Professor.
'Can't we get a special?' asked Lord Godalming.
Van Helsing shook his head, 'I fear not. This land is very different from yours or mine. Even if we did have a special, it would probably not arrive as soon as our regular train. Moreover, we have something to prepare. We must think. Now let us organize. You, friend Arthur, go to the train and get the tickets and arrange that all be ready for us to go in the morning. Do you, friend Jonathan, go to the agent of the ship and get from him letters to the agent in Galatz, with authority to make a search of the ship just as it was here. Quincey Morris, you see the Vice Consul, and get his aid with his fellow in Galatz and all he can do to make our way smooth, so that no times be lost when over the Danube. John will stay with Madam Mina and me, and we shall consult. For so if time be long you may be delayed. And it will not matter when the sun set, since I am here with Madam to make report.'
'And I,' said Mrs. Harker brightly, and more like her old self than she had been for many a long day, 'shall try to be of use in all ways, and shall think and write for you as I used to do. Something is shifting from me in some strange way, and I feel freer than I have been of late!'
The three younger men looked happier at the moment as they seemed to realize the significance of her words. But Van Helsing and I, turning to each other, met each a grave and troubled glance. We said nothing at the time, however.
When the three men had gone out to their tasks Van Helsing asked Mrs. Harker to look up the copy of the diaries and find him the part of Harker's journal at the Castle. She went away to get it.
When the door was shut upon her he said to me, 'We mean the same! Speak out!'
'Here is some change. It is a hope that makes me sick, for it may deceive us.'
'Quite so. Do you know why I asked her to get the manuscript?'
'No!' said I, 'unless it was to get an opportunity of seeing me alone.'
'You are in part right, friend John, but only in part. I want to tell you something. And oh, my friend, I am taking a great, a terrible, risk. But I believe it is right. In the moment when Madam Mina said those words that arrest both our understanding, an inspiration came to me. In the trance of three days ago the Count sent her his spirit to read her mind. Or more like he took her to see him in his earth box in the ship with water rushing, just as it go free at rise and set of sun. He learn then that we are here, for she have more to tell in her open life with eyes to see ears to hear than he, shut as he is, in his coffin box. Now he make his most effort to escape us. At present he want her not.
'He is sure with his so great knowledge that she will come at his call. But he cut her off, take her, as he can do, out of his own power, that so she come not to him. Ah! There I have hope that our man brains that have been of man so long and that have not lost the grace of God, will come higher than his child-brain that lie in his tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only work selfish and therefore small. Here comes Madam Mina. Not a word to her of her trance! She knows it not, and it would overwhelm her and make despair just when we want all her hope, all her courage, when most we want all her great brain which is trained like man's brain, but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the Count give her, and which he may not take away altogether, though he think not so. Hush! Let me speak, and you shall learn. Oh, John, my friend, we are in awful straits. I fear, as I never feared before. We can only trust the good God. Silence! Here she comes!'
I thought that the Professor was going to break down and have hysterics, just as he had when Lucy died, but with a great effort he controlled himself and was at perfect nervous poise when Mrs. Harker tripped into the room, bright and happy looking and, in the doing of work, seemingly forgetful of her misery. As she came in, she handed a number of sheets of typewriting to Van Helsing. He looked over them gravely, his face brightening up as he read.
Then holding the pages between his finger and thumb he said, 'Friend John, to you with so much experience already, and you too, dear Madam Mina, that are young, here is a lesson. Do not fear ever to think. A half thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but I fear to let him loose his wings. Here now, with more knowledge, I go back to where that half thought come from and I find that he be no half thought at all. That be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet strong to use his little wings. Nay, like the 'Ugly Duck' of my friend Hans Andersen, he be no duck thought at all, but a big swan thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to try them. See I read here what Jonathan have written.
'That other of his race who, in a later age, again and again, brought his forces over The Great River into Turkey Land, who when he was beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph.
'What does this tell us? Not much? No! The Count's child thought see nothing, therefore he speak so free. Your man thought see nothing. My man thought see nothing, till just now. No! But there comes another word from some one who speak without thought because she, too, know not what it mean, what it might mean. Just as there are elements which rest, yet when in nature's course they move on their way and they touch, the pouf! And there comes a flash of light, heaven wide, that blind and kill and destroy some. But that show up all earth below for leagues and leagues. Is it not so? Well, I shall explain. To begin, have you ever study the philosophy of crime? 'Yes' and 'No.' You, John, yes, for it is a study of insanity. You, no, Madam Mina, for crime touch you not, not but once. Still, your mind works true, and argues not a particulari ad universale. There is this peculiarity in criminals. It is so constant, in all countries and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy, come to know it empirically, that it is. That is to be empiric. The criminal always work at one crime, that is the true criminal who seems predestinate to crime, and who will of none other. This criminal has not full man brain. He is clever and cunning and resourceful, but he be not of man stature as to brain. He be of child brain in much. Now this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also. He, too, have child brain, and it is of the child to do what he have done. The little bird, the little fish, the little animal learn not by principle, but empirically. And when he learn to do, then there is to him the ground to start from to do more. 'Dos pou sto,' said Archimedes. 'Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!' To do once, is the fulcrum whereby child brain become man brain. And until he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every time, just as he have done before! Oh, my dear, I see that your eyes are opened, and that to you the lightning flash show all the leagues, 'for Mrs. Harker began to clap her hands and her eyes sparkled.
He went on, 'Now you shall speak. Tell us two dry men of science what you see with those so bright eyes.' He took her hand and held it whilst he spoke. His finger and thumb closed on her pulse, as I thought instinctively and unconsciously, as she spoke.
'The Count is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of an imperfectly formed mind. Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit. His past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know, and that from his own lips, tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call a 'tight place,' he went back to his own country from the land he had tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared himself for a new effort. He came again better equipped for his work, and won. So he came to London to invade a new land. He was beaten, and when all hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he fled back over the sea to his home. Just as formerly he had fled back over the Danube from Turkey Land.'
'Good, good! Oh, you so clever lady!' said Van Helsing, enthusiastically, as he stooped and kissed her hand. A moment later he said to me, as calmly as though we had been having a sick room consultation, 'Seventy-two only, and in all this excitement. I have hope.'
Turning to her again, he said with keen expectation, 'But go on. Go on! There is more to tell if you will. Be not afraid. John and I know. I do in any case, and shall tell you if you are right. Speak, without fear!'
'I will try to. But you will forgive me if I seem too egotistical.'
'Nay! Fear not, you must be egotist, for it is of you that we think.'
'Then, as he is criminal he is selfish. And as his intellect is small and his action is based on selfishness, he confines himself to one purpose. That purpose is remorseless. As he fled back over the Danube, leaving his forces to be cut to pieces, so now he is intent on being safe, careless of all. So his own selfishness frees my soul somewhat from the terrible power which he acquired over me on that dreadful night. I felt it! Oh, I felt it! Thank God, for His great mercy! My soul is freer than it has been since that awful hour. And all that haunts me is a fear lest in some trance or dream he may have used my knowledge for his ends.'
The Professor stood up, 'He has so used your mind, and by it he has left us here in Varna, whilst the ship that carried him rushed through enveloping fog up to Galatz, where, doubtless, he had made preparation for escaping from us. But his child mind only saw so far. And it may be that as ever is in God's Providence, the very thing that the evil doer most reckoned on for his selfish good, turns out to be his chiefest harm. The hunter is taken in his own snare, as the great Psalmist says. For now that he think he is free from every trace of us all, and that he has escaped us with so many hours to him, then his selfish child brain will whisper him to sleep. He think, too, that as he cut himself off from knowing your mind, there can be no knowledge of him to you. There is where he fail! That terrible baptism of blood which he give you makes you free to go to him in spirit, as you have as yet done in your times of freedom, when the sun rise and set. At such times you go by my volition and not by his. And this power to good of you and others, you have won from your suffering at his hands. This is now all more precious that he know it not, and to guard himself have even cut himself off from his knowledge of our where. We, however, are not selfish, and we believe that God is with us through all this blackness, and these many dark hours. We shall follow him, and we shall not flinch. Even if we peril ourselves that we become like him. Friend John, this has been a great hour, and it have done much to advance us on our way. You must be scribe and write him all down, so that when the others return from their work you can give it to them, then they shall know as we do.'
And so I have written it whilst we wait their return, and Mrs. Harker has written with the typewriter all since she brought the MS to us.
Chapter 26
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
29 October.-This is written in the train from Varna to Galatz. Last night we all assembled a little before the time of sunset. Each of us had done his work as well as he could, so far as thought, and endeavour, and opportunity go, we are prepared for the whole of our journey, and for our work when we get to Galatz. When the usual time came round Mrs. Harker prepared herself for her hypnotic effort, and after a longer and more serious effort on the part of Van Helsing than has been usually necessary, she sank into the trance. Usually she speaks on a hint, but this time the Professor had to ask her questions, and to ask them pretty resolutely, before we could learn anything. At last her answer came.
'I can see nothing. We are still. There are no waves lapping, but only a steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser. I can hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in the rowlocks. A gun is fired somewhere, the echo of it seems far away. There is tramping of feet overhead, and ropes and chains are dragged along. What is this? There is a gleam of light. I can feel the air blowing upon me.'
Here she stopped. She had risen, as if impulsively, from where she lay on the sofa, and raised both her hands, palms upwards, as if lifting a weight. Van Helsing and I looked at each other with understanding. Quincey raised his eyebrows slightly and looked at her intently, whilst Harker's hand instinctively closed round the hilt of his Kukri. There was a long pause. We all knew that the time when she could speak was passing, but we felt that it was useless to say anything.
Suddenly she sat up, and as she opened her eyes said sweetly, 'Would none of you like a cup of tea? You must all be so tired!'
We could only make her happy, and so acqueisced. She bustled off to get tea. When she had gone Van Helsing said, 'You see, my friends. He is close to land. He has left his earth chest. But he has yet to get on shore. In the night he may lie hidden somewhere, but if he be not carried on shore, or if the ship do not touch it, he cannot achieve the land. In such case he can, if it be in the night, change his form and jump or fly on shore, then, unless he be carried he cannot escape. And if he be carried, then the customs men may discover what the box contain. Thus, in fine, if he escape not on shore tonight, or before dawn, there will be the whole day lost to him. We may then arrive in time. For if he escape not at night we shall come on him in daytime, boxed up and at our mercy. For he dare not be his true self, awake and visible, lest he be discovered.'
There was no more to be said, so we waited in patience until the dawn, at which time we might learn more from Mrs. Harker.
Early this morning we listened, with breathless anxiety, for her response in her trance. The hypnotic stage was even longer in coming than before, and when it came the time remaining until full sunrise was so short that we began to despair. Van Helsing seemed to throw his whole soul into the effort. At last, in obedience to his will she made reply.
'All is dark. I hear lapping water, level with me, and some creaking as of wood on wood.' She paused, and the red sun shot up. We must wait till tonight.
And so it is that we are travelling towards Galatz in an agony of expectation. We are due to arrive between two and three in the morning. But already, at Bucharest, we are three hours late, so we cannot possibly get in till well after sunup. Thus we shall have two more hypnotic messages from Mrs. Harker! Either or both may possibly throw more light on what is happening.
Later.-Sunset has come and gone. Fortunately it came at a time when there was no distraction. For had it occurred whilst we were at a station, we might not have secured the necessary calm and isolation. Mrs. Harker yielded to the hypnotic influence even less readily than this morning. I am in fear that her power of reading the Count's sensations may die away, just when we want it most. It seems to me that her imagination is beginning to work. Whilst she has been in the trance hitherto she has confined herself to the simplest of facts. If this goes on it may ultimately mislead us. If I thought that the Count's power over her would die away equally with her power of knowledge it would be a happy thought. But I am afraid that it may not be so.
When she did speak, her words were enigmatical, 'Something is going out. I can feel it pass me like a cold wind. I can hear, far off, confused sounds, as of men talking in strange tongues, fierce falling water, and the howling of wolves.' She stopped and a shudder ran through her, increasing in intensity for a few seconds, till at the end, she shook as though in a palsy. She said no more, even in answer to the Professor's imperative questioning. When she woke from the trance, she was cold, and exhausted, and languid, but her mind was all alert. She could not remember anything, but asked what she had said. When she was told, she pondered over it deeply for a long time and in silence.
30 October, 7 A.M.-We are near Galatz now, and I may not have time to write later. Sunrise this morning was anxiously looked for by us all. Knowing of the increasing difficulty of procuring the hypnotic trance, Van Helsing began his passes earlier than usual. They produced no effect, however, until the regular time, when she yielded with a still greater difficulty, only a minute before the sun rose. The Professor lost no time in his questioning.
Her answer came with equal quickness, 'All is dark. I hear water swirling by, level with my ears, and the creaking of wood on wood. Cattle low far off. There is another sound, a queer one like... ' She stopped and grew white, and whiter still.
'Go on, go on! Speak, I command you!' said Van Helsing in an agonized voice. At the same time there was despair in his eyes, for the risen sun was reddening even Mrs. Harker's pale face. She opened her eyes, and we all started as she said, sweetly and seemingly with the utmost unconcern.
'Oh, Professor, why ask me to do what you know I can't? I don't remember anything.' Then, seeing the look of amazement on our faces, she said, turning from one to the other with a troubled look, 'What have I said? What have I done? I know nothing, only that I was lying here, half asleep, and heard you say 'go on! speak, I command you!' It seemed so funny to hear you order me about, as if I were a bad child!'
'Oh, Madam Mina,' he said, sadly, 'it is proof, if proof be needed, of how I love and honour you, when a word for your good, spoken more earnest than ever, can seem so strange because it is to order her whom I am proud to obey!'
The whistles are sounding. We are nearing Galatz. We are on fire with anxiety and eagerness.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 October.-Mr. Morris took me to the hotel where our rooms had been ordered by telegraph, he being the one who could best be spared, since he does not speak any foreign language. The forces were distributed much as they had been at Varna, except that Lord Godalming went to the Vice Consul, as his rank might serve as an immediate guarantee of some sort to the official, we being in extreme hurry. Jonathan and the two doctors went to the shipping agent to learn particulars of the arrival of the Czarina Catherine.
Later.-Lord Godalming has returned. The Consul is away, and the Vice Consul sick. So the routine work has been attended to by a clerk. He was very obliging, and offered to do anything in his power.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 October.-At nine o'clock Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and I called on Messrs. Mackenzie & Steinkoff, the agents of the London firm of Hapgood. They had received a wire from London, in answer to Lord Godalming's telegraphed request, asking them to show us any civility in their power. They were more than kind and courteous, and took us at once on board the Czarina Catherine, which lay at anchor out in the river harbor. There we saw the Captain, Donelson by name, who told us of his voyage. He said that in all his life he had never had so favourable a run.
'Man!' he said, 'but it made us afeard, for we expect it that we should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to keep up the average. It's no canny to run frae London to the Black Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on yer sail for his ain purpose. An' a' the time we could no speer a thing. Gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell on us and travelled wi' us, till when after it had lifted and we looked out, the deil a thing could we see. We ran by Gibraltar wi' oot bein' able to signal. An' til we came to the Dardanelles and had to wait to get our permit to pass, we never were within hail o' aught. At first I inclined to slack off sail and beat about till the fog was lifted. But whiles, I thocht that if the Deil was minded to get us into the Black Sea quick, he was like to do it whether we would or no. If we had a quick voyage it would be no to our miscredit wi'the owners, or no hurt to our traffic, an' the Old Mon who had served his ain purpose wad be decently grateful to us for no hinderin' him.'
This mixture of simplicity and cunning, of superstition and commercial reasoning, aroused Van Helsing, who said, 'Mine friend, that Devil is more clever than he is thought by some, and he know when he meet his match!'
The skipper was not displeased with the compliment, and went on, 'When we got past the Bosphorus the men began to grumble. Some o' them, the Roumanians, came and asked me to heave overboard a big box which had been put on board by a queer lookin' old man just before we had started frae London. I had seen them speer at the fellow, and put out their twa fingers when they saw him, to guard them against the evil eye. Man! but the supersteetion of foreigners is pairfectly rideeculous! I sent them aboot their business pretty quick, but as just after a fog closed in on us I felt a wee bit as they did anent something, though I wouldn't say it was again the big box. Well, on we went, and as the fog didn't let up for five days I joost let the wind carry us, for if the Deil wanted to get somewheres, well, he would fetch it up a'reet. An' if he didn't, well, we'd keep a sharp lookout anyhow. Sure eneuch, we had a fair way and deep water all the time. And two days ago, when the mornin' sun came through the fog, we found ourselves just in the river opposite Galatz. The Roumanians were wild, and wanted me right or wrong to take out the box and fling it in the river. I had to argy wi' them aboot it wi' a handspike. An' when the last o' them rose off the deck wi' his head in his hand, I had convinced them that, evil eye or no evil eye, the property and the trust of my owners were better in my hands than in the river Danube. They had, mind ye, taken the box on the deck ready to fling in, and as it was marked Galatz via Varna, I thocht I'd let it lie till we discharged in the port an' get rid o't althegither. We didn't do much clearin' that day, an' had to remain the nicht at anchor. But in the mornin', braw an' airly, an hour before sunup, a man came aboard wi' an order, written to him from England, to receive a box marked for one Count Dracula. Sure eneuch the matter was one ready to his hand. He had his papers a' reet, an' glad I was to be rid o' the dam' thing, for I was beginnin' masel' to feel uneasy at it. If the Deil did have any luggage aboord the ship, I'm thinkin' it was nane ither than that same!'
'What was the name of the man who took it?' asked Dr. Van Helsing with restrained eagerness.
'I'll be tellin' ye quick!' he answered, and stepping down to his cabin, produced a receipt signed 'Immanuel Hildesheim.' Burgen-strasse 16 was the address. We found out that this was all the Captain knew, so with thanks we came away.
We found Hildesheim in his office, a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez. His arguments were pointed with specie, we doing the punctuation, and with a little bargaining he told us what he knew. This turned out to be simple but important. He had received a letter from Mr. de Ville of London, telling him to receive, if possible before sunrise so as to avoid customs, a box which would arrive at Galatz in the Czarina Catherine. This he was to give in charge to a certain Petrof Skinsky, who dealt with the Slovaks who traded down the river to the port. He had been paid for his work by an English bank note, which had been duly cashed for gold at the Danube International Bank. When Skinsky had come to him, he had taken him to the ship and handed over the box, so as to save porterage. That was all he knew.
We then sought for Skinsky, but were unable to find him. One of his neighbors, who did not seem to bear him any affection, said that he had gone away two days before, no one knew whither. This was corroborated by his landlord, who had received by messenger the key of the house together with the rent due, in English money. This had been between ten and eleven o'clock last night. We were at a standstill again.
Whilst we were talking one came running and breathlessly gasped out that the body of Skinsky had been found inside the wall of the churchyard of St. Peter, and that the throat had been torn open as if by some wild animal. Those we had been speaking with ran off to see the horror, the women crying out. 'This is the work of a Slovak!' We hurried away lest we should have been in some way drawn into the affair, and so detained.
As we came home we could arrive at no definite conclusion. We were all convinced that the box was on its way, by water, to somewhere, but where that might be we would have to discover. With heavy hearts we came home to the hotel to Mina.
When we met together, the first thing was to consult as to taking Mina again into our confidence. Things are getting desperate, and it is at least a chance, though a hazardous one. As a preliminary step, I was released from my promise to her.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 October, evening.-They were so tired and worn out and dispirited that there was nothing to be done till they had some rest, so I asked them all to lie down for half an hour whilst I should enter everything up to the moment. I feel so grateful to the man who invented the 'Traveller's' typewriter, and to Mr. Morris for getting this one for me. I should have felt quite astray doing the work if I had to write with a pen... 
It is all done. Poor dear, dear Jonathan, what he must have suffered, what he must be suffering now. He lies on the sofa hardly seeming to breathe, and his whole body appears in collapse. His brows are knit. His face is drawn with pain. Poor fellow, maybe he is thinking, and I can see his face all wrinkled up with the concentration of his thoughts. Oh! if I could only help at all. I shall do what I can.
I have asked Dr. Van Helsing, and he has got me all the papers that I have not yet seen. Whilst they are resting, I shall go over all carefully, and perhaps I may arrive at some conclusion. I shall try to follow the Professor's example, and think without prejudice on the facts before me... 
I do believe that under God's providence I have made a discovery. I shall get the maps and look over them.
I am more than ever sure that I am right. My new conclusion is ready, so I shall get our party together and read it. They can judge it. It is well to be accurate, and every minute is precious.
MINA HARKER'S MEMORANDUM
Ground of inquiry.-Count Dracula's problem is to get back to his own place.
 He must be brought back by some one. This is evident. For had he power to move himself as he wished he could go either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way. He evidently fears discovery or interference, in the state of helplessness in which he must be, confined as he is between dawn and sunset in his wooden box.
 How is he to be taken?-Here a process of exclusions may help us. By road, by rail, by water?
1. By Road.-There are endless difficulties, especially in leaving the city.
 There are people. And people are curious, and investigate. A hint, a surmise, a doubt as to what might be in the box, would destroy him.
 There are, or there may be, customs and octroi officers to pass.
 His pursuers might follow. This is his highest fear. And in order to prevent his being betrayed he has repelled, so far as he can, even his victim, me!
2. By Rail.-There is no one in charge of the box. It would have to take its chance of being delayed, and delay would be fatal, with enemies on the track. True, he might escape at night. But what would he be, if left in a strange place with no refuge that he could fly to? This is not what he intends, and he does not mean to risk it.
3. By Water.-Here is the safest way, in one respect, but with most danger in another. On the water he is powerless except at night. Even then he can only summon fog and storm and snow and his wolves. But were he wrecked, the living water would engulf him, helpless, and he would indeed be lost. He could have the vessel drive to land, but if it were unfriendly land, wherein he was not free to move, his position would still be desperate.
We know from the record that he was on the water, so what we have to do is to ascertain what water.
The first thing is to realize exactly what he has done as yet. We may, then, get a light on what his task is to be.
Firstly.-We must differentiate between what he did in London as part of his general plan of action, when he was pressed for moments and had to arrange as best he could.
Secondly we must see, as well as we can surmise it from the facts we know of, what he has done here.
As to the first, he evidently intended to arrive at Galatz, and sent invoice to Varna to deceive us lest we should ascertain his means of exit from England. His immediate and sole purpose then was to escape. The proof of this, is the letter of instructions sent to Immanuel Hildesheim to clear and take away the box before sunrise. There is also the instruction to Petrof Skinsky. These we must only guess at, but there must have been some letter or message, since Skinsky came to Hildesheim.
That, so far, his plans were successful we know. The Czarina Catherine made a phenomenally quick journey. So much so that Captain Donelson's suspicions were aroused. But his superstition united with his canniness played the Count's game for him, and he ran with his favouring wind through fogs and all till he brought up blindfold at Galatz. That the Count's arrangements were well made, has been proved. Hildesheim cleared the box, took it off, and gave it to Skinsky. Skinsky took it, and here we lose the trail. We only know that the box is somewhere on the water, moving along. The customs and the octroi, if there be any, have been avoided.
Now we come to what the Count must have done after his arrival, on land, at Galatz.
The box was given to Skinsky before sunrise. At sunrise the Count could appear in his own form. Here, we ask why Skinsky was chosen at all to aid in the work? In my husband's diary, Skinsky is mentioned as dealing with the Slovaks who trade down the river to the port. And the man's remark, that the murder was the work of a Slovak, showed the general feeling against his class. The Count wanted isolation.
My surmise is this, that in London the Count decided to get back to his castle by water, as the most safe and secret way. He was brought from the castle by Szgany, and probably they delivered their cargo to Slovaks who took the boxes to Varna, for there they were shipped to London. Thus the Count had knowledge of the persons who could arrange this service. When the box was on land, before sunrise or after sunset, he came out from his box, met Skinsky and instructed him what to do as to arranging the carriage of the box up some river. When this was done, and he knew that all was in train, he blotted out his traces, as he thought, by murdering his agent.
I have examined the map and find that the river most suitable for the Slovaks to have ascended is either the Pruth or the Sereth. I read in the typescript that in my trance I heard cows low and water swirling level with my ears and the creaking of wood. The Count in his box, then, was on a river in an open boat, propelled probably either by oars or poles, for the banks are near and it is working against stream. There would be no such if floating down stream.
Of course it may not be either the Sereth or the Pruth, but we may possibly investigate further. Now of these two, the Pruth is the more easily navigated, but the Sereth is, at Fundu, joined by the Bistritza which runs up round the Borgo Pass. The loop it makes is manifestly as close to Dracula's castle as can be got by water.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL-CONTINUED
When I had done reading, Jonathan took me in his arms and kissed me. The others kept shaking me by both hands, and Dr. Van Helsing said, 'Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher. Her eyes have been where we were blinded. Now we are on the track once again, and this time we may succeed. Our enemy is at his most helpless. And if we can come on him by day, on the water, our task will be over. He has a start, but he is powerless to hasten, as he may not leave this box lest those who carry him may suspect. For them to suspect would be to prompt them to throw him in the stream where he perish. This he knows, and will not. Now men, to our Council of War, for here and now, we must plan what each and all shall do.'
'I shall get a steam launch and follow him,' said Lord Godalming.
'And I, horses to follow on the bank lest by chance he land,' said Mr. Morris.
'Good!' said the Professor, 'both good. But neither must go alone. There must be force to overcome force if need be. The Slovak is strong and rough, and he carries rude arms.' All the men smiled, for amongst them they carried a small arsenal.
Said Mr. Morris, 'I have brought some Winchesters. They are pretty handy in a crowd, and there may be wolves. The Count, if you remember, took some other precautions. He made some requisitions on others that Mrs. Harker could not quite hear or understand. We must be ready at all points.'
Dr. Seward said, 'I think I had better go with Quincey. We have been accustomed to hunt together, and we two, well armed, will be a match for whatever may come along. You must not be alone, Art. It may be necessary to fight the Slovaks, and a chance thrust, for I don't suppose these fellows carry guns, would undo all our plans. There must be no chances, this time. We shall not rest until the Count's head and body have been separated, and we are sure that he cannot reincarnate.'
He looked at Jonathan as he spoke, and Jonathan looked at me. I could see that the poor dear was torn about in his mind. Of course he wanted to be with me. But then the boat service would, most likely, be the one which would destroy the... the... Vampire. 
He was silent awhile, and during his silence Dr. Van Helsing spoke, 'Friend Jonathan, this is to you for twice reasons. First, because you are young and brave and can fight, and all energies may be needed at the last. And again that it is your right to destroy him. That, which has wrought such woe to you and yours. Be not afraid for Madam Mina. She will be my care, if I may. I am old. My legs are not so quick to run as once. And I am not used to ride so long or to pursue as need be, or to fight with lethal weapons. But I can be of other service. I can fight in other way. And I can die, if need be, as well as younger men. Now let me say that what I would is this. While you, my Lord Godalming and friend Jonathan go in your so swift little steamboat up the river, and whilst John and Quincey guard the bank where perchance he might be landed, I will take Madam Mina right into the heart of the enemy's country. Whilst the old fox is tied in his box, floating on the running stream whence he cannot escape to land, where he dares not raise the lid of his coffin box lest his Slovak carriers should in fear leave him to perish, we shall go in the track where Jonathan went, from Bistritz over the Borgo, and find our way to the Castle of Dracula. Here, Madam Mina's hypnotic power will surely help, and we shall find our way, all dark and unknown otherwise, after the first sunrise when we are near that fateful place. There is much to be done, and other places to be made sanctify, so that that nest of vipers be obliterated.'
Here Jonathan interrupted him hotly, 'Do you mean to say, Professor Van Helsing, that you would bring Mina, in her sad case and tainted as she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his deathtrap? Not for the world! Not for Heaven or Hell!'
He became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on, 'Do you know what the place is? Have you seen that awful den of hellish infamy, with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and every speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? Have you felt the Vampire's lips upon your throat?'
Here he turned to me, and as his eyes lit on my forehead he threw up his arms with a cry, 'Oh, my God, what have we done to have this terror upon us?' and he sank down on the sofa in a collapse of misery.
The Professor's voice, as he spoke in clear, sweet tones, which seemed to vibrate in the air, calmed us all.
'Oh, my friend, it is because I would save Madam Mina from that awful place that I would go. God forbid that I should take her into that place. There is work, wild work, to be done before that place can be purify. Remember that we are in terrible straits. If the Count escape us this time, and he is strong and subtle and cunning, he may choose to sleep him for a century, and then in time our dear one,' he took my hand, 'would come to him to keep him company, and would be as those others that you, Jonathan, saw. You have told us of their gloating lips. You heard their ribald laugh as they clutched the moving bag that the Count threw to them. You shudder, and well may it be. Forgive me that I make you so much pain, but it is necessary. My friend, is it not a dire need for that which I am giving, possibly my life? If it were that any one went into that place to stay, it is I who would have to go to keep them company.'
'Do as you will,' said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over, 'we are in the hands of God!'
Later.-Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when basely used. I felt so thankful that Lord Godalming is rich, and both he and Mr. Morris, who also has plenty of money, are willing to spend it so freely. For if they did not, our little expedition could not start, either so promptly or so well equipped, as it will within another hour. It is not three hours since it was arranged what part each of us was to do. And now Lord Godalming and Jonathan have a lovely steam launch, with steam up ready to start at a moment's notice. Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris have half a dozen good horses, well appointed. We have all the maps and appliances of various kinds that can be had. Professor Van Helsing and I are to leave by the 11:40 train tonight for Veresti, where we are to get a carriage to drive to the Borgo Pass. We are bringing a good deal of ready money, as we are to buy a carriage and horses. We shall drive ourselves, for we have no one whom we can trust in the matter. The Professor knows something of a great many languages, so we shall get on all right. We have all got arms, even for me a large bore revolver. Jonathan would not be happy unless I was armed like the rest. Alas! I cannot carry one arm that the rest do, the scar on my forehead forbids that. Dear Dr. Van Helsing comforts me by telling me that I am fully armed as there may be wolves. The weather is getting colder every hour, and there are snow flurries which come and go as warnings.
Later.-It took all my courage to say goodbye to my darling. We may never meet again. Courage, Mina! The Professor is looking at you keenly. His look is a warning. There must be no tears now, unless it may be that God will let them fall in gladness.
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
30 October, night.-I am writing this in the light from the furnace door of the steam launch. Lord Godalming is firing up. He is an experienced hand at the work, as he has had for years a launch of his own on the Thames, and another on the Norfolk Broads. Regarding our plans, we finally decided that Mina's guess was correct, and that if any waterway was chosen for the Count's escape back to his Castle, the Sereth and then the Bistritza at its junction, would be the one. We took it, that somewhere about the 47th degree, north latitude, would be the place chosen for crossing the country between the river and the Carpathians. We have no fear in running at good speed up the river at night. There is plenty of water, and the banks are wide enough apart to make steaming, even in the dark, easy enough. Lord Godalming tells me to sleep for a while, as it is enough for the present for one to be on watch. But I cannot sleep, how can I with the terrible danger hanging over my darling, and her going out into that awful place... 
My only comfort is that we are in the hands of God. Only for that faith it would be easier to die than to live, and so be quit of all the trouble. Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward were off on their long ride before we started. They are to keep up the right bank, far enough off to get on higher lands where they can see a good stretch of river and avoid the following of its curves. They have, for the first stages, two men to ride and lead their spare horses, four in all, so as not to excite curiosity. When they dismiss the men, which shall be shortly, they shall themselves look after the horses. It may be necessary for us to join forces. If so they can mount our whole party. One of the saddles has a moveable horn, and can be easily adapted for Mina, if required.
It is a wild adventure we are on. Here, as we are rushing along through the darkness, with the cold from the river seeming to rise up and strike us, with all the mysterious voices of the night around us, it all comes home. We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways. Into a whole world of dark and dreadful things. Godalming is shutting the furnace door... 
31 October.-Still hurrying along. The day has come, and Godalming is sleeping. I am on watch. The morning is bitterly cold, the furnace heat is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats. As yet we have passed only a few open boats, but none of them had on board any box or package of anything like the size of the one we seek. The men were scared every time we turned our electric lamp on them, and fell on their knees and prayed.
1 November, evening.-No news all day. We have found nothing of the kind we seek. We have now passed into the Bistritza, and if we are wrong in our surmise our chance is gone. We have overhauled every boat, big and little. Early this morning, one crew took us for a Government boat, and treated us accordingly. We saw in this a way of smoothing matters, so at Fundu, where the Bistritza runs into the Sereth, we got a Roumanian flag which we now fly conspicuously. With every boat which we have overhauled since then this trick has succeeded. We have had every deference shown to us, and not once any objection to whatever we chose to ask or do. Some of the Slovaks tell us that a big boat passed them, going at more than usual speed as she had a double crew on board. This was before they came to Fundu, so they could not tell us whether the boat turned into the Bistritza or continued on up the Sereth. At Fundu we could not hear of any such boat, so she must have passed there in the night. I am feeling very sleepy. The cold is perhaps beginning to tell upon me, and nature must have rest some time. Godalming insists that he shall keep the first watch. God bless him for all his goodness to poor dear Mina and me.
2 November, morning.-It is broad daylight. That good fellow would not wake me. He says it would have been a sin to, for I slept peacefully and was forgetting my trouble. It seems brutally selfish to me to have slept so long, and let him watch all night, but he was quite right. I am a new man this morning. And, as I sit here and watch him sleeping, I can do all that is necessary both as to minding the engine, steering, and keeping watch. I can feel that my strength and energy are coming back to me. I wonder where Mina is now, and Van Helsing. They should have got to Veresti about noon on Wednesday. It would take them some time to get the carriage and horses. So if they had started and travelled hard, they would be about now at the Borgo Pass. God guide and help them! I am afraid to think what may happen. If we could only go faster. But we cannot. The engines are throbbing and doing their utmost. I wonder how Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris are getting on. There seem to be endless streams running down the mountains into this river, but as none of them are very large, at present, at all events, though they are doubtless terrible in winter and when the snow melts, the horsemen may not have met much obstruction. I hope that before we get to Strasba we may see them. For if by that time we have not overtaken the Count, it may be necessary to take counsel together what to do next.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
2 November.-Three days on the road. No news, and no time to write it if there had been, for every moment is precious. We have had only the rest needful for the horses. But we are both bearing it wonderfully. Those adventurous days of ours are turning up useful. We must push on. We shall never feel happy till we get the launch in sight again.
3 November.-We heard at Fundu that the launch had gone up the Bistritza. I wish it wasn't so cold. There are signs of snow coming. And if it falls heavy it will stop us. In such case we must get a sledge and go on, Russian fashion.
4 November.-Today we heard of the launch having been detained by an accident when trying to force a way up the rapids. The Slovak boats get up all right, by aid of a rope and steering with knowledge. Some went up only a few hours before. Godalming is an amateur fitter himself, and evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again.
Finally, they got up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off on the chase afresh. I fear that the boat is not any better for the accident, the peasantry tell us that after she got upon smooth water again, she kept stopping every now and again so long as she was in sight. We must push on harder than ever. Our help may be wanted soon.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
31 October.-Arrived at Veresti at noon. The Professor tells me that this morning at dawn he could hardly hypnotize me at all, and that all I could say was, 'dark and quiet.' He is off now buying a carriage and horses. He says that he will later on try to buy additional horses, so that we may be able to change them on the way. We have something more than 70 miles before us. The country is lovely, and most interesting. If only we were under different conditions, how delightful it would be to see it all. If Jonathan and I were driving through it alone what a pleasure it would be. To stop and see people, and learn something of their life, and to fill our minds and memories with all the colour and picturesqueness of the whole wild, beautiful country and the quaint people! But, alas!
Later.-Dr. Van Helsing has returned. He has got the carriage and horses. We are to have some dinner, and to start in an hour. The landlady is putting us up a huge basket of provisions. It seems enough for a company of soldiers. The Professor encourages her, and whispers to me that it may be a week before we can get any food again. He has been shopping too, and has sent home such a wonderful lot of fur coats and wraps, and all sorts of warm things. There will not be any chance of our being cold.
We shall soon be off. I am afraid to think what may happen to us. We are truly in the hands of God. He alone knows what may be, and I pray Him, with all the strength of my sad and humble soul, that He will watch over my beloved husband. That whatever may happen, Jonathan may know that I loved him and honoured him more than I can say, and that my latest and truest thought will be always for him.
Chapter 27
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
1 November.-All day long we have travelled, and at a good speed. The horses seem to know that they are being kindly treated, for they go willingly their full stage at best speed. We have now had so many changes and find the same thing so constantly that we are encouraged to think that the journey will be an easy one. Dr. Van Helsing is laconic, he tells the farmers that he is hurrying to Bistritz, and pays them well to make the exchange of horses. We get hot soup, or coffee, or tea, and off we go. It is a lovely country. Full of beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities. They are very, very superstitious. In the first house where we stopped, when the woman who served us saw the scar on my forehead, she crossed herself and put out two fingers towards me, to keep off the evil eye. I believe they went to the trouble of putting an extra amount of garlic into our food, and I can't abide garlic. Ever since then I have taken care not to take off my hat or veil, and so have escaped their suspicions. We are travelling fast, and as we have no driver with us to carry tales, we go ahead of scandal. But I daresay that fear of the evil eye will follow hard behind us all the way. The Professor seems tireless. All day he would not take any rest, though he made me sleep for a long spell. At sunset time he hypnotized me, and he says I answered as usual, 'darkness, lapping water and creaking wood.' So our enemy is still on the river. I am afraid to think of Jonathan, but somehow I have now no fear for him, or for myself. I write this whilst we wait in a farmhouse for the horses to be ready. Dr. Van Helsing is sleeping. Poor dear, he looks very tired and old and grey, but his mouth is set as firmly as a conqueror's. Even in his sleep he is intense with resolution. When we have well started I must make him rest whilst I drive. I shall tell him that we have days before us, and he must not break down when most of all his strength will be needed... All is ready. We are off shortly.
2 November, morning.-I was successful, and we took turns driving all night. Now the day is on us, bright though cold. There is a strange heaviness in the air. I say heaviness for want of a better word. I mean that it oppresses us both. It is very cold, and only our warm furs keep us comfortable. At dawn Van Helsing hypnotized me. He says I answered 'darkness, creaking wood and roaring water,' so the river is changing as they ascend. I do hope that my darling will not run any chance of danger, more than need be, but we are in God's hands.
2 November, night.-All day long driving. The country gets wilder as we go, and the great spurs of the Carpathians, which at Veresti seemed so far from us and so low on the horizon, now seem to gather round us and tower in front. We both seem in good spirits. I think we make an effort each to cheer the other, in the doing so we cheer ourselves. Dr. Van Helsing says that by morning we shall reach the Borgo Pass. The houses are very few here now, and the Professor says that the last horse we got will have to go on with us, as we may not be able to change. He got two in addition to the two we changed, so that now we have a rude four-in-hand. The dear horses are patient and good, and they give us no trouble. We are not worried with other travellers, and so even I can drive. We shall get to the Pass in daylight. We do not want to arrive before. So we take it easy, and have each a long rest in turn. Oh, what will tomorrow bring to us? We go to seek the place where my poor darling suffered so much. God grant that we may be guided aright, and that He will deign to watch over my husband and those dear to us both, and who are in such deadly peril. As for me, I am not worthy in His sight. Alas! I am unclean to His eyes, and shall be until He may deign to let me stand forth in His sight as one of those who have not incurred His wrath.
MEMORANDUM BY ABRAHAM VAN HELSING
4 November.-This to my old and true friend John Seward, M.D., of Purfleet, London, in case I may not see him. It may explain. It is morning, and I write by a fire which all the night I have kept alive, Madam Mina aiding me. It is cold, cold. So cold that the grey heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the ground is hardening to receive it. It seems to have affected Madam Mina. She has been so heavy of head all day that she was not like herself. She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps! She who is usual so alert, have done literally nothing all the day. She even have lost her appetite. She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well. However, tonight she is more vif. Her long sleep all day have refresh and restore her, for now she is all sweet and bright as ever. At sunset I try to hypnotize her, but alas! with no effect. The power has grown less and less with each day, and tonight it fail me altogether. Well, God's will be done, whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead!
Now to the historical, for as Madam Mina write not in her stenography, I must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so each day of us may not go unrecorded.
We got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise yesterday morning. When I saw the signs of the dawn I got ready for the hypnotism. We stopped our carriage, and got down so that there might be no disturbance. I made a couch with furs, and Madam Mina, lying down, yield herself as usual, but more slow and more short time than ever, to the hypnotic sleep. As before, came the answer, 'darkness and the swirling of water.' Then she woke, bright and radiant and we go on our way and soon reach the Pass. At this time and place, she become all on fire with zeal. Some new guiding power be in her manifested, for she point to a road and say, 'This is the way.'
'How know you it?' I ask.
'Of course I know it,' she answer, and with a pause, add, 'Have not my Jonathan travelled it and wrote of his travel?'
At first I think somewhat strange, but soon I see that there be only one such byroad. It is used but little, and very different from the coach road from the Bukovina to Bistritz, which is more wide and hard, and more of use.
So we came down this road. When we meet other ways, not always were we sure that they were roads at all, for they be neglect and light snow have fallen, the horses know and they only. I give rein to them, and they go on so patient. By and by we find all the things which Jonathan have note in that wonderful diary of him. Then we go on for long, long hours and hours. At the first, I tell Madam Mina to sleep. She try, and she succeed. She sleep all the time, till at the last, I feel myself to suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm her. For I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done something. I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I look down and find Madam Mina still asleep. It is now not far off sunset time, and over the snow the light of the sun flow in big yellow flood, so that we throw great long shadow on where the mountain rise so steep. For we are going up, and up, and all is oh, so wild and rocky, as though it were the end of the world.
Then I arouse Madam Mina. This time she wake with not much trouble, and then I try to put her to hypnotic sleep. But she sleep not, being as though I were not. Still I try and try, till all at once I find her and myself in dark, so I look round, and find that the sun have gone down. Madam Mina laugh, and I turn and look at her. She is now quite awake, and look so well as I never saw her since that night at Carfax when we first enter the Count's house. I am amaze, and not at ease then. But she is so bright and tender and thoughtful for me that I forget all fear. I light a fire, for we have brought supply of wood with us, and she prepare food while I undo the horses and set them, tethered in shelter, to feed. Then when I return to the fire she have my supper ready. I go to help her, but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already. That she was so hungry that she would not wait. I like it not, and I have grave doubts. But I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of it. She help me and I eat alone, and then we wrap in fur and lie beside the fire, and I tell her to sleep while I watch. But presently I forget all of watching. And when I sudden remember that I watch, I find her lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes. Once, twice more the same occur, and I get much sleep till before morning. When I wake I try to hypnotize her, but alas! Though she shut her eyes obedient, she may not sleep. The sun rise up, and up, and up, and then sleep come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake. I have to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when I have harnessed the horses and made all ready. Madam still sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid! I am afraid of all things, even to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch.
5 November, morning.-Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.
All yesterday we travel, always getting closer to the mountains, and moving into a more and more wild and desert land. There are great, frowning precipices and much falling water, and Nature seem to have held sometime her carnival. Madam Mina still sleep and sleep. And though I did have hunger and appeased it, I could not waken her, even for food. I began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with that Vampire baptism. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'if it be that she sleep all the day, it shall also be that I do not sleep at night.' As we travel on the rough road, for a road of an ancient and imperfect kind there was, I held down my head and slept.
Again I waked with a sense of guilt and of time passed, and found Madam Mina still sleeping, and the sun low down. But all was indeed changed. The frowning mountains seemed further away, and we were near the top of a steep rising hill, on summit of which was such a castle as Jonathan tell of in his diary. At once I exulted and feared. For now, for good or ill, the end was near.
I woke Madam Mina, and again tried to hypnotize her, but alas! unavailing till too late. Then, ere the great dark came upon us, for even after down sun the heavens reflected the gone sun on the snow, and all was for a time in a great twilight. I took out the horses and fed them in what shelter I could. Then I make a fire, and near it I make Madam Mina, now awake and more charming than ever, sit comfortable amid her rugs. I got ready food, but she would not eat, simply saying that she had not hunger. I did not press her, knowing her unavailingness. But I myself eat, for I must needs now be strong for all. Then, with the fear on me of what might be, I drew a ring so big for her comfort, round where Madam Mina sat. And over the ring I passed some of the wafer, and I broke it fine so that all was well guarded. She sat still all the time, so still as one dead. And she grew whiter and even whiter till the snow was not more pale, and no word she said. But when I drew near, she clung to me, and I could know that the poor soul shook her from head to feet with a tremor that was pain to feel.
I said to her presently, when she had grown more quiet, 'Will you not come over to the fire?' for I wished to make a test of what she could. She rose obedient, but when she have made a step she stopped, and stood as one stricken.
'Why not go on?' I asked. She shook her head, and coming back, sat down in her place. Then, looking at me with open eyes, as of one waked from sleep, she said simply, 'I cannot!' and remained silent. I rejoiced, for I knew that what she could not, none of those that we dreaded could. Though there might be danger to her body, yet her soul was safe!
Presently the horses began to scream, and tore at their tethers till I came to them and quieted them. When they did feel my hands on them, they whinnied low as in joy, and licked at my hands and were quiet for a time. Many times through the night did I come to them, till it arrive to the cold hour when all nature is at lowest, and every time my coming was with quiet of them. In the cold hour the fire began to die, and I was about stepping forth to replenish it, for now the snow came in flying sweeps and with it a chill mist. Even in the dark there was a light of some kind, as there ever is over snow, and it seemed as though the snow flurries and the wreaths of mist took shape as of women with trailing garments. All was in dead, grim silence only that the horses whinnied and cowered, as if in terror of the worst. I began to fear, horrible fears. But then came to me the sense of safety in that ring wherein I stood. I began too, to think that my imaginings were of the night, and the gloom, and the unrest that I have gone through, and all the terrible anxiety. It was as though my memories of all Jonathan's horrid experience were befooling me. For the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him. And then the horses cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as men do in pain. Even the madness of fright was not to them, so that they could break away. I feared for my dear Madam Mina when these weird figures drew near and circled round. I looked at her, but she sat calm, and smiled at me. When I would have stepped to the fire to replenish it, she caught me and held me back, and whispered, like a voice that one hears in a dream, so low it was.
'No! No! Do not go without. Here you are safe!'
I turned to her, and looking in her eyes said, 'But you? It is for you that I fear!'
Whereat she laughed, a laugh low and unreal, and said, 'Fear for me! Why fear for me? None safer in all the world from them than I am,' and as I wondered at the meaning of her words, a puff of wind made the flame leap up, and I see the red scar on her forehead. Then, alas! I knew. Did I not, I would soon have learned, for the wheeling figures of mist and snow came closer, but keeping ever without the Holy circle. Then they began to materialize till, if God have not taken away my reason, for I saw it through my eyes. There were before me in actual flesh the same three women that Jonathan saw in the room, when they would have kissed his throat. I knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous lips. They smiled ever at poor dear Madam Mina. And as their laugh came through the silence of the night, they twined their arms and pointed to her, and said in those so sweet tingling tones that Jonathan said were of the intolerable sweetness of the water glasses, 'Come, sister. Come to us. Come!'
In fear I turned to my poor Madam Mina, and my heart with gladness leapt like flame. For oh! the terror in her sweet eyes, the repulsion, the horror, told a story to my heart that was all of hope. God be thanked she was not, yet of them. I seized some of the firewood which was by me, and holding out some of the Wafer, advanced on them towards the fire. They drew back before me, and laughed their low horrid laugh. I fed the fire, and feared them not. For I knew that we were safe within the ring, which she could not leave no more than they could enter. The horses had ceased to moan, and lay still on the ground. The snow fell on them softly, and they grew whiter. I knew that there was for the poor beasts no more of terror.
And so we remained till the red of the dawn began to fall through the snow gloom. I was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror. But when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again. At the first coming of the dawn the horrid figures melted in the whirling mist and snow. The wreaths of transparent gloom moved away towards the castle, and were lost.
Instinctively, with the dawn coming, I turned to Madam Mina, intending to hypnotize her. But she lay in a deep and sudden sleep, from which I could not wake her. I tried to hypnotize through her sleep, but she made no response, none at all, and the day broke. I fear yet to stir. I have made my fire and have seen the horses, they are all dead. Today I have much to do here, and I keep waiting till the sun is up high. For there may be places where I must go, where that sunlight, though snow and mist obscure it, will be to me a safety.
I will strengthen me with breakfast, and then I will do my terrible work. Madam Mina still sleeps, and God be thanked! She is calm in her sleep... 
JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL
4 November, evening.-The accident to the launch has been a terrible thing for us. Only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago, and by now my dear Mina would have been free. I fear to think of her, off on the wolds near that horrid place. We have got horses, and we follow on the track. I note this whilst Godalming is getting ready. We have our arms. The Szgany must look out if they mean to fight. Oh, if only Morris and Seward were with us. We must only hope! If I write no more Goodby Mina! God bless and keep you.
DR. SEWARD'S DIARY
5 November.-With the dawn we saw the body of Szgany before us dashing away from the river with their leiter wagon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset. The snow is falling lightly and there is a strange excitement in the air. It may be our own feelings, but the depression is strange. Far off I hear the howling of wolves. The snow brings them down from the mountains, and there are dangers to all of us, and from all sides. The horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off. We ride to death of some one. God alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be... 
DR. VAN HELSING'S MEMORANDUM
5 November, afternoon.-I am at least sane. Thank God for that mercy at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. When I left Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy circle, I took my way to the castle. The blacksmith hammer which I took in the carriage from Veresti was useful, though the doors were all open I broke them off the rusty hinges, lest some ill intent or ill chance should close them, so that being entered I might not get out. Jonathan's bitter experience served me here. By memory of his diary I found my way to the old chapel, for I knew that here my work lay. The air was oppressive. It seemed as if there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made me dizzy. Either there was a roaring in my ears or I heard afar off the howl of wolves. Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina, and I was in terrible plight. The dilemma had me between his horns.
Her, I had not dare to take into this place, but left safe from the Vampire in that Holy circle. And yet even there would be the wolf! I resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to the wolves we must submit, if it were God's will. At any rate it was only death and freedom beyond. So did I choose for her. Had it but been for myself the choice had been easy, the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than the grave of the Vampire! So I make my choice to go on with my work.
I knew that there were at least three graves to find, graves that are inhabit. So I search, and search, and I find one of them. She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in the old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Undead have hypnotize him. And he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss, and the man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold. One more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Undead!... 
There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries, though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the Count have had. Yes, I was moved. I, Van Helsing, with all my purpose and with my motive for hate. I was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties and to clog my very soul. It may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me. Certain it was that I was lapsing into sleep, the open eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.
Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should begin to be enthrall. But I go on searching until, presently, I find in a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like Jonathan I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the mist. She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion. But God be thanked, that soul wail of my dear Madam Mina had not died out of my ears. And, before the spell could be wrought further upon me, I had nerved myself to my wild work. By this time I had searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell. And as there had been only three of these Undead phantoms around us in the night, I took it that there were no more of active Undead existent. There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest. Huge it was, and nobly proportioned. On it was but one word.
DRACULA
This then was the Undead home of the King Vampire, to whom so many more were due. Its emptiness spoke eloquent to make certain what I knew. Before I began to restore these women to their dead selves through my awful work, I laid in Dracula's tomb some of the Wafer, and so banished him from it, Undead, for ever.
Then began my terrible task, and I dreaded it. Had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror. For it was terrible with the sweet Miss Lucy, what would it not be with these strange ones who had survived through centuries, and who had been strengthened by the passing of the years. Who would, if they could, have fought for their foul lives... 
Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher work. Had I not been nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living over whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone on. I tremble and tremble even yet, though till all was over, God be thanked, my nerve did stand. Had I not seen the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realization that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery. I could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake drove home, the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam. I should have fled in terror and left my work undone. But it is over! And the poor souls, I can pity them now and weep, as I think of them placid each in her full sleep of death for a short moment ere fading. For, friend John, hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries ago had at last assert himself and say at once and loud, 'I am here!'
Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Undead.
When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept, she woke from her sleep and, seeing me, cried out in pain that I had endured too much.
'Come!' she said, 'come away from this awful place! Let us go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us.' She was looking thin and pale and weak. But her eyes were pure and glowed with fervour. I was glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep.
And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet our friends, and him, whom Madam Mina tell me that she know are coming to meet us.
MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL
6 November.-It was late in the afternoon when the Professor and I took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming. We did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take heavy rugs and wraps with us. We dared not face the possibility of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow. We had to take some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even the sign of habitation. When we had gone about a mile, I was tired with the heavy walking and sat down to rest. Then we looked back and saw where the clear line of Dracula's castle cut the sky. For we were so deep under the hill whereon it was set that the angle of perspective of the Carpathian mountains was far below it. We saw it in all its grandeur, perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice, and with seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the adjacent mountain on any side. There was something wild and uncanny about the place. We could hear the distant howling of wolves. They were far off, but the sound, even though coming muffled through the deadening snowfall, was full of terror. I knew from the way Dr. Van Helsing was searching about that he was trying to seek some strategic point, where we would be less exposed in case of attack. The rough roadway still led downwards. We could trace it through the drifted snow.
In a little while the Professor signalled to me, so I got up and joined him. He had found a wonderful spot, a sort of natural hollow in a rock, with an entrance like a doorway between two boulders. He took me by the hand and drew me in.
'See!' he said, 'here you will be in shelter. And if the wolves do come I can meet them one by one.'
He brought in our furs, and made a snug nest for me, and got out some provisions and forced them upon me. But I could not eat, to even try to do so was repulsive to me, and much as I would have liked to please him, I could not bring myself to the attempt. He looked very sad, but did not reproach me. Taking his field glasses from the case, he stood on the top of the rock, and began to search the horizon.
Suddenly he called out, 'Look! Madam Mina, look! Look!'
I sprang up and stood beside him on the rock. He handed me his glasses and pointed. The snow was now falling more heavily, and swirled about fiercely, for a high wind was beginning to blow. However, there were times when there were pauses between the snow flurries and I could see a long way round. From the height where we were it was possible to see a great distance. And far off, beyond the white waste of snow, I could see the river lying like a black ribbon in kinks and curls as it wound its way. Straight in front of us and not far off, in fact so near that I wondered we had not noticed before, came a group of mounted men hurrying along. In the midst of them was a cart, a long leiter wagon which swept from side to side, like a dog's tail wagging, with each stern inequality of the road. Outlined against the snow as they were, I could see from the men's clothes that they were peasants or gypsies of some kind.
On the cart was a great square chest. My heart leaped as I saw it, for I felt that the end was coming. The evening was now drawing close, and well I knew that at sunset the Thing, which was till then imprisoned there, would take new freedom and could in any of many forms elude pursuit. In fear I turned to the Professor. To my consternation, however, he was not there. An instant later, I saw him below me. Round the rock he had drawn a circle, such as we had found shelter in last night.
When he had completed it he stood beside me again saying, 'At least you shall be safe here from him!' He took the glasses from me, and at the next lull of the snow swept the whole space below us. 'See,' he said, 'they come quickly. They are flogging the horses, and galloping as hard as they can.'
He paused and went on in a hollow voice, 'They are racing for the sunset. We may be too late. God's will be done!' Down came another blinding rush of driving snow, and the whole landscape was blotted out. It soon passed, however, and once more his glasses were fixed on the plain.
Then came a sudden cry, 'Look! Look! Look! See, two horsemen follow fast, coming up from the south. It must be Quincey and John. Take the glass. Look before the snow blots it all out!' I took it and looked. The two men might be Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris. I knew at all events that neither of them was Jonathan. At the same time I knew that Jonathan was not far off. Looking around I saw on the north side of the coming party two other men, riding at breakneck speed. One of them I knew was Jonathan, and the other I took, of course, to be Lord Godalming. They too, were pursuing the party with the cart. When I told the Professor he shouted in glee like a schoolboy, and after looking intently till a snow fall made sight impossible, he laid his Winchester rifle ready for use against the boulder at the opening of our shelter.
'They are all converging,' he said. 'When the time comes we shall have gypsies on all sides.' I got out my revolver ready to hand, for whilst we were speaking the howling of wolves came louder and closer. When the snow storm abated a moment we looked again. It was strange to see the snow falling in such heavy flakes close to us, and beyond, the sun shining more and more brightly as it sank down towards the far mountain tops. Sweeping the glass all around us I could see here and there dots moving singly and in twos and threes and larger numbers. The wolves were gathering for their prey.
Every instant seemed an age whilst we waited. The wind came now in fierce bursts, and the snow was driven with fury as it swept upon us in circling eddies. At times we could not see an arm's length before us. But at others, as the hollow sounding wind swept by us, it seemed to clear the air space around us so that we could see afar off. We had of late been so accustomed to watch for sunrise and sunset, that we knew with fair accuracy when it would be. And we knew that before long the sun would set. It was hard to believe that by our watches it was less than an hour that we waited in that rocky shelter before the various bodies began to converge close upon us. The wind came now with fiercer and more bitter sweeps, and more steadily from the north. It seemingly had driven the snow clouds from us, for with only occasional bursts, the snow fell. We could distinguish clearly the individuals of each party, the pursued and the pursuers. Strangely enough those pursued did not seem to realize, or at least to care, that they were pursued. They seemed, however, to hasten with redoubled speed as the sun dropped lower and lower on the mountain tops.
Closer and closer they drew. The Professor and I crouched down behind our rock, and held our weapons ready. I could see that he was determined that they should not pass. One and all were quite unaware of our presence.
All at once two voices shouted out to 'Halt!' One was my Jonathan's, raised in a high key of passion. The other Mr. Morris' strong resolute tone of quiet command. The gypsies may not have known the language, but there was no mistaking the tone, in whatever tongue the words were spoken. Instinctively they reined in, and at the instant Lord Godalming and Jonathan dashed up at one side and Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris on the other. The leader of the gypsies, a splendid looking fellow who sat his horse like a centaur, waved them back, and in a fierce voice gave to his companions some word to proceed. They lashed the horses which sprang forward. But the four men raised their Winchester rifles, and in an unmistakable way commanded them to stop. At the same moment Dr. Van Helsing and I rose behind the rock and pointed our weapons at them. Seeing that they were surrounded the men tightened their reins and drew up. The leader turned to them and gave a word at which every man of the gypsy party drew what weapon he carried, knife or pistol, and held himself in readiness to attack. Issue was joined in an instant.
The leader, with a quick movement of his rein, threw his horse out in front, and pointed first to the sun, now close down on the hill tops, and then to the castle, said something which I did not understand. For answer, all four men of our party threw themselves from their horses and dashed towards the cart. I should have felt terrible fear at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardor of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them. I felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something. Seeing the quick movement of our parties, the leader of the gypsies gave a command. His men instantly formed round the cart in a sort of undisciplined endeavour, each one shouldering and pushing the other in his eagerness to carry out the order.
In the midst of this I could see that Jonathan on one side of the ring of men, and Quincey on the other, were forcing a way to the cart. It was evident that they were bent on finishing their task before the sun should set. Nothing seemed to stop or even to hinder them. Neither the levelled weapons nor the flashing knives of the gypsies in front, nor the howling of the wolves behind, appeared to even attract their attention. Jonathan's impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him. Instinctively they cowered aside and let him pass. In an instant he had jumped upon the cart, and with a strength which seemed incredible, raised the great box, and flung it over the wheel to the ground. In the meantime, Mr. Morris had had to use force to pass through his side of the ring of Szgany. All the time I had been breathlessly watching Jonathan I had, with the tail of my eye, seen him pressing desperately forward, and had seen the knives of the gypsies flash as he won a way through them, and they cut at him. He had parried with his great bowie knife, and at first I thought that he too had come through in safety. But as he sprang beside Jonathan, who had by now jumped from the cart, I could see that with his left hand he was clutching at his side, and that the blood was spurting through his fingers. He did not delay notwithstanding this, for as Jonathan, with desperate energy, attacked one end of the chest, attempting to prize off the lid with his great Kukri knife, he attacked the other frantically with his bowie. Under the efforts of both men the lid began to yield. The nails drew with a screeching sound, and the top of the box was thrown back.
By this time the gypsies, seeing themselves covered by the Winchesters, and at the mercy of Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward, had given in and made no further resistance. The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well.
As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.
But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart.
It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.
I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.
The Castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of the setting sun.
The gypsies, taking us as in some way the cause of the extraordinary disappearance of the dead man, turned, without a word, and rode away as if for their lives. Those who were unmounted jumped upon the leiter wagon and shouted to the horsemen not to desert them. The wolves, which had withdrawn to a safe distance, followed in their wake, leaving us alone.
Mr. Morris, who had sunk to the ground, leaned on his elbow, holding his hand pressed to his side. The blood still gushed through his fingers. I flew to him, for the Holy circle did not now keep me back, so did the two doctors. Jonathan knelt behind him and the wounded man laid back his head on his shoulder. With a sigh he took, with a feeble effort, my hand in that of his own which was unstained.
He must have seen the anguish of my heart in my face, for he smiled at me and said, 'I am only too happy to have been of service! Oh, God!' he cried suddenly, struggling to a sitting posture and pointing to me. 'It was worth for this to die! Look! Look!'
The sun was now right down upon the mountain top, and the red gleams fell upon my face, so that it was bathed in rosy light. With one impulse the men sank on their knees and a deep and earnest 'Amen' broke from all as their eyes followed the pointing of his finger.
The dying man spoke, 'Now God be thanked that all has not been in vain! See! The snow is not more stainless than her forehead! The curse has passed away!'
And, to our bitter grief, with a smile and in silence, he died, a gallant gentleman.
NOTE
Seven years ago we all went through the flames. And the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. It is an added joy to Mina and to me that our boy's birthday is the same day as that on which Quincey Morris died. His mother holds, I know, the secret belief that some of our brave friend's spirit has passed into him. His bundle of names links all our little band of men together. But we call him Quincey.
In the summer of this year we made a journey to Transylvania, and went over the old ground which was, and is, to us so full of vivid and terrible memories. It was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths. Every trace of all that had been was blotted out. The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.
When we got home we were talking of the old time, which we could all look back on without despair, for Godalming and Seward are both happily married. I took the papers from the safe where they had been ever since our return so long ago. We were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document. Nothing but a mass of typewriting, except the later notebooks of Mina and Seward and myself, and Van Helsing's memorandum. We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story. Van Helsing summed it all up as he said, with our boy on his knee.
'We want no proofs. We ask none to believe us! This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care. Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.'
JONATHAN HARKER

HUMBUG
A STUDY IN EDUCATION
BY E. M. DELAFIELD
I
Good women know by instinct that the younger generation, more especially when nearly related to themselves, should be equipped to encounter life by the careful and systematic misrepresentation of the more vital aspects of life.
The mother of Lily and Yvonne Stellenthorpe was a good woman, and had all a good woman's capacity for the falsification of moral values. Her husband was so constituted that it would not be unjust to describe him in identical terms.
Lily was so pretty that she did not begin to disappoint her parents seriously until she was seven years old, but Yvonne, who was not pretty and who displayed many less negative disadvantages as well, was a source of dismay to them from her very infancy, when she nearly died of water on the brain.
"Is little Vonnie quite like other children, I sometimes wonder?" fearfully whispered Eleanor Stellenthorpe to her husband, when Yvonne was five years old. And Philip Stellenthorpe, with that entire refusal to acknowledge even the possibility of any painful contingency so wholly characteristic of the sentimental, replied, also in a whisper:
"Hush, my dearest! I can't bear to hear you say a thing like that."
Accordingly nothing of the sort was ever said again, although it became perfectly obvious, in the course of another year or two, that Vonnie was "not quite like other children"-was, in fact, very, very slightly deficient mentally.
She was a quiet little girl, who could be intensely obstinate, with a hesitation in her always unready speech that hardly amounted to an impediment. She was tall and healthy looking, so that one scarcely realized her head to be too large, as it certainly was, for her body.
Little Lily loved Yvonne, her senior by two years, with the fierce, protective passion of a mother for a helpless child. It was a love that caused her the most acute suffering of which a sensitive and highly-strung child is capable, and the manifestations of which were sorrowfully described by her parents, in all good faith, as Lily's naughtiness, and tendency to impertinent interference.
It was naughty to rage and cry when Vonnie was punished for being obstinate or slow, it was impertinent to stamp and shout: "It's not fair! It's not fair!" when Vonnie was left at home, and Father and Mother were kind enough to take Lily out for a treat, such as a neighbouring garden-party, or a wedding, and it was naughtiest of all, when Vonnie was laughed at or admonished for not understanding things quickly, to interfere and cry out: "She can't help it-she is trying-it isn't fair to scold her!"
Lily knew that all these things were naughty, because she had always been told so, but the spirit of frenzy that possessed her always drove her on, the consciousness of naughtiness notwithstanding. Therefore at a very early age there was implanted in her the conviction that she had been sent into the world with a natural proclivity towards wrong-doing.
Both children knew that Lily was their parents' favourite. It would have been impossible not to know it. She might be sorrowfully reproached for her "disloyalty"-a favourite accusation-to the cardinal article of belief that Father and Mother always knew best, but she was never punished. Her prettiness and her precocious cleverness were exploited and praised to her face. She was sent for to the drawing-room whenever there were visitors, and taken out in the carriage to pay calls, and very often given small, unexpected presents and surprises by her mother, in which Vonnie's only share was to be told that "next time" it would be her turn.
It never was her turn, and Lily and Vonnie both knew that the "next time" of the promises would never come.
Paradoxically, it was far harder upon Lily than upon Vonnie. She had the greater capacity for suffering of the two, and a strong abstract sense of justice besides, that rendered her absolutely incapable of accepting uncritically an unfair situation. In addition, the ardour of her love for Vonnie was proportionate to the intensity of all her emotions.
Theoretically, one loved Father and Mother best of everybody in the world. In fact, it would have been a "disloyalty" of the very naughtiest kind to contemplate any other possibility. It was proper to love one's sister third in order, and Lily and Vonnie were both persuaded that to these regulations they must and did conform. Lily, at seven years old, naturally did not seek logically to reconcile this doctrine with the strange accesses of rage and rebellion against Father and Mother that seized her so frequently upon Vonnie's behalf.
Vonnie resented nothing, for herself. She was philosophical, humble-minded, and above all desirous of peace. The nursery storms raised by Lily in her defence were her chief source of grievance. She did not mind being left out of treats, very much. She minded the noise of Lily's angry screams, and Mother's argumentative reproaches, and the final grieved intervention of Father, very much more.
Fortunately, perhaps, for her peace, Vonnie very often failed to realize that it was her own inoffensive self that was the cause of these terrible domestic cataclysms.
She was absent-minded, and never much interested in what people were saying, so that very often the beginning of disturbance went quite unheard by her. Sometimes she only woke up to what was happening when Lily had begun to scream, as she always did sooner or later when her furious gusts of temper outran her powers of verbal expression.
Then Vonnie would think wearily: "Another scene!" which was what she always called a disturbance of any kind, and put her hands to her head, through which each one of Lily's shrieks sent a dull pain jarring. It made her feel rather sick in a curious sort of way, to see Lily shaking all over, the tears streaming down her scarlet cheeks, and Mother, as pale as Lily was crimson, with miserable eyes and a face that almost implored her to be good.
"My pet, how can you be so naughty? Can't you trust Mother to know what's best for both her babies?"
"It's not fair, it's not fair!" shrieked Lily as she had been shrieking for the last five minutes.
"Stop saying that, Lily. It's not true, it's very naughty. Don't you know that Mother would never do anything that wasn't fair?"
"Let-Vonnie-come-too," Lily sobbed more quietly.
"My little darling, leave Vonnie to me. You must learn not to interfere with Vonnie. It will be her turn next time. Besides, Vonnie doesn't want to go, do you, Vonnie my pet?"
"No, Mother," said Vonnie, watching her mother's face and only desirous of saying what would most quickly conduce to peace.
"You see, Lily! As though Mother didn't know what was best for her little Vonnie."
"She always says she doesn't want to go! It's not fair!..."
Lily had begun again, more frantically than ever. Father had to be sent for.
Father took up a high line at once. "My little Lily!" said he gravely. He firmly placed his little Lily upon his knee, a post of honour reserved exclusively for moments of serious appeal and which, even at the height of her frenzy, Lily would never have thought it possible to decline.
"My little Lily! Is this the way you show your gratitude, when an outing is planned for you? Don't you know that you are grieving us very much, when we are only thinking of your welfare and pleasure, and wanting to make you happy? God will be very angry with you, if you can't show a happy, grateful spirit."
Father and Mother were never angry-they were only grieved. It was God that was always indignant and resentful on their behalf.
Lily was afraid of God, and secretly thought that He, who knew everything and could do everything, always punished her naughtiness by sending the thing that she dreaded most in all the world-one of Vonnie's fearful earaches.
The assurance that God was angry again made her choke down some of her defiant sobs and mutterings.
"We might all be so happy, if you were a good little girl, and it ought to be so easy with parents who love you dearly. Many poor little children have no father and mother or nice, cheerful, happy home. Now, my pet, are you sorry?"
"Yes," said Lily tremulously, thinking of God with the earache bolt still, as it were, suspended.
"Then I think you had better ask God to forgive you. Go and kiss your dear mother, and then run and get dressed. Don't keep the carriage waiting."
God, and Philip Stellenthorpe's magnanimity, had defeated Lily.
She crept away, dragging her feet.
Her head ached and her eyes smarted and, dressed up in her white silk frock and best hat, precociously sensitive to the contrast, she had to leave Vonnie in everyday clothes and nursery pinafore, a forlorn figure at the window, and take her seat between her parents in the open carriage.
As they drove, she heard them exchange comments over her head, as they very often did, in slightly lowered tones.
"Her poor little eyes are quite swollen-"
"Poor little thing!"
They always forgave her quickly, like that, however frightful her offence.
Would that God had been equally unresentful! All through the unappreciated afternoon, Lily was secretly addressing earnest, spasmodic appeals to that unappeasable Avenger.
"Don't make Vonnie have earache-not this time!... I did stop screaming at the end-I am sorry-I never, never mean to be naughty again. Oh, don't make Vonnie have earache-give me any other punishment- If only Vonnie doesn't have earache this time, I promise I'll never be naughty again as long as I live-"
"Have you enjoyed yourself, my pet?"
"Yes, Mother."
It would have been naughty not to enjoy oneself when Father and Mother had given one a treat, and quite unthinkable actually to say that one hadn't. As well part at once with the last feeble shred of hope that God would withhold the earache punishment.
Those earaches to which Vonnie was periodically a victim were like the shadow of some monstrous nightmare, for ever hanging over Lily's head. The perpetual foreboding of them, which was never altogether absent from her, darkened her childish days, but when the nightmare was actually upon her, the foreboding realized, Lily knew the meaning of anguish.
Her tiny impotence would hurl itself against the cruel facts of Vonnie's pain, Vonnie's speechless and stoical acceptance of it, worst of all, the philosophic unconcern of the surrounding grown-up people. Because Vonnie never cried, never complained, would say "Nothing is the matter" to all their enquiries, they would not see.
They were not really sufficiently interested to see.
When Lily had toothache-really a very little toothache-and tentatively said so, her mother petted her additionally, asking her continually if the tooth was hurting less, and giving her a story-book in the drawing-room at lesson time. She came into the night nursery with a carefully shaded light in her hand, in the middle of the night, and woke Lily up by putting a little plate with some grapes on it at her bedside. All of which was very pleasant, and Lily was quite sorry when next day it proved impossible, with any vestige of truth, to assert that the tooth was still aching.
But if anything hurt Vonnie, she would never say so. Lily knew this, but nobody else seemed to realize it. In the same way, Lily, by some mysterious instinct that she could not have analyzed, always knew by some quite indescribable look around Vonnie's eyes, when anything was the matter with her. She even knew, and the knowledge made her so miserable that she felt as though she could not bear it, that Vonnie sometimes tried to shut her away, too, and would rather that she had not known so much and so unerringly.
Vonnie's reticence was appalling. She would have suffered tortures, rather than risk a possible scene by complaining. She could only just bear Lily's piercing watchfulness so long as it found no vent in words.
On the earache days, and, worst of all, nights, both were at a pitch of strain that amounted to acute nervous tension and each reacted upon the other.
An east wind gave Vonnie earache. So did sitting in a draught, or staying out of doors late when it was damp, or sometimes just catching an ordinary cold in the head. Lily knew all this. A familiar sensation to her was that of a sudden sinking, a physical sickness that only lasted for a few seconds, when some grown-up authority observed carelessly in her hearing:
"Why, the wind has gone right round to the east to-day."
Once Lily had put her apprehension into words and said, breathless from misery:
"Then Vonnie will get earache!"
"What!
'When the wind is in the east
It's neither good for man nor beast!'"
her father made playful quotation.
But when Lily, frightened and resentful that she was not being taken seriously, repeated angrily: "But she will get earache-she always does, if there's an east wind," her father spoke gravely.
"Come, come, my pet. I don't like to hear you say things like that. That's not being a very good little girl, you know. It's only gloomy, ungrateful little people who run to meet trouble halfway. Little Vonnie doesn't mean to get earache. Do you, Vonnie?"
"Yes, Father-I mean no," said Vonnie vaguely.
She went out and she did get earache. Lily had always known that she would.
Yet Lily, from that day added to her store of small, perverted convictions, the unescapable conclusion that it was very naughty to foresee calamity, and still naughtier to voice that foresight.
She still sometimes said to the nurse, or to the daily governess: "Vonnie's got a cold already. She'll have earache if she goes out to-day." The words seemed forced from her in a frail hope that would not be denied, that the catastrophe might be averted.
But the nurse simply said: "Will you learn to mind your own business, Miss Lily? I should hope I know what was good for Miss Vonnie by this time, without any interference from you."
And the governess said bracingly: "Oh, I don't think Vonnie's got much of a cold, have you, dear?"
To which Vonnie, of course, said No, just as she would have said there was nothing the matter, if earache had actually been upon her.
"There, you see, Lily! You really must give up always trying to speak for Vonnie instead of letting her speak for herself. It's not good for her, and it's not good for you. What will you do when you're both grown up?" said Miss Cleeve humorously, "if you're at a ball, let us say, and some gentleman asks Vonnie to dance, and then you, Lily, answer instead of her and say 'Oh no, thank you very much, she's tired.' Wouldn't that make you both look very silly, don't you think?"
Lily was no match for Miss Cleeve's ridicule. She could think of no confutation of this reductio ad absurdum of the situation, even in her own mind. She merely hated Miss Cleeve vehemently, and put her for ever into the large class of people who "didn't understand."
These were indeed legion, where was concerned the most vital preoccupation of Lily's whole being-Vonnie's welfare.
When an earache pain had actually begun, which it did almost always in the evening, not the day-time-and Lily knew by the look on Vonnie's face that it was still quite endurable, there was a faint hope that if she went to bed quickly and pulled the blankets over her head, she might go to sleep before it became really bad.
But Vonnie would not, and Lily dared not, utter a word of this to the authorities, and consequently the half-hour spent in the drawing-room with Father and Mother before bedtime underwent no curtailment, on such occasions.
They played Happy Families, or Beggar-my-Neighbour, or listened to Father reading aloud, just as usual.
And all the time Lily, in an agony, was inwardly adjuring the Being to whom she believed all her misery to be directly attributable.
"Let them send us to bed soon-don't let her be bad to-night-oh, do make them send us to bed to-night-now at once. Let her go to sleep before it gets bad-I'll be so good if only You'll make them send us to bed at once before it gets bad-"
On one such evening, when Philip Stellenthorpe saw Lily's eyes fixed upon him, and her lips moving, as he thought, in earnest attention to his reading, he paused as he was about to close the book.
"What about an extra quarter of an hour, just for once?" he enquired benevolently. "It's almost too exciting to leave off here, don't you think, little Lily?"
He never really quite believed that poor little Vonnie, who never spoke, could follow the thread of any story, although he would have been much shocked if anybody had ever put such a thought into words.
And Lily, unforgettably, appallingly conscious of her own departure from sacred tradition, gratitude and everything else to be accounted for righteousness, said in a voice that sounded loud and strained: "Please, I'd rather we went to bed now."
There was a dreadful silence.
The kind smile abruptly vanished from Philip's face altogether, and he shut up the book as though he could never bear to open it again, and put it away from him almost with horror.
Eleanor Stellenthorpe looked stricken.
"Run along, my pets," she said in the accustomed formula, but in an inward voice that suggested restrained suffering.
She received Vonnie's kiss automatically, as she always did, but when Lily put her arms round her mother's neck, fearful of omitting the customary hug that she knew was always expected of her, Eleanor released herself gently. Slowly bowing her head, she at the same time raised her eyes and fixed them sorrowfully upon Lily's face, producing an extraordinarily poignant effect of silent reproach.
Philip kissed Lily once upon the forehead, instead of as usual, two or three times all over her face and said deeply:
"My poor little child! Good-night."
Lily went upstairs in tears, indescribably guilty.
She had been naughty again, and oh! how like God it was, to have arranged things like that. If Vonnie didn't get to bed and to sleep before the earache gained its hold, then they must both suffer through one of those black nights of misery that Lily so dreaded. But when one was asked whether one preferred to go straight to bed, or to sit up while Father was kind enough to read aloud, it was naughty and ungrateful to choose bed. So that God, having thus trapped one into naughtiness, was there all ready with His favourite punishment-the thing that He knew she dreaded most of all the punishments in the world-Vonnie's earache.
That night, the hand of God, as Lily saw it, was even heavier than usual. Vonnie's earache was agonizing.
Lily knew this, in the darkness of the night nursery, from the tiny, stifled moans that came from Vonnie's bed. Not a sound ever escaped her until the pain was almost unbearable, and even then Lily knew that she would never utter a spoken word, because the children were forbidden to speak after the light was put out.
Lily herself lay stiff and rigid in her bed, her hands clenched, her body quivering and sweating, with every faculty strained to its utmost in the intensity of her tortured listening. Each time that Vonnie's almost inaudible moan sounded, a pang went through Lily's whole frame. Every now and then she would discover that she was holding her breath, and find herself constrained to exhale it in a long, quivering, noiseless sob.
From time to time when the little moaning sound had not at once recurred after the brief interval of silence by which it was usually succeeded, a sick hope invaded Lily that Vonnie might after all be dropping off to sleep. But, redoubling the intensity of her own listening, she could hear sobbing, irregular breathing from Vonnie that shook her with a fresh despair.
"Vonnie!" she whispered.
No answer.
"Oh, Vonnie, is it very bad?"
"No," came the faintest of whispers in reply.
It was not true, Lily knew perfectly well, and she knew also that very likely next day Vonnie would deliberately go and confess to their mother that she had been disobedient and talked, after the light had been put out in the night nursery.
She would say nothing about her earache, nothing to excuse herself, nothing to incriminate Lily, and would accept rebuke or punishment quite speechlessly. Lily knew that Vonnie always craved any form of penalty that would ease her conscience of the imaginary burdens with which she was eternally loading it. But no one else understood this.
Presently a shaft of moonlight crept through the curtained window, and Lily sat up in bed. Then she saw, with a shock that made her feel sick, that Vonnie was sitting bolt upright, not lying down at all. Her small pillow was put up on end behind her and inadequately supported her shoulders, and both hands clasped her temples.
As a rule, Vonnie lay down on the side that wasn't hurting her, and kept both hands over her bad ear. Lily had never seen her sitting up like this before and it seemed to deny any hope of her ever being able to go to sleep at all.
"Oh, let me fetch Nurse," sobbed Lily, shaking from head to foot.
Vonnie shook her head very slightly in obstinate negative, and the movement forced a gasping sound of pain from her.
It was always the same thing.
Vonnie would not tell about her earache when it began because she was afraid of a fuss, and she would not tell about it afterwards for fear of being scolded because she had not "said" sooner. If Lily told instead of her, then it was naughty and interfering, and very likely disbelieved besides, in the face of Vonnie's stoical denials. There was no hope anywhere, and the awful night would never, never end.
Lily sat up too, because it was impossible to lie down while Vonnie crouched there, racked with pain; and tense, angry appeals that she thought of as prayers, raced through her mind.
"Make her go to sleep-it's nothing to You to send her off to sleep-You can't let her go on like this all night.... It's cruel to punish Vonnie too, as well as me.... Why can't You send the earache to me, when it's me You want to punish?"
But God, who knew everything, would never be taken in by an argument of that sort, however plausible it might have been to the ears of human justice. Lily knew very well that God perfectly understood how, in some strange, naughty way that invariably made the authorities angry, Vonnie's sufferings hurt Lily far more acutely than her own could ever have done. And, of course, He took advantage of His knowledge whenever she had to be punished. Lily had even, sometimes, reflected with a forlorn kind of abstract justice, that this was fair enough. If He didn't so ingeniously choose the very way that hurt most, it wouldn't be a real punishment.
But, within sight and sound of Vonnie's torture to-night, she had no consideration for abstract justice.
She did what she had very seldom done before, and went to fetch the nurse.
Nurse was in bed and, to Lily's astonishment, had not yet gone to sleep.
"Did Miss Vonnie ask you to come for me?" she demanded suspiciously.
Lily had anticipated the question, which was always the preliminary, in the nursery, to an emphatic recommendation to mind her own business and leave Miss Vonnie to mind hers.
"Yes, she did," said Lily, feeling herself choke. God could hardly do much more than He had done already, even to a liar, and everything but present relief had become worthless of consideration.
"Now mind, if you've got me out of bed for nothing-" said Nurse threateningly. But she spoke in quite a kind voice, and put on her dressing-gown, and lit a candle. "Good gracious, child, why are you so white?" she asked Lily and took her hand protectingly and held it all the way to the night nursery.
Vonnie's moans were much louder now, and Lily, looking up anxiously at Nurse, felt that she must, for once, accept Vonnie's illness at its own valuation, and not at the slighting one that Vonnie herself would fain give to it.
"Now then, Miss Vonnie dear, what's all this?"
Nurse took Vonnie's hands down from her head. The odd look round Vonnie's eyes that had been so nearly imperceptible early in the evening had deepened in a very strange way, and after one glance at her small, leaden-coloured face, Nurse's manner changed altogether.
She went to the little medicine-cupboard high up on the wall, and lit the spirit-lamp, and heated water and put into it some sweet-smelling oil out of a green bottle. She put Vonnie's dressing-gown round her and a large shawl over that, and sat down in a low chair and took Vonnie on to her lap. Then she dipped some cotton-wool into the warm oil and put it into each ear, and all the time she was coaxing and pitying Vonnie with kind, soothing words.
Lily never forgot the exquisite ecstasy of relief with which she watched and heard it all from her own bed in the corner. The violent reaction from her state of nervous anguish was so great that she began to cry and sob quite quietly, scarcely knowing that she was doing so.
Vonnie's moaning ceased almost at once, and her whole attitude relaxed, and presently Nurse got up and put her gently down in the low chair, with a pillow behind her.
"I shall be back directly," she whispered reassuringly to Lily, opening the door very softly.
She came back with their mother.
"She's dropped off now. I expect she'll sleep, poor little thing-she's worn out with the pain," said Nurse as they looked down at unconscious Vonnie.
"Poor child! Well, Nurse, if you'll move in here for to-night, I'll take Miss Lily into my room."
"Going to sleep with Mother" was a treat. Lily knew very well that if she had been the one to be ill, she would have been moved into her mother's room long since.
But nothing mattered, now that Vonnie was sleeping peacefully, and being taken care of by a kind, omnipotent grown-up person.
When Lily was lying snugly between the soft, scented sheets in her mother's enormous bed, with the pale pink quilt spread across it, her mother came and knelt beside her and put her arms round her.
"Go to sleep quickly, my pet. I shall be in bed directly. I've only got to take off my dressing-gown. Settle down comfily, now."
A delicious, drowsy feeling invaded Lily, and she turned over obediently on her side.
"Why, my poor chicken, you've been crying! There's nothing for you to cry about. Did you have a bad dream?"
"Vonnie had earache," murmured Lily, half asleep, and heard without surprise her mother's amused, uncomprehending laugh and answer:
"Why, you silly little goose, it was poor Vonnie who had earache, not you! There was nothing for you to cry about! You must have been dreaming."
II
Lily never knew whether the night that she had fetched Nurse to come to Vonnie had witnessed the culminating episode in that series of giant nightmares, Vonnie's earaches-or whether it only stood out in her memory from the acute sensation of exquisite relief that it had finally afforded her.
At all events, it was after one of the earache nights that a dreadful thought first came to her.
What a good thing it would be if Vonnie were to die! Lily was horrified at her own wickedness, but dwelt upon this solution with a sort of unwilling fascination.
She knew instinctively that Vonnie would never grow up like other people-would never be able either to take care of herself, or to find people who would take care of her. She would never be very happy, she would always have earache, and be left out of treats, and chidden for being so slow.
Whereas, if Vonnie died, there was an end of earache, of scoldings, of everything that was unkind or unfair. She would go to Heaven, where everybody was perfectly happy for ever, and Lily herself would never mind anything again, if once she knew for certain that Vonnie was happy and taken care of, even though out of sight. It seemed a very simple solution, although God, to say nothing of Father and Mother, would certainly be very angry with her for thinking of such a thing.
Lily, affrighted, put the idea away from her, although it came back again when she once overheard Aunt Clo emphatically remarking that Vonnie would certainly never live to grow up.
Lily did not know of the devastating effect produced by Aunt Clo's unsolicited pronouncement.
"That child won't live to grow up," said Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe defiantly.
"Good heavens, Clo, what a thing to say in front of her own mother!"
Eleanor was half indignant and half tearful.
"Mark my words," said Aunt Clo inexorably.
Her brother Philip looked at her in pained rebuke.
"I don't like to hear you say a thing like that, Clo. It's-it's heartless. Poor little Vonnie!"
"But no! There is nothing heartless about it. You and Eleanor refuse to face facts, my poor Philip. Why, you have only to look at Vonnie to see that she isn't-"
Philip winced so painfully, holding up his hand as though in protest, that she broke off.
"But just compare her with Lily, who is two years younger! Look at the way Lily chatters, and the too, too precocious things she says, and the way she can read and play her little pieces on the piano! Not that I approve of the way you exploit the child, my Eleanor. It's very bad for her, alas! and I can see that she thinks herself tremendously superior to poor little Vonnie, always left out of everything."
"We have always been devoted to both our little children, Clo," said Philip gravely. "It may be rather a temptation to take Lily about with us more than is quite good for her-she is a very pretty little mite, and one likes to hear her chatter, and to make her happy. But we love both our dear little girls equally, as they know very well."
It was perfectly true that the dear little girls had, at least, often been told that this was so, and neither Philip nor his wife ever admitted the possibility that their children might have come to draw other conclusions for themselves.
"Vonnie doesn't really enjoy being taken about. I've made a few little experiments with her, quite often, and they've never been a great success," observed Eleanor.
Her idolatry of her younger child had given her occasional moments of insight and she did not possess to the full her husband's monumental capacity for evading the acknowledgment of painful or unpleasant facts. A wistful desire for self-justification sometimes possessed her, and a complete absence of judgment led her to ask it from the quarter in which she was least likely to receive it.
"Why do you say things like that, Clo dear? Vonnie is very happy and well taken care of in the nursery. You don't think there's any jealousy between them?"
"I can hardly credit that Vonnie likes seeing her younger sister always preferred to herself," said Aunt Clo, shrugging her shoulders. "It would scarcely be human nature."
She was merely making application of a rule that she supposed to be general, to a particular case of which she knew nothing.
Vonnie had never in her life been jealous of Lily's privileges-and Lily herself bitterly resented them.
But Aunt Clo, who so scornfully accused her brother and sister-in-law of refusing to face facts, was quite determined that Vonnie was jealous because she was neglected, and that Lily was complacently ready to rob her sister of her rights as eldest.
Even Aunt Clo, however, never in so many words said that Vonnie's intellect was in any way feeble. She only continued to repeat that the child would most certainly never live to grow up, and since neither Eleanor nor Philip would conceivably have allowed, even in their inmost thoughts, that to die might prove very much easier for Vonnie than to live, Miss Stellenthorpe was not again asked to stay with them.
There was no break, or open quarrel-an open quarrel with Philip Stellenthorpe would have been a sheer impossibility-and the nearest that Philip ever allowed himself to go to an analysis of the disagreeable situation was to say to his wife:
"Poor Clo isn't very sympathetic in her manner, especially on subjects she doesn't quite understand, like the bringing-up of children. Perhaps, dear, we'll wait a little while before having her here again."
Eleanor understood, and the little while became of quite indefinite duration, without anybody's having to put a distressing resolution into painful words.
As it would have been "disloyal" to admit that a near relation could be anything but loved and admired, Lily and Vonnie were only told, as was indeed the truth, that Aunt Clo lived a great deal abroad. Lily, observant and critical, could, however, perfectly well have told the date at which Father and Mother began always to speak of her absent relative as "your poor Aunt Clo"-and the adjective was to her perfectly indicative of some obscure condemnation.
Lily had intuitions about the grown-up people about her, especially her father and mother, of which they appeared to be quite unaware.
She knew that something, or someone, had made them at last realize that Vonnie's slowness and her rather inarticulate way of speaking were not so many manifestations of naughtiness on her part. They would have preferred it, Lily concluded, if these things had been naughtiness. In some incomprehensible way, they resented having to be anxious about Vonnie.
Sometimes, when Mother spoke to Vonnie sharply for the second or third time and Vonnie only looked at her dumbly with that scared, bewildered gaze which meant that she had not been "paying attention," Father and Mother would exchange a look that Lily indefinably resented.
Then Mother would compress her lips, as though exercising great control over herself, and turn away without speaking.
And Father sometimes said, in that grave, gentle voice which both children perfectly well knew to mean profound vexation:
"Run away and play, little Vonnie. You needn't stay in the drawing-room any more. My Lily can come and look at pictures, if she likes. You can trot off and enjoy yourself in the nursery."
Lily never dared to ask whether she might go to the nursery too, although she knew that Vonnie, humiliated and dejected by these kind words which she was supposed to accept unquestioningly at their spoken value, would only sit by herself on the nursery oil-cloth, quite still, slowly tracing patterns with her finger on the floor. If Lily had been with her, they would have played their own private games with the dolls or the marbles, and have been happy together.
But Lily had, instead, to accept her own undesired privileges, and even before she was nine years old, it had grown to be a moral impossibility for her to brave her parents' shocked grief and disappointment by displaying to them that ungracious candour which they would have felt to be ungrateful disloyalty.
This moral cowardice Lily, inevitably, grew to look upon as righteousness.
She was conforming to the standard set before her.
It was not a very wide-embracing standard, but it was a very unyielding one. It gave one to understand, without adducing any reason or explanation for its arbitrary condemnations, that certain things constituted naughtiness. Chief amongst these, of course, was the crime of "disloyalty," which equally comprised any implied distrust-a spoken one was out of the question-of any opinion, decision, act, word, or deed emanating from Father or Mother, and the ungraciousness of admitting to possible disappointment or fatigue when taken anywhere by Father or Mother. Sometimes, on such an occasion, one of them might enquire of Lily: "Are you tired, my pet?" and in some mysterious way it was not telling a story to reply joyfully: "Oh, no, not a bit!" instead of saying, as was probably the case, "Oh, yes, I am!" It was only doing what was expected of one, and anything else would have been "disloyal."
Telling stories, however, was most undoubtedly a form of naughtiness in any other connection. Lily knew, and was often told, that she was an untruthful child. The accusation was entirely deserved, and as no distinction was ever drawn between the casual untruthfulness of any sensitive and imaginative child, and the fundamental insincerity of a mentally dishonest one, Lily remained persuaded that she was of an incurably deceitful disposition.
She was always profoundly ashamed when she had told a lie, which she often did when she wanted to draw attention to herself or to make people believe her of some great importance or merit.
But she was not really exhilarated or proud of herself, although she tried to persuade herself that she was, when her mother or the governess praised her for confessing to some breakage, or piece of accidental mischief.
"That's a brave little girl, to be honest!" and "No one is ever punished who tells the truth at once."
Lily could not feel that she had really been very brave or very honest. That wasn't the sort of thing about which it would ever have occurred to her to tell a lie. She knew perfectly well that she was never punished on account of even careless damage, and there was a sort of lurking self-importance that was far from unpleasant, in making elaborate confession of the misdeed, with an artistic display of all the shame and nervousness that she was supposed to be enduring.
It was, in fact, rather like being praised for not crying at the dentist. Mere vanity was entirely responsible for Lily's courage on such occasions, and a desire to be told how brave she was. It would have mortified her self-esteem acutely, had she shed tears. However, she was always greatly praised for being so courageous, whereas nothing much was ever said about Vonnie's endurance, because Vonnie always remarked stolidly on receipt of the customary sixpence: "But it didn't hurt me much, and I didn't want to cry!"
Lily would have been incapable of so belittling her own achievement, but she was capable of a genuine appreciation, and even generous envy, for Vonnie's conscientiousness-which was more than Eleanor Stellenthorpe was. Such an ungracious reception of the parental praises and sixpences very nearly amounted to disloyalty, in her unexpressed opinion.
Her disapprobation was only felt by her children-it was seldom put into words.
Philip Stellenthorpe and anything in the nature of "scoldings" were unthinkable under the same roof, and Eleanor intensely disliked the system of punishment by which her own childhood had been made miserable.
Neither realized in the slightest degree that the atmosphere of oppressive disapproval and hurt feeling which they contrived wordlessly to diffuse whenever their children fell short of the ideal formed for them, caused infinitely greater suffering to both than the severest punishment would have done.
Occasionally, when Lily fell into one of the tempestuous crying fits sorrowfully alluded to as "temper," and entirely unrecognized as the inevitable concomitant of a highly wrought nervous organization forced into an unnatural condition of life, Eleanor would talk to her long and seriously. She was afraid that her little Lily had a morbid disposition.
"What is morbid?"
Grievance-making. Did Lily realize what an extraordinarily happy little girl she ought to be? Yes-Lily, sobbing and crying in an access of uncontrollable misery, did know how very, very happy she ought to be-truly she did. Everything in the world to make her happy, her mother sadly repeated. Then she told Lily something about her own childish days.
Things had been very different for her. Grandpapa was very strict with all his children, and Grandmamma thought nothing of giving her daughter a good whipping from time to time. How would Lily like to be shut up in her bedroom on bread and water, after receiving a hearty box on the ears, because she could not say her Duty to her Neighbour?
"Never," said Eleanor emphatically, "never have I laid a finger upon either of you."
The stories of Grandpapa's severity were terrible, and so far removed from anything in Lily's experience was his system of blows and deprivations that sometimes, in the depths of her heart, she found herself wondering if all the stories could be perfectly true?
She stifled the disloyal thought, suppressing it. Suppression was in fact the only recognized method for dealing with any and every form of naughtiness.
It was naughty, obviously, since it was forbidden, for Lily and Yvonne to buy sweets.
"You don't want to spend your money on nasty, cheap sweets, my dear children" was Philip's fashion of discouraging a propensity to which he himself happened never to have been liable.
Yvonne and Lily did want to spend their money on buying the sweets very often, but they were successfully debarred from doing so by the unpleasant conviction that the wish, for some quite unexplained reason, was something degrading and to be concealed with shame.
Even expensive chocolates, occasionally bestowed by visitors, were kept in the drawing-room and decorously handed round after tea when the children came downstairs.
"Don't they want to take them upstairs and finish the box in the nursery?" jovial Cousin Charlie Hardinge had once enquired, looking on with surprise.
"Oh dear no, this is quite an old-established custom. They like this way of doing it, don't you, Lily my pet?"
"Yes," said Lily, smiling happily.
She was far too responsive not to know instinctively just how terribly hurt and disconcerted Father and Mother would have been if she had answered otherwise.
Vonnie was at once less intuitive and more honest. But then she was very seldom appealed to, and even when both were impartially addressed, it was always Lily who made reply, partly from the old instinct of safeguarding Vonnie. It was so certain that Vonnie would blindly sacrifice Father's and Mother's feelings to her own truthfulness, and find herself in tacit disgrace thereby!
Lily herself seldom made such mistakes, although one or two terrible lapses stood out in her memory for years, as being amongst the worst and most devastating naughtinesses of a childhood that was perpetually haunted by a sense of uncomprehended sin.
There was the time when she had suddenly, and most disastrously, found courage to protest against the appellation of "little pet," that was bestowed upon her, so she considered, in and out of season.
"I'm not so very little," said Lily at nine years old, "and I'm not a pet when I'm being naughty. You say 'my little pet' even when you're scolding me."
"Lily! When did I ever scold you?"
Eleanor's tone was heart-rending, and she entirely disregarded the point at issue.
Not so her husband, frowning heavily.
"That's not at all a good way of talking," said he-and very nearly added, "my little pet." The consciousness of checking himself gave an additional force to his pained tones. "You will always be our little Lily, and God has given you kind and loving parents, and you are insulting Him when you jeer like that at things which ought to be sacred to you."
The magnitude of the indictment, no less than the sorrowful silence maintained for the rest of the evening by both her parents, reduced Lily to tears and a sense of crushing disgrace.
Things were always worse when God became involved in them-and besides, there was the earache menace if He grew angry.
But in that respect, God had stayed His hand of late. Lily, however, put no confidence in this forbearance, and felt herself thoroughly justified of her distrust when, quite suddenly, Vonnie fell ill.
At first, there was no such prolonged misery involved in this calamity as in one of the dreaded earache nights, and Lily was more surprised and gratified than rendered anxious, when Vonnie's bed was taken out of the night nursery and placed in the dressing-room adjoining Mother's room, whilst Father and his bed went away into the Blue Room.
She spent a whole Sunday afternoon with Vonnie, and they played a long, quiet, interminable game, involving the recital of low-voiced and mysterious stories by Lily, and sleepy, pleased acquiescent nods and murmurs from Vonnie. She did not seem very ill, and Lily was allowed to kiss her, which was usually forbidden in times of illness because "it might be catching."
"Good-night, Vonnie. We'll play some more to-morrow."
"Oh yes, I shall be quite well to-morrow."
They kissed one another.
When to-morrow came, however, Lily learnt, for the most part indirectly from the servants' talk amongst themselves, that Vonnie had become much worse during the night. The doctor had actually been sent for before breakfast.
"Has she got earache?" asked Lily, feeling very much frightened and voicing the deepest fear that she knew.
"You run along, Miss Lily, and don't ask questions," said the parlour-maid. "Your Mamma particularly said as no one was to frighten you."
As usual, Eleanor, solicitously guarding her darling from others, had made no allowance for Lily's powers of either induction or imagination.
Miss Cleeve came as usual, but she sent Lily out of the room while she had a short conversation with the housemaid, bringing up some coals.
Lily felt convinced that Clara was telling Miss Cleeve something about Vonnie.
"What's the matter with Vonnie? When can I go and see her?" she asked instantly on being readmitted.
"Dear me, what an imperious little person this is!" said Miss Cleeve very brightly indeed. "Gently, gently, Lily, if you please. If you do your lessons very nicely and are a good little girl, perhaps you'll go and see Vonnie later on. We shall see."
Miss Cleeve looked very wise and very decided, and Lily distrusted her violently.
"Why haven't I seen Mother this morning?"
"She's busy, dear."
"But Nurse is with Vonnie too. Is Vonnie so very, very ill?"
"Ha, ha!" said Miss Cleeve with a laugh that rang singularly untrue. "What a silly little girl to talk like that, now! Come and sit down, and you shall choose which lesson you'd like to begin with, for a treat."
Miss Cleeve's brightness and Miss Cleeve's treats inspired Lily with a sickening sense of fear.
She was kept in the schoolroom all the morning, and when she and Miss Cleeve went downstairs to luncheon, Miss Cleeve held her hand with unnecessary tightness all the way. But Lily was alert, and she saw the doctor's little carriage going away down the drive from the window of the hall, and she also saw her mother standing, with head uncovered at the front door, and her mother did not look at all as usual.
Lily wrenched her hand away from Miss Cleeve's and ran to her.
"Can't I see Vonnie?" she cried urgently.
Her mother kissed her silently.
"I hope-?" said Miss Cleeve hesitatingly.
There was an interchange of glances between the two grown women that the child's strained, anxious gaze sought desperately to interpret.
"Is Vonnie very ill, Mother?"
"There's nothing for you to worry your little self about, my darling," said Eleanor in a soothing voice, kissing her again.
A choking sense of her own impotence, resentment at their futile evasions, and above all a growing horror of all this mystery, made Lily burst into loud, unrestrained crying.
"Hush!" cried Miss Cleeve sharply, pulling her into the dining-room.
"Lily, Lily," said her mother. "Oh don't, my little pet."
She sank into a chair, looking overwhelmed.
"My dear child," said her father, suddenly emerging from the embrasure of the dining-room window, "you mustn't add to your mother's troubles just now. You must be a good little girl, and not think of yourself at all. Do your little lessons, and play about in the sunshine, and don't give any trouble, but be a good, happy little child."
It all sounded very kind and easy. The flood of misery that overwhelmed one must be some form of obscure, but extreme, naughtiness.
Luncheon was eaten almost in silence, and Eleanor went away before it was finished, stroking Lily's long brown hair as she passed behind her chair.
"Play in the garden this afternoon," she whispered, "and Mother will try and come to you in the drawing-room after tea."
Then a telegram was brought in and Philip, after reading it, said to the parlour-maid:
"The carriage will be wanted to meet the 3.30 train this afternoon. Tell Fowler."
Miss Cleeve looked up and said: "Is it-?" and raised her eyebrows.
"Yes. A second opinion will be a relief to us, though I'm afraid-" He checked himself.
Lily, not daring to glance at them, knew very well that it was because of her that they left all their sentences unfinished.
"-Probably a trained nurse, if he recommends it-" said her father, very low and rapidly.
What was a Train-Nurse?
Miss Cleeve went away, as usual on Saturdays, as soon as lunch was finished, saying warningly to Lily: "Now mind you go and play in the terrace garden as your mother told you. I think I should stay on the nice front terrace all the afternoon, if I were you. It'll be nice and sunny there."
"Yes, Miss Cleeve," said Lily forlornly.
There was probably something to be seen or heard from the other part of the garden, overlooking the drive, that they did not want her to know about.
In spite of this conviction, however, Lily went to the terrace, and looked up at the windows of the room where Vonnie was.
The blinds of both windows were drawn down so as to admit the least possible light into the bedroom and there was nothing to be learnt. Lily went into the potting-shed and sat there in the obscurity and cried.
She heard two of the servants walking down the path outside, as though on their way to the stables, and caught fragmentary words and phrases.... "It's awful-so quick, too."
"That's the way with tumours... don't you remember me telling you about my poor Aunt Gertie... just the same way it was-"
"Why, they may have to operate...."
"They say the pain's cruel... and for a poor little child, too!"
Lily put her fingers in her ears and cast herself upon the ground.
It was Vonnie they were talking about, and they said the pain was cruel-and no one would tell her anything, or let her go to Vonnie.
"I wish I was dead, oh, I wish I was dead!" sobbed Lily.
A child with an intense capacity for feeling can suffer to a degree that is beyond any degree of adult suffering, because imagination, ignorance, and the conviction of utter helplessness are untempered either by reason or by experience. Nothing in all Lily's life ever again held for her the bitterness of that afternoon in the potting-shed, when she had been sent out to be a good, happy little child, and play about in the sunshine.
After a long while, the housemaid Clara came and called her, and exclaimed with compassion at the sight of her when she appeared.
"Are you missing poor Miss Vonnie? There, never mind, dear, come along in now and have your tea."
Clara had tea with her instead of Nurse, and was very kind, and Lily, unable to cry any more, felt dumbly grateful to her and did not ask any of those questions which she felt sure that Clara would somehow contrive not to answer.
"Come and wash your face before you go downstairs," said Clara encouragingly, "so that your Mamma won't think you've been crying."
But Lily's mother was not in the drawing-room, when she went there with the traces of her tears carefully removed.
Her father was reading and he greeted Lily in a grave, depressed way, and told her to look at a picture-book.
They sat in silence for what seemed a very long time.
Lily only spoke once, and then she said quite suddenly:
"Father, please, what is a tumour?"
Philip cast a startled look at her, that added to the effect of rebuke in his shocked reply:
"Hush, hush, my child. That will do. You must not ask questions like that, you know."
Lily was conscious that he looked furtively and uneasily at her at intervals during the remainder of the evening.
"Shall I see Mother?" she asked wistfully when she went to bed.
"I will ask her to come and say good-night to you."
Waiting in bed for the redemption of this promise, Lily grew frightened again, and pictured Vonnie victimized by some terrible and magnified form of earache, wondering miserably why Lily had not come to play with her again, or at least to kiss her good-night.
She cried again, and dozed, and at intervals murmured some angry, urgently worded formula addressed to God, because her father had said to her very gravely that she must say her prayers, and ask God to bless everybody-Father and Mother and Vonnie. Lily had understood that he would not seem to attach special importance to Vonnie's need, by naming her only.
It was the middle of the night when she woke with a sudden start, and a new, compelling sense of terror.
Instinctively, she sprang, trembling, out of bed and groped her way to the door. There were lights and subdued voices without, and Lily ran out on to the stairs in her night-gown and caught at her mother's person. Dazed by the light and her own violent wakening from a heavy sleep, Lily hardly knew what happened next, or how she was taken back to her bed again.
But it was her mother who knelt by the bedside, with tears streaming down her face.
"Oh! Tell me what's happened?" said Lily. "Is it Vonnie?"
She did not know what it was that she feared.
"You oughtn't to know-I never meant you to be told till morning-" Eleanor was sobbing violently. "What can I say?-God-she's very happy with God, darling-gone to heaven-"
Amongst the disjointed words, Lily suddenly caught a flash of meaning.
"Is Vonnie dead?" she asked incredulously.
"Hush!" cried Eleanor in a sort of stifled shriek. But her head bent itself in assent.
Then Vonnie wasn't unhappy, wasn't ill-would never be either again, but always happy and well! It was like a dream come true.
Lily, after the long misery of the day, felt nothing but a rush of relief and comfort at the knowledge that Vonnie was dead.
The relief which is the outcome of a violent emotional reaction, however, cannot be expected to endure.
In any case, even had Lily not awakened to a changed world, in which she hourly missed Yvonne, the inseparable companion of all her nursery days, Philip Stellenthorpe could never have rested content until the strange callousness manifested by his younger daughter had been explained away. "The want of realization of a little, sheltered child," he forbearingly called it.
But it had shocked him, all the same.
Whilst Eleanor was only blindly anxious to shield Lily from any fright or grief, where she herself considered that fright or grief might threaten, Philip was unable to refrain from exacting the due meed of conventionality that he took for a tribute to Yvonne's memory.
Yvonne's belongings disappeared mysteriously, and one day when Lily asked if she mightn't have Vonnie's paint-box now, her father, overhearing her, was gravely displeased.
"My dear child," said he, "you don't want to be a heartless little girl, do you?"
Lily did not want to be a heartless little girl at all, and still less did she want to be called one. Therefore she did not attempt to restrain showers of pitiful tears whenever she missed Vonnie most, and to cry in church whenever she saw her mother doing so.
After a time, Philip and Eleanor ceased to speak of Vonnie at all, although a great many photographs of her now pervaded the drawing-room and Eleanor's dressing-table.
It soon became impossible for Lily to connect the object of so much that was in reality a kind of exploited sacredness, with the real Vonnie whose impotent champion she had been, to whom she had always been preferred against her will, who had been of so little significance save to Lily herself, in her tiny world during her short life-time.
The Yvonne of the photographs, of Mother's occasional Sunday evening low-voiced talks, of Father's still more occasional, solemnly mournful references, gradually acquired a meaning for Lily, albeit a purely sentimental one, that had nothing to do with Vonnie, whom she really only remembered, after a little while, in occasional vivid flashes.
Nevertheless it was actually many years before, at the most casual mention of a cold east wind, Lily ceased to feel a sudden irrational rush of sheer jubilant triumph, because the east wind could never give Vonnie earache any more.
III
"There are some gypsies on the common, Father."
"Are there, my pet? You and Miss Cleeve had better keep to the road, for the present, then. Very likely they have illness about. Those people are not very careful."
"There was such a thin little boy. He looked as though he didn't get much to eat," said Lily tentatively.
"Well, well, my darling, we'll hope he does. Did you find any blackberries on your walk this morning?"
"Only a few. They're not yet ripe. But, Father-" Lily was ten years old, and nowadays when she saw that her father and mother were deliberately evading a subject upon which she desired information, something that seemed stronger than herself drove her on to urge the point, with an affectation of being unaware of their disapproval.
"Do you think that little boy was really starving, perhaps?"
"No, no, my child." Philip moved uneasily and glanced at his wife. "People don't starve in England nowadays."
"We won't talk about sad things like that, Lily dear," said Eleanor brightly. "People needn't be poor unless they want to, you know. They can always find work."
"Why hasn't everyone got a house then? Why can't that little boy live in a house like we do?" Lily demanded meditatively.
There was a silence weighty with disapproval.
Then Philip remarked simply and with finality:
"Don't ask foolish questions, my little pet."
Lily knew herself defeated and was guiltily conscious of having deserved rebuke by her deliberate pursual of one of the many topics that, for reasons never explained, should not be talked about.
During the year that had elapsed since Vonnie's death, the number of these subjects seemed to have increased enormously. Not only was Vonnie not to be talked about, but anything connected with death, funerals, and mortality generally must be avoided, and it was a general axiom that what Philip occasionally referred to as "sad, painful, distressing things" were never really fit subjects for discussion.
Curiously enough, the nervous sufferings of Lily's whole early childhood, culminating in the emotional crisis that she had undergone when Yvonne died, at this period deserted her. She was now merely sensitive in a petulant way, subconsciously antagonistic to all her surroundings, and obsessed by a resentful certainty that her father and mother did not understand her.
This ungracious conviction she once haltingly attempted to explain to Eleanor, early faced with the endeavour that has defeated so many, that of avoiding the only form of words obviously designed to express what she wished to have understood, and finding instead some other formula in which it might be conveyed with equal lucidity and yet less outspokenness.
The results were a number of self-contradictory statements from Lily, followed by tears.
"But what is it that I don't understand, my baby?" Eleanor urged her to return to the attack.
"Me," quavered Lily, suddenly explicit.
Her mother winced very visibly indeed.
Lily felt unutterably naughty.
"My dearest," said Eleanor at last, "how can a grown-up person not understand a little child? You're talking nonsense, you know. There can be nothing in a little girl of ten years old that's beyond the understanding of a grown-up, experienced person. And to say that a mother doesn't understand her own child, is to suggest something that can't possibly be. Some day you'll know what I mean."
"When?" said Lily.
Eleanor's absolute belief in the creed that she had enunciated perforce carried a certain conviction to Lily's bewildered and undeveloped mind.
"When?" she repeated.
"When you have a little child of your own," her mother replied simply.
There was nothing more to be said.
Until that far-away, unbelievable time when one would be sufficiently old to have a little child of one's own, it must be taken on trust that all grown-up people, especially one's father and mother, understood one perfectly, although they made one feel all the time as though they did not.
Lily's thoughts and her feelings became speedily more and more muddled and confused.
Her discontent, which originated in sheer perplexity, took the form of argumentative and tiresome contradiction of the rules imposed upon her.
"She used to be such a dear, little sunny thing," cried Eleanor piteously. "Of course, I know there's an awkward age for all children to go through but I never thought of Lily's beginning it so young."
She cried and looked pale over Lily's naughtiness very often, and Lily was tortured by remorse and self-accusations that were without any effect upon her behaviour.
One day her father, who was tacitly supposed to know of her naughtiness, but to find it too grievous to be mentioned openly, spoke to her.
"You will regret it bitterly later on, my child, if you grieve your mother just now. There are reasons which you can't understand why she should be spared in every possible way, at present."
Were these specific reasons, or only the usual mysterious ones held over one's head by the authorities, and generally supposed to have obscure reference to God?
Lily presently came to the conclusion that some definite event was impending, and that she was supposed to know nothing whatever about it. Things were said to her of which it was obvious that she was intended to make general application only, and to which, with intuitive certainty, she instantly attached a special meaning.
"You must always be a very good little girl to your mother, and pray to God that He may take good care of her."
Why should Father suddenly say that, when it was an old-established certainty that Lily knew she ought to be a good little girl, and had prayed for her mother every night ever since she could remember, as a matter of course?
Sometimes it almost seemed as though they wanted to see how far it was possible for them to go, before Lily would make any sign of having noticed that there was a mystery.
"Nurse, I want you to bring those things that I spoke to you about into my room this morning."
"Yes, madam."
And then five minutes later:
"My little Lily must stay in the schoolroom and do her lessons very nicely this morning, and not go running about the house too much. Trot along to Miss Cleeve, my pet."
As though Miss Cleeve had ever dreamed of allowing Lily to run about the house during lesson time! Such a thing was quite unheard of, and Eleanor's casual tone did not for an instant deceive Lily into supposing that the prohibition had been a casual one.
On another occasion, a still more careless enquiry:
"You know you must never come into upstairs rooms without knocking at the door first, don't you, darling?"
A rule that Lily had known and had been made to observe, since she was three years old.
It appeared, therefore, that there was some urgent necessity for enforcing the rule now. Lily discovered that the door of the Blue Room was locked, all of a sudden.
She felt a strange inability to question her father or mother, but she tried to entrap Miss Cleeve into an admission, unconsciously imitating the air of carelessness with which Eleanor had tried, as Lily dimly felt, to entrap her into asking some question, to which a reply might be given that would direct curiosity into an innocuous channel leading nowhere.
"Oh, Miss Cleeve! Did you know the door of the Blue Room had been locked?"
Lily gave a high-pitched, nervous giggle. "Perhaps the key's been lost!"
Miss Cleeve threw her a very sharp glance of which Lily pretended to be quite unaware.
"Really, dear," she said in a very even voice. "Keys sometimes are lost, you know. But there's nothing to take you to the Blue Room, that I know of."
"Nurse goes in there sometimes. I've seen her coming out."
"I daresay she likes to see that it's kept dusted and tidy," said Miss Cleeve, in a preternaturally calm voice. "Now run and wash your hands for lunch, dear."
Lily felt thoroughly baffled by Miss Cleeve, and could not decide whether or not the governess had penetrated the motive of her artless enquiries.
Because she felt ashamed of her own attempts at solving the mystery that was in the air, she was sure that she was being naughty again.
When she went downstairs to the dining-room, her mother and Miss Cleeve were already there, talking in furtive tones to one another. Eleanor broke off the instant that Lily appeared and looked at her in rather a startled way, but Miss Cleeve, with the same determined naturalness with which she had spoken upstairs, uttered her final remark quite loud:
"So I thought perhaps a word to the wise, Mrs. Stellenthorpe-"
"Quite right, Miss Cleeve, thank you. I shall take care. Anyway it won't be very long now before-"
They both looked at Lily, who suddenly felt so uncomfortable that, to cover her own confusion, she almost involuntarily cried out: "Before what, Mother?"
Her mother and Miss Cleeve exchanged glances in a way that made Lily feel unutterably small and foolish and ignorant.
To her deep mortification, she felt her face burning with angry scarlet, although without knowing why.
"Poor little thing!" said Eleanor, and actually laughed, causing all Lily's inchoate disconcertment to culminate in a silent, furious resolution, that never again would she ask any of them about anything, so long as she lived.
The impassioned, childishly formed determination was not of a nature to endure. The inexplicable resentment that had caused it, Lily never forgot.
She could not have told what sudden intuition first made her suspect the truth, but when Eleanor, with certain circumlocutions and euphemistic phrases, told her that she might pray to God to send her a baby brother, Lily felt that she had known all the time that this was what all the mystery had been about.
"It's a great secret and you mustn't talk about it to anyone," Eleanor whispered.
Lily had no wish to talk about it to anyone. She was by that time thoroughly convinced that the arrival of a baby was something necessitating endless concealments and misrepresentations, and therefore of a highly shameful nature.
She was sent away to the seaside with Miss Cleeve for nearly six weeks, and when they came back again, the little brother was established in a blue and white cradle, and the Blue Room had been unlocked and transformed into a night nursery.
Lily gathered from various things that the servants said, that her mother had been ill, and that the illness was in some manner connected with the baby's coming. The subject puzzled her, and troubled her thoughts very often, but she felt sure that it was wrong to desire enlightenment, and she knew that if she asked questions she would receive either jocular or untrue replies, or the shocked "Hush!" of enforced reticence.
Eleanor having a horror of pet animals, from which she feared the contraction of mysterious and unspecified diseases of the skin, Lily was safeguarded from any direct encounter with the crudities of Nature. Her imagination therefore continued to evolve theories and explanations that her common-sense rejected, but that frightened and distressed her none the less, and that sent her furtively in quest of the information which she believed to be illicit, to such forbidden books of reference as the "Encyclopædia Britannica."
After Kenneth was born, Lily, to her unconscious relief, ceased to be the sole object in life of her parents, her governess, and her nurse. She spent less time in the drawing-room, and after Miss Cleeve had left for the day, remained in the schoolroom and read endlessly.
"Not too many story-books, my little darling," Eleanor occasionally said with a hint of disapproval in her tones, but as the books in the schoolroom were all story-books, and she was not allowed to touch the ones in the drawing-room, Lily continued to indulge her taste for fiction, although with the usual underlying feeling of guilt that seemed automatically to attach itself to whatever was pleasant.
There were curious nuances, never put into words, as that to read a new story-book was more reprehensible than to re-read an old one, and even when a recent birthday had occasioned the arrival of some delightful blue or red volume, the very giver of it might be apt to exclaim, with a sound of vexation, on seeing Lily immersed in it:
"Another new story-book!"
Lily grew to be so apprehensive of these expressions of disapproval that sometimes she slipped the new book, with its incriminating, shining binding, into one of the brown paper covers that concealed the wear and tear of the old books.
This manœuvre was one day penetrated by Miss Cleeve, who did not seek any explanation of it, but merely told Lily on general grounds that she was a most sly child, and didn't seem to know the meaning of the word "honour."
Lily wept and felt that it was true.
Gradually she came to consider her passion for reading as another sign of her own depravity, much confirmed in this view by the grave pronouncements of her father, who said to her from time to time:
"Dear child, you know you don't want to have your little nose buried in a story-book at every spare moment."
It was the question of buying sweets, all over again. Certain propensities, for reasons never specified, were evidently so undesirable that the existence of them might not even be admitted. One was told that one didn't want to do such things, and all the time was conscious of wanting to do them very much indeed.
Evidently, such desires must never be openly admitted.
The atmosphere became more and more charged with concealments, as time revealed more and more of the complexities of life.
When Kenneth was nearly a year old, he caught scarlet fever. The infection was in the village. Miss Cleeve succumbed, and Eleanor, panic-stricken, sent Lily away by herself for the first time in her life.
It was expressly explained that she was not going to school. No. There would never be any question of that. Lily was simply going to a beautiful peaceful convent, not at all far away, where she would be very happy with the kind Sisters and play with the pupils.
The scheme was Eleanor's. She had an ideal, totally unbased upon experience, of a convent school, that was of an extreme and highly sentimental picturesqueness. In her mind's eye, mild-faced nuns paced perpetually up and down a garden, and innocent children, in a more or less permanent state of preparing for their première Communion, were instructed in the arts of music and embroidery and ancienne politesse française.
She combated Philip's strong objections to letting Lily go within the sphere of Catholic influence.
"It isn't as though she were older," Eleanor urged. "She's only a baby, Philip. And it will be for such a little while. Please God, we can have her home again by Christmas."
It was really the last argument that had most weight with Philip, and the desire that his wife's mind should be at ease about their darling.
Neither had the slightest conception of the utter unfitness for any form of independence in which they had brought up their child.
Philip himself took her to the convent, emphatically telling her in the presence of the Mother Superior that she must always say her prayers night and morning just as she had been taught them, and that she was not to think of herself as having been sent to school.
The reiteration of this last axiom rather disappointed Lily. It sounded much more grown up and like other girls to be sent to school, and school, according to many story-books, was an exciting place where one distinguished oneself easily and made interesting friendships and learnt to play games.
Lily was afraid that a convent might prove to be a very tame affair, by comparison. In effect, she never did learn to play games there, since the only one in vogue-a complicated system of running about wildly in the playground from one chalk-mark to another, called The Rescue of the Holy City from the Infidels-proved beyond her comprehension from the first to the last day of her stay.
Nor did she make interesting friendships, because any friendships at all were entirely forbidden and rendered impossible by a quantity of rules that were enforced by perpetual surveillance. Neither did she distinguish herself, excepting by the unprecedented number of humiliating and babyish mistakes that she seemed to be perpetually making.
Lily, for the first time in her life thrown amongst other children, heard from their unsparing lips various brutal truths about herself: She was a most frightful baby for her age.
Anybody could see that she'd been made a regular spoilt child of at home.
It was most awfully affected, the way she was always using grown-up words.
It was simply silly, always to get red and cry at the least little bit of chaff.
It was perfectly indecent to wear such a disgustingly short frock-the nuns said so.
Lily was only too thankful to exchange her brief velveteen skirts for a blue serge uniform dress, that flapped against her ankles and of which the collar-band scratched her neck.
But even the uniform did not save her from committing other outrages upon propriety, hitherto unsuspected. A brand-new category of sins sprang into being, all of them classed under the heading of Immodesty-a word that Lily had never heard mentioned before.
Legs were particularly immodest. To show them, to cross one of them over the other, to mention them by name, was all highly immodest. So was any allusion to any part of the human anatomy below the shoulder-blades.
There was an uneasy suggestion that it might at any moment become immodest to talk about any male creature other than a priest, the convent gardener, or one's own father. Even brothers seemed to be better left out of the conversation.
The hideous immodesty latent in the taking of a bath could only be defeated by a cold, shroud-like garment of white calico, that fastened just above the wearer's collar-bone, was buttoned at the wrists, and fell in folds to the ground.
A bath, accompanied by a bath-chemise, was in readiness for each pupil once a week.
Lily jumped trustfully into her first bath at the convent, pleased at finding that she was expected to take it without supervision, which she had never done before, got out again very quickly upon the discovery that the water, on a dank November day, was nearly cold, and dried herself imperfectly in the chilly amplitude of the bath-chemise, which she supposed to be a towel of a new kind. The same afternoon a scandalized nun enquired whether Lily was in the habit of taking a bath "without wearing anything?"
"All naked? Yes," said Lily, nodding assent.
Then it appeared that not only was her practice immodest, but so was her language. The nun was not at all angry, she was very kind, but the vicarious shame that she quite obviously felt on Lily's behalf, remained unforgettable.
The affair could only be classed with Lily's other great outrage against decency, which was never destined to pass altogether from her memory.
The first time that she fell ill at the convent, which she did with the rapidity of a very much over-coddled child suddenly bereft of even ordinary supervision in the affairs of the body, Lily was sent to the Infirmary. She had fainted during breakfast.
"Poor little dear! You shall go to bed at once," said the kind old Sister in charge. "Where's your dressing-gown, dear?"
"In the dormitory."
"Then I'll fetch it for you. Get ready for bed as fast as you can."
Lily, interpreting this literally, made every speed in divesting herself of her clothes, forgetful that her night-gown was not lying waiting on the newly made Infirmary bed.
But the Sister would bring it, she decided, and sat close to the comfortable blaze of the Infirmary fire. Only a diminutive vest inadequately concealed her from the appalled gaze of the returning nun. Lily found herself enshrouded in both night-gown and dressing-gown on the instant, and directed to get into bed.
The nun was very forbearing, and only said, when the first shock had passed:
"A modest little girl would never have done that. What can your poor guardian angel have thought?"
The Protestant Lily, however, was less concerned with the hypothetical embarrassment of her guardian angel, than with this new view of herself as a little girl lacking in modesty.
She was homesick while she was at the convent, and a good deal bullied by her contemporaries, nevertheless the discipline was of a more wholesome kind than any she had yet known, and the total absence of any real element of education in the teaching that she received was partially compensated by the nuns' conscientious observance of Philip's prohibitions, and the amount of dogmatical religious instruction that she thereby escaped.
She might even have profited by the three months she spent at school, if it had been the conventual habit to pay any slightest regard to the more modern laws of hygiene.
Lily was not naturally a practical child, although she possessed a certain fundamental common-sense, and a precocious ability to profit by experience once acquired. Certain simple hygienic practices of which the regular observance had been enjoined upon her at home, without any explanation as to the necessity for them, she had acquiesced in blindly as a matter of course, without the slightest realization of the fact that they were connected with the preservation of her bodily welfare.
As the extreme modesty enjoined by the nuns did not permit of any supervision in such matters, even as regarded the youngest of the children in their charge, a state of affairs naturally followed that resulted in the very rapid deterioration of Lily's health.
Moreover, there prevailed at the convent, as at the very large majority of European educational establishments, the monstrous custom of curtailing the amount of sleep required for the proper development of growing youth.
Lily, although, like the other junior pupils, she was seldom in bed before nine o'clock, suffered less than they did-and very much less than the seniors, young girls all more or less at a stage of physical and mental development that made the utmost demand upon each one's constitution. Lily, at all events, need not obey the clamorous bell that summoned the school at a quarter to six every morning, in order that all might be assembled in the chapel by half-past six. She remained in bed until it became imperative to get up, dress herself-a task that she had not been allowed to perform unaided hitherto, and to which she was consequently highly inadequate-wash herself with an equal absence of thoroughness, partly because she was unaccustomed to ice-cold water, and partly because it was immodest to unfasten one's night-gown before various garments had been shuffled on underneath it-and then join the other children, who had now been fasting for more than an hour, for breakfast.
The food they were given was abundant, although inferior in quality, and completely lacking in variety. Each day of the week had its appointed menu, which was never departed from.
Sweets and chocolates were permitted only on Sundays, when, to equalize distribution and encourage generosity, the assembled gastronomical wealth of the establishment was placed upon the long tables of the refectory at dinner-time. No favouritism was permitted, so that each box or dish must be sent the length of the table by its owner, each of whose fellow-pupils would accept one specimen of the contents.
Naturally, the abstention of the week enhanced the necessity for profiting to the full by the plethora of Sunday, and Lily was not the only child who, when the day of rest and plenty was over, wished miserably, and for more than one reason, that Sunday privileges were allowed to extend over the cheerlessness of the week.
Philip came once to see his daughter, and was dismayed, without altogether knowing why, at her appearance when she was sent to him in the parlour.
The many inches of additional skirt by which the convent authorities had striven to obliterate the recollection of Lily's original display of brown stocking, made her look absurdly tall and thin, and her hands and little, slim wrists seemed to have grown bony.
Philip, scrutinizing her face anxiously, decided that she had lost some of her colour and that there certainly were black rings round her eyes. Her hair seemed to be in need of brushing.
To his enquiries, Lily replied, after the fashion of almost all children, that nothing was the matter. Yes, she liked the convent.
Had anyone been talking to her about religion? No, she didn't think so.
This relieved Philip's chief personal anxiety on Lily's behalf, and after cautioning her gently upon the use of slang and the care of her hands, he bade her say her little prayers every day, and be a very good child, and said that he hoped she would be home by Christmas.
He went away inexplicably depressed.
Eleanor instantly felt the weight of that depression, but as Philip had seriously resolved that his wife must, for her own good, be subjected to no further anxiety whilst the little boy continued ill, he gave her a hollow and unsmiling account, which he made as brief as possible, of Lily's welfare and happiness. It would have been quite impossible to Eleanor to receive a statement of her husband's at any but its face value.
She pretended, even to herself, that she believed Philip's account, and only cried in the middle of the night, telling herself that it was because she was over-tired.
Whether or not this last was the cause of her weeping, it was certainly a fact.
With quite irrational self-immolation, she had refused to entrust the care of Kenneth to a trained nurse, and devoted herself to him day and night in a veritable orgy of maternal sacrifice.
Kenneth recovered, although probably less rapidly than he would have done under professional care, and Eleanor fell ill.
She had the fever very slightly, but after a time, she tentatively asked that Lily should be sent for from the convent.
"I must see her once more, Philip."
It was entirely characteristic of Eleanor Stellenthorpe that with all her impassioned idolatry of her favourite child, it never occurred to her that she might spare Lily's sensitive youth an emotional scene such as the one of farewell that she contemplated.
But Philip, although heavy with the sense of impending calamity, and the spoken weight of an unfavourable medical verdict, was incapable of abandoning his life-long endeavour to alter the nature of painful facts by dint of refusing to acknowledge them.
"Don't talk like that, Eleanor dearest," he begged her. "It sounds just a little morbid, and of course you'll be well again by Christmas."
Accordingly, nothing distressing was put into words, and Philip and Eleanor, neither of them inwardly deceived by their spoken denial of despondency, suffered separately and in silence.
For two days before she died, Eleanor was unconscious, but it was not until after her death that Philip said, with heart-broken sincerity:
"I gave up hope from the moment she fell ill. From the first, I really knew that she would never get well again."
IV
Philip did not want to send Lily to school. He and his wife had been at one upon this point. He regretted even the three months that she had spent at the convent, although he remarked at intervals for long afterwards that a girls' school and a convent were not at all the same thing.
"Besides, my little pet, you were only there for a month or two, and you were not at all well when you came away. It wasn't at all a success."
"But that was years ago," Lily protested. "I should like it very much, now, or best of all if only you would send me to a proper school, Father."
For nearly four years, ever since her mother's death, she had asked at intervals to be sent to school.
At first, Philip had answered her with a sort of mournful playfulness.
"What! Doesn't my little girl get enough lessons at home? We must talk to Miss Cleeve, and see if she can't manage an extra hour or two on Saturday afternoons-shall we, Lily?"
The Lily of ten and eleven years old had dutifully pretended amusement, and thought herself naughty for the inward pang that she experienced at being treated like a baby.
A year later, she was far more openly rebellious.
"It's so very dull doing lessons all alone, Father."
"If God had spared us our poor little Yvonne, you would not have to do them alone," said Philip, the allusion, in some mysterious way, having exactly the effect of a merited rebuke.
Lily immediately, and quite irrationally, felt that she had been heartless.
"Besides," continued her father, pressing the advantage that he perceived himself to have gained, although without quite knowing how, "you don't want to break up our poor little home-party any further, my child, do you? You and I and poor little Kenneth are all that are left now, you know."
Lily was silenced, although, dimly, she knew that she had been unfairly defeated. What he said was true-she cried herself to sleep at the thought of it sometimes-but her powers of clear thinking had been too thoroughly obscured for her to analyze the illogical attitude taken up by her father, who from time to time said, with the most obvious sincerity:
"Poor little children! How can I do anything for them? She made home, and now that she and little Yvonne are gone, there is nothing left but sadness and emptiness. I have no wish whatever to live, but it must be as God Almighty wills."
"It couldn't make any difference to him if I went to school," Lily reflected resentfully, after Philip had thus once more put in words the utter despondency that hung always over him.
By the time that Lily was fourteen, there was scarcely anything left of the pride and the species of doting affection that her father had displayed during her early childhood. His ideal of a happy home had been rudely shattered by Eleanor's death, and he attributed the signs of Lily's inevitable development to a lack of veneration for her mother's memory. He was honestly incapable of perceiving that, if Eleanor had lived, conflict of the most irreconcilable kind must have arisen between her and Lily.
He dumbly and piteously resented Lily's incoherent attempts at self-expression, her struggling efforts to evolve her own personality in the midst of a stultifying atmosphere, with much the same blind sentimentality that he regretted the lost, blue-eyed prettiness of her baby days and the unescapable certainty that she was grown too tall to sit upon his knee.
Her continual requests to be sent to school distressed him profoundly. At one and the same time, he saw Lily convicted of disloyalty in wishing to alter the routine of life instituted for her by her mother, and as heartlessly desirous of abandoning her lonely father and little brother in their changed and saddened home.
At last he said to her:
"I can stand this no longer. Go, Lily, but remember that God Himself will condemn those who blaspheme against the sacred love of father and mother. You can go. I will keep no child at home against its will."
His face was drawn and grey with suffering, as he looked at the child who seemed to him to be growing up devoid of heart. Only the extremity of pain and disappointment would have made him speak so and Lily realized it.
She broke into terrified sobs, and saw herself with his eyes.
Both were shaken by the sense of an immense issue involved. The question had acquired a monstrous and devastating magnitude. Only the shamed and stifled, but still living, sense of proportion in Lily's soul, that warned her how bitterly she would, later, regret the folly of yielding to a sentimental impulse, prevented her from exclaiming that she never, never wanted to leave home as long as she lived.
An almost intolerable period of tension followed. The gloom of Philip Stellenthorpe became abysmal. Only little four-year-old Kenneth appeared to be cheerfully insensible to it.
Undaunted by his father's weighty tenderness, that was in itself an advertisement of melancholy, Kenneth continued to play with his toys, to shout for bread-and-jam with his tea, and to wriggle unconcernedly away when his father would have lifted him to Lily's old post of honour on the parental knee.
Kenneth was far from being the motherless baby boy of fiction. He evinced no special affection for anyone, and was quite unaffectedly impenitent when sins, that had once been the cause of heart-searching remorse to Lily and Yvonne, were pointed out to him with sorrowful gravity. Although only ten years separated them, Kenneth was in fact the modern child that Lily had never been allowed to become.
She watched him with more awe than affection, sometimes. He seemed to be a hard little boy.
The next phase of Lily Stellenthorpe's education was inaugurated by the astonishing announcement of Miss Cleeve, that she was going to be married and must go away.
"The old order changeth," said Philip, in tones of bewildered pain.
He gave Miss Cleeve a munificent wedding present, and reflected that yet another link with the past was breaking.
To look for another governess for Lily seemed to him an appalling task. His conscience would not have allowed him to depute it to his sister Clothilde, for ever since the fulfilment of her pronouncement that Vonnie would not live to grow up, Philip had steadily assured himself that poor Clo's judgments were not to be trusted.
Such is the curious effect produced by a prophet whose word has been too well verified in his own country.
Philip, like all sentimentalists, preferred asking advice to taking it. He decided to consult Eleanor's cousin and nearest surviving relative, unconsciously reserving to himself the right of finding that, after all, poor Charlie Hardinge was not a very sympathetic fellow, and held very little sacred, and that his counsels could not be worthy of serious consideration.
Besides the fact of his relationship-of potent weight with Philip-Charlie Hardinge was further qualified as adviser, in being the father of three little girls. The little girls, however, and Ethel their mother, had only been seen by the Stellenthorpes at rare intervals.
Charlie himself was in the habit of staying with them for two nights on his way to and from the north of England, in the course of every year. He always brought the children presents, and Philip always said in advance, nervously: "You must thank Cousin Charlie very nicely if he is kind enough to bring you a little present of chocolates, but you'll keep them downstairs in the drawing-room, like good children, won't you?"
He had never been able to forget altogether that Charlie Hardinge had once expressed injudicious surprise at the decorous restraint that prevailed over the distribution of sweets presented to the Stellenthorpe children.
Unconsciously, he liked Charlie much better in esse than in posse, and found even his exuberant habit of repeating everything he said three or four times over merely an ebullition of warm-hearted earnestness.
"Now, now, now, now," said Charlie. "You want some suggestion about this kiddie of yours-your Lily. I understand perfectly. What are you to do with her-fourteen, isn't she? Fourteen-yes-fourteen. Now, our Dorothy isn't fourteen yet, and Janet and Sylvia, of course, are younger still. Sylvia is just ten, in fact. You know they've just gone to school at Bridgecrap?"
"No," said Philip, startled. "I had no idea of it. I always supposed that you and Ethel meant to educate them at home."
His terrible fear of any unpleasantness made him hesitate, and feel unable to say, as he had meant to say, that he disapproved of girls' schools altogether.
"Well, it was a sacrifice," Hardinge admitted with a sigh. "A sacrifice. But we felt that it was for the kiddies' own good. No brother, you see. They wanted to be taught how to take chaff, and ragging, and teasing-that's what they wanted-they wanted to get thoroughly well teased. Now your Lily, my dear fellow-very pretty kiddie-widdie, mind you, beautifully mannered, and I'm only saying this because I'm fond of her-your kiddie doesn't know how to take a joke. I noticed it this evening, when I was chaffing her a little about holding herself so badly. That's another thing she wants-drilling. Drilling, drilling!"
Charlie hit himself a resounding blow on the chest.
"She wants drilling!"
"She is tall for her age," said Philip, who considered personal remarks ill-bred, unless complimentary.
"So's my Dorothy," Hardinge inexorably returned. "Now, how tall is your kiddie? How tall exactly?"
"I really don't know, but she is certainly taller than most children of fourteen. In fact the governess, before she left, told me that Lily was outgrowing her strength."
"Our Dorothy is thirteen and a half and stands five-foot five in her stockings. Five-foot five, and a back like a ramrod. Now, Lily isn't five-foot five, I'm positive of that. We'll measure her to-morrow, and you'll find she's not five-foot five. Nowhere near it."
Philip made a politely acquiescent sound.
"Drilling is what she wants, drilling and games. It's done everything in the world for my kiddie-widdies. Little Sylvia, now, didn't hold herself as well as the other two-was rather inclined to poke. And after one term at Bridgecrap she's holding her head up, and her shoulders back, and talks of nothing but hockey."
Philip suppressed a shudder at a consummation which appeared to him so utterly undesirable.
"You must send Lily to Bridgecrap," said Charlie Hardinge positively. "No place like it. Splendid air-right up above the sea, outdoor games all the year round-swimming and gym-everything you can think of."
"Who is the lady in charge?"
"A splendid woman-splendid woman. Miss Melody-Monica Melody. You've heard of her, of course-took a university degree, and has written some very sound stuff about education. Mind you, I sounded her very carefully before I sent the kiddies. Ethel and I had really had no idea of sending them to school at all-but they were keen to go. It was their own idea-Dorothy started it."
Philip almost groaned.
"I can hardly understand the idea of young children who actually want to leave home," he said, considerably understating his case.
"Your kiddie-widdie wants to go to school too, eh?" said Charlie acutely. "I thought so. I thought so now, I thought so. You take it all too seriously, my dear fellow, far too seriously. It's very natural, you know. My little girliekins had one another, after all, but Lily hasn't a soul-not a soul of her own age."
"This is a lonely place, as you know," said Philip stiffly. "There are no girls of her own age within a reasonable distance."
"Well, are there any boys then, any boys?"
"Boys?"
"Boys-boys of her own age. Boys, boys, boys. If there are no girls for the poor kiddie to play with, I suppose she must play with boys."
Philip rose from his chair and made elaborate examination of a slightly smoking lamp.
By the time that he had meticulously adjusted it, he was able to turn round and speak with calm.
"I shouldn't like my little Lily to become a tomboy. She is quite happy in her own little nursery."
"Now, what's the good of talking as though she were still a baby? She's not a baby-you really must make up your mind to it, my dear chap, that the kiddie isn't a baby any longer."
Philip was quite incapable of making up his mind to anything of the sort, but by sheer force of iteration Charlie Hardinge succeeded in accustoming his mind to the possibility of sending Lily to Bridgecrap.
To Lily's dismay, almost as much as to Philip's own, Charlie asked her in her father's presence:
"Wouldn't you like to go to school, little woman, where my kiddie-widdies are? You've often heard of my Dorothy, now, haven't you? and she's always asking about you. They're all three of them at school at Bridgecrap now, as happy as the day is long. You'd like to go to school, wouldn't you?"
Lily cast a hasty glance at her father. His eyes did not meet hers, but she knew the profoundedly dejected droop of his head, and was acutely sensitive to the meaning of his silence.
The atmosphere in which she and her father lived-of perpetually wounded susceptibilities, of suppressed verities, of only half-sincere demonstrations, continued long after they had ceased to be spontaneous-had made of Lily a super-sensitive, unbalanced creature, distrustful of her own instincts, and almost incapable of clear thinking. She had become the victim of muddle, the commonest and the most disastrous foundation upon which to build up a life.
It now seemed to her that it would be impossible to speak the truth in the face of the obvious pain that it would give her father, while at the same time she was aware of the utter uselessness of telling a lie. To tell a lie, incidentally, was a sin, but then so was it a sin to be heartless and undutiful, and the latter was fraught with the more painful consequences of the two.
Good-natured Charlie Hardinge saw, without understanding it, the conflict reflected on her small, pale face.
"Come, come, come, come! You look as though school would do you all the good in the world. My kiddies have got cheeks like roses, and Dorothy holds herself like a grenadier-head up, shoulders back! They think Bridgecrap the jolliest place in the world."
"Is it a large school?" asked Lily, evading the point at issue with absolute relief.
"Thirty girls. Miss Melody has some very nice kiddies there indeed-girls you're likely to see something of, later on. Very nice girls-girls that Ethel and I thoroughly liked the look of. Walk well, hold themselves well, keen on all sorts of games-"
It might be said that Philip eventually sent Lily to Bridgecrap in spite of Charlie Hardinge's recommendations, rather than because of them.
The thing that really moved him most, although he was quite unaware that it was the determining factor in his decision, was Charlie's positive assurance that Lily was losing her prettiness.
"The kiddie's pale," said Charlie accusingly. "She used to have a pretty colour when she was a little thing, and now she looks anæmic-and there are lines under her eyes. She's moping, Philip, that's what it is. Moping. No wonder she holds herself so badly!"
Philip did not like hearing strictures, that he could not feel to be altogether without foundation, upon the appearance of his daughter.
It cost him real and severe pain to let her go, although her presence at home gave him no happiness, and he did not attempt to conceal the extent of his sacrifice from Lily.
"Good-bye, my poor little girl. You shall have your own way, and go right away from home for a time. I hope it may answer, my poor child, and send you back some day to those who love you best in the world. God bless you."
This was Philip's valediction, sending Lily to her new surroundings with a leaden weight of guilt at her heart, and a reproachful picture of a sorrowful and deserted father returning to an empty house.
Having more or less lost hold upon her own convictions, she felt that, had it been possible, she would gladly have renounced Bridgecrap for ever, and returned to her father.
In this frame of mind, and with spirit encompassed by the accumulation of false values that had steadily been put before her in one form or another by the two small worlds that she had known-her home and the convent-it may readily be assumed that Lily began her career at Bridgecrap school under a severe handicap.
The standards there were altogether different from any that she had known yet.
"Honour" seemed to be the watchword of the place. The girls who excelled in games, or in examinations, did so "for the honour of the school." Their own personal honour was appealed to, freely and frequently. The convent system of surveillance would have been unthinkable, at Bridgecrap.
"I want you girls to have just the Public School code of honour that your brothers have-" Miss Melody herself often rousingly remarked.
But although the Bridgecrap girls were to play games like boys, to hold the traditional boys' views about honour, and, theoretically, to receive an education that should as nearly as possible conform to the pattern of that bestowed upon their brothers, they were never for a moment allowed to view the masculine sex as the superior sex. On the contrary, there was nothing, they were told, that a man could do which a woman could not do better. The old idea that women were not fitted for the professions that had hitherto been closed to them was being disproved every day. Miss Melody hoped to see many of her girls take their degrees, strike out careers for themselves....
Many of the girls responded enthusiastically, although the majority of them belonged to a class of society in which careers, other than that of matrimony, are scarcely yet tolerated for its daughters; and seldom contemplated by them, schooldays once over. They were enthusiastic, although they did not realize it, largely because of the excellent physical conditions under which they lived.
Games were played all the year round, at Bridgecrap. There was an elaborate gymnasium, and once a week the girls went to the swimming-baths. Lily was good-naturedly despised by them all for her absolute lack of athletic training or proficiency and total absence of muscle.
Just as at ten years old she had heard the opinion of her contemporaries at the convent, and been humiliated by it, so at Bridgecrap she met with an equal candour, clothed in the slang that was tolerated, if not actually permitted, from the pupils.
"Look here, Lily Thingamy, or whatever your name is, you'll have to stir your stumps a bit. Can't hold a whole hockey practice up for you, you know."
"Just look at this kid! Why, she hasn't any more muscle than a kitten. If she weren't so thin, she'd be disgustingly flabby!"
"You want backbone, that's what you want. It makes one sick to see anybody of your age who's never been taught what ragging means."
"My dear kid, it's no use saying you don't know the rules of the game. You've bally well got to know them. What on earth do you know, if you don't know anything about cricket?"
There were things that Lily did know, although she speedily became aware that the knowledge of them would not bring her to honour or triumph amongst the girls, and scarcely even amongst the mistresses. It was not accounted as particularly creditable to her, for instance, that she took a high place in the school, and retained it easily. More might have been made of it, but for the fact that all Miss Cleeve's conscientious teaching had never embraced the form of cramming known as taking examinations, and at Bridgecrap the taking of examinations was made the test of knowledge.
Consequently, however excellent her half year's work, Lily seldom succeeded in passing a test, to the form of which she was unaccustomed, and the lists were regularly headed by the captain of the hockey team, who had been at Bridgecrap nearly six years, possessed a capacity for hard work, a well-trained, mechanical memory, and no intellect whatever.
The mistresses were almost all primarily selected for their proficiency in games, except the French teacher, a Swiss lady who gave all her lessons in broken English.
The Scripture classes were taken by Miss Melody herself, in each of the three divisions of the school. History was imparted in the usual patchwork of dates, anecdotes, and names famous in Great Britain between the reign of King Alfred the Great and that of Queen Anne, geography was not taught beyond the Upper Third, botany was an extra, natural history ignored, and plain needlework not taught. Mathematics, except in the cases of one or two peculiarly constituted beings, presented itself to the girls, as to the majority of feminine minds, as a compound of meaningless "sums" that, if juggled with by a series of unrelated processes, might "come out right" at the end. Those of the pupils, Lily Stellenthorpe amongst them, who had least liking or aptitude for figures, received, by way of inculcating these, an hour's private and extra tuition in arithmetic once a week. Almost each one of them still surreptitiously counted upon her fingers, as little children do, believing it to be a form of cheating, but entirely unfamiliar with any more legitimate method of achieving the same result.
Literature, kept within the realms of English achievement, generally embraced one Shakespearean play thoroughly prepared, out of a school edition, for a coming examination. Shakespearean plays not judged suitable for this purpose, many of the girls did not even know by name. A few had "read Scott, because my young brother had to swot up 'Woodstock' last hols." Scarcely one could connect the name of any classic with that of its author, and all, without exception, would have felt heartily ashamed of being found, under no form of compulsion, to be reading poetry.
Few, it may be added, ran any such risk.
The religious principles of the school were Church of England, but religion, to Lily's relief, did not imply the insistent advertisement of outward and minor pieties that had prevailed at the convent.
A short daily service was held in the school chapel, and there were prayers morning and evening. Miss Melody held "Sunday talks" for the elder girls, of which the prevalent notes were brightness and broad-mindedness. Free discussions of Bible and Catechism readings were encouraged, with implicit avoidance of certain of the Commandments which apparently were not fit subjects for explanation.
Indeed, the nuns themselves could have displayed no more silent and resolute modesty than prevailed at Bridgecrap upon subjects that, sooner or later, must become of vital moment to every one of the feminine creatures there being educated.
V
Lily formed and retained a very acute impression of the Bridgecrap atmosphere, during the three years that she spent there, but hardly a single personality in the place made any lasting effect upon her memory. Yet it was during those three years that a secret and shamed conviction slowly crystallized within her; they were all what she inwardly called Real Live People, and she herself was only a sham. However much she might try to be like everyone else, sooner or later they would find her out.
She could not have explained wherein lay the difference, but connected it vaguely with a mysterious undercurrent of romance that ran through her daily life, and of which no one must ever, ever know.
She thought that no one but herself ever invented long, dramatic stories, that went on from day to day, in which one traversed strange and eventful scenes, always a heroine, always becomingly dressed, and always in full view of a selected audience.
Lily also supposed herself, with more reason, to be unique in another respect.
At fifteen, even at sixteen years of age, she still liked playing with toys. Not even such respectable toys as jig-saw puzzles, or ingenious mechanical contrivances-although even such tastes as these must have roused the extreme of scorn in the players of hockey-but terribly, shamefully babyish things-wooden farmyards and tea sets and dolls.
Above all, dolls.
Officially, Lily had outgrown dolls at twelve years old. Miss Cleeve had expected it, had taken it for granted. She might, or might not, have known that there was a little wax baby-doll, in long clothes, hidden in Lily's bedroom.
But certainly neither she, nor anybody else, knew that the doll Sophy had accompanied Lily to school.
Worse-Lily played with Sophy in secret and took her into bed with her every night. She had a small bedroom to herself, as had most of the elder girls, and as soon as the governess in charge had paid her brief nightly visit of inspection, and extinguished the light, Lily crept out of bed, felt her way to the chest of drawers, unlocked the bottom drawer and took out the baby-doll from underneath a pile of garments folded at the very back of the drawer.
She pretended that Sophy had to be hidden away in a cave all day from danger of kidnapping, and that she might only visit her at night. She cuddled her, and talked to her in a whisper, and went to sleep with her in her arms.
With part of herself, Lily really believed that Sophy could understand what she said to her, and appreciate the caresses lavished upon her. There was never any question of her forgetting to conceal the little doll again in the mornings. She was far too genuinely terrified of being found out.
It appalled her, occasionally, to think of the effect that discovery might have upon all those Real Live People. Not only the girls, but everyone she had ever known-governesses and servants, and relations like Aunt Clo and Cousin Charlie, or her father. Lily did not really feel that even her mother would have understood, although, like most motherless children, she idealized the memory of the dead woman. The only person with whom she knew that her secret could quite well have been shared, would have been Vonnie.
They had always played "pretence games" together, and Vonnie would have outgrown them no more than Lily.
It was partly this consciousness of a guilty secret, of which Lily was unutterably ashamed, that kept her from any intimate friendships at school.
Like many naturally reserved people, she held an ideal of friendship that included the most complete unreserve, and how could such a thing ever be possible to a person who would have to begin by saying:
"I am not like other people. I am not a nearly grown-up girl like you are-I still play pretence games with myself, although I am sixteen. All the pencils in my pencil-box have names, and ages and characters. I like quite baby toys, and I would much rather play by myself with a box of tin soldiers, than go for a school-picnic, or to see a Shakespearean play. I have got a baby-doll and I talk to her and take her to bed every night, and I always mean to go on, as long as I live."
Whenever Lily reached this climax, in her imaginary confession, she always saw the recipient of it, not necessarily as derisive or scornful, but simply, blankly amazed and completely uncomprehending.
There could be nobody who would understand in the whole world.
The whole world, if bounded by the gates of Bridgecrap, certainly justified Lily's instinct in that respect.
She liked most of the girls, although she knew in her heart that there was no real link between herself and any one of them. This she put down to that indefinable eccentricity of hers which differentiated her from the rest of the world. She knew that the girls were conscious of it too, although it would not have occurred to them to put it into words.
The discussion of an abstract question amongst themselves they would have considered to be an affectation, and bad form, although the youthful Briton's trick of freely making crude personal remarks flourished unchallenged.
"I say, what a scarlet nose you've got!"
This was entirely permissible and called for neither comment nor reply, other than a casual "Have I-what's it matter?"
But Lily always remembered the outcry that followed upon a remark once made by one of the younger pupils:
"I wonder why one gets that funny feeling sometimes of having done things before? Sort of like that Indian thing Mam'oiselle was reading about the other day-reincarnation or something-"
"Here! Chuck it, please. That was in a lesson!"
"Little girls shouldn't use long words they don't understand," said a senior severely.
"Snub for you, Elizabeth Fulham, showing off like that! Trying to be original, I s'pose! Did you ever hear of such affectation in a Fourth Form kid!"
Apparently no one ever had and no one ever did again, Elizabeth Fulham subsiding, with a very red face, into silence and subsequent orthodoxy. Certainly no one else at Bridgecrap could fairly be accused of trying to be original. It would have been the unforgivable sin.
Everyone seemed to copy everyone else.
Many of the girls copied Dorothy Hardinge, the eldest of Charlie Hardinge's three kiddies, because she was very good at games and had won the High Jumping Competition two years running at the school sports. The Third Form girls parted their hair in the boyish way affected by Dorothy, and used the same slang that she did; and were "keen" on the mathematical mistress, because Dorothy was "keen" on her.
Schoolgirl friendships were not the fashion at Bridgecrap, and were cried down as "sloppy" by the girls themselves.
But it was de rigeur to have an infatuation for one or other of the teachers, with the exception of Mademoiselle who, being a "beastly foreigner," naturally "didn't count."
The majority of these enthusiasms might almost be described as being artificially manufactured to meet the requirements of that great law that enforced conformation to type. The mildest demonstrations only were indulged in.
"Isn't she swe-eet-isn't she ducky?"
Such was the prescribed formula when Lily was at Bridgecrap, and once it had been ecstatically uttered, the speaker was recognized as being "keen" on Miss So-and-So, and there the matter remained stationary.
There were one or two exceptions to this comparatively healthy state of affairs, as is inevitable in any community living under similar conditions of unnatural segregation. Lily, without knowing why, hated the headlong adorations that occasionally overtook a girl for one of the mistresses, and that almost always resulted in some unspecified crisis, when the adorer was sent for by Miss Melody, and severely, though quite inexplicitly, cautioned against "foolishness."
Sometimes, Lily thought, the mistress was cautioned too, for very often her manner to her devotee would change abruptly, and become very cold and self-conscious.
The affair almost always ended in a violent reaction, when the discarded adorer would hate vehemently where she had erstwhile loved. Such affairs always made Lily feel glad that she herself was not particularly attracted to anyone at Bridgecrap. The whole thing seemed to her to be so oddly undignified, and besides, it was always the least likeable girls who were overtaken by such infatuations.
Lily knew, unaccountably, that there was a subtly unwholesome element in the school, sometimes a very minor element indeed-but always there.
She guessed, vaguely, at the subjects of certain whispered conversations and giggling references, but although she was quite aware of unenlightened curiosities and perplexities of her own, the thought of sharing them would literally have revolted her. Nor did the whisperers and gigglers ever approach her, instinctively able to discern, as they were, exactly whom they might or might not hope to admit to their foolish, underbred companionship.
The youngest of Charlie Hardinge's daughters was the child in the school whom Lily liked best, although she knew that she had been expected to make friends with her contemporaries, Dorothy and Janet. But Dorothy who, as her father had said, stood five-feet five in her stockings at thirteen years old, and had a back like a ramrod-Dorothy, at fifteen, had attained to a degree of athletic prowess that admitted her to the comradeship of the most highly placed girls in the school.
She naturally took not the slightest notice of Lily, who was universally recognized at "a perfect duffer at games."
Of Janet Hardinge, Lily was frightened, although Janet was her junior. Janet was clever, according to the Bridgecrap standards, and she was amongst the few girls in the school who expressed a contempt that was not, in the main, wholly good-natured, for Lily's physical inefficiency. She had a spiteful tongue, that turned itself readily to personalities of a coarse and wounding nature, and Lily's sensitiveness was sufficiently obvious to render her a favourite target. Janet was not popular, and Lily was perhaps the only one of her school-fellows who realized that hers was simply the obtuse cruelty of the absolutely unimaginative. Her sister Sylvia was four years younger than Lily, and so entirely absorbed by hockey that only the chance of school theatricals revealed to either that they had anything in common.
A play was acted every year at Midsummer. At first, Lily had been convinced that she could act. She knew that the girls to whom the important parts were given frequently spoke their lines with perfectly meaningless intonation, and with emphasis very often laid in the wrong place.
She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first part given to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that her voice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear and distinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged with self-consciousness.
Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.
"Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!" said an unnecessarily surprised junior mistress. "I wish you principals would put as much intelligence into some of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge."
Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, and it was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be a very unimportant one.
Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious in her demeanour.
"Lily!" commanded the mistress sharply. "You can read that long speech of Dorothy's, and see what you make of it."
Ever since her arrival at Bridgecrap Lily had been convicted of her inferiority to everyone there.
Now, in a glorious flash, she saw her chance of at last achieving a success.
She read the speech without hesitation, and felt that she had read it very well.
"Excellent! I wish I'd given you a bigger part. We'll see...."
Lily was disproportionately excited.
The next day, she was told to give Dorothy's speech again, this time with the necessary action, which included a slow entrance and a dramatic exit prefacing the fall of the curtain.
"Oh, my dear child! Hold yourself properly-you can't walk like that. And your hands-no, no-that won't do. Can't you move properly?"
It was just what Lily could not do. Her instinct for the correct manipulation of words and ideas did not extend to the disposition of her own muscles.
Enforced drill, gymnastics and detested games, begun too late and without any attempt at individual tuition, had failed to impart to Lily the natural poise and erect bearing that made Dorothy Hardinge's movements harmonious. Her body was as self-conscious as her mind was supple and alert.
"No use at all. We can't have her standing about the stage like that. What would Miss Melody say?"
"I'm sorry, Lily," said the junior mistress kindly. "It's a great pity you can't learn to hold yourself properly. Otherwise, you might act very well."
Lily's brief triumph was over, at the expense of this humiliation.
It was then that Sylvia Hardinge surprised her by saying quietly: "It's a shame! You said all that stuff perfectly splendidly-as though it really meant something. They ought to let you have a really good part-you act better than any of us."
Lily secretly agreed with her, whilst believing herself conceited for doing so, but she was none the less astonished and gratified at Sylvia's appreciation.
"I'm glad you think I can act. Did I really hold myself so very badly?"
"Yes," said Sylvia simply. "Frightfully."
It was like a douche of cold water.
Lily's friendship with Sylvia was destined to run a course that was neatly foreshadowed thus in their first encounter.
Sylvia admired Lily, thought her clever and very pretty, and was a sympathetic and affectionate companion.
Lily felt passionately grateful for her affection, and sometimes told herself joyfully that she had found a friend at last.
And then from time to time she was suddenly brought up short against the sharply defined limits of Sylvia's comprehension, and the jarring candour of Sylvia's ruthlessly unalterable condemnations.
Grown-up people always told one that in this world there was no such thing as a perfect friendship. Lily obediently generalized thus, and strove for philosophy in defiance of a hidden, quite unsupported certainty, in the depths of her own mind, that the generalization was a false one.
It was not until her final half year at Bridgecrap that Lily came under the direct personal influence of the headmistress.
Miss Melody was fifty-seven, she had given up her life to the work of education, and she still brought to it the enthusiasm of a pioneer. Her solitary weakness was the not altogether uncommon one of an unshakable belief in her own infallibility.
"You may have a difficult time in front of you, childie," she said to Lily very kindly. "A motherless girl is very often at a great disadvantage. I was motherless myself before I was twenty."
She had a rounded mellow voice and always articulated her words with great deliberation and distinctness. "And the dear little brother! Is that a big responsibility, Lily?"
"Kenneth will be going to school almost at once," said Lily evasively.
She would like to have replied, as Miss Melody obviously expected her to do, with an admission of her own perplexities as regarded her relations to Kenneth, but she knew very well that no responsibility would really be hers. Nothing vital bound her to Kenneth as she had been bound to Vonnie, and the immense gulf of her ten years' seniority had inspired in her no maternal solicitude towards her independent little brother.
"He will be nearly eight when I leave here, and I know my father means him to go to school when he's eight," said Lily.
"Child, you're not going to be a shirker, are you? Lily, Lily, isn't that the weak place? Ah, I thought so. I thought so. Afraid of responsibility, aren't you?"
Miss Melody's eye was at once penetrating and melancholy, as she fixed it upon her pupil.
"Now, childie dear, if you know what that weakness of yours is, fight against it. Fight against it, dearie, and pray. Don't forget what prayer can do for us all. The very weakest can be made strong, you know...."
Lily listened with a sense of disquiet. She felt vaguely that Miss Melody, so kind and wise and helpful, had somehow evolved a preconceived idea that did not altogether fit the reality.
"I don't know whether it is exactly that I'm afraid of responsibility," Lily began, feeling that the help Miss Melody was so willing to impart must rest upon a basis of fact, if it was to be of value to her.
The schoolmistress laughed softly.
"Lily, Lily, haven't you learnt not to make excuses for yourself yet? I hoped all my girls were taught that in the lowest form in the school!"
Lily looked as thoroughly disconcerted as she felt. Was it making excuses for herself to try and explain what she felt to be the truth, even though it happened to run contrary to Miss Melody's judgment?
"No, no, child," Miss Melody was grave again now. "Never be ashamed to own up to your weaknesses. I want you to think about backbone, dearie. It's what you need. I know, childie-perhaps more than you think. All sorts of girls have passed through my care, and I'm very, very proud to think that I've known something about each one of them-perhaps been able to give each one a little help. And there are no two alike, Lily, and each one has to be studied individually."
"And do you-have you really-?" Lily wanted to ask whether Miss Melody had really penetrated to the true self of every one of her pupils. It seemed so incredible, that girls like Dorothy Hardinge, for instance, should really have an inward life, even as Lily herself, and that Miss Melody should enter therein, and understand it all.
"Do I really study each one individually? Indeed I do, Lily, although it may seem to you girls that you see very little of the headmistress except in school, and on state occasions. Oh, I know," and Miss Melody laughed again.
Then she dropped her deep, soft voice impressively.
"I've studied you, childie dear, and thought about you very often. There's weakness, Lily-there's weakness. You'll have to be very much on your guard. I should like to have seen you much keener about games, much more in earnest for the honour of the school at our hockey and cricket matches. You may think that those things are of no very great importance in themselves, but there's a fine spirit behind it all, you know-a thoroughly English spirit. It's that keenness that you seem to me to lack."
Miss Melody paused, and looked with her characteristic air of profound scrutiny at Lily.
"Well?" she said encouragingly.
Lily felt that she was letting slip an opportunity for just such a clarification of issues as she had long sought after, but the habits of obscure and muddled thinking into which she had all her life been led stood in her way.
She made a consciously inadequate effort, belatedly.
"I think I could be more-keen-about things, if I only felt they were more worth it," she said confusedly. "I know I'm no good at games, but it isn't only that-it doesn't seem to me to matter frightfully whether one's good at them or not-and it's the same about other things, even lessons. I do enjoy them-some of them at least-but all the time I've got a sort of feeling-what's it all for?"
She paused, confused and frightened.
"Go on-" said Miss Melody. Her voice was slightly melancholy, but she was slowly nodding her head, as though in comprehension.
"I think if I could find something that seemed to me thoroughly worth while I could-could really let myself go and give my whole self to it. Something like a-a person one loved very much, or a sort of life one felt was right for oneself-not just right in itself-" Lily stopped, in utter disarray.
She knew that she had not succeeded in conveying her meaning by those halting, ill-expressed phrases, but the extent of her failure was not apparent to her until Miss Melody spoke again.
"I'm very, very glad you should have spoken, childie... perhaps we can get this straightened out between us. That's a terrible idea of yours, you know, that things aren't worth while. Why, at your age, anything ought to be worth while-over and over again, Lily. The games and the lessons, and the little brother at home-it's all worth while, dearie. While you're thinking and dreaming away about some imaginary call to devote yourself to someone or something, all the little opportunities are slipping by you-you're squandering all your energies on fancies that mean nothing. You must learn to put your whole self into what you're doing, Lily-into the living present. Why, it's all worth while! As I told you just now, it isn't the number of runs you make in the cricket match that matters, it's the spirit that holds the whole eleven together, that makes each one keen to see her side win the match. That's what matters!"
Lily looked with unhappy eyes at Miss Melody. Why could she feel no real response within herself to these rousing truths?
At that moment she hated her own tepidity, her own secret, alien standards. She made an earnest and violent endeavour to relinquish the latter for ever, and to range herself under Miss Melody's inspiring banner.
"The games in themselves are only games. True," said Miss Melody. "But there's something else, Lily. I wonder if you've ever thought of it? Everything we do, great or small, can be turned to the greater honour and glory of God. I think you know very well that the Apostle Paul has written about that-didn't we have it, not so very long ago, at our reading? And don't you think, if you want a motive, that you have an adequate one there? If you think of that, childie, you won't ask again 'what's it all for' or whether it's worth while, will you?"
Could Lily, at seventeen years old, have formulated her own obstinate, inmost certainty, and have replied to Miss Melody?-"The Apostle Paul spoke for himself. Neither he nor anyone else can speak for me. Until I have evolved my own convictions, I shall continue to suffer from that lack of motive which I have most inadequately tried to put before you, and of which you have quite obviously understood nothing at all."
Nothing is more certain than that no such arrogant lucidity sprang either to her mind or to her lips.
"I'll try, Miss Melody-" she said, earnestly and meekly.
"I know you will, I'm quite sure of it. There's a big effort to be made, Lily, before you can shake off that supineness of yours, but it can be done, dearie. Now, when you leave here I want you to feel that you can write to me quite freely and I shall always find time to answer you. Do you know that girls who left me fifteen and twenty years ago still write to me? Some of them have girls of their own at school by now.
"Tell me, childie dear, have you ever thought of what your own future is to be? Is it to be a career, or the making of a home for the little brother, or do you want a home of your very own-marriage, Lily?"
The mere knowledge that she had never before heard the word mentioned in such a connection by Miss Melody, made Lily blush foolishly.
The headmistress smiled-an omniscient smile. "I thought so-I thought so. Well, Lily, although I haven't married myself, I always advocate marriage for the majority of my girls. Most women are happier in the beaten track, and I don't think you're one of those that are called upon to stand alone. Oh, there's nothing derogatory in that. Marriage is a very high calling, child, and there's a great deal to it-a great deal of responsibility, Lily."
Miss Melody's arch smile underlined the word, as though it had become a catchword, used to denote their dual consciousness of Lily's weakness.
Lily smiled back again, faintly protesting.
"Ah, you don't like that! It's the old bugbear, isn't it? Well, well, childie...." Miss Melody appeared to lose herself in reflectiveness.
The fiction of Lily's dread of responsibility was now firmly established between them.
"If I can give you any advice, or help you in any way, just let me know, dear child. We've had a nice, long talk, and I think it's been helpful to you."
Miss Melody paused so significantly that Lily almost involuntarily said: "Yes, Miss Melody."
"I'm very thankful for that, Lily-very proud and thankful. You must come to me again before the breaking up. Bless you, childie dear."
Lily understood that the interview was at an end.
Acutely sensitive as she was to Miss Melody's kind and serious interest in her welfare, it was almost inevitable that she should come to the sorrowful conclusion that Miss Melody, in her vast and tolerant experience, must be correct in her estimate of Lily's self. The thought depressed her.
She lacked backbone, and she was a shirker, squandering all her energies upon fancies that meant nothing.
In a vague and general way, Lily resolved to abjure those fancies and to readjust her scale of relative values so that it should include all that Miss Melody had meant by such words as "keenness"-"a thoroughly English spirit" and "doing everything to the greater honour and glory of God."
VI
The least highly spirited amongst us, however easily cowed by outside influence, seldom finds it easy or desirable to practise meekness when dealing with a near relative at home.
This law, which is a practically invariable one, deserves a candid recognition which it seldom receives.
Certainly it was never openly admitted to exist by Philip Stellenthorpe, whose house furnished a striking example of its workings after Lily had finally returned from Bridgecrap.
At school, she had been the victim of a diffidence engendered in the consciousness of failure.
At home, the consciousness of failure merely roused her to covert and irritable defiance of criticism.
She was no longer the sensitive and over-intuitive child steadily denying her own instincts wherever she foresaw that they must run counter to her father's unalterably sentimental ideals. But neither had she the moral courage nor the training in honesty of thought that would have enabled her boldly to analyze the causes of her own discontent.
She was resentful of Philip's arbitrary conventions, for which he never gave any other reason than that "Father says it will be best that way," and at the same time she believed her resentment to be wrong and undutiful.
She thought, and was shocked and unhappy to think, that there were times when she hated her father, whereas her hatred was in reality wholly for certain manifestations of his solicitude and affection for herself.
"A child that is impatient of its parent's love," Philip once called her, in bewildered pain and disappointment.
Lily felt herself to be unutterably heartless, cried herself sick with remorse and despair, and then had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from protesting aloud in exasperation the very next time that Philip called her his little pet.
A perpetually tête-à-tête existence might well have brought the state of tension between them to an unforgettable climax, but that the situation was saved by the Hardinges.
The Hardinges came to live within a mile of Philip Stellenthorpe.
The shock to him was less severe than if they had been people of whom he knew nothing, and the sacred tradition of Eleanor's day, that "the children were happiest in their own little nursery," was allowed to lapse when Lily between eighteen and nineteen years old, and Kenneth in his first term at school. Subtle and intangible conflict and the presence of the cheerful, commonplace Hardinges were unthinkable together in the same atmosphere.
Dorothy Hardinge, no longer able to play hockey with any regularity, philosophically turned her attention to other forms of amusement, and was quite ready to make a companion of Lily Stellenthorpe. Having reluctantly put up her hair and lengthened her skirts, she made the best of privileges that she had never coveted, took her clothes quite seriously, and discovered frankly, for the first time, that Lily had at least one undeniable advantage over other girls that had never been recognized at school, in that she was extremely and unusually pretty.
Janet was less simple-minded, or less generous than Dorothy, and always made Lily conscious of her faint contempt.
Sylvia was still called Lily's friend, although they had much less in common than had Lily and Dorothy, now that Lily was accounted grown up, while Sylvia had three more years of school before her.
Charlie and Ethel Hardinge gave tennis parties and small dances, and picnic parties, and talked as proudly and volubly of "the girls" as they had once talked of "the kiddies-widdies."
They included Lily and Kenneth in everything.
"We've got two boys coming to stay with us next week. It ought to be rather fun," Dorothy Hardinge proclaimed. "There are never enough men to go round, here."
"There are so few families with sons, and anyway the boys always seem to be years younger than the girls-like Kenneth," said Janet discontentedly.
It had been the fashion at Bridgecrap to deride as early Victorian any assumption of the desirability of masculine society under any conditions, but Dorothy Hardinge at least had candidly readjusted her point of view amongst her new surroundings.
"We shall try and give a dance, while they're here. One of them is father's ward, Colin Eastwood-he's eighteen and awfully nice. Sort of quiet, you know, but nice. And he's bringing a friend, someone we don't know. Father said he might. He's at some University or other, and he's about twenty-two, or something like that. He'll probably think himself as old as anything, compared to us," said Dorothy with a little laugh that betrayed excitement.
Lily felt excited, too. She had met very few boys indeed that were beyond the age of sailor suits, but she had indulged in as many romantic fancies of possible future conquests for herself, as were allowed her by the ineradicable memory of the convent theory that masculinity was ipso facto something to be, as far as possible, ignored by the modest feminine.
Much reading and an uncontrollable imagination had merely eradicated the recollection of conventual shibboleths, but Lily was still sufficiently bound by them to feel very much ashamed when she found herself wondering whether Colin Eastwood and his friend would think that she was pretty. Dorothy said that she was.
From time to time, when she had on a new hat or put on a summer frock for the first time, her father looked at her with an air of rather melancholy gratification, and then made some small, detached observation at the very end of the day, when it might be assumed to have no special significance to the immediate occasion:
"My little Lily is getting quite a grown-up girl, now. It's quite a duty for little people to take care of their complexions, you know, we're given these small advantages to be a pleasure to those who care about our looks."
Lily had thereby deduced that Philip was afraid of her becoming vain, and that therefore he, also, thought her pretty.
She sometimes took long and furtive observations of herself in the glass. Her eyes, dark-lashed and rather deeply set, were not nearly as blue as Dorothy Hardinge's, but her nose at least was straight where Dorothy's turned up, and her soft skin had no freckles, and was sun-burned olive instead of red. She thought that her lips were too full, but at all events they were firmly closed, since she had always breathed through her nose, which not one of the three Hardinges could do for any length of time. And her hair was lovely.
Lily would never have applied to it, even in her own mind, such an adjective-redolent of vanity, according to the code-but nevertheless, that was what she really thought of it, when she brushed out the long, silky brown waves.
She counted vanity as being amongst her besetting sins, and strove to persuade herself that, against the evidence of her own senses, she really ought to believe herself plain and unattractive.
It was a mark of her own unregeneracy, that this should prove to be so extraordinarily difficult.
It became more difficult than ever, when Colin Eastwood and Lily began to meet one another every day at the parties and excursions arranged by the Hardinges in honour of their two guests.
Colin, as Dorothy had said, was nice, and very quiet. The indications of his admiration for Lily were so shyly offered that she only became aware of it by subtle and gradual degrees.
So restrained and delicate was that impalpable idyll of their extreme youth, that it never became the object of jarring and facetious comment, as was Dorothy's loud flirtation with Colin's cheerful and amusing friend, embarked upon within an hour of their first acquaintance.
Lily, at first, had indeed been inwardly mortified at the promptness of Dorothy's conquest. The undergraduate was a Real Live Person-so was Dorothy. So were all the others. Lily, just as at school, felt herself to be but an indifferent masquerader, through the badly sustained pretensions of whom they could all see plainly.
She found herself paired with Colin, in all the expeditions, and thought that it was because he had such nice manners that he always stayed beside her. But in a very little while she knew that, actually, Colin manœuvred for the place next her, and that his gaze always sought hers to share in the frequent jokes and allusions that had so soon come into being amongst them all.
He liked her better than Dorothy, or Janet or any of them.
It was just such a first romance as is only possible to certain diffident and highly sensitized temperaments, as yet unawakened to any thought of the cruder and more obvious manifestations of mutual attractions. Colin Eastwood was very nearly as ingenuous as Lily, and quite as shy.
He sat next her at picnics, and looked pitiful if the privilege was accidentally usurped by others. He once, daringly, and with shaking fingers, fastened her glove for her.
He asked her to call him Colin, and when she shyly acquiesced he was transported, but looked at her with a gaze that implored a yet further privilege.
Lily blushed at first, and then said timidly:
"And will you call me Lily?"
He said breathlessly: "Oh, I should love to." The audacity of the words made both their hearts beat quicker, so that they could say no more.
When they played tennis at the Hardinges' house, Lily was generally assigned to Colin for a partner, as it was necessary to equalize the sets by coupling the weakest player, as Lily indubitably was, with the strongest.
At first she thought that he must resent her inferiority, but it was soon evident that he did not even acknowledge it to exist. When she played well, he praised her rapturously, and when she played badly he put aside her apologies with assurances that the sun, or the wind, or some mistaken movement of his own had been against her.
Under the stimulus of his admiration, Lily suddenly blossomed into a self-confidence hitherto unknown to her, and actually learnt to like tennis, and to play passably well.
Occasionally Colin was her adversary, and then he served his balls to her as gently as possible, and she knew it, and was thrilled by his chivalry, although she never made acknowledgment of it to him in any spoken words.
Such tiny little things seemed to count. The way one looked, or didn't look-the seat one chose in the garden at tea-time. The allusions that proved how carefully certain predilections or desires had been noted. And there were the photographs.
All of them had cameras, and groups were taken. Colin always placed himself next to Lily, or sitting at her feet, or standing just behind her, for these.
Colin took photographs of Lily, because that was such a very pretty hat, if she didn't think it rude of him to make a personal remark. And might he take one of her without a hat on at all, for a change?
Lily would just take one snapshot of Colin, because he had put her camera to rights, and they must see if it had been a successful operation.
Colin manœuvred the unsuspecting Sylvia into making use of his Kodak, which was much superior to her own Brownie, so that the photograph which she took of Colin and Lily, alone together on the tennis court, appeared to be a sudden inspiration of her own.
But Lily knew that the whole was a deeply thought-out plot of Colin's, although he never said so. When the films were developed and printed, however, though Colin exhibited them freely, he let Lily know, casually, that only she and he were to have copies of that particular photograph.
The glamour of perfect summer weather lay over it all, and the scent and colour of the innumerable roses with which the Hardinges' garden seemed to be eternally decked. It was the beginning of August, when the halcyon days drew to a close, and on the last evening, they all, under a red harvest moon, went out to the favourite scene of their many excursions-a stretch of common land whereon the heather had just burst into purple bloom.
The undergraduate challenged Dorothy to a race through the thick, impeding clumps, and they sped far ahead, the youth gaining upon her every moment, in spite of a long start and the silk skirt that she had daringly wound round her waist, exposing her frilled petticoats and a shapely length of leg.
Sylvia and two contemporaries, encountered upon the way, linked arms and could be heard singing fragmentarily as they went. Kenneth, excited by the unwonted lateness of the hour, ran with the Hardinges' dog, and alternately teased and chattered to Janet, always left odd-man-out, and now relegated to the society of her father, who told her instructive things about the moon. Lily and Colin lingered far behind them all.
They were not articulate, even now, in spite of the soft allurement of the melancholy that possessed them both.
In Lily's mind, there floated a fragment once read somewhere:
... De cet adieu, si douce est la tristesse.
She said tremulously:
"I'm sorry you're both going away to-morrow."
She had not wanted to say both, but the word mysteriously forced itself from her.
"I'm sorry, too," Colin answered fervently. "I shall never forget this time. It's been the happiest of my whole life."
"I think it's been the happiest of mine, too."
Shyness overwhelmed and silenced them both.
"You don't want to catch up with the others, do you?" spoke Colin entreatingly.
"No-oh no. They're too far ahead," said Lily hurriedly.
The hillside became steeper, and the gorse-bushes that stood up amidst the tough springing heather became more numerous.
"I think I'd better go first and-and help you, if I may."
He thrust the stiff, green spires aside, and held out his hand.
Lily tremulously placed hers within his grasp.
They climbed slowly, without speaking.
"Shall we sit down for a minute?" Colin suggested, when the end of the steep path was reached, and Lily had softly, but definitely, withdrawn her hand from his.
They leant against a boulder, and Colin detected a tiny tuft of white heather.
"Let's each pick a piece of it, and not tell anyone where we found it."
Then they exchanged their pieces, rather solemnly and without speaking much. Colin's fingers lingered round Lily's as she tendered her little spray towards him, and they looked long at one another in the moonlight.
"I shall always keep mine," he murmured.
"As a remembrance," whispered Lily.
"I shan't need anything to make me remember," said the boy reproachfully. "Will you keep yours?" he added beseechingly.
"Yes."
Colin kissed his piece of heather and put it into a little pocketbook.
Lily tucked hers tenderly into the front of her gown. Then it was all over and the others joined them, and they went down the hill again all together, singing "For Auld Lang Syne," and Lily and Kenneth were left at their own lodge-gates.
And for the next few days, Lily found the picnics dull, and the tennis parties no longer events to be looked forward to, and the taking of photographs not worth while.
Once Dorothy Hardinge said to her, quite calmly: "I believe Colin Eastwood was awfully in love with you, Lily."
"Father says Colin is frightfully susceptible," said Janet quickly. "I heard Father and Mother laughing about him."
Lily did not mind the laughter of good-natured Cousin Charlie and his wife.
She wondered with shy, delicious tremors whether Colin really was in love with her, and whether some day he would come back again and ask her to marry him, and take her away to some nebulous dream world in which all true lovers had their being.
Her dreams and fancies were nearly as unsubstantial as those that she had woven round imaginary adventures, and told herself from day to day, at school. She was still only pretending to be like other people. Really Lily knew that it was all pretence to say that she was now grown up.
Philip said it from time to time, even while himself still treating her as a child, with no slightest claim to either judgment or individuality of her own.
But when he one day found her, more or less surreptitiously, childishly devouring toffee in the garden, he reminded her seriously and with displeasure, of her years.
"You don't want to eat unwholesome sweetstuff, between meals, like a little schoolboy. That's all very well for the nursery," said Philip, disregarding the fact, resentfully remembered by Lily, that no such practice had ever been allowed prevalence in the Stellenthorpe nursery.
"I don't like to see you behaving so babyishly, Lily. It's-it's undignified, and unsuitable. I don't like to see it."
He saw it no more.
Lily, although regarding detection as shameful, was either not sufficiently convinced of the heinousness of eating toffee at nineteen years old, or else lacked sufficient self-control to refrain from surreptitiously indulging her desire for sweet things.
She made inconspicuous expeditions to the village sweet-shop, and returned with her purchases in her pocket, thoroughly despising herself the while.
Guilt, and a ludicrously disproportionate terror showed plainly in her face when she once met her father, on her return by the least frequented entrance to the house.
"What have you been doing, my little pet?" Philip enquired with a suspiciousness foreign to his nature, but which must have been engendered in the most trusting of parents by Lily's confused and disconcerted expression.
"I just went up to the village," she stammered, and felt herself flushing.
Philip stared at her in a puzzled manner. "What for?" he said at last.
"Nothing, Father. Just a-a walk."
Lily hastened away from further questions with the sense of her own degradation strong upon her. She hated herself for having told a lie, and supposed that she had done so from a natural and ingrained tendency to deceive in the first place, and an uncontrollable and dishonouring passion for sweets in the second. She had become incapable of analyzing impartially the true grounds of her own moral cowardice.
Had her natural honesty of mind been less systematically and thoroughly warped, she might have received illumination from the sequel of the affair.
Philip, during the afternoon that followed their encounter, was silent with that peculiar silence which Lily knew, too well, denoted in him both grief and perplexity.
Then, at the end of the evening, he said to her suddenly:
"My little child would never do anything foolish without telling me, eh, Lily?"
"No, Father," automatically said Lily, neither of them awake to the absurd and improbable inconsistency of prefacing an act of folly by announcing it in a quarter where it would certainly receive scant encouragement.
"You must never play little, underhand tricks," said Philip nervously.
It was quite evident that he intensely disliked saying whatever he had set himself to say, and Lily's heart sank with the familiar feelings of shame and dismay as she realized that he was obliquely referring to her morning's walk.
"It's-it's not quite ladylike, not to be open and above-board. And little people have to be specially careful when they're rather older. There must never be anything like-well, like setting up a correspondence, for instance, with some youth or other, without saying anything about it."
For a moment Lily felt utterly bewildered.
"We don't want to put anything at all unpleasant into words," her father said hastily, "but sometimes a little hint.... You see, my little pet, very young people can be rather thoughtless sometimes, and then it may lead to things that are perhaps a little bit undesirable-you'll understand better when you're older. But clandestine expeditions to post letters, or to call for them, are quite out of the question, and might lead to a great deal of talk and unpleasantness."
Philip stopped to shudder at the distasteful vista of possibilities thus opened up, and the perception suddenly flashed upon Lily of his ingenious misinterpretation of the object of her morning expedition.
It afforded her the most unaffected relief.
There was no humiliation, and but little inconvenience, in being suspected of misdemeanours on a scale to which she had never aspired. It was even, mysteriously, rather gratifying.
"You understand what I mean, my darling?"
"Yes," said Lily, trying to keep extreme thankfulness out of her voice.
"Then we needn't say anything more about it." But Philip still fidgetted uneasily with his newspaper and it was evident that he had more to say, and that he much disliked the prospect of saying it.
"Of course, one likes you to have plenty of innocent and ladylike amusement," he said at last, in reluctant and distrustful tones. "Certainly one does. And Cousin Charlie's daughters and-and their friends-are everything that is nice and proper, no doubt. But I shouldn't like to think that you ever get at all-excited, or unguarded, so that people might find you a little bit-undignified."
Lily's relief was now merged in acute discomfort.
Her father must be thinking of Colin Eastwood. Had she really been undignified?
To Lily's thinking it was an unendurable word, denoting indefinable forms of unrestraint, of an underbred lack of self-respect.
"One of these days," said Philip, carefully looking away from his daughter's discomfited face and perhaps scarcely less embarrassed than was she, "one of these days I hope to see my little girl happily engaged and married to some good, suitable man. But not for a long, long while yet, and in the meantime my little Lily mustn't cheapen herself by foolish boy-and-girl nonsense."
"I haven't-" stammered Lily, scarlet.
"Hush, hush, now. You know you mustn't contradict Father like that."
The form of Philip's serious and unvehement rebukes had not varied since the days of Lily's babyhood.
"You'll be a good child, my pet, I know. If only your mother had been spared to us, there would never have been any little difficulties. You must talk to Cousin Ethel, if there's anything she can help you about-"
"But there isn't anything-" Lily was frenziedly repudiating she knew not what.
"Well, well, we needn't talk of sad, uncomfortable things, my child. Only no little hole-and-corner affairs with letter-writing, remember."
But Lily had ceased to derive relief from the evident immunity from detection of the toffee scandal that was thus implied.
Her idle dreaming about that impalpable summer romance was over, and she strove with shame to forget the very name of Colin Eastwood.
VII
"You must have a talk with Ethel, have a talk with Ethel," said Charlie Hardinge. "My dear fellow, you must have a talk with Ethel."
Philip looked gloomy and distrustful.
He did not tell himself that Ethel Hardinge always roused in him a feeling of irritation that temporarily embraced the whole family of Hardinge, nor did he realize that she had a precisely similar effect upon most of those people who, with reluctant admiration, spoke of her as being such a good mother.
He told himself instead that Ethel was the mother of three daughters, and that therefore she understood everything about all young girls.
Without enthusiasm, he embarked upon a talk with Ethel.
"My motherless little child," said Philip, thereby involving himself in misunderstanding at the very outset, since Ethel supposed him to be alluding to little Kenneth.
"No, no," said Philip, pained. "Kenneth is at school. Besides, he is a boy. It's my poor little Lily that troubles me."
"Oh, but she's not a child," said Ethel brightly. "I assure you, you mustn't think of her as a child. A girl of nineteen is grown up, or she ought to be. My Dorothy is a year younger than Lily, but I should never dream of saying she wasn't grown up. Besides, she'd resent it so much if I did!"
"I think Lily is content to let me judge for her-" said Philip stiffly.
Nothing in Lily's conduct justified the assertion-rather the reverse-but while Philip's necessity constrained him to ask for assistance, his dignity constantly impelled him to deny any need of it. This naturally increased the delicacy of his adviser's position, but Ethel Hardinge was cheerfully impervious to atmospheric conditions.
"There's a stage when they get discontented and out of hand," she remarked thoughtfully. "I went through it with Dorothy, and I'm going through it with Janet now. Girls thinking they can't get on at home, you know."
Philip was sincerely horrified.
"That is very sad and shocking," said he gravely. "Home is a young girl's natural sphere above all others, I should have thought. But I hope little Lily has no terrible ideas of that kind in her head."
"Oh, they all go through it," Ethel repeated comfortably. "It'll be my Sylvia next."
"Indeed?" said Philip, who felt no interest in Ethel's Sylvia, but would have thought it unsympathetic not to simulate one.
His conscientious observance of this self-imposed law retarded the course of the consultation a good deal, since everything that either of them said invariably served to remind Ethel of its applicability to one or more of her own children.
"It goes off, once they get other things to think about," Mrs. Hardinge observed optimistically. "Dorothy was quite all right again when we had those nice boys staying here. They had plenty of fun all together, and it quite took her mind off her grievances."
"But why should little chil-should young girls, living at home, have grievances at all?" demanded Philip piteously. "They ought to be as happy as the day is long."
"Of course, our kiddies have everything to make them jolly-and really, I think they know it, at the bottom of their hearts. Dorothy and Sylvia are cheery enough, now, and Janet is only going through a phase. But your Lily-of course it's lonelier for her. And then, she's very affectionate and sensitive, after all-my girls always say she wants bracing-perhaps it rather reacts on her spirits to know that you-that you-"
Ethel called up a fit of coughing to her aid. It was never easy to make a personal remark to Philip Stellenthorpe.
He grew more rigid than ever as the sense of this one was borne in upon him.
"You mean that my own happiness is, naturally, no longer to be found in this life? But my little Lily can know nothing of that," said he in all good faith. "I should never dream of speaking about my grief to her, or allowing it to cloud her spirits."
"I don't see how you can help it," said Ethel bluntly.
Philip sat in astonished silence.
He had never thought of his children save as beings of quite undeveloped perceptions, and it was to him an incredible and unwelcome suggestion that Lily might possibly be aware of anything that had not expressly been put into words for her information.
"We always imagined, Charlie and I, that you'd give Lily a regular season in London as soon as she grew up. I only wish we could afford it for our kiddies-but it's out of the question, with three of them."
"If Lily's dear mother had been spared to us, no doubt there would have been something of that sort," said Philip dejectedly. "But in the circumstances, it hardly occurred to me that I should actually spend three or four months in town, and take her to balls and parties and all the rest of it, myself. And I am really quite out of touch with London society nowadays. But if my duty to the child requires a sacrifice-"
"No-no," said Ethel hastily.
She rightly conjectured that the spirit in which Philip would approach the proposed immolation might safely be counted upon to victimize Lily quite as thoroughly as himself.
"Isn't there anyone to whom you could send her? It's so easy to make arrangements of that sort, as a rule. Most people are only too pleased to take a pretty girl about-by arrangement, of course."
"I could only entrust the charge of Lily to near relations, naturally," said Philip.
If Mrs. Hardinge failed to appreciate the force of the axiom, she made no sign of it.
"Surely there are aunts and people?"
"My wife was an only daughter, as of course you know, and her brothers are not married. I have only one sister, and she is unmarried and lives abroad."
Philip's manner suggested strongly that "abroad" in this connection might cover a multitude of sins. But Ethel knew all about Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe.
"Oh, but wouldn't she be the very person? I remember her quite well. Last time I was in town taking Sylvia to the dentist I met your sister in the waiting-room. We had quite a long talk."
"My sister has a small villa in Italy, outside Rome. She lives there almost altogether, and I fancy she would dislike London."
Ethel entirely disbelieved that any woman would dislike London for a sojourn of which the expenses of herself and a young and pretty companion would be liberally met. But she felt unable to put this into words which should leave Philip's susceptibilities unwounded.
So she said instead, with an air of bright inspiration:
"Then why not send Lily to Italy? It would be a splendid education. I've often thought how much I should like Janet to get a trip abroad! She's the clever one, you know-it would be rather wasted on Dorothy, I'm afraid. From what your sister told me she has a most interesting circle of friends amongst the English colony in Rome, and knows all the Embassy people."
"Yes, that is so."
Philip appeared to be much more favourably struck with this scheme than with Ethel's previous suggestion.
He put from him the painful recollection of certain heartless words, spoken nearly ten years ago, and tried only to remember that poor Clo was his nearest relation, and Lily's aunt.
After all, she had loved the children in her own way, and Philip had long ago euphemized her terrible speech about Vonnie into "poor Clo's rather unsympathetic way of speaking about things that should be held sacred."
Whenever Philip Stellenthorpe came to within measurable distance of a decision, however, it was his invariable instinct to make earnest search for difficulties or disadvantages that might stand in the way of its execution.
"There are several drawbacks to the plan, of course," he began at once. "My sister may have other arrangements of her own, or the idea may not appeal to Lily."
"I shouldn't dream of consulting her, if I were you," said Ethel in a surprised voice. "Just tell her it's all settled, as a tremendous surprise for her, and she'll be delighted. Girls are like that."
"I'm sure my little girl would never be ungrateful for anything I had arranged on her behalf," said Philip sadly. "But I don't know whether this is the right time of year for Italy. I should have to find out about that."
"You would hardly send her for less than six months, surely," urged the practical Mrs. Hardinge. "Some of that would be sure to be the right time of year."
"And what about the journey?"
Philip pounced upon a further debatable point with gloomy triumph.
Ethel misunderstood him.
"That would be one point in favour of letting her go this autumn. She wouldn't have that long journey in the heat."
"I was wondering who should take her."
"Take her? Isn't she old enough to take herself?"
"It is one of my rules," said Philip sublimely, "that Lily should not go about alone. I have never allowed her to travel by herself, and I shouldn't dream of letting her begin by a journey to Italy."
"Of course, if she's never travelled by herself, she can't begin by going all that way. Our kiddies always go about together-but perhaps one by herself may be different. Only it seems a pity she should be so helpless at her age."
Philip looked offended as he always did at any form of criticism.
"You could send a maid with her."
"My sister's establishment would probably not admit of an additional servant."
"She could see Lily into the train in Paris, and then come back. Come, you wouldn't mind her going straight through in a ladies' carriage by herself, would you?" said Ethel persuasively.
Philip reluctantly conceded that this might be permitted, less because the idea appeared to him satisfactory, than because he had just thought of a fresh objection to the whole scheme, and was desirous of bringing it forward immediately.
"I should be sorry if Lily made her friends amongst Roman Catholics, I must admit."
"I daresay most of Miss Stellenthorpe's friends are English. I believe there's quite a colony there. In any case, she wouldn't be likely to be attracted by a foreigner, would she?"
Ethel's abrupt descent from the general to the particular slightly scandalized her hearer.
"No-no. I don't know that I was thinking of anything very specific," he said untruthfully. "Only on general grounds."
"Oh well, of course, she's very pretty. There are sure to be plenty of people who'll admire her. That boy we had here, Colin Eastwood, was a good deal smitten."
Ethel laughed comfortably, but Philip remained quite unsmiling.
"Boy-and-girl nonsense is all very well," he remarked in tones which implied the contrary, "but of course it can't lead to anything, and only puts foolish ideas into the heads of little people. I naturally hope to see my poor little Lily happily and suitably settled some day, but there's plenty of time before her."
"I approve of early marriages," Ethel declared stoutly. "I hope if our girls are to marry, that they'll all marry young."
"I have no doubt of it," mechanically said Philip. "Thank you a thousand times for your help. I shall think over our discussion, and let you know what I decide."
He went away trying not to let himself perceive that it would afford his own harassed sense of paternal responsibility an immense relief to send Lily away from home for several months.
It was a disappointment to him when she received his announcement almost doubtfully, although he would certainly have felt, and said it, to be sad and unnatural had she exhibited unrestrained pleasure at the prospect of leaving home.
They continued to remain, therefore, at cross-purposes during the correspondence embarked upon with Aunt Clo, and the resulting arrangements for Lily's journey in September to the villa at Genazzano.
"No doubt Aunt Clo will either meet you in Rome herself, or send somebody else to meet you, and take you to Genazzano. The difficulty is your journey as far as Rome. Your Cousin Ethel suggested sending one of the maids with you to Paris, and letting her see you into the train there. Or I could take you so far myself."
Philip, sighed heavily. He detested travelling.
"Why couldn't I go by myself?" Lily demanded, suddenly rebellious. "I'm sure Cousin Ethel would let Dorothy."
Philip looked at her in unfeigned surprise.
"Why, my little pet," he said gently, "you know very well that Father doesn't allow you to go about alone."
"But why?"
"Not that argumentative tone, my child. Some day you will be very, very grateful for all the care that I have lavished on you, and perhaps when it's too late you may wish that you'd shown a more affectionate and dutiful recognition of it. Now, don't let me hear anything more about it. You know it's a very old rule that you mayn't go about by yourself, so there's no more to be said."
And such was the time-honoured immutability of those arbitrary rules, that there really was no more to be said. It occurred not at all to Philip and only remotely to Lily, that the manner, if not the matter, of his prohibitions was senselessly tyrannical. He was honestly convinced that his favourite catchword-"Father says it will be better so" would serve as ample justification to the minds of his children for any commands that he might choose to lay upon them.
The resulting condition of resentful obedience induced in Lily, who was at once too sensitive and too fond of her father to risk reducing him to one of those states of despairing depression that were his only form of displaying vexation, Philip described as "a nice, happy, friendly, little home-party, with no unpleasant discussions."
Since the death of his wife, he had known no more definite happiness than his own pitifully negative contentment whenever such a state of affairs appeared to him to prevail in his house. He would have thought it a disloyalty to Eleanor's memory to suppose that he could ever be happy again.
The children might be so-in fact he wished them to be so, and was bewildered and hurt when his own lack of proportion created an atmosphere to which Lily, at least, reacted at a cost infinitely greater to herself than either of them realized.
Kenneth, ten years younger, was different.
The "difference" of Kenneth, in fact, was becoming positively appalling, to his entirely humourless father.
Kenneth disregarded the code with blatant impunity, and that not from a spirit of defiance, but apparently from sheer constitutional inability to regard it seriously.
He obviously did not believe that grown-up people were infallible.
Remonstrance never made him cry, nor imputations of heartlessness and disloyalty.
He never willingly sat upon anybody's knee after he was three years old, but would say cheerfully: "I'd rather not, thank you," as he walked away.
He held opinions of his own, and expressed them freely.
He did not instantly relinquish them when Philip gravely and gently told him that he was an ignorant little boy and that Father always knew best.
He was addicted to making personal remarks.
He spoke crudely and candidly about subjects that Philip had always tacitly impressed upon his children as being sad or unpleasant, and therefore unfit to be mentioned freely.
He asked indiscreet questions.
"How old are you, Father?"
"Hush, hush, little boy. That's a very rude question. You know you must never ask grown-up people their age."
"Why not?"
"Because it's very bad manners."
"Cousin Charlie asked Lily how old she was, the other day, and Lily didn't mind."
"That's different." Philip was at last beginning to learn that one could not put an end to Kenneth's enquiries merely by saying: "Come, come, you know Father doesn't like arguments."
"Cousin Charlie is a great deal older than Lily, and can say what he likes to her."
"Then it's only old people who mind being asked their age. Is that why you won't tell me yours, Father, because you're so old?"
Philip was exceedingly sensitive about his age, and quite incapable of assessing the utter meaninglessness of his son's estimate.
"That's a naughty, heartless way of speaking," he said, deeply hurt. "I don't want to talk any more to little people who can speak like that."
"Oh well, it doesn't matter," said Kenneth with supreme indifference. "I s'pose you're about seventy or eighty. I didn't know you'd mind being asked."
In the last assertion lay the painful core of the matter. Kenneth really didn't know, as Lily, and even Vonnie, had known, as much by intuition as by training, what Philip would "mind."
He transgressed constantly, and was gaily impervious to the devastating effect of his transgressions upon his father and, by reflection, upon Lily. But Lily secretly admired Kenneth, and envied him that pachydermatous courage of his own convictions that she herself had never acquired.
Kenneth was never afraid of being himself, although that self in no slightest degree corresponded to Philip's ideal of a motherless little boy of nine years old.
He went to school and was not in the least homesick, and he seemed to be neither grieved nor ashamed when Philip expressed great disappointment at his first report.
"I hoped you would have been proud to bring back some nice prize or other to show me," said Philip wistfully.
"Prizes are fearful rot," said Kenneth.
He afterwards remarked in a detached way to Lily that, after all, what he did at school was his own business, more or less.
"Father pays for you to go there," said Lily, instinctively aware that only such practical considerations would carry any weight to her youthful hearer.
"Yes, of course. But he needn't want to know whether I've made any nice friends, and rot of that sort."
"I know it's rather aggravating to be asked about that sort of thing," half whispered Lily, feeling herself to be guilty of treason. "But after all, it's because he's fond of us, that he wants to know everything about us."
"Being fond is such rot," said Kenneth, in his graceless and limited vocabulary.
Lily was quite glad to see him return to school before her own departure for Italy.
"I'm afraid you won't see your sister at home next holidays, my boy, so you and I will have to cheer one another up," said Philip nervously. "But it'll be a great treat for Lily to go abroad."
"Mind you send me some stamps for my collection, Lily," Kenneth said earnestly.
"Come, come, Kenneth. Try and not think quite so much about your own little concerns. Now say good-bye, my boy."
But the most determined sentimentalist upon earth could extract no conventional emotion out of Kenneth.
"Good-bye," he said casually, and turned an inattentive cheek to Lily's salute.
She would willingly have omitted the ceremony of kissing him altogether, knowing that he disliked it, but for her certainty that Philip, shocked and pained, would have insisted upon its due performance.
"I hope little Kenneth is not a heartless boy," said his father, turning away dejectedly from the scene of farewell that had impressed him so unsatisfactorily.
But hope was not the predominant note in his voice.
Lily was so sorry for her father-all the sorrier because she was conscious that her own inmost sympathies lay with Kenneth's point of view-that she felt it incumbent upon her to show no elation at all at her own projected departure, although she was in reality fast becoming both excited and pleased at the prospect of going into entirely new surroundings.
The result of which filial piety was that Philip told Ethel Hardinge, in a resigned way and with a smile of great melancholy, that little people realized very few of the sacrifices made for them, and one must not expect to see them display gratitude.
VIII
"Aha!" cried Aunt Clo in a loud, ringing contralto.
She stood on the small, empty platform and waved her hand above her head with a spacious, graceful gesture, as Lily got out of the train.
Miss Stellenthorpe's short, iron-grey curls were uncovered and parted in a masculine style on one side of her head, and she wore a dark-blue, fisherman's jersey and a pair of dark-blue knickerbockers. Her large, well-shaped legs and feet were bare.
"Aha! Good! Good!"
She kissed Lily upon both cheeks in an emphatic, foreign sort of way, and gazed at her with a fondly humorous smile.
"Ecco!" said Aunt Clo.
She hurried Lily across the little platform, affectionately grasping her arm, and talking so cordially all the while that her niece felt quite unable to interrupt her.
At last she said:
"My luggage, Aunt Clo. I'm afraid there's a trunk-"
"A trunk! Dio mio! Let us not forget the trunk!"
Aunt Clo sped back again, appearing not at all disconcerted, and disposed of the trunk question with much animation.
"The trunk," she exclaimed to Lily in mock-bombastic style, "the trunk is provided for. All is well with the trunk. It appears at the gate of Il Monasterio au plaisir de ce brave Lorenzo."
There were many French phrases and a few Italian ones scattered through Aunt Clo's conversation, and she frequently gave a strangely foreign construction to the sentences that she spoke in English.
Lily was impressed by her fluency, by the perfection of her French, and by a certain humorous candour that Aunt Clo displayed in voicing her opinions.
Nevertheless, she could not quite kill her remembrance of having, as a child, disliked Aunt Clo.
Outside the station was a very small waggonette with a striped red and yellow awning. A sleepy, good-natured-looking peasant, his shirt open at the neck, sat on the box.
"Ecco, Umbertino!"
Miss Stellenthorpe waved her niece into the waggonette and sprang in after her. The vigor of her ascent seemed out of all proportion to the dilatory progress that they made along a baked and arid-looking road, the fields on either side unrelieved by any shade.
"But the vineyards round Genazzano!" said Aunt Clo expressively. "Patienza!"
Genazzano proved to be a small village consisting of one cobble-stoned street, winding up the side of a steep hill, and an ancient grey pile that stood raised from the roadside at the top of half a dozen irregular steps.
"The Cathedrale," Aunt Clo introduced it.
A mattress, imperfectly concealed behind a heavy red curtain, hung before the entrance to the cathedral after the Italian fashion.
A small, brown-skinned child was squeezing its way inside, and a sturdy peasant woman, carrying a baby and a basket, was pushing her way out.
"Buon' giorno, Teresa mia!" cried Aunt Clo, waving her hand.
The woman smiled in reply.
"This is the country of the Miraculous Virgin," Miss Stellenthorpe told Lily. "The Madonna of Genazzano. The statue is in the cathedral and we have a wonderful procession once a year. Ah! ce cher Genazzano!"
Tenderness radiated from her face and voice.
The waggonette drew up before a small iron fence that enclosed a tiny stone house, built along the four sides of a square. A little cloister ran all round the house, and the space in the middle formed a courtyard where shrubs flowered in painted green pots.
There was no garden, other than the small and apparently untended courtyard, but within the house, Aunt Clo waved through the window at a thick trellis covered with vine tendrils and fig-leaves, and framing a sturdy arbour beneath which stood a rustic bench and table, and said:
"La Tonnelle."
Beyond lay a sloping track ground on which the vines grew round poles that stood in long, converging lines, reminding Lily of a miniature edition of a Kentish hop-field.
"Truly have not my lines fallen to me in pleasant places?" Aunt Clo enquired musingly. It was perhaps a slight relief to Lily that her tone required no reply. A bald negative or affirmative seemed so inadequate a rejoinder to Aunt Clo's rounded, elaborate periods.
When they were sitting in the tonnelle that evening, however, just before the falling of the brief Italian dusk, Miss Stellenthorpe made enquiries to which more detailed answers were necessary.
"And what of Philip-what of your father, Lily?"
Lily answered as fully as was compatible with that old obsession that it was disloyal to present one's near relations to the gaze of another in any aspect save that particular one in which they might choose to regard themselves. She knew that Philip often described himself as a broken man, and conscientiously did her best to put a picture of a broken man before Aunt Clo.
"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, and "Ecco!" and nodded with deliberation, as though merely acquiescing in the recital of a state of affairs that had long been known to her.
"Nous nous aimons de loin," she said with resignation. "It doesn't do to remove the crutches before a lame man is ready to walk. I myself have stood without a prop all my life, and I wanted to see your father and mother strong and straight and unsupported, too. But perhaps I was hard and hasty. I was young. They clutched at the artificial supports that I tried to make them spurn-they resented the council of perfection.... Well, well... I thank whatever gods there be, that I myself have learnt to stand upright and face the sunlight."
Aunt Clo drew up her tall person as she spoke, and threw back her head in a gesture expressive of freedom and gallantry.
Later on, when Lily and she had dinner together, Miss Stellenthorpe became less metaphorical and more colloquial.
Her appearance was a surprise to her niece. She had discarded the blue jersey and the knickerbockers for an admirably fitting drapery of flame-coloured brocade, closely following the lines of her fine figure, and a Greek fillet encircled her head. Her arms were bare to the shoulder and Lily, glancing surreptitiously downwards, saw that she wore flame-coloured stockings and shoes that were laced sandal-wise.
"Certainly, I descend to the conventions in the evening," cried Aunt Clo, not altogether truthfully, as her gaze followed Lily's. "Would you believe it, Lily, that I shocked Genazzano profoundly when I first lived here!"
Lily felt that she could believe it easily.
"'But,' they cried, 'the signorina shows her legs! She wears clothes like a man! It is immodest!' Imagine it-such a point of view here in Genazzano, which is like an earthly Paradise. I was confounded."
"'But is this Suburbia?' I asked. One expects Suburbia to be shocked-or even the provinces. Lily!" cried Aunt Clo in a tone of playful accusation. "I believe your father would be shocked. My legs-the legs that God gave me-would shock your father, if he saw them uncovered."
Once more the very fervour of Lily's inward acquiescence kept her silent.
"Oh, these people who are shocked!" said Aunt Clo with a musical groan. "But Genazzano is now used to my knickerbockers-who knows but that one day your father may be reconciled to the thought of uncovered legs? Or would he say-ha, ha!-would he say that they were immodest? an indecent spectacle?... I believe that's what he would say!"
Aunt Clo, speaking with mournful roguishness, seemed disposed, in a breezy, open-minded sort of way, to attribute the most prurient-minded views and expressions to the rest of humanity.
She told Lily that there was a girl in the village who was suspected of being about to have an illegitimate child. She was only fifteen.
"I have sent for her to come up here to-morrow. Naturally, her relations can get nothing out of her. They have frightened her, and made her believe that she has done something to be ashamed of."
She leant forward and scrutinized Lily's face by the indifferent light of the two oil-lamps in the room.
"Biglia Mia! But I've made you blush! It suits you, and is charming-but why-why?"
Lily was indeed blushing, deeply annoyed with herself for so doing, and yet irresistibly compelled to it by Aunt Clo's open mention of subjects that were never referred to at home, and had only been furtively whispered about by the least endurable of the girls at school.
"I-I suppose I'm not used to hearing those things talked about," she stammered. "I've never been told anything-I'm not even sure that I know what 'illegitimate' means, exactly."
"Philip's child-Philip's child!" almost moaned Aunt Clo. "I might have guessed it! He would never face life himself, and he brings up his child to suppose that ignorance means innocence. Oh, horrible!"
She shuddered and almost sprang from her seat. "Come out under the starlight, my child-you want no fruit? That's right-you and I must have some talk."
Lily felt ashamed of the irrepressible feeling of disappointment with which she followed Miss Stellenthorpe, whirled away from her beautiful untasted plateful of ripe figs.
But, of course, illegitimacy was not a subject to be discussed over dessert.
Aunt Clo, however, said nothing more about illegitimacy. She began instead to tell Lily how, long ago, she had solemnly warned Philip and Eleanor that they were refusing to face Truth; to look at facts as they were.
"It was about the poor little Yvonne. She would have been saved, if they had brought themselves to acknowledge her weakness, instead of trying to persuade themselves and the world that she was like other children. Let me see-you were two years younger-but you can remember?"
"Yes," said Lily rather curtly.
Vonnie had been so seldom mentioned, since her death, and then always in such consecrated phrases that Lily felt Aunt Clo's outspokenness almost as an indecency.
"Aha! nous avons changé tout cela-but when you were mites together, I remember very well how superior you thought yourself to poor little Vonnie. Hardly your fault, child-you were the favourite. They never disguised it, although, of course, they never would acknowledge it, in so many words. Ah, quel système!"
Aunt Clo shook her head.
"Dear little one, how much you've improved since then!"
There was delicate approbation in her tone, and in the large, genial, scrutinizing eye that Lily could just perceive, gleamingly turned upon her in the moonlight.
Although, theoretically, Lily supposed herself to be striving after perfection, it caused her a distinct feeling of resentment to hear that she had "improved," but she dishonestly attributed her annoyance to her growing conviction that it would be in better taste if Aunt Clo were rather less candid in criticism of her niece's nearest relations.
With her disconcerting penetration, Miss Stellenthorpe seemed to be aware of some such unsympathetic atmosphere surrounding her.
"You mustn't resent my plain speaking. Pour moi, il n'y a que la vérit. When we have known one another a little longer, my Lily, you will realize that truth is an obsession with me. Nothing but the truth. Deceit in any shape or form is the one unforgivable sin!"
Lily gave a fleeting glimpse to certain aspects of herself with a feeling of veritable horror, and a most sincere resolution that these must be for ever concealed from her hostess.
It was impossible not to desire Miss Stellenthorpe's approval. She was so spaciously generous in her appreciations, so gravely despondent in her well-weighed condemnations.
It was true that Lily was sometimes surprised at the courses taken by appreciation or condemnation alike.
There was the case of the village girl, Carla. Nothing could be more evident than that Aunt Clo's impassioned interest in her situation amounted to positive enjoyment. Lily heard her aunt's voice in fluent rhetoric, morning after morning, encouraging and upholding Carla, exhorting and rebuking Carla's tearful mother, eloquently proclaiming her championship of Carla to her own servant, to the young man who brought the milk, to the postman, in fact to anyone of the little community of peasantry at Genazzano who would listen to her.
"Of course the man is the parish priest at Sta. Lucia-I don't doubt it. So, thank God, there can be no question of making him marry her. Thank God for that, say I!" Aunt Clo fervently told Lily at breakfast one morning.
"But wouldn't it be better if she was married before-before-?" Lily blushed again, bewildered.
"Never!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, striking the table with her open hand. "It would be a far greater wrong than the first, to compel that poor child to marriage."
The point of view implied was so new to Lily that she immediately felt, in her complete reaction from the standards set before her in her childhood, that it was probably the right point of view.
But as, for some inexplicable reason, she very much objected to those prolonged dissections of the affaire Carla in which Aunt Clo was so ready to indulge, Lily gently turned the conversation to a christening which she had seen take place in the cathedral on the previous afternoon. Aunt Clo was always ready to be intensely interested in ceremonies celebrated by the Catholic or other alien denominations, that would have bored her extremely in the Church to which she belonged.
But on this occasion, she showed but little enthusiasm on the subject of the postmaster's twins.
"Ah, and they've a child not a year old yet-and Heaven alone knows how many Augustino and Maria have had altogether. Criminal, criminal! When will they learn the folly and wickedness of breeding in that reckless way!"
Lily could suggest no helpful solution to a problem of which she scarcely grasped the outline.
To her it merely seemed as if Aunt Clo had no approbation to spare for babies unless they were illegitimate ones.
Staying at Genazzano, Lily began for the first time to experience in some slight degree what is meant by the liberty of the individual.
Aunt Clo showered books and opinions upon her, but encouraged her to form her own judgments of either. Not only was there no disloyalty in differing from Aunt Clo, but she seemed positively to prefer argument to acquiescence. Certainly, to adduce an opposite point of view, generally led to a lucid and eloquent exposition, embellished by many polished French phrases, of Aunt Clo's opinions of the subject in question, but she always said-"Aha?" and "So!" very kindly indeed to Lily's diffident interpolations.
There were certain, quite trivial, little things, nevertheless, which Lily felt that her aunt would despise in her, and the compulsion under which she thought herself to conceal these kept alive in her the old guilty feeling that she was not really like other people and was only pretending to be grown up.
She would rather have been detected by Miss Stellenthorpe in a forgery, than in the infantile practice of eating sweets, so insistent was her certainty that Aunt Clo would be far less contemptuous of the former predilection than of the latter.
Yet they had never discussed the matter, although Aunt Clo, in the midst of reminiscences of a day spent in Paris in company of a wealthy American friend, once said, in her emphatically descriptive style:
"He was so full of petits soins intimes, dear person! There we were in one of those enormous glittering pâtisseries shops, and I couldn't prevent him from loading me with great boxes of pâtes de guimauve, and huge Easter eggs of pink crystallized sugar... and all the while there was the most heavenly riot of scent and colour in a flower-shop next door. If only one could have exchanged all the bonbons for one single bunch of violets!"
Aunt Clo heaved a sigh of retrospective regret, and not for the world would Lily have owned to her own degraded preference for pâtes de guimauve and pink crystallized sugar above all the bunches of violets that Parma could produce.
Lily reflected impatiently that when she was a child it had been naughty to want sweets, and now that she was grown up, it would be childish. It seemed that there was no time of life at which such a desire could ever be laid claim to honourably. As for Aunt Clo, she often seemed to be quite unaware that such a thing as food existed.
When they went for expeditions, and visited Roman churches and museums, Lily was greatly ashamed of the undoubted fact that her enjoyment was constantly haunted by the fear that Aunt Clo, towards twelve o'clock, would exclaim in a breezy manner:
"Il Palatino, now, my Lily! Shall we take a base advantage of the Germans and Americans, who will all be flocking in search of food, and have the glory of the place to ourselves?"
And Aunt Clo would spring vigorously up the steepest paths, under the hottest sun, and very likely remember nothing more about luncheon at all until it was time to take the tram to the station for their train, when she might observe with one of her most negligent gestures:
"Have we eaten? I forget! But qu'importe, in the midst of this-and this-and this!"
Once they even missed the train that should at least have returned them to Genazzano in time for tea, because Aunt Clo leaped out of the tram just before the station was reached, at the sudden realization that Lily had never been inside the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli.
Impervious alike to hunger, thirst, and fatigue, she remained on her feet for nearly an hour in the dim, cool church, pointing out in an impassioned undertone the reasons why certain frescoes were to be admired, and shuddering away from others to which the chief drawback appeared to be that all tourists always looked at them first.
Aunt Clo's knowledge of Art in all its branches seemed to be almost illimitable, and she gave Lily a copy of a thin book of her own, that bore upon the title-page: "Beauty: a Finger-post. By Clotilde Stellenthorpe. Privately printed."
The Finger-post pointed to the great necessity for surrounding oneself with Spaces, and Silences, and occasional Splashes-of light or colour, or sound-and also indicated deleterious features in many hitherto accepted standards. It rather inclined to leave the reader with the impression that Beauty, as a whole, had received a thorough revision at the hands of the author of the book, and would henceforth be found to be within the range of the book's appreciators. There was an underlying suggestion that those outside this circle had not yet reached the stage of development at which Beauty could be of any advantage to them.
Nowadays, Aunt Clo no longer wrote about Beauty. She told Lily that she tried to live it, instead. Everything in the tiny house at Genazzano had been chosen for the sake of either form or colour, and the little bronze mirror that hung, sloping, over Miss Stellenthorpe's writing-table possessed a further qualification.
"I like to go through life le sourire aux lèvres," said Aunt Clo, markedly accentuating the habitual pleasantness of her expression as she spoke. "It is pleasing, refreshing-to look up and meet a smile. What will you, if it happens to be one's own?"
Aunt Clo laughed outright at her own quaint fancy. "When I raise my head from my writing, I see reflected in my little mirror a pair of steady eyes, a face that holds the lines graven by many experiences, some grave, some gay, and a smile-I hope a strong, steadfast, humorous smile. Time was, my Lily, when the face that I saw in the mirror was that of a tragic muse. Thank God, the phase has passed!"
Aunt Clo not infrequently threw out similar sombre indications that her past had held some deep, unspecified cause for woe.
She was very kind to Lily, although frequently deploring in her the traces of her upbringing.
"You must learn to say Yes to Life!" she cried ringingly from time to time, her hand upon her niece's shoulder, her handsome head tilted backwards. "You know your Nietzsche?"
Lily shook her head, feeling much abashed and conscious that Aunt Clo thought her very young indeed.
"Courage!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. "Ah, jeunesse, jeunesse!"
Lily reflected quite irritably that Aunt Clo might just as well have said: "Youth, youth!" and have done with it.
IX
"To-day-I give battle!"
Aunt Clo's voice sounded as though the prospect filled her with mingled elation and concern.
"Can you amuse yourself, my Lily, if I leave you for the day? Books-piano-flowers-birds-" Aunt Clo enumerated the resources of her establishment with large and expressive wavings of her well-shaped hands over the breakfast-table.
"I can write some letters, and you have lent me so many books. I shall have plenty to do."
"Benissimo!"
"Shall you be away all day?" said Lily tentatively. She had already learnt that Miss Stellenthorpe rather welcomed enquiries on subjects of which the importance apparently required an extreme reticence of reply.
A shade of gravity at once fell across her face. "Ah! who can tell? If the mission is to be successful, a day is not too long... but I am very much afraid. Not fearful, you understand, cara, but-let me say-aware of responsibility-immense responsibility."
Lily felt that she, too, must look serious, in sympathy, and regretfully realized that Aunt Clo was about to rise abstractedly from the table, although her niece greatly desired another breakfast roll. Sometimes, interested in discussion, Aunt Clo would sit over a meal interminably, her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her keen, handsome face. At others, she would rise impatiently, flinging her napkin to the ground, and appearing regardless of the incompleteness of her niece's meal.
Lily had never yet found the necessary courage to remain in her place and continue stolidly to eat. Aunt Clo had a curious faculty for throwing into relief the grossness of material needs.
She now stood at the open window and addressed Lily slowly and sadly.
"Little one, do you know what it is to see a frail, foolish, lovely butterfly dashing itself against a lighted globe? To seek desperately to turn it elsewhere, to set it free into the cool, dark night outside-and yet to see it return again and again in search of its own destruction?"
Lily nodded. She always found it difficult to reply adequately in words when Aunt Clo became, as she often did, metaphorical.
"I go," said Miss Stellenthorpe, her hands extended, palms uppermost, "I go to try and deliver the butterfly from the lamp to-day. I can tell you no more, my Lily."
She left the house with the same mixture of portentous foreboding and exhilaration in her bearing, saying to Lily in farewell, as though her new simile still pleased her:
"Who knows but that I myself may come back with singed wings! Not for nothing has one the privilege of spending oneself upon others!"
"I hope it will be all right," said Lily-inadequately, she felt, as usual.
Aunt Clo also appeared to be conscious of the inadequacy, for she replied very gravely indeed:
"Ah! That is what it can never be. Addio!" She waved her hand above her head and strode away, clad in the blue jersey and the knickerbockers which she never discarded in the day-time, except when proceeding on a sight-seeing expedition to Rome.
Lily turned back into the house, and felt rather guilty because she was relieved by the prospect of spending a whole day in solitude, free from the slight tension of spirit that always assailed her in the lofty atmosphere wherein Aunt Clo seemed usually to exist. She felt still more guilty a little later on, when she went in search of a book.
Aunt Clo had recommended several volumes to her niece from the many, bearing the stamp of the London Library, that lay about the house.
"Pater," had said Aunt Clo. "Incredible that you have not yet made acquaintance with the beloved Pater! Or Fénelon. Do you know Fénelon? Then there is the little 'Cinque-cento' series-light, of course, but full of appeal. Or you may care for old friends, perhaps-I have Froissard, Ruskin, d'Annunzio-but not in a translation, I fear. Take your choice, bambina mia-I make you free of all my most precious companions."
Lily tried hard not to remember Aunt Clo's generous suggestions as she made her way to a small and remote bookcase that she had observed, on the first evening of her arrival at Genazzano, in a corner of the passage. The books were small and old-fashioned looking, and Lily had had no difficulty in discovering that almost all were children's books, that no doubt dated from Aunt Clo's incredible childhood. And Lily liked children's books, just as she liked toys, and sweets, and other babyish diversions, and she was just as profoundly ashamed of the one predilection as of the other.
She had read the volumes pressed upon her by Aunt Clo, and had liked one or two of them, whilst finding the majority strangely wearisome, but all the time there had lurked at the back of her mind a longing recollection of those children's books that were never taken from the shelf.
She knew that she would really enjoy them much more than even the novels conceded to her youthful tastes by Aunt Clo: "Jude the Obscure," "Daisy Miller," and "Sandra Belloni," none of which she had felt herself able to appreciate, or even to understand.
It was all part of that old sense that she was not a real, live person at all, but only a little girl pretending.
The relief of dropping the pretence was undeniable. Lily chose "The Little Duke" because it had pictures, a book called "The Magic Beads" because she liked the name, and a volume of fairy-tales because she always loved fairy-tales. She took them out into the garden.
She was a little bit ashamed of herself, because she felt so happy, knowing that it was childish pleasure in the story-books, and the sunniness of the day and her own feeling of freedom, that made her happy.
She had so often been told that happiness is the attribute of youth that she believed it, although she herself was young and not particularly happy. And as she had also heard youth spoken of contemptuously, or else with amused patronage, Lily had retained an impression that happiness was something slightly to be despised, especially when springing from trivial causes.
She had lunch by herself and kept "The Magic Beads" propped open on the table in front of her, and ate several more of the enormous purple figs than she would have eaten had Aunt Clo, with her superhuman indifference to food, been sitting, very erect and animated, opposite to her.
The afternoon was even lazier and more blissful than the morning had been, the joy of it somehow enhanced as it became more liable to interruption. But Miss Stellenthorpe had not returned by five o'clock. Evidently the butterfly was showing determination, in its pursuit of the flame.
It was nearly six o'clock when Lily heard sounds that caused her to bestow the three small and shabby volumes into her work-bag, which she had guiltily extracted from disuse from the bottom of her trunk for the purpose, and hasten to the little iron gate in welcome.
Aunt Clotilde was not alone, and she looked, if possible, even more exhilarated than she usually looked after some particularly strenuous exertion.
"Ecco! I return with a friend, my Lily!"
Was this the butterfly, or the lamp?
Lily at once rejected the former hypothesis, and felt doubtful even of the latter, as she exchanged greetings with Aunt Clo's friend.
He was a very tall Englishman, in whose long face Lily discovered some freakish resemblance to a good-looking camel, and he had small, tawny eyes that twinkled, and very crisp curly hair, touched with iron-grey. His shoulders were so broad and his carriage so erect that even Aunt Clo seemed unimposing beside him.
Lily did not learn his name at once, since Miss Stellenthorpe had merely waved their introduction with both hands, and since throughout the evening she called the visitor either "Amico," "my very dear Friend," or "Mon cher."
It appeared that Aunt Clo's very dear friend was serving on a Royal Commission for the investigation of something unspecified, that compelled him to sojourn in Rome, now a hot and arid desert.
"But della Torre, you know the young Marchese della Torre, of course? Well, he is actually kind enough to stay on in a corner of the Palazzo della Torre, and make me his guest. What a good fellow he is-I met him once or twice in England, that's all-and now he turns up trumps like this! Isn't he a brick?"
The hearty English colloquialisms positively rang through the little room still vibrant with the cosmopolitan inversions and polished elegancies of Aunt Clo's habitual speech. Aunt Clo, however, was more animated than ever, and commented vivaciously several times upon the good fortune that had brought about the encounter with her friend.
"Would that I could offer you the hospitality of mon toit de chaumière, amico! But alas! even my grey hairs would not protect me from the tongues of ce bon Genazzano. I dare not do it," cried Aunt Clo in humorous despair. "But we meet again, is it not so?"
"I hope so! I should hope so indeed. Won't you and your niece come in one morning, and let us do some sight-seeing together, and then perhaps you will allow me to have the pleasure of giving you lunch at the Grand Hotel?"
He addressed himself to Miss Stellenthorpe, but after her gracious and sprightly acceptance of the invitation, the Englishman's kindly, twinkling gaze turned triumphantly to Lily.
She smiled at him shyly and almost involuntarily, attracted by his eagerness and simplicity, and perhaps by the manifest admiration in his glance. "Why not to-morrow?" he cried. "Do come in to-morrow. What could we go and look at to-morrow?"
"Why not San Pietro?" said Aunt Clo.
"As a matter of fact, I've been there already," said the guest with great simplicity. "But by all means-"
"Amico," said Aunt Clo, with some severity in her voice, "you do not see San Pietro in one visit-nor yet in two, nor perhaps two hundred. Je vous donne rendezvous at the Bronze Door at eleven to-morrow morning. Va bene?"
Lily looked forward to the proposed excursion and hoped that the Marchese would be as agreeable as was his friend.
She learnt from Aunt Clo that the name of the latter was Nicholas Aubray, that she had met him first in Paris, several years ago, and had then personally demonstrated to him the beauties of the Louvre.
"Not altogether a Philistine," said Aunt Clo thoughtfully. "There are possibilities there, my Lily; undoubtedly, possibilities. Ce bon Nicholas! I wonder what he finds in common with Giulio della Torre!"
Lily wondered too, when she met the Marchese della Torre on the following morning. He looked much younger than did Mr. Aubray, was extremely good-looking in an elegant pink-and-bronze style, and was meticulously clad in a beautifully-cut grey suit, with a soft shirt, a pink tie, pink socks, and shining brown boots. Miss Stellenthorpe's acquaintance with him was slight, she had told her niece, but she addressed him as della Torre, in Continental fashion, and extended the back of her hand for him to kiss. The Marchese also kissed Lily's hand, and she fancied that she saw amusement lurking in Nicholas Aubray's long, lean face.
She had expected that Aunt Clo, as usual, would live up to her rôle of connaisseuse in Beauty, and would deliver eloquent and pungently-worded dissertations upon the more eclectic subjects for admiration that surrounded them.
But it speedily became astoundingly evident that Aunt Clo's erudition was out-matched. Lily and Mr. Aubray, obediently waiting to be told what they might admire, found themselves overlooked in the clash of conflicting authorities. The Marchese gracefully countered all Miss Stellenthorpe's artistic and historical allusions with others even more recondite, and appeared to have command of ejaculatory phrases in at least six languages to her three.
"Michelangelo-il maestro!" said Aunt Clo reverently, gazing up at the dome.
"You forget Bramante!" cried the Marchese in tones of courteous anguish. "Aïe! you forget Bramante!"
"Most certainly I do not forget Bramante," said Aunt Clo with dignified annoyance. "But I put the Maestro first."
The Marchese bowed with a gesture that far outdid, in its appreciative humility, the tone of Aunt Clo's tribute, through which an undeniable asperity had pierced.
"E le due San Gallo?" murmured the Marchese.
"Penuzzi!" Aunt Clo retorted with flashing eyes.
"Rosellino," said the Marchese politely, but securing the last word, since Miss Stellenthorpe had nothing ready with which to defeat the recollection of Rosellino.
"Your aunt is a wonderful person," said Nicholas Aubray in lowered tones to Lily. "She knows everything about Art, I suppose?"
"Yes, I suppose she does."
"She and della Torre must revel in one another's company. He's a most artistic fellow, very well read and full of information. I knew they'd have a lot in common."
At the triumph in his tone, Lily turned to look at him. He was evidently not in the least ironical, but full of genuine pride and satisfaction at an encounter which he obviously accepted entirely at its face value.
Lily felt momentarily ashamed of her own secret inclination to detect a concealed and embittered resentment at the other's pretensions on the part of either of the two exponents of Art.
She was half puzzled and half attracted by that characteristic simplicity of Nicholas Aubray's, that, to her more critical perceptions, was later on to account for his curiously limited capacity to judge correctly of his fellow-creatures, and that so oddly counteracted his unmistakable shrewdness of mind.
She found in him a very sympathetic companion, as they wandered together round the interior of the immense building, leaving behind them fragmentary echoes of the sprightly Spanish proverbs with which the Marchese appeared to be countering Aunt Clo's interpolated French exclamations and Latin quotations.
There was a feeling of relaxation in freely pointing out certain obvious glories and universally acknowledged masterpieces, such as Aunt Clo regarded as only to be commented upon by the general public, and Lily felt it to be even more of a relief when Mr. Aubray calmly suggested, at the end of half an hour, that they should go outside and wait for the others.
"You'll get tired, if you stand about for so long in the heat," he observed matter-of-factly, and with a consideration to which she had, at Genazzano, become unused.
They sat down outside in the shade, and instead of abstract and impassioned discourse upon all that Beauty stood for, Lily found herself embarked upon such trivial and comfortable personalities as she could not help welcoming, after the long course of unbroken conversational altitudes upon which her hostess habitually promenaded her.
Nicholas Aubray actually seemed to think that anything about herself was interesting!
She told him about her home and about Bridgecrap, and he laughed whole-heartedly when she confessed that she was no good at games, and seemed to think it of so little account that Lily was encouraged to make a daring confession.
"Sometimes I read children's books-just because I enjoy them. It makes me feel as though I was only pretending to be grown up, you know."
"Oh, you splendid person! I think that's simply ripping!"
"You don't think I ought to be ashamed of it?" cried Lily, delightedly conscious that he did not.
"Good heavens, no! I think it's splendid. Why shouldn't you like children's books? I read fairy-tales myself and enjoy them immensely."
"Do you really?" Lily was enchanted.
"Tell me some more about yourself," begged Nicholas Aubray warmly, and Lily was young enough to respond candidly to the invitation.
"We must make some more of these expeditions," was the conclusion reached by Mr. Aubray, when he and Lily had spent an hour in eager conversation eminently satisfactory to them both.
"I was a good deal bored at having to stay on and on here, excellent fellow though della Torre is, but this meeting with you and your aunt has made all the difference in the world. You'll come with me again, won't you?"
"Oh, I should love to!"
"Hurrah!" He looked quite boyishly delighted, and flung his hat into the air and caught it again.
"Now what about lunch? Food-food! I'm starving!"
He reiterated the announcement with the same unabashed exuberance to Aunt Clo herself, having returned into the Cathedral, to Lily's rather awed astonishment, for the express purpose of summoning her away.
"Come along, come along. We want our meal!"
He was just as vehemently enthusiastic about their excellent and prolonged luncheon at the Grand Hotel as he had been about St. Peter's or in denunciation of Lily's deprecatory confessions of her athletic short-comings.
Aunt Clo's own vitality, to the strength of which she often made carelessly thankful allusion, was as nothing beside that of Nicholas Aubray.
But to-day, Aunt Clo appeared to have fallen rather below her usual standards of high-spirited graciousness and gallantry of intellect.
She even said "Ay di me!" in a rather wearied fashion as she sank into a chair.
"I'm afraid you are quite tired out," solicitously said the Marchese, in his fluent English idiom.
"I am not easily wearied of body," returned Miss Stellenthorpe, smiling sombrely.
"Food-that's what we all want!" Nicholas Aubray declared. "I may not always be hungry, but thank God I'm greedy, as the man said in Punch."
He laughed heartily at the hackneyed jest, and Lily noted with a slight feeling of disappointment that his laugh was perhaps the least attractive thing about him. It came too frequently, although always spontaneously, and was what the French call saccadé in character. Moreover, his laughter at his own indifferent humour, rooted more often in light-heartedness than in wit, was over-prolonged.
An adjournment for rest at the Palazzo della Torre was politely suggested by the Marchese, and Lily rather hoped that the invitation might be accepted, but Miss Stellenthorpe again gravely repudiated any suggestion of fatigue.
"But you make the siesta, surely?" cried the Marchese, astonished.
"Never," said Aunt Clo austerely.
The stately proclamation of her own immunity from the prevalent custom of an afternoon sleep during the hot weather, appeared somehow to restore to Aunt Clo her usual equanimity.
She bade an agreeable farewell to the two men, by whom an expedition to Frascati was proposed for the following week.
"We'll make a picnic of it," cried Nicholas Aubray joyously. "Take plenty of sandwiches and things, and eat them under the trees."
But even Nicholas Aubray's needless insistence upon the grosser aspects of the day's requirements did not, as Lily half feared, cause Miss Stellenthorpe to flinch.
"I'm glad," said she graciously that evening at Genazzano, "very glad to do all in my power pour égayer un peu les choses for Nicholas Aubray. Tell me, my Lily, how did our friend strike you?"
"I liked him very much."
"Liked!" Aunt Clo shrugged away the conventional phrase in her most characteristic fashion.
"How significant that contrast was, n'est-ce pas? The frankly bourgeois enthusiasm of our friend-his naif admiration for the obvious-and then that affectation of preciseness, that pedantic effrontery of young della Torre! It amused me, Lily-it amused me greatly."
Aunt Clo's mouth took on an embittered curve at the recollection.
"Let me recommend you to cultivate that young man rather more, bambina, when next our quartette sallies forth in company. He repays study, I assure you. Besides," added Aunt Clo with some acidity of tone, "I will not conceal from you that a whole day spent in listening to so much youthful arrogance would try my nerves considerably. He is your contemporary, my Lily. I shall leave you to deal with him."
Lily felt vaguely sorry to hear it.
"He is much younger than Mr. Aubray, isn't he?" she asked.
"By at least ten years, I should imagine," said her aunt emphatically. "Nicholas Aubray must be nearing forty. But the heart of a boy still. Ce cher Nicholas! He should have married, as I have often told him. Now della Torre, who could well learn rather more of life in the wider, bigger sense of the word, is actually in search of a wife, as I know. But fools have ever rushed in-"
Aunt Clo ended with raised eyebrows and a sigh, leaving no doubt, in Lily's mind, that her own destined rôle in the Frascati expedition was that of recipient of the Marchese's polished conversation.
Perhaps her efforts were not sufficiently decided.
Perhaps Nicholas Aubray, with a certain joyful obtuseness that he was disconcertingly apt to display when dealing with the human equation, still triumphantly furthered the intercourse of the two fine spirits between whom he had elected to find so rare an affinity. Perhaps, as Lily herself suspected, the Marchese liked a youthful and ignorant hearer less well than one with whom discussion was at least possible, even if unprofitable. At all events, he explained Frascati to Miss Stellenthorpe, and twice informed her that she had been misinformed regarding the remote ancestry of the family of Aldobrandini, while Lily and Nicholas Aubray loitered beneath the trees, and Nicholas told Lily that he lived by himself in London and was often very lonely.
"But to you, I suppose, I seem almost old. Too old to want new friends?" he asked her with a wistful air of desiring contradiction, and at the same time throwing out his broad chest and straightening his always straight shoulders with obviously unconscious vanity.
Lily remembered her father. He was over fifty, and she certainly did not look upon him as being old, if only because she knew that he would have regarded the application of such an adjective from a child to a parent as being both disrespectful and disloyal.
Nicholas Aubray was at least twelve years younger than Philip Stellenthorpe.
She reassured him whole-heartedly and was gratified at the satisfaction in his face, which he displayed with the frankness of a child.
"I thought you and I would be pals, somehow, from the first moment we met. Don't you think it's a great thing to have a pal?"
Lily felt herself to be unreasonable for intensely disliking the word that he had selected.
"That's a word I like-pal!" said Nicholas Aubray, striking one hand into the palm of the other. "Isn't it a splendid, hearty sort of word? That's what I should really like us to be-regular pals."
There was silence between them for the fraction of a moment, and then he added wistfully: "You don't think it's cheek of me to suggest it-you don't think it's absurd, at my age?"
On the instant, his odd, intermittent appeal made itself acutely felt once more.
"I should like it," said Lily, flushing. "I-I think it's an honour for me."
"No, no-it's all the other way round. What a splendid thing life is! Don't you think it's splendid, on a day like this, when one's just struck a bargain like ours? Real pals-that's what you and I are going to be. I can't tell you how much it's going to mean to me. Of course, you've got heaps of friends of your own age already I suppose. Perhaps there's even-"
He paused.
"I haven't any business to ask, I suppose. But since we're to be pals, you won't mind. You know I'm not asking from impertinent curiosity, but from very keen interest in anything that belongs to you." His voice had become very serious.
"Tell me whether there's anybody very special, that you take a-a great interest in, won't you?"
"No, there isn't," said Lily in a low voice. She did not feel humiliated by the unromantic admission, because she was acutely aware that it would somehow intensely gratify her listener.
She heard him exhale a long breath.
"Do you know that's a relief to me! I was somehow certain you were going to say that there was some young spark-and somehow I didn't want there to be."
He burst out laughing.
"There's no fool like an old fool, is there? I want my new-found little pal to myself, you know. I don't want to share her thoughts with some young blood at Oxford or God knows where-"
He went on laughing, in catches, long after Lily felt that her own faint smile had died upon her lips.
X
Lily thought a good deal about her friendship with Nicholas Aubray.
Sometimes she rejoiced almost incredulously in his flashes of sympathetic understanding, and in the frank enjoyment of child-like things that he, unlike her, never thought it necessary to conceal. Sometimes she applied to herself the old term of "disloyal," because an involuntary criticism of his simple vanity, or of his curiously unequal powers of judgment, occasionally flashed across her.
She was flattered and touched by his enthusiastic liking for herself, and presently she began to wonder, rather awestruck, whether he could have fallen in love with her.
When she suddenly found him looking at her in silence with eager, pleading eyes, or when he said: "We'll let the others go on a bit, let's walk slowly," she was reminded of the boy Colin Eastwood, and she then thought that perhaps Nicholas Aubray loved her. When Aunt Clo said, in her thoughtful, appraising way: "My very good friend, Nicholas, is accounted an able man in his own line. He has made a success of his career-oh, undoubtedly!" then Lily felt that only an incredible presumption could ever have led her to imagine that so clever a man and one so much her senior, could ever have thought of her save with the most passing, friendly interest.
His susceptibility to beauty was very evident, and he made it clear that he admired Lily's.
That, of course, was not at all the same thing as falling in love, Lily told herself.
She speculated a great deal more upon the state of Nicholas Aubray's feelings, than upon her own. One of the more solemn counsels which Lily had received from Miss Melody upon leaving Bridgecrap, had concerned the question of falling in love.
"Not too many romantic fancies in that little head, childie," had been Miss Melody's warning. "Remember that you've no mother to guide you, poor child, and keep a watch upon yourself. Not too much novel-reading-aha, Lily, isn't that a weakness?-and no day-dreaming, mind."
Lily had been quite as much annoyed at hearing herself called romantic as the romantic usually are.
"If love should come-as I hope it will, in due course-let it all come quite naturally. Don't think about it beforehand; don't indulge in fancies. Beware of that romantic imagination," Miss Melody had repeated with great significance.
Lily had listened very dutifully, but if she had ever analyzed this submissive spirit, she might have discovered that it was founded upon a curious, calm certainty that Miss Melody knew nothing whatever of what she talked about.
Not that the daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, well versed in distrusting and suppressing her own instincts, would have made such an admission to herself. She was undeveloped, and had never been allowed the luxury of intellectual honesty.
She had, as yet, arrived at no conscious weighing of her own capacities. Her nearest approach to it took the form of an inward and rather derisive wonder that Miss Melody, who so advocated forethought and preparation in respect of examinations, choice of a career, and the like, should appear to suppose that something which Lily classified to herself as "the most important thing in the world" could be best approached after a course of completely ignoring its existence and tacitly denying its potency.
In defiance of Miss Melody, Lily allowed herself to wonder whether Nicholas meant to ask her to marry him. Her upbringing and her inexperience alike admitted of no other development of affairs than a proposal of marriage, to result in either a refusal and eternal separation, or an acceptance and subsequent wedding.
She saw Nicholas Aubray almost daily.
Lily felt flattered and excited, but her now ingrained incapacity for facing an issue definitely, allowed her to keep entirely upon the surface of even her own thoughts, and when she was seized by a misgiving that she felt no slightest real wish ever to marry Nicholas Aubray, she hastily rebuked herself for the vanity of supposing that he had any intention of asking her to do so, thus suppressing her consciousness of the problem in relative values that confronted her.
It was that policy of suppression upon which her whole education had been based.
Presently Lily became aware that Miss Stellenthorpe was turning a thoughtful and critical eye upon the situation.
Her manner to her niece acquired both a more weighty tenderness, and a slightly humorous air of appraisement.
She tolerated the Marchese della Torre with renewed geniality, and only upon one occasion relegated him to a lengthy tête-à-tête walk with Lily whilst she herself strode far ahead, apparently absorbed in earnest conversation with Nicholas Aubray.
It was on that evening that Aunt Clo, for the first time, spoke with great frankness and intimacy of herself and her own past to Lily.
"You have wondered, little one, why I have never chosen to marry, have you not?" she abruptly demanded, gazing shrewdly at her niece.
Fortunately, Lily felt, the shrewdness was not sufficient to penetrate her own embarrassment and pierce to the true answer of that portentous question.
Lily had always supposed, on the rare occasions when she had given the matter a thought, that Aunt Clo must have remained unmarried because nobody had ever wanted to many her.
It now became almost overwhelmingly evident that such had not been the case.
"Why should I not say it? I have been greatly desired, and by many. Perhaps, bambina, it may help you, if I let you in where so few have ever yet penetrated-into the story of my heart. As a girl I was, perhaps, not beautiful," Miss Stellenthorpe musingly observed without, however, any great conviction in her tone. "Certainly I had not the exquisite daintiness, the porcelain prettiness, that I see in you, my Lily. But I was a strong, vital, passionate creature, and intensely magnetic-that, above all. Had I a daughter possessed of that magnetism, she should be guarded-most carefully guarded. The gift is not one to be played with. I suppose I was reckless. Chi lo sa? Ah well, the years have brought their own chastening, maybe. Oh, not in my proud, solitary virginity-that has been my own choice."
Aunt Clo upreared her head in a sudden, high-souled gesture.
"No. But-ay di me! How I have been loved! And I-I, in my turn have loved, carina. Once-and once only. I cannot tell you the whole story, little one. Some day, perhaps, when you, too, have lived and loved-though may you never touch the depths that I have plumbed! I had rejected many loves-lesser loves, as they seemed to me. Then came one-there is only one, in a woman's life. Our souls rushed together-une veritable fusion d'âmes. There was one summer-"
Aunt Clo became lost in retrospect, her fine eyes fixed upon some point of the horizon far above Lily's head.
When she spoke again, her voice had flattened dramatically.
"Autumn succeeds to summer, carina, and the deep-hearted, passionate red roses drop their petals one by one.... A cataclysm swept across my life. There was storm-separation, interference from others. I was doubly betrayed. There was a woman who had been my dear, dear friend, in whom I had trusted much. And she failed me, Lily. When the crisis came, she was incapable of meeting the demands that the privilege of friendship must always make, sooner or later. Ah yes-she failed me indeed!"
"Was she-one of the people who interfered?" Lily half fearfully enquired, as Miss Stellenthorpe paused as though for enquiry.
"Indeed, yes! She was ruthless-ruthless to me, and to that other...."
"But did he-how could he let her...?" stammered Lily.
"Ah how! But-," said Miss Stellenthorpe sombrely, "she was his wife."
No revelation could have come with greater unexpectedness upon her breathless listener.
"Oh! Was he married, Aunt Clo?"
Aunt Clo bent a terrible brow upon Lily at the naïve colloquialism of the exclamation.
"Bound by our hideous English laws, he was," she said slowly. "But there are other, higher standards. He and I knew it-we had scaled the mountain-heights-but the little, feeble soul that had called herself my friend remained below, weakly wailing. The little soul that had only strength to hold on, like some small, sharp-toothed rodent! It held on-grasping the shadow between its tiny, poisoned fangs, when it could no longer hold the substance."
Aunt Clo passed a hand slowly across her eyes, as though to banish the vision of so perverted a tenacity.
Then she turned upon Lily a smile of rare, considered sweetness, blended with great sadness. "I have forgiven-long, long ago. One can outlive such bitterness, my Lily, and come out from the vortex stronger, and bigger and braver."
Lily felt a mad desire to enquire whether the unfortunate rodent of Aunt Clo's history had also emerged from it similarly uplifted.
"There was a time," said Aunt Clo, "when I asked myself despairingly-'Does the road wind up-hill all the way?' You know the answer, child. 'Yes-to the very end.' I have accepted that answer now. Acceptance has long ago become part of myself. Not the pallid, passive acceptance of submission, you understand, but some bright, strong, vital thing that soars upwards like a flame-"
Aunt Clo paused again, and her niece kept silence.
"You mustn't call me brave, little one," Miss Stellenthorpe suddenly protested, when both had remained speechless for some while.
Lily showed no sign of defying the prohibition. Her aunt stood up.
"I will leave you. It grows late, and this has cost me something. But don't reproach yourself, bambina-if I can help you but a very little, be sure that I shall never count the cost."
Aunt Clo crossed the room slowly, with an unwonted gesture of supporting herself, as she reached a low table near the door and leant her hand upon it heavily.
She glanced back at Lily, and there was again a slight suggestion of baffled expectancy on her face.
"Buona notte, my child."
With a grave and graceful movement she kissed the tip of her slim, fine fingers and waved them in the direction of her niece.
Then she appeared to detect suddenly the presence of her other hand, still grasping the little table, and drew it away with an air of surprised melancholy.
"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, half playfully, half sadly. "That is the first time, is it not, that you have seen me in need of extraneous support? That is not like me."
She slowly nodded, two or three times, as though considering so new an aspect of herself, and then drew herself up to her full, stately height as she left the room. Lily felt that she herself had been somehow found remiss.
Comment, at least, had been expected of her, and she had been utterly unable to offer any.
She wondered uneasily if it were the measure of her own childishness, that Aunt Clo's story should merely have left her feeling uncomfortably bewildered, and anxiously conscious that her father would have been sincerely shocked by it.
Lily speculated as to what she should do if Nicholas Aubray were suddenly to discover himself as a married man. She indulged in an agreeable vision of his impassionate declaration, her own heart-broken renunciation of him, and their eternal farewell. After a long, long illness she would face life once more-her hair would be prematurely whitened. She, too, would tell some young, untried soul the story of her own experience....
Lily had formulated one or two very beautiful sentences when she became aware that she was thoroughly enjoying herself. The discovery scandalized her sincerely.
These things were serious-they constituted reality, and here she was playing a kind of game with them!
Lily felt profoundly dissatisfied with herself and her own inability to regard as sacred the many things that her upbringing had taught her should be classified under that traditional heading of Philip's. It bewildered her to find that Nicholas himself, although his ardour touched and pleased her in a strange, exciting way, did not awaken in her any of the emotions that she had always associated with the dawn of love.
There was not even the vague, elusive sense of remote and delicate romance that Colin Eastwood had inspired.
But Philip had implied that episode to have been an undignified and childish cheapening of herself-something that, in the belittling phrase of omniscient parenthood, "could not lead to anything," and Lily herself, translating into the cruder and more direct terms of youth, had known that, between her and Colin, there could be nothing so matured and definite as a spoken engagement with definite prospects of marriage.
Consequently, her relations with Colin must have been unreal-those with Nicholas must be real. Thus Lily, faithfully endeavouring to follow the careful rule of thumb laid down for her, and unutterably perplexed at finding it so much at variance with that inner vision to which she believed herself to have no right.
Daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, and product of their teaching, she found the way of least resistance in allowing herself to shelve the whole question, telling herself that it would certainly be mere folly and vanity to envisage prematurely the possibilities latent in a decision which she might never be called upon to make.
The issues at stake were consequently left to obscure themselves still further while Lily strove to persuade herself of their non-existence, and while the necessity for that decision which she was strenuously unfitting herself to make coherently came nearer to her every day.
The weather had grown crisp and cool long before Nicholas Aubray's affairs in Rome were concluded, and he came out to the villa at Genazzano to announce his approaching return to England.
"I shall be very, very sorry to go," he said emotionally. "If anyone had told me, when I first grumbled at coming to Italy, that six weeks later I should actually want to stay on-I shouldn't have believed it."
He looked at Lily as he spoke.
"Aha!" quoth Aunt Clo. "Italy claims us all. I-but I was long ago enslaved, as you perceive. You will return, my friend."
"I hope so. But good-byes are always sad things, I think. One is always sorry, I mean, to say good-bye to a place in which one has been happy." He was again addressing himself to Lily, surprising her, as he occasionally did, by the earnest warmth with which he could deliver himself of a platitude. She hoped that he did not see Aunt Clo wince as she rose from her place.
"Mes très chers, je vous quitte. One little half-hour. There is an unhappy child whose supreme moment is drawing very near. I have told you of my Carla? They are trying to persuade her that she has sinned-ah, the horrible folly and cruelty of it all!"
Miss Stellenthorpe hastened away, and Nicholas Aubray, after a moment, exclaimed, as he not infrequently did:
"What a splendid person your aunt is! I can't tell you how much I admire her."
"She is very kind," said Lily, trying to atone by the fervour of her voice for a certain blankness that invaded her at this fresh example of Nicholas Aubray's enthusiasm.
"Isn't she-isn't she? She's been a godsend to the peasantry here, I feel sure. She has," said Nicholas significantly, "been very kind to me."
"I know she likes you very much."
Lily spoke hurriedly and almost at random, overwhelmed by sudden nervous shyness.
"She's-she's enjoyed your being here, and all our excursions."
"Did she tell you that we had a long talk the other day?"
"She didn't tell me so specially," said Lily, and added hastily: "You've known her a long time, haven't you?"
"I have never seen as much of her as I should have liked, but I've always thought of her as a most splendid person, whom I should like to know much better. But it's never too late to mend, eh?"
He laughed, in jerks.
Lily seldom felt at ease with Nicholas Aubray when he was amused, although she forced her own smiles, in sympathy with the child-like appeal of the gaze that he was fixing directly upon her.
He grew grave again suddenly, after his wont.
"What about you? Am I to say good-bye to my little pal without anything to look forward to?"
Lily's heart beat with excitement and a sense of flattery, but she also felt overwhelmingly embarrassed, and quite unable to summon up the warm reply with which she would have liked to please him.
"I wonder whether you ever write letters?" said Nicholas, when he had waited in silence for some time.
"I haven't got many people to write to."
"You've got your pal-your old, ancient pal, who perhaps seems to you almost in his dotage-"
He broke off anxiously, and this time Lily's quick perception of his unspoken need of reassurance came to her help.
"I think of you as being of my own age," she exclaimed quickly, "or else just a little bit older, so as to be able to help me about things, and-and advise me sometimes."
"That's very sweet and dear of you to say that. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it-" said Nicholas, with the abrupt huskiness of tone of a man easily moved to emotion.
Suddenly he laid one of his hands very gently over Lily's, with a tentative, almost timid, gesture.
She knew that his sensitiveness would be instantly hurt by the least gesture of withdrawal, even though he was giving her the opportunity of making one.
Tenderness for his feelings, a half-frightened desire to see what would follow, and a certain exultant vanity, kept her motionless.
Subconsciously, there passed through her a regret, of which she failed to catch the significance, that it had always been physically distasteful to her to be touched. She accepted the dislike as being part of an inevitable state of affairs not susceptible to alteration.
"You didn't mind my doing that, did you?" said Nicholas nervously.
He had taken his hand away, after a prolonged, gentle pressure upon hers.
Lily shook her head.
She could not have given with truth either a negative or an affirmative answer, nevertheless she was relieved at Nicholas Aubray's exclamation:
"I'm glad of that! I wouldn't vex you for the whole world, you know. If ever I do anything that you don't like, you must tell me. Sometimes I think I'm too clumsy-and rough and-and elderly, to hope to keep your friendship. And it would make me very sad, if I lost it now."
"No, no-you couldn't!" Lily murmured.
"Well, will you let me hear from you-often-and see you when you're in England again?"
"I hardly ever go to London, though, I'm afraid," said Lily naïvely.
"Perhaps I might be allowed to come to your part of the world, though. I want to get to know your father, and-and everyone and everything that belongs to you. I wonder if you realize that, little pal?"
Lily said: "I think I do," because she felt that that was what he wanted her to say, and then was terrified at the thought of what his rejoinder might be.
"Thank God for that!" cried Nicholas, with a sort of boyish, laughing heartiness.
She was half relieved and half disappointed.
"That's a bargain, then. We'll write to one another."
"Ought I to?" Lily faltered, with a sudden recollection of the obnoxious phrases as to hole-and-corner correspondence, once employed by her father. The remembrance caused her to crimson, and Nicholas Aubray looked at her very kindly.
"I told your aunt, when we had our talk together the other day, how very much I should like to be allowed to hear from you," he said quietly, "and she was good enough to suggest that I might propose it to you. So it only depends upon you, now."
Something chivalrous in the words and manner alike sent a rush of affection and gratitude through Lily's being.
At such moments she felt that nothing was wanting in her liking for Nicholas Aubray.
"I'm so glad you did that," she said impulsively.
"You don't think I could ever take advantage of your youth and kindness to ask you to do anything that you might for an instant regret later on!" he exclaimed. "I'm not such a skunk as that! No. Thank God, you never would do anything of the kind that some of these modern girls seem to go in for.... That was just one of the things that attracted me to you so awfully-if I may say so."
"You don't think I'm old-fashioned and priggish? I often think I'm not like most other girls-I think I was brought up differently."
"All the better!" cried Nicholas vigorously.
"I'm glad you think it's all the better," said Lily. "Sometimes I-I've felt that I hated being unlike other people."
She glanced at him wistfully, half wondering if he would reassure her, if she confessed to that old, hidden feeling of not being a Real Live Person, but only a pretender.
"I only wish there were more people like you," said Nicholas Aubray. "Some day you must tell me all about your bringing-up, and why you think it's made you different. Will you?"
"It's quite dull, I'm afraid. Only about how I was at home, and then at a convent for a very little while and afterwards at school."
"I'm sure I shouldn't find it dull," said Nicholas Aubray, "I should never find anything dull that was about yourself. I want to hear everything."
His look, straight into her eyes, emphasized his words.
"I should like to feel that you were able to make a real safety-valve of me-tell me anything and everything, quite freely."
Lily's liking for him just then was so strong that the required assurance came in a rush of sincerity.
"I don't think I should mind telling you anything, and I've always wanted a friend. So few people seem to understand-"
A certain recollection, awakened by the words, made her pause.
"Of course there are a few things," she said shyly and wistfully, "that I suppose no one ever puts into words, exactly. Things one knows about oneself, that-that nobody else in the world could be expected to understand-"
"I won't ask for those," gently said Nicholas, smiling at her, rather puzzled.
He was naturally unaware that Lily was thinking just then of a battered wax baby-doll lying at the very back of the wardrobe in her bedroom.
XI
When Lily left Italy, it was with the definite certainty that Nicholas Aubray meant to ask her to marry him.
It appeared that he had discussed his intentions openly with Aunt Clo, who spoke of him to Lily on the evening that preceded her departure from Genazzano.
"Developments unlooked for indeed," said Aunt Clo with a whimsical smile. "But tell me-the idea does not displease you, little one?"
She looked at her niece with an air of interested enquiry as she spoke, but went on talking herself before Lily had time to reply.
"May and December, perhaps! Or so it seems to the youthful eyes of May. But there are worse alliances than that-many, many worse. And some natures, of which it seems to me, my Lily, that yours is one, demand less than others. Those are the happy ones!"
Aunt Clo sighed tempestuously and flung a hand across her eyes. It was evident that she did not count herself one of that favoured band amongst whom she assigned place to her niece.
"The temperament that seeks, and gives, passionately, is not one that I could wish you. Qui dit aimer, dit souffrir. Never were words more true! nor, perhaps, had any woman better cause than I to know it."
Miss Stellenthorpe groaned slightly and, having made the inevitable personal application so irresistible in discussing the affairs of others, was able to resume, with her quick, brilliant smile:
"But it is not of myself that I want to speak, mignonne! I ceased, long ago, to look upon myself save as a helper, a soul with experience and tenderness behind it, to stretch out a hand and aid the unknowing, the struggling, the unlearned, the young. For myself-che sarà sarà! But for you, my Lily, what is it to be?"
"I-I don't know," said Lily, very lamely indeed.
Aunt Go looked more omniscient than ever, as she gazed at her niece.
"So undeveloped a little soul, is it?" she mused tolerantly. "Love would do much for you, little one-perhaps all."
"But I don't feel sure that-that I'm at all in love," Lily faltered foolishly.
Inwardly she was asking herself with bewilderment why it was that she could not speak sincerely about this thing to Aunt Clotilde. Perhaps it was because it was impossible not to feel that Aunt Clotilde was a good deal more interested in her own analytical dissection of the situation than in the people primarily concerned.
At all events, Lily found Miss Stellenthorpe of small assistance to her, and she had been too thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of distrust of her own instincts to consider the possibility of solving her own problems without extraneous advice. She did not want to consult Philip, because he was her father, and she took it for granted that he would therefore take her decision upon himself, with a strong bias in favour of any course least advocated by herself. Theoretically, Lily had been taught that parents sacrificed everything for their children. Practical experience of Philip's and of Eleanor's anxious, tender tyranny and immutable conviction of their own omnipotence no less than omniscience, in all matters concerning their offspring, had quite unconsciously led her to the opposite conclusion.
She thought timidly of consulting her old schoolmistress, Miss Melody. Had not Miss Melody put herself and all her experience at Lily's disposal, and had she not declared that girls who had been once under her charge at school still turned to her for help and counsel that she gladly and proudly gave?
With this species of mental reservation to strengthen her, Lily left Genazzano without making any definite confidence to Aunt Clo.
"I don't really feel as if I knew my own mind, just now," she said apologetically, and not altogether untruly.
"Ah, jeunesse!" smiled Miss Stellenthorpe. "Certainly, child of my heart, you do not love as yet-if you can ask yourself for a moment: Do I love? then it is certain you do not. But it will come-it will come. If not Nicholas, then another. But I think-however, I had best not tell you what I think! Only remember that it is not given to everyone to inspire love in so gallant a gentleman as is Nicholas Aubray. 'Sans peur et sans reproche'-those words often come to my mind when I think of Nicholas!"
"I like him very much," said Lily, more and more feebly, as Aunt Clo's periods overwhelmed her more and more with the sense of her own utter inadequacy.
Aunt Clotilde's smile became more pronounced, and also more deeply imbued with delicate and patronizing scorn.
"Well, well-the little 'like' may develop into a little 'love'-who knows? You need fear nothing tempestuous, nothing overwhelming, my Lily. Yours is not the passionate temperament. Don't look discomfited, child. I mean nothing derogatory-perhaps I envy you, in certain moments of soul weariness-chi lo sa? But I mean nothing unkind-nothing belittling. Only with me, as you know, Truth is a veritable obsession-entire frankness."
Lily was left with the subconscious suspicion that Aunt Clo's obsession for entire frankness was principally indulged in the direction of an unsparing candour with regard to the deficiencies of other people.
She did not resent Miss Stellenthorpe's diagnosis of her niece's emotional capacities as superficial. With all but the very lowest strata of her consciousness, she was inclined to endorse it. It was less trouble, even if rather less flattering to one's vanity, to take for granted the slightness of one's own demands upon life-and happiness-which latter Lily instinctively thought of as synonymous with love.
She replied to Nicholas Aubray's letters, which came often, with friendly, rather self-conscious epistles, answering his frequent, "Tell me about yourself, little pal," with rather laboriously enthusiastic accounts of her reading, her expeditions to Roman churches and ruins, her impressions of life at Genazzano.
Nicholas had said to her: "I've been told that I write rather good letters. I don't know whether I do or not, but anyhow I shall like writing to you, and I shall just put down anything that comes into my head-as though we were talking."
She found the letters he wrote to her delightful productions, full of an indescribable spirit of spontaneity, and was fully aware of the immaturity that characterized her own replies.
There were not many personalities in their correspondence, but Nicholas, towards the end of each letter, told Lily that he missed her companionship-that he looked forward very much to the time when he should see her again. Lily wondered rather tremulously when that time would come, and specially how it would be viewed by her father.
She tormented herself with various derogatory speeches that she put into Philip's mouth.
"My little pet, you mustn't talk nonsense... little people of your age don't have proposals from grown-up men, you know.... I shall tell this Mr. Aubray that I can't have him writing to you like this... a hole-and-corner correspondence...."
No! Even one's father could never say that. Nicholas Aubray had been as punctilious as Philip himself, and had obtained Aunt Clo's sanction to the correspondence before embarking upon it.
Lily wondered whether Aunt Clo, first and last, had acted upon her own initiative, without any reference at all to Philip.
If so, he would still be in complete ignorance of the cataclysmic fact that Lily's whole destiny was shortly to be decided. She phrased it thus to herself in an unconscious attempt to safeguard the dignity of the situation, that she felt would be threatened by Philip's habitual treatment of her as a very young and irresponsible child.
Philip's first greeting of her dissolved the fear, and left her with a wondering sense of intense gratification. True to his life-long restrictions, nothing was put into words, but Lily was at no pains to account for the new pride and pleasure in her that was suddenly displayed by her father.
He openly praised her looks, and said once or twice that "Aunt Clo's accounts of her little companion" had given him great pleasure.
His least indirect reference to Lily's new standing as the desired of Nicholas Aubray was made a very few days after her return, as he bade her good-night one evening.
"Good-night, my child. God bless you and give you happiness. I only want you to be very happy, you know. One is young for such a very little while-"
He sighed, but Lily was reflecting, rather humorously, that never before had he hinted at any possible term to the youthfulness upon which he had so often insisted.
Nevertheless, she was touched by his kindness, and by the new pride in her, which she divined in his frequent, half-surreptitious glances at her and occasional wistful smiles.
Very soon she found courage to mention that which she well knew that they both had in mind: the coming of Nicholas Aubray.
"You remember Aunt Clo's friend, that I told you about, Father?" Thus Lily, feeling unaccountably deceitful in so describing Nicholas, although she knew that Philip knew the exact relation in which Nicholas stood, both to Aunt Clo and to herself, and also that he knew her to be quite aware of his knowing.
Such strange and silent interplays of knowledge were uncomfortably frequent in association with Philip Stellenthorpe.
"I mean Mr. Aubray. I think he might rather like to come and-and see us, if you wouldn't mind."
"Not at all," said Philip graciously. "Your friend is quite a distinguished man, my dear child. Did your Aunt Clo speak to you of his career as a barrister?"
"A little."
"Curiously enough, I recently came across a very striking little pamphlet of his on the subject of the Shipping Law. It is a good deal too technical for a woman, but I found it of great interest, and was much struck by the style in which it was written."
Lily was principally conscious of a secret increase of self-esteem because Philip, indirectly, had spoken of her as a woman.
Such small and subtle appeals to vanity gave greater titillation to her spirits than did the anticipation of again meeting Nicholas.
In the interval between their parting at Genazzano and their meeting again, she had viewed the abstract prospect of a possible proposal of marriage from Nicholas with complacency, sometimes even with a thrill of exultation.
She had played, alike, with the ideas of accepting him as lover and future husband, and of refusing him only to find more overwhelming bliss in some dim future with another. In none of her fancies had she ever thought seriously and sincerely, for the reason that she had never been taught to think at all.
When Nicholas Aubray had accepted the invitation and was actually come, his presence alternately brought enjoyment and embarrassment to Lily.
That Philip was pleased with him was evident, and so completely had Lily assimilated the theory that her parent was above criticism, that it did not occur to her to wonder whether the admiration was altogether mutual until Nicholas said to her with rather a rueful smile:
"Your father doesn't very much care for joking, does he?"
"Doesn't he?" said Lily, vaguely surprised.
Philip's occasional jests with his children were of a melancholy and stereotyped kind, but it had not consciously struck Lily that he was deficient in humour.
"I only mean that I was telling him one or two stupid stories after dinner to-night about things I've come across in Court. I daresay I told them clumsily. Please don't think that I'm being impertinent enough to venture the least shadow of criticism. I only thought perhaps I'd been rather clumsy and mal-à-propos. You know, I'm awfully keen for your people to like me a little bit, as well as you."
"Of course they will," Lily assured him. "You and Aunt Clo are friends already. But I haven't very many near relations. There's Kenneth, but he's only a little boy."
"Good!" cried Nicholas. "I like little boys. I'm not afraid of them."
He laughed, and Lily laughed, at the preposterous implication, but it was by just such flashing glimpses of an essentially child-like spirit that Nicholas Aubray endeared himself to Lily.
She liked him so much that she would hardly acknowledge to herself the occasional pangs of revulsion suffered by her liking, when his laughter, rather grating and always over-prolonged, seemed to her to be almost unmeaningly provoked, or when his appreciation of the Hardinges, which in itself Lily welcomed, found bewildering expression in its utter lack of coincidence with her own intuitions.
"Miss Janet Hardinge is more silent than the pretty, golden-haired one, isn't she? I should think she was one of those shy, very reserved sort of people, who are easily overwhelmed."
Lily, who had been at school with the unpopular Janet, and knew her to be neither shy nor easily overwhelmed, felt at a loss.
"Which is your friend?"
"I see most of Dorothy now, but the youngest-the one who's still at school-was the one I liked best, Sylvia."
"'Who is Sylvia, what is she?'" quoted Nicholas Aubray, and again his laughter appeared to Lily to be quite inordinate.
With a sort of superficial attempt at impartial candour, she tried to balance Nicholas Aubray's claim to a sense of humour, vaguely aware that such an adjunct must be desirable in the close companionship implied by marriage.
He had a sense of humour.
Many of his stories of experiences in Court, whether appreciated or not by Philip Stellenthorpe, had made Lily laugh. In Italy, they had laughed together over many trivial things. Lily, when amused, had never appealed in vain to him to share in her amusement.
Slightly bewildered, she derided at last that her own sense of humour had need of extension, in order to cover the area of ground whereon Nicholas Aubray found subject for mirth.
She omitted to note that such ground stretched widely on either side of the line of demarcation that divides the subtlety of irony from the obviousness of mere comicality.
Nicholas stayed with the Stellenthorpes for nearly a week, and Lily took him for walks, and played the piano for his loudly expressed admiration, and was both vaguely disappointed and slightly relieved at the impersonality that generally prevailed in their conversations. She actually surmised in Nicholas a certain shyness that he had not shown in Italy, as though he sometimes doubted his own powers of pleasing and attracting her.
It was inevitable that gratified vanity should play a large part in Lily's view of the clever and distinguished man, so much her senior, who sought to win her favour with a diffidence that filled her with wonder.
Philip's manner towards his daughter had also altered, and on the day preceding the last one of Nicholas Aubray's visit, it needed only her father's pleased yet anxious glances towards herself, and in the tone in which he said: "Why not stay in this afternoon, Lily? I don't like that little cough of yours," to convey to Lily that the two men were to hold a conversation together, and that although she was not to be present at it, her father desired to make sure of her presence in the house. She acquiesced, as she had all her life acquiesced in his obliquely conveyed wishes, in part from the inculcated habit of obedience, and in part from her own moral cowardice.
"I think I shall sit over the fire in the library. Shall we have tea there? It's much warmer than the hall."
"Certainly. We'll join you there."
This time Nicholas, as well as Philip, cast a glance at her that seemed to bear unspoken meanings.
Lily's afternoon in the library was not a reposeful one.
She tried at first to feel pleasure in her own undoubted resemblance to the heroine of a novel. Situation and setting were alike traditional. No doubt Nicholas Aubray was at that moment asking formal assent of her father to the right of proposing to her.
Lily stifled at birth a rebellious fancy that she might have preferred less formality and more impetuosity from her lover.
Her upbringing, assigning to parents a right little less than divine over their children, and her sense that Nicholas scarcely belonged to her own generation, alike enabled her to view his method of procedure as the desirable outcome of his scrupulous chivalry.
She played for a little while with fancies that she herself qualified as childish, concerning a diamond ring, the excitement of telling the Hardinges that she was engaged, and the glory of being married at twenty.
Mrs. Aubray-she would be Mrs. Aubray!
Lily Aubray.
She wrote it down and looked at it, feeling more than ever like the heroine of a novel. Then Lily suddenly told herself that it was her duty to face this question-and again had to stifle an unwelcome idea that the time for facing it had already passed when she had first suggested to her father the visit of Nicholas Aubray. It was extraordinary, the difficulty of facing the question.
Her mind kept wandering to trivial considerations, and she rehearsed to herself the imaginary speeches that Nicholas might make. She could not focus her thoughts at all to the point of supplying her own answers.
"But I must know whether I mean to accept or to refuse him!" Lily expostulated with herself.
She remembered the accepted convention that no woman need allow a man to offer her marriage in so many words if she intends to humiliate him by a refusal.
"A nice girl can always stave off the actual proposal, and make the man understand that it's no use," Dorothy Hardinge had once seriously informed her.
But Lily did not now feel that any amount of subtle "niceness" on her part could possibly stave off a declaration which had got so far as to receive the sanction of her father.
Staring into the fire, she thought that she was making up her mind when she told herself resolutely: "Now, I must decide once and for all whether I'm in love with him or not."
Aunt Clo's words-almost the only ones that had remained with her out of the many so lavishly scattered for her benefit-returned to Lily with a sense of uneasiness.
"If you can ask yourself for a moment, Do I love? then it is certain that you do not...."
Lily did not want to think that it was certain that she did not love Nicholas Aubray.
There were times when she did love him, she felt convinced. She was less certain whether she was "in love" with him.
Oddly enough, the memory of the boy Colin Eastwood recurred to her again and again, not by value of his own personality, but as the object round which certain infinitely vague and delicate emotions had centred.
"But they were such little things," Lily murmured to herself, frowning.
It had mattered whether or no Colin had the place next to hers at the picnics-whether, in exchanging good-nights at the end of a moonlight walk, his last "good-night" had been for her-whether they were partners in the tennis tournament or not-whether they danced the last waltz of the evening together. If he was in the garden while the rest of them were clustered round Lily at the piano, she acknowledged a slight feeling of restlessness that consciously vanished at his footstep-which she could always distinguish-on the threshold of the French window.
It had, somehow, been an incident in the day, if he touched her hand in helping her up some steep bank, or in handing her a tennis ball. Philip's unspecified, but thoroughly understood, condemnation of the whole slight episode had relegated it to the extreme background of Lily's consciousness. It had become foolish, something to be slightly despised-on account, she supposed of Colin's youthfulness and the negative property described by her father as "leading to nothing."
Nicholas Aubray, so much her senior, "led to" something. In some ways, Lily felt that he understood her, and like all young and over-sensitive souls, she craved to be understood.
Nicholas had understood about her liking childish things-he had even appeared to share her tastes. She knew, instinctively, that they had, mentally, much in common.
It was impossible to imagine everyday life lived with Colin Eastwood; but with Nicholas Aubray she could picture to herself a life of companionship, of books and theatres, and friends shared by them both.
"I might have a baby," Lily reflected, after deciding that she would like to live in London.
It pleased her to reflect how fond Nicholas was of children, and it was quite easy to picture him with the blue-eyed baby of Lily's own most private fancies.
Whereas the thought of Colin Eastwood as a husband and father seemed absurd-almost indecent. He belonged to a dream world.
The little things that had seemed to matter so much belonged to the dream world too.
It had certainly never seemed important whether or no Nicholas sat next to her at tea-time, nor had she any particular recollection of ever distinguishing his footfall from that of the Marchese della Torre, or her father's or Cousin Charlie Hardinge's.
The new and mysterious instincts, conjured momentarily into being during a midsummer holiday, had nothing to do with Real Life.
For a moment, Lily visualized strange possibilities, of that dream world inextricably interwoven with Real Life, in such fashion as could never be realized through the medium either of Colin's personality or of Nicholas Aubray's.
"Body, soul and spirit-"
Words, somewhere read, floated across her mind, implying something of union scarcely apprehended, to the very existence of which she had no clue, save only that most deep-rooted instinct which she had been taught to ignore and to distrust. Like a clarion call across the faint stirrings of an all but extinguished breath of life, came the rousing echo of Miss Melody's teaching, impressed by many repetitions:
"No day-dreams, childie! Beware of that imagination of yours-don't let yourself get morbid...."
Morbid! That was the word-the terrible, degrading word, that was never analyzed, which was applied to private thought and the construction of private ideals. They were morbid.
Lily regarded it as a sign of grace that this timely recollection caused her to feel ashamed. She rallied to the call of Miss Melody's wisdom.
"I shan't decide anything in a hurry. I ought to make sure, and so I'll ask him to let me give him an answer in a little while. And perhaps I'll go and stay at Bridgecrap and see Miss Melody and talk to her-it will help me to get my thoughts thoroughly clear, if I put them into words. There's nothing to be at all frightened of-I needn't do anything I don't like-I'm a free agent. I mustn't be morbid."
Lily felt braced and relieved, when she had thus discovered that a line of least resistance still existed, and that the facing of a direct issue might still be postponed, and perhaps almost altogether avoided, by shifting the onus of decision on to Miss Melody's advice.
She trembled very much when Nicholas, late in the afternoon, came and joined her, standing over the great armchair into which she had sunk back.
It seemed to her, that he, too, was nervous as she looked up at him speechlessly.
"I've had a-a very nice talk with your father," he said at last. "I've been talking to him about something which is more important to me than anything else in the world, just now."
Nicholas paused and Lily saw that he, also, was shaking a little.
At the same moment he dropped on to one knee beside her and laid his hand over hers.
"Lily dear," said Nicholas Aubray, speaking with great simplicity, "you know that I'm very much in love with you. Could you care for me enough to be my wife?"
Instead of the exultation of mind she had expected to experience on hearing this, her first proposal, Lily felt an odd inclination to tears. She looked down at Nicholas.
"Do you really want me to?" she asked him falteringly, and like a child.
A sudden laugh flickered in his gaze as it met hers.
"You dear child! Of course I do. Do you think I don't mean it? Why, Lily, I've thought of nothing else since those very first days in Italy."
He looked at her wistfully.
"Do I seem to you too old, my dear? I do love you so much. I think I could make you very happy."
"But you-could I ever-you must think of your happiness too-" said Lily incoherently. "Oh, please, will you let me think it over for a little while and write to you?"
"Then you'd like me to go away to-morrow, back to London?" said Nicholas slowly.
Lily felt ashamed and sorry as she saw the disappointment in his face, but she nodded an assent.
"It must be just as you like, my dear, of course. I could hardly have hoped for anything else, perhaps." He rose to his feet again.
His face was very much overcast as he stood silent, in front of the fire.
Suddenly he threw back his head and squared his shoulders with the gesture she had so often seen, and gave a little laugh.
"Never say die, eh, Lily? You know, I shan't take no for an answer very easily. Tell me, dear, you do like me a little, don't you?"
"Very, very much."
"Then won't you trust me to look after you, and make you happier than you've ever been? I believe I could, Lily."
"I do trust you. Only-it's too serious," said Lily timidly. "I want to make sure that-that I care, too."
There was a silence. Then Nicholas Aubray said abruptly:
"You're right, my dear. You shall have time, all the time you want. But can't you give me a little hope, meanwhile?"
His response to her appeal had moved Lily to that intensity of gratitude and admiration that his chivalry could always evoke in her. The sudden, warm recognition of his generosity roused the like impulses in herself.
"I think it will be all right," she said naïvely.
"You little darling!"
On the instant all his gravity had vanished and he wore the aspect of buoyancy that contrasted so effectively with his grizzled head and broad shoulders.
"There's something I want now, Lily. I wonder if I shall get it-just to send me back to town happy?"
She looked at him rather apprehensively.
"Please, please don't look so frightened, dear! It wouldn't mean anything you don't want, you know."
"What?"
"Mayn't I kiss you, Lily-once?"
The first impulse of a coquetry in reality foreign to her nature stirred in Lily.
"No one ever has, yet," she said, and smiled.
"I know that, my dear. I was sure of it. You're like your name-a little, untouched flower."
A tiny thrill shot through her at the words, the first approach to direct love-making that she had ever heard addressed to herself. She felt sorry when the characteristic British reaction against an open expression of sentiment came swiftly from Nicholas.
"You see, you're actually making me poetical!" he exclaimed, with a hastiness that obviously covered a certain confusion, and if his ensuing laugh was jerky and over-prolonged, it needed but little intuition this time to attribute it to scarcely disguised nervousness.
"What did Father say?" Lily asked, in reality speaking almost at random so that he should stop that unamused, spasmodic laughter.
"He was very kind to me, and gave me leave to come down here whenever I like. So you see, I can come for my answer as soon as you like to send for me. But you're a little fraud, my dear, to turn the conversation like that! Will you let me have one thing to remember?"
He was looking full at her with ardent and yet kindly eyes.
Lily nodded faintly.
As he bent over her she raised her head a little and turned her face sideways to him, closing her eyes. For the fraction of a second Nicholas Aubray hesitated, and then stooped and kissed her very softly on the cheek.
She wondered why, as he straightened himself again, he laughed-this time very low and gently.
XII
"My little pet, you must decide for yourself."
Philip Stellenthorpe was deeply moved.
"My little pet!" he repeated. "It only seems the other day that you were playing with your toys on the nursery floor. I can't deny, my child, that it would make me very, very happy to give you to such a man-one whom I could trust so absolutely. He would make you very happy, Lily."
"That's what he said," answered Lily, with no ironical intent.
"You must study your own feelings, Lily. Remember that it's a responsibility.... Aubray is a very able man, my child, with a career before him. It's a great honour to be asked to share the life of such a man. You do feel that?"
"Oh yes, Father."
"That's right, darling, that's right. I don't wish to persuade you in any way. At the same time it would make me happier than anything else in the world, now, to see my little Lily married to such a man. It's-it's a wonderful opportunity, Lily. My little motherless girl, living quietly at home, to marry a distinguished man of Aubray's standing, before she's twenty!"
The triumph in Philip's voice, of which he himself seemed to be half ashamed, touched Lily acutely.
He might say, in all sincerity, that he did not wish to persuade her, but he could have found no more effective means of so doing than by his very forbearance.
His wistful pride in the opportunity that he so obviously was longing to see her accept, and the restraint that he put upon himself in order to leave her free, filled Lily with a passionate wish to please him.
She knew that, were she to disappoint him in this, he would not reproach her. Only the mute pathos of a deepened silence, a more constant melancholy, would do that.
"He wants me to be happy, after all," reflected Lily, knowing also that Philip would only see happiness for her in just such a marriage, in just such a life, incapable of believing in the reality of any happiness that he could not personally apprehend.
Nor, indeed, had Lily any specific alternative interpretation of the term to submit to him. Marriage, in spite of Miss Melody, had always appeared to her as the natural goal of woman, and she was young enough to tell herself very seriously that this, her first offer of marriage, might perhaps also prove to be her last. The dread of perpetual maidenhood, in fact, possessed Lily so firmly that she almost found herself urging it to Miss Melody herself, as a reason for accepting Nicholas Aubray. For Miss Melody, interested and incisive as ever, had spoken.
"Childie dear, listen to me. You must weigh the pros and the cons very, very carefully. I'm very glad you take this question seriously, Lily, very glad indeed. Now, dearie, do you know what I recommend? Write it all down, Lily, put it all on to paper. Write down the For and Against, just as though it were one of the old school exercises. There's nothing like method, dearie-you know that's what I always say. Do you think me very unromantic?"
In truth, Lily did think so, and she looked apologetically at Miss Melody.
Her old schoolmistress laughed heartily.
"Well, well, it's very natural you should think so, but you must beware of that romantic little head of yours. Do you remember, Lily, when you were leaving school, that I warned you against letting your imagination run away with you? Oh, you've improved since those days, I know-I know. But now, my dear child, you have come to cross-roads, and there must be no mistake here. It's too important. Tell me, what does your father say to you about this?"
"He has been very kind. He hasn't said much. I know he wants me to feel quite free. But, of course, I can't help knowing that he would like it very much, and I should like to please him."
"He would like it very much, would he?" repeated Miss Melody reflectively. "Well, childie, that seems to me a very big item on the side of the Pros. Not as a sole reason for marrying, you understand, or even as a chief one-but simply because your father's judgment of this man is likely to be a very, very sound one. If he likes him so much, and trusts him well enough to want to give you to him, why, then, Lily, I think we may safely take it for granted that he must be a very admirable person. A man is a better judge of another man than we women can ever be, you know."
If Lily, in some undefined way, felt that Miss Melody had failed to touch upon the real point at issue, which in no way concerned the intrinsic worth of Nicholas Aubray-she had too much faith in the voice of external authority, and too little in her own convictions, to pause upon the thought.
"Then there's another thing, you know, dearie. You say he is a good deal older than you are. Well, childie, that seems to me in your case to be a real advantage. You lack backbone, Lily-you know I've always told you so. I should be frightened to think of you at the head of a household without a very, very steady hand behind you, childie. Don't you feel that yourself?"
"Yes, I think I do."
Miss Melody shot out a plump forefinger almost triumphantly.
"There you are, again! I think I do. You must know, childie dear, not think! Oh, Lily, Lily!"
Miss Melody shook her head and dropped her deep voice. There was humour in her kindly, penetrating eyes.
"It seems to me that a clever, strong-minded man, older than yourself, is the very husband you need, Lily. Tell me-you trust this man?"
"Oh, yes."
"That's the great thing-absolute trust. But there's another question too, dearie-one that only you can answer. Do you care for him?"
Had Lily replied in accordance with her state of mind, she would once more have said, "I think I do."
But she felt that this formula of uncertainty was now barred to her.
"Sometimes I do," she remarked finally.
"Sometimes, sometimes!" repeated Miss Melody in melancholy impatience. "What a half-hearted little person it is! Lily, Lily, either you care for this man or you don't care for him, surely. How can you say 'Sometimes'?"
"There are times when-when he's nicer, and I like him better, than other times," Lily confusedly tried to explain.
Miss Melody's brow cleared.
She laughed.
"And are there no times when you are 'nicer' as you call it, than at other times? We're all human, you know, dearie. You mustn't look for perfection."
Lily had often told herself the same thing, and illogically derived reassurance in hearing from somebody else the truism that had failed to impress her from within by any applicability to her especial need.
"I'm not certain that I'm in love with him," she said timidly.
"You mustn't confuse being 'in love' with loving, childie dear," said Miss Melody.
They looked at one another in silence.
Apparently Miss Melody had no further assistance to give to Lily. Her subsequent counsel was merely repetition, and she concluded it by telling Lily gravely and kindly that nobody could really advise her, or had any right to try to influence her. She must decide for herself.
Lily left Bridgecrap with the complete certainty that the wise and experienced Miss Melody was strongly biased in favour of her pupil's immediate marriage with Nicholas Aubray.
"I shall expect to get news from you soon," said Miss Melody significantly in farewell.
It in no wise mitigated the significance, that she should add with an inscrutable smile:
"One way or the other."
It would fall extremely flat, Lily reflected ruefully, if her news were to be "the other," after all.
The novel sense of her own importance was so agreeable that she felt no more than a passing shock at the discovery that the Hardinges were perfectly aware of Nicholas's proposal.
Ethel Hardinge, after a few brisk preliminaries as to the disadvantages of being motherless, sought candidly to advise Lily.
"There's nothing like first love," said Ethel in a hearty sort of way. "They say nobody marries their first love, but I did, and no two people could be happier than we are, of that I'm certain."
"Then it does last?" said Lily tentatively.
"Being in love? Well, no, dear, not in the same way, of course. One must look at these things sensibly, and yet at the same time without being foolish," said Mrs. Hardinge with clarity. "I'm speaking to you as I should speak to one of my own girlies. You mustn't expect to remain in love for ever and ever."
Lily felt that Cousin Ethel was taking too much for granted.
"But Cousin Ethel, I don't know that I am in love at all, yet."
"Oh! Well, of course, dear-just hand me the white cotton, dear-Sylvia is so hard on her knickers, always-But you do like him very much?"
"Yes, very much."
"He certainly is charming-so utterly unlike most clever people. He's a good deal older than you are-perhaps that's what you're thinking of? Dorothy never looks at them if they're over twenty-five, but then you and she are very different."
"Yes," said Lily dejectedly.
She had an undefined feeling that any possible vestige of romance was being eliminated from her love-affair by all these bright and kindly discussions. She felt more at a loss than ever.
"But, after all, Lily, nobody can make up your mind for you. It's a thing you must really decide entirely for yourself. The scissors, if you wouldn't mind, dear. I should hardly feel justified in talking to you at all, if I wasn't so fond of you, and then you've no mother, poor dear! But I shouldn't dream of influencing you, one way or the other."
There was a pause, and Lily picked up a reel of cotton and handed Mrs. Hardinge the scissors.
"It would give your father the greatest happiness, of course, and he's had a sad life, Lily. He never got over the loss of your mother, as Charlie says. And then if anything happened to him, well, of course, there'd be a home for you and for Kenneth and someone to look after you both. Not that you couldn't always count on us for anything we could do, but nothing can be the same as one's very own belongings. With a husband, you see, there's always somebody there."
"That's just what I'm afraid of, in a way," said Lily, at last gathering courage. "I mean that it would be so dreadful if one found one didn't care enough, and yet one was permanently tied."
"But, my dear child," said Mrs. Hardinge earnestly, "there is a love that comes after marriage, you know. Not the same thing as being in love, but something that really lasts. Many a girl who hasn't known whether she was in love or not, or who really isn't in love with the man at first, finds everything quite different once she's really married to him."
Lily listened believingly. Nothing seemed to her more probable than that the married state, about which there hung many mysterious reticences, should operate some startling change of outlook by means unguessed at by the uninitiated.
"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Hardinge hopefully, "you're more in love than you think you are. Very often girls don't realize things-and then before they know where they are, it's too late, and may mean a life-time of regret."
Thinking this over, it appeared to Lily that Cousin Ethel, who was so kind and knew so much about young girls, held that if one was in love, very likely one didn't know it until after one had married the man and that if one wasn't, it was still worth while marrying him because there was something better than being in love, that came after marriage.
The only remaining alternative seemed to be the life-time of regret.
Having derived no stable satisfaction from the advice that she had already received, Lily began to consider where she could seek for more advice, and involved herself further and further in the endeavour to see truth through the vision of others.
Dorothy Hardinge was crudely positive.
"I wouldn't have him, Lily, if you aren't in love with him. There are sure to be heaps of other men who'll want to marry you. They even want to marry me, and you're a million times prettier than I am, and heaps of men don't care a bit about games. I mean whether one's good at them or not. Of course that's one thing in Mr. Aubray's favour, I suppose-as he's frightfully clever and rather old and lives in London, he wouldn't mind about your being rather bad at games, would he?"
"He doesn't mind at all; he's told me so."
"That's all right then. I suppose you wouldn't tell me what he said when he proposed? I can't imagine him doing it, somehow." Dorothy giggled. "I bet he was very grand and formal."
Lily raised her chin slightly.
She had no desire to hear Dorothy's wit, the elementary form of which was well known to her, expend itself in this direction.
But it was never difficult to change the trend of Dorothy's thoughts.
"You've had a great many people in love with you, haven't you, Dorothy?"
"We hardly ever see a new man down here," said Dorothy discontentedly. "But I must say, I generally have somebody or other to make things amusing-one meets them at tennis, and so on. But of course you know, they don't all propose, or anything like that."
"What happens, then?"
"Well," said Dorothy, in a candid and interested voice, "there are generally what I call the three stages: eyesie-pysie, handy-pandy and footy-wootie. First, one just looks at each other and sort of gets going that way, then they squeeze one's hand whenever they can, and try and get hold of it in the dark, coming home from dances and that sort of thing, and then they stick out their foot under the table or somewhere, and press yours, and you go on talking to other people all the time and looking as if nothing was happening. It's sort of fun in a way, though I wouldn't dare tell Mother about it. She'd say it was vulgar, I suppose."
The same unpleasing adjective also appeared to Lily to be highly applicable.
"No one's ever done that kind of thing with me," she said, without emphasis of any kind.
"I suppose you're not the sort, or else you haven't met enough men. That's what I mean, Lily. I do think it would be a frightful pity to get married right away, before you've had any fun at all. Of course, one couldn't go on with that sort of fooling about after one was married, it wouldn't be playing the game. But I must say it's fun, and I can't see any harm in it, so long as one doesn't take it too seriously. Of course, I shouldn't let things go too far."
"What would you call too far?"
"Well, there are girls who say that a dance isn't any fun, unless one gets-well, kissed, as a matter of fact."
"Oh!" said Lily disgustedly.
"I know it's rather awful, when one says it in cold blood like that; and mind you, I don't go in for it myself, Lily, I really don't. I won't say that no one ever has, but it was a sort of accident, truly it was."
"Didn't you mind?"
"No," said Dorothy, "I can't say I did. Afterwards I sort of felt ashamed of myself because I knew Mother would think it so awful if she ever knew-which God forbid! But it sort of seemed natural, kind of, at the time."
"I don't believe I should ever like it," said Lily with finality.
"I think you ought to give yourself a chance of finding out. It's all very well," said Dorothy argumentatively, "if one's frantically in love with anyone, I suppose one's mad enough to want to be tied up to him for ever and ever. But personally I don't want to fall seriously in love for ages yet. Just have a good time while I'm young and have heaps of great friends, and then perhaps, later on, a real, proper grande passion or whatever they call it, and get married."
"I think one might be rather sorry, then, that there had been other people first," said Lily shyly.
"I think that's sentimental tosh," said Dorothy Hardinge with simple finality.
The verdict disquieted Lily but slightly; nevertheless, Dorothy's wisdom had its effect upon her decision. If eyesie-pysie, handy-pandy and footy-wootie constituted happiness in youth, then better far be married, and to relinquish youth.
Lily felt certain that she had no talent for such a form of enjoyment, and she thought that it must be on this account that no such overtures as those described by Dorothy had ever fallen to her lot. The daughter of Philip Stellenthorpe knew no regret, however, for the deprivation.
She could never afterwards recall with any definite certainty the moment in which she took her final decision. When she found herself betrothed to Nicholas Aubray, it seemed natural enough, and the sense of irrevocability that thenceforth encompassed her, Lily almost welcomed.
No one gave her any advice now. They all congratulated her, and even Dorothy Hardinge, after she saw Lily and Nicholas together, and when Lily, herself awestruck, displayed an emerald and diamond ring and a diamond pendant, said cordially:
"Well, I must say you were right in a way, Lily. The trousseau and the presents and all this fuss about you must be simply too heavenly!"
Lily herself derived unforeseen excitement and pleasure from all these accessories to her engagement, her father's intense gratification and pride in her, the warmly-worded congratulations that she received, and the admiring welcome that her youth and prettiness met with from the bewildering number of new friends and relations to whom Nicholas presented her, even the trousseau frocks and the jewels and the wedding presents, all gave her a dream-like feeling of astonished delight.
She did not doubt any more whether she was in love. There was a glamour over her days that could only mean happiness, and happiness and love were still, to Lily's way of thinking, synonymous.
Sometimes she realized with surprise how impossible it would be now to disappoint all this kindness, and saw herself as much bound to Nicholas as though she were already married to him. And she felt with a certain joyful astonishment, that any lingering doubt must be dispelled by the discovery that the personality of Nicholas Aubray seemed to be far more in harmony with her own as a lover than as a friend.
XIII
The person of whom Lily seemed to see least during the period of her engagement was the man whom she was to marry.
Jests about placing them beside one another at the many hospitable tables to which they were invited seemed to be inevitable, but each was obviously expected to talk and make acquaintance with the friends or relations of the other.
Everyone congratulated Lily whole-heartedly.
"He's awfully nice, Lily-he's got such a nice twinkle," said Dorothy Hardinge.
Now that Lily was really engaged, with a ring, and presents arriving every day, and a trousseau imminent, Dorothy was full of excitement, and appeared to have forgotten all her previous strictures.
Perhaps there was something infectious about the glamour surrounding a wedding.
Lily reflected naïvely that she had never before realized how impossible it would be to break off an engagement once it had been made known. Would one have to return all these glittering, shining presents, countermand all the things that had been ordered, write explanations to everybody, and an announcement to the papers so that one's change of mind should be made public? Surely nothing could be more utterly impossible. She had a strong suspicion that the mere imagining of such a contingency would unhesitatingly have been labelled as morbid by Miss Melody.
She abandoned it willingly.
A letter from Miss Melody, the reading of which was very like listening to Miss Melody's own deep voice, did much to confirm the surmise.
"Well, Lily dear, and so the die is cast! Shall you think me quite a witch, childie, if I confess that I wasn't altogether astonished at the news, although very, very much pleased?
"The love of a good man is a great thing. I am glad you look upon the responsibility that it entails upon you as a serious one. At the same time, however, don't let your thoughts dwell too much upon that side of it. Remember that 'the burden is fitted to the back!' Perhaps not very complimentary to Mr. Aubray, but you'll understand what I mean, dear child."
Lily could almost hear the low, rich laugh with which Miss Melody repudiated any uncomplimentary intent in the not very felicitous expression that she had selected.
Many other letters reached her, some of them from relations whom she had scarcely seen. Most of the writers seemed to have heard of Nicholas Aubray as a distinguished and clever man, some of them had even met him, and those who had not done so were as enthusiastic as those who had, since hearsay had endowed him so plentifully.
It was all very like a dream.
Nicholas urged an early wedding, and was rather timidly seconded by Philip.
"I am in favour of early marriages," said Philip, with his habitual air of affirming a theory in the hope of making himself believe in it.
"Yes, yes, yes-for the girl, certainly," said Charlie Hardinge.
Even without Cousin Charlie's tactful implication, it was evident that no one could suggest that Nicholas was making an early marriage.
"He isn't a widower, is he?" said Sylvia to Lily with an air of horrified apprehension.
"Oh no! How could you think so?" Lily was equally horrified.
"I thought he might be, as he's so old-and I must say I should hate to think of your doing anything like that!"
"So should I," said Lily with perfect sincerity. "I should want to be the only person that my-my husband had ever loved."
She was innocently consequential, and Janet Hardinge's scoffing laugh jarred on and surprised her.
"All that is stuff out of books. Nobody ever loves only one person, I don't believe. Not in a long life, anyway."
"Of course, one cares for a lot of people," said Sylvia indignantly, "but Lily and I mean the falling-in-love sort of love. I should hope she was the only girl he'd ever been in love with! I wouldn't marry a man unless I was."
"Mother herself says that very few people ever marry their first love," said Janet quite firmly.
This led to a serious conversation with Cousin Ethel.
Lily did not exactly seek it, but she was ready to resign herself to what she supposed to be a necessity.
"You have no mother, poor child."
Ethel spoke the time-honoured cliché very kindly.
"I am glad you are going to be married, Lily. After my own girls, I don't know that any engagement could have given me so much pleasure. Not only for your father's sake-though I'm delighted to see how happy it makes him-but for your own. Oh, my dear, make the most of your time. It's so wonderful to be young, and happy, and in love."
Lily tried to appear responsive, and was angry at the slight self-consciousness that alone possessed her as she tried to contemplate the causes for rejoicing enumerated by Mrs. Hardinge.
"You're a very, very lucky child. He's a man in a thousand, and it's a wonderful thing to have found one another in time. All the nicest men are generally married long before they're anywhere near his age."
"I suppose," said Lily, remembering Janet, "that I oughtn't to expect, perhaps, to be his first love?"
She looked at Mrs. Hardinge, hoping for reassurance.
"My dear child! Of course, there's love and love, you know. Men have their fancies, but it's the woman they want to marry who really counts. Has he ever told you about-about anything of that sort, in his life?"
"He told me he'd never asked anyone to marry him before."
"There!" cried Ethel in a tone of relief. "What more can you want? I think that's marvellous, at his age. And, Lily dear, let me give you a word of advice. You've no mother, poor child! Now that he's so generously and frankly told you that, you'll be content, won't you? I mean, don't go on and on asking him about the time before he knew you. Some girls are so foolish and wreck all their own happiness with that sort of thing. But I don't think you're like that, are you?"
Lily was puzzled, and also rather distressed. Was married life to contain merely a fresh series of those silences and reticences that had made life at home a thing of eternal difficulties?
It did not seem characteristic of Nicholas.
At last she said: "I should like us to tell one another everything, I think, Cousin Ethel."
Mrs. Hardinge burst into a rather nervous laugh.
"Oh, my dear little girl! Now I'm going to talk to you just as though it were Dorothy or Janet. You see, dear, men aren't the same as women and we mustn't expect it. Nicholas is-is a good man, you know, or your father wouldn't let you marry him. But no man can be expected to tell his wife everything, as you call it-especially when there is a difference in age."
Lily began to feel as though they were talking at cross-purposes.
"You must trust your husband, you know, dear," said Cousin Ethel.
"We do trust one another."
"I'm sure of it. And remember, Lily, that men know a great many things that women aren't expected to understand, and so you mustn't be disappointed if Nicholas has interests in which you can't altogether share. It's bound to be so, even in the very happiest marriages."
Lily felt vaguely disappointed. Her ideal of companionship had been otherwise, and no doubt Cousin Ethel would have joined with Miss Melody in apostrophizing it with that disparaging adjective, Romantic.
"You young things are always so romantic," cried Mrs. Hardinge, causing Lily to start guiltily. "Of course it's natural and right that you should be so, and one's glad of it. Dorothy is just like you, Lily, and so is even little Sylvia. Goodness knows I don't want any of you to be old before your time. I'm often worried about Janet, and the things she says. But you know, dear, it wouldn't be fair not to warn you that there's always something to put up with in marriage. There must be give and take on both sides. And it's a great change for a girl, too-naturally it is."
"What did you feel like when you were first married, Cousin Ethel?"
"I was very much in love," declared Mrs. Hardinge, "and so was Cousin Charlie. And we've been as happy as the day is long together. But of course there were things to put up with. I was one of a very large family. We lived in London at first, and my home was in Ireland and we were much too poor to go there and pay them visits as I should have liked to do. I remember at first, when Charlie was at the office all day, I used to wonder how I could bear the loneliness. The housekeeping didn't take any time at all, and I couldn't shop much, because we hadn't a penny to spare, and we couldn't afford a library subscription even, or a piano. I used to do a lot of sewing, and when it got dark, and I wanted to economize and save the gas bill, I used to sit and do nothing, and think about them all at home having a jolly time in the old schoolroom, and I don't mind telling you now, Lily, what no one ever knew, that I used sometimes to cry my eyes out with home-sickness."
"Oh, poor Cousin Ethel! And what did Cousin Charlie do?"
"He never knew anything about it. I wouldn't have let him know for the world. He would have thought I was unhappy."
Lily was more perplexed than ever. It seemed that because a wife was unhappy, it must at all costs be avoided that her husband should think her unhappy.
"Wouldn't he have understood?"
"I daresay he would. I'm sure he would have been very dear and kind. But men do dislike that kind of thing so much. You know, dear, a woman, after she's married, has to forget herself and think of her husband."
Lily had been taught to regard self-abnegation as a virtue, and she saw nothing but cause for shame in her own fleeting suspicion that it might in reality be nothing but a weakness.
"There's one thing, you won't have the wretched question of money to worry you. When I first married I had no allowance, and had to ask Charlie for every penny. Not that he ever grudged it, poor dear-far from it. But it used to make it so difficult, somehow, to ask for a shilling here and a shilling there-even though it was absolutely necessary. Of course later on, when we were a little better off, he gave me a fixed sum for the housekeeping, and I always saved on that. Charlie sometimes asked me how I'd managed to find a new bonnet, or some little thing for the babies, but I never told him very much about it." Ethel laughed reminiscently.
"Would he have minded?"
"Oh, I don't suppose so. But one never quite knows about money, with men. They're so odd about that sort of thing. And, of course, women don't know anything about money matters."
It seemed a pity that there should be so many things that women knew nothing about.
"Marriage is the only life for a woman, my dear. I hope all my three will marry. I can't tell you how sorry I am for women who are old maids-no interests, no children, very likely no home. Whereas a happy married life-" She paused expressively, and then said:
"You were too young to notice very much when your mother was still alive, but look at your father without her! He has never got over her loss. They were absolutely devoted to one another. Or if you want to know what really happily married people are like, Lily dear, you've only to look at us."
The contemplation of Mr. and Mrs. Hardinge left Lily still speechless.
Perhaps something of this dubious spirit showed in her face. At all events Mrs. Hardinge said very earnestly:
"Now don't mix up love and romance, Lily. They have nothing whatever to do with one another. You girls never seem to realize that, and then of course you're disappointed. Being in love is one thing, and a very right and natural and charming thing-but you mustn't expect to stay in love all the days of your life."
"I suppose not," said Lily doubtfully.
She had not the moral courage to suppose anything else, imbued as she was with the theory that it was both her duty and to her advantage to accept her opinions ready-made from her seniors.
"I don't want to sound hard and cynical, dear," said Ethel, looking harassed and motherly. "Of course you're in love with Nicholas and he with you, and it's the very happiest and most idyllic time that you'll ever know. I only meant to put you a little bit on your guard-after all.... No mother, poor child!"
It came in almost like the refrain of a song.
"And even if-when the actual glamour of falling in love is over, then, you know, there's something very much better that takes its place."
"What, Cousin Ethel?"
"Oh, my dear child! Love-trust-confidence-all the little ups and downs you've been through together-even the little quarrels. It all helps to draw you more closely together. Charlie and I laugh together now sometimes, at all sorts of funny things that happened to us years ago. It all helps."
Helps-what did it help?
Lily would not ask any further, because of a strange, sick feeling that kept on invading her and to which nothing would have induced her to give the name of dismay.
So that was love.
She felt ashamed and almost angry at the thought of her own secret, past dreams. Romantic, indeed. Miss Melody and Cousin Ethel, extremely unlike as they were, would most certainly have joined issue in kindly condemnation here. Both would alike have made use of the self-same words. Beware, foolish little child, of romance and of imagination alike.
Love was a thing of ephemeral excitements, greatly accrued self-importance, preparations, gifts, congratulations, a great deal of talk and discussion.
It was also a thing of rather bewildering demands and claims. Nicholas had the right to hold her hand now whenever he wanted to, and he always did so whenever they were alone together, playing with her engagement-ring, bending back the supple fingers, examining the tips of them, very often kissing them. He put his arm round her when they were together, frequently. He kissed her lips at each meeting and parting-sometimes he unexpectedly bent and touched her cheek or her forehead.
It had been a relief to Lily to find that his touch did not actually displease her, as did that of most people.
She was by temperament, she supposed, undemonstrative, but it disappointed her vaguely that certain latent possibilities in herself had not in any way been roused by Nicholas. She wished that there was anyone to whom she could turn for explanation.
But of course everybody would make the same humiliating accusation, and inform her regretfully that she was romantic. These wild, sweet dreams had been romantic, undoubtedly.
She had thought of love as a thing of flames and carnations-the odd, beautiful words had served her fancy instinctively. Something so wonderful that talk would spoil it. Or if there had to be talk and discussion and preparation, it would all pass by unheeded, because of something that mattered so infinitely more.
She had a curious idea that one would not care to have a wedding, and a beautiful lace veil, and all those presents. It would be more like an inevitable recognition of a great central fact in the whole universe, and then-what?
She hardly knew, but could formulate vaguely the picture of a going forth. The soft, dark-blue gloom of a summer night, and the trusted, hidden depths of a known and loved beech-wood, or the lashing wind of a grey, winter sky and the shelter of a flung cloak and the lee of a high boulder-what would it matter, which the setting were?
O folly, O romance! O shadows of Philip Stellenthorpe, tremulously proud of a future position, of Charlie and Ethel happily married and discussing the new asparagus-bed, and the children, and the ups and downs of their joint past, of Dorothy Hardinge, gaily pursuing her course of handy-pandy, eyesie-pysie and the rest of it, and yet frankly envious of Lily's new dignities!
Those were the real things, the real necessities, and so were the wedding preparations, and the beautiful ring, and the endless consultations over clothes and furniture and journeys....
The dreams were-just Romance, to be condemned and eschewed, now that Reality had come. And Cousin Ethel had said that this was the happiest and most idyllic time of Lily's life.
It was full of excitement, certainly.
"Lily dear, you'll have to settle about that blue brocade quickly, if you want to take it away with you. Of course, if you wait for it till you get back there's heaps of time."
"Oh, must I write another letter, Cousin Ethel?"
"Poor child, your hand must be tired. Janet can write it for you quite well if you tell her what to say."
And Janet, not at all unwillingly, was pressed into the service.
Lily's own sudden importance positively bewildered her.
"My dear child, the vicar wants to know your choice of hymns for the ceremony. Will you and Nicholas talk it over, and let me know as soon as you can? Nicholas will be here on Saturday, I suppose?"
"Yes, Father. You know you said every week-end until the wedding."
"Of course, my little pet, of course. I only wish he could give us more time; but after all, he'll want the holiday more, later on. How long are you hoping to be away?"
"He thinks he can spare a month quite well."
"That's excellent. It'll be a wonderful time for you both, my dear child."
"Lily, Lily!" Kenneth burst into the room. "There's another enormous parcel for you just come-it says Glass. Come and see what it is."
"A telegram for you, miss."
"Nicholas can't get away on Saturday, Father. He isn't coming."
"Dear me, how very disappointing. My poor, dear child!"
"He'll come next week-end, for certain."
Lily was actually experiencing an unacknowledged relief at the thought that the claims upon her time necessitated by the presence of Nicholas were at least postponed.
There were so many letters to be written, parcels to be unpacked, clothes to be tried on, and it was all so very important.
"That's my good little girl," said Philip, in a tone that expressed as much relief as though he had feared the outbreak of tears to be expected from a child disappointed of its treat.
Mrs. Hardinge was plain-spoken.
"Well, you'll see plenty of Nicholas after the wedding, and now you can get some of those letters off your mind, Lily. You can make them very short. Everybody knows that a bride never has time for long letters, and you simply must get everything finished up before the wedding."
Before the wedding-until the wedding-because of the wedding.
They all said that, in a frenzied sort of way which implied that the wedding was the final goal towards which Time itself was tending as to the ultimate bourne.
"After the wedding" was only alluded to as some remote period during which rest might obtain which must until then be utterly foregone. Lily's own imagination refused to entertain more than the crowding preoccupations of the present. She knew that she and Nicholas were going to Paris together, but all that she could realize was that by that time all the presents must be acknowledged, all the new frocks finished and packed up, and all the various business of the last few weeks finally accomplished.
The relief of it would be incalculable.
The last Saturday before the wedding-day brought Nicholas, but this time he stayed with the Hardinges. Lily saw him, alone, less than ever.
"Can't I see you in your wedding-dress, just for a minute?" he urged.
"Good gracious, no!" Cousin Ethel was horrified. "Don't you know it's unlucky? She isn't going to put it on again till she goes to the church. You'll see it then. And she looks lovely. It's the prettiest wedding-dress I've ever seen."
Lily thought of the misty whiteness of her wedding-dress, swathed in tissue paper, hanging alone in a large closet, with a dust-sheet spread upon the floor beneath it, across which lay the heavy gleaming folds of the embroidered train.
She could not believe that she was to wear it. On the eve of her wedding, the preparations all somehow miraculously completed, Lily was principally conscious of overpowering physical fatigue.
The wistfulness of an utterly over-wrought spirit possessed her, and she felt strangely inclined to tears.
"It will be a very sad house without you, little Lily," said her father pathetically.
"Oh, I hope not, Father."
"Well, well-I mustn't let my loneliness sadden your joy. You are happy, my darling?"
"Very," said Lily in a choked voice.
"Remember that if you have the slightest doubt of your own feelings, it's not too late to say so. Even now, at the eleventh hour," said Philip solemnly. "It's not too late."
It was the first time that he had made any suggestion of the sort, and Lily was by this time quite incapable of viewing it as a practical possibility. The beautiful and costly wedding-dress hanging in the closet upstairs, the lace veil and the pearl necklace, the packed and corded trunks with new-painted initials, the very fact that within less than twenty-four hours a number of guests would be assembling in church, made it quite impossible to receive Philip's portentous warning as being more than a mere form of words.
It almost seemed as though he regarded it so himself, for when Lily murmured an inarticulate and meaningless reply he said:
"You've chosen a good man, and one to whom I am proud to give you."
He kissed and blessed her very kindly, rather as though it were part of some grave ritual.
"I approve your choice on behalf of your mother, as well as myself. If only she were here, Lily! Poor child, it's hard on you."
Philip suddenly began to fidget with whatever lay nearest to hand.
"You've had a little talk with Cousin Ethel?" he said meaningly.
Lily had had innumerable talks with Cousin Ethel, but a terrifying certainty suddenly invaded her that her father was alluding to none of them.
She said "Yes" nevertheless, and Philip said hastily: "That's right, that's right," and did not look at her.
Lily hoped fervently that there the mysterious question would be allowed to rest.
When Mrs. Hardinge sought her that evening, however, she knew that her hopes were futile.
Cousin Ethel looked at the wedding-dress, scrutinized the white gloves, told Lily to drink a glass of hot milk so that she might sleep, and then began to wander aimlessly round Lily's bedroom, straightening small pieces of furniture with a confused and absent air.
"Everything is absolutely ready, I think, and Dorothy and I will be round in good time to help you dress. You-you're all right, dear?"
"Yes, thank you, Cousin Ethel. I'm so tired I believe I shall go to sleep at once."
"That's right. Try and not think about anything, but just go off to sleep."
Cousin Ethel seemed to hesitate, picked up a packet of labels and put it down again, and said rather hoarsely:
"You mustn't be nervous, my dear. Poor little thing-I wish you had your mother. But it'll be quite all right really, you know."
Mrs. Hardinge gazed at her with an apprehensive look.
"You've lived in the country all your life, after all. You-you know-Well, dear," said Mrs. Hardinge in a sudden burst of courage, "after all-you've seen the animals."
The expression was perhaps infelicitous.
Lily, terrified and over-tired, began uncontrollably to cry.
XIV
It was a surprise to Lily Aubray to learn, while she was still upon her honeymoon, that her husband considered her to have been a spoilt child in the house of her father.
He did not in the least make this a subject of reproach, but humorously took it for granted.
"You were probably much too pretty not to spoil," said he.
The accusation mortified Lily.
"But I really don't think I was particularly spoilt, Nicholas. Not after Mother died, anyway. Father was rather strict about a good many things. I was not allowed sweets, for instance, and hardly ever saw any other children, and never went to parties. And you know how particular he is-and always was-about manners."
"Too particular," said Nicholas significantly. "He never scolded you, I suppose?"
"Not exactly."
"Just let you see when you'd done the wrong thing, eh? That's the trouble, my dear. A little wholesome criticism would have made you much less thin-skinned. It's a great pity there's so much difference in age between you and Kenneth. You've practically been an only child since you were ten years old."
Lily remembered various disparaging comments applied to herself by the girls at Bridgecrap, and certain doubts of her father's absolute infallibility, stifled conscientiously hitherto, began to stir within her. It was true that she was childishly over-sensitive, brooding over a trifling criticism, and hurt by it the more, when she could not help recognizing its truth. Philip, when obliged to point out a defect in his offspring, had always done so with portentous elaboration and had himself suffered so obviously in the composition and the delivery of his rebuke, that each such occasion had acquired a monstrous and deplorable significance.
Nicholas, whether he praised or blamed his wife, did so with cheerful and unsparing candour. Far more often than he criticized her, however, he paid her extravagant, and not always discerning, compliments.
"You're so keen about things, Lily, that's what's so splendid of you. So thoroughly interested in everything."
Sometimes Nicholas said this when Lily had not been interested at all, but had merely, in accordance with the training of her childhood, simulated interest or amusement, in order that she might not disappoint him. She was not sufficiently well-educated to enjoy a very great deal of sight-seeing, and certain prolonged visits to art galleries and museums in Paris tired more than they pleased her. Music, of which she had a real appreciation, Nicholas professed to love, but Lily found that although he beat time with his hand very enthusiastically at the beginning of any well-known work, and frequently hummed something rather indeterminate under his breath, he found concerts in reality tedious.
When they visited a large cordite factory, he was enthusiastic, and Lily endeavoured to be so as well, understanding very little of what he told her, but saying "Yes, I see," and asking questions that she hoped might please him.
Sometimes a fleeting wonder crossed her mind as to the possibilities of companionship between two people of identical tastes and desires. Once, even, she found herself reflecting upon the extreme, and obviously unattainable, luxury of perfect honesty, frank admission of likes and dislikes, frank recognition of differences to be admitted and respected. An impractical idea, and one that verged upon the disloyal. She did not mention it to Nicholas. There were, in fact, several things that could not be mentioned to Nicholas, although this, like so much else, Lily would not have owned to herself.
She was never at a loss for conversation with him, as she had often been with Philip, saving up small remarks and comments that occurred to her during the day in order to produce them at meal-time and promote talk.
With Nicholas, there were no weighty silences. He was almost always ready to talk, and Lily found it very easy to please him. He always seemed to find her amusing, and was equally ready to laugh at her jests and at his own.
Even his love-making was of a jovial, exuberant kind now, and he often exclaimed joyously and loudly that it was a topping world.
"Isn't this simply great now, little pal? Isn't it all splendid?"
An odd self-consciousness invaded Lily on these occasions; she wished that her replies were less perfunctory than she felt them to be.
She did not, somehow, feel exuberant, as Nicholas did, but oddly bewildered and tired.
Sometimes Nicholas was solicitous for her and asked anxiously whether she had a headache, or felt fatigued, but he was curiously lacking in discernment, and seldom made the enquiry on occasions when Lily really was tired.
She decided, after a time, that he only did so when prompted by some lassitude of his own.
Lily was not consciously disappointed by a certain lack of sympathy between herself and her husband, partly because it was only evinced in small and infrequent ways, and partly because she conscientiously recalled to her memory the many warnings received from Cousin Ethel and other authorities.
Marriage was a thing of give and take, they had said.
Nothing was perfect in this world.
Romance was an affair of the imagination, and imagination was something to be kept strictly within bounds.
With these and other platitudes Lily contrived to stifle the memory of her old day-dreams, so kindly and gravely condemned by Miss Melody.
There were a great many lighter aspects of her new life that gave her a childish sense of gratification.
She liked the glances of surprise which strangers occasionally cast at her wedding-ring, and the polite astonishment of the shop assistants when they discovered her to be "Madame" instead of "Mademoiselle."
The many compliments that Nicholas received from acquaintances upon the beauty of his young wife he faithfully transmitted to Lily, and they added to her pleasure in her new dignities.
She enjoyed wearing her new and beautiful jewels, and when Nicholas, regardless of her already elaborate trousseau, begged her to buy Paris frocks, Lily declared herself desirous of a black velvet evening dress, because "only married women wore black velvet."
Nicholas laughed heartily at her pretensions, took her to the most extravagant couturier in Paris, and had her photographed in the black velvet gown, that admirably enhanced her fair, child-like beauty.
He praised her looks continually, and Lily presently discovered that she could please him very much by allusions to his own height, the breadth of his shoulders, and his fine carriage.
Sometimes he suggested that they might be taken for father and daughter, but he obviously wished the idea to be received with friendly derision, and Lily never failed to gratify him.
Nevertheless, Lily in her own mind very often contrasted Nicholas with her father.
On the whole, life was very much easier and more natural with Nicholas than it had been with Philip. Each, in widely different ways, was exacting, but Nicholas only demanded an intensification of display, where Philip had required a suppression of natural characteristics. Nicholas was actually pleased when Lily admitted that she liked sweets, and did not at all appear to think it a waste of money to buy her fondants and marrons glacés.
Sometimes she thought that the most child-like qualities in her were the ones that he most valued. She wore a different frock almost every day, and knew that he delighted in her display of vanity. The new frocks themselves pleased her, too, and the novelty of her independence, and even such trivialities as her new address.
"Mrs. Aubray," she read aloud with a certain triumph, on the envelopes of newly-arrived letters.
Mrs. Aubray glanced self-consciously at her wedding-ring, visualized herself in her new clothes, and the graceful disposition of her wavy hair as manipulated by her new maid, and read her letters from England.
"My dearest little child,
"The house seems very sad and empty without you, especially now that Kenneth has left it too. However, it is very pleasant to think of your happiness, and no doubt you are greatly enjoying your time in Paris with your husband. Poor little Kenneth went off to school very pluckily, and showed no signs at all of feeling upset. I was vexed at receiving no telegram from him to announce his safe arrival, although I gave him the money for one when I saw him off at the station, and begged him to ask some elder boy to see to it for him the moment they arrived. I wish now that I had done this myself, as no telegram came.
"I had to send off a wire myself, with answer prepaid to the school, and received a satisfactory reply yesterday afternoon.
"Your letters are a great pleasure, and your descriptions of your sight-seeing most clever and interesting. Cousin Charlie is very kind about enlivening my solitude, and we have had some capital games of chess. Your Cousin Ethel is in London with Dorothy, and has kindly been to the new house several times to see that all is in good order for your return. She is, I believe, writing to you about this, and also to give you a piece of news, which will doubtless interest you greatly, but which is to be kept a secret at present, I understand. I will therefore say nothing further until I hear from you.
"We have had very poor weather here since you left, but I hope that Paris is in sunshine.
"My love to Nicholas and to yourself, my dear child, and may God Almighty bless you both.
"Ever your devoted Father,
"Philip Stellenthorpe."
"I hope poor Kenneth wasn't dreadfully furious at having that prepaid telegram," was Lily's reflection.
She opened Ethel Hardinge's letter.
"My dear Lily,
"Delighted to hear such excellent news of you, the girls all enjoyed your letter. We have a great piece of news to tell you. Dorothy is engaged to be married. 'One wedding makes another' they always say. He is very nice, indeed, and we are delighted. It has all happened very quickly, and it's quite private, so please tell no one, except, of course, Nicholas.
"He is a Captain Durand, a soldier, and we greatly fear that it means many years of foreign service, but they are really in love, and I think I can talk Cousin Charlie into letting them be married before the regiment sails for India next year.
"D. will write you all details, of course. You never saw anyone so radiant as she is-but I expect you know all about it!! I know you'll be delighted at her happiness.
"Your house looks lovely. D. and I have been round there several times, and hustled the workmen, and everything ought to be quite finished in another ten days. We go home to-morrow, after a very busy time, as you can imagine, with all this excitement. Everybody wearing yellow nowadays, it seems to me, and everything very frilly. Pink and blue seem to be quite out of fashion, such a pity, as D. always looks bilious in yellow or cream-colour. But, of course, you'll tell us all about clothes and colours when you get back from Paris. I hope the new frocks are a great success. Did the black hat travel all right?
"Best love, dear Lily. It's such a real delight to think of your happiness.
"Yours affec'ly and in haste,
"E. H."
Lily searched hastily amongst the remaining envelopes for Dorothy's letter. It was a very long one scrawled in Dorothy's untidy handwriting at various intervals of time.
"Dearest Lily,
"You will be surprised. I'm engaged!!! Really, I can hardly believe it myself yet, and it's deadly private at present, though why I can't think, but you know what old people are like, taking about being caushus, and waiting and seeing, et cetera. But of course I said I'd have to tell you at once, you having had all the same excitement yourself such a little while ago.
"Well! I'll try and begin at the beginning, and not to be too frightfully excited to write sense. His name is Frank Durand, and he is a soldier, taller than me, thank goodness, though not, I must say, nearly as tall as yours. He is honestly and truly good looking with brown eyes, rather long eyelashes, and a short moustache, and brown hair, very short and thick. He's got ripping teeth, which makes him look particularly nice when he smiles, which he pretty often does. He is a good deal sunburnt-brown, not red, I am thankful to say. He is twenty-eight, and has done frightfully well in the Army, for his age, though he doesn't seem in the least clever, which is lucky, or I should have been terrified of him.
"The whole story of it was that we met at the County Ball just after your wedding, and he asked me for hundreds of dances, and I must say Mother scolded me like anything afterwards, and very nearly threatened not to take me to London with her at all, but I knew she would, of course, all the time. In fact I'd told him I was going to London next day for a fortnight and told him the name of the hotel and everything. He came and called the very day after we'd arrived, and luckily Mother liked him, and asked him to lunch-this was Friday-and on Sunday we met him in the Park, and I had to pretend I was frightfully surprised. 
"On Tuesday I wore my new saxe-blue frock-that I must say Miss Jones has made simply heavenly-and he came to tea, and asked if we'd come to a theatre party that had been got up frightfully hurriedly for the next night. There was a man there for Mother, old and rather deadly-and two other men from his regiment, and his sister, rather pretty, but quite old, at least twenty-nine, I should think-and a Miss Ballantyne, who had the most disgustingly lovely hair, real auburn and very curly. You know how impossible it is to get mine to wave, even with tongs! However, I had on my new evening frock that you haven't seen, a really good white satin, with plain pearl trimming, and I didn't look bad.
"We had dinner first at a restaurant, and I was feeling so excited all the time I could hardly speak. I didn't sit next him at dinner, but I did at the theatre, and there was nobody on his other side, because he sat at the end of the row. I can honestly say, Lily, that I didn't hear a single word of the play, though the other people were roaring away like mad, with laughter.
"I simply can't tell you the sort of things he was saying to me the whole time, but of course you can imagine!
"Well, it was raining when we came out, and there was the usual fuss about cabs and things, and Mother keeping on about wanting a four-wheeler, and the other men went away by Tube, and the Ballantyne girl had a tiny sort of broom sent for her and took Phyllis Durand and there was room for one other, and of course it ought to have been Frank, but he found a hansom and said could he take me home in it, and Mother go in the broom?
"Can you imagine Mother allowing such a thing? Of course I felt certain she wouldn't, but I did look at her to give her a hint, and she said yes like a perfect lamb!!
"Well, he did it in the hansom, just as we were turning out of Shaftesbury Avenue into Piccadilly Circus. I was frightfully surprised in a way, because it seemed so frightfully quick, but I was simply frantically happy, and only afraid I should wake up and find it all a dream.
"I must say, I'd no idea life could be at all like this! When I think of how we all stodged away through the days at Bridgecrap, and thought ourselves quite happy! Doesn't it all seem a long way off?
"Well, my hand is getting frightfully tired, so I must end as quick as I can.
"I told Mother next morning, and I must say she was very nice, and he came round and they had a long jaw, and seemed to hit it off very well together. Mother wrote her usual reams to Father, and pretended that it all depended on him, but of course we knew it was all right the minute she approved.
"I haven't got a ring yet, but Father is coming up here, or we're going home early next week-it isn't yet decided which-after that we can be properly engaged. Of course we really are, now, but we pretend to think we're not, to please Mother, et cetera. Frank luckily has no relations except his sister. I am dying for you to know him, he is so awfully nice, and we're simply too happy for words. Do write a long answer to this.
"Best love from
"Dorothy.
"P.S.-I feel rather a selfish pig for writing all about myself, but I knew you'd want to hear the really interesting parts. I hope you're having a heavenly time too, with your one, but of course you are. Your house looks simply ripping. Frank and I will probably live abroad in bungalows and things when we're married, and not be a bit rich."
Happiness had positively endowed Dorothy with descriptive powers hitherto unsuspected in her.
Lily felt excited and pleased, and oddly sad, all at once. She read Dorothy's letter over again.
Not a word about handy-pandy, footy-wootie and eyesie-pysie! Lily could not help wondering whether these adjuncts to courtship had been dispensed with. She was inclined to hope so. Dorothy's happiness was, evidently enough, above the realm of trivialities.
Lily read the letter through for the third time. Dorothy had always been inarticulate, but it seemed now that she was suddenly able to express herself. However colloquial the words that she might have selected, Lily felt that they somehow conveyed very vividly an impression of sudden and overwhelming happiness.
Lily, in a strange and confused way, felt as though, through Dorothy, she saw exemplified the brilliant descriptions given to her of the joys of early love, descriptions which, when she had tried to apply them to herself, had seemed extraordinarily unreal. Her will had repeated the assurances of her happiness, but her emotions had remained unstirred.
She told Nicholas the news that her letters had contained.
"By Jove! That's excellent. I hope he's a good fellow. When are they going to be married?"
"She doesn't say, but Cousin Ethel evidently thinks it will be before next year, when his regiment goes to India."
"Splendid! Funny you and she should be married more or less at the same time, eh? You'll be able to tell her all about the management of a husband-an old married woman like you." His laughter, as always, prolonged itself considerably beyond the limits of his wife's very faint amusement at the jest.
"Give her my best congratulations, Lily. I'm so glad about it. She's a first-rate girl, isn't she? I should like her immensely even if she wasn't a great friend of my little wife's. Captain Durand is in luck, isn't he?"
Lily assented eagerly.
"Don't you think Dorothy is pretty, Nicholas?"
"I know somebody who's much prettier." He laughed and kissed her.
She felt ungrateful because she wished that he would give her the opinion she had asked for instead of caressing her.
The next moment he did so.
"Yes, I think she's quite nice-looking. She's got plenty of brains, too, hasn't she?"
His tone took an affirmative reply for granted, and Lily gave it because she was afraid that it would sound ungenerous to express the opinion that Dorothy was emphatically devoid of brains.
She reflected, besides, that Nicholas was more likely to be a competent judge of brains than she was herself.
Lily was always willing to tell herself that the judgments of Nicholas were more to be trusted than were her own. She liked to acknowledge to herself his superiority, believing that because she acknowledged it, she relied upon it.
But in the recesses of her soul, into which she had been taught to shun investigation, her own intuitions and convictions remained unaltered.
"Where are they going to live? In India?" Nicholas enquired.
His absorption in any matter under discussion was always cordial and unfeigned, and always came as a joyful surprise to Lily, accustomed to Philip's elaborately polite pretences at an interest which he in reality seldom felt in the affairs of other people.
"I suppose they'll live in India," she said. "I don't know how many more years of foreign service he has, but he's only twenty-eight. Dorothy says something about living in bungalows and places."
"Good! She means to go with him, then?"
"Oh, I'm sure she does," said Lily, surprised. "Cousin Ethel will miss her dreadfully."
"So will someone else, I'm afraid," said Nicholas kindly. "I hoped you were going to have her to stay with you when we were settled in town. I'm afraid it will be lonely for you sometimes, when I'm very busy, as I sometimes am." He looked at her for a moment. "Perhaps we shall be able to put that right later on, eh, Lily?"
She smiled at him.
Such references did not discompose her in the least, and she was placidly glad that Nicholas should so much desire a child. It had pleased and relieved her to find that her husband did not consider the subject of potential babies as improper as she had always supposed it to be.
"But there's another sister, the little one at school. You like her better than Janet, don't you? We can have her to stay with us, I hope. But I shall tell Dorothy that she's let me down, by running off like this to India."
Nicholas laughed heartily.
"All the same, she's a plucky girl. It's no joke for a woman to spend all the best years of her life following the drum. It means bad climates very often, and no fixed home, and perhaps separation from her children-certainly separation from her own people. All that means some pretty big sacrifices."
"Yes." Lily spoke dreamily and with hesitation.
"But you think it would be worth it, eh?"
"Yes," said Lily with more of emphasis in her tone than was habitual to her.
"Oh yes, worth it over and over again for the man one loved."
"You little dear!" cried Nicholas exuberantly.
She realized with a violent shock, as he caught her in his arms, that her thoughts had been of some visionary abstraction, and not at all of Nicholas Aubray.
XV
Something which could hardly be called a reconciliation, but which was gracefully apostrophized by Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe as a rapprochement, took place between Philip and his sister after Lily's marriage.
Philip would neither admit that they had ever been estranged, nor that the undoubted fact that Lily owed her acquaintance with Nicholas Aubray to her aunt, was in any way connected with their renewal of intercourse.
It needed Miss Stellenthorpe to carry off the situation with what she would herself certainly have described as désinvolture.
"My good, my excellent Philip!" she cried in tones of patronage. "Well did I know that you could not persist in your undignified sulks for ever. It was more than time that you and I met again."
Her excellent Philip, with every appearance of being seriously annoyed, replied unsmilingly:
"Circumstances have been very much against our meeting, my dear Clo."
His eyes were fixed upon the ground, but it would not have been possible to escape hearing the contemptuous snap of Aunt Clo's thumb and middle finger.
"You still refuse to call a spade a spade," she said with mingled scorn and compassion. "I recognized your old weakness when I received our little one at Genazzano."
"Lily is a good, happy little child, I hope," said Philip quite automatically, making use of the formula that he had always opposed to any criticism of his parental methods.
Aunt Clo shrugged her shoulders.
"She is singularly ill-equipped to encounter life. You ask me why I come to such a conclusion, what I find in our Lily? I find in her an invincible ignorance of the true facts of life, the tendency of an ostrich to hide her head from the light, an entire absence of that frank, free outlook that is the birthright of every thinking soul. I find her wrapped in the conventionalities and sentimentalities of a bygone age."
Philip remained perfectly silent, but Miss Stellenthorpe was not thereby debarred from carrying on a spirited conversation.
"Did I then, you enquire, break down the foolish wall of prejudice and ignorance, and show our Lily something of the blue mountains beyond? I reply that I did. My own bigger, wider, clearer vision was what I strove to teach her."
"You gave Lily a most delightful visit to Italy," said Philip in measured tones. "She is very much beholden to you, and so am I. Nicholas Aubray, of course, is an old friend of yours."
"Aha! we turn the conversation!" cried Aunt Clo, with an air of greater shrewdness than was altogether warranted by her penetration of Philip's exceedingly obvious manœuvre.
"Ce bon Nicholas! He will widen the little one's views. You have never taught her to seek for the great things of life, Philip. Perhaps as well! I myself have been storm-tossed and passion-wrecked, and now that the evening has come, I look back upon the day of tempest with a great calm. But all are not fit."
Miss Stellenthorpe shook her head repeatedly, and fixed her gaze upon vacancy.
Philip making no attempt to break the retrospective reverie of his sister, she roused herself from it briskly, with her characteristic laugh, her head flung back.
"But I scarcely know how I came to speak of myself. That is not worthy of either of us. Tell me, my Philip, how goes life with you?"
"I am very well, Clo."
"The body, yes!" cried Aunt Clo with impatient scorn. "But the spirit, the imperishable, the eternal?"
"You know that life is over for me," said Philip, gently and with perfect conviction.
"No!" said Miss Stellenthorpe in a voice like a trumpet-call. And with a still greater effect of emphasis she substituted, "Nay!" a moment later.
"Nay! Can life ever be over while the sun shines, the wind blows, the open road lies before you? Come, my Philip, this is not well!"
Aunt Clo struck a rousing hand between Philip's shoulder-blades.
"Avanti! There is work for us all. Because you have failed once you need not despair."
"Failed?"
"You refused to listen to me-when I bade you face the truth. You deluded yourself with catchwords and pretty phrases, and allowed Vonnie to-"
Philip Stellenthorpe faced his sister with a grey face and compressed lips.
"That will do, Clotilde."
"Ah, coward, coward!" said Miss Stellenthorpe. But she spoke in lower and more doubtful tones and made no immediate attempt to impel her brother to face life with her own unflinching enjoyment of the process.
Her visit upon the whole did not greatly disturb the monotonous and purposeless routine of Philip's days. For many hours at a time Aunt Clo remained invisible, after announcing gravely and with a certain air of sad, steadfast responsibility, that she had many, many letters to write.
"Not idle, trivial notes or pages of foolish gossip, but words of counsel, of cheer to a darkened soul, I trust. There is one là-bas, who needs me, needs me greatly. A frail, delicate bird of foreign plumage, dashing its head against the bars of a gilded cage."
Sometimes it was a bird, sometimes a slender bark tossing upon stormy waters, sometimes a pale flower bent before the blast. But always Aunt Clo's support was craved, and always was she ready to devote her time, her energies, her pen-and-ink, to the task.
The Hardinges pursued acquaintance with Aunt Clo with a certain amount of awe, although she was gracious to the three girls and to Dorothy's fiancé, as one who watches with benevolence the antics of a tribe of aborigines.
"How young! and ah! how English!" murmured Aunt Clo, with an air of having nothing whatever to do with the nationality in question.
Before Lily and Nicholas Aubray returned from their honeymoon, Aunt Clo had left England again.
"What would you?" she enquired of the interested Hardinges, who listened to her as to an astonishing oracle. "What would you? I cannot breathe in the atmosphere of my brother's house. It has always been so. Pour moi, il n'y a que la vérité! I must have the truth, fearless and outspoken, or I die!"
The Hardinges looked startled.
"What a household, his and poor Eleanor's! You"-Aunt Clo's finger flew out accusingly at Charlie Hardinge-"you were there often, while my sister-in-law was alive?"
"Yes, yes, often enough. The kiddies were badly brought up-badly brought up. I used to tell Philip so."
"I also," said Aunt Clo grimly. "The little Vonnie, now. Well did I see that the child was not destined to live long. I sought to open their eyes-oh, most gently, most kindly-and with what result, you ask? With the result that they declared themselves hurt-they proclaimed me unsympathetic. Me! Ha!"
Aunt Clo gave a short laugh.
"Well, well, well," said Charlie pacifically. "That's all over now, and Lily has a very nice home of her own. I'm sure you must be very proud of your niece, Miss Stellenthorpe. She's a charming girl, and a very pretty girl."
"Lily is as yet a child," said Miss Stellenthorpe, unconsciously quoting her brother.
"I'm glad she has a good husband," said Ethel decisively.
To Ethel's way of thinking, all husbands were good husbands, provided that they were not actively bad husbands.
"Lily is very sweet and gentle," she said, "and very easily influenced. It's a very good thing she married young."
"Easily influenced? Ah! Well, it's at all events a likeable weakness-" graciously returned Aunt Clo, merely resting upon that pleasant sense of superiority engendered by the contemplation of any weakness unshared by the contemplative one.
"I cannot wait to see her, hêlas! There are other claims upon me. Sad, sad, lost ones, groping through a labyrinth," said Aunt Clo darkly.
To the rescue of these straying souls she accordingly hastened.
Lily, settling down into her new life, felt a shamefaced satisfaction that she should escape the slight strain entailed by the effort of living up to Aunt Clotilde's exalted ideals.
It was easier to choose furniture for the drawing-room without the terrible certainty that one's writing-table would be found Philistine, one's colour scheme crude.
Lily enjoyed arranging her possessions, but she was both inexperienced and diffident, and it was a relief to find that Nicholas had eclectic and cultivated tastes.
"Did you invent that sort of panel thing?" said Sylvia Hardinge in awe.
Lily shook her head. She was nearly as much overwhelmed as was Sylvia.
"Nicholas got it. It's Chinese lacquer."
"My goodness!" said Sylvia, with a crispness and crudity of utterance that Lily felt inclined to echo.
Paris had been a curious, transitory stage of dressing up every day, sight-seeing, meeting new people, dining in crowded restaurants. There had all the time been a sense of impermanence, as though it was all a strange experiment that might be relinquished, half regretfully, half with relief, once accomplished.
At first, life in the London flat as Mrs. Aubray, seemed nearly as experimental.
There were a great many new people, already seen in glimpses during that confused and crowded period before the wedding, and scarcely distinguished one from another. Lily turned to Nicholas with a new sense of seeking a comparatively familiar refuge, after a bewildering number of encounters with these kind, strange faces.
Nicholas was out every day now, and Lily first awaited in herself the deplorable state of tearful loneliness that Cousin Ethel had once upon a time described to her as the portion of young wives. But whether because Nicholas, unlike Cousin Ethel's husband, was able and willing to give his wife a subscription to Mudie's Library, or whether because Lily had not been torn from the society of numerous brothers and sisters, no such dejection of spirits assailed her.
Housekeeping seemed to be an extraordinarily simple matter with an experienced cook, admirable servants, and the ample allowance given her by her husband. Lily's most arduous task in her household was the choosing of exquisite and expensive flowers at a Bond Street florist, and disposing them in her drawing-room.
She played a great deal upon the Erard piano, read a great many novels, a little poetry and an occasional volume of memoirs or biography, and tried to think of requirements in needlework that should keep her new maid occupied. It seemed a pleasant, leisurely, rather aimless sort of existence. Not quite what imagination had pictured married life to be.
But Lily shied, mentally, at the fatal word "imagination," the thing which had so often been pointed out to her as a dangerous pitfall.
Kind old aunts of Nicholas, or young married women who, nevertheless, were for the most part older than herself, asked Lily directly or indirectly whether she was happy, and she always assented readily enough.
She had been told that certain things constituted happiness, had been trained to accept her values ready-made, and was consequently able to enjoy with placidity those things which her natural instincts, long since stifled and overlain, would have held in a quite different estimate to that of the people surrounding her.
On Sundays Nicholas was with her all day, and very often they went into the country from Saturday to Monday.
For the first few months after her marriage Lily went to church every Sunday as she had always done, and Nicholas accompanied her. She could hardly have said when it was that she first became aware of his attitude towards religion.
"I wouldn't interfere with anybody's faith, my dear, least of all with yours," said Nicholas, thereby causing his wife, for the first time, to ask herself in what her faith consisted.
"Do you only go to church to please me, then, Nicholas?"
"I like to go anywhere with you, darling."
"But tell me what do you think about religion?"
"I don't know that I know very much about it, my dear. The old aunt who brought me up was a Presbyterian, as I think I told you. I had a good deal of church-going to put up with, as a small lad, and Sunday was a very dull day, when I mightn't play with my toys or get my clothes dirty, and that's pretty well all I know about it."
"And after you grew up, Nicholas?"
"I went through the usual phases, I suppose. I remember telling my tutor, when I left school, that I was an atheist."
Nicholas stopped and looked humorously at his wife, and they both laughed.
"Good! I was beginning to think I'd married a little saint. Atheism is a common complaint amongst the very young, I imagine."
"What are you now, Nicholas?"
"I suppose an agnostic," said Nicholas reflectively. "I can hardly imagine any thoughtful person, over a certain age, being anything else. Though I suppose that's nonsense, when one thinks of the number of deeply religious people that exist in all denominations."
"I suppose you'd call Father a religious man?"
"He ought to have been a Trappist monk," declared Nicholas.
"But that's Roman Catholic! Father is very much prejudiced against Roman Catholics."
"I know he is."
"They have no sense of honour," said Lily seriously.
Nicholas looked at her quizzically.
"How many Catholics have you known, Lily?"
"I was at school at a convent for a very little while, when I was ten, but I certainly didn't get to know anybody there very well. I don't think I should have been allowed to have a Catholic friend."
"Well, I think if I were you I shouldn't judge them quite so severely until you've had some experience of them. I have some very good friends among Catholics, and some of them priests, into the bargain."
Lily looked at her husband, rather bewildered.
"One must respect any sincere form of belief, don't you think?" he said gently, "even though one doesn't happen to share it. It's pure accident that you or I weren't born of Buddhist parents, after all."
"Do you mean that you don't think it matters much what Church one belongs to?"
"I don't think it matters in the least. How can it? The great thing is to try and keep straight, isn't it?"
Nicholas remained meditative for a moment.
"Look here, Lily darling, don't run away with the idea that I want to-to destroy your faith, or any nonsense of that sort. I've never studied these questions, and I don't know anything about theology and all the rest of it. It's quite right you should go to church, and religion is a great comfort to a woman sometimes. I know that."
He nodded with an air of great sagacity.
Lily wondered whether religion would ever be a great comfort to her, should she require comfort. And why should Nicholas specify such comfort as applicable to a woman rather than to a man?
She did not consciously dwell upon the matter for very long, but gradually became accustomed to view the question in the way that her husband evidently did, as a purely temperamental one. It was not long, moreover, before Lily perceived that Nicholas was far from being alone in his point of view. It was shared by the majority of the people belonging to the world in which she now moved with her husband.
On the whole it was a relief to feel that there were other opinions than those held by Philip Stellenthorpe, Ethel Hardinge, or Miss Melody. The friends of Nicholas, indeed, more nearly approximated in their views to the startling enunciations of Aunt Clo, whose unconventionalities of diction soon began to acquire, in the retrospect, a character of the merest commonplace.
Lily sometimes told herself, with a certain amount of secret complacency, that she really was a grown-up Person at last.
It gave her an agreeable sense of dignity to receive in her own house the people who had loomed largest upon the horizon of her childhood.
Miss Melody, allowing herself a summer holiday on the Continent, broke her journey in order to spend an hour or two with her erstwhile pupil, and was frankly captivated by the mingled courtesy and cheery good-fellowship shown towards her by Nicholas.
"He makes me think of Chaucer's 'verrye parfit gentil knyghte,'" she said to Lily. "Childe dear, I feel the better for seeing you in your happiness."
Cousin Ethel, less classically, admitted to deriving similar benefit.
"It does my heart good to see you, Lily! Such a lovely house, and such a splendid husband to take care of you. You're a lucky child."
And Philip:
"This is all very charming, my little pet. You should be very happy and-and thankful."
"Yes, Father."
It did not strike either of them, as Lily made her dutiful response, that even if she had not been happy, it never would have occurred to her to tell her father so.
The months slipped by, and it was a matter of rather pleased surprise to the naïveté of Nicholas Aubray's wife that she and her husband were not confronted by that picturesque episode famed in both art and literature as the First Quarrel.
Cousin Ethel had certainly warned her that there would be "ups and downs," and Lily had taken it for granted that these included occasional minor dissensions between her husband and herself.
"Do you know that Nicholas and I have never had a single quarrel?" she observed to Dorothy Hardinge.
"I shouldn't think anybody would ever dare to quarrel with him. Frank and I have had one."
There was so much of a rather melancholy pride in the announcement that Lily felt justified in enquiring further.
"Oh, it was about my dancing with other people. He wanted me to dance at least every other dance with him, and I wouldn't. He was furious, and for the matter of that, so was I."
"Dorothy! You're never furious," said Lily incredulously.
She could not remember ever to have seen Dorothy otherwise than good-humoured and easy-going and light-hearted.
"Well, I was angry that time. I foamed."
Dorothy paused reflectively.
"Of course, we made it up afterwards, and it was heavenly."
"I can't imagine your ever being very angry," said Lily.
"Neither could I," Dorothy admitted frankly. "I always thought I had a beautiful temper, especially compared to poor Janet. But I'm afraid I haven't, after all. Perhaps the truth is that Frank is the only person I've ever known who's really worth quarrelling with."
The explanation, with its odd, un-Hardinge-like quality of discernment, was destined to remain in Lily's memory.
She asked Dorothy to stay with her, and they purchased together the very economically-chosen outfit that Dorothy hoped to take to India with her, which Lily supplemented as often as she dared with presents from herself and Nicholas.
"Thanks awfully, Lily. The blue feather you gave me will go too beautifully with this, won't it? Seulement je pense que je sais un shop moins cher dans le High Street. Nous pouvons disons ici que nous le penserons-over."
The Hardinge superstition that none but themselves could understand schoolroom French was an old one, and had served them many an ill turn with Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe.
When Dorothy's visit was over, and the time before her marriage and departure for India seemed to be lessening very rapidly, Lily realized that, although they had little in common save youth and a year or two's companionship, she would miss her very much.
After all, it had been amusing to discuss frocks and ornaments and purchases together, to rejoice candidly in the glory of Lily's new possessions, and to laugh together at old, foolish, trivial jokes and catchwords that had no merit at all except that of association.
Lily, rather surprised, and very much ashamed, one evening broke into involuntary tears. She did not want Nicholas to know that she had cried, but the tear-stains on her face would not be effaced, and after all, Lily thought that he would understand. There was already a sharply-marked line of division in her thoughts between the things that Nicholas would, and those that he would not, understand.
She told him why she had cried.
"Poor little dear!" Nicholas was very kind and petted her, saying that she was tired, and must take more care of herself. But the next day he was inexplicably depressed, with a tendency to monosyllables and a complete inability to smile.
Lily, only too familiar with such phenomena in her father, felt her heart sink.
"Are you worried, Nicholas?" she ventured.
"No."
He raised his eyebrows slightly, as though wishing to show her that he was surprised at the question.
"You're not vexed with me, are you?"
"I could never be vexed with you, darling," he said, speaking more naturally.
Later, he returned to the subject of his own accord.
"What made my little wife think I could be vexed with her? So long as you don't feel that I'm an elderly fellow who had no business to marry a pretty little girl out of the nursery. Is that it, eh, Lily?"
He laughed as he spoke but there was a kind of nervous anxiety in the look that he turned upon her.
"Of course I don't, Nicholas!"
She raised her lips to his quickly, partly in order to hide the understanding that she felt had leapt into her face.
She saw that Nicholas was sensitive upon the subject of his age. He had found, in Lily's regret at the loss of her old playmate, an implied allusion to the years that separated him from his wife.
It had hurt his feelings.
All this Lily felt with intuitive certainty. Neither she nor Nicholas alluded further to the subject, but he retained his gravity of demeanor until some trifling whimsicality struck his sense of humour, when his habitual spontaneous gaiety returned to him, with all the suddenness of a child's transition from sulky silence to laughter.
Lily was gladdened and relieved by the restoration of her husband's good spirits, and her plastic youth received yet another impression.
She must never let Nicholas know that she was anything less than radiantly happy, or he would attribute it to the disparity of years between them, and his feelings would be hurt.
There was no calamity that it seemed to her more essential to avoid.
XVI
A year after Dorothy Hardinge's marriage, her father died suddenly.
"It seems so incredible, somehow," said Lily.
"My dear, none of us can live for ever. But I know what you mean."
The face of Nicholas was abnormally grave, perhaps in decorous concealment of the indubitable fact that Charlie Hardinge's unexpected death could hardly affect him very deeply, save through concern for its effect upon Lily.
"I don't know why it's so difficult to associate some people with death. Cousin Charlie, somehow, seems part of all the things I've always known, all my life. I can't realize he isn't there any more."
Nicholas patted her hand gently.
"You'd like to come down with me for the funeral, wouldn't you? We could stay with your father for a couple of nights, no doubt, and you might be a comfort to those poor girls. They're both at home, of course?"
"Yes. Poor Dorothy, it will be dreadful for her, away in India."
"Yes, that's hard luck!"
Nicholas was very sympathetic and kind, and Lily felt grateful.
She was, as she had said, utterly unable to associate good-natured, commonplace Cousin Charlie Hardinge with the idea of death.
Philip Stellenthorpe met his daughter and son-in-law with an air of appropriate solemnity which, however, was too near to his habitual expression to be greatly noticeable.
"This is a sad business-terribly sudden. I'm glad you've come down-very glad. They'll appreciate that very much."
"How is Cousin Ethel?" said Lily.
"I've not seen her, but the girls say she's bearing up very bravely, poor thing. I went over there at once, of course, to see if I could be of any help, and saw Janet. Very much upset, of course, poor child, but most sensible and helpful. A brother of poor Charlie's is arriving to-day with his wife, and meanwhile we've made most of the necessary arrangements."
"What time is the funeral?"
Philip gave a very slight start at the question, asked in serious, but unsubdued, tones by Nicholas, and Lily guessed instantly that her father had hitherto avoided making direct use of the word.
"Half-past two, the day after to-morrow. That gives her family, who are very much scattered about the world, time to get here."
"Would Janet and Sylvia like me to go and see them to-morrow, do you think, Father?"
"Yes, my little pet. Janet says that your Cousin Ethel would like to see you, too. They think it's a comfort to her to talk. It's been a terrible shock, of course."
"Very sudden."
Lily knew by the way in which Nicholas spoke that he was making conversation, and that he would secretly have welcomed a change of subject.
"Very sudden indeed. He was apparently in his usual health, and perfectly cheerful, until Sunday evening, when he complained of a pain in his side. They none of them thought anything of it-he didn't himself-but he went upstairs early. He'd only been out of the room a few moments when they heard the sound of a fall. The maid heard it from the dining-room and went upstairs, and there she found him on the floor, unconscious. Most mercifully it wasn't your Cousin Ethel herself who found him there-the shock was terrible enough as it was. The doctor was there inside half an hour, but he couldn't do anything at all. It was all over by ten o'clock, and he never recovered consciousness at all."
"Heart, I suppose?"
"Yes."
The Hardinges themselves told Lily these details all over again, each one repeating the same things over and over again in different words.
Janet and Sylvia sat forlornly in the schoolroom, in old black serge skirts and new black blouses hastily made up by the village dressmaker. They had nothing to do.
An uncle and aunt had arrived and the aunt was upstairs with Ethel. The uncle had gone down to the church "to see about things," they said.
"Oh, Lily, if only it hadn't been so awfully, awfully sudden! We'd all had dinner together, you know, just as usual, and he only stayed in the drawing-room a few minutes, and then said he thought he'd go to bed early."
"He did say he'd a pain in his side; he told Mother so-but we never thought it was anything-" said Sylvia.
"No. And then he went upstairs, and we were all sewing, just as usual, and we never heard anything. It was Emily who heard, from the dining-room, clearing away dinner. And she went upstairs and his door was open, and she saw-oh, Lily!"
Tears choked Janet's utterance.
Both girls had cried until their eyelids were swollen and discoloured and their faces white from exhaustion.
"Has there been time to hear from Dorothy?" Lily asked, for the sake of saying something.
"Not yet. The cable might come any time, now. We cabled to Frank, of course. And he was so pleased about Dorothy's baby and everything, and now-now he'll never see her."
They sobbed and cried.
"The baby will be a comfort to Dorothy."
"Yes, oh yes. And to Mother too, later on."
A bell rang, and Janet said:
"That might be the cable."
Waiting for the Indian cable seemed to be the nearest approach to an occupation that was possible.
"Uncle has sent up the announcement to the papers, so to-morrow I suppose there'll be telegrams and things," said Sylvia, shuddering. "But the Indian cable ought to be here to-day."
The cable came at last and Janet took it upstairs unopened to her mother's room, and Sylvia and Lily remained in the schoolroom, where the clock hands moved so slowly that they often seemed to have stopped altogether. Lily held Sylvia's hand, and spoke from time to time, trying not to think that her platitudes were utterly meaningless.
"He couldn't have felt anything at all-it would have been so much more dreadful if he'd had to suffer... and now he-he's so much happier... he'd want you to be brave...."
She wondered desperately, as she spoke, whether she really believed what she said. Was Cousin Charlie happy now, with some incommunicable bliss? Was he really capable any more, of wishes and hopes concerning those left behind?
Sylvia cried on, softly and drearily, and the hands of the clock crawled slowly round.
Presently Janet came back again and said that the aunt and uncle were downstairs.
"It's so dreadful to have to think of meals and things, just the same," she said.
"Mother is staying upstairs, Lily, but she'd like you to come and see her this afternoon. I think it's a comfort to her to talk."
Cousin Ethel was very brave, and it seemed, as Janet and Sylvia had said, to comfort her to talk.
"He was so good, Lily-that's such a comfort to me. Twenty-five years married, and I never had a cross word from him! I like to think that the children will all be able to remember that. He was such a kind father, too, so devoted to his girls. Do you remember how he used to call them 'kiddie-widdies'?
"After all, Lily dear, one of us had to go first-it's only a very, very few that are allowed to slip away together-and I couldn't have borne to think of him left without me. He's happy now, for ever and ever, and I don't suppose it'll seem more than a flash of time to him, where he is now, before we meet again."
Cousin Ethel cried, too, but it was evident that she found consolation in the thought of an Eternal Life holding the certain promise of ultimate reunion.
Lily went away and promised Janet and Sylvia that she would come again the following day.
"The Hannigan aunts are arriving to-night, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary. I think perhaps it's easier, when there are people there," Sylvia whispered.
Lily was glad to think that they would have the occupation of preparing for, and receiving, the visitors. Anything would surely be better than sitting, sick with crying, repeating over and over again all that they had said already.
She felt very tired, and full of remorse for her own inadequacy. She knew that there had been no conviction behind any of the commonplace utterances with which she had striven to convey consolation. Only her sympathy with their sorrow had been real. Even sympathy, however, seemed to fail her when Philip Stellenthorpe spoke of personal loss to himself.
"Our very nearest friend, poor Charlie," he observed sorrowfully. "There are very few left now, my little Lily, whom I know as I did your poor Cousin Charlie. We'd been friends for many years and I thought very highly of him-very highly indeed."
Lily, against her own will, knew that during Cousin Charlie's life-time Philip had not thought highly of him at all. They had not been intimate friends-Philip had no intimate friends-and it was Charlie Hardinge, not Philip, who had taken for granted that a good-fellowship, at all events, existed between them. Philip had very often resented Charlie's officious interest in his affairs, and his reiterations of unwanted advice.
"Well," said Philip with a heavy sigh, "our loss is his gain, poor fellow, no doubt."
Then he, too, believed, or affected to believe, that Cousin Charlie was now in a region of undimmed happiness, a disincarnate spirit in the presence of his Creator.
Lily deliberately tried to imagine the operation of such a transformation.
Cousin Charlie, interested in his garden, in the arrival in India of a little granddaughter, in the successful solution of a chess problem, utterly without premonition, so far as one knew, of any kind. Walking upstairs, perhaps thinking quite casually of the little pain in his side that they all knew was nothing at all, perhaps occupied with some trivial reflection about the lamp in the passage. He was always particular about the trimming of the wicks....
And then in one instant, unconsciousness. They had found him on the very threshold of the dressing-room, where he must have fallen just as he entered it.
There had been no flicker of consciousness. He had been dead within one hour from the time of his seizure.
And what after that?
Cousin Charlie, awakening in a new world, a world where presumably all his old interests held little or no meaning, confronted with a Supreme Being to whom he had paid a more or less perfunctory homage on Sundays, and told that he had earned, in his comfortable, easy-going, perfectly honourable fifty-eight years upon earth, an eternity of perfect happiness.
It was only less unthinkable than was the alternative of kindly, active Cousin Charlie consigned to an eternity of misery and punishment.
Perhaps there was no afterwards at all, and Cousin Charlie's spirit had flickered out when the machinery of his physical body failed. Then there would never be any reunion, such as his wife, who loved him, looked for so confidently.
Lily could not believe it.
Love, at least, must be a thing that went on. Love was part of God.
She remembered, with a great sense of relief, the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. A place where the souls of the dead awaited. The suggestion of a place of existence upon which the spirit might learn, and be prepared gradually for transformation, seemed to Lily to carry a sense of possibility with it. The other alternatives, quite simply, appeared to her to be incredible.
Her mind was very much occupied with such thoughts, and she found it difficult to speak of other things, as Nicholas was obviously desirous of doing.
Nevertheless, she seconded the efforts of her husband when her father persisted in discussing the funeral arrangements of the following day.
"What a ghoulish sort of pleasure your father seems to take in this business," Nicholas remarked pensively when they were alone together. "I quite agree that it's sad enough, but it needn't pervade the whole conversation, surely."
"I suppose after to-morrow he'll be all right," said Lily.
She was faintly shocked at the criticism of Philip, although her reason admitted its justice.
"You do like Father, Nicholas dear, don't you?"
"My dear child, because one likes a person it needn't make one blind and deaf and dumb to their short-comings," said her husband cheerfully.
Lily assimilated in silence the obvious common-sense of the dictum, that all the same came to her as something almost new, and entirely revolutionary.
The next day, they attended Charlie Hardinge's funeral. Lily retained confused impressions of the smell of new crape, of the sound of decorous murmuring in the church, and then of stifled sobbing as Janet and Sylvia took their places. Ethel Hardinge's thick veil fell over her face, but Lily did not think that she shed tears.
The organist struggled with unusual music, obviously beyond the capabilities of the player, and presently to familiar strains the choir sang:
"Light's abode, celestial Salem,
Visions whence true peace doth spring,
Brighter than the heart can fancy....
There for ever and for ever
Alleluia is out-pour'd....
All is pure and all is holy
That within thy walls is stored."
Lily knew the choice to be Ethel's.
The insistence upon abrupt translation from life on earth into a world of perfect joy and peace, where "all is pure and all is holy," again bewildered and almost distressed Lily.
Could such violent dislocation as was implied really take place?
A child did not, in the space of a night, become a man. Learning, even on the lowest plane, was not acquired in an hour. Did God, then, reverse all His laws as manifested upon earth, whenever a soul left its body?
If so, the spirit now in heaven was not Cousin Charlie at all. It was somebody quite else, with understanding and aspirations that had never been his; one to whom new revelations had been made, that must of necessity transform the soul that received them.
The Charlie Hardinge loved and mourned by his wife and by their children would have been saddened and frightened by such a cleavage of himself from them. One could imagine him, clinging still to old formulæ, asking piteously for explanations, calling upon old, familiar trivialities.
But radiant in the presence of his God, every value he had known upon earth transmuted, without pause or preparation?
Lily knew that she could accept no such assurance. She remembered, as a little child, asking whether she might pray for her dead mother, and Philip's gentle teaching that those at rest with God needed no intercession. They were at peace. The child had been comforted, receiving the words with full confidence, because spoken by her father. Now, Lily found that her whole being rejected them, although she desired to believe, and was frightened of her independent judgment as of a sin. The thought of Charlie Hardinge's soul, as she imagined it to be, deprived of the familiar body and of all the homely accessories to existence, obsessed her. With a sense of furtive guilt, Lily prayed. She prayed that he might not be afraid, or lonely, that someone might be there to help him, and that he might, in some mysterious way, keep in touch with the people that he loved and that loved him, without feeling the added pang of their tears and their sorrow.
Surely the twenty-five years with Ethel counted for something, even in eternity?
She fell again into a maze of speculation, that lasted until all was over.
As the groups of people moved away from the newly-filled grave, Lily saw Janet Hardinge beckoning to her. She went to her, and Janet said wistfully and miserably, as Sylvia had said the day before: "I think it makes it easier if there are people there, Lily. Please come up to the house with us, won't you?"
The Hardinges' house was filled with strange uncles and aunts, most of them entirely unknown to Lily. Tea was laid in the dining-room, and the house, with blinds up-drawn again, and the hall door open, had to Lily's eyes an odd look as of having been newly relieved from strain.
She sat between a Hardinge aunt and an uncle whose name she did not know.
He was a kindly, red-faced man, who shook his head, saying, "Well, well, well," very much as Charlie Hardinge himself might have said it, and then appeared to dismiss the more serious aspect of the gathering from his conversation, if not altogether from his thoughts.
"This is a very good room," he said approvingly, looking round him. "Nice aspect, nice sunny room. They ought to use this room a great deal."
On Lily's other side the Hannigan aunt murmured lugubriously:
"They must just try and begin life again, and make the best kind of a home they can. That's what I tell them. They've got to begin again, now."
And at the other end of the table Lily could hear yet another aunt telling Sylvia that she must be brave and eat some sponge-cake and drink up her tea.
Mrs. Hardinge did not appear at all.
Tea was prolonged as though nobody knew what was to be done, once it was over.
"They ought to go away, and make a thorough break," said Miss Hannigan to Lily. "Then they could come back here again, you know, and start fresh."
"Let me cut you a piece of cake, now," said her other neighbour.
She was relieved when a diversion was caused by the maid's announcement that her husband had come to fetch her.
Janet had gone upstairs to her mother, but Sylvia embraced Lily convulsively in the hall, and said:
"Oh, Lily! It's all so awful, and it goes on and on. I keep feeling that I shall wake up and find it's all a dream."
A few tears of exhaustion rolled down her little white face as she spoke, but Lily saw that she had literally cried until she could cry no more.
"Are you all going away for a little while?" she said hesitatingly. "Your aunt said something about it."
"They want us to go back to Ireland with them, but Mother thinks they couldn't really afford three visitors, and such a long journey wouldn't be worth while for less than a month."
"Cousin Ethel wouldn't go alone, or perhaps with just Janet, and let you come to me-or somewhere else, of course, if you'd rather?"
"Oh!" cried Sylvia, "we must all keep together now that there are only the three of us left."
Lily, as she left the house, violently disputed this sentiment within herself. The longer the three desolate women remained together, just so much the longer would they react upon one another emotionally. Lily wondered whether she was herself heartless in so thinking. It made her seriously uneasy to know that Philip Stellenthorpe would most certainly consider her to be so.
She felt strangely rebellious, and at the same time ashamed of it.
"Well," said Nicholas, "I'm extremely thankful it's over. I was very much afraid there was going to be an accident, weren't you?"
"What-when?"
"Didn't you notice? I suppose your little head was somewhere in the clouds again. One of the bearers wasn't fit for the job-quite unmistakably intoxicated. That's the worst of having country labourers-one can't ever be quite sure. I was on thorns, I can tell you."
He laughed a little, quite gently, but the sound jarred vaguely upon Lily.
"Has the whole thing upset you, poor child? It's the first time, I suppose, you've been to a funeral, isn't it? Well, I must say I hope nothing of that sort will ever be done over me. I should like to be buried at sea."
He flung back his shoulders, tapping his broad chest with the tips of his fingers.
"When this 'poor clay' is laid by, I must say that I should like to think that its only grave was to be rolling waters, eh, Lily?"
She was conscious of feeling more utterly out of tune with his mood than ever before.
"What can it matter, if it isn't oneself at all? Lots of people say that, about being buried at sea, but it's no more and no less than being buried anywhere else. What's the difference?"
He looked surprised.
"What's happened to my holy little saint? I should have thought that the prayers and the consecrated ground and all the rest of it meant a great deal to you, Lily."
His kind, good-humoured air of interested curiosity made her regret her own exasperation, of which, however, she knew herself to be far more conscious than he was.
"Nicholas, tell me really. What do you think has happened to Cousin Charlie's soul, now?"
"My dear little girl! We know that he was very kind and good, and-and Almighty God's mercy...." He stopped, looking disconcerted.
"What's come over you, Lily?"
"I don't know. Only it all seemed so unreal, somehow, to think of Cousin Charlie perfectly happy in heaven and either not knowing anything at all about the people he loved best, or else, in some miraculous way, able to understand why God should let them suffer, and what good is going to come out of it all, so that he doesn't mind. It all seems so-so unlike the ordinary sort of person that he was."
"Yes," said Nicholas. "Yes."
"How could he suddenly turn into a pure spirit who would find eternal joy in the presence of God?" cried Lily recklessly. "They sang that hymn about heaven, but how can one imagine an ordinary, average, good person suddenly in heaven for ever and ever more, unless they've become absolutely different? Surely it's the same essential spirit that was on earth, that goes on into the next world?"
"Heaven, eh? Harps and crowns and white robes and wings and all the rest of it, eh, Lily? No, my dear, I can't say that any of that appeals to me very much."
"Do you believe in it, Nicholas?"
"The old idea of heaven or hell, world without end, Amen? No-yes. I don't know. No, I can't say I do."
"What do you think happens after death, then?"
"One goes on, somewhere or other, of course."
"Yes."
"But I know no more than you do, my dear," said Nicholas. "I don't suppose we were ever meant to know."
Lily was intensely aware that such a conclusion shirked the question entirely, but she said nothing more.
It was from that time that she began to acknowledge to herself her own inner conflict between loyalty, that she had been taught was the supreme virtue, and the insistent demand of something within herself that claimed a right to independent judgment.
Reacting to the sense of having been deluded, Lily gradually forsook the habit of going to church, and was relieved when Nicholas made no comment.
They did not talk about religion. The subject was one which quite evidently held not the slightest interest for Nicholas.
Lily went once or twice by herself to the Brompton Oratory, but always with a sense of doing something wrong. She also purchased, almost furtively, from a green baize board erected at the bottom of the church, a penny pamphlet purporting to explain the chief difficulties that might be supposed to confront a potential "convert" to the Catholic religion.
The little book was ungrammatical, written in slipshod English, and was far from even being explicit. But Lily understood that in the Catholic Church was to be found even less liberty of thought than in her own. The Church told her children what to believe, and beyond that they might not look.
Lily wondered whether such restriction of outlook might not be conducive to great inward peace.
She thought of it wistfully and sentimentally, but knew very well that she could never now, of her own free-will, seek to suppress, unsatisfied, the new spirit of doubt that encompassed her.
With her faith in the arbitrary presentment of the religion that had been imposed upon her, Lily also lost much of her childish faith in the essential infallibility of her father.
His religious beliefs were his own, and she did not seek to question them, but she resented more and more having been brought up to suppose that such beliefs could be transmitted wholesale, to be received without question and without analysis. No such acceptance, she thought, could be of enduring value. Discontent possessed her.
She continued to take pleasure in the many enjoyments that awaited her, but she knew that she was missing happiness.
Alternately, Lily blamed and pitied herself.
XVII
Nicholas Aubray had no idea that he made certain remarks at certain hours of every day, with almost clock-work regularity.
It was left to his wife to make this discovery and others; her critical faculty developing with every year, the years themselves still too few to prevent her from putting her discoveries into words.
"You mustn't be too sharp in your judgment of other people, my dear," Nicholas said to her from time to time, without any more direct reference to an increasing uneasiness in the atmosphere, that he would not, indeed, admit even to himself.
Lily, too, had her reticences.
The shibboleth declared any criticism of another to be uncharitable at best, disloyal at worst. Unthinkable, to criticize one's husband.
Lily sought valiantly to ignore that which certain perceptions in her registered almost automatically.
She loved Nicholas, therefore she must see Nicholas as perfect.
The effort, in the course of time, became considerable, and very wearying.
She lived in a constant searching of spirit, fond of Nicholas and grateful to him when he petted her, touched by his many thoughtfulnesses and frequent gifts, intensely desirous of believing that she loved him, and irritated almost-although never quite-to the point of protesting aloud when he sang out of tune.
Nicholas sang very often, from exuberance of spirits, and it was almost always out of tune.
He had a singular faculty for remembering the words of popular musical-comedy songs, and no ability at all to retain the simplest of airs correctly.
"I say, Lily, that was a catchy sort of thing we heard last night."
"Oh yes, I know."
Lily spoke hurriedly, trying to escape from the conviction that she was in dread lest Nicholas should attempt to reproduce the tune that he had liked.
"The one that girl sang in the second act-very fine girl, too!"
His tone was jocosely significant, and although such humorous allusions did not really amuse her in the least, Lily eagerly caught at this one.
"I saw you look at her, Nicholas! She's rather your type, isn't she?"
"What do you mean by my type, madam, I should like to know? How do you know I've got a type, eh?"
He began to laugh spasmodically, and Lily's lips mechanically took on the curves of the amusement that she did not share.
"My type, indeed! Ha, ha!"
Lily's meaningless laughter echoed his genuine mirth. Then he began to hum:
"In Lou-is-ville-I've left my little home,
The folk I used to know
In Lou-is-ville-where-something-something-roam.
Tra-la-la-la-lah
In Lou-is-ville."
"Catchy sort of tune, that."
"Oh yes. Would you like me to get the score?"
"Not unless you want it yourself. I thought that was pretty nearly the only good thing in it, didn't you? Besides, what do you want with a score when you've got a husband who can reproduce it note for note to you next morning? Ah-hum-!"
Nicholas cleared his throat and expanded his chest in facetious burlesquing of an operatic performance.
"In Louisville! I've left my little home."
He sang it through again, with mock dramatic emphasis and gesticulation, and Lily dug her nails into the palms of her hands and stretched her mouth into a fixed smile.
She was unspeakably disgusted at herself.
Why should she mind these things? And why, minding them, should not love for Nicholas make her minding of no account?
For she still maintained to herself that she loved Nicholas.
That which perplexed her perhaps most was her own increasing tendency to dwell upon a recollection that for several years now had been almost altogether obscured-Vonnie.
The memory of her childish championship of Vonnie, the sick despair of knowing herself to be better loved and cared for than was Vonnie, the pain that she had suffered through Vonnie's pain-all recurred to her with an odd sense of contrast.
How could one compare the two? The kindly derision of common-sense sounded in her imagination, insensibly clothing itself in the accents of that embodiment of common-sense, Monica Melody. "Childie, childie, think what you're saying. Why, how can you compare the two, Lily? The affection of a little child for another little child, and the love of a woman for her husband! Oh Lily, Lily!"
Miss Melody would certainly conclude with mellow, tolerant laughter.
And yet the comparison existed, and remained insistent.
She would never suffer for Nicholas as she had suffered for Vonnie.
"Perhaps I am better balanced now," Lily wistfully suggested to herself, but the suggestion carried no conviction.
She found the phrase that elucidated the question for her almost by chance:
To the limit of capacity.
Quite involuntarily, the application leaped to her mind.
She had loved Vonnie to the limit of capacity. Her feeling for Nicholas did not extend even to the first outposts of that limit.
But she loved him, nevertheless. It was a question of degree.
Lily stifled the illuminating thought, accused herself of the extreme of disloyalty, and watched eagerly for signs in herself that she did love Nicholas. That he loved her, she could not doubt, and the thought filled her with remorseful gratitude. It still surprised and touched her that her husband, unlike her father, should so seldom find fault with her either directly or by implication, and that he should share and enjoy her enjoyment of almost every form of entertainment.
He listened, with obvious pleasure and interest, to everything she said, and no subject was too trivial for discussion. He seemed never to be blasé or indifferent. Occasionally, only, he was out of temper or depressed, when his already long face would become indescribably elongated, and his conversation monosyllabic.
Lily found that if she asked him a direct question, on such occasions, he would gravely and curtly reply: "Why should anything be the matter?" after the manner of a sulky child that desires to draw attention to its sulks but is too proud to give a reason for them. If she said nothing, he either recovered himself quickly, or spoke, with a sort of remote, detached condemnation, of the circumstance that had annoyed him. He never admitted to a trivial disturbance of mind, but sometimes, with transparent self-satisfaction, he would lay claim to outbursts of stupendous fury.
"I'm afraid I lost my temper pretty thoroughly to-day. The fellow won't try that game on again. He got my monkey up, and I let him have it straight. Hit out straight from the shoulder. I told him exactly what I thought of him, and you should have seen his face, Lily-the poor little devil was green. I don't remember, word for word, exactly what I said, but I fancy I let him have it pretty straight. I don't mince matters when my blood's up. Mind you, Lily, a temper like mine's no joke. I've always been afraid of going too far, one of these days."
He looked at her as though for confirmation, and she said, knowing that it would please him:
"It's a fault on the right side, I suppose. A man who hasn't got a temper doesn't get very far, I imagine."
"You're right there, my dear. I shouldn't be where I am now if I hadn't been able to put the fear of God into those who work for me, from time to time."
Nicholas laughed.
"You've never seen me angry, my dear, and I hope you never will."
"Only over a collar-stud," observed Lily, with defective tact.
The mild joke was not at all a successful one.
Nicholas's hatchet face lengthened immediately and grew inordinately grave.
"I'm talking about necessary anger, my dear girl, the sort of wrath that's pretty nearly indispensable when you're dealing with men and women, if you want to get the best out of them. Weaklings have got to be made to feel that they're up against strength. If a man's strong, he's got to have a temper."
"Nobody could call you weak, Nicholas," said Lily, and the remark, as she had meant it to do, restored his complacency.
"Well, I've many faults, but there are two feelings for which I don't think I shall be held to account, I must say. I'm not a weak man, Lily-and I fancy I'm a pretty shrewd judge of human nature. I think I can sum up men and women fairly correctly, even at first sight."
Lily did not like Nicholas when he boasted. In the depths of her heart, uneasily conscious of arrogance the while, she disputed his statement that he was a judge of human nature, for his judgments seldom tallied with her own, especially where women were concerned.
"I don't suppose," said Nicholas, laughing, "that the fellow I told off this morning will come near me again for a fortnight. I imagine he was pretty thoroughly scared."
"I daresay," smiled Lily.
She went on smiling, and Nicholas went on laughing. His laughter had long ago got upon her nerves, but she did not own to herself that this was the case.
Even when her amusement was genuine, she never found it easy to prolong her laughter to the extent of his. Very often, her amusement was not genuine at all.
Nicholas had a fund of anecdotes, quotations, and good stories, some of which he retailed over-frequently. Many of the stories were witty; one or two, to the daughter of Philip Stellenthorpe, appeared to be merely coarse. It seemed to her that Nicholas was totally unable to distinguish between wit, even if admittedly "improper," and the form of rather gross vulgarity that claims to be funny merely on the grounds of its vulgarity.
Sometimes she despised herself for making the distinction, which with her was entirely instinctive. Nicholas, however, so far as she could see, did not discover that she made any distinction at all in her appreciation of his sallies.
His perceptions, acute in some directions, appeared to Lily to be astonishingly blunt in others. Whenever he perceived in her any sign of physical weakness or fatigue, it touched her sharply and always afresh, but it always surprised her. At times, when his simplicity and enthusiasm were most in evidence, she welcomed in herself a rush of tenderness for him.
His frequent demonstrations of affection she accepted with a sort of passive pleasure, as might an affectionate child, but she dwelt little on the subject of outer demonstrations in her own thoughts, aware that Nicholas, disappointed, had at first thought her unawakened, and then frigid.
There were many thoughts, indeed, upon which she lacked courage to dwell in her resolute suppression of the lurking consciousness of an irrevocable mistake.
She hoped that she might have a child, and then, forlornly, that repeated disappointment and anxiety might not alienate Nicholas's love for her, which she knew subconsciously, to be the thing in him that she cared for most.
Nearly four years after her marriage she had a long illness, and once more the hope of motherhood was taken from her.
"Poor child!" said Nicholas, much harassed.
He was very busy, and it distressed him to think of the many hours that he was out of the house.
"That nurse is no companion for you-stupid, uneducated woman. I wish we could get hold of a younger one. Or is there anyone whom you'd like to have, little girl? What about one of the Hardinges?"
"No, thank you," said Lily wearily. She did not want Janet or Sylvia with her. "I think I'd rather be alone. I'm so tired-and nurse is really very kind."
But Nicholas was not satisfied. To please him, Lily made pretence that she would like to invite Miss Stellenthorpe to stay with her, and was secretly relieved when Aunt Clo, in the minute handwriting described by herself as "scholarly," wrote and lamented that she could not leave Italy for another six weeks.
"Alas, Bambina mia, that I should not be able to fly to you! But there is one here who needs me-a sick, broken creature, whose bruised soul requires patience and tenderness. Yours, my Lily, is a sickness of the body. This other has been deeply, cruelly, wounded in the spirit. Can I, who have plumbed the very depths, refuse to give of my healing, such as it may be?
"But courage, little one! I will fly to you when once this frail craft has been piloted into safe harbour. Ah, these conflicting claims! Are they the penalty exacted of Strength, I ask myself? I smiled with a great tenderness, my Lily, at your enclosure, and the many words in which you wrapped the offering. These things matter so little! Nevertheless, you know that I have denuded myself of much, and I accept, with willing and gracious thanks, your so charming thought. It matters little to me how I travel to you, but an you will it to be in the luxury of a wagon-lit, so be it!
"In six weeks, then, my beloved child."
There was never any formal beginning to Aunt Clo's letters, and her signature, launched abruptly onto the page with no conventional valedictory phrase, was a complicated hieroglyphic of initials, understood to be characteristic.
"What a splendid person she is," Nicholas remarked, as he did with punctuality whenever Miss Stellenthorpe was mentioned, "always helping somebody. Helping lame dogs over stiles, eh?"
Lily did not answer, and he repeated: "Eh, Lily?"
It was one of the tiring things about Nicholas that he always required a reply to everything that he said, however obvious.
"Yes."
"But all the same, charity begins at home. Shall we write and tell her so, eh?"
"She'll come in six weeks," said Lily, smiling without any mirth, conscious only of overpowering fatigue.
"Six weeks! I should like to think of something for you before that, my dear."
Two days later, Nicholas came to her exultant. "The very thing! I've got the very thing for you-splendid!"
Lily tried not to look dismayed.
"Somehow, I thought I shouldn't be defeated. Once I set out to do something, it generally gets done, I fancy!" He paused to laugh.
"Do you remember old Dickenson, Lily? Nice old boy, with a long family. I met him yesterday and he was telling me about his eldest girl-quite a handsome girl too, I remember her as a flapper. It seems she went off and trained as a hospital nurse. Plucky of her, wasn't it? There were half a dozen of them at home, and no money, and this girl didn't get on particularly well with the rest of them, for some reason, so off she goes. Dickenson was telling me, they thought she'd never get through her training-they give them a very stiff time, I fancy, but she stuck it and came through splendidly. She's at home now, I don't quite know what happened, but she was going to be married, and then it was broken off. I didn't ask for details, naturally. But there she is, a handsome wench, and fully trained, and she must be a plucky girl, too. Dickenson says she's eager for a job. You'd like her, Lily, and she'd be more of a companion for you than old Stick-in-the-mud. What about having her here?"
"As a nurse?"
"The doctor's all for it. Stick-in-the-mud's time is up in about a week anyway, isn't it? and he says you don't really want very much done for you now-only someone at hand. No night-nursing. How'd it do to get Miss Dickenson here till your aunt comes? She'd stay with us as a sort of friend, you know."
The eagerness of Nicholas for his plan was very evident.
"Have you seen her, Nicholas?"
"Not since she was a flapper. I remember her as a very attractive child. I think she must be a plucky girl, too, to have gone off like that," said Nicholas, dwelling reflectively upon his catchword. "Plucky thing for a girl to do."
He reiterated the verdict again, with greater emphasis, after seeking an interview with Miss Dickenson.
"By George, Lily, you'll like that girl. She's a girl of spirit, quite good-looking, too. I know you'll get on together."
The complete conviction of his tone was almost infectious, especially as Lily thought it disloyal to let herself remember how frequently her estimate of other people had failed to coincide with that of her husband.
Nicholas rather elaborately urged his case.
"You mustn't think I want to force this idea of mine upon you, on any account. But it would ease my mind about you, when I have to be away all day. She's a lively sort of girl, full of spirit, and I don't fancy she has much of a time at home. They're shockingly badly off, too, and no doubt it would be a relief-however, that's not the point. But I think you'd like a girl of your own kind about the house, wouldn't you? Less professional than a regular nurse, and yet just as useful. She was most eager about doing anything for you-there'd be no nonsense about her."
"It would be more amusing for you in the evenings, after dinner," said Lily reflectively.
He looked vexed.
"That has nothing whatever to do with it, my dear. If you think I'm urging this idea with a view to my own-"
"No, no," cried Lily hastily.
In her weakness, she felt the tears rising to her throat at the mere apprehension of having offended him, or appeared to be ungrateful.
"I should really like it for my own sake, Nicholas. She sounds very nice indeed. Why shouldn't she come next week and stay till Aunt Clo comes?"
"That's entirely as you wish. It's for you to decide."
He still spoke with the ultra-gravity of tone that denoted that his curiously childish susceptibilities had been touched.
"It's a splendid idea," said Lily with a trembling lip. "I'd like to have her very much. It was very clever of you to think of it, Nicholas."
With disproportionate relief, she saw his expression relax.
"That's good, then. I'll arrange it to-morrow. I thought I'd find something for you, poor old girl! I generally hit on something when I've made up my mind to it, eh? You'll like Doris Dickenson, Lily, she's a plucky girl, and I don't fancy she's had too easy a time of it. I know pretty well whom you'll cotton to by this time, eh?"
"Yes, indeed," said Lily.
She was no more conscious of hypocrisy than if she had been humouring the boast that a child standing on a table, might make of being taller than a grown man.
The susceptibility of her husband to feminine beauty was to Lily so much of a commonplace that her first sight of the object of his new enthusiasm surprised her quite unexpectedly.
Doris Dickenson belonged to the type of woman whose unfailing attraction for men remains forever incomprehensible to her own sex.
Lily did not think her colourless, freckled, and rather heavy face in the least good-looking, her blue-green eyes were almost without lashes, her plump hands, with fingers broad at the base and tapering sharply to a point, were over-manicured. She was both tall and heavily made, although she moved well, and the only claim to beauty that Lily could allow her was the flaming colour of her coarse, abundant red hair.
"It makes a difference having her, eh?" said Nicholas contentedly.
It made a great difference.
Lily wondered very much whether anyone had ever considered Doris Dickenson to be a good nurse. She had the typical faults of the professional, and but little of her conscientiousness and enthusiasm for her work.
Lily, more than ever deficient in self-confidence through physical weakness, wondered despairingly whether it was entirely her own fault that she sometimes found Miss Dickenson almost unbearable. Was she, as Nicholas often said, hypercritical?
Things unimportant in themselves assumed monstrous proportions and took possession of her mind. Amongst them were small characteristics of Doris Dickenson.
Her flow of incessant talk, concerned almost exclusively with herself, her experiences, her relations, and her love-affairs.
The recurrence in her conversation of the particular adverb or adjective that momentarily obsessed her, regardless of its applicability.
"How devastating!" she would drawl, of a broken wine-glass, a thunderstorm, a new novel. Even a bunch of flowers was "devastatingly pretty." But the following week, the events of the hour were all "preposterous," and the word was introduced into her conversation in every impossible connection, until a fresh adjective appeared to replace it.
She also possessed to perfection the trick of the meaningless tag-of all others perhaps the most characteristic of the second-rate mind.
"Here's your medicine. I say, why do you look like that?"
And, very frequently:
"Don't say it in such a tragic voice! What makes you say it like that?"
Lily at first made futile efforts to find a reasonable answer to the bewildering senselessness of such enquiries.
But she found that Doris never listened to an answer, never appeared to expect one.
Lily came to the conclusion that "Why do you look like that?" was merely meant as a concession to the conventionalities, a hasty passing assumption of an interest in her welfare, that could not even carry its pretence through to the end.
Lily grew more and more weary, and wondered why she lacked moral courage to tell Nicholas that his experiment was not proving successful. That he would never perceive it without being told, she took for granted.
Nicholas lacked neither generosity nor tenderness towards his wife, and she took herself bitterly to task for the involuntary disappointment that possessed her in her constant perception of his lack of intuition.
XVIII
"I say, Mrs. Aubray, do you think I leave you too long alone in the evenings, after dinner?"
"Not at all," said Lily, trying not to make her voice over-emphatic.
"Do you really mean that? I'm sure you really think I neglect you appallingly."
Lily knew very well that Miss Dickenson was not really sure of anything of the kind, and would have been both astonished and indignant had her self-indictment been endorsed by her patient.
"I mean, do tell me really. I should hate it if you thought that I stayed away after dinner when I ought to be cheering you up. But you would tell me if you did, wouldn't you?"
"I'm very glad that you should keep my husband company at dinner when he's by himself, and of course he always comes up to me after dinner when he's in, so naturally-"
"Oh, good gracious! You don't suppose I meant that I wanted to stay with you while he's here? I wouldn't do such an appalling thing for the world; why, it's an appalling idea. You didn't think that was what I meant, did you? I mean, I'd rather be told if you did, of course, but you didn't, did you? Do say if you did, though."
For all the incessant string of tiresome appeals on Miss Dickenson's lips, her roving eyes betrayed the utter lack of any purpose or meaning behind her words.
"Don't look like that! Why do you look like that?"
"Like what?" said Lily, crossly and childishly, although experience had taught her that the question never provoked a reasonable answer.
"Like that. Sort of appalled, aren't you? But I'd always rather know things-that's why I ask."
"Like Rosa Dartle." The words seemed to drop, in spite of deadly weariness, from Lily.
"Like who?"
Doris very often gave one the trouble of repeating a thing, when Lily felt certain that she had heard it the first time.
She now said nothing at all.
"Like who, did you say?"
Lily shut her eyes, and her impulses at the moment were little short of murderous.
"I say, what's up? Tired? Who's Rosa Dartle?"
"A character in Dickens-'David Copperfield.'"
"How appalling! Dickens' people always are appalling, aren't they? What makes you think I'm like Rosa Dartle, whoever she may be?"
"She used to ask questions."
"I say, I like that! D'you think I ask questions? It's supposed to be a sign of an enquiring nature, isn't it?"
Lily, her despair untinged by any humour, gazed into an abyss of such utter futility as silenced her with sheer amazement.
"Isn't it?"
"I daresay it is."
She adjusted her unwilling part in the sorry dialogue to the level of her companion; lacking both physical energy and moral courage to put an end to it.
"You've got an appalling number of books in this house, haven't you? I always mean to read some day when I've got time, but I've always been too busy. They say it's never too late to mend. Of course in hospital there simply wasn't a hope, and my off-time was always so taken up. Of course we were never allowed to speak to the doctors-far less go out with them-but there was one perfectly mad fellow who used simply to follow me about. Appalling wasn't the word for it. I say, I believe I'm shocking you! Are you shocked? I'd rather you said if you are. I mean really-"
It went on da capo, and Lily was disgusted with herself for her utter inability to silence the elder woman by any of the pungent sentences that she constantly formulated in her own mind, but could never bring herself to utter aloud.
She did not really believe that Doris Dickenson was in the least sensitive, in spite of her touchiness, but the girl's footing in the house as semi-guest, semi-professional attendant, as well as Nicholas Aubray's friendship for her, made it seem extraordinarily difficult to rebuke her self-sufficiency in terms trenchant enough to penetrate her singular obtuseness of mind.
"You get on with her all right, don't you?" said Nicholas, with the simple satisfaction of one stating a fact rather than asking a question.
"Yes," said Lily hesitatingly. The teaching inculcated in her childhood always made it an effort to her to speak the truth, when the truth might possibly distress or disappoint her hearer.
But she added after a moment:
"She does talk rather too much, I think."
"Does she?" said Nicholas, in a surprised voice. "I must say I haven't noticed that. I always think she's rather shy."
It was quite true that Doris was nearly always rather silent when Nicholas was with Lily, although Lily did not believe that she was at all shy. She seemed, indeed, to be more nearly sulky than shy, at such times.
But she always listened attentively to what Nicholas said, and glanced at him from time to time out of the corners of her small, blue-green eyes.
One evening when Nicholas was alone with Lily he told her that Doris had been telling him something about her life, during their tête-à-tête dinner.
"She's had a very hard time, Lily, mind you. I think it's wonderful it hasn't made her in the least bitter, poor child."
Lily saw that Nicholas's rather facile sympathies had been roused. She felt vaguely surprised.
"Did she tell you about her engagement, and why it was broken off?"
"She did. I suppose she's confided it all to you, long ago?"
"No. She's mentioned several times that she was once engaged, but she's never told me why she didn't get married."
"I daresay she's very reserved," said Nicholas. His tone betrayed a slight sense of flattery at having received a unique confidence. "I don't know quite why she told me about it, but I suppose she saw that I was interested. I suppose that was it."
Lily smiled a very little.
Nicholas never made it difficult for any woman to see when he was interested.
"The man must have been a bit of a brute, I should fancy. He got engaged to her while she was at this hospital place and they were to be married almost directly, so of course she resigned from the hospital. I fancy, though she must have worked hard there, that the surroundings were never particularly congenial. In fact, she as good as told me that she only went to work so as to give her younger sisters a better time at home. Rather plucky, eh? But of course she left when she thought she was going to be married. And then what does this wretched fellow do but get insanely jealous over some pal or other of hers, lose his head completely, and say things that no girl could possibly overlook. She couldn't forgive him, of course, and I don't blame her. Life with a jealous husband-and for a girl like that-Good Lord!"
"It's odd she should be so attractive," said Lily. "She isn't pretty."
"No-no, I suppose not. But she's taking, don't you think? Something very arresting about her, altogether. I must say, I can't help admiring her spirit. She's told you how they worked them at that place, I suppose?"
"The hospital? Yes."
"For a girl brought up, I suppose, very much as you were yourself," said Nicholas, "it must have taken some spirit to stick it out. She was telling me that there wasn't a soul there of her own class, practically, for her to speak to, and she used to cry from sheer loneliness, sometimes. I can't imagine her crying, somehow."
"Neither can I," said Lily drily.
Something in the quality of the silence that followed did not please her, and she went on speaking hastily:
"But she seems to have made a few friends all the same, Nicholas. At least she's always telling me of the young men who ran after her."
"I daresay," said Nicholas curtly.
The lengthening of his face indicated that his enthusiasm had been somewhat dashed, and Lily, characteristically, at once sought to efface the unsympathetic colouring that she had purposely given to her words. "I rather wonder she hasn't married. She could have done so easily, I should think."
"Oh, of course she could."
The tone in which he spoke was once more confident and enthusiastic.
"Old Dickenson told me something about that. He said she was the sort of girl men used to look at while she was still in the nursery-although both her sisters are prettier-in fact, as you say, this one isn't exactly good-looking, I suppose. I don't know what it is about her-magnetism, I suppose. Certainly she's attractive. Don't you think so?"
"She's more so to men than to women, I should imagine."
"Perhaps. You women have odd ideas about one another's merits, eh?" He laughed heartily and was still laughing when Doris came into the room.
Nicholas rose and placed a chair for her.
"We were just talking about you. I was telling my wife something about the stiff upper lip you've shown all along. I can tell you," said Nicholas significantly, "she admires pluck as much as I do. Eh, Lily?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Doris.
She was taciturn in the presence of Nicholas and his warm, friendly admiration.
"We both want you to feel that you've got real pals in us-people that you can always turn to, you know. I don't want to think of your going through any more of those lonely times that you were telling me about-"
"It's awfully sweet of you both," said Doris slowly. She looked at Nicholas as she spoke.
His small, tawny eyes expressed all the candid, unsubtle simplicity of his spirit. A hundred times he had looked at Lily herself with just such open, uncritical admiration.
"I think you've a great deal to be proud of, you know," said Nicholas. "There must have been times when you felt pretty nearly down and out, eh?" And Doris again replied:
"Oh, I don't know."
"But I do," said Nicholas, nodding triumphantly.
Lily wondered, with a certain impatience, why Doris did not indulge in one of those lengthy expositions of her own grievances against life, and the hospital, and her father, with which she had so often wearied her patient.
Was she really sufficiently intelligent to realize how very much more effective was this uneloquent refusal to dwell upon the hardships that Nicholas was so evidently ready to accept at her own valuation?
Next morning, however, when the two were again alone together, Doris was quite as voluble as ever and Lily quite as profoundly fatigued by her.
"I shall soon be strong enough to get up," said Lily. "I don't want to lie here longer than I need."
"You're like me," Miss Dickenson retorted. She possessed a wonderful power of extracting a personal application from apparently anything in the world. "That's just like me. I never can bear to give in. You know, sometimes I've really been on my last legs, as the saying is, and the Sister or someone has noticed it, and told me to slack off a bit. But I simply can't take things easily. I have to go on till I drop. That's absolutely me all over."
She leant back comfortably in an armchair as she spoke and began to polish her finger-nails with the palm of her hand-a favourite exercise.
"I was so awfully surprised at your not manicuring, Mrs. Aubray. It was one of the first things I noticed about you. You know, I'm afraid I always notice people's hands. It's the first thing I look at, almost. I suppose I sort of judge people by that. I sort of can't help it. I always look first of all at their hands."
Lily wondered, with the acrimony born of weariness, why this well-worn boast should almost invariably emanate from those least capable of any intelligent observation whatsoever.
She ignored Miss Dickenson's claim to perspicacity altogether, and replied to her earlier remark.
"I hope you don't feel that you have to go on till you drop, here. It's the last thing I should wish, and besides there's nothing but weakness the matter with me. I shall be getting up very soon-I hope before my aunt comes."
"Oh, yes, your aunt is coming. Now, when I'm ill, I never have any of my relations near me-not my sisters or anyone. It isn't that I don't think they'd come, you know, but I simply couldn't ask them. A weird sort of pride, I suppose. I really am a weird sort of person altogether, you know."
Lily closed her eyes.
"What makes you put that face on-it makes you look so weird. What were you asking about-oh, yes-me when I'm ill. It's too funny, you know. I go on and on long after other people would have let themselves collapse, and then, when I do have to give in, of course I'm most frightfully bad. I'm a fearfully bad patient, too, because I'm always down on the nurse. I suppose it's because I know so well how nursing ought to be done."
"Oh," said Lily.
She remained speechless, even after Miss Dickenson had three times asked what made her say it like that.
"It sounded so weird," remarked Doris distrustfully, in conclusion.
But the sense of irony that occasionally sustained Lily was not always at her command. She regained her strength very slowly, and had no great desire to be well again.
Her relations with Nicholas were in a curiously fluid state. His presence, after enduring that of Doris Dickenson all day, always brought to her a rush of relief and pleasure, and often his companionship appeared to her as almost a perfect thing. The revulsion of feeling was proportionately painful when words of his, casually and kindly spoken, from time to time forced upon her an unwelcome realization of the gulf that mentally separated them.
They would never agree about people.
Lily, shamefacedly admitting the immense importance to herself of the personal equation in life, yet tried to blame herself for regarding the difference between them as being an important one. Sometimes, even, in her weakness and youthfulness, she tried to deny its existence.
Her husband's cult for Doris Dickenson, however, Lily unaffectedly welcomed. Incomprehensible though it seemed to her that Miss Dickenson's company should afford aught but weariness to anybody, she was glad that Nicholas should not have a solitary breakfast and dinner.
He always disliked being alone, unless when he was busy, and Lily felt vaguely that her prolonged stay upstairs would be partly compensated for if she could provide other companionship for him.
She was glad to remember that Nicholas had always liked Aunt Clo.
When Miss Stellenthorpe's visit became due, Lily said to her husband:
"Am I to say anything to Miss Dickenson about going away?"
"Why?" said Nicholas, looking astounded.
"I thought she was only staying till Aunt Clo arrived; and Aunt Go will be here to-morrow."
"Oh well-it isn't a sort of Box and Cox arrangement, is it? There's plenty of room for them both. Just as you like, my dear, of course-but your aunt might feel freer if you still had your regular nurse at your beck and call. Besides, she's a nice girl-a nice girl, and a plucky one. You'd be sorry to lose her."
To the daughter of Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe it was almost an impossibility to cut across that kind, well-pleased statement with a wounding contradiction.
Lily's spirit sought the familiar refuge of the weak, a feeble and unconvinced optimism. "Perhaps Doris will go of herself, when Aunt Clo is here."
To a certain extent, the half-hearted prediction was verified, although the eventual departure of Doris Dickenson was not, perhaps, entirely a matter of free-will.
"Bambina!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, less than a week after her arrival, with even more than her habitual emphasis of diction. "Bambina mia! How can this be?"
"What?"
"This canaglia!" said Miss Stellenthorpe, snapping her finger and thumb and becoming several degrees more cosmopolitan than usual.
"But who-what-je vous le demande-who is this Dickenson... que vient-elle-faire dans cette galère? Ecco! My Lily! Mais c'est rigolo, voyons!"
It was always a little difficult to be adequate when replying to Aunt Clo.
"She is looking after me professionally-she's been properly trained."
"Ahimé!" Aunt Clo sighed gustily, her eyes upturned to Heaven.
"I don't like her," Lily confessed. "She tires me very much; she talks such a lot, and really what she says is never worth hearing."
There was actual relief in putting into words the thoughts that she had so often suppressed in her own mind.
"Basta! I understand, my child. Enough. You lie there, like a trampled flower, with this thing-this inferior, third-rate machine-rattling above you! But of what is Nicholas, ce bon Nicholas-of what is he thinking?"
"He arranged it on purpose for me-he was thinking of me," said Lily eagerly. "He thought she would be more of a companion than just an ordinary nurse. We know her family, and she was to be here more or less as a friend."
"Et patati et patata," said Miss Stellenthorpe scornfully. "Leave this to me, little one. I understand the Dickenson type very well."
It appeared indeed that she did.
Sitting in Lily's room, her large and shapely legs crossed beneath the astonishingly brief serge skirt that had temporarily replaced the blue knickerbockers of Genazzano, Miss Stellenthorpe elegantly smoked a number of cigarettes, and eyed the while, with critical penetration, Miss Doris Dickenson.
"You're like me, Miss Stellenthorpe. I'm afraid I smoke like a chimney-you know, my nerves sort of want it, somehow. I always inhale, too. Everyone always says I smoke too much."
"And who is 'everyone'?" negligently enquired Miss Stellenthorpe.
Doris stared at her.
"Everyone is everyone, I suppose," she said shortly.
Aunt Clo smiled with irrepressible superiority, turning to her niece.
"But how typical, is it not, of young England? The art of definition: everyone is everyone, she supposes! Ha, ha!"
"One talks carelessly, sometimes," Lily said, strongly inclined to laugh.
"But not at all," graciously exclaimed her aunt; "if by 'one' you allude to yourself, carina, I can assure you that it is not so. Your vocabulary, your originality, the extent of your reading, all combine to render your conversation stimulating. How I revel in the clash of wits! My niece and I between us must teach you the use of words, my little Dickenson."
Aunt Clo's little Dickenson appeared to be far from delighted at the proposition.
"How d'you mean, the use of words?" she asked curtly.
"Your vocabulary," Aunt Clo explained in a kind voice, "is that of a child, or a savage. It is, I believe, a statistical fact that certain savage tribes use a language of only two hundred words. It suffices for their need of self-expression. The vocabulary of the average English man or woman comprises little over fifteen hundred words, in daily use. People like myself, on the other hand, sooner or later have recourse to the most recondite expressions available, in the instinctive desire to avoid the banale. Words from other languages creep in-classical quotations-conversation becomes an art-"
Miss Stellenthorpe waved her cigarette gracefully round her head.
"How devastating!" said Doris Dickenson in the pause that followed.
Her voice was charged with the rather laboured sneer that in the English middle-classes is described as "sarcasm."
"Unhappy one!" said Aunt Clo, and groaned aloud. "What is this 'devastating' that you employ à tort et à travers? A senseless and meaningless cliché!"
She fixed a large and gleaming eye, that held undisguised horror in it, upon Doris.
Lily was conscious of a fearful joy in listening, as the many scathing criticisms that had thronged into her own mind were thus eloquently and unrestrainedly put into words by her aunt.
The sulky face of Miss Dickenson was darkly flushed.
"I speak thus for your own good, my Dickenson," said Aunt Clo, shaking a long forefinger. "You render yourself intolerable to the well-educated, and it is but a kindness to tell you so. Not only are you inexperienced, and therefore crude of outlook, but you are ignorant, self-assertive, stupidly bombastic, and talkative to a degree that-"
"Really, Miss Stellenthorpe, if you think I'm going to sit down under such rudeness-"
Doris's voice had risen instantly to the true virago's pitch of shrillness.
"Silence!" said Aunt Clo. "You disturb my niece. Perform the material duties, my Dickenson, for which I remark that you have been well trained, but cease to weary us with the trivialities of your conversation. En voilà assez, n'est-ce-pas?"
"I don't understand gibberish."
It was evident that Doris, after the manner of her kind, was recklessly seeking after rudeness for the sake of rudeness, regardless of wit or point. Miss Stellenthorpe raised her handsome eyebrows in an expression of patient despair.
"You perceive, my Lily? This girl-mal' educata indeed, as my beloved Italians say-knows neither her own language nor any other. What can you expect of such? Deplorable, oh deplorable!"
Aunt Clo looked at Miss Dickenson and shook her head repeatedly.
"Wretched one, have you never been taught that until you have learned the art of listening, you are unfit to talk? L'art d'ennuyer c'est de tout dire. That art, my unhappy Dickenson, you possess to the full. It is your only one. I come to this house-straight, I may tell you, from unravelling the many tangled threads of another's destiny-I come, and what do I find? What, I ask you, do I find? I find my niece, broken in body and spirit, needing the utmost cherishing, the greatest delicacy of handling, the reticence of true sympathy-and compelled instead to submit to your ministrations. You ask me, perhaps, to tell you fully and freely of what those ministrations consist."
"I don't ask you," cried Doris passionately. "I don't want to know what you think."
"Non far niente! I shall tell you just the same," declared Miss Stellenthorpe with unabated spirit. "Pour moi il n'y a que la vérité. The day will yet come when you will remember my frankness with gratitude and admiration. But even should that day not come, my Dickenson, it matters little. The time has come for me to speak, and I shall speak. I have sat here in silence," said Aunt Clo, not altogether truthfully, "and I have been filled with amazement that my niece should not, long ago, have said what I am saying now. Instead, with a supineness for which, candidly, I blame her, she has allowed herself to be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, you ask me, by what? By a ceaseless torrent of meaningless, ill-chosen, unmelodious words, my Dickenson, strung together without rhyme or reason. You have but one topic-the supremely uninteresting one of yourself. You are reminded of yourself à tout bout de champ-worse, you insist upon reminding us of yourself. But we do not want to know about you. You are not interesting. A-t-on jamais vu un toupet pareil! You tell us of your views, your habits, your trivial little experiences, as though they were of cosmic importance. Could futility go further, I ask you? You reply at once: No, undoubtedly not. There is yet hope for you, then."
On this optimistic pronouncement Aunt Clo met at last with the interruption that her niece, fascinated by so much candour, had been unable to offer.
Nicholas Aubray entered.
"Well, well," said he cheerily, "the Female Parliament sitting?"
The trivial pleasantry was received in perfect silence, and Nicholas cast a sudden, shrewd glance round the room.
"What on earth-?"
"Niente!" said Aunt Clo vivaciously. "A few words, amico mio, of counsel to the young-the very young, I may say."
"Is that Lily?" asked her husband, with a rather puzzled smile.
"But no! Our Lily may be young in years, but in wit, in understanding, she is delightfully mature. But the little Dickenson there-sans rancune, hein, my Dickenson?"
Miss Dickenson's heavy face, from red, had become white.
She looked at Miss Stellenthorpe, with the concentrated hatred that only embittered vanity can engender.
"I am going to leave the house," she said thickly. "I shan't stay in a house where I've been insulted."
"Who has insulted you in this house?" demanded Nicholas, half smiling.
Doris made a dumb gesture indicating Miss Stellenthorpe.
"Nonsense!" said Nicholas brusquely. He put his hand on the girl's arm.
"What's all this about? You've misunderstood something. What is it?"
"Rien de rien!" declared Aunt Clo contemptuously. "For the little Dickenson's own good, mon ami, I take it upon myself to point out certain wearisome tricks that our Lily has borne far too long, and hence comes this talk of insult. Enfantillage!"
Aunt Clo's cigarette described a parabola that dismissed the subject as being one of no further importance. Nicholas turned to his wife.
"Lily-of course Miss Dickenson mustn't dream of leaving us. We should be most distressed-"
Lily looked at Doris.
She had neither the courage to persuade her to stay, nor to encourage her to go.
"I shan't stay," said Doris obstinately.
Nicholas frowned, looked at his wife appealingly and then at Miss Dickenson with evident concern.
It came to Lily, with a slight sense of shock, that Nicholas could not be depended upon in a crisis. He was uncertain.
Doris was staring at him with smouldering eyes, and both were silent.
It was Aunt Clotilde, high-handed to the last, who carried off the situation.
She uncrossed her amazing length of limb, rose to her feet with a swinging movement, and flicked the ash off her cigarette with considerable elegance of gesture.
"You have said well, my Dickenson," observed Aunt Clo. "You will remain here no longer. Go, then; and on no account forget what I have said to you. Speak less, eschew slang, learn to place your words correctly, avoid clichés that mean nothing, and above all, cast from your mind for ever the delusion that the art of conversation consists in the dropping of detached pieces of information concerning yourself."
XIX
"I'm very sorry you're going, very sorry indeed," said Nicholas.
He was purposely speaking with restraint of manner.
"I couldn't stay after a row like that," said Doris candidly. "I couldn't possibly."
The word vexed him.
"I hope there are no such things as 'rows' in my house," he said, deliberately repressive.
"Of course, I wasn't going to say anything upstairs with Mrs. Aubray still weak as she is, but if I don't say anything, it isn't because I don't feel. Miss Stellenthorpe was most insulting."
They stared at one another.
"I'm very sorry," said Nicholas uncomfortably.
"Please don't think that I think it's anything to do with you," said Doris, with some formality. "You and-and Mrs. Aubray, of course-have always been very kind, and of course, I have done my best, and I can't help knowing I'm a good nurse." She paused.
"Of course you are. It's made all the difference having you here."
Nicholas spoke eagerly, both from sincere conviction and from the desire to gratify her.
"Miss Stellenthorpe didn't seem to think so. I don't know what she knows about nursing, I'm sure, but from the way she spoke you'd thing she was matron-in-chief and all."
Nicholas wished that Miss Dickenson had contrived to pass through her hospital training without incorporating into her being quite so many slightly common turns of speech. The matter of Aunt Clo's accusations, whatever the manner of them, might not have been altogether without justification.
"She's very artistic and highly strung, you know," he urged in extenuation of Aunt Clotilde. "She-she really is a very splendid person, you know. I'm sorry you and she haven't hit it off."
"I'd better go upstairs and pack, I suppose," said Doris.
"Don't be in a hurry, please don't. Anyhow, one of the maids will see to all that for you, if it's really necessary. Won't you have a talk with Lily first?"
"I don't want to worry her. Besides, she could have stopped Miss Stellenthorpe saying all she did, if she'd wanted to. I don't know what I shall do now, I'm sure."
Nicholas began to walk up and down, very much perturbed, and Doris dropped into a chair.
"I oughtn't to be bothering you, I suppose," she said presently. "My rotten affairs don't really matter to anybody but myself."
"Please don't say that-please don't. I simply hate to hear you say a thing like that. I thought it was agreed that you were to look on us as real pals."
His kind-heartedness seriously perturbed, he stopped in front of her.
"Don't you remember the agreement?"
"Did you really mean it? I'd be awfully glad to have you for a pal. You always strike me as being so awfully dependable and-and strong."
Nicholas, unconsciously accepting her transition from the first person plural to the third person singular, threw out his chest with the old, satisfied gesture.
"It's very nice of you to feel that. I think I am to be depended on, Miss Dickenson, where my friends are concerned, and I'm very glad you feel that. Very glad. As for strength-well, I'm certainly not a weak man."
He laughed a little, very much pleased, as is a man who meets with reassurance upon a point about which he is sometimes secretly dubious.
"My shoulders are quite broad enough to bear your troubles as well as my own, I think, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. Rather. But it seems a shame-"
"Why? You know I'm interested in anything that concerns you. Of course I am."
His candid, solicitous eyes were fixed upon her opaque, unrevealing gaze.
"Thank you, awfully," said Miss Dickenson slowly. "I get a sort of devastating feeling, sometimes, you know."
"Tell me what you mean," Nicholas sympathetically invited her.
"Oh well, things are a bit difficult all round, you know. I can't live at home, I simply can't. It's too devastating. That's what really made me take up nursing-to get away from home."
"But your father is so proud of you-you should have heard him speaking of you, as I did the other day. I can assure you he quite appreciates your pluck and-and spirit."
"Oh, I daresay. It really isn't so much Father as my aunts and people, and my married sister, and even the two girls. They're always sort of talking at me."
Her voice grew angry.
"I can't have a friend, or go anywhere, or do anything, without them interfering. My aunts are always hinting that I don't know how to take care of myself."
"But I'm sure you do," Nicholas said gently.
"Of course! It's all old-fashioned, devastating nonsense, that's what it is. Because men like talking to me. There isn't anything in it-I'm not even pretty."
She scarcely made a pause, but it was not in Nicholas to refrain from a meditative interpolation: "I don't know so much about that!"
"It's quite true I've got a lot of men friends, or at least I had. I've given up men now, since the one I was engaged to treated me so badly. You know, I told you about him.... When that happened I said, Thank you, that's enough for me, I said. I know what men are now, and I shan't have anything more to do with them."
"But it's not like you to be bitter," Nicholas said, in a gentle, puzzled way.
His ear and his trained mind alike noted the futility of her speech, but his masculinity was all the while increasingly aware of that in her which, for want of a better word, he could only describe as animal magnetism.
In her, it was extraordinarily powerful.
"Sometimes," declared Doris inconsistently, "I just think I'll marry the next man that asks me."
The suggestion, for reasons that he did not attempt to analyze, somehow affected Nicholas disagreeably.
"Oh, I don't think I should do that if I were you," he gravely objected.
"Why not? Men are all rotten, anyway-it doesn't make much odds which of them one takes in the end."
Her cheap cynicism made Nicholas vaguely uncomfortable. He looked at her without speaking.
As though Doris, by means of some odd intuition of her own, had guessed his disapproval, she changed her tone suddenly.
"Of course I don't really mean half I say-you mustn't think I mean it all, really you mustn't. I've known some awfully nice men-men who really were nice, I mean. Most of my pals have been men-not flirting, I don't mean, or anything like that. Just friends."
"I hope you're going to add another to their number," said Nicholas, smiling suddenly.
"Really?"
Her blue-green eyes, neither large nor lustrous, fixed themselves upon his face with a sudden intensity that was somehow alluring.
"Of course, really," Nicholas declared readily.
She sketched a movement that yet was not actually one, and Nicholas found himself ratifying his avowal of friendship with a handclasp.
"I don't want you to feel that all this makes a bit of difference," he said earnestly. "If you ever want a friend-well, here I am, very much at your service. And don't you go and do anything impetuous with your life. I should be very, very sorry to see you make a mistake."
"Thank you," said Doris.
She added after a moment, in the low, half-sullen tone that she sometimes adopted:
"I must say, it's nice to know that somebody cares."
"Of course I care," Nicholas vigorously replied.
He released her hand with a final hearty pressure. "Now supposing I have a little chat with Miss Stellenthorpe, don't you think we could put this right? I can't bear you to go away from our house like this."
"Oh, it's all right. Mrs. Aubray really is awfully much better now. I don't think she needs me any longer. Her maid can quite well give her all the help she needs now and-I expect I've been here long enough, anyway."
From this attitude Nicholas could not move her, and indeed he had no very urgent desire to do so. It did not need Aunt Clotilde's eloquence to inform him that Lily shared Miss Dickenson's own estimate of her visit, and thought that she had been there long enough.
"You ought to have told me, my dear child, if you found that she was getting on your nerves," said Nicholas frowningly to Lily.
He was vexed that Lily had not told him, vexed that he had not perceived it for himself, vexed, indefinably, that Miss Dickenson should have been found wanting, and vexed that she should leave the house under the weight of a grievance.
"I'm sorry you and Miss Dickenson didn't quite hit it off together," he said to Miss Stellenthorpe, with a hint of rebuke in his voice.
Aunt Clo was quite impenitent.
"The day will come," she remarked with an air of detached omniscience, "the day will come, when the little Dickenson will remember my words with gratitude. But at present she has a skin like a rhinoceros hide. I assure you, cher ami, that it was necessary for me to put dots upon my i's with her."
"That you certainly did," said Nicholas, with a certain grimness.
"Et alors?" said Miss Stellenthorpe coldly.
Nicholas had a perfectly genuine admiration for her, and would not pursue the point.
He bade Doris Dickenson farewell with renewed assurances of friendship, and on the day she left, his lantern-jawed face unconsciously grew lengthier than ever, and his voice very grave. If, subconsciously, Nicholas waited to receive comment upon these phenomena, he was destined to disappointment.
Miss Stellenthorpe's concern was wholly for her niece.
"The little one requires distraction," she authoritatively informed Nicholas. "She is regaining strength just now, and we do not want her to brood. Encourage her to go out, to see her friends, de se distraire, enfin!"
Nicholas begged Lily to follow Aunt Clo's advice, and was delighted when Aunt Clo herself, with her usual ceremoniousness, enquired whether he would permit the Marchese della Torre to call upon them.
"But of course! Splendid fellow, della Torre! He'll remind us of our courting days, eh, Lily? What on earth does he want to ask permission for? Why doesn't the fellow drop in one day? I didn't even know he was in England."
"Nor I," admitted Aunt Clotilde. "We met by chance, entirely."
"'We met 'twas in a crowd,' eh?" said Nicholas. "Well, Lily, will you write and ask him to dinner? I should like to do something for him."
In the weeks that followed, it might have been said with truth that Nicholas did a good deal for the Marchese della Torre. Always hospitable, he was whole-heartedly grateful to the young man who had rendered his long-ago stay in Rome agreeable, and he had conceived one of those innocent admirations for the Italian's range of erudition that made up part of his child-like singleness of vision.
The Marchese, more exquisitely dressed than ever, was as full of urbanity, as well informed and as imperturbable as of old, and only one change was to be remarked in him. A true Italian, the merely perfunctory admiration accorded by him to Lily Stellenthorpe as a young and pretty English girl, and a Protestant, became lively and acute directly he met her as the wife of another man.
He kept his dark eyes reverently fixed upon her face, and did not venture upon personalities until he had many times seen both Lily and her husband. Then one evening at the theatre he said to her, "You have changed a great deal, in these few years. Although your face is as young as ever, the soul that looks out of your eyes is that of a woman-no longer that of a child."
Lily was startled, but she was too young and too disconsolate to reject the subtle flattery.
"I feel very old, sometimes."
She felt afraid for a moment that he might laugh at her, kindly, as Nicholas would have done, from the height of the years that separated them. But della Torre said quickly:
"I know. People laugh a little, sometimes, when one says that, but it is only because they themselves have either never grown up at all, or have done so insensibly. They do not know anything about the short cut to knowledge that is traversed by some of us."
"What is that short cut?" said Lily.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I am afraid, generally-suffering. But why do you ask? You know it as well as I do-perhaps better. You are a woman, and highly strung."
"Sometimes I've wondered whether I mind things more than other people do," said Lily, divided between the yearning for self-expression and the old, inculcated idea that only impersonal channels can be altogether safe ones in conversation between a man and a woman.
The Italian raised his eyebrows.
"Of course! How can you wonder? Your capacity for emotion of every kind is written on your face. Not for all to read, certainly: but for those who know, to recognize. You are not happy."
"Yes, I am," said Lily quickly.
"Forgive me. You say that because you think I have no right to speak so-and perhaps I deserve it. I am sorry."
The humility in his voice caused her a moment of compunction.
"Don't be sorry," she said, smiling. "I suppose no one is exactly happy, once the happiness of childhood has been left behind."
"Childhood!" exclaimed the Italian scornfully. "The happiness of childhood! What does childhood know beyond the happiness of eating too many sweets, the happiness of a little animal? It is only men and women who experience real happiness, and real suffering. You-you have never yet been happy, and you are beginning to realize it. Is that true?"
"Yes," said Lily very low.
He betrayed no least quiver of triumph at having won the admission from her.
"You are eternally seeking something-perhaps you hardly know what... desires and vague wishes within yourself frighten and disturb you sometimes-then you think that you are ungrateful and discontented, and you blame yourself. Non é vero?"
"Yes, it's true," said Lily. She felt a thrill of wonder that anyone should understand so well. The lights in the theatre were lowered again and the orchestra playing the opening bars of the Intermezzo of Cavalleria Rusticana, with its eternal appeal.
All the emotionalism in Lily responded to the age-old lure of the music.
She turned her head and looked at the Italian. His dark eyes were bent upon her, with a look so tender, so concerned for her sadness, that her own eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Poverina!" he said with great simplicity. "And you English women have no religion! In Italy the sad ones go to the church, they burn little candles and think that their wishes will come true, or they find comfort in their own virtues and resignation to the will of God. But you? What have you?"
He answered his own question with an eloquent gesture of negation, and Lily said nothing.
But later in the evening she turned to him again, and although she was still silent, she knew that it needed only that slight movement to tell his acute perceptions of her mute, half-ashamed desire for sympathy.
"You are like me. Music-poetry-but especially music," he said, watching her face; "they speak too much of the unattainable, beautiful, intimate things-the Blue Rose one dreams about."
"Is it always unattainable?" she asked wistfully.
"There is only one Blue Rose," said della Torre, and shrugged his shoulders, smiling. Then he added: "There are other roses, though. Beautiful, dark-red ones, and flame-coloured ones. I have found many roses, even if never the Blue one."
The next day he sent her roses, and wrote upon the card which accompanied them: "They are only make-believe, but I cannot find the One that I want you to have."
Thus was established between them the language of allusion.
The Marchese made no secret to Lily of the fact that women interested him supremely. She thought that he was not making love to her when he told her frankly that he had loved often.
"Love is the only thing that matters," della Torre remarked. "It has often been said before, it remains none the less true. A man is young just as long as he retains his capacity for falling in love. What does it matter if he loves successfully or unsuccessfully? It is the hope, the fears, the despairs, that count-the meetings and partings, the misunderstandings, the beautiful pretence that the most ephemeral of emotions will endure for ever."
"You don't think that love is lasting?"
Lily was smiling a little, but there was disappointment in her heart.
"The Blue Rose is the only one that never fades," said Giulio della Torre.
Lily found herself wondering very often just how much she liked him.
His intuition seemed to her to be very wonderful, and his tact unfailing. He never jarred upon her varying moods, and she knew, with inward compunction, that they varied often. She could hardly herself tell when it first become a thing of accepted implication between them, that he loved her. Divided between the conventionality that told her she should be shocked, the common-sense conviction that his passion would be as brief as it was likely to be fruitless, and the unavowed gratification that she derived from it, Lily, as usual, refused to envisage the direct question.
She continued passive.
Nicholas liked the Marchese, and meaning merely a mild facetiousness, referred to him when he was not present as "our friend Spaghetti."
Miss Clotilde Stellenthorpe returned to Italy, and mysteriously expressed her parting counsel to Lily.
"Aha, bambina! You will have courage, will you not? There is much to be done, much to be suffered, by those who steer slender craft down the rapids."
Lily did not seek to interpret her aunt's metaphor. It seemed to her, indeed, that she sought nothing, did nothing, said nothing. Everything within herself was negative, torpid and unresisting.
"You are asleep," said Giulio della Torre half wistfully, half reproachfully.
"Perhaps."
"Do you never mean to wake up, Princess?"
"I can't," said Lily.
She was unable to resist the temptation of interpreting herself to so sympathetic an observer. "When I was a little girl, I cared about things so dreadfully. I had a younger sister whom I loved... in those days everything seemed to matter so much. Now, I hardly feel anything at all. I seem to have grown indifferent."
"Because there is nothing for you to care about." He looked at her boldly.
"I think one might break through the thorn-hedge, Princess, and waken you."
"No," said Lily sharply.
She thought of Nicholas.
"You forget I'm married," she said, with a childish mixture of dignity and simplicity.
The Marchese shrugged his shoulders.
"Not at all. He is very good, very kind, the husband-but so much older! And you were never in love with him-of that I am very certain."
"I thought I was-everyone told me I was-" she began, and added belatedly. "I can't discuss it with you. You must see that. Please don't say any more."
But he said a great deal more, and Lily, with a certain sense of fascination, felt quite unable to help listening to him.
"It was never an Englishman that you needed at all-you do not belong to the Northern races, whatever your birth may be. In temperament you are of the South. You need infinitely more than anyone here will ever give you. To the English, sentiment is ridiculous-poetry is for the inside of the poetry books only-passion is improper-and love means merely the domestic affections. But you-what you need, what you must have, if you are ever to express yourself, fulfil yourself-it is romance."
He spoke with so much simplicity that Lily, answering nothing, merely looked up at him with amazed recognition of the truth in his words. He understood, as Nicholas would never understand, but she knew that she did not want him to make love to her. When the things that he said to her made her heart beat faster she wondered why she was all the time so certain that she did not love him.
He made love openly to her, with a suddenness and a fervour that totally disconcerted her.
"But may I not tell you that I adore you?" he asked piteously. "You have never been loved as you should be loved, most Beautiful. Let me show you."
Lily's sense of her own invulnerability was strong, even if it was also unconsciously wistful. She let Giulio della Torre "show her" in the words that came to him so readily and so eloquently, but when he took her hand, or rather, snatched at it with his own slender, olive fingers, she had a sudden and purely instinctive movement of recoil.
"Oh, don't!"
He flushed angrily. "What is the matter? Why may I not touch your hand?"
"I don't like it," said Lily simply.
He stared at her for a moment, amazement and mortified vanity struggling together in his face. Suddenly, a true Latin, he burst into a rueful laugh at his own discomfiture.
"I believe you mean it! But then you really are as cold-as white-as your own name-flower! You don't know what it is-to care?"
"But," said Lily, herself confused, "you always said that I didn't-that I never-"
"One says these things! But I did not know it was so literally true-"
"Forgive me," he added very gently. "You are still only a child, after all."
Lily justified his words better than she realized, by flushing deeply with vexation. She had thought that he understood her, but his understanding had been only the first move in the game, and she realized, with something nearly allied to disappointment, that the Italian was not the man to rouse her to any appreciation of subsequent moves.
"It's just-not," she thought, and involuntarily the words added themselves-"like Nicholas. He's-just not."
She was slightly relieved, upon the whole, when della Torre bade her a whimsical farewell.
"I still think that I could have taught you something, had you been willing to learn-but you are afraid. You will learn not to be afraid of life, some day, and then-"
He made an expressive gesture.
"Am I afraid of life?" she said, rather surprised. "Yes, I think perhaps I am. I think I have always been taught to be afraid of it."
"And I, I wanted to teach you to forget everything that you have been taught! But it is never the teaching that matters-only the teacher. You know what they say?"
He paused a moment dramatically, looking at her and smiling.
"C'est le ton qui fait la musique."
Lily remembered the words very often, after Giulio della Torre had gone.
"Did you give our friend Spaghetti his marching orders?" Nicholas made enquiry of her, his eyebrows raised in a significantly humorous expression.
"I don't know that I did, exactly. He gave them to himself, I think."
"I thought he seemed a bit infatuated," said Nicholas complacently.
"Would you be angry if I told you that I-I did encourage him a little bit?"
Nicholas roared with laughter.
His mirth was so spontaneous and so ludicrously inapposite to Lily's own half-formed intention of making as sensational a confession as the mildness of the facts allowed, that she could not help laughing with him.
"But, Nicholas, I really am ashamed."
"Why, darling?"
He put his arm round her waist.
"Because one evening he-he told me I wasn't happy and I said it was true."
It was that which had weighed upon her, with its implication of her husband's inadequacy. The fact that she had allowed the Marchese to tell her that he loved her, appeared to her to be relatively of no importance.
"You shouldn't tell fibs," said Nicholas serenely.
Lily was silent from sheer disconcertment.
"What are you downcast about?" he asked affectionately. "I've been so disgustingly busy lately, I haven't had any talks with my little wife. That fellow didn't worry you, did he?"
"Not in himself," Lily said confusedly, making an effort to give her real thoughts to her husband.
She was not surprised when he failed to follow her bungling attempt.
"Not in himself, eh? Well, he's a splendid fellow, della Torre, full of brains, and I don't blame him if he got a little bit above his boots, eh?"
She had scarcely ever hear Nicholas say a word in condemnation of anyone, and although the thought touched her, she was also impatient of his lack of discrimination.
"Nicholas, it was partly my own fault, that the Marchese thought that I should like him to make love to me a little bit."
"Was it, by Jove!" Nicholas refused to take the matter at all seriously.
"You know, you're a very fascinating little person, my dear. You mustn't be surprised if inflammable young foreigners lose their heads from time to time. And you mustn't let it distress you, either. I can't have you looking worried."
It was so evident that his whole solicitude was for herself alone, that Lily felt a sudden rush of passionate gratitude and affection towards him.
"Oh, Nicholas, how good you are to me!"
She raised her lips to his.
The disappointment that marriage had brought to her receded at such moments.
She ceased to try to wrench from her relation with Nicholas a supreme meaning which it could never hold.
She was content to feel his love for her, momentarily forgetting to rebel at the poverty of the response that it awakened in herself, content to know that he was content, and curiously relieved because she could sincerely assure herself that she loved her husband.
XX
No dramatic crisis came to break down the endless monotony of Lily's dissatisfaction as time went on. But she envisaged the possibility of one.
"Supposing I meet the man I could have loved-supposing I do love him?"
The specious echo of words that might have been spoken by her father, by Miss Melody, by any of those who had stood for wisdom to her childhood, followed on the thought.
"Why meet trouble halfway?... How weak to torture oneself about something which may never happen... crossing bridges before one comes to them...."
Something in the last phrase awoke a long-dormant memory.
They had said that to her, long ago-the new metaphor leaving a little picture on her plastic, childish mind-in the old days when she had been afraid, because the east wind would give Vonnie earache.
They had said that it was naughty and ungrateful to run and meet trouble halfway. Of course Vonnie wouldn't get earache. And Vonnie had gone out into the east wind, and had got earache. The agony of those nights of silent strain was upon Lily once more as she remembered.
Illumination came to her.
They had bluffed her into accepting those old catchwords then, but was she of her own free-will to be bound by them now?
"Don't put things into words-don't let imagination run away with you. Beware of imagination. It's morbid to dwell upon what may never happen."
Shove it all out of sight! Bury it without looking at it! Embark upon adventure by the line of least resistance!
And then, when that which was buried rises to confront you, in stark, unescapable reality, then, realize that your defences are not ready, that an emergency is upon you with which you have deliberately unfitted yourself to cope, that Truth, your only weapon, you have long ago cast from you at the bidding of those who read its name Morbidity.
But she was dimly aware that, as submission had blinded her once, so bitterness obscured her vision now.
The old, inculcated instinct for seeking advice beset her often, but she derided it in the realization that no glib outside verdict could now carry weight with her.
Half enviously, half mockingly, she thought of the old literary convention that, in a time of mental crisis, some chance encounter, some wisdom met almost at random, should provide the unforgettable word holding the key of solution.
"She never saw the lame cobbler again, but his words had made all life look different henceforward...."
There were no such fortuitous sign-posts in real life, Lily decided.
More than one adviser, nevertheless, sought her unasked.
"All is not well with you, my Lily."
Aunt Clo's penetrating gaze had underlined her words.
"Shall I tell you, little one, that I foresaw this some time ago? Moi aussi, j'ai passé par là. There comes a day, is it not so?"
"What?" asked Lily, mildly bewildered.
"Jeunesse, jeunesse!" said Aunt Clo, quite in her old way. "Youth calls to youth, my Lily, as well I know. And watching you, I have re-lived my own past. You know something of the story of my past. Do not, I beseech you, little one-do not let me live to see tragedy repeat itself."
"Tell me what you mean, Aunt Clo."
"Lily, Lily! Fencing is unworthy of you-utterly unworthy of us both."
"I want to know what you think," said Lily wearily.
"Think!" repeated Aunt Clo solemnly. "What can I think?"
Her niece was utterly unable to find a reply to the portentous conundrum.
Miss Stellenthorpe put one hand upon Lily's shoulder and plunged a long, deep look into her eyes.
Then she sank into a seat and allowed the saddest of smiles to dawn upon her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. "Who am I, that you should turn to me, my dear? I, who made such a shipwreck of my youth? But O, little one! How lightly I should count the cost, if it is to save you from the same folly, from the same life-time of regret!"
Had Aunt Clotilde really some message to interpret?
Lily looked at her with a faint stirring of hope. Miss Stellenthorpe's fine eyes were glowing.
"Lose all, and you shall find all!" she declared. "The old Prophets knew much, my Lily. Listen, child. It will cost you, to break through the old traditions-who knows it better than I? But you must have courage. You must break free. Your soul asks it of you. And that other-your rightful mate-how can he fulfil himself without you?"
Lily was paralyzed. How difficult, how impossible to stop Aunt Clo in mid-career with the startling commonplace: "There is no other."
"But it's not-there's no one who-"
"Bambina-ah, how readily the old name comes! Leave subterfuges to smaller souls. Leave them, I say!"
Aunt Clo's voice rose in a crescendo of impassioned admonishment.
"I do not ask for names-for details. I may perhaps have hoped for a fuller, freer response from you-but I understand. Je comprends tout-je ne suis pas comme les autres, moi qui vous parle. But whatever the circumstances, whatever the difficulties, you must find courage to disregard them. It is your soul that is at stake, my Lily. And after all-what are you risking? The good opinion of conventional moralists!"
Aunt Clo's middle finger met her thumb in a resonant snap of utter contempt for all conventional moralists.
"What do they know of such needs as ours? I say ours advisedly, my Lily. You know the outline of my life's story. There was only one man-though many have desired me-but only one man who supremely mattered. And he was bound, even as you are. And she to whom he was bound-she who had called herself my friend-she betrayed us both. She refused him his freedom."
Aunt Clo bowed her head, as though unwilling to face Lily's reception of such a climax.
"You ask me," said Miss Stellenthorpe, after a slight silence which neither had broken, "you ask me why, swept off our feet as we were, he and I did not take the law into our own hands. My reply to you is that I had to suffer the double bitterness of her betrayal, and of his. For he failed me-his courage was less than mine. Although I urged him to take the strong way, the high line, he did not do so. He was afraid. I cast pride to the winds, my Lily-I held back nothing. But that other-she tempted him with specious pleadings of her 'rights,' and he was weak. I do not seek to deny it now. He took the coward's refuge."
Miss Stellenthorpe gazed sombrely at her niece.
"Flight. With her."
There was a solemn silence.
"But it was not to speak of myself that I came, carina, but of you. Do not wreck your life, little one, for a scruple. You have courage, n'est-ce-pas? It needs but one mighty effort to shake off the old superstitions-and after that Love, Freedom, Self-expression! Are these not worth a sacrifice?"
"Yes-if-"
"Go to your lover!" said Aunt Clo with a clarion call. "I am not afraid to say it," and indeed she was not. "Go to your lover."
It was more than difficult to undeceive Aunt Clo. Nor, when she finally took her departure, did Lily feel certain that Miss Stellenthorpe had relinquished all hope of her niece's ultimate defiance of the seventh commandment.
It gave her a faint sense of ironical amusement to discover that her father's thoughts had taken the same direction as had Aunt Clo's, inspiring in him diametrically opposite emotions.
Lily went to stay with him, and was glad that she looked ill enough to justify her leaving London whilst Nicholas was obliged to remain there.
"I'm sorry Nicholas couldn't get away," said Philip rather nervously. "It's very good of him to spare you. You're not looking quite as well as you generally do, my child."
This was Philip's nearest approach to an uncomplimentary statement.
"I'm tired," Lily said.
"Come, come, come," said Philip.
The bracing admonition was marred by his uncertain tone, and the anxious glances that he kept casting towards his daughter.
At last he said to her:
"My little pet, you're not fretting about anything, are you? I'm sorry to see you so-so pale."
Something in the kind, familiar, anxious tone stirred Lily suddenly. She began to cry.
"Poor little child!" said Philip.
He seemed less surprised than Lily had expected him to be, at her sudden weakness, and stroked her hair with hands that trembled a little.
"Tell me all about it," he suggested.
Lily had never thought it possible that she should put her vague disappointment and weariness into words, least of all to her father. Nevertheless she found herself trying to do so.
"It isn't anything-that's the worst of it. Nothing definite. Only Nicholas-Nicholas and I-I wish I loved him more than I do-he's disappointed in me."
"No, no," protested Philip. "That great deprivation is worse for you than for him-besides, my poor dear child, you're still young-"
"It isn't that," said Lily. "He was kinder than I can ever say about that-after all, it isn't my fault, and besides, I might have a child, even yet-they didn't say it was impossible. It's just ourselves-Nicholas and me."
"My child!"
Philip Stellenthorpe looked thoroughly frightened. "I know there's a great disparity of years-but you were fully aware of that when you married him. You were in love with him, Lily."
She made no answer.
"And he with you," said her father hurriedly. "I was deeply touched, at the time, by the way in which he spoke of you. But, my little darling, you know that being in love, as people call it, isn't a thing that lasts for ever. Something better comes to take its place. And there are bound to be little frictions, in even the happiest marriages. You mustn't let yourself exaggerate. There's been no misunderstanding between you, has there?"
Lily knew that by the word "misunderstanding" he meant dispute, and she said that there had been none.
"There, then, you see! What is there to fret about? Nicholas is devoted to you."
"I know."
"And he's your husband, my dear child. You love him."
"I am very fond of him," said Lily slowly. Then she added, speaking more for the relief of words, than with any recollection of her hearer, "It's just because I'm fond of him that I'm so unhappy. I can't give him anything real-I've tried and tried to think that I could, and it's no use-I'm sorry because of him, and I'm sorry because of myself-I've missed the best there is, somehow, and I'm realizing it more and more as I go on, and now I just feel as though I couldn't go on any more. If I wasn't fond of Nicholas, I think I should leave him."
"Don't talk like that-don't say terrible things like that. You don't know what they mean," Philip exclaimed in great agitation. "Don't you know that it's a mortal sin?"
"What is?"
"To let your thoughts turn for a moment, after your solemn marriage vows, to-to any thought of-'for better for worse-till death us do part,' and cleaving to him only-"
"But I shan't go away. I am fond of Nicholas. It would be much easier for me if I weren't," said Lily.
"What do you mean?"
Lily did not seek to explain what she meant. It was scarcely clear even to herself, save that her affection for Nicholas was real of its kind, and therefore must debar her from the drastic and impetuous measures for which her whole undisciplined youth craved.
She remained away on one excuse after another.
Her old schoolmate, Dorothy, came home from India, and although Lily admired Dorothy's healthy, fair-headed, unbeautiful babies, and went almost daily to play with them, she would not admit that her own childlessness roused in her any regret.
Nor did it.
But she watched with sick envy Dorothy's eagerness for her Indian mail letters, and the tears that clouded her frank, unsentimental gaze, as she spoke of "poor Frank"-who would not be able to afford leave for a long while.
"You are lucky, Lily, to live in England with no dreadful complications about having to go up to the hills, for the sake of the babies, and leave your man, sweltering away in the awful heat. And now I've got to leave Dolly behind, and go back with only Aileen, and I shan't have her after our next leave at home, I don't suppose. Frank is so good he'd let me stay at home with them altogether, like some wives do-but of course I wouldn't."
"Do you think he needs you more than the children do?"
"Well, I do, but apart from that," said Dorothy, "I know I jolly well can't do without him!"
She laughed as she spoke, and Lily knew that she did so because she was so much in earnest.
"I've got to finish my mail letter," said Dorothy, who had always hated writing letters.
Lily watched her pull out the perennial block of thin ruled paper to which every day she added a fresh, scrawled contribution.
She herself wrote every few days to Nicholas, and in reply received short letters, indited upon Club notepaper, informing her that he was very busy, or that he had gone past their house, that the exterior painting seemed to be getting on well, that he hoped she was feeling stronger, and would not hurry back to town just yet, the more especially as workmen were still in the house. He was always her devoted husband.
Lily divined haste in the notes, as well as the affectionate feeling that was part of Nicholas. She wrote and told him that Kenneth was to come home in a week's time, and that she should like to await his arrival. Her husband's answer was one of cordial acquiescence, and then he wrote no more for several days.
Lily, as usual, found Kenneth everything that she herself had never dared to be.
He had spent most of his holidays with friends, about whom he vouchsafed the scantiest particulars to his family.
"A fellow I know," or "One of the chaps at the place where I've just been staying," said Kenneth, or, more non-committally still, "Somebody or other that one came across somewhere or other."
"I should like to hear something about this visit of yours, my boy," said Philip, in tones that unwittingly suggested a strong sense of suspiciousness.
"Oh, it was all right."
"So I suppose-so I suppose," Philip laughed rather nervously. "Had it not been 'all right,' as you express it, no doubt I should have been informed. But we've not been told very much about your amusements, or about your young friends themselves. Your school-fellow's father is-or rather was, a good many years ago-an acquaintance of mine, as you know. Besides, my dear boy, I like to know something about the sort of people with whom you're friendly."
Philip's voice had become rebukeful.
"Oh, they're all right," said Kenneth.
"How many brothers and sisters has Graham got?" enquired Lily hastily.
"There were two or three kids knocking about, and a girl with her hair up. She's the eldest."
"Oh, Jean Graham. I think I met her in the Park one day-rather pretty, with fair curly hair."
"Oh," said Kenneth indifferently. But the thought appeared to awaken some association. "I say, Lily, who do you know with carrotty hair?"
"I don't know. Heaps of people. Nobody in particular. What do you mean, exactly?"
"Somebody who's a friend of your old man's. At least-"
"That's not at all a nice way of talking, Kenneth," said his father gravely. "Apologize to your sister."
"No, never mind, Father," Lily interposed.
She remembered, with curious detachment, the two little girls, Vonnie and Lily-who had always been so gentle and respectful in their speech, knowing quite well that anything else would offend the susceptibilities of Father and Mother most terribly.
"It's most disloyal to speak in that rude, foolish way of a near relation-and one who has been so kind to you, too," Philip told the boy.
"Sorry."
Kenneth's tone was so cheerfully unconcerned that Lily hurriedly broke across the light-hearted echo of it that seemed to linger, inappropriately, in the atmosphere diffused by Philip's deep vexation.
"What were you going to tell us about? Somebody with red hair whom Nicholas knows?"
"M'm."
Philip raised his eyebrows at the unceremonious mutter, and sighed, but he uttered no spoken rebuke. Lily wondered whether he gauged the full imperviousness of Kenneth to those silent tokens of disapproval that had been so potent with Philip's elder children.
"A fattish girl, with red hair."
Philip looked up sharply.
"I don't know whether you mean Doris Dickenson," said Lily. "She has red hair. She's a hospital nurse."
"That's it. I knew I'd seen her before. She looked after you when you were ill."
"Yes, she did, but when-"
"I saw her, and old-I mean, Nicholas, too-the other day, when I was coming through London."
"Nonsense, my dear boy," said Philip curtly. "You must have made a mistake. Your brother-in-law would have told me if he'd seen you."
"He didn't see me."
"Then where were you?"
"Just going along down the street. It's all on the way to Victoria station."
"I never gave you leave to hang about London by yourself. I told you to come straight through, in a four-wheeled cab."
"I missed that train-"
"You never told me," exclaimed Philip in horrified tones. "Besides, what do you mean? I met you at the station here at seven o'clock myself. How can you have missed the train?"
"I missed that slow one you wrote about, but I found there was a much better one that got to the junction in time for the connection. At least, it really arrived five minutes after my train was supposed to start, but I knew it would be late, just as it always is. I had heaps of time."
"You had no business to alter the arrangements that Father had made for you, my boy."
"Sorry," said Kenneth in exactly the same cheerful, impersonal accents that he had used before.
"And besides, what would have happened supposing the train hadn't been late? You might have had to spend the night there."
Philip's tone was that of one who points out some terrible danger barely escaped.
Lily felt conscious of a spasm of sharp impatience. No wonder that Kenneth was reticent, even as she herself, as a child, had frequently been deceitful, in the endeavour to evade Philip's portentous anxieties and distrusts.
He was beginning now a serious exposition of the utter inability of "very young people" ever to judge what was best, and Lily felt that she must stop him before her own exasperation made itself felt.
"But what about Nicholas, Kenneth? Why didn't you speak to him?"
Kenneth turned to her, obviously rendered loquacious by his desire to follow her lead.
"Well, I'd really half thought of looking him up, only then I saw scaffolding and stuff outside, and I thought he wouldn't be there. But I looked up at the windows and saw him, as it happened, staring out. And I was just going to cross the street when a taxi drew up at the door, and the carrotty-haired one got out, and ran up the steps like blazes and let herself in. So then I bunked off."
"Let herself in," repeated Philip slowly, "How could she do that?"
"With a key," said Kenneth matter-of-factly. "I suppose old Nicholas didn't want the fag of going down to answer the door, and the servants were all away, or out, or something."
"Yes," said Lily, "the servants are all away; there's only a caretaker."
She spoke quite automatically, but her mind had instantly registered and accepted the new situation unconsciously disclosed by Kenneth, almost without surprise. She suddenly felt as though she had found a clue to some evasive conviction that had been eluding her.
"That's why he hasn't written to me lately," she reflected calmly.
Then she became aware of her father.
"Kenneth is talking nonsense, my little Lily," he said tremulously. "It's all quite-quite-quite unimportant, of course, but you mustn't let yourself-"
She recognized that he was torn between a terrified desire to reassure her, his own sense of shock and outrage, and the old, pathetic instinct to conceal, at all costs, from Kenneth any significance in what Kenneth had just said.
"It's all right," she said, smiling at him without any effort at all.
"What's up?" Kenneth demanded, glancing from one to the other.
"Nothing, my boy, nothing at all. Why should there be anything up, as you call it?" said Philip, grey-faced and shaking. "Only I don't like you to-to tell foolish stories like that."
"But why-"
"Don't argue, now, Kenneth. You know Father will never allow arguing. Now that will do, we needn't say any more about it."
Lily saw on Kenneth's young face exactly that slow awakening to an uncomfortable sense of mystery, that would presently give way to concealed surmisings and surreptitious attempts at trapping down the truth, that had made life a thing of perpetual furtiveness to her own childhood.
She felt so strong a nervous impulse to speak the rending, shattering truth aloud that it came as a sharp relief to see Kenneth, after a suspicious stare at his father, get up and leave the room.
Lily gave Philip no time for the evasions that he was obviously and piteously seeking in his own mind.
"It's all right." She strangely found the words of reassurance on her lips again.
"I know Nicholas. I think he probably has been-unfaithful-with this girl. But it's a sort of passing madness-you mustn't think he's like that really."
"Lily-Lily, my poor child. But we mustn't rush at conclusions, my poor darling. I can question Kenneth quietly, later on-without letting him realize anything, of course."
"No, no. I'm going partly on intuition, Father."
"But had you suspected before, then?"
"Oh no. I knew the girl was-well, a flirt, to put it mildly, and of course I knew that Nicholas admired her. But he's never even seen her since my illness, ages ago."
"How can you tell that, my poor child-what do you know of these things? This business must be tackled by a man. Shall I go up to town at once?"
"I don't think so."
Hard-won certainties, that Lily had scarcely known herself to possess, rallied round her. Her own inner convictions crystallised into decisive speech, gained strength every moment.
"No. It isn't a question for that sort of thing at all-I mean scenes and interviews and recriminations. I shall have to tell Nicholas that I know, and then-then I suppose we shall talk it all over, and see what ought to be done-if anything."
"You don't realize," groaned Philip. "My poor little inexperienced child, you must be guided by me. It may not be as bad as we think."
Lily thought for a moment and then found herself speaking with a decision that surprised herself.
"This is something that I must decide for myself. You can't help me. Nobody can, except Nicholas himself. I should like him to come down here, please."
"You would rather that than let me take you up to London? But are you sure that he will come?"
"Quite sure," said Lily.
In her own mind, she was thinking that very likely Nicholas would write and ask her to come home, before she had even time to send her summons to him. He wasn't deceiving her, "leading a double life," as the conventions of fiction and the drama.
It had all been a sort of accident, probably, Lily reflected. Almost certainly Nicholas, like all weak natures, would feel the instant need of salving his own sense of degradation by making a confession.
Philip was groaning.
"If you had only been more open with me the other day! I had no idea things had gone so far-I thought it was a vague, passing discontent, that meant nothing. But you must have realized even then that he was wronging you in some such terrible way. I could never have believed it, never. However, we mustn't meet trouble halfway, I suppose."
He sighed heavily.
"My poor child, there is at least a remedy open to you, if things are as we fear-though God forbid it should ever come to that."
"What?" asked Lily.
"You can claim your freedom," said her father very low. "There is one cause for which the marriage tie may be dissolved, in the eyes of God."
Lily realized with a shock of astonishment that here was an aspect of the case which actually had not presented itself to her mind.
Divorce.
A second chance! The words flashed through her mind, opening up an illimitable vista of freedom, a sudden, unlooked-for way of escape from that which had appeared unescapable. She had longed wildly and hopelessly for a miracle that would obliterate the years that had elapsed since her marriage to Nicholas Aubray.
Against her own sense of conventional decorum, against her father's shocked unhappiness, relief sprang to life within her at the thought that the miracle might yet take place, the writing of the years might be erased, the irrevocable revoked.
XXI
A certain grave, curt manner and lengthening of face had always been half unconsciously displayed by Nicholas when perturbed or out of temper.
Lily, latterly sharply critical, had interpreted such signs into a desire to be questioned. She half expected to see them now, and at the anticipation a most inappropriately trivial irritation possessed her.
Instead, Nicholas faced her with pitiful, tired eyes and a haggard face.
"Do you know, Lily, or have I got to tell you?" he asked her instantly.
And, also instantly, she replied:
"I know already."
"Thank God for that. I thought perhaps you did, when I got your telegram asking me to come."
"Should you have told me?"
"Yes. I couldn't have met you again and not told you. It was only a question of when." He looked at her piteously. "But, Lily, are you sure you understand? How do you know-what is it you've heard?"
"Kenneth saw her-Doris-let herself into the house, and he saw you at one of the windows. He told me almost by chance-without understanding. Father was there. But it wasn't so much what he said-that didn't amount to much. It was just that I knew it was true-I wasn't exactly surprised."
"But it all happened within the last week. Darling, I've been a hound, and God knows how I hate myself, but I've not been deceiving you. It's over, already-was over before your telegram ever reached me."
"It was a sort of passing madness, I suppose," Lily said, using the words that she had used to Philip.
Nicholas seized upon them eagerly.
"That's exactly what it was. And look here, Lily-at the cost of sounding like a cad, I'm going to tell you straight; it hasn't hurt Doris. You're not to think of her as a girl that I've betrayed. I've been a brute-but it's to you, not to her. Doris is-well, I wasn't the first-not by a long way."
"I didn't know-I didn't like her-but I didn't think she was that sort."
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders.
"Then you aren't in love with her?"
"Good God, no!"
He came and knelt beside her.
"Lily, it's you I love, my darling, my little wife. I don't know if a woman can understand how these things happen.... We haven't been happy together lately and I was lonely and down on my luck. I met her by chance, and she asked me to take her to tea somewhere, and she's attractive, you know, in her way. I took her to a theatre the same night-but I swear to you that I never thought of anything but having a cheery evening at a deadly dull time of year in London. But then-well, then I suppose I saw that she was for it, and I lost my head. I drove her home in a taxi, and when we got to her place she-she didn't want to get out. She said she'd see me to the Club, instead-I suppose I knew what she was up to, then. She's living at some Mansions or other, and she knew our place was more or less shut up. Anyway, we went there, and not to the Club. The old woman had left the drinks and things out, as she did every night before going off home, and the house was empty. It seemed safe enough, from the point of view of discovery. Heaven knows how she got the latch-key-I suppose she took it. She telephoned me next day at the Cub that she was coming to bring it back to me-she hadn't the wit to know that I hated her like hell by that time and never wanted to go near her again. Though it was myself I ought to have hated-and did, too. Well, I thought if she was bent on coming, I'd let her come, and show her that it was all over, and that I knew I'd been a cad. I never thought of the little fool letting herself in like that with the wretched key-though I'd have laid a thousand to one against the chance of anyone spotting her who knew either of us. It was the most extraordinary chance-"
"You didn't see Kenneth?"
"No."
"What made you ask if I knew?"
"I'd a sort of feeling you must know. In fact, I rather felt as if everybody must know-sort of branded. I couldn't write to you, or do anything. I knew I should have to tell you. Lily, do you think you can ever forgive me?"
"Oh, yes," said Lily, surprised.
"You angel! You little saint!" With an exuberant gesture he put his arm round her, and she made an instinctive movement of recoil.
"But Nicholas, wait. I never thought of forgiving or not forgiving, because I don't feel angry, but you know, we-we could-"
He stared at her incredulously.
"Father said that I could divorce you, and I suppose it's true. It could be arranged somehow."
"Your father! But this is a matter that concerns only our two selves. Besides, Lily, you don't know what you're saying. Divorce is not a thing to be spoken of like that-lightly. It's a frightful thing to think of."
For a moment the old inclination to accept the values of another beset her. Then she spoke steadily.
"Divorce would set us free to begin again. You've given me adequate grounds, Nicholas, after all. Tell me honestly-would a divorce, undefended-I suppose you wouldn't defend the case?-would it hurt your career?"
Nicholas stood up again and looked down at her very grimly.
"It would do you quite as much harm as it would me, my dear. A woman who's been through the Divorce Court, even if she's perfectly innocent, is looked upon askance by many people. But I don't believe you know what you're talking about. It's an insane suggestion. It could be done, no doubt with a certain amount of collusion, but you've no idea of all that it would entail."
"Perhaps," Lily said slowly, "perhaps, Nicholas, I think that it would be worth while, if it would give us both a chance of beginning again."
Nicholas looked at her with eyes that, from incredulous, became slowly agonized.
"We can," he said, "I suppose it would be possible. But I-I thought you loved me."
Quite suddenly, he was crying like a child that is forced to realize the infliction of some bitter, almost incredible disappointment.
"Don't you care for me at all, Lily? Has it made you hate me? Don't you realize that I was mad and wicked and a fool; but it was you I cared for, all the time? I thought you understood."
"Nicholas!"
She was touched by him as she had never been before. "Don't-don't! I do understand, I think."
"You were away-and things between us haven't been very happy lately. I don't want to make excuses, Lily, but can't you see a little how it happened?"
"Yes. Oh, Nicholas, the way these things happen-the way everything happens-always out of something else-"
She stopped, unable to express the fullness of her crowding thoughts.
"This-in itself," she said at last timidly, "is only an episode. But all the things that have been leading up to it, Nicholas-the disappointment I've been to you-"
"Never, my darling."
Confronted by his loyally-meant denial of fact, Lily felt helpless.
"Nicholas," she said at last. "If I spoke just now of a desperate remedy, it's because I've been feeling desperate. I really mean it, quite literally. It's not just a word."
His mouth twitched a little.
"My dearest child, you've only known that there was anything to be desperate about for the last twenty-four hours. Heaven knows I don't want to minimize the unspeakable thing I've done, but still-desperation-when you say yourself that it's an episode, merely-"
"You don't understand, Nicholas. I've been in despair for longer than I can tell you. This affair is nothing-a sin of the body. If it's a wrong done to me, and I suppose in a way it is-then I forgive you-of course I do. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me to matter much-and as you said just now, I'd left you alone, and we hadn't been of much use to one another. I think it was partly my fault, that it happened at all."
"My darling child, you can talk generously and frankly like that, and yet you speak of divorce!"
There was the impatience in his voice that had so often led her hastily to disavow her own views.
"Don't you see how utterly illogical you're being?"
She shook her head.
"You haven't understood. You think I just used the word divorce as a sort of threat, to show that I knew what a serious wrong you'd done me-that I didn't mean it, or didn't understand what such a step really means. But Nicholas, I'll be honest with you-at last, I'll be honest. I've thought of divorce before-I've thought of death-of running away-of anything that would enable us to begin again. This thing that's happened may provide the means."
"But then you've hated me?"
His voice held utter bewilderment and incredulity.
"No!" cried Lily passionately.
She found that she was crying.
"I don't hate you, Nicholas. How could I? I'm fond of you, that's just it. I ought never to have married you-it wasn't fair. But oh, Nicholas, I am fond of you!"
The hard lucidity of utterance with which she had confronted him a moment earlier had deserted her. She was crying uncontrollably.
"Whichever way we turn, it all seems hopeless. I can't help making you unhappy-I am fond of you, Nicholas; oh, Nicholas-can't you understand?"
They clung together, and both were weeping.
"Forgive me, my poor darling," he reiterated helplessly.
"No, no-it's for you to forgive me, Nicholas. This thing-this little thing that's happened between you and Doris-it's nothing, I don't care what anybody says-it's not a real thing, and it doesn't matter. It's only pretence if I say it does."
"Lily, don't leave me. I can't do without you. Forgive me! Don't-don't fail me!"
Her pity and affection tore at her. She wanted to cry to him that she would never fail him, that no forgiveness was needed between them, that they would begin life together again. The impulse of reckless generosity rose to blot out the relentless unalterability of truth.
Every carefully inculcated falsity of upbringing strove against her, every easy sentimentality sought to stifle sincerity of thought.
"Let me wait-don't make me say anything now," she besought him. "I ought to think-I want to think, before we settle anything. Give me time, Nicholas."
He was obviously puzzled and she knew that he thought her forgiveness of him to be still in the balance.
"But you'll tell me soon, Lily?" he said wistfully. "Of course you have a right morally to claim this-this terrible penalty, and I would make it as easy as I could for you, dear-you know I'd do that. But you won't-you couldn't. Talk to your father, darling. He'll help you."
But Lily talked to no one.
She had taken advice once before. This time, she sought to confront her own issues alone.
Freedom. This might mean freedom.
She had longed, with the frantic desire of hopelessness, to begin again. And Nicholas himself had provided her with a door of escape. A legitimate exit.
Her thoughts roamed free and disconnected.
Freedom to begin again! Who knew what life might yet hold, with the gain of bitter and profound experience behind her, and the potent, incalculable fact of a freed spirit before her?
She had learnt honesty at last, and at last the gaze of her soul was steady.
"The very beginning of it all, when they made me believe myself in love with Nicholas, and I hadn't the courage to own to myself that I wasn't! Or perhaps it goes further back even than that, back to the time when Vonnie and I were little. Vonnie, my Vonnie, shall I ever love anyone again? Vonnie knew the truth about values; she knew what mattered to her and what didn't. Perhaps I did too-I think I did when we were little, but afterwards I took my values ready-made. One can't do that. Humbug brings its own penalty-my life since I've grown up here has been just that-Humbug. Yes, and long before I was grown-up, too."
Wandering from the bewilderment of her own life, Lily thought of the problem of education.
Wherein lay the failure of one generation to render enduring help to another?
"It isn't love-the lack of it. They do love-so do we. Is it the old, possessive idea? Children belonging to their parents? They don't belong. Each soul belongs to itself-I'm certain of that. The parents have responsibility, at first, yes-they brought one into the world for their own pleasure, or because they thought it right, or because they couldn't help it. They have to keep their children alive-to do the best they can for them-to tell them the truth as far as they know it. And that's what they don't do. They tell the children what they think is good for them to know.... They arrogate to themselves the right of claiming infallibility. And they're not infallible-they know they're not. But they won't let the children know it. And so they evade, and deceive, and suppress, and the children grow up and find that there is no infallibility-but by that time they have learnt to evade, and deceive, and suppress, themselves."
Her heart smote her.
"Even now, it hurts me to think what I know is true. My instinct is to take refuge in the old idea of loyalty. Yet I know that it's only another word for sentimentality-for a wilful obscuring of facts."
Words came unsought into her mind.
"The truth shall make you free." Truth leading to Freedom. The two gifts that were withheld.
Loving their children, sacrificing often and much for them, yearning over them, parents, fearing loss to themselves, barred the road to freedom.
They wanted the children to belong to them.
"And one can't. The gulf is always there, between the generations. To own its existence might be to bridge it. But they won't own to it-they try and teach us not to own to it. They call it by other names-disloyalty, and ingratitude, and the arrogance of youth. And it's none of those things, until we're taught to consider it so."
"Honour thy father and mother." Yes, but they want one to do more than that-to go on belonging, to take on trust the vital things that matter most, that only personal experience can teach. That old idea that parents can choose the religion of their children-it's wrong, wrong all along the line. They ought to be free.
Will it ever come to that? Is it an impossibility that parents should exist who will one day say to a child: 'We profess such-and-such a faith. We hold it to be true, we hope that you, in time to come, will hold it to be true. But you are free. You are bound by no promises made on your behalf in your babyhood, you are at liberty to exercise the gift of free-will of which we have never robbed you.'
"Would a child, so taught, trust the more fully for the lack of all claim to blind obedience?"
"Obedience." She stopped upon the word. Not obedience-"because I am the dispenser of rewards and punishments. Not 'because I am I, and to be obeyed.' Not the appeal to the emotions: 'To please me-because it will grieve and disappoint me if you disobey-' Least of all, 'because I say it is right to obey, and pleasing to God, and wrong to disobey, and displeasing to Him.' But perhaps, 'because the logical consequences of disobedience will lead to harm. Let reason and experience, so far as you have either, help you to understand.'"
That was not the old way. Was it a better one? The difficulty of it-the incalculable importance of it! She thought of the many who had striven, and of the far greater number who saw no need to strive, and held unthinkingly to the old shibboleths.
A faint echo of Miss Melody's kind, complacent tones came to her from the past.
"Lily, Lily, what are all these fancies? Are children never to learn obedience without question, pray? According to you, dearie, then, must a baby cut himself with a sharp knife so as to learn by experience why he was forbidden to touch it? Come, come-that would never do."
Ghost of Miss Melody's laugh, floating on the air! Lily smiled, herself, very faintly.
The reductio ad absurdum is not an argument.
"Should I have the courage, if I had children? The courage never to grudge them the experience of suffering, to let them say 'Yes' to Life? To realize, and let them realize, from the very beginning, that no created soul belongs to another-that each must stand alone?"
She dropped her face into her hands, shuddering-realizing something of that ultimate abnegation that imposes nothing, but holds all in reserve.
Would Nicholas have helped her?
She knew that he would not. Their ideals, again and again, differed.
All, all irrelevant. There were no children of his and hers, thank God!
Other thoughts of Nicholas crowded to her mind. His love for her, his uncritical enjoyment of life, a certain child-like spirit of joviality that had harmonized with her own youth.
"But I ought never to have married him."
She was putting hard facts into hard words at last.
"I knew just enough, even then, to know that nothing but the best of all would satisfy me-and for me Nicholas could never be anything but the second-best. Everything-except the one thing needful. Even then, if I'd been honest with myself, and admitted that it was a second-best.... But I wasn't-all this time I've tried to put into our relationship a value that it hasn't got. This infidelity of his...." She remembered it with a shock of surprise. "It doesn't matter, in itself. But it can set me free-free to begin again, to possess myself, to eliminate pretenses. My life with Nicholas is all held together by pretenses."
There came another thought and for an instant she was tempted to sheer away, with a tag on her lips of conventional optimism, "What's the use of thinking about what may never happen?"
Then she faced it, and deliberately recalled words spoken to her by Giulio della Torre, wise in his own generation.
"What you need-what you must have, if you are ever to fulfil yourself-it is romance.... You will learn not to be afraid of life, some day." And at the end, when he had spoken of all that she had need to be taught:
"C'est le ton qui fait la musique."
It was the teacher, not the teaching, that mattered.
"Some day, I shall love," thought Lily.
And she reflected coldly: "It is at least possible, if not probable. Am I to pretend to myself that such a thing is out of the question, because I am married? Why, I don't even know what I should do-whether I might not leave Nicholas altogether. And break his heart-oh, Nicholas!"
She was fond of him, she knew that she would always be fond of him. It would be impossible to her to be ruthless where Nicholas was concerned, she thought, and next moment she told herself fiercely that her opportunity had come, that she would divorce him, and find herself free to begin life again, alone.
It was just. Nicholas had given her just cause.
For a little while Lily thought that the conflict lay, as so often, between sincerity and sentiment.
Then illumination came to her, searing and vivid.
Was the freedom for which she looked to be based upon yet another artificial value? Was she to exact from Nicholas a supreme penalty for that which had been powerless to hurt her?
Philip Stellenthorpe might say that there was one reason for which the tie of marriage might be set aside. Nicholas himself, piteously bewildered, might admit technical justification for such penalization, the world might condemn Nicholas and be right in so doing by the letter of the law, but the wife of Nicholas knew that in the spirit he had not sinned against her, and that she had no right to turn against himself his sin of the body for her own ends.
"If I loved him I should forgive him. Not loving him, there is no real question of forgiveness at all. It's the old test-the applying of a general law to a particular case-taking one's values ready-made-the old, old humbug."
The last, comforting falsity fell from her, and she saw the ultimate presentment of all the truth that she would ever know, in stark finality.
She could build for herself no freedom upon a foundation of pretence.
XXII
The unendurable circumstance remains unaltered. The alteration is in the soul that suffers.
Lily's relation with Nicholas was largely founded, as she had told herself, upon pretence, and the rapture of complete sincerity could never be hers. But she told him, again and again, in reply to his impassioned protestations of gratitude, that she felt herself entitled to assume no attitude of forgiveness.
"It wasn't for the-the sin," she said painfully, "that I thought of divorce. It would only have been a pretext-"
Nicholas gazed at her as tenderly as uncomprehendingly.
"Poor darling, you've been more generous than words can say. And you do understand a little, Lily? It would never, never have happened if my little wife hadn't been away from me for such a long while."
"You do need me, Nicholas?"
"Need you? By Jove, I should think I do," cried Nicholas, in the old buoyant, explosive way. She knew it to be true.
Nicholas had given her his love, and it would be hers always. He depended upon her, he trusted her. She had given him herself, cheated of her right to know the possibilities in herself, the possibilities in life; cheated into accepting her values ready-made. But the gift had been made.
Lily knew that never, to gratify her aching longing for the freedom that only Truth can give, could she see herself justified in seeking to force upon Nicholas a vision of the facts as she saw them.
By degrees that to herself were imperceptible, she put behind her the old, childish visions that had typified themselves to her under the names of Flames and Carnations. Only her faith in that to which she personally relinquished all claim, remained unimpaired, and destined to endure.
For a long while bitterness tinged her thoughts of Philip.
It was he to whom the utter faith of her impressionable childhood had been given, he who, thinking it love, had again and again deceived her.
It was out of the hard, smiling revolt behind which Kenneth entrenched himself more and more securely and triumphantly against their father, that Lily's softening came at last.
He had failed his children, but had they not failed him? Vonnie, who had died, was the child that had hurt and perplexed Philip Stellenthorpe least; the child that he had loved least. When Lily knew that she might herself be about to have a child, the last resentment against her father was slowly eliminated from her heart.
A strange certainty possessed her that this time the blossom would come to maturity.
Of later years, she had hoped never to have a child, asking herself:
"Why should I want to bring a child into the world, for it to suffer as I suffer?"
Slowly Time had transmuted that cry into a dawning hope that because she had suffered, her child might suffer less.
The little, normal, everyday things of life slipped past, and bore away with them the sense of crisis from Lily and Nicholas.
It was all but incredible that there had ever been a crisis.
The figures that for a little while had seemed to be only shades, peopling a dream world, became real once more.
Aunt Clo, after her fashion, reappeared abruptly from some labyrinthine tangle of lives unknown, from which her hand, and seemingly hers only, could evolve a clue.
"Ecco! my little one," said she. "I hardly thought that we should meet again thus. Eheu fugaces!"
Her tone was not free from reproach.
"I am very glad that you have come," said Lily.
Her aunt's head was graciously bent in acknowledgment towards her.
"I also. There was a time, my Lily, when I thought that you might wish to claim my help-such help as my knowledge of Life enables me to give. You know, perhaps better than most, whether I grudge the spending of myself upon others."
Aunt Clo gave a melancholy smile at the mere supposition of anything so far removed from fact.
"Why, you ask me, did I not come forward, did I not speak freely and frankly, as is ever my wont? Ahimé! la verité, pour moi, c'est tout! Why did I not cast the bulwark of my strength before so frail a fortress, one so near capitulation? I reply, Because I am proud. Yes! c'est moi qui vous le dit, child. I am deeply, intimately, passionately proud."
Aunt Clo's head sank upon her breast at the admission, but very soon she raised it again and once more faced the world.
Her handsome face expressed a sort of joyous determination.
"Can I regret it, you ask me? No, little one! J'ai l'âme fière, it is all too true, but mine is not an ignoble pride. Rather is it a pride of race, a pride of character, that has upborne me through seas far rougher than you, I trust, will ever know. It is true, I cannot deny, that it has made me suffer, but it is through suffering that I have learnt to be strong."
Aunt Clo paused again, and looked very strong indeed.
"Many have turned to me in their need, as you know. I do not think that I have failed any. Indeed, no. But where confidence is not given, I cannot seek it. For I am proud, Lily. Proud and intensely reserved."
It was, as ever, a little difficult to rise to Aunt Clo's level.
"I am happier than I was last time you came, Aunt Clo. And I think Nicholas is very happy; especially now."
"Especially?"
"I am going to have a child," said Lily.
Aunt Clo gazed at her niece for a full moment before raising her eyebrows and emphasizing her appreciation of the facts by a slow series of words that had a curious air of well-weighed significance.
"Aha! The domesticities have claimed you."
"I wanted you to know. I knew you would be glad, really, for my sake."
Miss Stellenthorpe rose, erect and very tall, placed a hand upon either of Lily's shoulders, and kissed her brow with solemnity.
She made no further reference to Lily's confidence until the moment of her departure.
"Child," she then said, turning upon the threshold in farewell. "Child! Let me know, in the midst of the sad task to which I go-a tangled skein to be unravelled, my Lily-let me hear that you have given a man-child to the world."
There were others also who, possibly for less altruistic motives than Miss Stellenthorpe's, hoped that Lily's child would be a son.
Ethel Hardinge delivered herself of many prudent and matronly exhortations.
"And I do hope you'll have a boy, dear. I was dreadfully disappointed when all my three were girls, and so was poor dear Charlie, though he was much too kind to say so. And then Dorothy's first two, dear little darling things, though I wouldn't change them for the world-still, you know how delighted she was when little Charles appeared. There is something about having a son, you know, Lily."
Lily, thoroughly understanding this cryptic statement, agreed to it, but she said also:
"Nicholas doesn't mind which it is, if only we really have a child, and I don't think I could be disappointed, so long as it lived."
"Ah, poor little thing. But you'll see, Lily dear, everything is going to be all right this time. Only you must take great care of yourself. You've no mother, and you won't mind a little advice from me, will you? Tell me, dear, do you...."
Cousin Ethel was very kind, and intensely interested, full of counsels that related to the physiological aspect of the situation.
Philip Stellenthorpe desired a grandson. He told Lily sadly that his own son was causing him great anxiety.
"He sometimes almost seems to be growing up a heartless little boy."
"You know, Father, Kenneth isn't really a little boy at all, now."
"He will always be a little boy to me," returned her father with simplicity. "When, please God, you have your own child, Lily, you'll know that's one of the sad and beautiful things about the parents of a child. To them, he never really grows up. They always see him as the dear little baby they took care of, and petted, and loved."
"Kenneth wouldn't like that, you know, Father. He doesn't really want to be taken care of, now. I think, in fact, that he resents being treated as though he were still a child."
"It's very ungrateful," said Philip, shaking his head. "Ungrateful and heartless. You were not like that, my little Lily."
"I was a girl, not a boy."
She hesitated, and then the thought of Kenneth made her speak.
"But, Father, sometimes I've wished that I was rather more like Kenneth. He's honest, anyway. He wants to develop into an individual with characteristics and opinions and beliefs of his own. I know Kenneth is often conceited and-and tiresome, but I don't really think he's heartless."
"Then what is he, pray? What is his persistent refusal to confide in me, to follow the advice that I'm only too ready to give him, to trust me?"
"I suppose he wants to feel that he belongs to himself."
"What nonsense!" Philip was roused to the extent of making use of a colloquialism. "A child, in one sense, must always belong to the parents who brought him into the world. Why, he owes them everything-life itself. The opinions and beliefs that you talk about, can only come to him through the things they teach him or cause him to be taught."
"That," said Lily, "is why it seems to me that so many of us, of his generation, are handicapped. I mean that we were taught along certain grooves, and never told to look beyond. Never told that Truth is not to be handed on, ready-made, but must be won at individual cost. And never told, either, that free-will is the right of every human soul, and that all teaching is only preliminary to the exercise of that free-will." She stopped, deeply in earnest, and gazed at her father.
"I should like my child," she said timidly, "to feel always that he belongs to himself. That we, Nicholas and I, can only tell him that we ourselves have learnt such and such things, and then leave him also to learn them by his own experience. I shouldn't want him to take his beliefs on trust from us-or from anybody. We are not omniscient. How can we tell the aspect that the Truth is to wear for him? Only he can find that out, perhaps at the cost of many mistakes. But it seems to me that the knowledge we have won for ourselves must be a more real and lasting thing than the ready-made standards of other people."
Philip shook his grey head, and Lily saw that his worn face looked more deeply lined.
"My poor little girl, you will see it all very differently when you have your child."
With all the intensity that was in her, Lily inwardly resolved that never, through weakness or faltering of hers, should that prophecy be realized. Never, so long as the clarity of vision won at long last still remained to her, would she let sentimentality, however disguised, blind her to the rights of her child's individual soul.
To Philip she said nothing more.
He looked at her sorrowfully and pitifully, but after a little while he found, as he had always found, a fiction with which to drape the hard reality that he disliked.
"You're not yourself at present, you know, my little pet. It's very natural. Your condition.... You'll look at it all very different by-and-by."
Thus Philip, deriving such comfort as he could from a fictitious optimism.
Lily left it to him, and sought no further to speak of the many things that were in her mind. She had once come very near to hating her father in the bitterness of her youth, and now, with the faint dawn of a better wisdom, she was glad to let the past rest, to know that the future was not in his hands.
Sometimes, but very seldom, Lily reflected upon the possibility of her own death in child-birth.
Rather to her own surprise, she did not want to die. She wanted to see her child, and to remain with it.
"Of course you won't die, my darling," said Nicholas tenderly. "You must stay and look after me, eh, Lily? And you couldn't let the poor little thing be motherless, whichever it is."
"Which do you want, Nicholas?"
"Of course, every man wants a son." Nicholas threw back his shoulders in the old, characteristic way. "But I should love a little girl, Lily, with pretty hair like yours."
He touched her brown hair very softly. Often, now, his caresses were tinged with diffidence, and he was less prodigal of them.
"If you have a girl, Lily, you'll be able to have her always with you. A girl needn't go to school. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"Yes. Only, Nicholas-"
She slipped her hand into his, doubtful whether he would agree with what she was about to say, and instinctively and half unconsciously seeking to propitiate him, as she would have to do for all the days of their married life, if she was to act upon the convictions that were hers, but were indifferent to him.
"You wouldn't always want to have her at home if she wanted to go away? They have the right to develop along their own lines-the children."
Nicholas gave her a shrewd glance.
"You didn't get much of a chance that way, did you? I shall leave it to you, my dear. It's the mother's job to bring up her daughters, isn't it, and her son, too, for that matter, till he goes to school. Do you know what Ignatius Loyola used to say?"
"I don't think so. Tell me."
"'Give me a child until he is seven years old. After that any one may have him who wills,'" quoted Nicholas. "So you see that according to that, it's the early years that count."
"I believe it's true," she exclaimed.
"So do I. Those are the impressions that remain longest. I've lived a good many more years in this funny old world than you have, my dear, and I flatter myself that my memory is as good as that of most people-" he paused.
"Eh, Lily?"
"Your memory is a very good one, Nicholas."
"Well, be that as it may, I've certainly come to the conclusion that it's those early impressions that make one's after-life. Somehow, they're ineradicable."
Lily believed it utterly. Searching her own lesser experience, and greater perceptions, she knew that so it had been with herself.
So would it be with her child.
"It's for me to make those early impressions true ones," she thought. "Not just ideas of blind loyalty and unreasoning trust, that later years are bound to destroy, but of self-reliance, and honesty of mind, and courage in facing things as they are."
Nicholas had said that she should bring up the child herself, and she knew that he meant it.
It was the best that she could hope for now. The perfect union of minds to whom an identical vision has been vouchsafed could never be hers and his. The marriage of body, soul and spirit, that she had once dreamed of dimly, and called by its true name of Love, she had forfeited through her marriage with Nicholas.
She had long sought to comfort herself with illusions, but she had found no strength until she had put facts into words, and stripped the truth of sentimental accessories.
In her final acceptance, she felt nearer to her husband than ever before.
It was not the fault of Nicholas that their relations to one another had been founded upon a falsity. The one wrong for which he might reproach himself had been powerless to hurt her.
They only spoke of it once again.
Lily asked her husband whether he knew what had become of Doris Dickenson.
"Must we mention her?" he said unwillingly.
"Not if you'd rather not. I only wondered what she was doing?"
"No good, from what I heard! Not that it amounts to much, but I did hear somebody commiserating poor old Dickenson the other day. She isn't living at home. She can't keep straight."
A vision of Miss Dickenson, to Lily's eyes so singularly unattractive, rose to her mind in odd juxtaposition to the account now given of her.
She could have laughed, but for knowing that it would shock Nicholas sincerely to hear her.
"Don't you bother your little head about her, my darling child. She's a wrong 'un, that's what she is," said Nicholas with great finality.
He looked at her wistfully.
"You have been a perfect darling to me, Lily. I know you've forgiven me, but I shall never, as long as I live, forgive myself."
"Nicholas, don't let's ever speak of it again."
"Really, Lily?"
"Really."
He drew a long breath.
"Well! I've got a wonderful little wife. You must take great care of yourself, my dear. You're tired now, aren't you?"
"Yes."
She smiled at him gratefully, surprised and touched that he should have seen.
"I generally know when you're tired, I fancy," said Nicholas complacently. "There isn't very much escapes me, eh, Lily?"
She leant against him, very tired.
"Eh, Lily?" Nicholas repeated.
She roused herself, and answered him as she knew that he wished to be answered.
Lily's child was a boy.
With his advent, a certain measure of personal happiness came to her, that sometimes made her marvel.
"But after all," she thought, "why should I arrogate to myself the right of deciding what my greatest happiness is to be?"
She looked at the sleeping child, and willed that he might never know the kindly deceits, the sentimental falsities, the arbitrary presentment of a fraction of truth as Truth entire, that had made for the standards of her own youth a foundation of shifting sands.
The long, long way round that it had been to arrive at last at her own convictions, and cease to try and wrench them into line with those of other people!
The baby stirred a little and she bent over him quickly, and as she soothed her child to sleep again, Lily whispered to him:
"You shall belong to yourself. Always."
June 9th, 1920. SINGAPORE.
Feb. 17th, 1921. JOHORE.

Chapter I. THE MAGNET ATTRACTING: A WAIF AMID FORCES
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What, pray, is a few hours-a few hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in swift review, until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counsellor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognised for what they are, their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then weakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions.
Caroline, or Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was, nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness and an eye alight with certain native intelligence, she was a fair example of the middle American class-two generations removed from the emigrant. Books were beyond her interest-knowledge a sealed book. In the intuitive graces she was still crude. She could scarcely toss her head gracefully. Her hands were almost ineffectual. The feet, though small, were set flatly. And yet she was interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things. A half-equipped little knight she was, venturing to reconnoitre the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy, which should make it prey and subject-the proper penitent, grovelling at a woman's slipper.
"That," said a voice in her ear, "is one of the prettiest little resorts in Wisconsin."
"Is it?" she answered nervously.
The train was just pulling out of Waukesha. For some time she had been conscious of a man behind. She felt him observing her mass of hair. He had been fidgetting, and with natural intuition she felt a certain interest growing in that quarter. Her maidenly reserve, and a certain sense of what was conventional under the circumstances, called her to forestall and deny this familiarity, but the daring and magnetism of the individual, born of past experiences and triumphs, prevailed. She answered.
He leaned forward to put his elbows upon the back of her seat and proceeded to make himself volubly agreeable.
"Yes, that is a great resort for Chicago people. The hotels are swell. You are not familiar with this part of the country, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I am," answered Carrie. "That is, I live at Columbia City. I have never been through here, though."
"And so this is your first visit to Chicago," he observed.
All the time she was conscious of certain features out of the side of her eye. Flush, colourful cheeks, a light moustache, a grey fedora hat. She now turned and looked upon him in full, the instincts of self-protection and coquetry mingling confusedly in her brain.
"I didn't say that," she said.
"Oh," he answered, in a very pleasing way and with an assumed air of mistake, "I thought you did."
Here was a type of the travelling canvasser for a manufacturing house-a class which at that time was first being dubbed by the slang of the day "drummers." He came within the meaning of a still newer term, which had sprung into general use among Americans in 1880, and which concisely expressed the thought of one whose dress or manners are calculated to elicit the admiration of susceptible young women-a "masher." His suit was of a striped and crossed pattern of brown wool, new at that time, but since become familiar as a business suit. The low crotch of the vest revealed a stiff shirt bosom of white and pink stripes. From his coat sleeves protruded a pair of linen cuffs of the same pattern, fastened with large, gold plate buttons, set with the common yellow agates known as "cat's-eyes." His fingers bore several rings-one, the ever-enduring heavy seal-and from his vest dangled a neat gold watch chain, from which was suspended the secret insignia of the Order of Elks. The whole suit was rather tight-fitting, and was finished off with heavy-soled tan shoes, highly polished, and the grey fedora hat. He was, for the order of intellect represented, attractive, and whatever he had to recommend him, you may be sure was not lost upon Carrie, in this, her first glance.
Lest this order of individual should permanently pass, let me put down some of the most striking characteristics of his most successful manner and method. Good clothes, of course, were the first essential, the things without which he was nothing. A strong physical nature, actuated by a keen desire for the feminine, was the next. A mind free of any consideration of the problems or forces of the world and actuated not by greed, but an insatiable love of variable pleasure. His method was always simple. Its principal element was daring, backed, of course, by an intense desire and admiration for the sex. Let him meet with a young woman once and he would approach her with an air of kindly familiarity, not unmixed with pleading, which would result in most cases in a tolerant acceptance. If she showed any tendency to coquetry he would be apt to straighten her tie, or if she "took up" with him at all, to call her by her first name. If he visited a department store it was to lounge familiarly over the counter and ask some leading questions. In more exclusive circles, on the train or in waiting stations, he went slower. If some seemingly vulnerable object appeared he was all attention-to pass the compliments of the day, to lead the way to the parlor car, carrying her grip, or, failing that, to take a seat next her with the hope of being able to court her to her destination. Pillows, books, a footstool, the shade lowered; all these figured in the things which he could do. If, when she reached her destination he did not alight and attend her baggage for her, it was because, in his own estimation, he had signally failed.
A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which the dress of a man will cause her to study her own. This line the individual at her elbow now marked for Carrie. She became conscious of an inequality. Her own plain blue dress, with its black cotton tape trimmings, now seemed to her shabby. She felt the worn state of her shoes.
"Let's see," he went on, "I know quite a number of people in your town. Morgenroth the clothier and Gibson the dry goods man."
"Oh, do you?" she interrupted, aroused by memories of longings their show windows had cost her.
At last he had a clew to her interest, and followed it deftly. In a few minutes he had come about into her seat. He talked of sales of clothing, his travels, Chicago, and the amusements of that city.
"If you are going there, you will enjoy it immensely. Have you relatives?"
"I am going to visit my sister," she explained.
"You want to see Lincoln Park," he said, "and Michigan Boulevard. They are putting up great buildings there. It's a second New York-great. So much to see-theatres, crowds, fine houses-oh, you'll like that."
There was a little ache in her fancy of all he described. Her insignificance in the presence of so much magnificence faintly affected her. She realised that hers was not to be a round of pleasure, and yet there was something promising in all the material prospect he set forth. There was something satisfactory in the attention of this individual with his good clothes. She could not help smiling as he told her of some popular actress of whom she reminded him. She was not silly, and yet attention of this sort had its weight.
"You will be in Chicago some little time, won't you?" he observed at one turn of the now easy conversation.
"I don't know," said Carrie vaguely-a flash vision of the possibility of her not securing employment rising in her mind.
"Several weeks, anyhow," he said, looking steadily into her eyes.
There was much more passing now than the mere words indicated. He recognised the indescribable thing that made up for fascination and beauty in her. She realised that she was of interest to him from the one standpoint which a woman both delights in and fears. Her manner was simple, though for the very reason that she had not yet learned the many little affectations with which women conceal their true feelings. Some things she did appeared bold. A clever companion-had she ever had one-would have warned her never to look a man in the eyes so steadily.
"Why do you ask?" she said.
"Well, I'm going to be there several weeks. I'm going to study stock at our place and get new samples. I might show you 'round."
"I don't know whether you can or not. I mean I don't know whether I can. I shall be living with my sister, and-"
"Well, if she minds, we'll fix that." He took out his pencil and a little pocket note-book as if it were all settled. "What is your address there?"
She fumbled her purse which contained the address slip.
He reached down in his hip pocket and took out a fat purse. It was filled with slips of paper, some mileage books, a roll of greenbacks. It impressed her deeply. Such a purse had never been carried by any one attentive to her. Indeed, an experienced traveller, a brisk man of the world, had never come within such close range before. The purse, the shiny tan shoes, the smart new suit, and the air with which he did things, built up for her a dim world of fortune, of which he was the centre. It disposed her pleasantly toward all he might do.
He took out a neat business card, on which was engraved Bartlett, Caryoe & Company, and down in the left-hand corner, Chas. H. Drouet.
"That's me," he said, putting the card in her hand and touching his name. "It's pronounced Drew-eh. Our family was French, on my father's side."
She looked at it while he put up his purse. Then he got out a letter from a bunch in his coat pocket. "This is the house I travel for," he went on, pointing to a picture on it, "corner of State and Lake." There was pride in his voice. He felt that it was something to be connected with such a place, and he made her feel that way.
"What is your address?" he began again, fixing his pencil to write.
She looked at his hand.
"Carrie Meeber," she said slowly. "Three hundred and fifty-four West Van Buren Street, care S. C. Hanson."
He wrote it carefully down and got out the purse again. "You'll be at home if I come around Monday night?" he said.
"I think so," she answered.
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. Here were these two, bandying little phrases, drawing purses, looking at cards, and both unconscious of how inarticulate all their real feelings were. Neither was wise enough to be sure of the working of the mind of the other. He could not tell how his luring succeeded. She could not realise that she was drifting, until he secured her address. Now she felt that she had yielded something-he, that he had gained a victory. Already they felt that they were somehow associated. Already he took control in directing the conversation. His words were easy. Her manner was relaxed.
They were nearing Chicago. Signs were everywhere numerous. Trains flashed by them. Across wide stretches of flat, open prairie they could see lines of telegraph poles stalking across the fields toward the great city. Far away were indications of suburban towns, some big smokestacks towering high in the air.
Frequently there were two-story frame houses standing out in the open fields, without fence or trees, lone outposts of the approaching army of homes.
To the child, the genius with imagination, or the wholly untravelled, the approach to a great city for the first time is a wonderful thing. Particularly if it be evening-that mystic period between the glare and gloom of the world when life is changing from one sphere or condition to another. Ah, the promise of the night. What does it not hold for the weary! What old illusion of hope is not here forever repeated! Says the soul of the toiler to itself, "I shall soon be free. I shall be in the ways and the hosts of the merry. The streets, the lamps, the lighted chamber set for dining, are for me. The theatre, the halls, the parties, the ways of rest and the paths of song-these are mine in the night." Though all humanity be still enclosed in the shops, the thrill runs abroad. It is in the air. The dullest feel something which they may not always express or describe. It is the lifting of the burden of toil.
Sister Carrie gazed out of the window. Her companion, affected by her wonder, so contagious are all things, felt anew some interest in the city and pointed out its marvels.
"This is Northwest Chicago," said Drouet. "This is the Chicago River," and he pointed to a little muddy creek, crowded with the huge masted wanderers from far-off waters nosing the black-posted banks. With a puff, a clang, and a clatter of rails it was gone. "Chicago is getting to be a great town," he went on. "It's a wonder. You'll find lots to see here."
She did not hear this very well. Her heart was troubled by a kind of terror. The fact that she was alone, away from home, rushing into a great sea of life and endeavour, began to tell. She could not help but feel a little choked for breath-a little sick as her heart beat so fast. She half closed her eyes and tried to think it was nothing, that Columbia City was only a little way off.
"Chicago! Chicago!" called the brakeman, slamming open the door. They were rushing into a more crowded yard, alive with the clatter and clang of life. She began to gather up her poor little grip and closed her hand firmly upon her purse. Drouet arose, kicked his legs to straighten his trousers, and seized his clean yellow grip.
"I suppose your people will be here to meet you?" he said. "Let me carry your grip."
"Oh, no," she said. "I'd rather you wouldn't. I'd rather you wouldn't be with me when I meet my sister."
"All right," he said in all kindness. "I'll be near, though, in case she isn't here, and take you out there safely."
"You're so kind," said Carrie, feeling the goodness of such attention in her strange situation.
"Chicago!" called the brakeman, drawing the word out long. They were under a great shadowy train shed, where the lamps were already beginning to shine out, with passenger cars all about and the train moving at a snail's pace. The people in the car were all up and crowding about the door.
"Well, here we are," said Drouet, leading the way to the door. "Good-bye, till I see you Monday."
"Good-bye," she answered, taking his proffered hand.
"Remember, I'll be looking till you find your sister."
She smiled into his eyes.
They filed out, and he affected to take no notice of her. A lean-faced, rather commonplace woman recognised Carrie on the platform and hurried forward.
"Why, Sister Carrie!" she began, and there was embrace of welcome.
Carrie realised the change of affectional atmosphere at once. Amid all the maze, uproar, and novelty she felt cold reality taking her by the hand. No world of light and merriment. No round of amusement. Her sister carried with her most of the grimness of shift and toil.
"Why, how are all the folks at home?" she began; "how is father, and mother?"
Carrie answered, but was looking away. Down the aisle, toward the gate leading into the waiting-room and the street, stood Drouet. He was looking back. When he saw that she saw him and was safe with her sister he turned to go, sending back the shadow of a smile. Only Carrie saw it. She felt something lost to her when he moved away. When he disappeared she felt his absence thoroughly. With her sister she was much alone, a lone figure in a tossing, thoughtless sea.
Chapter II. WHAT POVERTY THREATENED: OF GRANITE AND BRASS
Minnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then being called, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited by families of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and were still coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rate of 50,000 a year. It was on the third floor, the front windows looking down into the street, where, at night, the lights of grocery stores were shining and children were playing. To Carrie, the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars, as they tinkled in and out of hearing, was as pleasing as it was novel. She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought her into the front room, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, the murmur of the vast city which stretched for miles and miles in every direction.
Mrs. Hanson, after the first greetings were over, gave Carrie the baby and proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a few questions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was a silent man, American born, of a Swede father, and now employed as a cleaner of refrigerator cars at the stock-yards. To him the presence or absence of his wife's sister was a matter of indifference. Her personal appearance did not affect him one way or the other. His one observation to the point was concerning the chances of work in Chicago.
"It's a big place," he said. "You can get in somewhere in a few days. Everybody does."
It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to get work and pay her board. He was of a clean, saving disposition, and had already paid a number of monthly instalments on two lots far out on the West Side. His ambition was some day to build a house on them.
In the interval which marked the preparation of the meal Carrie found time to study the flat. She had some slight gift of observation and that sense, so rich in every woman-intuition.
She felt the drag of a lean and narrow life. The walls of the rooms were discordantly papered. The floors were covered with matting and the hall laid with a thin rag carpet. One could see that the furniture was of that poor, hurriedly patched together quality sold by the instalment houses.
She sat with Minnie, in the kitchen, holding the baby until it began to cry. Then she walked and sang to it, until Hanson, disturbed in his reading, came and took it. A pleasant side to his nature came out here. He was patient. One could see that he was very much wrapped up in his offspring.
"Now, now," he said, walking. "There, there," and there was a certain Swedish accent noticeable in his voice.
"You'll want to see the city first, won't you?" said Minnie, when they were eating. "Well, we'll go out Sunday and see Lincoln Park."
Carrie noticed that Hanson had said nothing to this. He seemed to be thinking of something else.
"Well," she said, "I think I'll look around to-morrow. I've got Friday and Saturday, and it won't be any trouble. Which way is the business part?"
Minnie began to explain, but her husband took this part of the conversation to himself.
"It's that way," he said, pointing east. "That's east." Then he went off into the longest speech he had yet indulged in, concerning the lay of Chicago. "You'd better look in those big manufacturing houses along Franklin Street and just the other side of the river," he concluded. "Lots of girls work there. You could get home easy, too. It isn't very far."
Carrie nodded and asked her sister about the neighbourhood. The latter talked in a subdued tone, telling the little she knew about it, while Hanson concerned himself with the baby. Finally he jumped up and handed the child to his wife.
"I've got to get up early in the morning, so I'll go to bed," and off he went, disappearing into the dark little bedroom off the hall, for the night.
"He works way down at the stock-yards," explained Minnie, "so he's got to get up at half-past five."
"What time do you get up to get breakfast?" asked Carrie.
"At about twenty minutes of five."
Together they finished the labour of the day, Carrie washing the dishes while Minnie undressed the baby and put it to bed. Minnie's manner was one of trained industry, and Carrie could see that it was a steady round of toil with her.
She began to see that her relations with Drouet would have to be abandoned. He could not come here. She read from the manner of Hanson, in the subdued air of Minnie, and, indeed, the whole atmosphere of the flat, a settled opposition to anything save a conservative round of toil. If Hanson sat every evening in the front room and read his paper, if he went to bed at nine, and Minnie a little later, what would they expect of her? She saw that she would first need to get work and establish herself on a paying basis before she could think of having company of any sort. Her little flirtation with Drouet seemed now an extraordinary thing.
"No," she said to herself, "he can't come here."
She asked Minnie for ink and paper, which were upon the mantel in the dining-room, and when the latter had gone to bed at ten, got out Drouet's card and wrote him.
"I cannot have you call on me here. You will have to wait until you hear from me again. My sister's place is so small."
She troubled herself over what else to put in the letter. She wanted to make some reference to their relations upon the train, but was too timid. She concluded by thanking him for his kindness in a crude way, then puzzled over the formality of signing her name, and finally decided upon the severe, winding up with a "Very truly," which she subsequently changed to "Sincerely." She scaled and addressed the letter, and going in the front room, the alcove of which contained her bed, drew the one small rocking-chair up to the open window, and sat looking out upon the night and streets in silent wonder. Finally, wearied by her own reflections, she began to grow dull in her chair, and feeling the need of sleep, arranged her clothing for the night and went to bed.
When she awoke at eight the next morning, Hanson had gone. Her sister was busy in the dining-room, which was also the sitting-room, sewing. She worked, after dressing, to arrange a little breakfast for herself, and then advised with Minnie as to which way to look. The latter had changed considerably since Carrie had seen her. She was now a thin, though rugged, woman of twenty-seven, with ideas of life coloured by her husband's, and fast hardening into narrower conceptions of pleasure and duty than had ever been hers in a thoroughly circumscribed youth. She had invited Carrie, not because she longed for her presence, but because the latter was dissatisfied at home, and could probably get work and pay her board here. She was pleased to see her in a way but reflected her husband's point of view in the matter of work. Anything was good enough so long as it paid-say, five dollars a week to begin with. A shop girl was the destiny prefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of the great shops and do well enough until-well, until something happened. Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure on promotion. They did not exactly count on marriage. Things would go on, though, in a dim kind of way until the better thing would eventuate, and Carrie would be rewarded for coming and toiling in the city. It was under such auspicious circumstances that she started out this morning to look for work.
Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at the sphere in which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had the peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its many and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless-those who had their fortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had reached a disastrous climax elsewhere. It was a city of over 500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of a metropolis of a million. Its streets and houses were already scattered over an area of seventy-five square miles. Its population was not so much thriving upon established commerce as upon the industries which prepared for the arrival of others. The sound of the hammer engaged upon the erection of new structures was everywhere heard. Great industries were moving in. The huge railroad corporations which had long before recognised the prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of land for transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had been extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth. The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regions where, perhaps, one solitary house stood out alone-a pioneer of the populous ways to be. There were regions open to the sweeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking lines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals, eventually ending on the open prairie.
In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district, to which the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by other cities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individual buildings. The presence of ample ground made this possible. It gave an imposing appearance to most of the wholesale houses, whose offices were upon the ground floor and in plain view of the street. The large plates of window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use, and gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and prosperous look. The casual wanderer could see as he passed a polished array of office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerks hard at work, and genteel businessmen in "nobby" suits and clean linen lounging about or sitting in groups. Polished brass or nickel signs at the square stone entrances announced the firm and the nature of the business in rather neat and reserved terms. The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to make the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.
Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walked bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force which she did not understand. These vast buildings, what were they? These strange energies and huge interests, for what purposes were they there? She could have understood the meaning of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving little pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost all significance in her little world.
It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array of vessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the way, lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she could see the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily about. The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals of importance. She could only think of people connected with them as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding in carriages. What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end it all came, she had only the vaguest conception. It was all wonderful, all vast, all far removed, and she sank in spirit inwardly and fluttered feebly at the heart as she thought of entering any one of these mighty concerns and asking for something to do-something that she could do-anything.
Chapter III. WEE QUESTION OF FORTUNE: FOUR-FIFTY A WEEK
Once across the river and into the wholesale district, she glanced about her for some likely door at which to apply. As she contemplated the wide windows and imposing signs, she became conscious of being gazed upon and understood for what she was-a wage-seeker. She had never done this thing before, and lacked courage. To avoid a certain indefinable shame she felt at being caught spying about for a position, she quickened her steps and assumed an air of indifference supposedly common to one upon an errand. In this way she passed many manufacturing and wholesale houses without once glancing in. At last, after several blocks of walking, she felt that this would not do, and began to look about again, though without relaxing her pace. A little way on she saw a great door which, for some reason, attracted her attention. It was ornamented by a small brass sign, and seemed to be the entrance to a vast hive of six or seven floors. "Perhaps," she thought, "they may want some one," and crossed over to enter. When she came within a score of feet of the desired goal, she saw through the window a young man in a grey checked suit. That he had anything to do with the concern, she could not tell, but because he happened to be looking in her direction her weakening heart misgave her and she hurried by, too overcome with shame to enter. Over the way stood a great six-story structure, labelled Storm and King, which she viewed with rising hope. It was a wholesale dry goods concern and employed women. She could see them moving about now and then upon the upper floors. This place she decided to enter, no matter what. She crossed over and walked directly toward the entrance. As she did so, two men came out and paused in the door. A telegraph messenger in blue dashed past her and up the few steps that led to the entrance and disappeared. Several pedestrians out of the hurrying throng which filled the sidewalks passed about her as she paused, hesitating. She looked helplessly around, and then, seeing herself observed, retreated. It was too difficult a task. She could not go past them.
So severe a defeat told sadly upon her nerves. Her feet carried her mechanically forward, every foot of her progress being a satisfactory portion of a flight which she gladly made. Block after block passed by. Upon streetlamps at the various corners she read names such as Madison, Monroe, La Salle, Clark, Dearborn, State, and still she went, her feet beginning to tire upon the broad stone flagging. She was pleased in part that the streets were bright and clean. The morning sun, shining down with steadily increasing warmth, made the shady side of the streets pleasantly cool. She looked at the blue sky overhead with more realisation of its charm than had ever come to her before.
Her cowardice began to trouble her in a way. She turned back, resolving to hunt up Storm and King and enter. On the way, she encountered a great wholesale shoe company, through the broad plate windows of which she saw an enclosed executive department, hidden by frosted glass. Without this enclosure, but just within the street entrance, sat a grey-haired gentleman at a small table, with a large open ledger before him. She walked by this institution several times hesitating, but, finding herself unobserved, faltered past the screen door and stood humbly waiting.
"Well, young lady," observed the old gentleman, looking at her somewhat kindly, "what is it you wish?"
"I am, that is, do you-I mean, do you need any help?" she stammered.
"Not just at present," he answered smiling. "Not just at present. Come in some time next week. Occasionally we need some one."
She received the answer in silence and backed awkwardly out. The pleasant nature of her reception rather astonished her. She had expected that it would be more difficult, that something cold and harsh would be said-she knew not what. That she had not been put to shame and made to feel her unfortunate position, seemed remarkable.
Somewhat encouraged, she ventured into another large structure. It was a clothing company, and more people were in evidence-well-dressed men of forty and more, surrounded by brass railings.
An office boy approached her.
"Who is it you wish to see?" he asked.
"I want to see the manager," she said. He ran away and spoke to one of a group of three men who were conferring together. One of these came towards her.
"Well?" he said coldly. The greeting drove all courage from her at once.
"Do you need any help?" she stammered.
"No," he replied abruptly, and turned upon his heel.
She went foolishly out, the office boy deferentially swinging the door for her, and gladly sank into the obscuring crowd. It was a severe setback to her recently pleased mental state.
Now she walked quite aimlessly for a time, turning here and there, seeing one great company after another, but finding no courage to prosecute her single inquiry. High noon came, and with it hunger. She hunted out an unassuming restaurant and entered, but was disturbed to find that the prices were exorbitant for the size of her purse. A bowl of soup was all that she could afford, and, with this quickly eaten, she went out again. It restored her strength somewhat and made her moderately bold to pursue the search.
In walking a few blocks to fix upon some probable place, she again encountered the firm of Storm and King, and this time managed to get in. Some gentlemen were conferring close at hand, but took no notice of her. She was left standing, gazing nervously upon the floor. When the limit of her distress had been nearly reached, she was beckoned to by a man at one of the many desks within the near-by railing.
"Who is it you wish to see?" he required.
"Why, any one, if you please," she answered. "I am looking for something to do."
"Oh, you want to see Mr. McManus," he returned. "Sit down," and he pointed to a chair against the neighbouring wall. He went on leisurely writing, until after a time a short, stout gentleman came in from the street.
"Mr. McManus," called the man at the desk, "this young woman wants to see you."
The short gentleman turned about towards Carrie, and she arose and came forward.
"What can I do for you, miss?" he inquired, surveying her curiously.
"I want to know if I can get a position," she inquired.
"As what?" he asked.
"Not as anything in particular," she faltered.
"Have you ever had any experience in the wholesale dry goods business?" he questioned.
"No, sir," she replied.
"Are you a stenographer or typewriter?"
"No, sir."
"Well, we haven't anything here," he said. "We employ only experienced help."
She began to step backward toward the door, when something about her plaintive face attracted him.
"Have you ever worked at anything before?" he inquired.
"No, sir," she said.
"Well, now, it's hardly possible that you would get anything to do in a wholesale house of this kind. Have you tried the department stores?"
She acknowledged that she had not.
"Well, if I were you," he said, looking at her rather genially, "I would try the department stores. They often need young women as clerks."
"Thank you," she said, her whole nature relieved by this spark of friendly interest.
"Yes," he said, as she moved toward the door, "you try the department stores," and off he went.
At that time the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation, and there were not many. The first three in the United States, established about 1884, were in Chicago. Carrie was familiar with the names of several through the advertisements in the "Daily News," and now proceeded to seek them. The words of Mr. McManus had somehow managed to restore her courage, which had fallen low, and she dared to hope that this new line would offer her something. Some time she spent in wandering up and down, thinking to encounter the buildings by chance, so readily is the mind, bent upon prosecuting a hard but needful errand, eased by that self-deception which the semblance of search, without the reality, gives. At last she inquired of a police officer, and was directed to proceed "two blocks up," where she would find "The Fair."
The nature of these vast retail combinations, should they ever permanently disappear, will form an interesting chapter in the commercial history of our nation. Such a flowering out of a modest trade principle the world had never witnessed up to that time. They were along the line of the most effective retail organisation, with hundreds of stores coordinated into one and laid out upon the most imposing and economic basis. They were handsome, bustling, successful affairs, with a host of clerks and a swarm of patrons. Carrie passed along the busy aisles, much affected by the remarkable displays of trinkets, dress goods, stationery, and jewelry. Each separate counter was a show place of dazzling interest and attraction. She could not help feeling the claim of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and yet she did not stop. There was nothing there which she could not have used-nothing which she did not long to own. The dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats, the laces, ribbons, hair-combs, purses, all touched her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not any of these things were in the range of her purchase. She was a work-seeker, an outcast without employment, one whom the average employee could tell at a glance was poor and in need of a situation.
It must not be thought that any one could have mistaken her for a nervous, sensitive, high-strung nature, cast unduly upon a cold, calculating, and unpoetic world. Such certainly she was not. But women are peculiarly sensitive to their adornment.
Not only did Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new and pleasing in apparel for women, but she noticed too, with a touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her, brushing past in utter disregard of her presence, themselves eagerly enlisted in the materials which the store contained. Carrie was not familiar with the appearance of her more fortunate sisters of the city. Neither had she before known the nature and appearance of the shop girls with whom she now compared poorly. They were pretty in the main, some even handsome, with an air of independence and indifference which added, in the case of the more favoured, a certain piquancy. Their clothes were neat, in many instances fine, and wherever she encountered the eye of one it was only to recognise in it a keen analysis of her own position-her individual shortcomings of dress and that shadow of manner which she thought must hang about her and make clear to all who and what she was. A flame of envy lighted in her heart. She realised in a dim way how much the city held-wealth, fashion, ease-every adornment for women, and she longed for dress and beauty with a whole heart.
On the second floor were the managerial offices, to which, after some inquiry, she was now directed. There she found other girls ahead of her, applicants like herself, but with more of that self-satisfied and independent air which experience of the city lends; girls who scrutinised her in a painful manner. After a wait of perhaps three-quarters of an hour, she was called in turn.
"Now," said a sharp, quick-mannered Jew, who was sitting at a roll-top desk near the window, "have you ever worked in any other store?"
"No, sir," said Carrie.
"Oh, you haven't," he said, eyeing her keenly.
"No, sir," she replied.
"Well, we prefer young women just now with some experience. I guess we can't use you."
Carrie stood waiting a moment, hardly certain whether the interview had terminated.
"Don't wait!" he exclaimed. "Remember we are very busy here."
Carrie began to move quickly to the door.
"Hold on," he said, calling her back. "Give me your name and address. We want girls occasionally."
When she had gotten safely into the street, she could scarcely restrain the tears. It was not so much the particular rebuff which she had just experienced, but the whole abashing trend of the day. She was tired and nervous. She abandoned the thought of appealing to the other department stores and now wandered on, feeling a certain safety and relief in mingling with the crowd.
In her indifferent wandering she turned into Jackson Street, not far from the river, and was keeping her way along the south side of that imposing thoroughfare, when a piece of wrapping paper, written on with marking ink and tacked up on the door, attracted her attention. It read, "Girls wanted-wrappers & stitchers." She hesitated a moment, then entered.
The firm of Speigelheim & Co., makers of boys' caps, occupied one floor of the building, fifty feet in width and some eighty feet in depth. It was a place rather dingily lighted, the darkest portions having incandescent lights, filled with machines and work benches. At the latter laboured quite a company of girls and some men. The former were drabby-looking creatures, stained in face with oil and dust, clad in thin, shapeless, cotton dresses and shod with more or less worn shoes. Many of them had their sleeves rolled up, revealing bare arms, and in some cases, owing to the heat, their dresses were open at the neck. They were a fair type of nearly the lowest order of shop-girls-careless, slouchy, and more or less pale from confinement. They were not timid, however; were rich in curiosity, and strong in daring and slang.
Carrie looked about her, very much disturbed and quite sure that she did not want to work here. Aside from making her uncomfortable by sidelong glances, no one paid her the least attention. She waited until the whole department was aware of her presence. Then some word was sent around, and a foreman, in an apron and shirt sleeves, the latter rolled up to his shoulders, approached.
"Do you want to see me?" he asked.
"Do you need any help?" said Carrie, already learning directness of address.
"Do you know how to stitch caps?" he returned.
"No, sir," she replied.
"Have you ever had any experience at this kind of work?" he inquired.
She answered that she had not.
"Well," said the foreman, scratching his ear meditatively, "we do need a stitcher. We like experienced help, though. We've hardly got time to break people in." He paused and looked away out of the window. "We might, though, put you at finishing," he concluded reflectively.
"How much do you pay a week?" ventured Carrie, emboldened by a certain softness in the man's manner and his simplicity of address.
"Three and a half," he answered.
"Oh," she was about to exclaim, but checked herself and allowed her thoughts to die without expression.
"We're not exactly in need of anybody," he went on vaguely, looking her over as one would a package. "You can come on Monday morning, though," he added, "and I'll put you to work."
"Thank you," said Carrie weakly.
"If you come, bring an apron," he added.
He walked away and left her standing by the elevator, never so much as inquiring her name.
While the appearance of the shop and the announcement of the price paid per week operated very much as a blow to Carrie's fancy, the fact that work of any kind was offered after so rude a round of experience was gratifying. She could not begin to believe that she would take the place, modest as her aspirations were. She had been used to better than that. Her mere experience and the free out-of-door life of the country caused her nature to revolt at such confinement. Dirt had never been her share. Her sister's flat was clean. This place was grimy and low, the girls were careless and hardened. They must be bad-minded and hearted, she imagined. Still, a place had been offered her. Surely Chicago was not so bad if she could find one place in one day. She might find another and better later.
Her subsequent experiences were not of a reassuring nature, however. From all the more pleasing or imposing places she was turned away abruptly with the most chilling formality. In others where she applied only the experienced were required. She met with painful rebuffs, the most trying of which had been in a manufacturing cloak house, where she had gone to the fourth floor to inquire.
"No, no," said the foreman, a rough, heavily built individual, who looked after a miserably lighted workshop, "we don't want any one. Don't come here."
With the wane of the afternoon went her hopes, her courage, and her strength. She had been astonishingly persistent. So earnest an effort was well deserving of a better reward. On every hand, to her fatigued senses, the great business portion grew larger, harder, more stolid in its indifference. It seemed as if it was all closed to her, that the struggle was too fierce for her to hope to do anything at all. Men and women hurried by in long, shifting lines. She felt the flow of the tide of effort and interest-felt her own helplessness without quite realising the wisp on the tide that she was. She cast about vainly for some possible place to apply, but found no door which she had the courage to enter. It would be the same thing all over. The old humiliation of her plea, rewarded by curt denial. Sick at heart and in body, she turned to the west, the direction of Minnie's flat, which she had now fixed in mind, and began that wearisome, baffled retreat which the seeker for employment at nightfall too often makes. In passing through Fifth Avenue, south towards Van Buren Street, where she intended to take a car, she passed the door of a large wholesale shoe house, through the plate-glass windows of which she could see a middle-aged gentleman sitting at a small desk. One of those forlorn impulses which often grow out of a fixed sense of defeat, the last sprouting of a baffled and uprooted growth of ideas, seized upon her. She walked deliberately through the door and up to the gentleman, who looked at her weary face with partially awakened interest.
"What is it?" he said.
"Can you give me something to do?" said Carrie.
"Now, I really don't know," he said kindly. "What kind of work is it you want-you're not a typewriter, are you?"
"Oh, no," answered Carrie.
"Well, we only employ book-keepers and typewriters here. You might go around to the side and inquire upstairs. They did want some help upstairs a few days ago. Ask for Mr. Brown."
She hastened around to the side entrance and was taken up by the elevator to the fourth floor.
"Call Mr. Brown, Willie," said the elevator man to a boy near by.
Willie went off and presently returned with the information that Mr. Brown said she should sit down and that he would be around in a little while.
It was a portion of the stock room which gave no idea of the general character of the place, and Carrie could form no opinion of the nature of the work.
"So you want something to do," said Mr. Brown, after he inquired concerning the nature of her errand. "Have you ever been employed in a shoe factory before?"
"No, sir," said Carrie.
"What is your name?" he inquired, and being informed, "Well, I don't know as I have anything for you. Would you work for four and a half a week?"
Carrie was too worn by defeat not to feel that it was considerable. She had not expected that he would offer her less than six. She acquiesced, however, and he took her name and address.
"Well," he said, finally, "you report here at eight o'clock Monday morning. I think I can find something for you to do."
He left her revived by the possibilities, sure that she had found something at last. Instantly the blood crept warmly over her body. Her nervous tension relaxed. She walked out into the busy street and discovered a new atmosphere. Behold, the throng was moving with a lightsome step. She noticed that men and women were smiling. Scraps of conversation and notes of laughter floated to her. The air was light. People were already pouring out of the buildings, their labour ended for the day. She noticed that they were pleased, and thoughts of her sister's home and the meal that would be awaiting her quickened her steps. She hurried on, tired perhaps, but no longer weary of foot. What would not Minnie say! Ah, the long winter in Chicago-the lights, the crowd, the amusement! This was a great, pleasing metropolis after all. Her new firm was a goodly institution. Its windows were of huge plate glass. She could probably do well there. Thoughts of Drouet returned-of the things he had told her. She now felt that life was better, that it was livelier, sprightlier. She boarded a car in the best of spirits, feeling her blood still flowing pleasantly. She would live in Chicago, her mind kept saying to itself. She would have a better time than she had ever had before-she would be happy.
Chapter IV. THE SPENDINGS OF FANCY: FACTS ANSWER WITH SNEERS
For the next two days Carrie indulged in the most high-flown speculations.
Her fancy plunged recklessly into privileges and amusements which would have been much more becoming had she been cradled a child of fortune. With ready will and quick mental selection she scattered her meagre four-fifty per week with a swift and graceful hand. Indeed, as she sat in her rocking-chair these several evenings before going to bed and looked out upon the pleasantly lighted street, this money cleared for its prospective possessor the way to every joy and every bauble which the heart of woman may desire. "I will have a fine time," she thought.
Her sister Minnie knew nothing of these rather wild cerebrations, though they exhausted the markets of delight. She was too busy scrubbing the kitchen woodwork and calculating the purchasing power of eighty cents for Sunday's dinner. When Carrie had returned home, flushed with her first success and ready, for all her weariness, to discuss the now interesting events which led up to her achievement, the former had merely smiled approvingly and inquired whether she would have to spend any of it for car fare. This consideration had not entered in before, and it did not now for long affect the glow of Carrie's enthusiasm. Disposed as she then was to calculate upon that vague basis which allows the subtraction of one sum from another without any perceptible diminution, she was happy.
When Hanson came home at seven o'clock, he was inclined to be a little crusty-his usual demeanour before supper. This never showed so much in anything he said as in a certain solemnity of countenance and the silent manner in which he slopped about. He had a pair of yellow carpet slippers which he enjoyed wearing, and these he would immediately substitute for his solid pair of shoes. This, and washing his face with the aid of common washing soap until it glowed a shiny red, constituted his only preparation for his evening meal. He would then get his evening paper and read in silence.
For a young man, this was rather a morbid turn of character, and so affected Carrie. Indeed, it affected the entire atmosphere of the flat, as such things are inclined to do, and gave to his wife's mind its subdued and tactful turn, anxious to avoid taciturn replies. Under the influence of Carrie's announcement he brightened up somewhat.
"You didn't lose any time, did you?" he remarked, smiling a little.
"No," returned Carrie with a touch of pride.
He asked her one or two more questions and then turned to play with the baby, leaving the subject until it was brought up again by Minnie at the table.
Carrie, however, was not to be reduced to the common level of observation which prevailed in the flat.
"It seems to be such a large company," she said, at one place.
"Great big plate-glass windows and lots of clerks. The man I saw said they hired ever so many people."
"It's not very hard to get work now," put in Hanson, "if you look right."
Minnie, under the warming influence of Carrie's good spirits and her husband's somewhat conversational mood, began to tell Carrie of some of the well-known things to see-things the enjoyment of which cost nothing.
"You'd like to see Michigan Avenue. There are such fine houses. It is such a fine street."
"Where is H. R. Jacob's?" interrupted Carrie, mentioning one of the theatres devoted to melodrama which went by that name at the time.
"Oh, it's not very far from here," answered Minnie. "It's in Halstead Street, right up here."
"How I'd like to go there. I crossed Halstead Street to-day, didn't I?"
At this there was a slight halt in the natural reply. Thoughts are a strangely permeating factor. At her suggestion of going to the theatre, the unspoken shade of disapproval to the doing of those things which involved the expenditure of money-shades of feeling which arose in the mind of Hanson and then in Minnie-slightly affected the atmosphere of the table. Minnie answered "yes," but Carrie could feel that going to the theatre was poorly advocated here. The subject was put off for a little while until Hanson, through with his meal, took his paper and went into the front room.
When they were alone, the two sisters began a somewhat freer conversation, Carrie interrupting it to hum a little, as they worked at the dishes.
"I should like to walk up and see Halstead Street, if it isn't too far," said Carrie, after a time. "Why don't we go to the theatre to-night?"
"Oh, I don't think Sven would want to go to-night," returned Minnie. "He has to get up so early."
"He wouldn't mind-he'd enjoy it," said Carrie.
"No, he doesn't go very often," returned Minnie.
"Well, I'd like to go," rejoined Carrie. "Let's you and me go."
Minnie pondered a while, not upon whether she could or would go-for that point was already negatively settled with her-but upon some means of diverting the thoughts of her sister to some other topic.
"We'll go some other time," she said at last, finding no ready means of escape.
Carrie sensed the root of the opposition at once.
"I have some money," she said. "You go with me." Minnie shook her head.
"He could go along," said Carrie.
"No," returned Minnie softly, and rattling the dishes to drown the conversation. "He wouldn't."
It had been several years since Minnie had seen Carrie, and in that time the latter's character had developed a few shades. Naturally timid in all things that related to her own advancement, and especially so when without power or resource, her craving for pleasure was so strong that it was the one stay of her nature. She would speak for that when silent on all else.
"Ask him," she pleaded softly.
Minnie was thinking of the resource which Carrie's board would add. It would pay the rent and would make the subject of expenditure a little less difficult to talk about with her husband. But if Carrie was going to think of running around in the beginning there would be a hitch somewhere. Unless Carrie submitted to a solemn round of industry and saw the need of hard work without longing for play, how was her coming to the city to profit them? These thoughts were not those of a cold, hard nature at all. They were the serious reflections of a mind which invariably adjusted itself, without much complaining, to such surroundings as its industry could make for it.
At last she yielded enough to ask Hanson. It was a half-hearted procedure without a shade of desire on her part.
"Carrie wants us to go to the theatre," she said, looking in upon her husband. Hanson looked up from his paper, and they exchanged a mild look, which said as plainly as anything: "This isn't what we expected."
"I don't care to go," he returned. "What does she want to see?"
"H. R. Jacob's," said Minnie.
He looked down at his paper and shook his head negatively.
When Carrie saw how they looked upon her proposition, she gained a still clearer feeling of their way of life. It weighed on her, but took no definite form of opposition.
"I think I'll go down and stand at the foot of the stairs," she said, after a time.
Minnie made no objection to this, and Carrie put on her hat and went below.
"Where has Carrie gone?" asked Hanson, coming back into the dining-room when he heard the door close.
"She said she was going down to the foot of the stairs," answered Minnie. "I guess she just wants to look out a while."
"She oughtn't to be thinking about spending her money on theatres already, do you think?" he said.
"She just feels a little curious, I guess," ventured Minnie. "Everything is so new."
"I don't know," said Hanson, and went over to the baby, his forehead slightly wrinkled.
He was thinking of a full career of vanity and wastefulness which a young girl might indulge in, and wondering how Carrie could contemplate such a course when she had so little, as yet, with which to do.
On Saturday Carrie went out by herself-first toward the river, which interested her, and then back along Jackson Street, which was then lined by the pretty houses and fine lawns which subsequently caused it to be made into a boulevard. She was struck with the evidences of wealth, although there was, perhaps, not a person on the street worth more than a hundred thousand dollars. She was glad to be out of the flat, because already she felt that it was a narrow, humdrum place, and that interest and joy lay elsewhere. Her thoughts now were of a more liberal character, and she punctuated them with speculations as to the whereabouts of Drouet. She was not sure but that he might call anyhow Monday night, and, while she felt a little disturbed at the possibility, there was, nevertheless, just the shade of a wish that he would.
On Monday she arose early and prepared to go to work. She dressed herself in a worn shirt-waist of dotted blue percale, a skirt of light-brown serge rather faded, and a small straw hat which she had worn all summer at Columbia City. Her shoes were old, and her necktie was in that crumpled, flattened state which time and much wearing impart. She made a very average looking shop-girl with the exception of her features. These were slightly more even than common, and gave her a sweet, reserved, and pleasing appearance.
It is no easy thing to get up early in the morning when one is used to sleeping until seven and eight, as Carrie had been at home. She gained some inkling of the character of Hanson's life when, half asleep, she looked out into the dining-room at six o'clock and saw him silently finishing his breakfast. By the time she was dressed he was gone, and she, Minnie, and the baby ate together, the latter being just old enough to sit in a high chair and disturb the dishes with a spoon. Her spirits were greatly subdued now when the fact of entering upon strange and untried duties confronted her. Only the ashes of all her fine fancies were remaining-ashes still concealing, nevertheless, a few red embers of hope. So subdued was she by her weakening nerves, that she ate quite in silence going over imaginary conceptions of the character of the shoe company, the nature of the work, her employer's attitude. She was vaguely feeling that she would come in contact with the great owners, that her work would be where grave, stylishly dressed men occasionally look on.
"Well, good luck," said Minnie, when she was ready to go. They had agreed it was best to walk, that morning at least, to see if she could do it every day-sixty cents a week for car fare being quite an item under the circumstances.
"I'll tell you how it goes to-night," said Carrie.
Once in the sunlit street, with labourers tramping by in either direction, the horse-cars passing crowded to the rails with the small clerks and floor help in the great wholesale houses, and men and women generally coming out of doors and passing about the neighbourhood, Carrie felt slightly reassured. In the sunshine of the morning, beneath the wide, blue heavens, with a fresh wind astir, what fears, except the most desperate, can find a harbourage? In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day, fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death.
Carrie went straight forward until she crossed the river, and then turned into Fifth Avenue. The thoroughfare, in this part, was like a walled canon of brown stone and dark red brick. The big windows looked shiny and clean. Trucks were rumbling in increasing numbers; men and women, girls and boys were moving onward in all directions. She met girls of her own age, who looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence. She wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of knowing much in order to do anything in it at all. Dread at her own inefficiency crept upon her. She would not know how, she would not be quick enough. Had not all the other places refused her because she did not know something or other? She would be scolded, abused, ignominiously discharged.
It was with weak knees and a slight catch in her breathing that she came up to the great shoe company at Adams and Fifth Avenue and entered the elevator. When she stepped out on the fourth floor there was no one at hand, only great aisles of boxes piled to the ceiling. She stood, very much frightened, awaiting some one.
Presently Mr. Brown came up. He did not seem to recognise her.
"What is it you want?" he inquired.
Carrie's heart sank.
"You said I should come this morning to see about work-"
"Oh," he interrupted. "Um-yes. What is your name?"
"Carrie Meeber."
"Yes," said he. "You come with me."
He led the way through dark, box-lined aisles which had the smell of new shoes, until they came to an iron door which opened into the factory proper. There was a large, low-ceiled room, with clacking, rattling machines at which men in white shirt sleeves and blue gingham aprons were working. She followed him diffidently through the clattering automatons, keeping her eyes straight before her, and flushing slightly. They crossed to a far corner and took an elevator to the sixth floor. Out of the array of machines and benches, Mr. Brown signalled a foreman.
"This is the girl," he said, and turning to Carrie, "You go with him." He then returned, and Carrie followed her new superior to a little desk in a corner, which he used as a kind of official centre.
"You've never worked at anything like this before, have you?" he questioned, rather sternly.
"No, sir," she answered.
He seemed rather annoyed at having to bother with such help, but put down her name and then led her across to where a line of girls occupied stools in front of clacking machines. On the shoulder of one of the girls who was punching eye-holes in one piece of the upper, by the aid of the machine, he put his hand.
"You," he said, "show this girl how to do what you're doing. When you get through, come to me."
The girl so addressed rose promptly and gave Carrie her place.
"It isn't hard to do," she said, bending over. "You just take this so, fasten it with this clamp, and start the machine."
She suited action to word, fastened the piece of leather, which was eventually to form the right half of the upper of a man's shoe, by little adjustable clamps, and pushed a small steel rod at the side of the machine. The latter jumped to the task of punching, with sharp, snapping clicks, cutting circular bits of leather out of the side of the upper, leaving the holes which were to hold the laces. After observing a few times, the girl let her work at it alone. Seeing that it was fairly well done, she went away.
The pieces of leather came from the girl at the machine to her right, and were passed on to the girl at her left. Carrie saw at once that an average speed was necessary or the work would pile up on her and all those below would be delayed. She had no time to look about, and bent anxiously to her task. The girls at her left and right realised her predicament and feelings, and, in a way, tried to aid her, as much as they dared, by working slower.
At this task she laboured incessantly for some time, finding relief from her own nervous fears and imaginings in the humdrum, mechanical movement of the machine. She felt, as the minutes passed, that the room was not very light. It had a thick odour of fresh leather, but that did not worry her. She felt the eyes of the other help upon her, and troubled lest she was not working fast enough.
Once, when she was fumbling at the little clamp, having made a slight error in setting in the leather, a great hand appeared before her eyes and fastened the clamp for her. It was the foreman. Her heart thumped so that she could scarcely see to go on.
"Start your machine," he said, "start your machine. Don't keep the line waiting."
This recovered her sufficiently and she went excitedly on, hardly breathing until the shadow moved away from behind her. Then she heaved a great breath.
As the morning wore on the room became hotter. She felt the need of a breath of fresh air and a drink of water, but did not venture to stir. The stool she sat on was without a back or foot-rest, and she began to feel uncomfortable. She found, after a time, that her back was beginning to ache. She twisted and turned from one position to another slightly different, but it did not ease her for long. She was beginning to weary.
"Stand up, why don't you?" said the girl at her right, without any form of introduction. "They won't care."
Carrie looked at her gratefully. "I guess I will," she said.
She stood up from her stool and worked that way for a while, but it was a more difficult position. Her neck and shoulders ached in bending over.
The spirit of the place impressed itself on her in a rough way. She did not venture to look around, but above the clack of the machine she could hear an occasional remark. She could also note a thing or two out of the side of her eye.
"Did you see Harry last night?" said the girl at her left, addressing her neighbour.
"No."
"You ought to have seen the tie he had on. Gee, but he was a mark."
"S-s-t," said the other girl, bending over her work. The first, silenced, instantly assumed a solemn face. The foreman passed slowly along, eyeing each worker distinctly. The moment he was gone, the conversation was resumed again.
"Say," began the girl at her left, "what jeh think he said?"
"I don't know."
"He said he saw us with Eddie Harris at Martin's last night."
"No!" They both giggled.
A youth with tan-coloured hair, that needed clipping very badly, came shuffling along between the machines, bearing a basket of leather findings under his left arm, and pressed against his stomach. When near Carrie, he stretched out his right hand and gripped one girl under the arm.
"Aw, let me go," she exclaimed angrily. "Duffer."
He only grinned broadly in return.
"Rubber!" he called back as she looked after him. There was nothing of the gallant in him.
Carrie at last could scarcely sit still. Her legs began to tire and she wanted to get up and stretch. Would noon never come? It seemed as if she had worked an entire day. She was not hungry at all, but weak, and her eyes were tired, straining at the one point where the eye-punch came down. The girl at the right noticed her squirmings and felt sorry for her. She was concentrating herself too thoroughly-what she did really required less mental and physical strain. There was nothing to be done, however. The halves of the uppers came piling steadily down. Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the fingers, and towards the last she seemed one mass of dull, complaining muscles, fixed in an eternal position and performing a single mechanical movement which became more and more distasteful, until as last it was absolutely nauseating. When she was wondering whether the strain would ever cease, a dull-sounding bell clanged somewhere down an elevator shaft, and the end came. In an instant there was a buzz of action and conversation. All the girls instantly left their stools and hurried away in an adjoining room, men passed through, coming from some department which opened on the right. The whirling wheels began to sing in a steadily modifying key, until at last they died away in a low buzz. There was an audible stillness, in which the common voice sounded strange.
Carrie got up and sought her lunch box. She was stiff, a little dizzy, and very thirsty. On the way to the small space portioned off by wood, where all the wraps and lunches were kept, she encountered the foreman, who stared at her hard.
"Well," he said, "did you get along all right?"
"I think so," she replied, very respectfully.
"Um," he replied, for want of something better, and walked on.
Under better material conditions, this kind of work would not have been so bad, but the new socialism which involves pleasant working conditions for employees had not then taken hold upon manufacturing companies.
The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather-a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building, was not pleasant even in cold weather. The floor, though regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface. Not the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of foot-rests, swivel-back chairs, dining-rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The washrooms were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere was sordid.
Carrie looked about her, after she had drunk a tinful of water from a bucket in one corner, for a place to sit and eat. The other girls had ranged themselves about the windows or the work-benches of those of the men who had gone out. She saw no place which did not hold a couple or a group of girls, and being too timid to think of intruding herself, she sought out her machine and, seated upon her stool, opened her lunch on her lap. There she sat listening to the chatter and comment about her. It was, for the most part, silly and graced by the current slang. Several of the men in the room exchanged compliments with the girls at long range.
"Say, Kitty," called one to a girl who was doing a waltz step in a few feet of space near one of the windows, "are you going to the ball with me?"
"Look out, Kitty," called another, "you'll jar your back hair."
"Go on, Rubber," was her only comment.
As Carrie listened to this and much more of similar familiar badinage among the men and girls, she instinctively withdrew into herself. She was not used to this type, and felt that there was something hard and low about it all. She feared that the young boys about would address such remarks to her-boys who, beside Drouet, seemed uncouth and ridiculous. She made the average feminine distinction between clothes, putting worth, goodness, and distinction in a dress suit, and leaving all the unlovely qualities and those beneath notice in overalls and jumper.
She was glad when the short half hour was over and the wheels began to whirr again. Though wearied, she would be inconspicuous. This illusion ended when another young man passed along the aisle and poked her indifferently in the ribs with his thumb. She turned about, indignation leaping to her eyes, but he had gone on and only once turned to grin. She found it difficult to conquer an inclination to cry.
The girl next her noticed her state of mind. "Don't you mind," she said. "He's too fresh."
Carrie said nothing, but bent over her work. She felt as though she could hardly endure such a life. Her idea of work had been so entirely different. All during the long afternoon she thought of the city outside and its imposing show, crowds, and fine buildings. Columbia City and the better side of her home life came back. By three o'clock she was sure it must be six, and by four it seemed as if they had forgotten to note the hour and were letting all work overtime. The foreman became a true ogre, prowling constantly about, keeping her tied down to her miserable task. What she heard of the conversation about her only made her feel sure that she did not want to make friends with any of these. When six o'clock came she hurried eagerly away, her arms aching and her limbs stiff from sitting in one position.
As she passed out along the hall after getting her hat, a young machine hand, attracted by her looks, made bold to jest with her.
"Say, Maggie," he called, "if you wait, I'll walk with you."
It was thrown so straight in her direction that she knew who was meant, but never turned to look.
In the crowded elevator, another dusty, toil-stained youth tried to make an impression on her by leering in her face.
One young man, waiting on the walk outside for the appearance of another, grinned at her as she passed.
"Ain't going my way, are you?" he called jocosely.
Carrie turned her face to the west with a subdued heart. As she turned the corner, she saw through the great shiny window the small desk at which she had applied. There were the crowds, hurrying with the same buzz and energy-yielding enthusiasm. She felt a slight relief, but it was only at her escape. She felt ashamed in the face of better dressed girls who went by. She felt as though she should be better served, and her heart revolted.
Chapter V. A GLITTERING NIGHT FLOWER: THE USE OF A NAME
Drouet did not call that evening. After receiving the letter, he had laid aside all thought of Carrie for the time being and was floating around having what he considered a gay time. On this particular evening he dined at "Rector's," a restaurant of some local fame, which occupied a basement at Clark and Monroe Streets. There-after he visited the resort of Fitzgerald and Moy's in Adams Street, opposite the imposing Federal Building. There he leaned over the splendid bar and swallowed a glass of plain whiskey and purchased a couple of cigars, one of which he lighted. This to him represented in part high life-a fair sample of what the whole must be. Drouet was not a drinker in excess. He was not a moneyed man. He only craved the best, as his mind conceived it, and such doings seemed to him a part of the best. Rector's, with its polished marble walls and floor, its profusion of lights, its show of china and silverware, and, above all, its reputation as a resort for actors and professional men, seemed to him the proper place for a successful man to go. He loved fine clothes, good eating, and particularly the company and acquaintanceship of successful men. When dining, it was a source of keen satisfaction to him to know that Joseph Jefferson was wont to come to this same place, or that Henry E. Dixie, a well-known performer of the day, was then only a few tables off. At Rector's he could always obtain this satisfaction, for there one could encounter politicians, brokers, actors, some rich young "rounders" of the town, all eating and drinking amid a buzz of popular commonplace conversation.
"That's So-and-so over there," was a common remark of these gentlemen among themselves, particularly among those who had not yet reached, but hoped to do so, the dazzling height which money to dine here lavishly represented.
"You don't say so," would be the reply.
"Why, yes, didn't you know that? Why, he's manager of the Grand Opera House."
When these things would fall upon Drouet's ears, he would straighten himself a little more stiffly and eat with solid comfort. If he had any vanity, this augmented it, and if he had any ambition, this stirred it. He would be able to flash a roll of greenbacks too some day. As it was, he could eat where they did.
His preference for Fitzgerald and Moy's Adams Street place was another yard off the same cloth. This was really a gorgeous saloon from a Chicago standpoint. Like Rector's, it was also ornamented with a blaze of incandescent lights, held in handsome chandeliers. The floors were of brightly coloured tiles, the walls a composition of rich, dark, polished wood, which reflected the light, and coloured stucco-work, which gave the place a very sumptuous appearance. The long bar was a blaze of lights, polished woodwork, coloured and cut glassware, and many fancy bottles. It was a truly swell saloon, with rich screens, fancy wines, and a line of bar goods unsurpassed in the country.
At Rector's, Drouet had met Mr. G. W. Hurstwood, manager of Fitzgerald and Moy's. He had been pointed out as a very successful and well-known man about town. Hurstwood looked the part, for, besides being slightly under forty, he had a good, stout constitution, an active manner, and a solid, substantial air, which was composed in part of his fine clothes, his clean linen, his jewels, and, above all, his own sense of his importance. Drouet immediately conceived a notion of him as being some one worth knowing, and was glad not only to meet him, but to visit the Adams Street bar thereafter whenever he wanted a drink or a cigar.
Hurstwood was an interesting character after his kind. He was shrewd and clever in many little things, and capable of creating a good impression. His managerial position was fairly important-a kind of stewardship which was imposing, but lacked financial control. He had risen by perseverance and industry, through long years of service, from the position of barkeeper in a commonplace saloon to his present altitude. He had a little office in the place, set off in polished cherry and grill-work, where he kept, in a roll-top desk, the rather simple accounts of the place-supplies ordered and needed. The chief executive and financial functions devolved upon the owners-Messrs. Fitzgerald and Moy-and upon a cashier who looked after the money taken in.
For the most part he lounged about, dressed in excellent tailored suits of imported goods, a solitaire ring, a fine blue diamond in his tie, a striking vest of some new pattern, and a watch-chain of solid gold, which held a charm of rich design, and a watch of the latest make and engraving. He knew by name, and could greet personally with a "Well, old fellow," hundreds of actors, merchants, politicians, and the general run of successful characters about town, and it was part of his success to do so. He had a finely graduated scale of informality and friendship, which improved from the "How do you do?" addressed to the fifteen-dollar-a-week clerks and office attaches, who, by long frequenting of the place, became aware of his position, to the "Why, old man, how are you?" which he addressed to those noted or rich individuals who knew him and were inclined to be friendly. There was a class, however, too rich, too famous, or too successful, with whom he could not attempt any familiarity of address, and with these he was professionally tactful, assuming a grave and dignified attitude, paying them the deference which would win their good feeling without in the least compromising his own bearing and opinions. There were, in the last place, a few good followers, neither rich nor poor, famous, nor yet remarkably successful, with whom he was friendly on the score of good-fellowship. These were the kind of men with whom he would converse longest and most seriously. He loved to go out and have a good time once in a while-to go to the races, the theatres, the sporting entertainments at some of the clubs. He kept a horse and neat trap, had his wife and two children, who were well established in a neat house on the North Side near Lincoln Park, and was altogether a very acceptable individual of our great American upper class-the first grade below the luxuriously rich.
Hurstwood liked Drouet. The latter's genial nature and dressy appearance pleased him. He knew that Drouet was only a travelling salesman-and not one of many years at that-but the firm of Bartlett, Caryoe & Company was a large and prosperous house, and Drouet stood well. Hurstwood knew Caryoe quite well, having drunk a glass now and then with him, in company with several others, when the conversation was general. Drouet had what was a help in his business, a moderate sense of humour, and could tell a good story when the occasion required. He could talk races with Hurstwood, tell interesting incidents concerning himself and his experiences with women, and report the state of trade in the cities which he visited, and so managed to make himself almost invariably agreeable. To-night he was particularly so, since his report to the company had been favourably commented upon, his new samples had been satisfactorily selected, and his trip marked out for the next six weeks.
"Why, hello, Charlie, old man," said Hurstwood, as Drouet came in that evening about eight o'clock. "How goes it?" The room was crowded.
Drouet shook hands, beaming good nature, and they strolled towards the bar.
"Oh, all right."
"I haven't seen you in six weeks. When did you get in?"
"Friday," said Drouet. "Had a fine trip."
"Glad of it," said Hurstwood, his black eyes lit with a warmth which half displaced the cold make-believe that usually dwelt in them. "What are you going to take?" he added, as the barkeeper, in snowy jacket and tie, leaned toward them from behind the bar.
"Old Pepper," said Drouet.
"A little of the same for me," put in Hurstwood.
"How long are you in town this time?" inquired Hurstwood.
"Only until Wednesday. I'm going up to St. Paul."
"George Evans was in here Saturday and said he saw you in Milwaukee last week."
"Yes, I saw George," returned Drouet. "Great old boy, isn't he? We had quite a time there together."
The barkeeper was setting out the glasses and bottle before them, and they now poured out the draught as they talked, Drouet filling his to within a third of full, as was considered proper, and Hurstwood taking the barest suggestion of whiskey and modifying it with seltzer.
"What's become of Caryoe?" remarked Hurstwood. "I haven't seen him around here in two weeks."
"Laid up, they say," exclaimed Drouet. "Say, he's a gouty old boy!"
"Made a lot of money in his time, though, hasn't he?"
"Yes, wads of it," returned Drouet. "He won't live much longer. Barely comes down to the office now."
"Just one boy, hasn't he?" asked Hurstwood.
"Yes, and a swift-pacer," laughed Drouet.
"I guess he can't hurt the business very much, though, with the other members all there."
"No, he can't injure that any, I guess."
Hurstwood was standing, his coat open, his thumbs in his pockets, the light on his jewels and rings relieving them with agreeable distinctness. He was the picture of fastidious comfort.
To one not inclined to drink, and gifted with a more serious turn of mind, such a bubbling, chattering, glittering chamber must ever seem an anomaly, a strange commentary on nature and life. Here come the moths, in endless procession, to bask in the light of the flame. Such conversation as one may hear would not warrant a commendation of the scene upon intellectual grounds. It seems plain that schemers would choose more sequestered quarters to arrange their plans, that politicians would not gather here in company to discuss anything save formalities, where the sharp-eared may hear, and it would scarcely be justified on the score of thirst, for the majority of those who frequent these more gorgeous places have no craving for liquor. Nevertheless, the fact that here men gather, here chatter, here love to pass and rub elbows, must be explained upon some grounds. It must be that a strange bundle of passions and vague desires give rise to such a curious social institution or it would not be.
Drouet, for one, was lured as much by his longing for pleasure as by his desire to shine among his betters. The many friends he met here dropped in because they craved, without, perhaps, consciously analysing it, the company, the glow, the atmosphere which they found. One might take it, after all, as an augur of the better social order, for the things which they satisfied here, though sensory, were not evil. No evil could come out of the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber. The worst effect of such a thing would be, perhaps, to stir up in the material-minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a similarly splendid basis. In the last analysis, that would scarcely be called the fault of the decorations, but rather of the innate trend of the mind. That such a scene might stir the less expensively dressed to emulate the more expensively dressed could scarcely be laid at the door of anything save the false ambition of the minds of those so affected. Remove the element so thoroughly and solely complained of-liquor-and there would not be one to gainsay the qualities of beauty and enthusiasm which would remain. The pleased eye with which our modern restaurants of fashion are looked upon is proof of this assertion.
Yet, here is the fact of the lighted chamber, the dressy, greedy company, the small, self-interested palaver, the disorganized, aimless, wandering mental action which it represents-the love of light and show and finery which, to one outside, under the serene light of the eternal stars, must seem a strange and shiny thing. Under the stars and sweeping night winds, what a lamp-flower it must bloom; a strange, glittering night-flower, odour-yielding, insect-drawing, insect-infested rose of pleasure.
"See that fellow coming in there?" said Hurstwood, glancing at a gentleman just entering, arrayed in a high hat and Prince Albert coat, his fat cheeks puffed and red as with good eating.
"No, where?" said Drouet.
"There," said Hurstwood, indicating the direction by a cast of his eye, "the man with the silk hat."
"Oh, yes," said Drouet, now affecting not to see. "Who is he?"
"That's Jules Wallace, the spiritualist."
Drouet followed him with his eyes, much interested.
"Doesn't look much like a man who sees spirits, does he?" said Drouet.
"Oh, I don't know," returned Hurstwood. "He's got the money, all right," and a little twinkle passed over his eyes.
"I don't go much on those things, do you?" asked Drouet.
"Well, you never can tell," said Hurstwood. "There may be something to it. I wouldn't bother about it myself, though. By the way," he added, "are you going anywhere to-night?"
"'The Hole in the Ground,'" said Drouet, mentioning the popular farce of the time.
"Well, you'd better be going. It's half after eight already," and he drew out his watch.
The crowd was already thinning out considerably-some bound for the theatres, some to their clubs, and some to that most fascinating of all the pleasures-for the type of man there represented, at least-the ladies.
"Yes, I will," said Drouet.
"Come around after the show. I have something I want to show you," said Hurstwood.
"Sure," said Drouet, elated.
"You haven't anything on hand for the night, have you?" added Hurstwood.
"Not a thing."
"Well, come round, then."
"I struck a little peach coming in on the train Friday," remarked Drouet, by way of parting. "By George, that's so, I must go and call on her before I go away."
"Oh, never mind her," Hurstwood remarked.
"Say, she was a little dandy, I tell you," went on Drouet confidentially, and trying to impress his friend.
"Twelve o'clock," said Hurstwood.
"That's right," said Drouet, going out.
Thus was Carrie's name bandied about in the most frivolous and gay of places, and that also when the little toiler was bemoaning her narrow lot, which was almost inseparable from the early stages of this, her unfolding fate.
Chapter VI. THE MACHINE AND THE MAIDEN: A KNIGHT OF TO-DAY
At the flat that evening Carrie felt a new phase of its atmosphere. The fact that it was unchanged, while her feelings were different, increased her knowledge of its character. Minnie, after the good spirits Carrie manifested at first, expected a fair report. Hanson supposed that Carrie would be satisfied.
"Well," he said, as he came in from the hall in his working clothes, and looked at Carrie through the dining-room door, "how did you make out?"
"Oh," said Carrie, "it's pretty hard. I don't like it."
There was an air about her which showed plainer than any words that she was both weary and disappointed.
"What sort of work is it?" he asked, lingering a moment as he turned upon his heel to go into the bathroom.
"Running a machine," answered Carrie.
It was very evident that it did not concern him much, save from the side of the flat's success. He was irritated a shade because it could not have come about in the throw of fortune for Carrie to be pleased.
Minnie worked with less elation than she had just before Carrie arrived. The sizzle of the meat frying did not sound quite so pleasing now that Carrie had reported her discontent. To Carrie, the one relief of the whole day would have been a jolly home, a sympathetic reception, a bright supper table, and some one to say: "Oh, well, stand it a little while. You will get something better," but now this was ashes. She began to see that they looked upon her complaint as unwarranted, and that she was supposed to work on and say nothing. She knew that she was to pay four dollars for her board and room, and now she felt that it would be an exceedingly gloomy round, living with these people.
Minnie was no companion for her sister-she was too old. Her thoughts were staid and solemnly adapted to a condition. If Hanson had any pleasant thoughts or happy feelings he concealed them. He seemed to do all his mental operations without the aid of physical expression. He was as still as a deserted chamber. Carrie, on the other hand, had the blood of youth and some imagination. Her day of love and the mysteries of courtship were still ahead. She could think of things she would like to do, of clothes she would like to wear, and of places she would like to visit. These were the things upon which her mind ran, and it was like meeting with opposition at every turn to find no one here to call forth or respond to her feelings.
She had forgotten, in considering and explaining the result of her day, that Drouet might come. Now, when she saw how unreceptive these two people were, she hoped he would not. She did not know exactly what she would do or how she would explain to Drouet, if he came. After supper she changed her clothes. When she was trimly dressed she was rather a sweet little being, with large eyes and a sad mouth. Her face expressed the mingled expectancy, dissatisfaction, and depression she felt. She wandered about after the dishes were put away, talked a little with Minnie, and then decided to go down and stand in the door at the foot of the stairs. If Drouet came, she could meet him there. Her face took on the semblance of a look of happiness as she put on her hat to go below.
"Carrie doesn't seem to like her place very well," said Minnie to her husband when the latter came out, paper in hand, to sit in the dining-room a few minutes.
"She ought to keep it for a time, anyhow," said Hanson. "Has she gone downstairs?"
"Yes," said Minnie.
"I'd tell her to keep it if I were you. She might be here weeks without getting another one."
Minnie said she would, and Hanson read his paper.
"If I were you," he said a little later, "I wouldn't let her stand in the door down there. It don't look good."
"I'll tell her," said Minnie.
The life of the streets continued for a long time to interest Carrie. She never wearied of wondering where the people in the cars were going or what their enjoyments were. Her imagination trod a very narrow round, always winding up at points which concerned money, looks, clothes, or enjoyment. She would have a far-off thought of Columbia City now and then, or an irritating rush of feeling concerning her experiences of the present day, but, on the whole, the little world about her enlisted her whole attention.
The first floor of the building, of which Hanson's flat was the third, was occupied by a bakery, and to this, while she was standing there, Hanson came down to buy a loaf of bread. She was not aware of his presence until he was quite near her.
"I'm after bread," was all he said as he passed.
The contagion of thought here demonstrated itself. While Hanson really came for bread, the thought dwelt with him that now he would see what Carrie was doing. No sooner did he draw near her with that in mind than she felt it. Of course, she had no understanding of what put it into her head, but, nevertheless, it aroused in her the first shade of real antipathy to him. She knew now that she did not like him. He was suspicious.
A thought will colour a world for us. The flow of Carrie's meditations had been disturbed, and Hanson had not long gone upstairs before she followed. She had realised with the lapse of the quarter hours that Drouet was not coming, and somehow she felt a little resentful, a little as if she had been forsaken-was not good enough. She went upstairs, where everything was silent. Minnie was sewing by a lamp at the table. Hanson had already turned in for the night. In her weariness and disappointment Carrie did no more than announce that she was going to bed.
"Yes, you'd better," returned Minnie. "You've got to get up early, you know."
The morning was no better. Hanson was just going out the door as Carrie came from her room. Minnie tried to talk with her during breakfast, but there was not much of interest which they could mutually discuss. As on the previous morning, Carrie walked down town, for she began to realise now that her four-fifty would not even allow her car fare after she paid her board. This seemed a miserable arrangement. But the morning light swept away the first misgivings of the day, as morning light is ever wont to do.
At the shoe factory she put in a long day, scarcely so wearisome as the preceding, but considerably less novel. The head foreman, on his round, stopped by her machine.
"Where did you come from?" he inquired.
"Mr. Brown hired me," she replied.
"Oh, he did, eh!" and then, "See that you keep things going."
The machine girls impressed her even less favourably. They seemed satisfied with their lot, and were in a sense "common." Carrie had more imagination than they. She was not used to slang. Her instinct in the matter of dress was naturally better. She disliked to listen to the girl next to her, who was rather hardened by experience.
"I'm going to quit this," she heard her remark to her neighbour. "What with the stipend and being up late, it's too much for me health."
They were free with the fellows, young and old, about the place, and exchanged banter in rude phrases, which at first shocked her. She saw that she was taken to be of the same sort and addressed accordingly.
"Hello," remarked one of the stout-wristed sole-workers to her at noon. "You're a daisy." He really expected to hear the common "Aw! go chase yourself!" in return, and was sufficiently abashed, by Carrie's silently moving away, to retreat, awkwardly grinning.
That night at the flat she was even more lonely-the dull situation was becoming harder to endure. She could see that the Hansons seldom or never had any company. Standing at the street door looking out, she ventured to walk out a little way. Her easy gait and idle manner attracted attention of an offensive but common sort. She was slightly taken back at the overtures of a well-dressed man of thirty, who in passing looked at her, reduced his pace, turned back, and said:
"Out for a little stroll, are you, this evening?"
Carrie looked at him in amazement, and then summoned sufficient thought to reply: "Why, I don't know you," backing away as she did so.
"Oh, that don't matter," said the other affably.
She bandied no more words with him, but hurried away, reaching her own door quite out of breath. There was something in the man's look which frightened her.
During the remainder of the week it was very much the same. One or two nights she found herself too tired to walk home, and expended car fare. She was not very strong, and sitting all day affected her back. She went to bed one night before Hanson.
Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens. It requires sometimes a richer soil, a better atmosphere to continue even a natural growth. It would have been better if her acclimatization had been more gradual-less rigid. She would have done better if she had not secured a position so quickly, and had seen more of the city which she constantly troubled to know about.
On the first morning it rained she found that she had no umbrella. Minnie loaned her one of hers, which was worn and faded. There was the kind of vanity in Carrie that troubled at this. She went to one of the great department stores and bought herself one, using a dollar and a quarter of her small store to pay for it.
"What did you do that for, Carrie?" asked Minnie when she saw it.
"Oh, I need one," said Carrie.
"You foolish girl."
Carrie resented this, though she did not reply. She was not going to be a common shop-girl, she thought; they need not think it, either.
On the first Saturday night Carrie paid her board, four dollars. Minnie had a quaver of conscience as she took it, but did not know how to explain to Hanson if she took less. That worthy gave up just four dollars less toward the household expenses with a smile of satisfaction. He contemplated increasing his Building and Loan payments. As for Carrie, she studied over the problem of finding clothes and amusement on fifty cents a week. She brooded over this until she was in a state of mental rebellion.
"I'm going up the street for a walk," she said after supper.
"Not alone, are you?" asked Hanson.
"Yes," returned Carrie.
"I wouldn't," said Minnie.
"I want to see something," said Carrie, and by the tone she put into the last word they realised for the first time she was not pleased with them.
"What's the matter with her?" asked Hanson, when she went into the front room to get her hat.
"I don't know," said Minnie.
"Well, she ought to know better than to want to go out alone."
Carrie did not go very far, after all. She returned and stood in the door. The next day they went out to Garfield Park, but it did not please her. She did not look well enough. In the shop next day she heard the highly coloured reports which girls give of their trivial amusements. They had been happy. On several days it rained and she used up car fare. One night she got thoroughly soaked, going to catch the car at Van Buren Street. All that evening she sat alone in the front room looking out upon the street, where the lights were reflected on the wet pavements, thinking. She had imagination enough to be moody.
On Saturday she paid another four dollars and pocketed her fifty cents in despair. The speaking acquaintanceship which she formed with some of the girls at the shop discovered to her the fact that they had more of their earnings to use for themselves than she did. They had young men of the kind whom she, since her experience with Drouet, felt above, who took them about. She came to thoroughly dislike the light-headed young fellows of the shop. Not one of them had a show of refinement. She saw only their workday side.
There came a day when the first premonitory blast of winter swept over the city. It scudded the fleecy clouds in the heavens, trailed long, thin streamers of smoke from the tall stacks, and raced about the streets and corners in sharp and sudden puffs. Carrie now felt the problem of winter clothes. What was she to do? She had no winter jacket, no hat, no shoes. It was difficult to speak to Minnie about this, but at last she summoned the courage.
"I don't know what I'm going to do about clothes," she said one evening when they were together. "I need a hat."
Minnie looked serious.
"Why don't you keep part of your money and buy yourself one?" she suggested, worried over the situation which the withholding of Carrie's money would create.
"I'd like to for a week or so, if you don't mind," ventured Carrie.
"Could you pay two dollars?" asked Minnie.
Carrie readily acquiesced, glad to escape the trying situation, and liberal now that she saw a way out. She was elated and began figuring at once. She needed a hat first of all. How Minnie explained to Hanson she never knew. He said nothing at all, but there were thoughts in the air which left disagreeable impressions.
The new arrangement might have worked if sickness had not intervened. It blew up cold after a rain one afternoon when Carrie was still without a jacket. She came out of the warm shop at six and shivered as the wind struck her. In the morning she was sneezing, and going down town made it worse. That day her bones ached and she felt light-headed. Towards evening she felt very ill, and when she reached home was not hungry. Minnie noticed her drooping actions and asked her about herself.
"I don't know," said Carrie. "I feel real bad."
She hung about the stove, suffered a chattering chill, and went to bed sick. The next morning she was thoroughly feverish.
Minnie was truly distressed at this, but maintained a kindly demeanour. Hanson said perhaps she had better go back home for a while. When she got up after three days, it was taken for granted that her position was lost. The winter was near at hand, she had no clothes, and now she was out of work.
"I don't know," said Carrie; "I'll go down Monday and see if I can't get something."
If anything, her efforts were more poorly rewarded on this trial than the last. Her clothes were nothing suitable for fall wearing. Her last money she had spent for a hat. For three days she wandered about, utterly dispirited. The attitude of the flat was fast becoming unbearable. She hated to think of going back there each evening. Hanson was so cold. She knew it could not last much longer. Shortly she would have to give up and go home.
On the fourth day she was down town all day, having borrowed ten cents for lunch from Minnie. She had applied in the cheapest kind of places without success. She even answered for a waitress in a small restaurant where she saw a card in the window, but they wanted an experienced girl. She moved through the thick throng of strangers, utterly subdued in spirit. Suddenly a hand pulled her arm and turned her about.
"Well, well!" said a voice. In the first glance she beheld Drouet. He was not only rosy-cheeked, but radiant. He was the essence of sunshine and good-humour. "Why, how are you, Carrie?" he said. "You're a daisy. Where have you been?"
Carrie smiled under his irresistible flood of geniality.
"I've been out home," she said.
"Well," he said, "I saw you across the street there. I thought it was you. I was just coming out to your place. How are you, anyhow?"
"I'm all right," said Carrie, smiling.
Drouet looked her over and saw something different.
"Well," he said, "I want to talk to you. You're not going anywhere in particular, are you?"
"Not just now," said Carrie.
"Let's go up here and have something to eat. George! but I'm glad to see you again."
She felt so relieved in his radiant presence, so much looked after and cared for, that she assented gladly, though with the slightest air of holding back.
"Well," he said, as he took her arm-and there was an exuberance of good-fellowship in the word which fairly warmed the cockles of her heart.
They went through Monroe Street to the old Windsor dining-room, which was then a large, comfortable place, with an excellent cuisine and substantial service. Drouet selected a table close by the window, where the busy rout of the street could be seen. He loved the changing panorama of the street-to see and be seen as he dined.
"Now," he said, getting Carrie and himself comfortably settled, "what will you have?"
Carrie looked over the large bill of fare which the waiter handed her without really considering it. She was very hungry, and the things she saw there awakened her desires, but the high prices held her attention. "Half broiled spring chicken-seventy-five. Sirloin steak with mushrooms-one twenty-five." She had dimly heard of these things, but it seemed strange to be called to order from the list.
"I'll fix this," exclaimed Drouet. "Sst! waiter."
That officer of the board, a full-chested, round-faced negro, approached, and inclined his ear.
"Sirloin with mushrooms," said Drouet. "Stuffed tomatoes."
"Yassah," assented the negro, nodding his head.
"Hashed brown potatoes."
"Yassah."
"Asparagus."
"Yassah."
"And a pot of coffee."
Drouet turned to Carrie. "I haven't had a thing since breakfast. Just got in from Rock Island. I was going off to dine when I saw you."
Carrie smiled and smiled.
"What have you been doing?" he went on. "Tell me all about yourself. How is your sister?"
"She's well," returned Carrie, answering the last query.
He looked at her hard.
"Say," he said, "you haven't been sick, have you?"
Carrie nodded.
"Well, now, that's a blooming shame, isn't it? You don't look very well. I thought you looked a little pale. What have you been doing?"
"Working," said Carrie.
"You don't say so! At what?"
She told him.
"Rhodes, Morgenthau and Scott-why, I know that house over here on Fifth Avenue, isn't it? They're a close-fisted concern. What made you go there?"
"I couldn't get anything else," said Carrie frankly.
"Well, that's an outrage," said Drouet. "You oughtn't to be working for those people. Have the factory right back of the store, don't they?"
"Yes," said Carrie.
"That isn't a good house," said Drouet. "You don't want to work at anything like that, anyhow."
He chatted on at a great rate, asking questions, explaining things about himself, telling her what a good restaurant it was, until the waiter returned with an immense tray, bearing the hot savoury dishes which had been ordered. Drouet fairly shone in the matter of serving. He appeared to great advantage behind the white napery and silver platters of the table and displaying his arms with a knife and fork. As he cut the meat his rings almost spoke. His new suit creaked as he stretched to reach the plates, break the bread, and pour the coffee. He helped Carrie to a rousing plateful and contributed the warmth of his spirit to her body until she was a new girl. He was a splendid fellow in the true popular understanding of the term, and captivated Carrie completely.
That little soldier of fortune took her good turn in an easy way. She felt a little out of place, but the great room soothed her and the view of the well-dressed throng outside seemed a splendid thing. Ah, what was it not to have money! What a thing it was to be able to come in here and dine! Drouet must be fortunate. He rode on trains, dressed in such nice clothes, was so strong, and ate in these fine places. He seemed quite a figure of a man, and she wondered at his friendship and regard for her.
"So you lost your place because you got sick, eh?" he said. "What are you going to do now?"
"Look around," she said, a thought of the need that hung outside this fine restaurant like a hungry dog at her heels passing into her eyes.
"Oh, no," said Drouet, "that won't do. How long have you been looking?"
"Four days," she answered.
"Think of that!" he said, addressing some problematical individual. "You oughtn't to be doing anything like that. These girls," and he waved an inclusion of all shop and factory girls, "don't get anything. Why, you can't live on it, can you?"
He was a brotherly sort of creature in his demeanour. When he had scouted the idea of that kind of toil, he took another tack. Carrie was really very pretty. Even then, in her commonplace garb, her figure was evidently not bad, and her eyes were large and gentle. Drouet looked at her and his thoughts reached home. She felt his admiration. It was powerfully backed by his liberality and good-humour. She felt that she liked him-that she could continue to like him ever so much. There was something even richer than that, running as a hidden strain, in her mind. Every little while her eyes would meet his, and by that means the interchanging current of feeling would be fully connected.
"Why don't you stay down town and go to the theatre with me?" he said, hitching his chair closer. The table was not very wide.
"Oh, I can't," she said.
"What are you going to do to-night?"
"Nothing," she answered, a little drearily.
"You don't like out there where you are, do you?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"What are you going to do if you don't get work?"
"Go back home, I guess."
There was the least quaver in her voice as she said this. Somehow, the influence he was exerting was powerful. They came to an understanding of each other without words-he of her situation, she of the fact that he realised it. "No," he said, "you can't make it!" genuine sympathy filling his mind for the time. "Let me help you. You take some of my money."
"Oh, no!" she said, leaning back.
"What are you going to do?" he said.
She sat meditating, merely shaking her head.
He looked at her quite tenderly for his kind. There were some loose bills in his vest pocket-greenbacks. They were soft and noiseless, and he got his fingers about them and crumpled them up in his hand.
"Come on," he said, "I'll see you through all right. Get yourself some clothes."
It was the first reference he had made to that subject, and now she realised how bad off she was. In his crude way he had struck the key-note. Her lips trembled a little.
She had her hand out on the table before her. They were quite alone in their corner, and he put his larger, warmer hand over it.
"Aw, come, Carrie," he said, "what can you do alone? Let me help you."
He pressed her hand gently and she tried to withdraw it. At this he held it fast, and she no longer protested. Then he slipped the greenbacks he had into her palm, and when she began to protest, he whispered:
"I'll loan it to you-that's all right. I'll loan it to you."
He made her take it. She felt bound to him by a strange tie of affection now. They went out, and he walked with her far out south toward Polk Street, talking.
"You don't want to live with those people?" he said in one place, abstractedly. Carrie heard it, but it made only a slight impression.
"Come down and meet me to-morrow," he said, "and we'll go to the matinée. Will you?"
Carrie protested a while, but acquiesced.
"You're not doing anything. Get yourself a nice pair of shoes and a jacket."
She scarcely gave a thought to the complication which would trouble her when he was gone. In his presence, she was of his own hopeful, easy-way-out mood.
"Don't you bother about those people out there," he said at parting. "I'll help you."
Carrie left him, feeling as though a great arm had slipped out before her to draw off trouble. The money she had accepted was two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills.
Chapter VII. THE LURE OF THE MATERIAL: BEAUTY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended. When each individual realises for himself that this thing primarily stands for and should only be accepted as a moral due-that it should be paid out as honestly stored energy, and not as a usurped privilege-many of our social, religious, and political troubles will have permanently passed. As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: "Money: something everybody else has and I must get," would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly. Some of it she now held in her hand-two soft, green ten-dollar bills-and she felt that she was immensely better off for the having of them. It was something that was power in itself. One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value. Even then she would have had no conception of the relative value of the thing; her one thought would, undoubtedly, have concerned the pity of having so much power and the inability to use it.
The poor girl thrilled as she walked away from Drouet. She felt ashamed in part because she had been weak enough to take it, but her need was so dire, she was still glad. Now she would have a nice new jacket! Now she would buy a nice pair of pretty button shoes. She would get stockings, too, and a skirt, and, and-until already, as in the matter of her prospective salary, she had got beyond, in her desires, twice the purchasing power of her bills.
She conceived a true estimate of Drouet. To her, and indeed to all the world, he was a nice, good-hearted man. There was nothing evil in the fellow. He gave her the money out of a good heart-out of a realisation of her want. He would not have given the same amount to a poor young man, but we must not forget that a poor young man could not, in the nature of things, have appealed to him like a poor young girl. Femininity affected his feelings. He was the creature of an inborn desire. Yet no beggar could have caught his eye and said, "My God, mister, I'm starving," but he would gladly have handed out what was considered the proper portion to give beggars and thought no more about it. There would have been no speculation, no philosophising. He had no mental process in him worthy the dignity of either of those terms. In his good clothes and fine health, he was a merry, unthinking moth of the lamp. Deprived of his position, and struck by a few of the involved and baffling forces which sometimes play upon man, he would have been as helpless as Carrie-as helpless, as non-understanding, as pitiable, if you will, as she.
Now, in regard to his pursuit of women, he meant them no harm, because he did not conceive of the relation which he hoped to hold with them as being harmful. He loved to make advances to women, to have them succumb to his charms, not because he was a cold-blooded, dark, scheming villain, but because his inborn desire urged him to that as a chief delight. He was vain, he was boastful, he was as deluded by fine clothes as any silly-headed girl. A truly deep-dyed villain could have hornswaggled him as readily as he could have flattered a pretty shop-girl. His fine success as a salesman lay in his geniality and the thoroughly reputable standing of his house. He bobbed about among men, a veritable bundle of enthusiasm-no power worthy the name of intellect, no thoughts worthy the adjective noble, no feelings long continued in one strain. A Madame Sappho would have called him a pig; a Shakespeare would have said "my merry child"; old, drinking Caryoe thought him a clever, successful businessman. In short, he was as good as his intellect conceived.
The best proof that there was something open and commendable about the man was the fact that Carrie took the money. No deep, sinister soul with ulterior motives could have given her fifteen cents under the guise of friendship. The unintellectual are not so helpless. Nature has taught the beasts of the field to fly when some unheralded danger threatens. She has put into the small, unwise head of the chipmunk the untutored fear of poisons. "He keepeth His creatures whole," was not written of beasts alone. Carrie was unwise, and, therefore, like the sheep in its unwisdom, strong in feeling. The instinct of self-protection, strong in all such natures, was roused but feebly, if at all, by the overtures of Drouet.
When Carrie had gone, he felicitated himself upon her good opinion. By George, it was a shame young girls had to be knocked around like that. Cold weather coming on and no clothes. Tough. He would go around to Fitzgerald and Moy's and get a cigar. It made him feel light of foot as he thought about her.
Carrie reached home in high good spirits, which she could scarcely conceal. The possession of the money involved a number of points which perplexed her seriously. How should she buy any clothes when Minnie knew that she had no money? She had no sooner entered the flat than this point was settled for her. It could not be done. She could think of no way of explaining.
"How did you come out?" asked Minnie, referring to the day.
Carrie had none of the small deception which could feel one thing and say something directly opposed. She would prevaricate, but it would be in the line of her feelings at least. So instead of complaining when she felt so good, she said:
"I have the promise of something."
"Where?"
"At the Boston Store."
"Is it sure promised?" questioned Minnie.
"Well, I'm to find out to-morrow," returned Carrie disliking to draw out a lie any longer than was necessary.
Minnie felt the atmosphere of good feeling which Carrie brought with her. She felt now was the time to express to Carrie the state of Hanson's feeling about her entire Chicago venture.
"If you shouldn't get it-" she paused, troubled for an easy way.
"If I don't get something pretty soon, I think I'll go home."
Minnie saw her chance.
"Sven thinks it might be best for the winter, anyhow."
The situation flashed on Carrie at once. They were unwilling to keep her any longer, out of work. She did not blame Minnie, she did not blame Hanson very much. Now, as she sat there digesting the remark, she was glad she had Drouet's money. "Yes," she said after a few moments, "I thought of doing that."
She did not explain that the thought, however, had aroused all the antagonism of her nature. Columbia City, what was there for her? She knew its dull, little round by heart. Here was the great, mysterious city which was still a magnet for her. What she had seen only suggested its possibilities. Now to turn back on it and live the little old life out there-she almost exclaimed against the thought.
She had reached home early and went in the front room to think. What could she do? She could not buy new shoes and wear them here. She would need to save part of the twenty to pay her fare home. She did not want to borrow of Minnie for that. And yet, how could she explain where she even got that money? If she could only get enough to let her out easy.
She went over the tangle again and again. Here, in the morning, Drouet would expect to see her in a new jacket, and that couldn't be. The Hansons expected her to go home, and she wanted to get away, and yet she did not want to go home. In the light of the way they would look on her getting money without work, the taking of it now seemed dreadful. She began to be ashamed. The whole situation depressed her. It was all so clear when she was with Drouet. Now it was all so tangled, so hopeless-much worse than it was before, because she had the semblance of aid in her hand which she could not use.
Her spirits sank so that at supper Minnie felt that she must have had another hard day. Carrie finally decided that she would give the money back. It was wrong to take it. She would go down in the morning and hunt for work. At noon she would meet Drouet as agreed and tell him. At this decision her heart sank, until she was the old Carrie of distress.
Curiously, she could not hold the money in her hand without feeling some relief. Even after all her depressing conclusions, she could sweep away all thought about the matter and then the twenty dollars seemed a wonderful and delightful thing. Ah, money, money, money! What a thing it was to have. How plenty of it would clear away all these troubles.
In the morning she got up and started out a little early. Her decision to hunt for work was moderately strong, but the money in her pocket, after all her troubling over it, made the work question the least shade less terrible. She walked into the wholesale district, but as the thought of applying came with each passing concern, her heart shrank. What a coward she was, she thought to herself. Yet she had applied so often. It would be the same old story. She walked on and on, and finally did go into one place, with the old result. She came out feeling that luck was against her. It was no use.
Without much thinking, she reached Dearborn Street. Here was the great Fair store with its multitude of delivery wagons about its long window display, its crowd of shoppers. It readily changed her thoughts, she who was so weary of them. It was here that she had intended to come and get her new things. Now for relief from distress; she thought she would go in and see. She would look at the jackets.
There is nothing in this world more delightful than that middle state in which we mentally balance at times, possessed of the means, lured by desire, and yet deterred by conscience or want of decision. When Carrie began wandering around the store amid the fine displays she was in this mood. Her original experience in this same place had given her a high opinion of its merits. Now she paused at each individual bit of finery, where before she had hurried on. Her woman's heart was warm with desire for them. How would she look in this, how charming that would make her! She came upon the corset counter and paused in rich reverie as she noted the dainty concoctions of colour and lace there displayed. If she would only make up her mind, she could have one of those now. She lingered in the jewelry department. She saw the earrings, the bracelets, the pins, the chains. What would she not have given if she could have had them all! She would look fine too, if only she had some of these things.
The jackets were the greatest attraction. When she entered the store, she already had her heart fixed upon the peculiar little tan jacket with large mother-of-pearl buttons which was all the rage that fall. Still she delighted to convince herself that there was nothing she would like better. She went about among the glass cases and racks where these things were displayed, and satisfied herself that the one she thought of was the proper one. All the time she wavered in mind, now persuading herself that she could buy it right away if she chose, now recalling to herself the actual condition. At last the noon hour was dangerously near, and she had done nothing. She must go now and return the money.
Drouet was on the corner when she came up.
"Hello," he said, "where is the jacket and"-looking down-"the shoes?"
Carrie had thought to lead up to her decision in some intelligent way, but this swept the whole fore-schemed situation by the board.
"I came to tell you that-that I can't take the money."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" he returned. "Well, you come on with me. Let's go over here to Partridge's."
Carrie walked with him. Behold, the whole fabric of doubt and impossibility had slipped from her mind. She could not get at the points that were so serious, the things she was going to make plain to him.
"Have you had lunch yet? Of course you haven't. Let's go in here," and Drouet turned into one of the very nicely furnished restaurants off State Street, in Monroe.
"I mustn't take the money," said Carrie, after they were settled in a cosey corner, and Drouet had ordered the lunch. "I can't wear those things out there. They-they wouldn't know where I got them."
"What do you want to do," he smiled, "go without them?"
"I think I'll go home," she said, wearily.
"Oh, come," he said, "you've been thinking it over too long. I'll tell you what you do. You say you can't wear them out there. Why don't you rent a furnished room and leave them in that for a week?"
Carrie shook her head. Like all women, she was there to object and be convinced. It was for him to brush the doubts away and clear the path if he could. "Why are you going home?" he asked.
"Oh, I can't get anything here."
"They won't keep you?" he remarked, intuitively.
"They can't," said Carrie.
"I'll tell you what you do," he said. "You come with me. I'll take care of you."
Carrie heard this passively. The peculiar state which she was in made it sound like the welcome breath of an open door. Drouet seemed of her own spirit and pleasing. He was clean, handsome, well-dressed, and sympathetic. His voice was the voice of a friend.
"What can you do back at Columbia City?" he went on, rousing by the words in Carrie's mind a picture of the dull world she had left. "There isn't anything down there. Chicago's the place. You can get a nice room here and some clothes, and then you can do something."
Carrie looked out through the window into the busy street. There it was, the admirable, great city, so fine when you are not poor. An elegant coach, with a prancing pair of bays, passed by, carrying in its upholstered depths a young lady.
"What will you have if you go back?" asked Drouet. There was no subtle undercurrent to the question. He imagined that she would have nothing at all of the things he thought worth while.
Carrie sat still, looking out. She was wondering what she could do. They would be expecting her to go home this week.
Drouet turned to the subject of the clothes she was going to buy.
"Why not get yourself a nice little jacket? You've got to have it. I'll loan you the money. You needn't worry about taking it. You can get yourself a nice room by yourself. I won't hurt you."
Carrie saw the drift, but could not express her thoughts. She felt more than ever the helplessness of her case.
"If I could only get something to do," she said.
"Maybe you can," went on Drouet, "if you stay here. You can't if you go away. They won't let you stay out there. Now, why not let me get you a nice room? I won't bother you-you needn't be afraid. Then, when you get fixed up, maybe you could get something."
He looked at her pretty face and it vivified his mental resources. She was a sweet little mortal to him-there was no doubt of that. She seemed to have some power back of her actions. She was not like the common run of store-girls. She wasn't silly.
In reality, Carrie had more imagination than he-more taste. It was a finer mental strain in her that made possible her depression and loneliness. Her poor clothes were neat, and she held her head unconsciously in a dainty way.
"Do you think I could get something?" she asked.
"Sure," he said, reaching over and filling her cup with tea. "I'll help you."
She looked at him, and he laughed reassuringly.
"Now I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll go over here to Partridge's and you pick out what you want. Then we'll look around for a room for you. You can leave the things there. Then we'll go to the show to-night."
Carrie shook her head.
"Well, you can go out to the flat then, that's all right. You don't need to stay in the room. Just take it and leave your things there."
She hung in doubt about this until the dinner was over.
"Let's go over and look at the jackets," he said.
Together they went. In the store they found that shine and rustle of new things which immediately laid hold of Carrie's heart. Under the influence of a good dinner and Drouet's radiating presence, the scheme proposed seemed feasible. She looked about and picked a jacket like the one which she had admired at The Fair. When she got it in her hand it seemed so much nicer. The saleswoman helped her on with it, and, by accident, it fitted perfectly. Drouet's face lightened as he saw the improvement. She looked quite smart.
"That's the thing," he said.
Carrie turned before the glass. She could not help feeling pleased as she looked at herself. A warm glow crept into her cheeks.
"That's the thing," said Drouet. "Now pay for it."
"It's nine dollars," said Carrie.
"That's all right-take it," said Drouet.
She reached in her purse and took out one of the bills. The woman asked if she would wear the coat and went off. In a few minutes she was back and the purchase was closed.
From Partridge's they went to a shoe store, where Carrie was fitted for shoes. Drouet stood by, and when he saw how nice they looked, said, "Wear them." Carrie shook her head, however. She was thinking of returning to the flat. He bought her a purse for one thing, and a pair of gloves for another, and let her buy the stockings.
"To-morrow," he said, "you come down here and buy yourself a skirt."
In all of Carrie's actions there was a touch of misgiving. The deeper she sank into the entanglement, the more she imagined that the thing hung upon the few remaining things she had not done. Since she had not done these, there was a way out.
Drouet knew a place in Wabash Avenue where there were rooms. He showed Carrie the outside of these, and said: "Now, you're my sister." He carried the arrangement off with an easy hand when it came to the selection, looking around, criticising, opining. "Her trunk will be here in a day or so," he observed to the landlady, who was very pleased.
When they were alone, Drouet did not change in the least. He talked in the same general way as if they were out in the street. Carrie left her things.
"Now," said Drouet, "why don't you move to-night?"
"Oh, I can't," said Carrie.
"Why not?"
"I don't want to leave them so."
He took that up as they walked along the avenue. It was a warm afternoon. The sun had come out and the wind had died down. As he talked with Carrie, he secured an accurate detail of the atmosphere of the flat.
"Come out of it," he said, "they won't care. I'll help you get along."
She listened until her misgivings vanished. He would show her about a little and then help her get something. He really imagined that he would. He would be out on the road and she could be working.
"Now, I'll tell you what you do," he said, "you go out there and get whatever you want and come away."
She thought a long time about this. Finally she agreed. He would come out as far as Peoria Street and wait for her. She was to meet him at half-past eight. At half-past five she reached home, and at six her determination was hardened.
"So you didn't get it?" said Minnie, referring to Carrie's story of the Boston Store.
Carrie looked at her out of the corner of her eye. "No," she answered.
"I don't think you'd better try any more this fall," said Minnie.
Carrie said nothing.
When Hanson came home he wore the same inscrutable demeanour. He washed in silence and went off to read his paper. At dinner Carrie felt a little nervous. The strain of her own plans were considerable, and the feeling that she was not welcome here was strong.
"Didn't find anything, eh?" said Hanson.
"No."
He turned to his eating again, the thought that it was a burden to have her here dwelling in his mind. She would have to go home, that was all. Once she was away, there would be no more coming back in the spring.
Carrie was afraid of what she was going to do, but she was relieved to know that this condition was ending. They would not care. Hanson particularly would be glad when she went. He would not care what became of her.
After dinner she went into the bathroom, where they could not disturb her, and wrote a little note.
"Good-bye, Minnie," it read. "I'm not going home. I'm going to stay in Chicago a little while and look for work. Don't worry. I'll be all right."
In the front room Hanson was reading his paper. As usual, she helped Minnie clear away the dishes and straighten up. Then she said:
"I guess I'll stand down at the door a little while." She could scarcely prevent her voice from trembling.
Minnie remembered Hanson's remonstrance.
"Sven doesn't think it looks good to stand down there," she said.
"Doesn't he?" said Carrie. "I won't do it any more after this."
She put on her hat and fidgeted around the table in the little bedroom, wondering where to slip the note. Finally she put it under Minnie's hair-brush.
When she had closed the hall-door, she paused a moment and wondered what they would think. Some thought of the queerness of her deed affected her. She went slowly down the stairs. She looked back up the lighted step, and then affected to stroll up the street. When she reached the corner she quickened her pace.
As she was hurrying away, Hanson came back to his wife.
"Is Carrie down at the door again?" he asked.
"Yes," said Minnie; "she said she wasn't going to do it any more."
He went over to the baby where it was playing on the floor and began to poke his finger at it.
Drouet was on the corner waiting, in good spirits.
"Hello, Carrie," he said, as a sprightly figure of a girl drew near him. "Got here safe, did you? Well, we'll take a car."
Chapter VIII. INTIMATIONS BY WINTER: AN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED
Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life-he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance.
He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers-neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other-a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distinct pole of truth.
In Carrie-as in how many of our worldlings do they not?-instinct and reason, desire and understanding, were at war for the mastery. She followed whither her craving led. She was as yet more drawn than she drew.
When Minnie found the note next morning, after a night of mingled wonder and anxiety, which was not exactly touched by yearning, sorrow, or love, she exclaimed: "Well, what do you think of that?"
"What?" said Hanson.
"Sister Carrie has gone to live somewhere else."
Hanson jumped out of bed with more celerity than he usually displayed and looked at the note. The only indication of his thoughts came in the form of a little clicking sound made by his tongue; the sound some people make when they wish to urge on a horse.
"Where do you suppose she's gone to?" said Minnie, thoroughly aroused.
"I don't know," a touch of cynicism lighting his eye. "Now she has gone and done it."
Minnie moved her head in a puzzled way.
"Oh, oh," she said, "she doesn't know what she has done."
"Well," said Hanson, after a while, sticking his hands out before him, "what can you do?"
Minnie's womanly nature was higher than this. She figured the possibilities in such cases.
"Oh," she said at last, "poor Sister Carrie!"
At the time of this particular conversation, which occurred at 5 A.M., that little soldier of fortune was sleeping a rather troubled sleep in her new room, alone.
Carrie's new state was remarkable in that she saw possibilities in it. She was no sensualist, longing to drowse sleepily in the lap of luxury. She turned about, troubled by her daring, glad of her release, wondering whether she would get something to do, wondering what Drouet would do. That worthy had his future fixed for him beyond a peradventure. He could not help what he was going to do. He could not see clearly enough to wish to do differently. He was drawn by his innate desire to act the old pursuing part. He would need to delight himself with Carrie as surely as he would need to eat his heavy breakfast. He might suffer the least rudimentary twinge of conscience in whatever he did, and in just so far he was evil and sinning. But whatever twinges of conscience he might have would be rudimentary, you may be sure.
The next day he called upon Carrie, and she saw him in her chamber. He was the same jolly, enlivening soul.
"Aw," he said, "what are you looking so blue about? Come on out to breakfast. You want to get your other clothes to-day."
Carrie looked at him with the hue of shifting thought in her large eyes.
"I wish I could get something to do," she said.
"You'll get that all right," said Drouet. "What's the use worrying right now? Get yourself fixed up. See the city. I won't hurt you."
"I know you won't," she remarked, half truthfully.
"Got on the new shoes, haven't you? Stick 'em out. George, they look fine. Put on your jacket."
Carrie obeyed.
"Say, that fits like a T, don't it?" he remarked, feeling the set of it at the waist and eyeing it from a few paces with real pleasure. "What you need now is a new skirt. Let's go to breakfast."
Carrie put on her hat.
"Where are the gloves?" he inquired.
"Here," she said, taking them out of the bureau drawer.
"Now, come on," he said.
Thus the first hour of misgiving was swept away.
It went this way on every occasion. Drouet did not leave her much alone. She had time for some lone wanderings, but mostly he filled her hours with sight-seeing. At Carson, Pirie's he bought her a nice skirt and shirt waist. With his money she purchased the little necessaries of toilet, until at last she looked quite another maiden. The mirror convinced her of a few things which she had long believed. She was pretty, yes, indeed! How nice her hat set, and weren't her eyes pretty. She caught her little red lip with her teeth and felt her first thrill of power. Drouet was so good.
They went to see "The Mikado" one evening, an opera which was hilariously popular at that time. Before going, they made off for the Windsor dining-room, which was in Dearborn Street, a considerable distance from Carrie's room. It was blowing up cold, and out of her window Carrie could see the western sky, still pink with the fading light, but steely blue at the top where it met the darkness. A long, thin cloud of pink hung in midair, shaped like some island in a far-off sea. Somehow the swaying of some dead branches of trees across the way brought back the picture with which she was familiar when she looked from their front window in December days at home. She paused and wrung her little hands.
"What's the matter?" said Drouet.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, her lip trembling.
He sensed something, and slipped his arm over her shoulder, patting her arm.
"Come on," he said gently, "you're all right."
She turned to slip on her jacket.
"Better wear that boa about your throat to-night."
They walked north on Wabash to Adams Street and then west. The lights in the stores were already shining out in gushes of golden hue. The arc lights were sputtering overhead, and high up were the lighted windows of the tall office buildings. The chill wind whipped in and out in gusty breaths. Homeward bound, the six o'clock throng bumped and jostled. Light overcoats were turned up about the ears, hats were pulled down. Little shop-girls went fluttering by in pairs and fours, chattering, laughing. It was a spectacle of warm-blooded humanity.
Suddenly a pair of eyes met Carrie's in recognition. They were looking out from a group of poorly dressed girls. Their clothes were faded and loose-hanging, their jackets old, their general make-up shabby.
Carrie recognised the glance and the girl. She was one of those who worked at the machines in the shoe factory. The latter looked, not quite sure, and then turned her head and looked. Carrie felt as if some great tide had rolled between them. The old dress and the old machine came back. She actually started. Drouet didn't notice until Carrie bumped into a pedestrian.
"You must be thinking," he said.
They dined and went to the theatre. That spectacle pleased Carrie immensely. The colour and grace of it caught her eye. She had vain imaginings about place and power, about far-off lands and magnificent people. When it was over, the clatter of coaches and the throng of fine ladies made her stare.
"Wait a minute," said Drouet, holding her back in the showy foyer where ladies and gentlemen were moving in a social crush, skirts rustling, lace-covered heads nodding, white teeth showing through parted lips. "Let's see."
"Sixty-seven," the coach-caller was saying, his voice lifted in a sort of euphonious cry. "Sixty-seven."
"Isn't it fine?" said Carrie.
"Great," said Drouet. He was as much affected by this show of finery and gayety as she. He pressed her arm warmly. Once she looked up, her even teeth glistening through her smiling lips, her eyes alight. As they were moving out he whispered down to her, "You look lovely!" They were right where the coach-caller was swinging open a coach-door and ushering in two ladies.
"You stick to me and we'll have a coach," laughed Drouet.
Carrie scarcely heard, her head was so full of the swirl of life. They stopped in at a restaurant for a little after-theatre lunch. Just a shade of a thought of the hour entered Carrie's head, but there was no household law to govern her now. If any habits ever had time to fix upon her, they would have operated here. Habits are peculiar things. They will drive the really non-religious mind out of bed to say prayers that are only a custom and not a devotion. The victim of habit, when he has neglected the thing which it was his custom to do, feels a little scratching in the brain, a little irritating something which comes of being out of the rut, and imagines it to be the prick of conscience, the still, small voice that is urging him ever to righteousness. If the digression is unusual enough, the drag of habit will be heavy enough to cause the unreasoning victim to return and perform the perfunctory thing. "Now, bless me," says such a mind, "I have done my duty," when, as a matter of fact, it has merely done its old, unbreakable trick once again.
Carrie had no excellent home principles fixed upon her. If she had, she would have been more consciously distressed. Now the lunch went off with considerable warmth. Under the influence of the varied occurrences, the fine, invisible passion which was emanating from Drouet, the food, the still unusual luxury, she relaxed and heard with open ears. She was again the victim of the city's hypnotic influence.
"Well," said Drouet at last, "we had better be going."
They had been dawdling over the dishes, and their eyes had frequently met. Carrie could not help but feel the vibration of force which followed, which, indeed, was his gaze. He had a way of touching her hand in explanation, as if to impress a fact upon her. He touched it now as he spoke of going.
They arose and went out into the street. The downtown section was now bare, save for a few whistling strollers, a few owl cars, a few open resorts whose windows were still bright. Out Wabash Avenue they strolled, Drouet still pouring forth his volume of small information. He had Carrie's arm in his, and held it closely as he explained. Once in a while, after some witticism, he would look down, and his eyes would meet hers. At last they came to the steps, and Carrie stood up on the first one, her head now coming even with his own. He took her hand and held it genially. He looked steadily at her as she glanced about, warmly musing.
At about that hour, Minnie was soundly sleeping, after a long evening of troubled thought. She had her elbow in an awkward position under her side. The muscles so held irritated a few nerves, and now a vague scene floated in on the drowsy mind. She fancied she and Carrie were somewhere beside an old coal-mine. She could see the tall runway and the heap of earth and coal cast out. There was a deep pit, into which they were looking; they could see the curious wet stones far down where the wall disappeared in vague shadows. An old basket, used for descending, was hanging there, fastened by a worn rope.
"Let's get in," said Carrie.
"Oh, no," said Minnie.
"Yes, come on," said Carrie.
She began to pull the basket over, and now, in spite of all protest, she had swung over and was going down.
"Carrie," she called, "Carrie, come back"; but Carrie was far down now and the shadow had swallowed her completely.
She moved her arm.
Now the mystic scenery merged queerly and the place was by waters she had never seen. They were upon some board or ground or something that reached far out, and at the end of this was Carrie. They looked about, and now the thing was sinking, and Minnie heard the low sip of the encroaching water.
"Come on, Carrie," she called, but Carrie was reaching farther out. She seemed to recede, and now it was difficult to call to her.
"Carrie," she called, "Carrie," but her own voice sounded far away, and the strange waters were blurring everything. She came away suffering as though she had lost something. She was more inexpressibly sad than she had ever been in life.
It was this way through many shifts of the tired brain, those curious phantoms of the spirit slipping in, blurring strange scenes, one with the other. The last one made her cry out, for Carrie was slipping away somewhere over a rock, and her fingers had let loose and she had seen her falling.
"Minnie! What's the matter? Here, wake up," said Hanson, disturbed, and shaking her by the shoulder.
"Wha-what's the matter?" said Minnie, drowsily.
"Wake up," he said, "and turn over. You're talking in your sleep."
A week or so later Drouet strolled into Fitzgerald and Moy's, spruce in dress and manner.
"Hello, Charley," said Hurstwood, looking out from his office door.
Drouet strolled over and looked in upon the manager at his desk. "When do you go out on the road again?" he inquired.
"Pretty soon," said Drouet.
"Haven't seen much of you this trip," said Hurstwood.
"Well, I've been busy," said Drouet.
They talked some few minutes on general topics.
"Say," said Drouet, as if struck by a sudden idea, "I want you to come out some evening."
"Out where?" inquired Hurstwood.
"Out to my house, of course," said Drouet, smiling.
Hurstwood looked up quizzically, the least suggestion of a smile hovering about his lips. He studied the face of Drouet in his wise way, and then with the demeanour of a gentleman, said: "Certainly; glad to."
"We'll have a nice game of euchre."
"May I bring a nice little bottle of Sec?" asked Hurstwood. "Certainly," said Drouet. "I'll introduce you."
Chapter IX. CONVENTION'S OWN TINDER-BOX: THE EYE THAT IS GREEN
Hurstwood's residence on the North Side, near Lincoln Park, was a brick building of a very popular type then, a three-story affair with the first floor sunk a very little below the level of the street. It had a large bay window bulging out from the second floor, and was graced in front by a small grassy plot, twenty-five feet wide and ten feet deep. There was also a small rear yard, walled in by the fences of the neighbours and holding a stable where he kept his horse and trap.
The ten rooms of the house were occupied by himself, his wife Julia, and his son and daughter, George, Jr., and Jessica. There were besides these a maid-servant, represented from time to time by girls of various extraction, for Mrs. Hurstwood was not always easy to please.
"George, I let Mary go yesterday," was not an unfrequent salutation at the dinner table.
"All right," was his only reply. He had long since wearied of discussing the rancorous subject.
A lovely home atmosphere is one of the flowers of the world, than which there is nothing more tender, nothing more delicate, nothing more calculated to make strong and just the natures cradled and nourished within it. Those who have never experienced such a beneficent influence will not understand wherefore the tear springs glistening to the eyelids at some strange breath in lovely music. The mystic chords which bind and thrill the heart of the nation, they will never know.
Hurstwood's residence could scarcely be said to be infused with this home spirit. It lacked that toleration and regard without which the home is nothing. There was fine furniture, arranged as soothingly as the artistic perception of the occupants warranted. There were soft rugs, rich, upholstered chairs and divans, a grand piano, a marble carving of some unknown Venus by some unknown artist, and a number of small bronzes gathered from heaven knows where, but generally sold by the large furniture houses along with everything else which goes to make the "perfectly appointed house."
In the dining-room stood a sideboard laden with glistening decanters and other utilities and ornaments in glass, the arrangement of which could not be questioned. Here was something Hurstwood knew about. He had studied the subject for years in his business. He took no little satisfaction in telling each Mary, shortly after she arrived, something of what the art of the thing required. He was not garrulous by any means. On the contrary, there was a fine reserve in his manner toward the entire domestic economy of his life which was all that is comprehended by the popular term, gentlemanly. He would not argue, he would not talk freely. In his manner was something of the dogmatist. What he could not correct, he would ignore. There was a tendency in him to walk away from the impossible thing.
There was a time when he had been considerably enamoured of his Jessica, especially when he was younger and more confined in his success. Now, however, in her seventeenth year, Jessica had developed a certain amount of reserve and independence which was not inviting to the richest form of parental devotion. She was in the high school, and had notions of life which were decidedly those of a patrician. She liked nice clothes and urged for them constantly. Thoughts of love and elegant individual establishments were running in her head. She met girls at the high school whose parents were truly rich and whose fathers had standing locally as partners or owners of solid businesses. These girls gave themselves the airs befitting the thriving domestic establishments from whence they issued. They were the only ones of the school about whom Jessica concerned herself.
Young Hurstwood, Jr., was in his twentieth year, and was already connected in a promising capacity with a large real estate firm. He contributed nothing for the domestic expenses of the family, but was thought to be saving his money to invest in real estate. He had some ability, considerable vanity, and a love of pleasure that had not, as yet, infringed upon his duties, whatever they were. He came in and went out, pursuing his own plans and fancies, addressing a few words to his mother occasionally, relating some little incident to his father, but for the most part confining himself to those generalities with which most conversation concerns itself. He was not laying bare his desires for any one to see. He did not find any one in the house who particularly cared to see.
Mrs. Hurstwood was the type of woman who has ever endeavoured to shine and has been more or less chagrined at the evidences of superior capability in this direction elsewhere. Her knowledge of life extended to that little conventional round of society of which she was not-but longed to be-a member. She was not without realisation already that this thing was impossible, so far as she was concerned. For her daughter, she hoped better things. Through Jessica she might rise a little. Through George, Jr.'s, possible success she might draw to herself the privilege of pointing proudly. Even Hurstwood was doing well enough, and she was anxious that his small real estate adventures should prosper. His property holdings, as yet, were rather small, but his income was pleasing and his position with Fitzgerald and Moy was fixed. Both those gentlemen were on pleasant and rather informal terms with him.
The atmosphere which such personalities would create must be apparent to all. It worked out in a thousand little conversations, all of which were of the same calibre.
"I'm going up to Fox Lake to-morrow," announced George, Jr., at the dinner table one Friday evening.
"What's going on up there?" queried Mrs. Hurstwood.
"Eddie Fahrway's got a new steam launch, and he wants me to come up and see how it works."
"How much did it cost him?" asked his mother.
"Oh, over two thousand dollars. He says it's a dandy."
"Old Fahrway must be making money," put in Hurstwood.
"He is, I guess. Jack told me they were shipping Vegacura to Australia now-said they sent a whole box to Cape Town last week."
"Just think of that!" said Mrs. Hurstwood, "and only four years ago they had that basement in Madison Street."
"Jack told me they were going to put up a six-story building next spring in Robey Street."
"Just think of that!" said Jessica.
On this particular occasion Hurstwood wished to leave early.
"I guess I'll be going down town," he remarked, rising.
"Are we going to McVicker's Monday?" questioned Mrs. Hurstwood, without rising.
"Yes," he said indifferently.
They went on dining, while he went upstairs for his hat and coat. Presently the door clicked.
"I guess papa's gone," said Jessica.
The latter's school news was of a particular stripe.
"They're going to give a performance in the Lyceum, upstairs," she reported one day, "and I'm going to be in it."
"Are you?" said her mother.
"Yes, and I'll have to have a new dress. Some of the nicest girls in the school are going to be in it. Miss Palmer is going to take the part of Portia."
"Is she?" said Mrs. Hurstwood.
"They've got that Martha Griswold in it again. She thinks she can act."
"Her family doesn't amount to anything, does it?" said Mrs. Hurstwood sympathetically. "They haven't anything, have they?"
"No," returned Jessica, "they're poor as church mice."
She distinguished very carefully between the young boys of the school, many of whom were attracted by her beauty.
"What do you think?" she remarked to her mother one evening; "that Herbert Crane tried to make friends with me."
"Who is he, my dear?" inquired Mrs. Hurstwood.
"Oh, no one," said Jessica, pursing her pretty lips. "He's just a student there. He hasn't anything."
The other half of this picture came when young Blyford, son of Blyford, the soap manufacturer, walked home with her. Mrs. Hurstwood was on the third floor, sitting in a rocking-chair reading, and happened to look out at the time.
"Who was that with you, Jessica?" she inquired, as Jessica came upstairs.
"It's Mr. Blyford, mamma," she replied.
"Is it?" said Mrs. Hurstwood.
"Yes, and he wants me to stroll over into the park with him," explained Jessica, a little flushed with running up the stairs.
"All right, my dear," said Mrs. Hurstwood. "Don't be gone long."
As the two went down the street, she glanced interestedly out of the window. It was a most satisfactory spectacle indeed, most satisfactory.
In this atmosphere Hurstwood had moved for a number of years, not thinking deeply concerning it. His was not the order of nature to trouble for something better, unless the better was immediately and sharply contrasted. As it was, he received and gave, irritated sometimes by the little displays of selfish indifference, pleased at times by some show of finery which supposedly made for dignity and social distinction. The life of the resort which he managed was his life. There he spent most of his time. When he went home evenings the house looked nice. With rare exceptions the meals were acceptable, being the kind that an ordinary servant can arrange. In part, he was interested in the talk of his son and daughter, who always looked well. The vanity of Mrs. Hurstwood caused her to keep her person rather showily arrayed, but to Hurstwood this was much better than plainness. There was no love lost between them. There was no great feeling of dissatisfaction. Her opinion on any subject was not startling. They did not talk enough together to come to the argument of any one point. In the accepted and popular phrase, she had her ideas and he had his. Once in a while he would meet a woman whose youth, sprightliness, and humour would make his wife seem rather deficient by contrast, but the temporary dissatisfaction which such an encounter might arouse would be counterbalanced by his social position and a certain matter of policy. He could not complicate his home life, because it might affect his relations with his employers. They wanted no scandals. A man, to hold his position, must have a dignified manner, a clean record, a respectable home anchorage. Therefore he was circumspect in all he did, and whenever he appeared in the public ways in the afternoon, or on Sunday, it was with his wife, and sometimes his children. He would visit the local resorts, or those near by in Wisconsin, and spend a few stiff, polished days strolling about conventional places doing conventional things. He knew the need of it.
When some one of the many middle-class individuals whom he knew, who had money, would get into trouble, he would shake his head. It didn't do to talk about those things. If it came up for discussion among such friends as with him passed for close, he would deprecate the folly of the thing. "It was all right to do it-all men do those things-but why wasn't he careful? A man can't be too careful." He lost sympathy for the man that made a mistake and was found out.
On this account he still devoted some time to showing his wife about-time which would have been wearisome indeed if it had not been for the people he would meet and the little enjoyments which did not depend upon her presence or absence. He watched her with considerable curiosity at times, for she was still attractive in a way and men looked at her. She was affable, vain, subject to flattery, and this combination, he knew quite well, might produce a tragedy in a woman of her home position. Owing to his order of mind, his confidence in the sex was not great. His wife never possessed the virtues which would win the confidence and admiration of a man of his nature. As long as she loved him vigorously he could see how confidence could be, but when that was no longer the binding chain-well, something might happen.
During the last year or two the expenses of the family seemed a large thing. Jessica wanted fine clothes, and Mrs. Hurstwood, not to be outshone by her daughter, also frequently enlivened her apparel. Hurstwood had said nothing in the past, but one day he murmured.
"Jessica must have a new dress this month," said Mrs. Hurstwood one morning.
Hurstwood was arraying himself in one of his perfection vests before the glass at the time.
"I thought she just bought one," he said.
"That was just something for evening wear," returned his wife complacently.
"It seems to me," returned Hurstwood, "that she's spending a good deal for dresses of late."
"Well, she's going out more," concluded his wife, but the tone of his voice impressed her as containing something she had not heard there before.
He was not a man who traveled much, but when he did, he had been accustomed to take her along. On one occasion recently a local aldermanic junket had been arranged to visit Philadelphia-a junket that was to last ten days. Hurstwood had been invited.
"Nobody knows us down there," said one, a gentleman whose face was a slight improvement over gross ignorance and sensuality. He always wore a silk hat of most imposing proportions. "We can have a good time." His left eye moved with just the semblance of a wink. "You want to come along, George."
The next day Hurstwood announced his intention to his wife.
"I'm going away, Julia," he said, "for a few days."
"Where?" she asked, looking up.
"To Philadelphia, on business."
She looked at him consciously, expecting something else.
"I'll have to leave you behind this time."
"All right," she replied, but he could see that she was thinking that it was a curious thing. Before he went she asked him a few more questions, and that irritated him. He began to feel that she was a disagreeable attachment.
On this trip he enjoyed himself thoroughly, and when it was over he was sorry to get back. He was not willingly a prevaricator, and hated thoroughly to make explanations concerning it. The whole incident was glossed over with general remarks, but Mrs. Hurstwood gave the subject considerable thought. She drove out more, dressed better, and attended theatres freely to make up for it.
Such an atmosphere could hardly come under the category of home life. It ran along by force of habit, by force of conventional opinion. With the lapse of time it must necessarily become dryer and dryer-must eventually be tinder, easily lighted and destroyed.
Chapter X. THE COUNSEL OF WINTER: FORTUNE'S AMBASSADOR CALLS
In the light of the world's attitude toward woman and her duties, the nature of Carrie's mental state deserves consideration. Actions such as hers are measured by an arbitrary scale. Society possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things. All men should be good, all women virtuous. Wherefore, villain, hast thou failed?
For all the liberal analysis of Spencer and our modern naturalistic philosophers, we have but an infantile perception of morals. There is more in the subject than mere conformity to a law of evolution. It is yet deeper than conformity to things of earth alone. It is more involved than we, as yet, perceive. Answer, first, why the heart thrills; explain wherefore some plaintive note goes wandering about the world, undying; make clear the rose's subtle alchemy evolving its ruddy lamp in light and rain. In the essence of these facts lie the first principles of morals.
"Oh," thought Drouet, "how delicious is my conquest."
"Ah," thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, "what is it I have lost?"
Before this world-old proposition we stand, serious, interested, confused; endeavouring to evolve the true theory of morals-the true answer to what is right.
In the view of a certain stratum of society, Carrie was comfortably established-in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon harbour. Drouet had taken three rooms, furnished, in Ogden Place, facing Union Park, on the West Side. That was a little, green-carpeted breathing spot, than which, to-day, there is nothing more beautiful in Chicago. It afforded a vista pleasant to contemplate. The best room looked out upon the lawn of the park, now sear and brown, where a little lake lay sheltered. Over the bare limbs of the trees, which now swayed in the wintry wind, rose the steeple of the Union Park Congregational Church, and far off the towers of several others.
The rooms were comfortably enough furnished. There was a good Brussels carpet on the floor, rich in dull red and lemon shades, and representing large jardinières filled with gorgeous, impossible flowers. There was a large pier-glass mirror between the two windows. A large, soft, green, plush-covered couch occupied one corner, and several rocking-chairs were set about. Some pictures, several rugs, a few small pieces of bric-à-brac, and the tale of contents is told.
In the bedroom, off the front room, was Carrie's trunk, bought by Drouet, and in the wardrobe built into the wall quite an array of clothing-more than she had ever possessed before, and of very becoming designs. There was a third room for possible use as a kitchen, where Drouet had Carrie establish a little portable gas stove for the preparation of small lunches, oysters, Welsh rarebits, and the like, of which he was exceedingly fond; and, lastly, a bath. The whole place was cosey, in that it was lighted by gas and heated by furnace registers, possessing also a small grate, set with an asbestos back, a method of cheerful warming which was then first coming into use. By her industry and natural love of order, which now developed, the place maintained an air pleasing in the extreme.
Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free of certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her, laden with many new ones which were of a mental order, and altogether so turned about in all of her earthly relationships that she might well have been a new and different individual. She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world's opinions, and saw a worse. Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.
"My, but you're a little beauty," Drouet was wont to exclaim to her.
She would look at him with large, pleased eyes.
"You know it, don't you?" he would continue.
"Oh, I don't know," she would reply, feeling delight in the fact that one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she really did, that she was vain enough to think so much of herself.
Her conscience, however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise. There she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused. It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its last analysis. It was only an average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past environment, habit, convention, in a confused way. With it, the voice of the people was truly the voice of God.
"Oh, thou failure!" said the voice.
"Why?" she questioned.
"Look at those about," came the whispered answer. "Look at those who are good. How would they scorn to do what you have done. Look at the good girls; how will they draw away from such as you when they know you have been weak. You had not tried before you failed."
It was when Carrie was alone, looking out across the park, that she would be listening to this. It would come infrequently-when something else did not interfere, when the pleasant side was not too apparent, when Drouet was not there. It was somewhat clear in utterance at first, but never wholly convincing. There was always an answer, always the December days threatened. She was alone; she was desireful; she was fearful of the whistling wind. The voice of want made answer for her.
Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on that sombre garb of grey, wrapt in which it goes about its labours during the long winter. Its endless buildings look grey, its sky and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the general solemnity of colour. There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men. These feel as much as the poet, though they have not the same power of expression. The sparrow upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray horse tugging his weary load, feel the long, keen breaths of winter. It strikes to the heart of all life, animate and inanimate. If it were not for the artificial fires of merriment, the rush of profit-seeking trade, and pleasure-selling amusements; if the various merchants failed to make the customary display within and without their establishments; if our streets were not strung with signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with hurrying purchasers, we would quickly discover how firmly the chill hand of winter lays upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during which the sun withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth. We are more dependent upon these things than is often thought. We are insects produced by heat, and pass without it.
In the drag of such a grey day the secret voice would reassert itself, feebly and more feebly.
Such mental conflict was not always uppermost. Carrie was not by any means a gloomy soul. More, she had not the mind to get firm hold upon a definite truth. When she could not find her way out of the labyrinth of ill-logic which thought upon the subject created, she would turn away entirely.
Drouet, all the time, was conducting himself in a model way for one of his sort. He took her about a great deal, spent money upon her, and when he travelled took her with him. There were times when she would be alone for two or three days, while he made the shorter circuits of his business, but, as a rule, she saw a great deal of him.
"Say, Carrie," he said one morning, shortly after they had so established themselves, "I've invited my friend Hurstwood to come out some day and spend the evening with us."
"Who is he?" asked Carrie doubtfully.
"Oh, he's a nice man. He's manager of Fitzgerald and Moy's."
"What's that?" said Carrie.
"The finest resort in town. It's a way-up, swell place."
Carrie puzzled a moment. She was wondering what Drouet had told him, what her attitude would be.
"That's all right," said Drouet, feeling her thought. "He doesn't know anything. You're Mrs. Drouet now."
There was something about this which struck Carrie as slightly inconsiderate. She could see that Drouet did not have the keenest sensibilities.
"Why don't we get married?" she inquired, thinking of the voluble promises he had made.
"Well, we will," he said, "just as soon as I get this little deal of mine closed up."
He was referring to some property which he said he had, and which required so much attention, adjustment, and what not, that somehow or other it interfered with his free moral, personal actions.
"Just as soon as I get back from my Denver trip in January we'll do it."
Carrie accepted this as basis for hope-it was a sort of salve to her conscience, a pleasant way out. Under the circumstances, things would be righted. Her actions would be justified. She really was not enamoured of Drouet. She was more clever than he. In a dim way, she was beginning to see where he lacked. If it had not been for this, if she had not been able to measure and judge him in a way, she would have been worse off than she was. She would have adored him. She would have been utterly wretched in her fear of not gaining his affection, of losing his interest, of being swept away and left without an anchorage. As it was, she wavered a little, slightly anxious, at first, to gain him completely, but later feeling at ease in waiting. She was not exactly sure what she thought of him-what she wanted to do.
When Hurstwood called, she met a man who was more clever than Drouet in a hundred ways. He paid that peculiar deference to women which every member of the sex appreciates. He was not overawed, he was not overbold. His great charm was attentiveness. Schooled in winning those birds of fine feather among his own sex, the merchants and professionals who visited his resort, he could use even greater tact when endeavouring to prove agreeable to some one who charmed him. In a pretty woman of any refinement of feeling whatsoever he found his greatest incentive. He was mild, placid, assured, giving the impression that he wished to be of service only-to do something which would make the lady more pleased.
Drouet had ability in this line himself when the game was worth the candle, but he was too much the egotist to reach the polish which Hurstwood possessed. He was too buoyant, too full of ruddy life, too assured. He succeeded with many who were not quite schooled in the art of love. He failed dismally where the woman was slightly experienced and possessed innate refinement. In the case of Carrie he found a woman who was all of the latter, but none of the former. He was lucky in the fact that opportunity tumbled into his lap, as it were. A few years later, with a little more experience, the slightest tide of success, and he had not been able to approach Carrie at all.
"You ought to have a piano here, Drouet," said Hurstwood, smiling at Carrie, on the evening in question, "so that your wife could play."
Drouet had not thought of that.
"So we ought," he observed readily.
"Oh, I don't play," ventured Carrie.
"It isn't very difficult," returned Hurstwood. "You could do very well in a few weeks."
He was in the best form for entertaining this evening. His clothes were particularly new and rich in appearance. The coat lapels stood out with that medium stiffness which excellent cloth possesses. The vest was of a rich Scotch plaid, set with a double row of round mother-of-pearl buttons. His cravat was a shiny combination of silken threads, not loud, not inconspicuous. What he wore did not strike the eye so forcibly as that which Drouet had on, but Carrie could see the elegance of the material. Hurstwood's shoes were of soft, black calf, polished only to a dull shine. Drouet wore patent leather but Carrie could not help feeling that there was a distinction in favour of the soft leather, where all else was so rich. She noticed these things almost unconsciously. They were things which would naturally flow from the situation. She was used to Drouet's appearance.
"Suppose we have a little game of euchre?" suggested Hurstwood, after a light round of conversation. He was rather dexterous in avoiding everything that would suggest that he knew anything of Carrie's past. He kept away from personalities altogether, and confined himself to those things which did not concern individuals at all. By his manner, he put Carrie at her ease, and by his deference and pleasantries he amused her. He pretended to be seriously interested in all she said.
"I don't know how to play," said Carrie.
"Charlie, you are neglecting a part of your duty," he observed to Drouet most affably. "Between us, though," he went on, "we can show you."
By his tact he made Drouet feel that he admired his choice. There was something in his manner that showed that he was pleased to be there. Drouet felt really closer to him than ever before. It gave him more respect for Carrie. Her appearance came into a new light, under Hurstwood's appreciation. The situation livened considerably.
"Now, let me see," said Hurstwood, looking over Carrie's shoulder very deferentially. "What have you?" He studied for a moment. "That's rather good," he said.
"You're lucky. Now, I'll show you how to trounce your husband. You take my advice."
"Here," said Drouet, "if you two are going to scheme together, I won't stand a ghost of a show. Hurstwood's a regular sharp."
"No, it's your wife. She brings me luck. Why shouldn't she win?"
Carrie looked gratefully at Hurstwood, and smiled at Drouet. The former took the air of a mere friend. He was simply there to enjoy himself. Anything that Carrie did was pleasing to him, nothing more.
"There," he said, holding back one of his own good cards, and giving Carrie a chance to take a trick. "I count that clever playing for a beginner."
The latter laughed gleefully as she saw the hand coming her way. It was as if she were invincible when Hurstwood helped her.
He did not look at her often. When he did, it was with a mild light in his eye. Not a shade was there of anything save geniality and kindness. He took back the shifty, clever gleam, and replaced it with one of innocence. Carrie could not guess but that it was pleasure with him in the immediate thing. She felt that he considered she was doing a great deal.
"It's unfair to let such playing go without earning something," he said after a time, slipping his finger into the little coin pocket of his coat. "Let's play for dimes."
"All right," said Drouet, fishing for bills.
Hurstwood was quicker. His fingers were full of new ten-cent pieces. "Here we are," he said, supplying each one with a little stack.
"Oh, this is gambling," smiled Carrie. "It's bad."
"No," said Drouet, "only fun. If you never play for more than that, you will go to Heaven."
"Don't you moralise," said Hurstwood to Carrie gently, "until you see what becomes of the money."
Drouet smiled.
"If your husband gets them, he'll tell you how bad it is."
Drouet laughed loud.
There was such an ingratiating tone about Hurstwood's voice, the insinuation was so perceptible that even Carrie got the humour of it.
"When do you leave?" said Hurstwood to Drouet.
"On Wednesday," he replied.
"It's rather hard to have your husband running about like that, isn't it?" said Hurstwood, addressing Carrie.
"She's going along with me this time," said Drouet.
"You must both go with me to the theatre before you go."
"Certainly," said Drouet. "Eh, Carrie?"
"I'd like it ever so much," she replied.
Hurstwood did his best to see that Carrie won the money. He rejoiced in her success, kept counting her winnings, and finally gathered and put them in her extended hand. They spread a little lunch, at which he served the wine, and afterwards he used fine tact in going.
"Now," he said, addressing first Carrie and then Drouet with his eyes, "you must be ready at 7.30. I'll come and get you."
They went with him to the door and there was his cab waiting, its red lamps gleaming cheerfully in the shadow.
"Now," he observed to Drouet, with a tone of good-fellowship, "when you leave your wife alone, you must let me show her around a little. It will break up her loneliness."
"Sure," said Drouet, quite pleased at the attention shown.
"You're so kind," observed Carrie.
"Not at all," said Hurstwood, "I would want your husband to do as much for me."
He smiled and went lightly away. Carrie was thoroughly impressed. She had never come in contact with such grace. As for Drouet, he was equally pleased.
"There's a nice man," he remarked to Carrie, as they returned to their cosey chamber. "A good friend of mine, too."
"He seems to be," said Carrie.
Chapter XI. THE PERSUASION OF FASHION: FEELING GUARDS O'ER ITS OWN
Carrie was an apt student of fortune's ways-of fortune's superficialities. Seeing a thing, she would immediately set to inquiring how she would look, properly related to it. Be it known that this is not fine feeling, it is not wisdom. The greatest minds are not so afflicted; and on the contrary, the lowest order of mind is not so disturbed. Fine clothes to her were a vast persuasion; they spoke tenderly and Jesuitically for themselves. When she came within earshot of their pleading, desire in her bent a willing ear. The voice of the so-called inanimate! Who shall translate for us the language of the stones?
"My dear," said the lace collar she secured from Partridge's, "I fit you beautifully; don't give me up."
"Ah, such little feet," said the leather of the soft new shoes; "how effectively I cover them. What a pity they should ever want my aid."
Once these things were in her hand, on her person, she might dream of giving them up; the method by which they came might intrude itself so forcibly that she would ache to be rid of the thought of it, but she would not give them up. "Put on the old clothes-that torn pair of shoes," was called to her by her conscience in vain. She could possibly have conquered the fear of hunger and gone back; the thought of hard work and a narrow round of suffering would, under the last pressure of conscience, have yielded, but spoil her appearance?-be old-clothed and poor-appearing?-never!
Drouet heightened her opinion on this and allied subjects in such a manner as to weaken her power of resisting their influence. It is so easy to do this when the thing opined is in the line of what we desire. In his hearty way, he insisted upon her good looks. He looked at her admiringly, and she took it at its full value. Under the circumstances, she did not need to carry herself as pretty women do. She picked that knowledge up fast enough for herself. Drouet had a habit, characteristic of his kind, of looking after stylishly dressed or pretty women on the street and remarking upon them. He had just enough of the feminine love of dress to be a good judge-not of intellect, but of clothes. He saw how they set their little feet, how they carried their chins, with what grace and sinuosity they swung their bodies. A dainty, self-conscious swaying of the hips by a woman was to him as alluring as the glint of rare wine to a toper. He would turn and follow the disappearing vision with his eyes. He would thrill as a child with the unhindered passion that was in him. He loved the thing that women love in themselves, grace. At this, their own shrine, he knelt with them, an ardent devotee.
"Did you see that woman who went by just now?" he said to Carrie on the first day they took a walk together. "Fine stepper, wasn't she?"
Carrie looked, and observed the grace commended.
"Yes, she is," she returned, cheerfully, a little suggestion of possible defect in herself awakening in her mind. If that was so fine, she must look at it more closely. Instinctively, she felt a desire to imitate it. Surely she could do that too.
When one of her mind sees many things emphasized and re-emphasized and admired, she gathers the logic of it and applies accordingly. Drouet was not shrewd enough to see that this was not tactful. He could not see that it would be better to make her feel that she was competing with herself, not others better than herself. He would not have done it with an older, wiser woman, but in Carrie he saw only the novice. Less clever than she, he was naturally unable to comprehend her sensibility. He went on educating and wounding her, a thing rather foolish in one whose admiration for his pupil and victim was apt to grow.
Carrie took the instructions affably. She saw what Drouet liked; in a vague way she saw where he was weak. It lessens a woman's opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so pointedly and generously distributed. She sees but one object of supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself. If a man is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each.
In her own apartments Carrie saw things which were lessons in the same school.
In the same house with her lived an official of one of the theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five. They were people of a sort very common in America to-day, who live respectably from hand to mouth. Hale received a salary of forty-five dollars a week. His wife, quite attractive, affected the feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which means the care of a house and the raising of a family. Like Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor above.
Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations with her, and together they went about. For a long time this was her only companionship, and the gossip of the manager's wife formed the medium through which she saw the world. Such trivialities, such praises of wealth, such conventional expression of morals as sifted through this passive creature's mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confused her.
On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence. The constant drag to something better was not to be denied. By those things which address the heart was she steadily recalled. In the apartments across the hall were a young girl and her mother. They were from Evansville, Indiana, the wife and daughter of a railroad treasurer. The daughter was here to study music, the mother to keep her company.
Carrie did not make their acquaintance, but she saw the daughter coming in and going out. A few times she had seen her at the piano in the parlour, and not infrequently had heard her play. This young woman was particularly dressy for her station, and wore a jewelled ring or two which flashed upon her white fingers as she played.
Now Carrie was affected by music. Her nervous composition responded to certain strains, much as certain strings of a harp vibrate when a corresponding key of a piano is struck. She was delicately moulded in sentiment, and answered with vague ruminations to certain wistful chords. They awoke longings for those things which she did not have. They caused her to cling closer to things she possessed. One short song the young lady played in a most soulful and tender mood. Carrie heard it through the open door from the parlour below. It was at that hour between afternoon and night when, for the idle, the wanderer, things are apt to take on a wistful aspect. The mind wanders forth on far journeys and returns with sheaves of withered and departed joys. Carrie sat at her window looking out. Drouet had been away since ten in the morning. She had amused herself with a walk, a book by Bertha M. Clay which Drouet had left there, though she did not wholly enjoy the latter, and by changing her dress for the evening. Now she sat looking out across the park as wistful and depressed as the nature which craves variety and life can be under such circumstances. As she contemplated her new state, the strain from the parlour below stole upward. With it her thoughts became coloured and enmeshed. She reverted to the things which were best and saddest within the small limit of her experience. She became for the moment a repentant.
While she was in this mood Drouet came in, bringing with him an entirely different atmosphere. It was dusk and Carrie had neglected to light the lamp. The fire in the grate, too, had burned low.
"Where are you, Cad?" he said, using a pet name he had given her.
"Here," she answered.
There was something delicate and lonely in her voice, but he could not hear it. He had not the poetry in him that would seek a woman out under such circumstances and console her for the tragedy of life. Instead, he struck a match and lighted the gas.
"Hello," he exclaimed, "you've been crying."
Her eyes were still wet with a few vague tears.
"Pshaw," he said, "you don't want to do that."
He took her hand, feeling in his good-natured egotism that it was probably lack of his presence which had made her lonely.
"Come on, now," he went on; "it's all right. Let's waltz a little to that music."
He could not have introduced a more incongruous proposition. It made clear to Carrie that he could not sympathise with her. She could not have framed thoughts which would have expressed his defect or made clear the difference between them, but she felt it. It was his first great mistake.
What Drouet said about the girl's grace, as she tripped out evenings accompanied by her mother, caused Carrie to perceive the nature and value of those little modish ways which women adopt when they would presume to be something. She looked in the mirror and pursed up her lips, accompanying it with a little toss of the head, as she had seen the railroad treasurer's daughter do. She caught up her skirts with an easy swing, for had not Drouet remarked that in her and several others, and Carrie was naturally imitative. She began to get the hang of those little things which the pretty woman who has vanity invariably adopts. In short, her knowledge of grace doubled, and with it her appearance changed. She became a girl of considerable taste.
Drouet noticed this. He saw the new bow in her hair and the new way of arranging her locks which she affected one morning.
"You look fine that way, Cad," he said.
"Do I?" she replied, sweetly. It made her try for other effects that selfsame day.
She used her feet less heavily, a thing that was brought about by her attempting to imitate the treasurer's daughter's graceful carriage. How much influence the presence of that young woman in the same house had upon her it would be difficult to say. But, because of all these things, when Hurstwood called he had found a young woman who was much more than the Carrie to whom Drouet had first spoken. The primary defects of dress and manner had passed. She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidity born of uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyes which captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser among men. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the stale. If there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the bloom and unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. He looked into her pretty face and felt the subtle waves of young life radiating therefrom. In that large clear eye he could see nothing that his blasé nature could understand as guile. The little vanity, if he could have perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasant thing.
"I wonder," he said, as he rode away in his cab, "how Drouet came to win her."
He gave her credit for feelings superior to Drouet at the first glance.
The cab plopped along between the far-receding lines of gas lamps on either hand. He folded his gloved hands and saw only the lighted chamber and Carrie's face. He was pondering over the delight of youthful beauty.
"I'll have a bouquet for her," he thought. "Drouet won't mind." He never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for himself. He troubled himself not at all about Drouet's priority. He was merely floating those gossamer threads of thought which, like the spider's, he hoped would lay hold somewhere. He did not know, he could not guess, what the result would be.
A few weeks later Drouet, in his peregrinations, encountered one of his well-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return from a short trip to Omaha. He had intended to hurry out to Ogden Place and surprise Carrie, but now he fell into an interesting conversation and soon modified his original intention.
"Let's go to dinner," he said, little recking any chance meeting which might trouble his way.
"Certainly," said his companion.
They visited one of the better restaurants for a social chat. It was five in the afternoon when they met; it was seven-thirty before the last bone was picked.
Drouet was just finishing a little incident he was relating, and his face was expanding into a smile, when Hurstwood's eye caught his own. The latter had come in with several friends, and, seeing Drouet and some woman, not Carrie, drew his own conclusion.
"Ah, the rascal," he thought, and then, with a touch of righteous sympathy, "that's pretty hard on the little girl."
Drouet jumped from one easy thought to another as he caught Hurstwood's eye. He felt but very little misgiving, until he saw that Hurstwood was cautiously pretending not to see. Then some of the latter's impression forced itself upon him. He thought of Carrie and their last meeting. By George, he would have to explain this to Hurstwood. Such a chance half-hour with an old friend must not have anything more attached to it than it really warranted.
For the first time he was troubled. Here was a moral complication of which he could not possibly get the ends. Hurstwood would laugh at him for being a fickle boy. He would laugh with Hurstwood. Carrie would never hear, his present companion at table would never know, and yet he could not help feeling that he was getting the worst of it-there was some faint stigma attached, and he was not guilty. He broke up the dinner by becoming dull, and saw his companion on her car. Then he went home.
"He hasn't talked to me about any of these later flames," thought Hurstwood to himself. "He thinks I think he cares for the girl out there."
"He ought not to think I'm knocking around, since I have just introduced him out there," thought Drouet.
"I saw you," Hurstwood said, genially, the next time Drouet drifted in to his polished resort, from which he could not stay away. He raised his forefinger indicatively, as parents do to children.
"An old acquaintance of mine that I ran into just as I was coming up from the station," explained Drouet. "She used to be quite a beauty."
"Still attracts a little, eh?" returned the other, affecting to jest.
"Oh, no," said Drouet, "just couldn't escape her this time."
"How long are you here?" asked Hurstwood.
"Only a few days."
"You must bring the girl down and take dinner with me," he said. "I'm afraid you keep her cooped up out there. I'll get a box for Joe Jefferson."
"Not me," answered the drummer. "Sure I'll come."
This pleased Hurstwood immensely. He gave Drouet no credit for any feelings toward Carrie whatever. He envied him, and now, as he looked at the well-dressed jolly salesman, whom he so much liked, the gleam of the rival glowed in his eye. He began to "size up" Drouet from the standpoints of wit and fascination. He began to look to see where he was weak. There was no disputing that, whatever he might think of him as a good fellow, he felt a certain amount of contempt for him as a lover. He could hoodwink him all right. Why, if he would just let Carrie see one such little incident as that of Thursday, it would settle the matter. He ran on in thought, almost exulting, the while he laughed and chatted, and Drouet felt nothing. He had no power of analysing the glance and the atmosphere of a man like Hurstwood. He stood and smiled and accepted the invitation while his friend examined him with the eye of a hawk.
The object of this peculiarly involved comedy was not thinking of either. She was busy adjusting her thoughts and feelings to newer conditions, and was not in danger of suffering disturbing pangs from either quarter. One evening Drouet found her dressing herself before the glass.
"Cad," said he, catching her, "I believe you're getting vain."
"Nothing of the kind," she returned, smiling.
"Well, you're mighty pretty," he went on, slipping his arm around her. "Put on that navy-blue dress of yours and I'll take you to the show."
"Oh, I've promised Mrs. Hale to go with her to the Exposition to-night," she returned, apologetically.
"You did, eh?" he said, studying the situation abstractedly. "I wouldn't care to go to that myself."
"Well, I don't know," answered Carrie, puzzling, but not offering to break her promise in his favour.
Just then a knock came at their door and the maidservant handed a letter in.
"He says there's an answer expected," she explained.
"It's from Hurstwood," said Drouet, noting the superscription as he tore it open.
"You are to come down and see Joe Jefferson with me to-night," it ran in part. "It's my turn, as we agreed the other day. All other bets are off."
"Well, what do you say to this?" asked Drouet, innocently, while Carrie's mind bubbled with favourable replies.
"You had better decide, Charlie," she said, reservedly.
"I guess we had better go, if you can break that engagement upstairs," said Drouet.
"Oh, I can," returned Carrie without thinking.
Drouet selected writing paper while Carrie went to change her dress. She hardly explained to herself why this latest invitation appealed to her most.
"Shall I wear my hair as I did yesterday?" she asked, as she came out with several articles of apparel pending.
"Sure," he returned, pleasantly.
She was relieved to see that he felt nothing. She did not credit her willingness to go to any fascination Hurstwood held for her. It seemed that the combination of Hurstwood, Drouet, and herself was more agreeable than anything else that had been suggested. She arrayed herself most carefully and they started off, extending excuses upstairs.
"I say," said Hurstwood, as they came up the theatre lobby, "we are exceedingly charming this evening."
Carrie fluttered under his approving glance.
"Now, then," he said, leading the way up the foyer into the theatre.
If ever there was dressiness it was here. It was the personification of the old term spick and span.
"Did you ever see Jefferson?" he questioned, as he leaned toward Carrie in the box.
"I never did," she returned.
"He's delightful, delightful," he went on, giving the commonplace rendition of approval which such men know. He sent Drouet after a programme, and then discoursed to Carrie concerning Jefferson as he had heard of him. The former was pleased beyond expression, and was really hypnotised by the environment, the trappings of the box, the elegance of her companion. Several times their eyes accidentally met, and then there poured into hers such a flood of feeling as she had never before experienced. She could not for the moment explain it, for in the next glance or the next move of the hand there was seeming indifference, mingled only with the kindest attention.
Drouet shared in the conversation, but he was almost dull in comparison. Hurstwood entertained them both, and now it was driven into Carrie's mind that here was the superior man. She instinctively felt that he was stronger and higher, and yet withal so simple. By the end of the third act she was sure that Drouet was only a kindly soul, but otherwise defective. He sank every moment in her estimation by the strong comparison.
"I have had such a nice time," said Carrie, when it was all over and they were coming out.
"Yes, indeed," added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that a battle had been fought and his defences weakened. He was like the Emperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that his fairest provinces were being wrested from him.
"Well, you have saved me a dreary evening," returned Hurstwood. "Good-night."
He took Carrie's little hand, and a current of feeling swept from one to the other.
"I'm so tired," said Carrie, leaning back in the car when Drouet began to talk.
"Well, you rest a little while I smoke," he said, rising, and then he foolishly went to the forward platform of the car and left the game as it stood.
Chapter XII. OF THE LAMPS OF THE MANSIONS: THE AMBASSADOR PLEA
Mrs. Hurstwood was not aware of any of her husband's moral defections, though she might readily have suspected his tendencies, which she well understood. She was a woman upon whose action under provocation you could never count. Hurstwood, for one, had not the slightest idea of what she would do under certain circumstances. He had never seen her thoroughly aroused. In fact, she was not a woman who would fly into a passion. She had too little faith in mankind not to know that they were erring. She was too calculating to jeopardize any advantage she might gain in the way of information by fruitless clamour. Her wrath would never wreak itself in one fell blow. She would wait and brood, studying the details and adding to them until her power might be commensurate with her desire for revenge. At the same time, she would not delay to inflict any injury, big or little, which would wound the object of her revenge and still leave him uncertain as to the source of the evil. She was a cold, self-centred woman, with many a thought of her own which never found expression, not even by so much as the glint of an eye.
Hurstwood felt some of this in her nature, though he did not actually perceive it. He dwelt with her in peace and some satisfaction. He did not fear her in the least-there was no cause for it. She still took a faint pride in him, which was augmented by her desire to have her social integrity maintained. She was secretly somewhat pleased by the fact that much of her husband's property was in her name, a precaution which Hurstwood had taken when his home interests were somewhat more alluring than at present. His wife had not the slightest reason to feel that anything would ever go amiss with their household, and yet the shadows which run before gave her a thought of the good of it now and then. She was in a position to become refractory with considerable advantage, and Hurstwood conducted himself circumspectly because he felt that he could not be sure of anything once she became dissatisfied.
It so happened that on the night when Hurstwood, Carrie, and Drouet were in the box at McVickar's, George, Jr., was in the sixth row of the parquet with the daughter of H. B. Carmichael, the third partner of a wholesale dry-goods house of that city. Hurstwood did not see his son, for he sat, as was his wont, as far back as possible, leaving himself just partially visible, when he bent forward, to those within the first six rows in question. It was his wont to sit this way in every theatre-to make his personality as inconspicuous as possible where it would be no advantage to him to have it otherwise.
He never moved but what, if there was any danger of his conduct being misconstrued or ill-reported, he looked carefully about him and counted the cost of every inch of conspicuity.
The next morning at breakfast his son said:
"I saw you, Governor, last night."
"Were you at McVickar's?" said Hurstwood, with the best grace in the world.
"Yes," said young George.
"Who with?"
"Miss Carmichael."
Mrs. Hurstwood directed an inquiring glance at her husband, but could not judge from his appearance whether it was any more than a casual look into the theatre which was referred to.
"How was the play?" she inquired.
"Very good," returned Hurstwood, "only it's the same old thing, 'Rip Van Winkle.'"
"Whom did you go with?" queried his wife, with assumed indifference.
"Charlie Drouet and his wife. They are friends of Moy's, visiting here."
Owing to the peculiar nature of his position, such a disclosure as this would ordinarily create no difficulty. His wife took it for granted that his situation called for certain social movements in which she might not be included. But of late he had pleaded office duty on several occasions when his wife asked for his company to any evening entertainment. He had done so in regard to the very evening in question only the morning before.
"I thought you were going to be busy," she remarked, very carefully.
"So I was," he exclaimed. "I couldn't help the interruption, but I made up for it afterward by working until two."
This settled the discussion for the time being, but there was a residue of opinion which was not satisfactory. There was no time at which the claims of his wife could have been more unsatisfactorily pushed. For years he had been steadily modifying his matrimonial devotion, and found her company dull. Now that a new light shone upon the horizon, this older luminary paled in the west. He was satisfied to turn his face away entirely, and any call to look back was irksome.
She, on the contrary, was not at all inclined to accept anything less than a complete fulfilment of the letter of their relationship, though the spirit might be wanting.
"We are coming down town this afternoon," she remarked, a few days later. "I want you to come over to Kinsley's and meet Mr. Phillips and his wife. They're stopping at the Tremont, and we're going to show them around a little."
After the occurrence of Wednesday, he could not refuse, though the Phillips were about as uninteresting as vanity and ignorance could make them. He agreed, but it was with short grace. He was angry when he left the house.
"I'll put a stop to this," he thought. "I'm not going to be bothered fooling around with visitors when I have work to do."
Not long after this Mrs. Hurstwood came with a similar proposition, only it was to a matinée this time.
"My dear," he returned, "I haven't time. I'm too busy."
"You find time to go with other people, though," she replied, with considerable irritation.
"Nothing of the kind," he answered. "I can't avoid business relations, and that's all there is to it."
"Well, never mind," she exclaimed. Her lips tightened. The feeling of mutual antagonism was increased.
On the other hand, his interest in Drouet's little shop-girl grew in an almost evenly balanced proportion. That young lady, under the stress of her situation and the tutelage of her new friend, changed effectively. She had the aptitude of the struggler who seeks emancipation. The glow of a more showy life was not lost upon her. She did not grow in knowledge so much as she awakened in the matter of desire. Mrs. Hale's extended harangues upon the subjects of wealth and position taught her to distinguish between degrees of wealth. Mrs. Hale loved to drive in the afternoon in the sun when it was fine, and to satisfy her soul with a sight of those mansions and lawns which she could not afford. On the North Side had been erected a number of elegant mansions along what is now known as the North Shore Drive. The present lake wall of stone and granitoid was not then in place, but the road had been well laid out, the intermediate spaces of lawn were lovely to look upon, and the houses were thoroughly new and imposing. When the winter season had passed and the first fine days of the early spring appeared, Mrs. Hale secured a buggy for an afternoon and invited Carrie. They rode first through Lincoln Park and on far out towards Evanston, turning back at four and arriving at the north end of the Shore Drive at about five o'clock. At this time of year the days are still comparatively short, and the shadows of the evening were beginning to settle down upon the great city. Lamps were beginning to burn with that mellow radiance which seems almost watery and translucent to the eye. There was a softness in the air which speaks with an infinite delicacy of feeling to the flesh as well as to the soul. Carrie felt that it was a lovely day. She was ripened by it in spirit for many suggestions. As they drove along the smooth pavement an occasional carriage passed. She saw one stop and the footman dismount, opening the door for a gentleman who seemed to be leisurely returning from some afternoon pleasure. Across the broad lawns, now first freshening into green, she saw lamps faintly glowing upon rich interiors. Now it was but a chair, now a table, now an ornate corner, which met her eye, but it appealed to her as almost nothing else could. Such childish fancies as she had had of fairy palaces and kingly quarters now came back. She imagined that across these richly carved entrance-ways, where the globed and crystalled lamps shone upon panelled doors set with stained and designed panes of glass, was neither care nor unsatisfied desire. She was perfectly certain that here was happiness. If she could but stroll up yon broad walk, cross that rich entrance-way, which to her was of the beauty of a jewel, and sweep in grace and luxury to possession and command-oh! how quickly would sadness flee; how, in an instant, would the heartache end. She gazed and gazed, wondering, delighting, longing, and all the while the siren voice of the unrestful was whispering in her ear.
"If we could have such a home as that," said Mrs. Hale sadly, "how delightful it would be."
"And yet they do say," said Carrie, "that no one is ever happy."
She had heard so much of the canting philosophy of the grapeless fox.
"I notice," said Mrs. Hale, "that they all try mighty hard, though, to take their misery in a mansion."
When she came to her own rooms, Carrie saw their comparative insignificance. She was not so dull but that she could perceive they were but three small rooms in a moderately well-furnished boarding-house. She was not contrasting it now with what she had had, but what she had so recently seen. The glow of the palatial doors was still in her eye, the roll of cushioned carriages still in her ears. What, after all, was Drouet? What was she? At her window, she thought it over, rocking to and fro, and gazing out across the lamp-lit park toward the lamp-lit houses on Warren and Ashland avenues. She was too wrought up to care to go down to eat, too pensive to do aught but rock and sing. Some old tunes crept to her lips, and, as she sang them, her heart sank. She longed and longed and longed. It was now for the old cottage room in Columbia City, now the mansion upon the Shore Drive, now the fine dress of some lady, now the elegance of some scene. She was sad beyond measure, and yet uncertain, wishing, fancying. Finally, it seemed as if all her state was one of loneliness and forsakenness, and she could scarce refrain from trembling at the lip. She hummed and hummed as the moments went by, sitting in the shadow by the window, and was therein as happy, though she did not perceive it, as she ever would be.
While Carrie was still in this frame of mind, the house-servant brought up the intelligence that Mr. Hurstwood was in the parlour asking to see Mr. and Mrs. Drouet.
"I guess he doesn't know that Charlie is out of town," thought Carrie.
She had seen comparatively little of the manager during the winter, but had been kept constantly in mind of him by one thing and another, principally by the strong impression he had made. She was quite disturbed for the moment as to her appearance, but soon satisfied herself by the aid of the mirror, and went below.
Hurstwood was in his best form, as usual. He hadn't heard that Drouet was out of town. He was but slightly affected by the intelligence, and devoted himself to the more general topics which would interest Carrie. It was surprising-the ease with which he conducted a conversation. He was like every man who has had the advantage of practice and knows he has sympathy. He knew that Carrie listened to him pleasurably, and, without the least effort, he fell into a train of observation which absorbed her fancy. He drew up his chair and modulated his voice to such a degree that what he said seemed wholly confidential. He confined himself almost exclusively to his observation of men and pleasures. He had been here and there, he had seen this and that. Somehow he made Carrie wish to see similar things, and all the while kept her aware of himself. She could not shut out the consciousness of his individuality and presence for a moment. He would raise his eyes slowly in smiling emphasis of something, and she was fixed by their magnetism. He would draw out, with the easiest grace, her approval. Once he touched her hand for emphasis and she only smiled. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere which suffused her being. He was never dull for a minute, and seemed to make her clever. At least, she brightened under his influence until all her best side was exhibited. She felt that she was more clever with him than with others. At least, he seemed to find so much in her to applaud. There was not the slightest touch of patronage. Drouet was full of it.
There had been something so personal, so subtle, in each meeting between them, both when Drouet was present and when he was absent, that Carrie could not speak of it without feeling a sense of difficulty. She was no talker. She could never arrange her thoughts in fluent order. It was always a matter of feeling with her, strong and deep. Each time there had been no sentence of importance which she could relate, and as for the glances and sensations, what woman would reveal them? Such things had never been between her and Drouet. As a matter of fact, they could never be. She had been dominated by distress and the enthusiastic forces of relief which Drouet represented at an opportune moment when she yielded to him. Now she was persuaded by secret current feelings which Drouet had never understood. Hurstwood's glance was as effective as the spoken words of a lover, and more. They called for no immediate decision, and could not be answered.
People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.
In this conversation she heard, instead of his words, the voices of the things which he represented. How suave was the counsel of his appearance! How feelingly did his superior state speak for itself! The growing desire he felt for her lay upon her spirit as a gentle hand. She did not need to tremble at all, because it was invisible; she did not need to worry over what other people would say-what she herself would say-because it had no tangibility. She was being pleaded with, persuaded, led into denying old rights and assuming new ones, and yet there were no words to prove it. Such conversation as was indulged in held the same relationship to the actual mental enactments of the twain that the low music of the orchestra does to the dramatic incident which it is used to cover.
"Have you ever seen the houses along the Lake Shore on the North Side?" asked Hurstwood.
"Why, I was just over there this afternoon-Mrs. Hale and I. Aren't they beautiful?"
"They're very fine," he answered.
"Oh, me," said Carrie, pensively. "I wish I could live in such a place."
"You're not happy," said Hurstwood, slowly, after a slight pause.
He had raised his eyes solemnly and was looking into her own. He assumed that he had struck a deep chord. Now was a slight chance to say a word in his own behalf. He leaned over quietly and continued his steady gaze. He felt the critical character of the period. She endeavoured to stir, but it was useless. The whole strength of a man's nature was working. He had good cause to urge him on. He looked and looked, and the longer the situation lasted the more difficult it became. The little shop-girl was getting into deep water. She was letting her few supports float away from her.
"Oh," she said at last, "you mustn't look at me like that."
"I can't help it," he answered.
She relaxed a little and let the situation endure, giving him strength.
"You are not satisfied with life, are you?"
"No," she answered, weakly.
He saw he was the master of the situation-he felt it. He reached over and touched her hand.
"You mustn't," she exclaimed, jumping up.
"I didn't intend to," he answered, easily.
She did not run away, as she might have done. She did not terminate the interview, but he drifted off into a pleasant field of thought with the readiest grace. Not long after he rose to go, and she felt that he was in power. "You mustn't feel bad," he said, kindly; "things will straighten out in the course of time."
She made no answer, because she could think of nothing to say.
"We are good friends, aren't we?" he said, extending his hand.
"Yes," she answered.
"Not a word, then, until I see you again."
He retained a hold on her hand.
"I can't promise," she said, doubtfully.
"You must be more generous than that," he said, in such a simple way that she was touched.
"Let's not talk about it any more," she returned.
"All right," he said, brightening.
He went down the steps and into his cab. Carrie closed the door and ascended into her room. She undid her broad lace collar before the mirror and unfastened her pretty alligator belt which she had recently bought.
"I'm getting terrible," she said, honestly affected by a feeling of trouble and shame. "I don't seem to do anything right."
She unloosed her hair after a time, and let it hang in loose brown waves. Her mind was going over the events of the evening.
"I don't know," she murmured at last, "what I can do."
"Well," said Hurstwood as he rode away, "she likes me all right; that I know."
The aroused manager whistled merrily for a good four miles to his office an old melody that he had not recalled for fifteen years.
Chapter XIII. HIS CREDENTIALS ACCEPTED: A BABEL OF TONGUES
It was not quite two days after the scene between Carrie and Hurstwood in the Ogden Place parlour before he again put in his appearance. He had been thinking almost uninterruptedly of her. Her leniency had, in a way, inflamed his regard. He felt that he must succeed with her, and that speedily.
The reason for his interest, not to say fascination, was deeper than mere desire. It was a flowering out of feelings which had been withering in dry and almost barren soil for many years. It is probable that Carrie represented a better order of woman than had ever attracted him before. He had had no love affair since that which culminated in his marriage, and since then time and the world had taught him how raw and erroneous was his original judgment. Whenever he thought of it, he told himself that, if he had it to do over again, he would never marry such a woman. At the same time, his experience with women in general had lessened his respect for the sex. He maintained a cynical attitude, well grounded on numerous experiences. Such women as he had known were of nearly one type, selfish, ignorant, flashy. The wives of his friends were not inspiring to look upon. His own wife had developed a cold, commonplace nature which to him was anything but pleasing. What he knew of that under-world where grovel the beat-men of society had hardened his nature. He looked upon most women with suspicion-a single eye to the utility of beauty and dress. He followed them with a keen, suggestive glance. At the same time, he was not so dull but that a good woman commanded his respect. Personally, he did not attempt to analyse the marvel of a saintly woman. He would take off his hat, and would silence the light-tongued and the vicious in her presence-much as the Irish keeper of a Bowery hall will humble himself before a Sister of Mercy, and pay toll to charity with a willing and reverent hand. But he would not think much upon the question of why he did so.
A man in his situation who comes, after a long round of worthless or hardening experiences, upon a young, unsophisticated, innocent soul, is apt either to hold aloof, out of a sense of his own remoteness, or to draw near and become fascinated and elated by his discovery. It is only by a roundabout process that such men ever do draw near such a girl. They have no method, no understanding of how to ingratiate themselves in youthful favour, save when they find virtue in the toils. If, unfortunately, the fly has got caught in the net, the spider can come forth and talk business upon its own terms. So when maidenhood has wandered into the moil of the city, when it is brought within the circle of the "rounder" and the roué, even though it be at the outermost rim, they can come forth and use their alluring arts.
Hurstwood had gone, at Drouet's invitation, to meet a new baggage of fine clothes and pretty features. He entered, expecting to indulge in an evening of lightsome frolic, and then lose track of the newcomer forever. Instead he found a woman whose youth and beauty attracted him. In the mild light of Carrie's eye was nothing of the calculation of the mistress. In the diffident manner was nothing of the art of the courtesan. He saw at once that a mistake had been made, that some difficult conditions had pushed this troubled creature into his presence, and his interest was enlisted. Here sympathy sprang to the rescue, but it was not unmixed with selfishness. He wanted to win Carrie because he thought her fate mingled with his was better than if it were united with Drouet's. He envied the drummer his conquest as he had never envied any man in all the course of his experience.
Carrie was certainly better than this man, as she was superior, mentally, to Drouet. She came fresh from the air of the village, the light of the country still in her eye. Here was neither guile nor rapacity. There were slight inherited traits of both in her, but they were rudimentary. She was too full of wonder and desire to be greedy. She still looked about her upon the great maze of the city without understanding. Hurstwood felt the bloom and the youth. He picked her as he would the fresh fruit of a tree. He felt as fresh in her presence as one who is taken out of the flash of summer to the first cool breath of spring.
Carrie, left alone since the scene in question, and having no one with whom to counsel, had at first wandered from one strange mental conclusion to another, until at last, tired out, she gave it up. She owed something to Drouet, she thought. It did not seem more than yesterday that he had aided her when she was worried and distressed. She had the kindliest feelings for him in every way. She gave him credit for his good looks, his generous feelings, and even, in fact, failed to recollect his egotism when he was absent; but she could not feel any binding influence keeping her for him as against all others. In fact, such a thought had never had any grounding, even in Drouet's desires.
The truth is, that this goodly drummer carried the doom of all enduring relationships in his own lightsome manner and unstable fancy. He went merrily on, assured that he was alluring all, that affection followed tenderly in his wake, that things would endure unchangingly for his pleasure. When he missed some old face, or found some door finally shut to him, it did not grieve him deeply. He was too young, too successful. He would remain thus young in spirit until he was dead.
As for Hurstwood, he was alive with thoughts and feelings concerning Carrie. He had no definite plans regarding her, but he was determined to make her confess an affection for him. He thought he saw in her drooping eye, her unstable glance, her wavering manner, the symptoms of a budding passion. He wanted to stand near her and make her lay her hand in his-he wanted to find out what her next step would be-what the next sign of feeling for him would be. Such anxiety and enthusiasm had not affected him for years. He was a youth again in feeling-a cavalier in action.
In his position opportunity for taking his evenings out was excellent. He was a most faithful worker in general, and a man who commanded the confidence of his employers in so far as the distribution of his time was concerned. He could take such hours off as he chose, for it was well known that he fulfilled his managerial duties successfully, whatever time he might take. His grace, tact, and ornate appearance gave the place an air which was most essential, while at the same time his long experience made him a most excellent judge of its stock necessities. Bartenders and assistants might come and go, singly or in groups, but, so long as he was present, the host of old-time customers would barely notice the change. He gave the place the atmosphere to which they were used. Consequently, he arranged his hours very much to suit himself, taking now an afternoon, now an evening, but invariably returning between eleven and twelve to witness the last hour or two of the day's business and look after the closing details.
"You see that things are safe and all the employees are out when you go home, George," Moy had once remarked to him, and he never once, in all the period of his long service, neglected to do this. Neither of the owners had for years been in the resort after five in the afternoon, and yet their manager as faithfully fulfilled this request as if they had been there regularly to observe.
On this Friday afternoon, scarcely two days after his previous visit, he made up his mind to see Carrie. He could not stay away longer.
"Evans," he said, addressing the head barkeeper, "if any one calls, I will be back between four and five."
He hurried to Madison Street and boarded a horse-car, which carried him to Ogden Place in half an hour.
Carrie had thought of going for a walk, and had put on a light grey woollen dress with a jaunty double-breasted jacket. She had out her hat and gloves, and was fastening a white lace tie about her throat when the housemaid brought up the information that Mr. Hurstwood wished to see her.
She started slightly at the announcement, but told the girl to say that she would come down in a moment, and proceeded to hasten her dressing.
Carrie could not have told herself at this moment whether she was glad or sorry that the impressive manager was awaiting her presence. She was slightly flurried and tingling in the cheeks, but it was more nervousness than either fear or favour. She did not try to conjecture what the drift of the conversation would be. She only felt that she must be careful, and that Hurstwood had an indefinable fascination for her. Then she gave her tie its last touch with her fingers and went below.
The deep-feeling manager was himself a little strained in the nerves by the thorough consciousness of his mission. He felt that he must make a strong play on this occasion, but now that the hour was come, and he heard Carrie's feet upon the stair, his nerve failed him. He sank a little in determination, for he was not so sure, after all, what her opinion might be.
When she entered the room, however, her appearance gave him courage. She looked simple and charming enough to strengthen the daring of any lover. Her apparent nervousness dispelled his own.
"How are you?" he said, easily. "I could not resist the temptation to come out this afternoon, it was so pleasant."
"Yes," said Carrie, halting before him, "I was just preparing to go for a walk myself."
"Oh, were you?" he said. "Supposing, then, you get your hat and we both go?"
They crossed the park and went west along Washington Boulevard, beautiful with its broad macadamised road, and large frame houses set back from the sidewalks. It was a street where many of the more prosperous residents of the West Side lived, and Hurstwood could not help feeling nervous over the publicity of it. They had gone but a few blocks when a livery stable sign in one of the side streets solved the difficulty for him. He would take her to drive along the new Boulevard.
The Boulevard at that time was little more than a country road. The part he intended showing her was much farther out on this same West Side, where there was scarcely a house. It connected Douglas Park with Washington or South Park, and was nothing more than a neatly made road, running due south for some five miles over an open, grassy prairie, and then due east over the same kind of prairie for the same distance. There was not a house to be encountered anywhere along the larger part of the route, and any conversation would be pleasantly free of interruption.
At the stable he picked a gentle horse, and they were soon out of range of either public observation or hearing.
"Can you drive?" he said, after a time.
"I never tried," said Carrie.
He put the reins in her hand, and folded his arms.
"You see there's nothing to it much," he said, smilingly.
"Not when you have a gentle horse," said Carrie.
"You can handle a horse as well as any one, after a little practice," he added, encouragingly.
He had been looking for some time for a break in the conversation when he could give it a serious turn. Once or twice he had held his peace, hoping that in silence her thoughts would take the colour of his own, but she had lightly continued the subject. Presently, however, his silence controlled the situation. The drift of his thoughts began to tell. He gazed fixedly at nothing in particular, as if he were thinking of something which concerned her not at all. His thoughts, however, spoke for themselves. She was very much aware that a climax was pending.
"Do you know," he said, "I have spent the happiest evenings in years since I have known you?"
"Have you?" she said, with assumed airiness, but still excited by the conviction which the tone of his voice carried.
"I was going to tell you the other evening," he added, "but somehow the opportunity slipped away."
Carrie was listening without attempting to reply. She could think of nothing worth while to say. Despite all the ideas concerning right which had troubled her vaguely since she had last seen him, she was now influenced again strongly in his favour.
"I came out here to-day," he went on, solemnly, "to tell you just how I feel-to see if you wouldn't listen to me."
Hurstwood was something of a romanticist after his kind. He was capable of strong feelings-often poetic ones-and under a stress of desire, such as the present, he waxed eloquent. That is, his feelings and his voice were coloured with that seeming repression and pathos which is the essence of eloquence.
"You know," he said, putting his hand on her arm, and keeping a strange silence while he formulated words, "that I love you?" Carrie did not stir at the words. She was bound up completely in the man's atmosphere. He would have churchlike silence in order to express his feelings, and she kept it. She did not move her eyes from the flat, open scene before her. Hurstwood waited for a few moments, and then repeated the words.
"You must not say that," she said, weakly.
Her words were not convincing at all. They were the result of a feeble thought that something ought to be said. He paid no attention to them whatever.
"Carrie," he said, using her first name with sympathetic familiarity, "I want you to love me. You don't know how much I need some one to waste a little affection on me. I am practically alone. There is nothing in my life that is pleasant or delightful. It's all work and worry with people who are nothing to me."
As he said this, Hurstwood really imagined that his state was pitiful. He had the ability to get off at a distance and view himself objectively-of seeing what he wanted to see in the things which made up his existence. Now, as he spoke, his voice trembled with that peculiar vibration which is the result of tensity. It went ringing home to his companion's heart.
"Why, I should think," she said, turning upon him large eyes which were full of sympathy and feeling, "that you would be very happy. You know so much of the world."
"That is it," he said, his voice dropping to a soft minor, "I know too much of the world."
It was an important thing to her to hear one so well-positioned and powerful speaking in this manner. She could not help feeling the strangeness of her situation. How was it that, in so little a while, the narrow life of the country had fallen from her as a garment, and the city, with all its mystery, taken its place? Here was this greatest mystery, the man of money and affairs sitting beside her, appealing to her. Behold, he had ease and comfort, his strength was great, his position high, his clothing rich, and yet he was appealing to her. She could formulate no thought which would be just and right. She troubled herself no more upon the matter. She only basked in the warmth of his feeling, which was as a grateful blaze to one who is cold. Hurstwood glowed with his own intensity, and the heat of his passion was already melting the wax of his companion's scruples.
"You think," he said, "I am happy; that I ought not to complain? If you were to meet all day with people who care absolutely nothing about you, if you went day after day to a place where there was nothing but show and indifference, if there was not one person in all those you knew to whom you could appeal for sympathy or talk to with pleasure, perhaps you would be unhappy too."
He was striking a chord now which found sympathetic response in her own situation. She knew what it was to meet with people who were indifferent, to walk alone amid so many who cared absolutely nothing about you. Had not she? Was not she at this very moment quite alone? Who was there among all whom she knew to whom she could appeal for sympathy? Not one. She was left to herself to brood and wonder.
"I could be content," went on Hurstwood, "if I had you to love me. If I had you to go to; you for a companion. As it is, I simply move about from place to place without any satisfaction. Time hangs heavily on my hands. Before you came I did nothing but idle and drift into anything that offered itself. Since you came-well, I've had you to think about."
The old illusion that here was some one who needed her aid began to grow in Carrie's mind. She truly pitied this sad, lonely figure. To think that all his fine state should be so barren for want of her; that he needed to make such an appeal when she herself was lonely and without anchor. Surely, this was too bad.
"I am not very bad," he said, apologetically, as if he owed it to her to explain on this score. "You think, probably, that I roam around, and get into all sorts of evil? I have been rather reckless, but I could easily come out of that. I need you to draw me back, if my life ever amounts to anything."
Carrie looked at him with the tenderness which virtue ever feels in its hope of reclaiming vice. How could such a man need reclaiming? His errors, what were they, that she could correct? Small they must be, where all was so fine. At worst, they were gilded affairs, and with what leniency are gilded errors viewed. He put himself in such a lonely light that she was deeply moved.
"Is it that way?" she mused.
He slipped his arm about her waist, and she could not find the heart to draw away. With his free hand he seized upon her fingers. A breath of soft spring wind went bounding over the road, rolling some brown twigs of the previous autumn before it. The horse paced leisurely on, unguided.
"Tell me," he said, softly, "that you love me."
Her eyes fell consciously.
"Own to it, dear," he said, feelingly; "you do, don't you?"
She made no answer, but he felt his victory.
"Tell me," he said, richly, drawing her so close that their lips were near together. He pressed her hand warmly, and then released it to touch her cheek.
"You do?" he said, pressing his lips to her own.
For answer, her lips replied.
"Now," he said, joyously, his fine eyes ablaze, "you're my own girl, aren't you?"
By way of further conclusion, her head lay softly upon his shoulder.
Chapter XIV. WITH EYES AND NOT SEEING: ONE INFLUENCE WANES
Carrie in her rooms that evening was in a fine glow, physically and mentally. She was deeply rejoicing in her affection for Hurstwood and his love, and looked forward with fine fancy to their next meeting Sunday night. They had agreed, without any feeling of enforced secrecy, that she should come down town and meet him, though, after all, the need of it was the cause.
Mrs. Hale, from her upper window, saw her come in.
"Um," she thought to herself, "she goes riding with another man when her husband is out of the city. He had better keep an eye on her."
The truth is that Mrs. Hale was not the only one who had a thought on this score. The housemaid who had welcomed Hurstwood had her opinion also. She had no particular regard for Carrie, whom she took to be cold and disagreeable. At the same time, she had a fancy for the merry and easy-mannered Drouet, who threw her a pleasant remark now and then, and in other ways extended her the evidence of that regard which he had for all members of the sex. Hurstwood was more reserved and critical in his manner. He did not appeal to this bodiced functionary in the same pleasant way. She wondered that he came so frequently, that Mrs. Drouet should go out with him this afternoon when Mr. Drouet was absent. She gave vent to her opinions in the kitchen where the cook was. As a result, a hum of gossip was set going which moved about the house in that secret manner common to gossip.
Carrie, now that she had yielded sufficiently to Hurstwood to confess her affection, no longer troubled about her attitude towards him. Temporarily she gave little thought to Drouet, thinking only of the dignity and grace of her lover and of his consuming affection for her. On the first evening, she did little but go over the details of the afternoon. It was the first time her sympathies had ever been thoroughly aroused, and they threw a new light on her character. She had some power of initiative, latent before, which now began to exert itself. She looked more practically upon her state and began to see glimmerings of a way out. Hurstwood seemed a drag in the direction of honour. Her feelings were exceedingly creditable, in that they constructed out of these recent developments something which conquered freedom from dishonour. She had no idea what Hurstwood's next word would be. She only took his affection to be a fine thing, and appended better, more generous results accordingly.
As yet, Hurstwood had only a thought of pleasure without responsibility. He did not feel that he was doing anything to complicate his life. His position was secure, his home-life, if not satisfactory, was at least undisturbed, his personal liberty rather untrammelled. Carrie's love represented only so much added pleasure. He would enjoy this new gift over and above his ordinary allowance of pleasure. He would be happy with her and his own affairs would go on as they had, undisturbed.
On Sunday evening Carrie dined with him at a place he had selected in East Adams Street, and thereafter they took a cab to what was then a pleasant evening resort out on Cottage Grove Avenue near 39th Street. In the process of his declaration he soon realised that Carrie took his love upon a higher basis than he had anticipated. She kept him at a distance in a rather earnest way, and submitted only to those tender tokens of affection which better become the inexperienced lover. Hurstwood saw that she was not to be possessed for the asking, and deferred pressing his suit too warmly.
Since he feigned to believe in her married state he found that he had to carry out the part. His triumph, he saw, was still at a little distance. How far he could not guess.
They were returning to Ogden Place in the cab, when he asked:
"When will I see you again?"
"I don't know," she answered, wondering herself.
"Why not come down to The Fair," he suggested, "next Tuesday?"
She shook her head.
"Not so soon," she answered.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he added. "I'll write you, care of this West Side Post-office. Could you call next Tuesday?"
Carrie assented.
The cab stopped one door out of the way according to his call.
"Good-night," he whispered, as the cab rolled away.
Unfortunately for the smooth progression of this affair, Drouet returned. Hurstwood was sitting in his imposing little office the next afternoon when he saw Drouet enter.
"Why, hello, Charles," he called affably; "back again?"
"Yes," smiled Drouet, approaching and looking in at the door.
Hurstwood arose.
"Well," he said, looking the drummer over, "rosy as ever, eh?"
They began talking of the people they knew and things that had happened.
"Been home yet?" finally asked Hurstwood.
"No, I am going, though," said Drouet.
"I remembered the little girl out there," said Hurstwood, "and called once. Thought you wouldn't want her left quite alone."
"Right you are," agreed Drouet. "How is she?"
"Very well," said Hurstwood. "Rather anxious about you though. You'd better go out now and cheer her up."
"I will," said Drouet, smilingly.
"Like to have you both come down and go to the show with me Wednesday," concluded Hurstwood at parting.
"Thanks, old man," said his friend, "I'll see what the girl says and let you know."
They separated in the most cordial manner.
"There's a nice fellow," Drouet thought to himself as he turned the corner towards Madison.
"Drouet is a good fellow," Hurstwood thought to himself as he went back into his office, "but he's no man for Carrie."
The thought of the latter turned his mind into a most pleasant vein, and he wondered how he would get ahead of the drummer.
When Drouet entered Carrie's presence, he caught her in his arms as usual, but she responded to his kiss with a tremour of opposition.
"Well," he said, "I had a great trip."
"Did you? How did you come out with that La Crosse man you were telling me about?"
"Oh, fine; sold him a complete line. There was another fellow there, representing Burnstein, a regular hook-nosed sheeny, but he wasn't in it. I made him look like nothing at all."
As he undid his collar and unfastened his studs, preparatory to washing his face and changing his clothes, he dilated upon his trip. Carrie could not help listening with amusement to his animated descriptions.
"I tell you," he said, "I surprised the people at the office. I've sold more goods this last quarter than any other man of our house on the road. I sold three thousand dollars' worth in La Crosse."
He plunged his face in a basin of water, and puffed and blew as he rubbed his neck and ears with his hands, while Carrie gazed upon him with mingled thoughts of recollection and present judgment. He was still wiping his face, when he continued:
"I'm going to strike for a raise in June. They can afford to pay it, as much business as I turn in. I'll get it too, don't you forget."
"I hope you do," said Carrie.
"And then if that little real estate deal I've got on goes through, we'll get married," he said with a great show of earnestness, the while he took his place before the mirror and began brushing his hair.
"I don't believe you ever intend to marry me, Charlie," Carrie said ruefully. The recent protestations of Hurstwood had given her courage to say this.
"Oh, yes I do-course I do-what put that into your head?"
He had stopped his trifling before the mirror now and crossed over to her. For the first time Carrie felt as if she must move away from him.
"But you've been saying that so long," she said, looking with her pretty face upturned into his.
"Well, and I mean it too, but it takes money to live as I want to. Now, when I get this increase, I can come pretty near fixing things all right, and I'll do it. Now, don't you worry, girlie."
He patted her reassuringly upon the shoulder, but Carrie felt how really futile had been her hopes. She could clearly see that this easy-going soul intended no move in her behalf. He was simply letting things drift because he preferred the free round of his present state to any legal trammellings.
In contrast, Hurstwood appeared strong and sincere. He had no easy manner of putting her off. He sympathised with her and showed her what her true value was. He needed her, while Drouet did not care.
"Oh, no," she said remorsefully, her tone reflecting some of her own success and more of her helplessness, "you never will."
"Well, you wait a little while and see," he concluded. "I'll marry you all right."
Carrie looked at him and felt justified. She was looking for something which would calm her conscience, and here it was, a light, airy disregard of her claims upon his justice. He had faithfully promised to marry her, and this was the way he fulfilled his promise.
"Say," he said, after he had, as he thought, pleasantly disposed of the marriage question, "I saw Hurstwood to-day, and he wants us to go to the theatre with him."
Carrie started at the name, but recovered quickly enough to avoid notice.
"When?" she asked, with assumed indifference.
"Wednesday. We'll go, won't we?"
"If you think so," she answered, her manner being so enforcedly reserved as to almost excite suspicion. Drouet noticed something but he thought it was due to her feelings concerning their talk about marriage. "He called once, he said."
"Yes," said Carrie, "he was out here Sunday evening."
"Was he?" said Drouet. "I thought from what he said that he had called a week or so ago."
"So he did," answered Carrie, who was wholly unaware of what conversation her lovers might have held. She was all at sea mentally, and fearful of some entanglement which might ensue from what she would answer.
"Oh, then he called twice?" said Drouet, the first shade of misunderstanding showing in his face.
"Yes," said Carrie innocently, feeling now that Hurstwood must have mentioned but one call.
Drouet imagined that he must have misunderstood his friend. He did not attach particular importance to the information, after all.
"What did he have to say?" he queried, with slightly increased curiosity.
"He said he came because he thought I might be lonely. You hadn't been in there so long he wondered what had become of you."
"George is a fine fellow," said Drouet, rather gratified by his conception of the manager's interest. "Come on and we'll go out to dinner."
When Hurstwood saw that Drouet was back he wrote at once to Carrie, saying:
"I told him I called on you, dearest, when he was away. I did not say how often, but he probably thought once. Let me know of anything you may have said. Answer by special messenger when you get this, and, darling, I must see you. Let me know if you can't meet me at Jackson and Throop Streets Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock. I want to speak with you before we meet at the theatre."
Carrie received this Tuesday morning when she called at the West Side branch of the post-office, and answered at once.
"I said you called twice," she wrote. "He didn't seem to mind. I will try and be at Throop Street if nothing interferes. I seem to be getting very bad. It's wrong to act as I do, I know."
Hurstwood, when he met her as agreed, reassured her on this score.
"You mustn't worry, sweetheart," he said. "Just as soon as he goes on the road again we will arrange something. We'll fix it so that you won't have to deceive any one."
Carrie imagined that he would marry her at once, though he had not directly said so, and her spirits rose. She proposed to make the best of the situation until Drouet left again.
"Don't show any more interest in me than you ever have," Hurstwood counselled concerning the evening at the theatre.
"You mustn't look at me steadily then," she answered, mindful of the power of his eyes.
"I won't," he said, squeezing her hand at parting and giving the glance she had just cautioned against.
"There," she said playfully, pointing a finger at him.
"The show hasn't begun yet," he returned.
He watched her walk from him with tender solicitation. Such youth and prettiness reacted upon him more subtly than wine.
At the theatre things passed as they had in Hurstwood's favour. If he had been pleasing to Carrie before, how much more so was he now. His grace was more permeating because it found a readier medium. Carrie watched his every movement with pleasure. She almost forgot poor Drouet, who babbled on as if he were the host.
Hurstwood was too clever to give the slightest indication of a change. He paid, if anything, more attention to his old friend than usual, and yet in no way held him up to that subtle ridicule which a lover in favour may so secretly practise before the mistress of his heart. If anything, he felt the injustice of the game as it stood, and was not cheap enough to add to it the slightest mental taunt.
Only the play produced an ironical situation, and this was due to Drouet alone.
The scene was one in "The Covenant," in which the wife listened to the seductive voice of a lover in the absence of her husband.
"Served him right," said Drouet afterward, even in view of her keen expiation of her error. "I haven't any pity for a man who would be such a chump as that."
"Well, you never can tell," returned Hurstwood gently. "He probably thought he was right."
"Well, a man ought to be more attentive than that to his wife if he wants to keep her."
They had come out of the lobby and made their way through the showy crush about the entrance way.
"Say, mister," said a voice at Hurstwood's side, "would you mind giving me the price of a bed?"
Hurstwood was interestedly remarking to Carrie.
"Honest to God, mister, I'm without a place to sleep."
The plea was that of a gaunt-faced man of about thirty, who looked the picture of privation and wretchedness. Drouet was the first to see. He handed over a dime with an upwelling feeling of pity in his heart. Hurstwood scarcely noticed the incident. Carrie quickly forgot.
Chapter XV. THE IRK OF THE OLD TIES: THE MAGIC OF YOUTH
The complete ignoring by Hurstwood of his own home came with the growth of his affection for Carrie. His actions, in all that related to his family, were of the most perfunctory kind. He sat at breakfast with his wife and children, absorbed in his own fancies, which reached far without the realm of their interests. He read his paper, which was heightened in interest by the shallowness of the themes discussed by his son and daughter. Between himself and his wife ran a river of indifference.
Now that Carrie had come, he was in a fair way to be blissful again. There was delight in going down town evenings. When he walked forth in the short days, the street lamps had a merry twinkle. He began to experience the almost forgotten feeling which hastens the lover's feet. When he looked at his fine clothes, he saw them with her eyes-and her eyes were young.
When in the flush of such feelings he heard his wife's voice, when the insistent demands of matrimony recalled him from dreams to a stale practice, how it grated. He then knew that this was a chain which bound his feet.
"George," said Mrs. Hurstwood, in that tone of voice which had long since come to be associated in his mind with demands, "we want you to get us a season ticket to the races."
"Do you want to go to all of them?" he said with a rising inflection.
"Yes," she answered.
The races in question were soon to open at Washington Park, on the South Side, and were considered quite society affairs among those who did not affect religious rectitude and conservatism. Mrs. Hurstwood had never asked for a whole season ticket before, but this year certain considerations decided her to get a box. For one thing, one of her neighbours, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, who were possessors of money, made out of the coal business, had done so. In the next place, her favourite physician, Dr. Beale, a gentleman inclined to horses and betting, had talked with her concerning his intention to enter a two-year-old in the Derby. In the third place, she wished to exhibit Jessica, who was gaining in maturity and beauty, and whom she hoped to marry to a man of means. Her own desire to be about in such things and parade among her acquaintances and common throng was as much an incentive as anything.
Hurstwood thought over the proposition a few moments without answering. They were in the sitting room on the second floor, waiting for supper. It was the evening of his engagement with Carrie and Drouet to see "The Covenant," which had brought him home to make some alterations in his dress.
"You're sure separate tickets wouldn't do as well?" he asked, hesitating to say anything more rugged.
"No," she replied impatiently.
"Well," he said, taking offence at her manner, "you needn't get mad about it. I'm just asking you."
"I'm not mad," she snapped. "I'm merely asking you for a season ticket."
"And I'm telling you," he returned, fixing a clear, steady eye on her, "that it's no easy thing to get. I'm not sure whether the manager will give it to me."
He had been thinking all the time of his "pull" with the race-track magnates.
"We can buy it then," she exclaimed sharply.
"You talk easy," he said. "A season family ticket costs one hundred and fifty dollars."
"I'll not argue with you," she replied with determination. "I want the ticket and that's all there is to it."
She had risen, and now walked angrily out of the room.
"Well, you get it then," he said grimly, though in a modified tone of voice.
As usual, the table was one short that evening.
The next morning he had cooled down considerably, and later the ticket was duly secured, though it did not heal matters. He did not mind giving his family a fair share of all that he earned, but he did not like to be forced to provide against his will.
"Did you know, mother," said Jessica another day, "the Spencers are getting ready to go away?"
"No. Where, I wonder?"
"Europe," said Jessica. "I met Georgine yesterday and she told me. She just put on more airs about it."
"Did she say when?"
"Monday, I think. They'll get a notice in the papers again-they always do."
"Never mind," said Mrs. Hurstwood consolingly, "we'll go one of these days."
Hurstwood moved his eyes over the paper slowly, but said nothing.
"'We sail for Liverpool from New York,'" Jessica exclaimed, mocking her acquaintance. "'Expect to spend most of the "summah" in France,'-vain thing. As if it was anything to go to Europe."
"It must be if you envy her so much," put in Hurstwood.
It grated upon him to see the feeling his daughter displayed.
"Don't worry over them, my dear," said Mrs. Hurstwood.
"Did George get off?" asked Jessica of her mother another day, thus revealing something that Hurstwood had heard nothing about.
"Where has he gone?" he asked, looking up. He had never before been kept in ignorance concerning departures.
"He was going to Wheaton," said Jessica, not noticing the slight put upon her father.
"What's out there?" he asked, secretly irritated and chagrined to think that he should be made to pump for information in this manner.
"A tennis match," said Jessica.
"He didn't say anything to me," Hurstwood concluded, finding it difficult to refrain from a bitter tone.
"I guess he must have forgotten," exclaimed his wife blandly. In the past he had always commanded a certain amount of respect, which was a compound of appreciation and awe. The familiarity which in part still existed between himself and his daughter he had courted. As it was, it did not go beyond the light assumption of words. The tone was always modest. Whatever had been, however, had lacked affection, and now he saw that he was losing track of their doings. His knowledge was no longer intimate. He sometimes saw them at table, and sometimes did not. He heard of their doings occasionally, more often not. Some days he found that he was all at sea as to what they were talking about-things they had arranged to do or that they had done in his absence. More affecting was the feeling that there were little things going on of which he no longer heard. Jessica was beginning to feel that her affairs were her own. George, Jr., flourished about as if he were a man entirely and must needs have private matters. All this Hurstwood could see, and it left a trace of feeling, for he was used to being considered-in his official position, at least-and felt that his importance should not begin to wane here. To darken it all, he saw the same indifference and independence growing in his wife, while he looked on and paid the bills.
He consoled himself with the thought, however, that, after all, he was not without affection. Things might go as they would at his house, but he had Carrie outside of it. With his mind's eye he looked into her comfortable room in Ogden Place, where he had spent several such delightful evenings, and thought how charming it would be when Drouet was disposed of entirely and she was waiting evenings in cosey little quarters for him. That no cause would come up whereby Drouet would be led to inform Carrie concerning his married state, he felt hopeful. Things were going so smoothly that he believed they would not change. Shortly now he would persuade Carrie and all would be satisfactory.
The day after their theatre visit he began writing her regularly-a letter every morning, and begging her to do as much for him. He was not literary by any means, but experience of the world and his growing affection gave him somewhat of a style. This he exercised at his office desk with perfect deliberation. He purchased a box of delicately coloured and scented writing paper in monogram, which he kept locked in one of the drawers. His friends now wondered at the cleric and very official-looking nature of his position. The five bartenders viewed with respect the duties which could call a man to do so much desk-work and penmanship.
Hurstwood surprised himself with his fluency. By the natural law which governs all effort, what he wrote reacted upon him. He began to feel those subtleties which he could find words to express. With every expression came increased conception. Those inmost breathings which there found words took hold upon him. He thought Carrie worthy of all the affection he could there express.
Carrie was indeed worth loving if ever youth and grace are to command that token of acknowledgment from life in their bloom. Experience had not yet taken away that freshness of the spirit which is the charm of the body. Her soft eyes contained in their liquid lustre no suggestion of the knowledge of disappointment. She had been troubled in a way by doubt and longing, but these had made no deeper impression than could be traced in a certain open wistfulness of glance and speech. The mouth had the expression at times, in talking and in repose, of one who might be upon the verge of tears. It was not that grief was thus ever present. The pronunciation of certain syllables gave to her lips this peculiarity of formation-a formation as suggestive and moving as pathos itself.
There was nothing bold in her manner. Life had not taught her domination-superciliousness of grace, which is the lordly power of some women. Her longing for consideration was not sufficiently powerful to move her to demand it. Even now she lacked self-assurance, but there was that in what she had already experienced which left her a little less than timid. She wanted pleasure, she wanted position, and yet she was confused as to what these things might be. Every hour the kaleidoscope of human affairs threw a new lustre upon something, and therewith it became for her the desired-the all. Another shift of the box, and some other had become the beautiful, the perfect.
On her spiritual side, also, she was rich in feeling, as such a nature well might be. Sorrow in her was aroused by many a spectacle-an uncritical upwelling of grief for the weak and the helpless. She was constantly pained by the sight of the white-faced, ragged men who slopped desperately by her in a sort of wretched mental stupor. The poorly clad girls who went blowing by her window evenings, hurrying home from some of the shops of the West Side, she pitied from the depths of her heart. She would stand and bite her lips as they passed, shaking her little head and wondering. They had so little, she thought. It was so sad to be ragged and poor. The hang of faded clothes pained her eyes.
"And they have to work so hard!" was her only comment.
On the street sometimes she would see men working-Irishmen with picks, coal-heavers with great loads to shovel, Americans busy about some work which was a mere matter of strength-and they touched her fancy. Toil, now that she was free of it, seemed even a more desolate thing than when she was part of it. She saw it through a mist of fancy-a pale, sombre half-light, which was the essence of poetic feeling. Her old father, in his flour-dusted miller's suit, sometimes returned to her in memory, revived by a face in a window. A shoemaker pegging at his last, a blastman seen through a narrow window in some basement where iron was being melted, a bench-worker seen high aloft in some window, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up; these took her back in fancy to the details of the mill. She felt, though she seldom expressed them, sad thoughts upon this score. Her sympathies were ever with that under-world of toil from which she had so recently sprung, and which she best understood.
Though Hurstwood did not know it, he was dealing with one whose feelings were as tender and as delicate as this. He did not know, but it was this in her, after all, which attracted him. He never attempted to analyse the nature of his affection. It was sufficient that there was tenderness in her eye, weakness in her manner, good nature and hope in her thoughts. He drew near this lily, which had sucked its waxen beauty and perfume from below a depth of waters which he had never penetrated, and out of ooze and mould which he could not understand. He drew near because it was waxen and fresh. It lightened his feelings for him. It made the morning worth while.
In a material way, she was considerably improved. Her awkwardness had all but passed, leaving, if anything, a quaint residue which was as pleasing as perfect grace. Her little shoes now fitted her smartly and had high heels. She had learned much about laces and those little neckpieces which add so much to a woman's appearance. Her form had filled out until it was admirably plump and well-rounded.
Hurstwood wrote her one morning, asking her to meet him in Jefferson Park, Monroe Street. He did not consider it policy to call any more, even when Drouet was at home.
The next afternoon he was in the pretty little park by one, and had found a rustic bench beneath the green leaves of a lilac bush which bordered one of the paths. It was at that season of the year when the fulness of spring had not yet worn quite away. At a little pond near by some cleanly dressed children were sailing white canvas boats. In the shade of a green pagoda a bebuttoned officer of the law was resting, his arms folded, his club at rest in his belt. An old gardener was upon the lawn, with a pair of pruning shears, looking after some bushes. High overhead was the clean blue sky of the new summer, and in the thickness of the shiny green leaves of the trees hopped and twittered the busy sparrows.
Hurstwood had come out of his own home that morning feeling much of the same old annoyance. At his store he had idled, there being no need to write. He had come away to this place with the lightness of heart which characterises those who put weariness behind. Now, in the shade of this cool, green bush, he looked about him with the fancy of the lover. He heard the carts go lumbering by upon the neighbouring streets, but they were far off, and only buzzed upon his ear. The hum of the surrounding city was faint, the clang of an occasional bell was as music. He looked and dreamed a new dream of pleasure which concerned his present fixed condition not at all. He got back in fancy to the old Hurstwood, who was neither married nor fixed in a solid position for life. He remembered the light spirit in which he once looked after the girls-how he had danced, escorted them home, hung over their gates. He almost wished he was back there again-here in this pleasant scene he felt as if he were wholly free.
At two Carrie came tripping along the walk toward him, rosy and clean. She had just recently donned a sailor hat for the season with a band of pretty white-dotted blue silk. Her skirt was of a rich blue material, and her shirt waist matched it, with a thin-stripe of blue upon a snow-white ground-stripes that were as fine as hairs. Her brown shoes peeped occasionally from beneath her skirt. She carried her gloves in her hand.
Hurstwood looked up at her with delight.
"You came, dearest," he said eagerly, standing to meet her and taking her hand.
"Of course," she said, smiling; "did you think I wouldn't?"
"I didn't know," he replied.
He looked at her forehead, which was moist from her brisk walk. Then he took out one of his own soft, scented silk handkerchiefs and touched her face here and there.
"Now," he said affectionately, "you're all right."
They were happy in being near one another-in looking into each other's eyes. Finally, when the long flush of delight had subsided, he said:
"When is Charlie going away again?"
"I don't know," she answered. "He says he has some things to do for the house here now."
Hurstwood grew serious, and he lapsed into quiet thought. He looked up after a time to say:
"Come away and leave him."
He turned his eyes to the boys with the boats, as if the request were of little importance.
"Where would we go?" she asked in much the same manner, rolling her gloves, and looking into a neighbouring tree.
"Where do you want to go?" he enquired.
There was something in the tone in which he said this which made her feel as if she must record her feelings against any local habitation.
"We can't stay in Chicago," she replied.
He had no thought that this was in her mind-that any removal would be suggested.
"Why not?" he asked softly.
"Oh, because," she said, "I wouldn't want to."
He listened to this with but dull perception of what it meant. It had no serious ring to it. The question was not up for immediate decision.
"I would have to give up my position," he said.
The tone he used made it seem as if the matter deserved only slight consideration. Carrie thought a little, the while enjoying the pretty scene.
"I wouldn't like to live in Chicago and him here," she said, thinking of Drouet.
"It's a big town, dearest," Hurstwood answered. "It would be as good as moving to another part of the country to move to the South Side."
He had fixed upon that region as an objective point.
"Anyhow," said Carrie, "I shouldn't want to get married as long as he is here. I wouldn't want to run away."
The suggestion of marriage struck Hurstwood forcibly. He saw clearly that this was her idea-he felt that it was not to be gotten over easily. Bigamy lightened the horizon of his shadowy thoughts for a moment. He wondered for the life of him how it would all come out. He could not see that he was making any progress save in her regard. When he looked at her now, he thought her beautiful. What a thing it was to have her love him, even if it be entangling! She increased in value in his eyes because of her objection. She was something to struggle for, and that was everything. How different from the women who yielded willingly! He swept the thought of them from his mind.
"And you don't know when he'll go away?" asked Hurstwood, quietly.
She shook her head.
He sighed.
"You're a determined little miss, aren't you?" he said, after a few moments, looking up into her eyes.
She felt a wave of feeling sweep over her at this. It was pride at what seemed his admiration-affection for the man who could feel this concerning her.
"No," she said coyly, "but what can I do?"
Again he folded his hands and looked away over the lawn into the street.
"I wish," he said pathetically, "you would come to me. I don't like to be away from you this way. What good is there in waiting? You're not any happier, are you?"
"Happier!" she exclaimed softly, "you know better than that."
"Here we are then," he went on in the same tone, "wasting our days. If you are not happy, do you think I am? I sit and write to you the biggest part of the time. I'll tell you what, Carrie," he exclaimed, throwing sudden force of expression into his voice and fixing her with his eyes, "I can't live without you, and that's all there is to it. Now," he concluded, showing the palm of one of his white hands in a sort of at-an-end, helpless expression, "what shall I do?"
This shifting of the burden to her appealed to Carrie. The semblance of the load without the weight touched the woman's heart.
"Can't you wait a little while yet?" she said tenderly. "I'll try and find out when he's going."
"What good will it do?" he asked, holding the same strain of feeling.
"Well, perhaps we can arrange to go somewhere."
She really did not see anything clearer than before, but she was getting into that frame of mind where, out of sympathy, a woman yields.
Hurstwood did not understand. He was wondering how she was to be persuaded-what appeal would move her to forsake Drouet. He began to wonder how far her affection for him would carry her. He was thinking of some question which would make her tell.
Finally he hit upon one of those problematical propositions which often disguise our own desires while leading us to an understanding of the difficulties which others make for us, and so discover for us a way. It had not the slightest connection with anything intended on his part, and was spoken at random before he had given it a moment's serious thought.
"Carrie," he said, looking into her face and assuming a serious look which he did not feel, "suppose I were to come to you next week, or this week for that matter-to-night say-and tell you I had to go away-that I couldn't stay another minute and wasn't coming back any more-would you come with me?" His sweetheart viewed him with the most affectionate glance, her answer ready before the words were out of his mouth.
"Yes," she said.
"You wouldn't stop to argue or arrange?"
"Not if you couldn't wait."
He smiled when he saw that she took him seriously, and he thought what a chance it would afford for a possible junket of a week or two. He had a notion to tell her that he was joking and so brush away her sweet seriousness, but the effect of it was too delightful. He let it stand.
"Suppose we didn't have time to get married here?" he added, an afterthought striking him.
"If we got married as soon as we got to the other end of the journey it would be all right."
"I meant that," he said.
"Yes."
The morning seemed peculiarly bright to him now. He wondered whatever could have put such a thought into his head. Impossible as it was, he could not help smiling at its cleverness. It showed how she loved him. There was no doubt in his mind now, and he would find a way to win her.
"Well," he said, jokingly, "I'll come and get you one of these evenings," and then he laughed.
"I wouldn't stay with you, though, if you didn't marry me," Carrie added reflectively.
"I don't want you to," he said tenderly, taking her hand.
She was extremely happy now that she understood. She loved him the more for thinking that he would rescue her so. As for him, the marriage clause did not dwell in his mind. He was thinking that with such affection there could be no bar to his eventual happiness.
"Let's stroll about," he said gayly, rising and surveying all the lovely park.
"All right," said Carrie.
They passed the young Irishman, who looked after them with envious eyes.
"'Tis a foine couple," he observed to himself. "They must be rich."
Chapter XVI. A WITLESS ALADDIN: THE GATE TO THE WORLD
In the course of his present stay in Chicago, Drouet paid some slight attention to the secret order to which he belonged. During his last trip he had received a new light on its importance.
"I tell you," said another drummer to him, "it's a great thing. Look at Hazenstab. He isn't so deuced clever. Of course he's got a good house behind him, but that won't do alone. I tell you it's his degree. He's a way-up Mason, and that goes a long way. He's got a secret sign that stands for something."
Drouet resolved then and there that he would take more interest in such matters. So when he got back to Chicago he repaired to his local lodge headquarters.
"I say, Drouet," said Mr. Harry Quincel, an individual who was very prominent in this local branch of the Elks, "you're the man that can help us out."
It was after the business meeting and things were going socially with a hum. Drouet was bobbing around chatting and joking with a score of individuals whom he knew.
"What are you up to?" he inquired genially, turning a smiling face upon his secret brother.
"We're trying to get up some theatricals for two weeks from to-day, and we want to know if you don't know some young lady who could take a part-it's an easy part."
"Sure," said Drouet, "what is it?" He did not trouble to remember that he knew no one to whom he could appeal on this score. His innate good-nature, however, dictated a favourable reply.
"Well, now, I'll tell you what we are trying to do," went on Mr. Quincel. "We are trying to get a new set of furniture for the lodge. There isn't enough money in the treasury at the present time, and we thought we would raise it by a little entertainment."
"Sure," interrupted Drouet, "that's a good idea."
"Several of the boys around here have got talent. There's Harry Burbeck, he does a fine black-face turn. Mac Lewis is all right at heavy dramatics. Did you ever hear him recite 'Over the Hills'?"
"Never did."
"Well, I tell you, he does it fine."
"And you want me to get some woman to take a part?" questioned Drouet, anxious to terminate the subject and get on to something else. "What are you going to play?"
"'Under the Gaslight,'" said Mr. Quincel, mentioning Augustin Daly's famous production, which had worn from a great public success down to an amateur theatrical favourite, with many of the troublesome accessories cut out and the dramatis personæ reduced to the smallest possible number.
Drouet had seen this play some time in the past.
"That's it," he said; "that's a fine play. It will go all right. You ought to make a lot of money out of that."
"We think we'll do very well," Mr. Quincel replied. "Don't you forget now," he concluded, Drouet showing signs of restlessness; "some young woman to take the part of Laura."
"Sure, I'll attend to it."
He moved away, forgetting almost all about it the moment Mr. Quincel had ceased talking. He had not even thought to ask the time or place.
Drouet was reminded of his promise a day or two later by the receipt of a letter announcing that the first rehearsal was set for the following Friday evening, and urging him to kindly forward the young lady's address at once, in order that the part might be delivered to her.
"Now, who the deuce do I know?" asked the drummer reflectively, scratching his rosy ear. "I don't know any one that knows anything about amateur theatricals."
He went over in memory the names of a number of women he knew, and finally fixed on one, largely because of the convenient location of her home on the West Side, and promised himself that as he came out that evening he would see her. When, however, he started west on the car he forgot, and was only reminded of his delinquency by an item in the "Evening News"-a small three-line affair under the head of Secret Society Notes-which stated the Custer Lodge of the Order of Elks would give a theatrical performance in Avery Hall on the 16th, when "Under the Gaslight" would be produced.
"George!" exclaimed Drouet, "I forgot that."
"What?" inquired Carrie.
They were at their little table in the room which might have been used for a kitchen, where Carrie occasionally served a meal. To-night the fancy had caught her, and the little table was spread with a pleasing repast.
"Why, my lodge entertainment. They're going to give a play, and they wanted me to get them some young lady to take a part."
"What is it they're going to play?"
"'Under the Gaslight.'"
"When?"
"On the 16th."
"Well, why don't you?" asked Carrie.
"I don't know any one," he replied.
Suddenly he looked up.
"Say," he said, "how would you like to take the part?"
"Me?" said Carrie. "I can't act."
"How do you know?" questioned Drouet reflectively.
"Because," answered Carrie, "I never did."
Nevertheless, she was pleased to think he would ask. Her eyes brightened, for if there was anything that enlisted her sympathies it was the art of the stage. True to his nature, Drouet clung to this idea as an easy way out.
"That's nothing. You can act all you have to down there."
"No, I can't," said Carrie weakly, very much drawn toward the proposition and yet fearful.
"Yes, you can. Now, why don't you do it? They need some one, and it will be lots of fun for you."
"Oh, no, it won't," said Carrie seriously.
"You'd like that. I know you would. I've seen you dancing around here and giving imitations and that's why I asked you. You're clever enough, all right."
"No, I'm not," said Carrie shyly.
"Now, I'll tell you what you do. You go down and see about it. It'll be fun for you. The rest of the company isn't going to be any good. They haven't any experience. What do they know about theatricals?"
He frowned as he thought of their ignorance.
"Hand me the coffee," he added.
"I don't believe I could act, Charlie," Carrie went on pettishly. "You don't think I could, do you?"
"Sure. Out o' sight. I bet you make a hit. Now you want to go, I know you do. I knew it when I came home. That's why I asked you."
"What is the play, did you say?"
"'Under the Gaslight.'"
"What part would they want me to take?"
"Oh, one of the heroines-I don't know."
"What sort of a play is it?"
"Well," said Drouet, whose memory for such things was not the best, "it's about a girl who gets kidnapped by a couple of crooks-a man and a woman that live in the slums. She had some money or something and they wanted to get it. I don't know now how it did go exactly."
"Don't you know what part I would have to take?"
"No, I don't, to tell the truth." He thought a moment. "Yes, I do, too. Laura, that's the thing-you're to be Laura."
"And you can't remember what the part is like?"
"To save me, Cad, I can't," he answered. "I ought to, too; I've seen the play enough. There's a girl in it that was stolen when she was an infant-was picked off the street or something-and she's the one that's hounded by the two old criminals I was telling you about." He stopped with a mouthful of pie poised on a fork before his face. "She comes very near getting drowned-no, that's not it. I'll tell you what I'll do," he concluded hopelessly, "I'll get you the book. I can't remember now for the life of me."
"Well, I don't know," said Carrie, when he had concluded, her interest and desire to shine dramatically struggling with her timidity for the mastery. "I might go if you thought I'd do all right."
"Of course, you'll do," said Drouet, who, in his efforts to enthuse Carrie, had interested himself. "Do you think I'd come home here and urge you to do something that I didn't think you would make a success of? You can act all right. It'll be good for you."
"When must I go?" said Carrie, reflectively.
"The first rehearsal is Friday night. I'll get the part for you to-night."
"All right," said Carrie resignedly, "I'll do it, but if I make a failure now it's your fault."
"You won't fail," assured Drouet. "Just act as you do around here. Be natural. You're all right. I've often thought you'd make a corking good actress."
"Did you really?" asked Carrie.
"That's right," said the drummer.
He little knew as he went out of the door that night what a secret flame he had kindled in the bosom of the girl he left behind. Carrie was possessed of that sympathetic, impressionable nature which, ever in the most developed form, has been the glory of the drama. She was created with that passivity of soul which is always the mirror of the active world. She possessed an innate taste for imitation and no small ability. Even without practice, she could sometimes restore dramatic situations she had witnessed by re-creating, before her mirror, the expressions of the various faces taking part in the scene. She loved to modulate her voice after the conventional manner of the distressed heroine, and repeat such pathetic fragments as appealed most to her sympathies. Of late, seeing the airy grace of the ingenue in several well-constructed plays, she had been moved to secretly imitate it, and many were the little movements and expressions of the body in which she indulged from time to time in the privacy of her chamber. On several occasions, when Drouet had caught her admiring herself, as he imagined, in the mirror, she was doing nothing more than recalling some little grace of the mouth or the eyes which she had witnessed in another. Under his airy accusation she mistook this for vanity and accepted the blame with a faint sense of error, though, as a matter of fact, it was nothing more than the first subtle outcroppings of an artistic nature, endeavouring to re-create the perfect likeness of some phase of beauty which appealed to her. In such feeble tendencies, be it known, such outworking of desire to reproduce life, lies the basis of all dramatic art.
Now, when Carrie heard Drouet's laudatory opinion of her dramatic ability, her body tingled with satisfaction. Like the flame which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them into a gaudy shred of hope. Like all human beings, she had a touch of vanity. She felt that she could do things if she only had a chance. How often had she looked at the well-dressed actresses on the stage and wondered how she would look, how delightful she would feel if only she were in their place. The glamour, the tense situation, the fine clothes, the applause, these had lured her until she felt that she, too, could act-that she, too, could compel acknowledgment of power. Now she was told that she really could-that little things she had done about the house had made even him feel her power. It was a delightful sensation while it lasted.
When Drouet was gone, she sat down in her rocking-chair by the window to think about it. As usual, imagination exaggerated the possibilities for her. It was as if he had put fifty cents in her hand and she had exercised the thoughts of a thousand dollars. She saw herself in a score of pathetic situations in which she assumed a tremulous voice and suffering manner. Her mind delighted itself with scenes of luxury and refinement, situations in which she was the cynosure of all eyes, the arbiter of all fates. As she rocked to and fro she felt the tensity of woe in abandonment, the magnificence of wrath after deception, the languour of sorrow after defeat. Thoughts of all the charming women she had seen in plays-every fancy, every illusion which she had concerning the stage-now came back as a returning tide after the ebb. She built up feelings and a determination which the occasion did not warrant.
Drouet dropped in at the lodge when he went down town, and swashed around with a great air, as Quincel met him.
"Where is that young lady you were going to get for us?" asked the latter.
"I've got her," said Drouet.
"Have you?" said Quincel, rather surprised by his promptness; "that's good. What's her address?" and he pulled out his notebook in order to be able to send her part to her.
"You want to send her her part?" asked the drummer.
"Yes."
"Well, I'll take it. I'm going right by her house in the morning.
"What did you say her address was? We only want it in case we have any information to send her."
"Twenty-nine Ogden Place."
"And her name?"
"Carrie Madenda," said the drummer, firing at random. The lodge members knew him to be single.
"That sounds like somebody that can act, doesn't it?" said Quincel.
"Yes, it does."
He took the part home to Carrie and handed it to her with the manner of one who does a favour.
"He says that's the best part. Do you think you can do it?"
"I don't know until I look it over. You know I'm afraid, now that I've said I would."
"Oh, go on. What have you got to be afraid of? It's a cheap company. The rest of them aren't as good as you are."
"Well, I'll see," said Carrie, pleased to have the part, for all her misgivings.
He sidled around, dressing and fidgeting before he arranged to make his next remark.
"They were getting ready to print the programmes," he said, "and I gave them the name of Carrie Madenda. Was that all right?"
"Yes, I guess so," said his companion, looking up at him. She was thinking it was slightly strange.
"If you didn't make a hit, you know," he went on.
"Oh, yes," she answered, rather pleased now with his caution. It was clever for Drouet.
"I didn't want to introduce you as my wife, because you'd feel worse then if you didn't go. They all know me so well. But you'll go all right. Anyhow, you'll probably never meet any of them again."
"Oh, I don't care," said Carrie desperately. She was determined now to have a try at the fascinating game.
Drouet breathed a sigh of relief. He had been afraid that he was about to precipitate another conversation upon the marriage question.
The part of Laura, as Carrie found out when she began to examine it, was one of suffering and tears. As delineated by Mr. Daly, it was true to the most sacred traditions of melodrama as he found it when he began his career. The sorrowful demeanour, the tremolo music, the long, explanatory, cumulative addresses, all were there.
"Poor fellow," read Carrie, consulting the text and drawing her voice out pathetically. "Martin, be sure and give him a glass of wine before he goes."
She was surprised at the briefness of the entire part, not knowing that she must be on the stage while others were talking, and not only be there, but also keep herself in harmony with the dramatic movement of the scenes.
"I think I can do that, though," she concluded.
When Drouet came the next night, she was very much satisfied with her day's study.
"Well, how goes it, Caddie?" he said.
"All right," she laughed. "I think I have it memorised nearly."
"That's good," he said. "Let's hear some of it."
"Oh, I don't know whether I can get up and say it off here," she said bashfully.
"Well, I don't know why you shouldn't. It'll be easier here than it will there."
"I don't know about that," she answered. Eventually she took off the ballroom episode with considerable feeling, forgetting, as she got deeper in the scene, all about Drouet, and letting herself rise to a fine state of feeling.
"Good," said Drouet; "fine, out o' sight! You're all right Caddie, I tell you."
He was really moved by her excellent representation and the general appearance of the pathetic little figure as it swayed and finally fainted to the floor. He had bounded up to catch her, and now held her laughing in his arms.
"Ain't you afraid you'll hurt yourself?" he asked.
"Not a bit."
"Well, you're a wonder. Say, I never knew you could do anything like that."
"I never did, either," said Carrie merrily, her face flushed with delight.
"Well, you can bet that you're all right," said Drouet. "You can take my word for that. You won't fail."
Chapter XVII. A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE GATEWAY: HOPE LIGHTENS THE EYE
The, to Carrie, very important theatrical performance was to take place at the Avery on conditions which were to make it more noteworthy than was at first anticipated. The little dramatic student had written to Hurstwood the very morning her part was brought her that she was going to take part in a play.
"I really am," she wrote, feeling that he might take it as a jest; "I have my part now, honest, truly."
Hurstwood smiled in an indulgent way as he read this.
"I wonder what it is going to be? I must see that."
He answered at once, making a pleasant reference to her ability. "I haven't the slightest doubt you will make a success. You must come to the park to-morrow morning and tell me all about it."
Carrie gladly complied, and revealed all the details of the undertaking as she understood it.
"Well," he said, "that's fine. I'm glad to hear it. Of course, you will do well, you're so clever."
He had truly never seen so much spirit in the girl before. Her tendency to discover a touch of sadness had for the nonce disappeared. As she spoke her eyes were bright, her cheeks red. She radiated much of the pleasure which her undertakings gave her. For all her misgivings-and they were as plentiful as the moments of the day-she was still happy. She could not repress her delight in doing this little thing which, to an ordinary observer, had no importance at all.
Hurstwood was charmed by the development of the fact that the girl had capabilities. There is nothing so inspiring in life as the sight of a legitimate ambition, no matter how incipient. It gives colour, force, and beauty to the possessor.
Carrie was now lightened by a touch of this divine afflatus. She drew to herself commendation from her two admirers which she had not earned. Their affection for her naturally heightened their perception of what she was trying to do and their approval of what she did. Her inexperience conserved her own exuberant fancy, which ran riot with every straw of opportunity, making of it a golden divining rod whereby the treasure of life was to be discovered.
"Let's see," said Hurstwood, "I ought to know some of the boys in the lodge. I'm an Elk myself."
"Oh, you mustn't let him know I told you."
"That's so," said the manager.
"I'd like for you to be there, if you want to come, but I don't see how you can unless he asks you."
"I'll be there," said Hurstwood affectionately. "I can fix it so he won't know you told me. You leave it to me."
This interest of the manager was a large thing in itself for the performance, for his standing among the Elks was something worth talking about. Already he was thinking of a box with some friends, and flowers for Carrie. He would make it a dress-suit affair and give the little girl a chance.
Within a day or two, Drouet dropped into the Adams Street resort, and he was at once spied by Hurstwood. It was at five in the afternoon and the place was crowded with merchants, actors, managers, politicians, a goodly company of rotund, rosy figures, silk-hatted, starchy-bosomed, beringed and bescarfpinned to the queen's taste. John L. Sullivan, the pugilist, was at one end of the glittering bar, surrounded by a company of loudly dressed sports, who were holding a most animated conversation. Drouet came across the floor with a festive stride, a new pair of tan shoes squeaking audibly at his progress.
"Well, sir," said Hurstwood, "I was wondering what had become of you. I thought you had gone out of town again."
Drouet laughed.
"If you don't report more regularly we'll have to cut you off the list."
"Couldn't help it," said the drummer, "I've been busy."
They strolled over toward the bar amid the noisy, shifting company of notables. The dressy manager was shaken by the hand three times in as many minutes.
"I hear your lodge is going to give a performance," observed Hurstwood, in the most offhand manner.
"Yes, who told you?"
"No one," said Hurstwood. "They just sent me a couple of tickets, which I can have for two dollars. Is it going to be any good?"
"I don't know," replied the drummer. "They've been trying to get me to get some woman to take a part."
"I wasn't intending to go," said the manager easily. "I'll subscribe, of course. How are things over there?"
"All right. They're going to fit things up out of the proceeds."
"Well," said the manager, "I hope they make a success of it. Have another?"
He did not intend to say any more. Now, if he should appear on the scene with a few friends, he could say that he had been urged to come along. Drouet had a desire to wipe out the possibility of confusion.
"I think the girl is going to take a part in it," he said abruptly, after thinking it over.
"You don't say so! How did that happen?"
"Well, they were short and wanted me to find them some one. I told Carrie, and she seems to want to try."
"Good for her," said the manager. "It'll be a real nice affair. Do her good, too. Has she ever had any experience?"
"Not a bit."
"Oh, well, it isn't anything very serious."
"She's clever, though," said Drouet, casting off any imputation against Carrie's ability. "She picks up her part quick enough."
"You don't say so!" said the manager.
"Yes, sir; she surprised me the other night. By George, if she didn't."
"We must give her a nice little send-off," said the manager. "I'll look after the flowers."
Drouet smiled at his good-nature.
"After the show you must come with me and we'll have a little supper."
"I think she'll do all right," said Drouet.
"I want to see her. She's got to do all right. We'll make her," and the manager gave one of his quick, steely half-smiles, which was a compound of good-nature and shrewdness.
Carrie, meanwhile, attended the first rehearsal. At this performance Mr. Quincel presided, aided by Mr. Millice, a young man who had some qualifications of past experience, which were not exactly understood by any one. He was so experienced and so business-like, however, that he came very near being rude-failing to remember, as he did, that the individuals he was trying to instruct were volunteer players and not salaried underlings.
"Now, Miss Madenda," he said, addressing Carrie, who stood in one part uncertain as to what move to make, "you don't want to stand like that. Put expression in your face. Remember, you are troubled over the intrusion of the stranger. Walk so," and he struck out across the Avery stage in almost drooping manner.
Carrie did not exactly fancy the suggestion, but the novelty of the situation, the presence of strangers, all more or less nervous, and the desire to do anything rather than make a failure, made her timid. She walked in imitation of her mentor as requested, inwardly feeling that there was something strangely lacking.
"Now, Mrs. Morgan," said the director to one young married woman who was to take the part of Pearl, "you sit here. Now, Mr. Bamberger, you stand here, so. Now, what is it you say?"
"Explain," said Mr. Bamberger feebly. He had the part of Ray, Laura's lover, the society individual who was to waver in his thoughts of marrying her, upon finding that she was a waif and a nobody by birth.
"How is that-what does your text say?"
"Explain," repeated Mr. Bamberger, looking intently at his part.
"Yes, but it also says," the director remarked, "that you are to look shocked. Now, say it again, and see if you can't look shocked."
"Explain!" demanded Mr. Bamberger vigorously.
"No, no, that won't do! Say it this way-explain."
"Explain," said Mr. Bamberger, giving a modified imitation.
"That's better. Now go on."
"One night," resumed Mrs. Morgan, whose lines came next, "father and mother were going to the opera. When they were crossing Broadway, the usual crowd of children accosted them for alms-"
"Hold on," said the director, rushing forward, his arm extended. "Put more feeling into what you are saying."
Mrs. Morgan looked at him as if she feared a personal assault. Her eye lightened with resentment.
"Remember, Mrs. Morgan," he added, ignoring the gleam, but modifying his manner, "that you're detailing a pathetic story. You are now supposed to be telling something that is a grief to you. It requires feeling, repression, thus: 'The usual crowd of children accosted them for alms.'"
"All right," said Mrs. Morgan.
"Now, go on."
"As mother felt in her pocket for some change, her fingers touched a cold and trembling hand which had clutched her purse."
"Very good," interrupted the director, nodding his head significantly.
"A pickpocket! Well!" exclaimed Mr. Bamberger, speaking the lines that here fell to him.
"No, no, Mr. Bamberger," said the director, approaching, "not that way. 'A pickpocket-well?' so. That's the idea."
"Don't you think," said Carrie weakly, noticing that it had not been proved yet whether the members of the company knew their lines, let alone the details of expression, "that it would be better if we just went through our lines once to see if we know them? We might pick up some points."
"A very good idea, Miss Madenda," said Mr. Quincel, who sat at the side of the stage, looking serenely on and volunteering opinions which the director did not heed.
"All right," said the latter, somewhat abashed, "it might be well to do it." Then brightening, with a show of authority, "Suppose we run right through, putting in as much expression as we can."
"Good," said Mr. Quincel.
"This hand," resumed Mrs. Morgan, glancing up at Mr. Bamberger and down at her book, as the lines proceeded, "my mother grasped in her own, and so tight that a small, feeble voice uttered an exclamation of pain. Mother looked down, and there beside her was a little ragged girl."
"Very good," observed the director, now hopelessly idle.
"The thief!" exclaimed Mr. Bamberger.
"Louder," put in the director, finding it almost impossible to keep his hands off.
"The thief!" roared poor Bamberger.
"Yes, but a thief hardly six years old, with a face like an angel's. 'Stop,' said my mother. 'What are you doing?'
"'Trying to steal,' said the child.
"'Don't you know that it is wicked to do so?' asked my father.
"'No,' said the girl, 'but it is dreadful to be hungry.'
"'Who told you to steal?' asked my mother.
"'She-there,' said the child, pointing to a squalid woman in a doorway opposite, who fled suddenly down the street. 'That is old Judas,' said the girl."
Mrs. Morgan read this rather flatly, and the director was in despair. He fidgeted around, and then went over to Mr. Quincel.
"What do you think of them?" he asked.
"Oh, I guess we'll be able to whip them into shape," said the latter, with an air of strength under difficulties.
"I don't know," said the director. "That fellow Bamberger strikes me as being a pretty poor shift for a lover."
"He's all we've got," said Quincel, rolling up his eyes. "Harrison went back on me at the last minute. Who else can we get?"
"I don't know," said the director. "I'm afraid he'll never pick up."
At this moment Bamberger was exclaiming, "Pearl, you are joking with me."
"Look at that now," said the director, whispering behind his hand. "My Lord! what can you do with a man who drawls out a sentence like that?"
"Do the best you can," said Quincel consolingly.
The rendition ran on in this wise until it came to where Carrie, as Laura, comes into the room to explain to Ray, who, after hearing Pearl's statement about her birth, had written the letter repudiating her, which, however, he did not deliver. Bamberger was just concluding the words of Ray, "I must go before she returns. Her step! Too late," and was cramming the letter in his pocket, when she began sweetly with:
"Ray!"
"Miss-Miss Courtland," Bamberger faltered weakly.
Carrie looked at him a moment and forgot all about the company present. She began to feel the part, and summoned an indifferent smile to her lips, turning as the lines directed and going to a window, as if he were not present. She did it with a grace which was fascinating to look upon.
"Who is that woman?" asked the director, watching Carrie in her little scene with Bamberger.
"Miss Madenda," said Quincel.
"I know her name," said the director, "but what does she do?"
"I don't know," said Quincel. "She's a friend of one of our members."
"Well, she's got more gumption than any one I've seen here so far-seems to take an interest in what she's doing."
"Pretty, too, isn't she?" said Quincel.
The director strolled away without answering.
In the second scene, where she was supposed to face the company in the ball-room, she did even better, winning the smile of the director, who volunteered, because of her fascination for him, to come over and speak with her.
"Were you ever on the stage?" he asked insinuatingly.
"No," said Carrie.
"You do so well, I thought you might have had some experience."
Carrie only smiled consciously.
He walked away to listen to Bamberger, who was feebly spouting some ardent line.
Mrs. Morgan saw the drift of things and gleamed at Carrie with envious and snapping black eyes.
"She's some cheap professional," she gave herself the satisfaction of thinking, and scorned and hated her accordingly.
The rehearsal ended for one day, and Carrie went home feeling that she had acquitted herself satisfactorily. The words of the director were ringing in her ears, and she longed for an opportunity to tell Hurstwood. She wanted him to know just how well she was doing. Drouet, too, was an object for her confidences. She could hardly wait until he should ask her, and yet she did not have the vanity to bring it up. The drummer, however, had another line of thought to-night, and her little experience did not appeal to him as important. He let the conversation drop, save for what she chose to recite without solicitation, and Carrie was not good at that. He took it for granted that she was doing very well and he was relieved of further worry. Consequently he threw Carrie into repression, which was irritating. She felt his indifference keenly and longed to see Hurstwood. It was as if he were now the only friend she had on earth. The next morning Drouet was interested again, but the damage had been done.
She got a pretty letter from the manager, saying that by the time she got it he would be waiting for her in the park. When she came, he shone upon her as the morning sun.
"Well, my dear," he asked, "how did you come out?"
"Well enough," she said, still somewhat reduced after Drouet.
"Now, tell me just what you did. Was it pleasant?"
Carrie related the incidents of the rehearsal, warming up as she proceeded.
"Well, that's delightful," said Hurstwood. "I'm so glad. I must get over there to see you. When is the next rehearsal?"
"Tuesday," said Carrie, "but they don't allow visitors."
"I imagine I could get in," said Hurstwood significantly.
She was completely restored and delighted by his consideration, but she made him promise not to come around.
"Now, you must do your best to please me," he said encouragingly. "Just remember that I want you to succeed. We will make the performance worth while. You do that now."
"I'll try," said Carrie, brimming with affection and enthusiasm.
"That's the girl," said Hurstwood fondly. "Now, remember," shaking an affectionate finger at her, "your best."
"I will," she answered, looking back.
The whole earth was brimming sunshine that morning. She tripped along, the clear sky pouring liquid blue into her soul. Oh, blessed are the children of endeavour in this, that they try and are hopeful. And blessed also are they who, knowing, smile and approve.
Chapter XVIII. JUST OVER THE BORDER: A HAIL AND FAREWELL
By the evening of the 16th the subtle hand of Hurstwood had made itself apparent. He had given the word among his friends-and they were many and influential-that here was something which they ought to attend, and, as a consequence, the sale of tickets by Mr. Quincel, acting for the lodge, had been large. Small four-line notes had appeared in all of the daily newspapers. These he had arranged for by the aid of one of his newspaper friends on the "Times," Mr. Harry McGarren, the managing editor.
"Say, Harry," Hurstwood said to him one evening, as the latter stood at the bar drinking before wending his belated way homeward, "you can help the boys out, I guess."
"What is it?" said McGarren, pleased to be consulted by the opulent manager.
"The Custer Lodge is getting up a little entertainment for their own good, and they'd like a little newspaper notice. You know what I mean-a squib or two saying that it's going to take place."
"Certainly," said McGarren, "I can fix that for you, George."
At the same time Hurstwood kept himself wholly in the background. The members of Custer Lodge could scarcely understand why their little affair was taking so well. Mr. Harry Quincel was looked upon as quite a star for this sort of work.
By the time the 16th had arrived Hurstwood's friends had rallied like Romans to a senator's call. A well-dressed, good-natured, flatteringly-inclined audience was assured from the moment he thought of assisting Carrie.
That little student had mastered her part to her own satisfaction, much as she trembled for her fate when she should once face the gathered throng, behind the glare of the footlights. She tried to console herself with the thought that a score of other persons, men and women, were equally tremulous concerning the outcome of their efforts, but she could not disassociate the general danger from her own individual liability. She feared that she would forget her lines, that she might be unable to master the feeling which she now felt concerning her own movements in the play. At times she wished that she had never gone into the affair; at others, she trembled lest she should be paralysed with fear and stand white and gasping, not knowing what to say and spoiling the entire performance.
In the matter of the company, Mr. Bamberger had disappeared. That hopeless example had fallen under the lance of the director's criticism. Mrs. Morgan was still present, but envious and determined, if for nothing more than spite, to do as well as Carrie at least. A loafing professional had been called in to assume the role of Ray, and, while he was a poor stick of his kind, he was not troubled by any of those qualms which attack the spirit of those who have never faced an audience. He swashed about in such a self-confident manner that he was like to convince every one of his identity by mere matter of circumstantial evidence.
"It is so easy," he said to Mrs. Morgan, in the usual affected stage voice. "An audience would be the last thing to trouble me. It's the spirit of the part, you know, that is difficult."
Carrie disliked his appearance, but she was too much the actress not to swallow his qualities with complaisance, seeing that she must suffer his fictitious love for the evening.
At six she was ready to go. Theatrical paraphernalia had been provided over and above her care. She had practised her make-up in the morning, had rehearsed and arranged her material for the evening by one o'clock, and had gone home to have a final look at her part, waiting for the evening to come.
On this occasion the lodge sent a carriage. Drouet rode with her as far as the door, and then went about the neighbouring stores, looking for some good cigars. The little actress marched nervously into her dressing-room and began that painfully anticipated matter of make-up which was to transform her, a simple maiden, to Laura, The Belle of Society.
The flare of the gas-jets, the open trunks, suggestive of travel and display, the scattered contents of the make-up box-rouge, pearl powder, whiting, burnt cork, India ink, pencils for the eye-lids, wigs, scissors, looking-glasses, drapery-in short, all the nameless paraphernalia of disguise, have a remarkable atmosphere of their own. Since her arrival in the city many things had influenced her, but always in a far-removed manner. This new atmosphere was more friendly. It was wholly unlike the great brilliant mansions which waved her coldly away, permitting her only awe and distant wonder. This took her by the hand kindly, as one who says, "My dear, come in." It opened for her as if for its own. She had wondered at the greatness of the names upon the bill-boards, the marvel of the long notices in the papers, the beauty of the dresses upon the stage, the atmosphere of carriages, flowers, refinement. Here was no illusion. Here was an open door to see all of that. She had come upon it as one who stumbles upon a secret passage and, behold, she was in the chamber of diamonds and delight!
As she dressed with a flutter, in her little stage room, hearing the voices outside, seeing Mr. Quincel hurrying here and there, noting Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Hoagland at their nervous work of preparation, seeing all the twenty members of the cast moving about and worrying over what the result would be, she could not help thinking what a delight this would be if it would endure; how perfect a state, if she could only do well now, and then some time get a place as a real actress. The thought had taken a mighty hold upon her. It hummed in her ears as the melody of an old song.
Outside in the little lobby another scene was being enacted. Without the interest of Hurstwood, the little hall would probably have been comfortably filled, for the members of the lodge were moderately interested in its welfare. Hurstwood's word, however, had gone the rounds. It was to be a full-dress affair. The four boxes had been taken. Dr. Norman McNeill Hale and his wife were to occupy one. This was quite a card. C. R. Walker, dry-goods merchant and possessor of at least two hundred thousand dollars, had taken another; a well-known coal merchant had been induced to take the third, and Hurstwood and his friends the fourth. Among the latter was Drouet. The people who were now pouring here were not celebrities, nor even local notabilities, in a general sense. They were the lights of a certain circle-the circle of small fortunes and secret order distinctions. These gentlemen Elks knew the standing of one another. They had regard for the ability which could amass a small fortune, own a nice home, keep a barouche or carriage, perhaps, wear fine clothes, and maintain a good mercantile position. Naturally, Hurstwood, who was a little above the order of mind which accepted this standard as perfect, who had shrewdness and much assumption of dignity, who held an imposing and authoritative position, and commanded friendship by intuitive tact in handling people, was quite a figure. He was more generally known than most others in the same circle, and was looked upon as some one whose reserve covered a mine of influence and solid financial prosperity.
To-night he was in his element. He came with several friends directly from Rector's in a carriage. In the lobby he met Drouet, who was just returning from a trip for more cigars. All five now joined in an animated conversation concerning the company present and the general drift of lodge affairs.
"Who's here?" said Hurstwood, passing into the theatre proper, where the lights were turned up and a company of gentlemen were laughing and talking in the open space back of the seats.
"Why, how do you do, Mr. Hurstwood?" came from the first individual recognised.
"Glad to see you," said the latter, grasping his hand lightly.
"Looks quite an affair, doesn't it?"
"Yes, indeed," said the manager.
"Custer seems to have the backing of its members," observed the friend.
"So it should," said the knowing manager. "I'm glad to see it."
"Well, George," said another rotund citizen, whose avoirdupois made necessary an almost alarming display of starched shirt bosom, "how goes it with you?"
"Excellent," said the manager.
"What brings you over here? You're not a member of Custer."
"Good-nature," returned the manager. "Like to see the boys, you know."
"Wife here?"
"She couldn't come to-night. She's not well."
"Sorry to hear it-nothing serious, I hope."
"No, just feeling a little ill."
"I remember Mrs. Hurstwood when she was travelling once with you over to St. Joe-" and here the newcomer launched off in a trivial recollection, which was terminated by the arrival of more friends.
"Why, George, how are you?" said another genial West Side politician and lodge member. "My, but I'm glad to see you again; how are things, anyhow?"
"Very well; I see you got that nomination for alderman."
"Yes, we whipped them out over there without much trouble."
"What do you suppose Hennessy will do now?"
"Oh, he'll go back to his brick business. He has a brick-yard, you know."
"I didn't know that," said the manager. "Felt pretty sore, I suppose, over his defeat."
"Perhaps," said the other, winking shrewdly.
Some of the more favoured of his friends whom he had invited began to roll up in carriages now. They came shuffling in with a great show of finery and much evident feeling of content and importance.
"Here we are," said Hurstwood, turning to one from a group with whom he was talking.
"That's right," returned the newcomer, a gentleman of about forty-five.
"And say," he whispered, jovially, pulling Hurstwood over by the shoulder so that he might whisper in his ear, "if this isn't a good show, I'll punch your head."
"You ought to pay for seeing your old friends. Bother the show!"
To another who inquired, "Is it something really good?" the manager replied:
"I don't know. I don't suppose so." Then, lifting his hand graciously, "For the lodge."
"Lots of boys out, eh?"
"Yes, look up Shanahan. He was just asking for you a moment ago."
It was thus that the little theatre resounded to a babble of successful voices, the creak of fine clothes, the commonplace of good-nature, and all largely because of this man's bidding. Look at him any time within the half hour before the curtain was up, he was a member of an eminent group-a rounded company of five or more whose stout figures, large white bosoms, and shining pins bespoke the character of their success. The gentlemen who brought their wives called him out to shake hands. Seats clicked, ushers bowed while he looked blandly on. He was evidently a light among them, reflecting in his personality the ambitions of those who greeted him. He was acknowledged, fawned upon, in a way lionised. Through it all one could see the standing of the man. It was greatness in a way, small as it was.
Chapter XIX. AN HOUR IN ELFLAND: A CLAMOUR HALF HEARD
At last the curtain was ready to go up. All the details of the make-up had been completed, and the company settled down as the leader of the small, hired orchestra tapped significantly upon his music rack with his baton and began the soft curtain-raising strain. Hurstwood ceased talking, and went with Drouet and his friend Sagar Morrison around to the box.
"Now, we'll see how the little girl does," he said to Drouet, in a tone which no one else could hear.
On the stage, six of the characters had already appeared in the opening parlour scene. Drouet and Hurstwood saw at a glance that Carrie was not among them, and went on talking in a whisper. Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Hoagland, and the actor who had taken Bamberger's part were representing the principal rôles in this scene. The professional, whose name was Patton, had little to recommend him outside of his assurance, but this at the present moment was most palpably needed. Mrs. Morgan, as Pearl, was stiff with fright. Mrs. Hoagland was husky in the throat. The whole company was so weak-kneed that the lines were merely spoken, and nothing more. It took all the hope and uncritical good-nature of the audience to keep from manifesting pity by that unrest which is the agony of failure.
Hurstwood was perfectly indifferent. He took it for granted that it would be worthless. All he cared for was to have it endurable enough to allow for pretension and congratulation afterward.
After the first rush of fright, however, the players got over the danger of collapse. They rambled weakly forward, losing nearly all the expression which was intended, and making the thing dull in the extreme, when Carrie came in.
One glance at her, and both Hurstwood and Drouet saw plainly that she also was weak-kneed. She came faintly across the stage, saying:
"And you, sir; we have been looking for you since eight o'clock," but with so little colour and in such a feeble voice that it was positively painful.
"She's frightened," whispered Drouet to Hurstwood.
The manager made no answer.
She had a line presently which was supposed to be funny.
"Well, that's as much as to say that I'm a sort of life pill."
It came out so flat, however, that it was a deathly thing. Drouet fidgeted. Hurstwood moved his toe the least bit.
There was another place in which Laura was to rise and, with a sense of impending disaster, say, sadly:
"I wish you hadn't said that, Pearl. You know the old proverb, 'Call a maid by a married name.'"
The lack of feeling in the thing was ridiculous. Carrie did not get it at all. She seemed to be talking in her sleep. It looked as if she were certain to be a wretched failure. She was more hopeless than Mrs. Morgan, who had recovered somewhat, and was now saying her lines clearly at least. Drouet looked away from the stage at the audience. The latter held out silently, hoping for a general change, of course. Hurstwood fixed his eye on Carrie, as if to hypnotise her into doing better. He was pouring determination of his own in her direction. He felt sorry for her.
In a few more minutes it fell to her to read the letter sent in by the strange villain. The audience had been slightly diverted by a conversation between the professional actor and a character called Snorky, impersonated by a short little American, who really developed some humour as a half-crazed, one-armed soldier, turned messenger for a living. He bawled his lines out with such defiance that, while they really did not partake of the humour intended, they were funny. Now he was off, however, and it was back to pathos, with Carrie as the chief figure. She did not recover. She wandered through the whole scene between herself and the intruding villain, straining the patience of the audience, and finally exiting, much to their relief.
"She's too nervous," said Drouet, feeling in the mildness of the remark that he was lying for once.
"Better go back and say a word to her."
Drouet was glad to do anything for relief. He fairly hustled around to the side entrance, and was let in by the friendly door-keeper. Carrie was standing in the wings, weakly waiting her next cue, all the snap and nerve gone out of her.
"Say, Cad," he said, looking at her, "you mustn't be nervous. Wake up. Those guys out there don't amount to anything. What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know," said Carrie. "I just don't seem to be able to do it."
She was grateful for the drummer's presence, though. She had found the company so nervous that her own strength had gone.
"Come on," said Drouet. "Brace up. What are you afraid of? Go on out there now, and do the trick. What do you care?"
Carrie revived a little under the drummer's electrical, nervous condition.
"Did I do so very bad?"
"Not a bit. All you need is a little more ginger. Do it as you showed me. Get that toss of your head you had the other night."
Carrie remembered her triumph in the room. She tried to think she could to it.
"What's next?" he said, looking at her part, which she had been studying.
"Why, the scene between Ray and me when I refuse him."
"Well, now you do that lively," said the drummer. "Put in snap, that's the thing. Act as if you didn't care."
"Your turn next, Miss Madenda," said the prompter.
"Oh, dear," said Carrie.
"Well, you're a chump for being afraid," said Drouet. "Come on now, brace up. I'll watch you from right here."
"Will you?" said Carrie.
"Yes, now go on. Don't be afraid."
The prompter signalled her.
She started out, weak as ever, but suddenly her nerve partially returned. She thought of Drouet looking.
"Ray," she said, gently, using a tone of voice much more calm than when she had last appeared. It was the scene which had pleased the director at the rehearsal.
"She's easier," thought Hurstwood to himself.
She did not do the part as she had at rehearsal, but she was better. The audience was at least not irritated. The improvement of the work of the entire company took away direct observation from her. They were making very fair progress, and now it looked as if the play would be passable, in the less trying parts at least.
Carrie came off warm and nervous.
"Well," she said, looking at him, "was it any better?"
"Well, I should say so. That's the way. Put life into it. You did that about a thousand per cent. better than you did the other scene. Now go on and fire up. You can do it. Knock 'em."
"Was it really better?"
"Better, I should say so. What comes next?"
"That ballroom scene."
"Well, you can do that all right," he said.
"I don't know," answered Carrie.
"Why, woman," he exclaimed, "you did it for me! Now you go out there and do it. It'll be fun for you. Just do as you did in the room. If you'll reel it off that way, I'll bet you make a hit. Now, what'll you bet? You do it."
The drummer usually allowed his ardent good-nature to get the better of his speech. He really did think that Carrie had acted this particular scene very well, and he wanted her to repeat it in public. His enthusiasm was due to the mere spirit of the occasion.
When the time came, he buoyed Carrie up most effectually. He began to make her feel as if she had done very well. The old melancholy of desire began to come back as he talked at her, and by the time the situation rolled around she was running high in feeling.
"I think I can do this."
"Sure you can. Now you go ahead and see."
On the stage, Mrs. Van Dam was making her cruel insinuation against Laura.
Carrie listened, and caught the infection of something-she did not know what. Her nostrils sniffed thinly.
"It means," the professional actor began, speaking as Ray, "that society is a terrible avenger of insult. Have you ever heard of the Siberian wolves? When one of the pack falls through weakness, the others devour him. It is not an elegant comparison, but there is something wolfish in society. Laura has mocked it with a pretence, and society, which is made up of pretence, will bitterly resent the mockery."
At the sound of her stage name Carrie started. She began to feel the bitterness of the situation. The feelings of the outcast descended upon her. She hung at the wing's edge, wrapt in her own mounting thoughts. She hardly heard anything more, save her own rumbling blood.
"Come, girls," said Mrs. Van Dam, solemnly, "let us look after our things. They are no longer safe when such an accomplished thief enters."
"Cue," said the prompter, close to her side, but she did not hear. Already she was moving forward with a steady grace, born of inspiration. She dawned upon the audience, handsome and proud, shifting, with the necessity of the situation, to a cold, white, helpless object, as the social pack moved away from her scornfully.
Hurstwood blinked his eyes and caught the infection. The radiating waves of feeling and sincerity were already breaking against the farthest walls of the chamber. The magic of passion, which will yet dissolve the world, was here at work.
There was a drawing, too, of attention, a riveting of feeling, heretofore wandering.
"Ray! Ray! Why do you not come back to her?" was the cry of Pearl.
Every eye was fixed on Carrie, still proud and scornful. They moved as she moved. Their eyes were with her eyes.
Mrs. Morgan, as Pearl, approached her.
"Let us go home," she said.
"No," answered Carrie, her voice assuming for the first time a penetrating quality which it had never known. "Stay with him!"
She pointed an almost accusing hand toward her lover. Then, with a pathos which struck home because of its utter simplicity, "He shall not suffer long."
Hurstwood realised that he was seeing something extraordinarily good. It was heightened for him by the applause of the audience as the curtain descended and the fact that it was Carrie. He thought now that she was beautiful. She had done something which was above his sphere. He felt a keen delight in realising that she was his.
"Fine," he said, and then, seized by a sudden impulse, arose and went about to the stage door.
When he came in upon Carrie she was still with Drouet. His feelings for her were most exuberant. He was almost swept away by the strength and feeling she exhibited. His desire was to pour forth his praise with the unbounded feelings of a lover, but here was Drouet, whose affection was also rapidly reviving. The latter was more fascinated, if anything, than Hurstwood. At least, in the nature of things, it took a more ruddy form.
"Well, well," said Drouet, "you did out of sight. That was simply great. I knew you could do it. Oh, but you're a little daisy!"
Carrie's eyes flamed with the light of achievement.
"Did I do all right?"
"Did you? Well, I guess. Didn't you hear the applause?"
There was some faint sound of clapping yet.
"I thought I got it something like-I felt it."
Just then Hurstwood came in. Instinctively he felt the change in Drouet. He saw that the drummer was near to Carrie, and jealousy leaped alight in his bosom. In a flash of thought, he reproached himself for having sent him back. Also, he hated him as an intruder. He could scarcely pull himself down to the level where he would have to congratulate Carrie as a friend. Nevertheless, the man mastered himself, and it was a triumph. He almost jerked the old subtle light to his eyes.
"I thought," he said, looking at Carrie, "I would come around and tell you how well you did, Mrs. Drouet. It was delightful."
Carrie took the cue, and replied:
"Oh, thank you."
"I was just telling her," put in Drouet, now delighted with his possession, "that I thought she did fine."
"Indeed you did," said Hurstwood, turning upon Carrie eyes in which she read more than the words.
Carrie laughed luxuriantly.
"If you do as well in the rest of the play, you will make us all think you are a born actress."
Carrie smiled again. She felt the acuteness of Hurstwood's position, and wished deeply that she could be alone with him, but she did not understand the change in Drouet. Hurstwood found that he could not talk, repressed as he was, and grudging Drouet every moment of his presence, he bowed himself out with the elegance of a Faust. Outside he set his teeth with envy.
"Damn it!" he said, "is he always going to be in the way?" He was moody when he got back to the box, and could not talk for thinking of his wretched situation.
As the curtain for the next act arose, Drouet came back. He was very much enlivened in temper and inclined to whisper, but Hurstwood pretended interest. He fixed his eyes on the stage, although Carrie was not there, a short bit of melodramatic comedy preceding her entrance. He did not see what was going on, however. He was thinking his own thoughts, and they were wretched.
The progress of the play did not improve matters for him. Carrie, from now on, was easily the centre of interest. The audience, which had been inclined to feel that nothing could be good after the first gloomy impression, now went to the other extreme and saw power where it was not. The general feeling reacted on Carrie. She presented her part with some felicity, though nothing like the intensity which had aroused the feeling at the end of the long first act.
Both Hurstwood and Drouet viewed her pretty figure with rising feelings. The fact that such ability should reveal itself in her, that they should see it set forth under such effective circumstances, framed almost in massy gold and shone upon by the appropriate lights of sentiment and personality, heightened her charm for them. She was more than the old Carrie to Drouet. He longed to be at home with her until he could tell her. He awaited impatiently the end, when they should go home alone.
Hurstwood, on the contrary, saw in the strength of her new attractiveness his miserable predicament. He could have cursed the man beside him. By the Lord, he could not even applaud feelingly as he would. For once he must simulate when it left a taste in his mouth.
It was in the last act that Carrie's fascination for her lovers assumed its most effective character.
Hurstwood listened to its progress, wondering when Carrie would come on. He had not long to wait. The author had used the artifice of sending all the merry company for a drive, and now Carrie came in alone. It was the first time that Hurstwood had had a chance to see her facing the audience quite alone, for nowhere else had she been without a foil of some sort. He suddenly felt, as she entered, that her old strength-the power that had grasped him at the end of the first act-had come back. She seemed to be gaining feeling, now that the play was drawing to a close and the opportunity for great action was passing.
"Poor Pearl," she said, speaking with natural pathos. "It is a sad thing to want for happiness, but it is a terrible thing to see another groping about blindly for it, when it is almost within the grasp."
She was gazing now sadly out upon the open sea, her arm resting listlessly upon the polished door-post.
Hurstwood began to feel a deep sympathy for her and for himself. He could almost feel that she was talking to him. He was, by a combination of feelings and entanglements, almost deluded by that quality of voice and manner which, like a pathetic strain of music, seems ever a personal and intimate thing. Pathos has this quality, that it seems ever addressed to one alone.
"And yet, she can be very happy with him," went on the little actress. "Her sunny temper, her joyous face will brighten any home."
She turned slowly toward the audience without seeing. There was so much simplicity in her movements that she seemed wholly alone. Then she found a seat by a table, and turned over some books, devoting a thought to them.
"With no longings for what I may not have," she breathed in conclusion-and it was almost a sigh-"my existence hidden from all save two in the wide world, and making my joy out of the joy of that innocent girl who will soon be his wife."
Hurstwood was sorry when a character, known as Peach Blossom, interrupted her. He stirred irritably, for he wished her to go on. He was charmed by the pale face, the lissome figure, draped in pearl grey, with a coiled string of pearls at the throat. Carrie had the air of one who was weary and in need of protection, and, under the fascinating make-believe of the moment, he rose in feeling until he was ready in spirit to go to her and ease her out of her misery by adding to his own delight.
In a moment Carrie was alone again, and was saying, with animation:
"I must return to the city, no matter what dangers may lurk here. I must go, secretly if I can; openly, if I must."
There was a sound of horses' hoofs outside, and then Ray's voice saying: "No, I shall not ride again. Put him up."
He entered, and then began a scene which had as much to do with the creation of the tragedy of affection in Hurstwood as anything in his peculiar and involved career. For Carrie had resolved to make something of this scene, and, now that the cue had come, it began to take a feeling hold upon her. Both Hurstwood and Drouet noted the rising sentiment as she proceeded.
"I thought you had gone with Pearl," she said to her lover.
"I did go part of the way, but I left the party a mile down the road."
"You and Pearl had no disagreement?"
"No-yes; that is, we always have. Our social barometers always stand at 'cloudy' and 'overcast.'"
"And whose fault is that?" she said, easily.
"Not mine," he answered, pettishly. "I know I do all I can-I say all I can-but she-"
This was rather awkwardly put by Patton, but Carrie redeemed it with a grace which was inspiring.
"But she is your wife," she said, fixing her whole attention upon the stilled actor, and softening the quality of her voice until it was again low and musical. "Ray, my friend, courtship is the text from which the whole sermon of married life takes its theme. Do not let yours be discontented and unhappy."
She put her two little hands together and pressed them appealingly.
Hurstwood gazed with slightly parted lips. Drouet was fidgeting with satisfaction.
"To be my wife, yes," went on the actor in a manner which was weak by comparison, but which could not now spoil the tender atmosphere which Carrie had created and maintained. She did not seem to feel that he was wretched. She would have done nearly as well with a block of wood. The accessories she needed were within her own imagination. The acting of others could not affect them.
"And you repent already?" she said, slowly.
"I lost you," he said, seizing her little hand, "and I was at the mercy of any flirt who chose to give me an inviting look. It was your fault-you know it was-why did you leave me?"
Carrie turned slowly away, and seemed to be mastering some impulse in silence. Then she turned back.
"Ray," she said, "the greatest happiness I have ever felt has been the thought that all your affection was forever bestowed upon a virtuous woman, your equal in family, fortune, and accomplishments. What a revelation do you make to me now! What is it makes you continually war with your happiness?"
The last question was asked so simply that it came to the audience and the lover as a personal thing.
At last it came to the part where the lover exclaimed, "Be to me as you used to be."
Carrie answered, with affecting sweetness, "I cannot be that to you, but I can speak in the spirit of the Laura who is dead to you forever."
"Be it as you will," said Patton.
Hurstwood leaned forward. The whole audience was silent and intent.
"Let the woman you look upon be wise or vain," said Carrie, her eyes bent sadly upon the lover, who had sunk into a seat, "beautiful or homely, rich or poor, she has but one thing she can really give or refuse-her heart."
Drouet felt a scratch in his throat.
"Her beauty, her wit, her accomplishments, she may sell to you; but her love is the treasure without money and without price."
The manager suffered this as a personal appeal. It came to him as if they were alone, and he could hardly restrain the tears for sorrow over the hopeless, pathetic, and yet dainty and appealing woman whom he loved. Drouet also was beside himself. He was resolving that he would be to Carrie what he had never been before. He would marry her, by George! She was worth it.
"She asks only in return," said Carrie, scarcely hearing the small, scheduled reply of her lover, and putting herself even more in harmony with the plaintive melody now issuing from the orchestra, "that when you look upon her your eyes shall speak devotion; that when you address her your voice shall be gentle, loving, and kind; that you shall not despise her because she cannot understand all at once your vigorous thoughts and ambitious designs; for, when misfortune and evil have defeated your greatest purposes, her love remains to console you. You look to the trees," she continued, while Hurstwood restrained his feelings only by the grimmest repression, "for strength and grandeur; do not despise the flowers because their fragrance is all they have to give. Remember," she concluded, tenderly, "love is all a woman has to give," and she laid a strange, sweet accent on the all, "but it is the only thing which God permits us to carry beyond the grave."
The two men were in the most harrowed state of affection. They scarcely heard the few remaining words with which the scene concluded. They only saw their idol, moving about with appealing grace, continuing a power which to them was a revelation.
Hurstwood resolved a thousands things, Drouet as well. They joined equally in the burst of applause which called Carrie out. Drouet pounded his hands until they ached. Then he jumped up again and started out. As he went, Carrie came out, and, seeing an immense basket of flowers being hurried down the aisle toward her, she waited. They were Hurstwood's. She looked toward the manager's box for a moment, caught his eye, and smiled. He could have leaped out of the box to enfold her. He forgot the need of circumspectness which his married state enforced. He almost forgot that he had with him in the box those who knew him. By the Lord, he would have that lovely girl if it took his all. He would act at once. This should be the end of Drouet, and don't you forget it. He would not wait another day. The drummer should not have her.
He was so excited that he could not stay in the box. He went into the lobby, and then into the street, thinking. Drouet did not return. In a few minutes the last act was over, and he was crazy to have Carrie alone. He cursed the luck that could keep him smiling, bowing, shamming, when he wanted to tell her that he loved her, when he wanted to whisper to her alone. He groaned as he saw that his hopes were futile. He must even take her to supper, shamming. He finally went about and asked how she was getting along. The actors were all dressing, talking, hurrying about. Drouet was palavering himself with the looseness of excitement and passion. The manager mastered himself only by a great effort.
"We are going to supper, of course," he said, with a voice that was a mockery of his heart.
"Oh, yes," said Carrie, smiling.
The little actress was in fine feather. She was realising now what it was to be petted. For once she was the admired, the sought-for. The independence of success now made its first faint showing. With the tables turned, she was looking down, rather than up, to her lover. She did not fully realise that this was so, but there was something in condescension coming from her which was infinitely sweet. When she was ready they climbed into the waiting coach and drove down town; once, only, did she find an opportunity to express her feeling, and that was when the manager preceded Drouet in the coach and sat beside her. Before Drouet was fully in she had squeezed Hurstwood's hand in a gentle, impulsive manner. The manager was beside himself with affection. He could have sold his soul to be with her alone. "Ah," he thought, "the agony of it."
Drouet hung on, thinking he was all in all. The dinner was spoiled by his enthusiasm. Hurstwood went home feeling as if he should die if he did not find affectionate relief. He whispered "to-morrow" passionately to Carrie, and she understood. He walked away from the drummer and his prize at parting feeling as if he could slay him and not regret. Carrie also felt the misery of it.
"Good-night," he said, simulating an easy friendliness.
"Good-night," said the little actress, tenderly.
"The fool!" he said, now hating Drouet. "The idiot! I'll do him yet, and that quick! We'll see to-morrow."
"Well, if you aren't a wonder," Drouet was saying, complacently, squeezing Carrie's arm. "You are the dandiest little girl on earth."
Chapter XX. THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT: THE FLESH IN PURSUIT
Passion in a man of Hurstwood's nature takes a vigorous form. It is no musing, dreamy thing. There is none of the tendency to sing outside of my lady's window-to languish and repine in the face of difficulties. In the night he was long getting to sleep because of too much thinking, and in the morning he was early awake, seizing with alacrity upon the same dear subject and pursuing it with vigour. He was out of sorts physically, as well as disordered mentally, for did he not delight in a new manner in his Carrie, and was not Drouet in the way? Never was man more harassed than he by the thoughts of his love being held by the elated, flush-mannered drummer. He would have given anything, it seemed to him, to have the complication ended-to have Carrie acquiesce to an arrangement which would dispose of Drouet effectually and forever.
What to do. He dressed thinking. He moved about in the same chamber with his wife, unmindful of her presence.
At breakfast he found himself without an appetite. The meat to which he helped himself remained on his plate untouched. His coffee grew cold, while he scanned the paper indifferently. Here and there he read a little thing, but remembered nothing. Jessica had not yet come down. His wife sat at one end of the table revolving thoughts of her own in silence. A new servant had been recently installed and had forgot the napkins. On this account the silence was irritably broken by a reproof.
"I've told you about this before, Maggie," said Mrs. Hurstwood. "I'm not going to tell you again."
Hurstwood took a glance at his wife. She was frowning. Just now her manner irritated him excessively. Her next remark was addressed to him.
"Have you made up your mind, George, when you will take your vacation?"
It was customary for them to discuss the regular summer outing at this season of the year.
"Not yet," he said, "I'm very busy just now."
"Well, you'll want to make up your mind pretty soon, won't you, if we're going?" she returned.
"I guess we have a few days yet," he said.
"Hmff," she returned. "Don't wait until the season's over."
She stirred in aggravation as she said this.
"There you go again," he observed. "One would think I never did anything, the way you begin."
"Well, I want to know about it," she reiterated.
"You've got a few days yet," he insisted. "You'll not want to start before the races are over."
He was irritated to think that this should come up when he wished to have his thoughts for other purposes.
"Well, we may. Jessica doesn't want to stay until the end of the races."
"What did you want with a season ticket, then?"
"Uh!" she said, using the sound as an exclamation of disgust, "I'll not argue with you," and therewith arose to leave the table.
"Say," he said, rising, putting a note of determination in his voice which caused her to delay her departure, "what's the matter with you of late? Can't I talk with you any more?"
"Certainly, you can talk with me," she replied, laying emphasis on the word.
"Well, you wouldn't think so by the way you act. Now, you want to know when I'll be ready-not for a month yet. Maybe not then."
"We'll go without you."
"You will, eh?" he sneered.
"Yes, we will."
He was astonished at the woman's determination, but it only irritated him the more.
"Well, we'll see about that. It seems to me you're trying to run things with a pretty high hand of late. You talk as though you settled my affairs for me. Well, you don't. You don't regulate anything that's connected with me. If you want to go, go, but you won't hurry me by any such talk as that."
He was thoroughly aroused now. His dark eyes snapped, and he crunched his paper as he laid it down. Mrs. Hurstwood said nothing more. He was just finishing when she turned on her heel and went out into the hall and upstairs. He paused for a moment, as if hesitating, then sat down and drank a little coffee, and thereafter arose and went for his hat and gloves upon the main floor.
His wife had really not anticipated a row of this character. She had come down to the breakfast table feeling a little out of sorts with herself and revolving a scheme which she had in her mind. Jessica had called her attention to the fact that the races were not what they were supposed to be. The social opportunities were not what they had thought they would be this year. The beautiful girl found going every day a dull thing. There was an earlier exodus this year of people who were anybody to the watering places and Europe. In her own circle of acquaintances several young men in whom she was interested had gone to Waukesha. She began to feel that she would like to go too, and her mother agreed with her.
Accordingly, Mrs. Hurstwood decided to broach the subject. She was thinking this over when she came down to the table, but for some reason the atmosphere was wrong. She was not sure, after it was all over, just how the trouble had begun. She was determined now, however, that her husband was a brute, and that, under no circumstances, would she let this go by unsettled. She would have more lady-like treatment or she would know why.
For his part, the manager was loaded with the care of this new argument until he reached his office and started from there to meet Carrie. Then the other complications of love, desire, and opposition possessed him. His thoughts fled on before him upon eagles' wings. He could hardly wait until he should meet Carrie face to face. What was the night, after all, without her-what the day? She must and should be his.
For her part, Carrie had experienced a world of fancy and feeling since she had left him, the night before. She had listened to Drouet's enthusiastic maunderings with much regard for that part which concerned herself, with very little for that which affected his own gain. She kept him at such lengths as she could, because her thoughts were with her own triumph. She felt Hurstwood's passion as a delightful background to her own achievement, and she wondered what he would have to say. She was sorry for him, too, with that peculiar sorrow which finds something complimentary to itself in the misery of another. She was now experiencing the first shades of feeling of that subtle change which removes one out of the ranks of the suppliants into the lines of the dispensers of charity. She was, all in all, exceedingly happy.
On the morrow, however, there was nothing in the papers concerning the event, and, in view of the flow of common, everyday things about, it now lost a shade of the glow of the previous evening. Drouet himself was not talking so much of as for her. He felt instinctively that, for some reason or other, he needed reconstruction in her regard.
"I think," he said, as he spruced around their chambers the next morning, preparatory to going down town, "that I'll straighten out that little deal of mine this month and then we'll get married. I was talking with Mosher about that yesterday."
"No, you won't," said Carrie, who was coming to feel a certain faint power to jest with the drummer.
"Yes, I will," he exclaimed, more feelingly than usual, adding, with the tone of one who pleads, "Don't you believe what I've told you?"
Carrie laughed a little.
"Of course I do," she answered.
Drouet's assurance now misgave him. Shallow as was his mental observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made his little power of analysis useless. Carrie was still with him, but not helpless and pleading. There was a lilt in her voice which was new. She did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence. The drummer was feeling the shadow of something which was coming. It coloured his feelings and made him develop those little attentions and say those little words which were mere forefendations against danger.
Shortly afterward he departed, and Carrie prepared for her meeting with Hurstwood. She hurried at her toilet, which was soon made, and hastened down the stairs. At the corner she passed Drouet, but they did not see each other.
The drummer had forgotten some bills which he wished to turn into his house. He hastened up the stairs and burst into the room, but found only the chambermaid, who was cleaning up.
"Hello," he exclaimed, half to himself, "has Carrie gone?"
"Your wife? Yes, she went out just a few minutes ago."
"That's strange," thought Drouet. "She didn't say a word to me. I wonder where she went?"
He hastened about, rummaging in his valise for what he wanted, and finally pocketing it. Then he turned his attention to his fair neighbour, who was good-looking and kindly disposed towards him.
"What are you up to?" he said, smiling.
"Just cleaning," she replied, stopping and winding a dusting towel about her hand.
"Tired of it?"
"Not so very."
"Let me show you something," he said, affably, coming over and taking out of his pocket a little lithographed card which had been issued by a wholesale tobacco company. On this was printed a picture of a pretty girl, holding a striped parasol, the colours of which could be changed by means of a revolving disk in the back, which showed red, yellow, green, and blue through little interstices made in the ground occupied by the umbrella top.
"Isn't that clever?" he said, handing it to her and showing her how it worked. "You never saw anything like that before."
"Isn't it nice?" she answered.
"You can have it if you want it," he remarked.
"That's a pretty ring you have," he said, touching a commonplace setting which adorned the hand holding the card he had given her.
"Do you think so?"
"That's right," he answered, making use of a pretence at examination to secure her finger. "That's fine."
The ice being thus broken, he launched into further observation pretending to forget that her fingers were still retained by his. She soon withdrew them, however, and retreated a few feet to rest against the window-sill.
"I didn't see you for a long time," she said, coquettishly, repulsing one of his exuberant approaches. "You must have been away."
"I was," said Drouet.
"Do you travel far?"
"Pretty far-yes."
"Do you like it?"
"Oh, not very well. You get tired of it after a while."
"I wish I could travel," said the girl, gazing idly out of the window.
"What has become of your friend, Mr. Hurstwood?" she suddenly asked, bethinking herself of the manager, who, from her own observation, seemed to contain promising material.
"He's here in town. What makes you ask about him?"
"Oh, nothing, only he hasn't been here since you got back."
"How did you come to know him?"
"Didn't I take up his name a dozen times in the last month?"
"Get out," said the drummer, lightly. "He hasn't called more than half a dozen times since we've been here."
"He hasn't, eh?" said the girl, smiling. "That's all you know about it."
Drouet took on a slightly more serious tone. He was uncertain as to whether she was joking or not.
"Tease," he said, "what makes you smile that way?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Have you seen him recently?"
"Not since you came back," she laughed.
"Before?"
"Certainly."
"How often?"
"Why, nearly every day."
She was a mischievous newsmonger, and was keenly wondering what the effect of her words would be.
"Who did he come to see?" asked the drummer, incredulously.
"Mrs. Drouet."
He looked rather foolish at this answer, and then attempted to correct himself so as not to appear a dupe.
"Well," he said, "what of it?"
"Nothing," replied the girl, her head cocked coquettishly on one side.
"He's an old friend," he went on, getting deeper into the mire.
He would have gone on further with his little flirtation, but the taste for it was temporarily removed. He was quite relieved when the girl's named was called from below.
"I've got to go," she said, moving away from him airily.
"I'll see you later," he said, with a pretence of disturbance at being interrupted.
When she was gone, he gave freer play to his feelings. His face, never easily controlled by him, expressed all the perplexity and disturbance which he felt. Could it be that Carrie had received so many visits and yet said nothing about them? Was Hurstwood lying? What did the chambermaid mean by it, anyway? He had thought there was something odd about Carrie's manner at the time. Why did she look so disturbed when he had asked her how many times Hurstwood had called? By George! He remembered now. There was something strange about the whole thing.
He sat down in a rocking-chair to think the better, drawing up one leg on his knee and frowning mightily. His mind ran on at a great rate.
And yet Carrie hadn't acted out of the ordinary. It couldn't be, by George, that she was deceiving him. She hadn't acted that way. Why, even last night she had been as friendly toward him as could be, and Hurstwood too. Look how they acted! He could hardly believe they would try to deceive him.
His thoughts burst into words.
"She did act sort of funny at times. Here she had dressed, and gone out this morning and never said a word."
He scratched his head and prepared to go down town. He was still frowning. As he came into the hall he encountered the girl, who was now looking after another chamber. She had on a white dusting cap, beneath which her chubby face shone good-naturedly. Drouet almost forgot his worry in the fact that she was smiling on him. He put his hand familiarly on her shoulder, as if only to greet her in passing.
"Got over being mad?" she said, still mischievously inclined.
"I'm not mad," he answered.
"I thought you were," she said, smiling.
"Quit your fooling about that," he said, in an offhand way. "Were you serious?"
"Certainly," she answered. Then, with an air of one who did not intentionally mean to create trouble, "He came lots of times. I thought you knew."
The game of deception was up with Drouet. He did not try to simulate indifference further.
"Did he spend the evenings here?" he asked.
"Sometimes. Sometimes they went out."
"In the evening?"
"Yes. You mustn't look so mad, though."
"I'm not," he said. "Did any one else see him?"
"Of course," said the girl, as if, after all, it were nothing in particular.
"How long ago was this?"
"Just before you came back."
The drummer pinched his lip nervously.
"Don't say anything, will you?" he asked, giving the girl's arm a gentle squeeze.
"Certainly not," she returned. "I wouldn't worry over it."
"All right," he said, passing on, seriously brooding for once, and yet not wholly unconscious of the fact that he was making a most excellent impression upon the chambermaid.
"I'll see her about that," he said to himself, passionately, feeling that he had been unduly wronged. "I'll find out, b'George, whether she'll act that way or not."
Chapter XXI. THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT: THE FLESH IN PURSUIT
When Carrie came Hurstwood had been waiting many minutes. His blood was warm; his nerves wrought up. He was anxious to see the woman who had stirred him so profoundly the night before.
"Here you are," he said, repressedly, feeling a spring in his limbs and an elation which was tragic in itself.
"Yes," said Carrie.
They walked on as if bound for some objective point, while Hurstwood drank in the radiance of her presence. The rustle of her pretty skirt was like music to him.
"Are you satisfied?" he asked, thinking of how well she did the night before.
"Are you?"
He tightened his fingers as he saw the smile she gave him.
"It was wonderful."
Carrie laughed ecstatically.
"That was one of the best things I've seen in a long time," he added.
He was dwelling on her attractiveness as he had felt it the evening before, and mingling it with the feeling her presence inspired now.
Carrie was dwelling in the atmosphere which this man created for her. Already she was enlivened and suffused with a glow. She felt his drawing toward her in every sound of his voice.
"Those were such nice flowers you sent me," she said, after a moment or two. "They were beautiful."
"Glad you liked them," he answered, simply.
He was thinking all the time that the subject of his desire was being delayed. He was anxious to turn the talk to his own feelings. All was ripe for it. His Carrie was beside him. He wanted to plunge in and expostulate with her, and yet he found himself fishing for words and feeling for a way.
"You got home all right," he said, gloomily, of a sudden, his tune modifying itself to one of self-commiseration.
"Yes," said Carrie, easily.
He looked at her steadily for a moment, slowing his pace and fixing her with his eye.
She felt the flood of feeling.
"How about me?" he asked.
This confused Carrie considerably, for she realised the flood-gates were open. She didn't know exactly what to answer. "I don't know," she answered.
He took his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, and then let it go. He stopped by the walk side and kicked the grass with his toe. He searched her face with a tender, appealing glance.
"Won't you come away from him?" he asked, intensely.
"I don't know," returned Carrie, still illogically drifting and finding nothing at which to catch.
As a matter of fact, she was in a most hopeless quandary. Here was a man whom she thoroughly liked, who exercised an influence over her, sufficient almost to delude her into the belief that she was possessed of a lively passion for him. She was still the victim of his keen eyes, his suave manners, his fine clothes. She looked and saw before her a man who was most gracious and sympathetic, who leaned toward her with a feeling that was a delight to observe. She could not resist the glow of his temperament, the light of his eye. She could hardly keep from feeling what he felt.
And yet she was not without thoughts which were disturbing. What did he know? What had Drouet told him? Was she a wife in his eyes, or what? Would he marry her? Even while he talked, and she softened, and her eyes were lighted with a tender glow, she was asking herself if Drouet had told him they were not married. There was never anything at all convincing about what Drouet said.
And yet she was not grieved at Hurstwood's love. No strain of bitterness was in it for her, whatever he knew. He was evidently sincere. His passion was real and warm. There was power in what he said. What should she do? She went on thinking this, answering vaguely, languishing affectionately, and altogether drifting, until she was on a borderless sea of speculation.
"Why don't you come away?" he said, tenderly. "I will arrange for you whatever-"
"Oh, don't," said Carrie.
"Don't what?" he asked. "What do you mean?"
There was a look of confusion and pain in her face. She was wondering why that miserable thought must be brought in. She was struck as by a blade with the miserable provision which was outside the pale of marriage.
He himself realized that it was a wretched thing to have dragged in. He wanted to weigh the effects of it, and yet he could not see. He went beating on, flushed by her presence, clearly awakened, intensely enlisted in his plan.
"Won't you come?" he said, beginning over and with a more reverent feeling. "You know I can't do without you-you know it-it can't go on this way-can it?"
"I know," said Carrie.
"I wouldn't ask if I-I wouldn't argue with you if I could help it. Look at me, Carrie. Put yourself in my place. You don't want to stay away from me, do you?"
She shook her head as if in deep thought. "Then why not settle the whole thing, once and for all?"
"I don't know," said Carrie.
"Don't know! Ah, Carrie, what makes you say that? Don't torment me. Be serious."
"I am," said Carrie, softly.
"You can't be, dearest, and say that. Not when you know how I love you. Look at last night."
His manner as he said this was the most quiet imaginable. His face and body retained utter composure. Only his eyes moved, and they flashed a subtle, dissolving fire. In them the whole intensity of the man's nature was distilling itself.
Carrie made no answer.
"How can you act this way, dearest?" he inquired, after a time. "You love me, don't you?"
He turned on her such a storm of feeling that she was overwhelmed. For the moment all doubts were cleared away.
"Yes," she answered, frankly and tenderly.
"Well, then you'll come, won't you-come to-night?"
Carrie shook her head in spite of her distress.
"I can't wait any longer," urged Hurstwood. "If that is too soon, come Saturday."
"When will we be married?" she asked, diffidently, forgetting in her difficult situation that she had hoped he took her to be Drouet's wife.
The manager started, hit as he was by a problem which was more difficult than hers. He gave no sign of the thoughts that flashed like messages to his mind.
"Any time you say," he said, with ease, refusing to discolour his present delight with this miserable problem.
"Saturday?" asked Carrie.
He nodded his head.
"Well, if you will marry me then," she said, "I'll go."
The manager looked at his lovely prize, so beautiful, so winsome, so difficult to be won, and made strange resolutions. His passion had gotten to that stage now where it was no longer coloured with reason. He did not trouble over little barriers of this sort in the face of so much loveliness. He would accept the situation with all its difficulties; he would not try to answer the objections which cold truth thrust upon him. He would promise anything, everything, and trust to fortune to disentangle him. He would make a try for Paradise, whatever might be the result. He would be happy, by the Lord, if it cost all honesty of statement, all abandonment of truth.
Carrie looked at him tenderly. She could have laid her head upon his shoulder, so delightful did it all seem. "Well," she said, "I'll try and get ready then."
Hurstwood looked into her pretty face, crossed with little shadows of wonder and misgiving, and thought he had never seen anything more lovely.
"I'll see you again to-morrow," he said, joyously, "and we'll talk over the plans."
He walked on with her, elated beyond words, so delightful had been the result. He impressed a long story of joy and affection upon her, though there was but here and there a word. After a half-hour he began to realise that the meeting must come to an end, so exacting is the world.
"To-morrow," he said at parting, a gayety of manner adding wonderfully to his brave demeanour.
"Yes," said Carrie, tripping elatedly away.
There had been so much enthusiasm engendered that she was believing herself deeply in love. She sighed as she thought of her handsome adorer. Yes, she would get ready by Saturday. She would go, and they would be happy.
Chapter XXII. THE BLAZE OF THE TINDER: FLESH WARS WITH THE FLESH
The misfortune of the Hurstwood household was due to the fact that jealousy, having been born of love, did not perish with it. Mrs. Hurstwood retained this in such form that subsequent influences could transform it into hate. Hurstwood was still worthy, in a physical sense, of the affection his wife had once bestowed upon him, but in a social sense he fell short. With his regard died his power to be attentive to her, and this, to a woman, is much greater than outright crime toward another. Our self-love dictates our appreciation of the good or evil in another. In Mrs. Hurstwood it discoloured the very hue of her husband's indifferent nature. She saw design in deeds and phrases which sprung only from a faded appreciation of her presence.
As a consequence, she was resentful and suspicious. The jealousy that prompted her to observe every falling away from the little amenities of the married relation on his part served to give her notice of the airy grace with which he still took the world. She could see from the scrupulous care which he exercised in the matter of his personal appearance that his interest in life had abated not a jot. Every motion, every glance had something in it of the pleasure he felt in Carrie, of the zest this new pursuit of pleasure lent to his days. Mrs. Hurstwood felt something, sniffing change, as animals do danger, afar off.
This feeling was strengthened by actions of a direct and more potent nature on the part of Hurstwood. We have seen with what irritation he shirked those little duties which no longer contained any amusement of satisfaction for him, and the open snarls with which, more recently, he resented her irritating goads. These little rows were really precipitated by an atmosphere which was surcharged with dissension. That it would shower, with a sky so full of blackening thunderclouds, would scarcely be thought worthy of comment. Thus, after leaving the breakfast table this morning, raging inwardly at his blank declaration of indifference at her plans, Mrs. Hurstwood encountered Jessica in her dressing-room, very leisurely arranging her hair. Hurstwood had already left the house.
"I wish you wouldn't be so late coming down to breakfast," she said, addressing Jessica, while making for her crochet basket. "Now here the things are quite cold, and you haven't eaten."
Her natural composure was sadly ruffled, and Jessica was doomed to feel the fag end of the storm.
"I'm not hungry," she answered.
"Then why don't you say so, and let the girl put away the things, instead of keeping her waiting all morning?"
"She doesn't mind," answered Jessica, coolly.
"Well, I do, if she doesn't," returned the mother, "and, anyhow, I don't like you to talk that way to me. You're too young to put on such an air with your mother."
"Oh, mamma, don't row," answered Jessica. "What's the matter this morning, anyway?"
"Nothing's the matter, and I'm not rowing. You mustn't think because I indulge you in some things that you can keep everybody waiting. I won't have it."
"I'm not keeping anybody waiting," returned Jessica, sharply, stirred out of a cynical indifference to a sharp defence. "I said I wasn't hungry. I don't want any breakfast."
"Mind how you address me, missy. I'll not have it. Hear me now; I'll not have it!"
Jessica heard this last while walking out of the room, with a toss of her head and a flick of her pretty skirts indicative of the independence and indifference she felt. She did not propose to be quarrelled with.
Such little arguments were all too frequent, the result of a growth of natures which were largely independent and selfish. George, Jr., manifested even greater touchiness and exaggeration in the matter of his individual rights, and attempted to make all feel that he was a man with a man's privileges-an assumption which, of all things, is most groundless and pointless in a youth of nineteen.
Hurstwood was a man of authority and some fine feeling, and it irritated him excessively to find himself surrounded more and more by a world upon which he had no hold, and of which he had a lessening understanding.
Now, when such little things, such as the proposed earlier start to Waukesha, came up, they made clear to him his position. He was being made to follow, was not leading. When, in addition, a sharp temper was manifested, and to the process of shouldering him out of his authority was added a rousing intellectual kick, such as a sneer or a cynical laugh, he was unable to keep his temper. He flew into hardly repressed passion, and wished himself clear of the whole household. It seemed a most irritating drag upon all his desires and opportunities.
For all this, he still retained the semblance of leadership and control, even though his wife was straining to revolt. Her display of temper and open assertion of opposition were based upon nothing more than the feeling that she could do it. She had no special evidence wherewith to justify herself-the knowledge of something which would give her both authority and excuse. The latter was all that was lacking, however, to give a solid foundation to what, in a way, seemed groundless discontent. The clear proof of one overt deed was the cold breath needed to convert the lowering clouds of suspicion into a rain of wrath.
An inkling of untoward deeds on the part of Hurstwood had come. Doctor Beale, the handsome resident physician of the neighbourhood, met Mrs. Hurstwood at her own doorstep some days after Hurstwood and Carrie had taken the drive west on Washington Boulevard. Dr. Beale, coming east on the same drive, had recognised Hurstwood, but not before he was quite past him. He was not so sure of Carrie-did not know whether it was Hurstwood's wife or daughter.
"You don't speak to your friends when you meet them out driving, do you?" he said, jocosely, to Mrs. Hurstwood.
"If I see them, I do. Where was I?"
"On Washington Boulevard." he answered, expecting her eye to light with immediate remembrance.
She shook her head.
"Yes, out near Hoyne Avenue. You were with your husband."
"I guess you're mistaken," she answered. Then, remembering her husband's part in the affair, she immediately fell a prey to a host of young suspicions, of which, however, she gave no sign.
"I know I saw your husband," he went on. "I wasn't so sure about you. Perhaps it was your daughter."
"Perhaps it was," said Mrs. Hurstwood, knowing full well that such was not the case, as Jessica had been her companion for weeks. She had recovered herself sufficiently to wish to know more of the details.
"Was it in the afternoon?" she asked, artfully, assuming an air of acquaintanceship with the matter.
"Yes, about two or three."
"It must have been Jessica," said Mrs. Hurstwood, not wishing to seem to attach any importance to the incident.
The physician had a thought or two of his own, but dismissed the matter as worthy of no further discussion on his part at least.
Mrs. Hurstwood gave this bit of information considerable thought during the next few hours, and even days. She took it for granted that the doctor had really seen her husband, and that he had been riding, most likely, with some other woman, after announcing himself as busy to her. As a consequence, she recalled, with rising feeling, how often he had refused to go to places with her, to share in little visits, or, indeed, take part in any of the social amenities which furnished the diversion of her existence. He had been seen at the theatre with people whom he called Moy's friends; now he was seen driving, and, most likely, would have an excuse for that. Perhaps there were others of whom she did not hear, or why should he be so busy, so indifferent, of late? In the last six weeks he had become strangely irritable-strangely satisfied to pick up and go out, whether things were right or wrong in the house. Why?
She recalled, with more subtle emotions, that he did not look at her now with any of the old light of satisfaction or approval in his eye. Evidently, along with other things, he was taking her to be getting old and uninteresting. He saw her wrinkles, perhaps. She was fading, while he was still preening himself in his elegance and youth. He was still an interested factor in the merry-makings of the world, while she-but she did not pursue the thought. She only found the whole situation bitter, and hated him for it thoroughly.
Nothing came of this incident at the time, for the truth is it did not seem conclusive enough to warrant any discussion. Only the atmosphere of distrust and ill-feeling was strengthened, precipitating every now and then little sprinklings of irritable conversation, enlivened by flashes of wrath. The matter of the Waukesha outing was merely a continuation of other things of the same nature.
The day after Carrie's appearance on the Avery stage, Mrs. Hurstwood visited the races with Jessica and a youth of her acquaintance, Mr. Bart Taylor, the son of the owner of a local house-furnishing establishment. They had driven out early, and, as it chanced, encountered several friends of Hurstwood, all Elks, and two of whom had attended the performance the evening before. A thousand chances the subject of the performance had never been brought up had Jessica not been so engaged by the attentions of her young companion, who usurped as much time as possible. This left Mrs. Hurstwood in the mood to extend the perfunctory greetings of some who knew her into short conversations, and the short conversations of friends into long ones. It was from one who meant but to greet her perfunctorily that this interesting intelligence came.
"I see," said this individual, who wore sporting clothes of the most attractive pattern, and had a field-glass strung over his shoulder, "that you did not get over to our little entertainment last evening."
"No?" said Mrs. Hurstwood, inquiringly, and wondering why he should be using the tone he did in noting the fact that she had not been to something she knew nothing about. It was on her lips to say, "What was it?" when he added, "I saw your husband."
Her wonder was at once replaced by the more subtle quality of suspicion.
"Yes," she said, cautiously, "was it pleasant? He did not tell me much about it."
"Very. Really one of the best private theatricals I ever attended. There was one actress who surprised us all."
"Indeed," said Mrs. Hurstwood.
"It's too bad you couldn't have been there, really. I was sorry to hear you weren't feeling well."
Feeling well! Mrs. Hurstwood could have echoed the words after him open-mouthed. As it was, she extricated herself from her mingled impulse to deny and question, and said, almost raspingly:
"Yes, it is too bad."
"Looks like there will be quite a crowd here to-day, doesn't it?" the acquaintance observed, drifting off upon another topic.
The manager's wife would have questioned farther, but she saw no opportunity. She was for the moment wholly at sea, anxious to think for herself, and wondering what new deception was this which caused him to give out that she was ill when she was not. Another case of her company not wanted, and excuses being made. She resolved to find out more.
"Were you at the performance last evening?" she asked of the next of Hurstwood's friends who greeted her as she sat in her box.
"Yes. You didn't get around."
"No," she answered, "I was not feeling very well."
"So your husband told me," he answered. "Well, it was really very enjoyable. Turned out much better than I expected."
"Were there many there?"
"The house was full. It was quite an Elk night. I saw quite a number of your friends-Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Collins."
"Quite a social gathering."
"Indeed it was. My wife enjoyed it very much."
Mrs. Hurstwood bit her lip.
"So," she thought, "that's the way he does. Tells my friends I am sick and cannot come."
She wondered what could induce him to go alone. There was something back of this. She rummaged her brain for a reason.
By evening, when Hurstwood reached home, she had brooded herself into a state of sullen desire for explanation and revenge. She wanted to know what this peculiar action of his imported. She was certain there was more behind it all than what she had heard, and evil curiosity mingled well with distrust and the remnants of her wrath of the morning. She, impending disaster itself, walked about with gathered shadow at the eyes and the rudimentary muscles of savagery fixing the hard lines of her mouth.
On the other hand, as we may well believe, the manager came home in the sunniest mood. His conversation and agreement with Carrie had raised his spirits until he was in the frame of mind of one who sings joyously. He was proud of himself, proud of his success, proud of Carrie. He could have been genial to all the world, and he bore no grudge against his wife. He meant to be pleasant, to forget her presence, to live in the atmosphere of youth and pleasure which had been restored to him.
So now, the house, to his mind, had a most pleasing and comfortable appearance. In the hall he found an evening paper, laid there by the maid and forgotten by Mrs. Hurstwood. In the dining-room the table was clean laid with linen and napery and shiny with glasses and decorated china. Through an open door he saw into the kitchen, where the fire was crackling in the stove and the evening meal already well under way. Out in the small back yard was George, Jr., frolicking with a young dog he had recently purchased, and in the parlour Jessica was playing at the piano, the sounds of a merry waltz filling every nook and corner of the comfortable home. Every one, like himself, seemed to have regained his good spirits, to be in sympathy with youth and beauty, to be inclined to joy and merry-making. He felt as if he could say a good word all around himself, and took a most genial glance at the spread table and polished sideboard before going upstairs to read his paper in the comfortable armchair of the sitting-room which looked through the open windows into the street. When he entered there, however, he found his wife brushing her hair and musing to herself the while.
He came lightly in, thinking to smooth over any feeling that might still exist by a kindly word and a ready promise, but Mrs. Hurstwood said nothing. He seated himself in the large chair, stirred lightly in making himself comfortable, opened his paper, and began to read. In a few moments he was smiling merrily over a very comical account of a baseball game which had taken place between the Chicago and Detroit teams.
The while he was doing this Mrs. Hurstwood was observing him casually through the medium of the mirror which was before her. She noticed his pleasant and contented manner, his airy grace and smiling humour, and it merely aggravated her the more. She wondered how he could think to carry himself so in her presence after the cynicism, indifference, and neglect he had heretofore manifested and would continue to manifest so long as she would endure it. She thought how she should like to tell him-what stress and emphasis she would lend her assertions, how she should drive over this whole affair until satisfaction should be rendered her. Indeed, the shining sword of her wrath was but weakly suspended by a thread of thought.
In the meanwhile Hurstwood encountered a humorous item concerning a stranger who had arrived in the city and became entangled with a bunco-steerer. It amused him immensely, and at last he stirred and chuckled to himself. He wished that he might enlist his wife's attention and read it to her.
"Ha, ha," he exclaimed softly, as if to himself, "that's funny."
Mrs. Hurstwood kept on arranging her hair, not so much as deigning a glance.
He stirred again and went on to another subject. At last he felt as if his good-humour must find some outlet. Julia was probably still out of humour over that affair of this morning, but that could easily be straightened. As a matter of fact, she was in the wrong, but he didn't care. She could go to Waukesha right away if she wanted to. The sooner the better. He would tell her that as soon as he got a chance, and the whole thing would blow over.
"Did you notice," he said, at last, breaking forth concerning another item which he had found, "that they have entered suit to compel the Illinois Central to get off the lake front, Julia?" he asked.
She could scarcely force herself to answer, but managed to say "No," sharply.
Hurstwood pricked up his ears. There was a note in her voice which vibrated keenly.
"It would be a good thing if they did," he went on, half to himself, half to her, though he felt that something was amiss in that quarter. He withdrew his attention to his paper very circumspectly, listening mentally for the little sounds which should show him what was on foot.
As a matter of fact, no man as clever as Hurstwood-as observant and sensitive to atmospheres of many sorts, particularly upon his own plane of thought-would have made the mistake which he did in regard to his wife, wrought up as she was, had he not been occupied mentally with a very different train of thought. Had not the influence of Carrie's regard for him, the elation which her promise aroused in him, lasted over, he would not have seen the house in so pleasant a mood. It was not extraordinarily bright and merry this evening. He was merely very much mistaken, and would have been much more fitted to cope with it had he come home in his normal state.
After he had studied his paper a few moments longer, he felt that he ought to modify matters in some way or other. Evidently his wife was not going to patch up peace at a word. So he said:
"Where did George get the dog he has there in the yard?"
"I don't know," she snapped.
He put his paper down on his knees and gazed idly out of the window. He did not propose to lose his temper, but merely to be persistent and agreeable, and by a few questions bring around a mild understanding of some sort.
"Why do you feel so bad about that affair of this morning?" he said, at last. "We needn't quarrel about that. You know you can go to Waukesha if you want to."
"So you can stay here and trifle around with some one else?" she exclaimed, turning to him a determined countenance upon which was drawn a sharp and wrathful sneer.
He stopped as if slapped in the face. In an instant his persuasive, conciliatory manner fled. He was on the defensive at a wink and puzzled for a word to reply.
"What do you mean?" he said at last, straightening himself and gazing at the cold, determined figure before him, who paid no attention, but went on arranging herself before the mirror.
"You know what I mean," she said, finally, as if there were a world of information which she held in reserve-which she did not need to tell.
"Well, I don't," he said, stubbornly, yet nervous and alert for what should come next. The finality of the woman's manner took away his feeling of superiority in battle.
She made no answer.
"Hmph!" he murmured, with a movement of his head to one side. It was the weakest thing he had ever done. It was totally unassured.
Mrs. Hurstwood noticed the lack of colour in it. She turned upon him, animal-like, able to strike an effectual second blow.
"I want the Waukesha money to-morrow morning," she said.
He looked at her in amazement. Never before had he seen such a cold, steely determination in her eye-such a cruel look of indifference. She seemed a thorough master of her mood-thoroughly confident and determined to wrest all control from him. He felt that all his resources could not defend him. He must attack.
"What do you mean?" he said, jumping up. "You want! I'd like to know what's got into you to-night."
"Nothing's got into me," she said, flaming. "I want that money. You can do your swaggering afterwards."
"Swaggering, eh! What! You'll get nothing from me. What do you mean by your insinuations, anyhow?"
"Where were you last night?" she answered. The words were hot as they came. "Who were you driving with on Washington Boulevard? Who were you with at the theatre when George saw you? Do you think I'm a fool to be duped by you? Do you think I'll sit at home here and take your 'too busys' and 'can't come,' while you parade around and make out that I'm unable to come? I want you to know that lordly airs have come to an end so far as I am concerned. You can't dictate to me nor my children. I'm through with you entirely."
"It's a lie," he said, driven to a corner and knowing no other excuse.
"Lie, eh!" she said, fiercely, but with returning reserve; "you may call it a lie if you want to, but I know."
"It's a lie, I tell you," he said, in a low, sharp voice. "You've been searching around for some cheap accusation for months and now you think you have it. You think you'll spring something and get the upper hand. Well, I tell you, you can't. As long as I'm in this house I'm master of it, and you or any one else won't dictate to me-do you hear?"
He crept toward her with a light in his eye that was ominous. Something in the woman's cool, cynical, upper-handish manner, as if she were already master, caused him to feel for the moment as if he could strangle her.
She gazed at him-a pythoness in humour.
"I'm not dictating to you," she returned; "I'm telling you what I want."
The answer was so cool, so rich in bravado, that somehow it took the wind out of his sails. He could not attack her, he could not ask her for proofs. Somehow he felt evidence, law, the remembrance of all his property which she held in her name, to be shining in her glance. He was like a vessel, powerful and dangerous, but rolling and floundering without sail.
"And I'm telling you," he said in the end, slightly recovering himself, "what you'll not get."
"We'll see about it," she said. "I'll find out what my rights are. Perhaps you'll talk to a lawyer, if you won't to me."
It was a magnificent play, and had its effect. Hurstwood fell back beaten. He knew now that he had more than mere bluff to contend with. He felt that he was face to face with a dull proposition. What to say he hardly knew. All the merriment had gone out of the day. He was disturbed, wretched, resentful. What should he do? "Do as you please," he said, at last. "I'll have nothing more to do with you," and out he strode.
Chapter XXIII. A SPIRIT IN TRAVAIL: ONE RUNG PUT BEHIND
When Carrie reached her own room she had already fallen a prey to those doubts and misgivings which are ever the result of a lack of decision. She could not persuade herself as to the advisability of her promise, or that now, having given her word, she ought to keep it. She went over the whole ground in Hurstwood's absence, and discovered little objections that had not occurred to her in the warmth of the manager's argument. She saw where she had put herself in a peculiar light, namely, that of agreeing to marry when she was already supposedly married. She remembered a few things Drouet had done, and now that it came to walking away from him without a word, she felt as if she were doing wrong. Now, she was comfortably situated, and to one who is more or less afraid of the world, this is an urgent matter, and one which puts up strange, uncanny arguments. "You do not know what will come. There are miserable things outside. People go a-begging. Women are wretched. You never can tell what will happen. Remember the time you were hungry. Stick to what you have."
Curiously, for all her leaning towards Hurstwood, he had not taken a firm hold on her understanding. She was listening, smiling, approving, and yet not finally agreeing. This was due to a lack of power on his part, a lack of that majesty of passion that sweeps the mind from its seat, fuses and melts all arguments and theories into a tangled mass, and destroys for the time being the reasoning power. This majesty of passion is possessed by nearly every man once in his life, but it is usually an attribute of youth and conduces to the first successful mating.
Hurstwood, being an older man, could scarcely be said to retain the fire of youth, though he did possess a passion warm and unreasoning. It was strong enough to induce the leaning toward him which, on Carrie's part, we have seen. She might have been said to be imagining herself in love, when she was not. Women frequently do this. It flows from the fact that in each exists a bias toward affection, a craving for the pleasure of being loved. The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of the attributes of the sex. This, coupled with sentiment and a natural tendency to emotion, often makes refusing difficult. It persuades them that they are in love.
Once at home, she changed her clothes and straightened the rooms for herself. In the matter of the arrangement of the furniture she never took the housemaid's opinion. That young woman invariably put one of the rocking-chairs in the corner, and Carrie as regularly moved it out. To-day she hardly noticed that it was in the wrong place, so absorbed was she in her own thoughts. She worked about the room until Drouet put in appearance at five o'clock. The drummer was flushed and excited and full of determination to know all about her relations with Hurstwood. Nevertheless, after going over the subject in his mind the livelong day, he was rather weary of it and wished it over with. He did not foresee serious consequences of any sort, and yet he rather hesitated to begin. Carrie was sitting by the window when he came in, rocking and looking out. "Well," she said innocently, weary of her own mental discussion and wondering at his haste and ill-concealed excitement, "what makes you hurry so?"
Drouet hesitated, now that he was in her presence, uncertain as to what course to pursue. He was no diplomat. He could neither read nor see.
"When did you get home?" he asked foolishly.
"Oh, an hour or so ago. What makes you ask that?"
"You weren't here," he said, "when I came back this morning, and I thought you had gone out."
"So I did," said Carrie simply. "I went for a walk."
Drouet looked at her wonderingly. For all his lack of dignity in such matters he did not know how to begin. He stared at her in the most flagrant manner until at last she said:
"What makes you stare at me so? What's the matter?"
"Nothing," he answered. "I was just thinking."
"Just thinking what?" she returned smilingly, puzzled by his attitude.
"Oh, nothing-nothing much."
"Well, then, what makes you look so?"
Drouet was standing by the dresser, gazing at her in a comic manner. He had laid off his hat and gloves and was now fidgeting with the little toilet pieces which were nearest him. He hesitated to believe that the pretty woman before him was involved in anything so unsatisfactory to himself. He was very much inclined to feel that it was all right, after all. Yet the knowledge imparted to him by the chambermaid was rankling in his mind. He wanted to plunge in with a straight remark of some sort, but he knew not what.
"Where did you go this morning?" he finally asked weakly.
"Why, I went for a walk," said Carrie.
"Sure you did?" he asked.
"Yes, what makes you ask?"
She was beginning to see now that he knew something. Instantly she drew herself into a more reserved position. Her cheeks blanched slightly.
"I thought maybe you didn't," he said, beating about the bush in the most useless manner.
Carrie gazed at him, and as she did so her ebbing courage halted. She saw that he himself was hesitating, and with a woman's intuition realised that there was no occasion for great alarm.
"What makes you talk like that?" she asked, wrinkling her pretty forehead. "You act so funny to-night."
"I feel funny," he answered. They looked at one another for a moment, and then Drouet plunged desperately into his subject.
"What's this about you and Hurstwood?" he asked.
"Me and Hurstwood-what do you mean?"
"Didn't he come here a dozen times while I was away?"
"A dozen times," repeated Carrie, guiltily. "No, but what do you mean?"
"Somebody said that you went out riding with him and that he came here every night."
"No such thing," answered Carrie. "It isn't true. Who told you that?"
She was flushing scarlet to the roots of her hair, but Drouet did not catch the full hue of her face, owing to the modified light of the room. He was regaining much confidence as Carrie defended herself with denials.
"Well, some one," he said. "You're sure you didn't?"
"Certainly," said Carrie. "You know how often he came."
Drouet paused for a moment and thought.
"I know what you told me," he said finally.
He moved nervously about, while Carrie looked at him confusedly.
"Well, I know that I didn't tell you any such thing as that," said Carrie, recovering herself.
"If I were you," went on Drouet, ignoring her last remark, "I wouldn't have anything to do with him. He's a married man, you know."
"Who-who is?" said Carrie, stumbling at the word.
"Why, Hurstwood," said Drouet, noting the effect and feeling that he was delivering a telling blow.
"Hurstwood!" exclaimed Carrie, rising. Her face had changed several shades since this announcement was made. She looked within and without herself in a half-dazed way.
"Who told you this?" she asked, forgetting that her interest was out of order and exceedingly incriminating.
"Why, I know it. I've always known it," said Drouet.
Carrie was feeling about for a right thought. She was making a most miserable showing, and yet feelings were generating within her which were anything but crumbling cowardice.
"I thought I told you," he added.
"No, you didn't," she contradicted, suddenly recovering her voice. "You didn't do anything of the kind."
Drouet listened to her in astonishment. This was something new.
"I thought I did," he said.
Carrie looked around her very solemnly, and then went over to the window.
"You oughtn't to have had anything to do with him," said Drouet in an injured tone, "after all I've done for you."
"You," said Carrie, "you! What have you done for me?"
Her little brain had been surging with contradictory feelings-shame at exposure, shame at Hurstwood's perfidy, anger at Drouet's deception, the mockery he had made at her. Now one clear idea came into her head. He was at fault. There was no doubt about it. Why did he bring Hurstwood out-Hurstwood, a married man, and never say a word to her? Never mind now about Hurstwood's perfidy-why had he done this? Why hadn't he warned her? There he stood now, guilty of this miserable breach of confidence and talking about what he had done for her!
"Well, I like that," exclaimed Drouet, little realising the fire his remark had generated. "I think I've done a good deal."
"You have, eh?" she answered. "You've deceived me-that's what you've done. You've brought your old friends out here under false pretences. You've made me out to be-Oh," and with this her voice broke and she pressed her two little hands together tragically.
"I don't see what that's got to do with it," said the drummer quaintly.
"No," she answered, recovering herself and shutting her teeth. "No, of course you don't see. There isn't anything you see. You couldn't have told me in the first place, could you? You had to make me out wrong until it was too late. Now you come sneaking around with your information and your talk about what you have done."
Drouet had never suspected this side of Carrie's nature. She was alive with feeling, her eyes snapping, her lips quivering, her whole body sensible of the injury she felt, and partaking of her wrath.
"Who's sneaking?" he asked, mildly conscious of error on his part, but certain that he was wronged.
"You are," stamped Carrie. "You're a horrid, conceited coward, that's what you are. If you had any sense of manhood in you, you wouldn't have thought of doing any such thing."
The drummer stared.
"I'm not a coward," he said. "What do you mean by going with other men, anyway?"
"Other men!" exclaimed Carrie. "Other men-you know better than that. I did go with Mr. Hurstwood, but whose fault was it? Didn't you bring him here? You told him yourself that he should come out here and take me out. Now, after it's all over, you come and tell me that I oughtn't to go with him and that he's a married man."
She paused at the sound of the last two words and wrung her hands. The knowledge of Hurstwood's perfidy wounded her like a knife. "Oh," she sobbed, repressing herself wonderfully and keeping her eyes dry. "Oh, oh!"
"Well, I didn't think you'd be running around with him when I was away," insisted Drouet.
"Didn't think!" said Carrie, now angered to the core by the man's peculiar attitude. "Of course not. You thought only of what would be to your satisfaction. You thought you'd make a toy of me-a plaything. Well, I'll show you that you won't. I'll have nothing more to do with you at all. You can take your old things and keep them," and unfastening a little pin he had given her, she flung it vigorously upon the floor and began to move about as if to gather up the things which belonged to her.
By this Drouet was not only irritated but fascinated the more. He looked at her in amazement, and finally said:
"I don't see where your wrath comes in. I've got the right of this thing. You oughtn't to have done anything that wasn't right after all I did for you."
"What have you done for me?" asked Carrie blazing, her head thrown back and her lips parted.
"I think I've done a good deal," said the drummer, looking around. "I've given you all the clothes you wanted, haven't I? I've taken you everywhere you wanted to go. You've had as much as I've had, and more too."
Carrie was not ungrateful, whatever else might be said of her. In so far as her mind could construe, she acknowledged benefits received. She hardly knew how to answer this, and yet her wrath was not placated. She felt that the drummer had injured her irreparably.
"Did I ask you to?" she returned.
"Well, I did it," said Drouet, "and you took it."
"You talk as though I had persuaded you," answered Carrie. "You stand there and throw up what you've done. I don't want your old things. I'll not have them. You take them to-night and do what you please with them. I'll not stay here another minute."
"That's nice!" he answered, becoming angered now at the sense of his own approaching loss. "Use everything and abuse me and then walk off. That's just like a woman. I take you when you haven't got anything, and then when some one else comes along, why I'm no good. I always thought it'd come out that way."
He felt really hurt as he thought of his treatment, and looked as if he saw no way of obtaining justice.
"It's not so," said Carrie, "and I'm not going with anybody else. You have been as miserable and inconsiderate as you can be. I hate you, I tell you, and I wouldn't live with you another minute. You're a big, insulting"-here she hesitated and used no word at all-"or you wouldn't talk that way."
She had secured her hat and jacket and slipped the latter on over her little evening dress. Some wisps of wavy hair had loosened from the bands at the side of her head and were straggling over her hot, red cheeks. She was angry, mortified, grief-stricken. Her large eyes were full of the anguish of tears, but her lids were not yet wet. She was distracted and uncertain, deciding and doing things without an aim or conclusion, and she had not the slightest conception of how the whole difficulty would end.
"Well, that's a fine finish," said Drouet. "Pack up and pull out, eh? You take the cake. I bet you were knocking around with Hurstwood or you wouldn't act like that. I don't want the old rooms. You needn't pull out for me. You can have them for all I care, but b'George, you haven't done me right."
"I'll not live with you," said Carrie. "I don't want to live with you. You've done nothing but brag around ever since you've been here."
"Aw, I haven't anything of the kind," he answered.
Carrie walked over to the door.
"Where are you going?" he said, stepping over and heading her off.
"Let me out," she said.
"Where are you going?" he repeated.
He was, above all, sympathetic, and the sight of Carrie wandering out, he knew not where, affected him, despite his grievance.
Carrie merely pulled at the door.
The strain of the situation was too much for her, however. She made one more vain effort and then burst into tears.
"Now, be reasonable, Cad," said Drouet gently. "What do you want to rush out for this way? You haven't any place to go. Why not stay here now and be quiet? I'll not bother you. I don't want to stay here any longer."
Carrie had gone sobbing from the door to the window. She was so overcome she could not speak.
"Be reasonable now," he said. "I don't want to hold you. You can go if you want to, but why don't you think it over? Lord knows, I don't want to stop you."
He received no answer. Carrie was quieting, however, under the influence of his plea.
"You stay here now, and I'll go," he added at last.
Carrie listened to this with mingled feelings. Her mind was shaken loose from the little mooring of logic that it had. She was stirred by this thought, angered by that-her own injustice, Hurstwood's, Drouet's, their respective qualities of kindness and favour, the threat of the world outside, in which she had failed once before, the impossibility of this state inside, where the chambers were no longer justly hers, the effect of the argument upon her nerves, all combined to make her a mass of jangling fibres-an anchorless, storm-beaten little craft which could do absolutely nothing but drift.
"Say," said Drouet, coming over to her after a few moments, with a new idea, and putting his hand upon her.
"Don't!" said Carrie, drawing away, but not removing her handkerchief from her eyes. "Never mind about this quarrel now. Let it go. You stay here until the month's out, anyhow, and then you can tell better what you want to do. Eh?"
Carrie made no answer.
"You'd better do that," he said. "There's no use your packing up now. You can't go anywhere."
Still he got nothing for his words.
"If you'll do that, we'll call it off for the present and I'll get out."
Carrie lowered her handkerchief slightly and looked out of the window.
"Will you do that?" he asked.
Still no answer.
"Will you?" he repeated.
She only looked vaguely into the street.
"Aw! come on," he said, "tell me. Will you?"
"I don't know," said Carrie softly, forced to answer.
"Promise me you'll do that," he said, "and we'll quit talking about it. It'll be the best thing for you."
Carrie heard him, but she could not bring herself to answer reasonably. She felt that the man was gentle, and that his interest in her had not abated, and it made her suffer a pang of regret. She was in a most helpless plight.
As for Drouet, his attitude had been that of the jealous lover. Now his feelings were a mixture of anger at deception, sorrow at losing Carrie, misery at being defeated. He wanted his rights in some way or other, and yet his rights included the retaining of Carrie, the making her feel her error.
"Will you?" he urged.
"Well, I'll see," said Carrie.
This left the matter as open as before, but it was something. It looked as if the quarrel would blow over, if they could only get some way of talking to one another. Carrie was ashamed, and Drouet aggrieved. He pretended to take up the task of packing some things in a valise.
Now, as Carrie watched him out of the corner of her eye, certain sound thoughts came into her head. He had erred, true, but what had she done? He was kindly and good-natured for all his egotism. Throughout this argument he had said nothing very harsh. On the other hand, there was Hurstwood-a greater deceiver than he. He had pretended all this affection, all this passion, and he was lying to her all the while. Oh, the perfidy of men! And she had loved him. There could be nothing more in that quarter. She would see Hurstwood no more. She would write him and let him know what she thought. Thereupon what would she do? Here were these rooms. Here was Drouet, pleading for her to remain. Evidently things could go on here somewhat as before, if all were arranged. It would be better than the street, without a place to lay her head.
All this she thought of as Drouet rummaged the drawers for collars and laboured long and painstakingly at finding a shirt-stud. He was in no hurry to rush this matter. He felt an attraction to Carrie which would not down. He could not think that the thing would end by his walking out of the room. There must be some way round, some way to make her own up that he was right and she was wrong-to patch up a peace and shut out Hurstwood for ever. Mercy, how he turned at the man's shameless duplicity.
"Do you think," he said, after a few moments' silence, "that you'll try and get on the stage?"
He was wondering what she was intending.
"I don't know what I'll do yet," said Carrie.
"If you do, maybe I can help you. I've got a lot of friends in that line."
She made no answer to this.
"Don't go and try to knock around now without any money. Let me help you," he said. "It's no easy thing to go on your own hook here."
Carrie only rocked back and forth in her chair.
"I don't want you to go up against a hard game that way."
He bestirred himself about some other details and Carrie rocked on.
"Why don't you tell me all about this thing," he said, after a time, "and let's call it off? You don't really care for Hurstwood, do you?"
"Why do you want to start on that again?" said Carrie. "You were to blame."
"No, I wasn't," he answered.
"Yes, you were, too," said Carrie. "You shouldn't have ever told me such a story as that."
"But you didn't have much to do with him, did you?" went on Drouet, anxious for his own peace of mind to get some direct denial from her.
"I won't talk about it," said Carrie, pained at the quizzical turn the peace arrangement had taken.
"What's the use of acting like that now, Cad?" insisted the drummer, stopping in his work and putting up a hand expressively. "You might let me know where I stand, at least."
"I won't," said Carrie, feeling no refuge but in anger. "Whatever has happened is your own fault."
"Then you do care for him?" said Drouet, stopping completely and experiencing a rush of feeling.
"Oh, stop!" said Carrie.
"Well, I'll not be made a fool of," exclaimed Drouet. "You may trifle around with him if you want to, but you can't lead me. You can tell me or not, just as you want to, but I won't fool any longer!"
He shoved the last few remaining things he had laid out into his valise and snapped it with a vengeance. Then he grabbed his coat, which he had laid off to work, picked up his gloves, and started out.
"You can go to the deuce as far as I am concerned," he said, as he reached the door. "I'm no sucker," and with that he opened it with a jerk and closed it equally vigorously.
Carrie listened at her window view, more astonished than anything else at this sudden rise of passion in the drummer. She could hardly believe her senses-so good-natured and tractable had he invariably been. It was not for her to see the wellspring of human passion. A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairylands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.
Chapter XXIV. ASHES OF TINDER: A FACE AT THE WINDOW
That night Hurstwood remained down town entirely, going to the Palmer House for a bed after his work was through. He was in a fevered state of mind, owing to the blight his wife's action threatened to cast upon his entire future. While he was not sure how much significance might be attached to the threat she had made, he was sure that her attitude, if long continued, would cause him no end of trouble. She was determined, and had worsted him in a very important contest. How would it be from now on? He walked the floor of his little office, and later that of his room, putting one thing and another together to no avail.
Mrs. Hurstwood, on the contrary, had decided not to lose her advantage by inaction. Now that she had practically cowed him, she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of which would make her word law in the future. He would have to pay her the money which she would now regularly demand or there would be trouble. It did not matter what he did. She really did not care whether he came home any more or not. The household would move along much more pleasantly without him, and she could do as she wished without consulting any one. Now she proposed to consult a lawyer and hire a detective. She would find out at once just what advantages she could gain.
Hurstwood walked the floor, mentally arranging the chief points of his situation. "She has that property in her name," he kept saying to himself. "What a fool trick that was. Curse it! What a fool move that was."
He also thought of his managerial position. "If she raises a row now I'll lose this thing. They won't have me around if my name gets in the papers. My friends, too!" He grew more angry as he thought of the talk any action on her part would create. How would the papers talk about it? Every man he knew would be wondering. He would have to explain and deny and make a general mark of himself. Then Moy would come and confer with him and there would be the devil to pay.
Many little wrinkles gathered between his eyes as he contemplated this, and his brow moistened. He saw no solution of anything-not a loophole left.
Through all this thoughts of Carrie flashed upon him, and the approaching affair of Saturday. Tangled as all his matters were, he did not worry over that. It was the one pleasing thing in this whole rout of trouble. He could arrange that satisfactorily, for Carrie would be glad to wait, if necessary. He would see how things turned out to-morrow, and then he would talk to her. They were going to meet as usual. He saw only her pretty face and neat figure and wondered why life was not arranged so that such joy as he found with her could be steadily maintained. How much more pleasant it would be. Then he would take up his wife's threat again, and the wrinkles and moisture would return.
In the morning he came over from the hotel and opened his mail, but there was nothing in it outside the ordinary run. For some reason he felt as if something might come that way, and was relieved when all the envelopes had been scanned and nothing suspicious noticed. He began to feel the appetite that had been wanting before he had reached the office, and decided before going out to the park to meet Carrie to drop in at the Grand Pacific and have a pot of coffee and some rolls. While the danger had not lessened, it had not as yet materialised, and with him no news was good news. If he could only get plenty of time to think, perhaps something would turn up. Surely, surely, this thing would not drift along to catastrophe and he not find a way out.
His spirits fell, however, when, upon reaching the park, he waited and waited and Carrie did not come. He held his favourite post for an hour or more, then arose and began to walk about restlessly. Could something have happened out there to keep her away? Could she have been reached by his wife? Surely not. So little did he consider Drouet that it never once occurred to him to worry about his finding out. He grew restless as he ruminated, and then decided that perhaps it was nothing. She had not been able to get away this morning. That was why no letter notifying him had come. He would get one to-day. It would probably be on his desk when he got back. He would look for it at once.
After a time he gave up waiting and drearily headed for the Madison car. To add to his distress, the bright blue sky became overcast with little fleecy clouds which shut out the sun. The wind veered to the east, and by the time he reached his office it was threatening to drizzle all afternoon.
He went in and examined his letters, but there was nothing from Carrie. Fortunately, there was nothing from his wife either. He thanked his stars that he did not have to confront that proposition just now when he needed to think so much. He walked the floor again, pretending to be in an ordinary mood, but secretly troubled beyond the expression of words.
At one-thirty he went to Rector's for lunch, and when he returned a messenger was waiting for him. He looked at the little chap with a feeling of doubt.
"I'm to bring an answer," said the boy.
Hurstwood recognised his wife's writing. He tore it open and read without a show of feeling. It began in the most formal manner and was sharply and coldly worded throughout.
"I want you to send the money I asked for at once. I need it to carry out my plans. You can stay away if you want to. It doesn't matter in the least. But I must have some money. So don't delay, but send it by the boy."
When he had finished it, he stood holding it in his hands. The audacity of the thing took his breath. It roused his ire also-the deepest element of revolt in him. His first impulse was to write but four words in reply-"Go to the devil!"-but he compromised by telling the boy that there would be no reply. Then he sat down in his chair and gazed without seeing, contemplating the result of his work. What would she do about that? The confounded wretch! Was she going to try to bulldoze him into submission? He would go up there and have it out with her, that's what he would do. She was carrying things with too high a hand. These were his first thoughts.
Later, however, his old discretion asserted itself. Something had to be done. A climax was near and she would not sit idle. He knew her well enough to know that when she had decided upon a plan she would follow it up. Possibly matters would go into a lawyer's hands at once.
"Damn her!" he said softly, with his teeth firmly set, "I'll make it hot for her if she causes me trouble. I'll make her change her tone if I have to use force to do it!"
He arose from his chair and went and looked out into the street. The long drizzle had begun. Pedestrians had turned up collars, and trousers at the bottom. Hands were hidden in the pockets of the umbrellaless; umbrellas were up. The street looked like a sea of round black cloth roofs, twisting, bobbing, moving. Trucks and vans were rattling in a noisy line and everywhere men were shielding themselves as best they could. He scarcely noticed the picture. He was forever confronting his wife, demanding of her to change her attitude toward him before he worked her bodily harm.
At four o'clock another note came, which simply said that if the money was not forthcoming that evening the matter would be laid before Fitzgerald and Moy on the morrow, and other steps would be taken to get it.
Hurstwood almost exclaimed out loud at the insistency of this thing. Yes, he would send her the money. He'd take it to her-he would go up there and have a talk with her, and that at once.
He put on his hat and looked around for his umbrella. He would have some arrangement of this thing.
He called a cab and was driven through the dreary rain to the North Side. On the way his temper cooled as he thought of the details of the case. What did she know? What had she done? Maybe she'd got hold of Carrie, who knows-or-or Drouet. Perhaps she really had evidence, and was prepared to fell him as a man does another from secret ambush. She was shrewd. Why should she taunt him this way unless she had good grounds?
He began to wish that he had compromised in some way or other-that he had sent the money. Perhaps he could do it up here. He would go in and see, anyhow. He would have no row. By the time he reached his own street he was keenly alive to the difficulties of his situation and wished over and over that some solution would offer itself, that he could see his way out. He alighted and went up the steps to the front door, but it was with a nervous palpitation of the heart. He pulled out his key and tried to insert it, but another key was on the inside. He shook at the knob, but the door was locked. Then he rang the bell. No answer. He rang again-this time harder. Still no answer. He jangled it fiercely several times in succession, but without avail. Then he went below.
There was a door which opened under the steps into the kitchen, protected by an iron grating, intended as a safeguard against burglars. When he reached this he noticed that it also was bolted and that the kitchen windows were down. What could it mean? He rang the bell and then waited. Finally, seeing that no one was coming, he turned and went back to his cab.
"I guess they've gone out," he said apologetically to the individual who was hiding his red face in a loose tarpaulin raincoat.
"I saw a young girl up in that winder," returned the cabby.
Hurstwood looked, but there was no face there now. He climbed moodily into the cab, relieved and distressed.
So this was the game, was it? Shut him out and make him pay. Well, by the Lord, that did beat all!
Chapter XXV. ASHES OF TINDER: THE LOOSING OF STAYS
When Hurstwood got back to his office again he was in a greater quandary than ever. Lord, Lord, he thought, what had he got into? How could things have taken such a violent turn, and so quickly? He could hardly realise how it had all come about. It seemed a monstrous, unnatural, unwarranted condition which had suddenly descended upon him without his let or hindrance.
Meanwhile he gave a thought now and then to Carrie. What could be the trouble in that quarter? No letter had come, no word of any kind, and yet here it was late in the evening and she had agreed to meet him that morning. To-morrow they were to have met and gone off-where? He saw that in the excitement of recent events he had not formulated a plan upon that score. He was desperately in love, and would have taken great chances to win her under ordinary circumstances, but now-now what? Supposing she had found out something? Supposing she, too, wrote him and told him that she knew all-that she would have nothing more to do with him? It would be just like this to happen as things were going now. Meanwhile he had not sent the money.
He strolled up and down the polished floor of the resort, his hands in his pockets, his brow wrinkled, his mouth set. He was getting some vague comfort out of a good cigar, but it was no panacea for the ill which affected him. Every once in a while he would clinch his fingers and tap his foot-signs of the stirring mental process he was undergoing. His whole nature was vigorously and powerfully shaken up, and he was finding what limits the mind has to endurance. He drank more brandy and soda than he had any evening in months. He was altogether a fine example of great mental perturbation.
For all his study nothing came of the evening except this-he sent the money. It was with great opposition, after two or three hours of the most urgent mental affirmation and denial, that at last he got an envelope, placed in it the requested amount, and slowly sealed it up.
Then he called Harry, the boy of all work around the place.
"You take this to this address," he said, handing him the envelope, "and give it to Mrs. Hurstwood."
"Yes, sir," said the boy.
"If she isn't there bring it back."
"Yes, sir"
"You've seen my wife?" he asked as a precautionary measure as the boy turned to go.
"Oh, yes, sir. I know her."
"All right, now. Hurry right back."
"Any answer?"
"I guess not."
The boy hastened away and the manager fell to his musings. Now he had done it. There was no use speculating over that. He was beaten for to-night and he might just as well make the best of it. But, oh, the wretchedness of being forced this way! He could see her meeting the boy at the door and smiling sardonically. She would take the envelope and know that she had triumphed. If he only had that letter back he wouldn't send it. He breathed heavily and wiped the moisture from his face.
For relief, he arose and joined in conversation with a few friends who were drinking. He tried to get the interest of things about him, but it was not to be. All the time his thoughts would run out to his home and see the scene being therein enacted. All the time he was wondering what she would say when the boy handed her the envelope.
In about an hour and three-quarters the boy returned. He had evidently delivered the package, for, as he came up, he made no sign of taking anything out of his pocket.
"Well?" said Hurstwood.
"I gave it to her."
"My wife?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any answer?"
"She said it was high time."
Hurstwood scowled fiercely.
There was no more to be done upon that score that night. He went on brooding over his situation until midnight, when he repaired again to the Palmer House. He wondered what the morning would bring forth, and slept anything but soundly upon it. Next day he went again to the office and opened his mail, suspicious and hopeful of its contents. No word from Carrie. Nothing from his wife, which was pleasant.
The fact that he had sent the money and that she had received it worked to the ease of his mind, for, as the thought that he had done it receded, his chagrin at it grew less and his hope of peace more. He fancied, as he sat at his desk, that nothing would be done for a week or two. Meanwhile, he would have time to think.
This process of thinking began by a reversion to Carrie and the arrangement by which he was to get her away from Drouet. How about that now? His pain at her failure to meet or write him rapidly increased as he devoted himself to this subject. He decided to write her care of the West Side Post-office and ask for an explanation, as well as to have her meet him. The thought that this letter would probably not reach her until Monday chafed him exceedingly. He must get some speedier method-but how?
He thought upon it for a half-hour, not contemplating a messenger or a cab direct to the house, owing to the exposure of it, but finding that time was slipping away to no purpose, he wrote the letter and then began to think again.
The hours slipped by, and with them the possibility of the union he had contemplated. He had thought to be joyously aiding Carrie by now in the task of joining her interests to his, and here it was afternoon and nothing done. Three o'clock came, four, five, six, and no letter. The helpless manager paced the floor and grimly endured the gloom of defeat. He saw a busy Saturday ushered out, the Sabbath in, and nothing done. All day, the bar being closed, he brooded alone, shut out from home, from the excitement of his resort, from Carrie, and without the ability to alter his condition one iota. It was the worst Sunday he had spent in his life.
In Monday's second mail he encountered a very legal-looking letter, which held his interest for some time. It bore the imprint of the law offices of McGregor, James and Hay, and with a very formal "Dear Sir," and "We beg to state," went on to inform him briefly that they had been retained by Mrs. Julia Hurstwood to adjust certain matters which related to her sustenance and property rights, and would he kindly call and see them about the matter at once.
He read it through carefully several times, and then merely shook his head. It seemed as if his family troubles were just beginning.
"Well!" he said after a time, quite audibly, "I don't know."
Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket.
To add to his misery there was no word from Carrie. He was quite certain now that she knew he was married and was angered at his perfidy. His loss seemed all the more bitter now that he needed her most. He thought he would go out and insist on seeing her if she did not send him word of some sort soon. He was really affected most miserably of all by this desertion. He had loved her earnestly enough, but now that the possibility of losing her stared him in the face she seemed much more attractive. He really pined for a word, and looked out upon her with his mind's eye in the most wistful manner. He did not propose to lose her, whatever she might think. Come what might, he would adjust this matter, and soon. He would go to her and tell her all his family complications. He would explain to her just where he stood and how much he needed her. Surely she couldn't go back on him now? It wasn't possible. He would plead until her anger would melt-until she would forgive him.
Suddenly he thought: "Supposing she isn't out there-suppose she has gone?"
He was forced to take his feet. It was too much to think of and sit still.
Nevertheless, his rousing availed him nothing.
On Tuesday it was the same way. He did manage to bring himself into the mood to go out to Carrie, but when he got in Ogden Place he thought he saw a man watching him and went away. He did not go within a block of the house.
One of the galling incidents of this visit was that he came back on a Randolph Street car, and without noticing arrived almost opposite the building of the concern with which his son was connected. This sent a pang through his heart. He had called on his boy there several times. Now the lad had not sent him a word. His absence did not seem to be noticed by either of his children. Well, well, fortune plays a man queer tricks. He got back to his office and joined in a conversation with friends. It was as if idle chatter deadened the sense of misery.
That night he dined at Rector's and returned at once to his office. In the bustle and show of the latter was his only relief. He troubled over many little details and talked perfunctorily to everybody. He stayed at his desk long after all others had gone, and only quitted it when the night watchman on his round pulled at the front door to see if it was safely locked.
On Wednesday he received another polite note from McGregor, James and Hay. It read:
"Dear Sir: We beg to inform you that we are instructed to wait until to-morrow at one o'clock, before filing suit against you, on behalf of Mrs. Julia Hurstwood, for divorce and alimony. If we do not hear from you before that time we shall consider that you do not wish to compromise the matter in any way and act accordingly.
"Very truly yours, etc."
"Compromise!" exclaimed Hurstwood bitterly. "Compromise!"
Again he shook his head.
So here it was spread out clear before him, and now he knew what to expect. If he didn't go and see them they would sue him promptly. If he did, he would be offered terms that would make his blood boil. He folded the letter and put it with the other one. Then he put on his hat and went for a turn about the block.
Chapter XXVI. THE AMBASSADOR FALLEN: A SEARCH FOR THE GATE
Carrie, left alone by Drouet, listened to his retreating steps, scarcely realising what had happened. She knew that he had stormed out. It was some moments before she questioned whether he would return, not now exactly, but ever. She looked around her upon the rooms, out of which the evening light was dying, and wondered why she did not feel quite the same towards them. She went over to the dresser and struck a match, lighting the gas. Then she went back to the rocker to think.
It was some time before she could collect her thoughts, but when she did, this truth began to take on importance. She was quite alone. Suppose Drouet did not come back? Suppose she should never hear anything more of him? This fine arrangement of chambers would not last long. She would have to quit them.
To her credit, be it said, she never once counted on Hurstwood. She could only approach that subject with a pang of sorrow and regret. For a truth, she was rather shocked and frightened by this evidence of human depravity. He would have tricked her without turning an eyelash. She would have been led into a newer and worse situation. And yet she could not keep out the pictures of his looks and manners. Only this one deed seemed strange and miserable. It contrasted sharply with all she felt and knew concerning the man.
But she was alone. That was the greater thought just at present. How about that? Would she go out to work again? Would she begin to look around in the business district? The stage! Oh, yes. Drouet had spoken about that. Was there any hope there? She moved to and fro, in deep and varied thoughts, while the minutes slipped away and night fell completely. She had had nothing to eat, and yet there she sat, thinking it over.
She remembered that she was hungry and went to the little cupboard in the rear room where were the remains of one of their breakfasts. She looked at these things with certain misgivings. The contemplation of food had more significance than usual.
While she was eating she began to wonder how much money she had. It struck her as exceedingly important, and without ado she went to look for her purse. It was on the dresser, and in it were seven dollars in bills and some change. She quailed as she thought of the insignificance of the amount and rejoiced because the rent was paid until the end of the month. She began also to think what she would have done if she had gone out into the street when she first started. By the side of that situation, as she looked at it now, the present seemed agreeable. She had a little time at least, and then, perhaps, everything would come out all right, after all.
Drouet had gone, but what of it? He did not seem seriously angry. He only acted as if he were huffy. He would come back-of course he would. There was his cane in the corner. Here was one of his collars. He had left his light overcoat in the wardrobe. She looked about and tried to assure herself with the sight of a dozen such details, but, alas, the secondary thought arrived. Supposing he did come back. Then what?
Here was another proposition nearly, if not quite, as disturbing. She would have to talk with and explain to him. He would want her to admit that he was right. It would be impossible for her to live with him.
On Friday Carrie remembered her appointment with Hurstwood, and the passing of the hour when she should, by all right of promise, have been in his company served to keep the calamity which had befallen her exceedingly fresh and clear. In her nervousness and stress of mind she felt it necessary to act, and consequently put on a brown street dress, and at eleven o'clock started to visit the business portion once again. She must look for work.
The rain, which threatened at twelve and began at one, served equally well to cause her to retrace her steps and remain within doors as it did to reduce Hurstwood's spirits and give him a wretched day.
The morrow was Saturday, a half-holiday in many business quarters, and besides it was a balmy, radiant day, with the trees and grass shining exceedingly green after the rain of the night before. When she went out the sparrows were twittering merrily in joyous choruses. She could not help feeling, as she looked across the lovely park, that life was a joyous thing for those who did not need to worry, and she wished over and over that something might interfere now to preserve for her the comfortable state which she had occupied. She did not want Drouet or his money when she thought of it, nor anything more to do with Hurstwood, but only the content and ease of mind she had experienced, for, after all, she had been happy-happier, at least, than she was now when confronted by the necessity of making her way alone.
When she arrived in the business part it was quite eleven o'clock, and the business had little longer to run. She did not realise this at first, being affected by some of the old distress which was a result of her earlier adventure into this strenuous and exacting quarter. She wandered about, assuring herself that she was making up her mind to look for something, and at the same time feeling that perhaps it was not necessary to be in such haste about it. The thing was difficult to encounter, and she had a few days. Besides, she was not sure that she was really face to face again with the bitter problem of self-sustenance. Anyhow, there was one change for the better. She knew that she had improved in appearance. Her manner had vastly changed. Her clothes were becoming, and men-well-dressed men, some of the kind who before had gazed at her indifferently from behind their polished railings and imposing office partitions-now gazed into her face with a soft light in their eyes. In a way, she felt the power and satisfaction of the thing, but it did not wholly reassure her. She looked for nothing save what might come legitimately and without the appearance of special favour. She wanted something, but no man should buy her by false protestations or favour. She proposed to earn her living honestly.
"This store closes at one on Saturdays," was a pleasing and satisfactory legend to see upon doors which she felt she ought to enter and inquire for work. It gave her an excuse, and after encountering quite a number of them, and noting that the clock registered 12.15, she decided that it would be no use to seek further to-day, so she got on a car and went to Lincoln Park. There was always something to see there-the flowers, the animals, the lake-and she flattered herself that on Monday she would be up betimes and searching. Besides, many things might happen between now and Monday.
Sunday passed with equal doubts, worries, assurances, and heaven knows what vagaries of mind and spirit. Every half-hour in the day the thought would come to her most sharply, like the tail of a swishing whip, that action-immediate action-was imperative. At other times she would look about her and assure herself that things were not so bad-that certainly she would come out safe and sound. At such times she would think of Drouet's advice about going on the stage, and saw some chance for herself in that quarter. She decided to take up that opportunity on the morrow.
Accordingly, she arose early Monday morning and dressed herself carefully. She did not know just how such applications were made, but she took it to be a matter which related more directly to the theatre buildings. All you had to do was to inquire of some one about the theatre for the manager and ask for a position. If there was anything, you might get it, or, at least, he could tell you how.
She had had no experience with this class of individuals whatsoever, and did not know the salacity and humour of the theatrical tribe. She only knew of the position which Mr. Hale occupied, but, of all things, she did not wish to encounter that personage, on account of her intimacy with his wife.
There was, however, at this time, one theatre, the Chicago Opera House, which was considerably in the public eye, and its manager, David A. Henderson, had a fair local reputation. Carrie had seen one or two elaborate performances there and had heard of several others. She knew nothing of Henderson nor of the methods of applying, but she instinctively felt that this would be a likely place, and accordingly strolled about in that neighbourhood. She came bravely enough to the showy entrance way, with the polished and begilded lobby, set with framed pictures out of the current attraction, leading up to the quiet box-office, but she could get no further. A noted comic opera comedian was holding forth that week, and the air of distinction and prosperity overawed her. She could not imagine that there would be anything in such a lofty sphere for her. She almost trembled at the audacity which might have carried her on to a terrible rebuff. She could find heart only to look at the pictures which were showy and then walk out. It seemed to her as if she had made a splendid escape and that it would be foolhardy to think of applying in that quarter again.
This little experience settled her hunting for one day. She looked around elsewhere, but it was from the outside. She got the location of several playhouses fixed in her mind-notably the Grand Opera House and McVickar's, both of which were leading in attractions-and then came away. Her spirits were materially reduced, owing to the newly restored sense of magnitude of the great interests and the insignificance of her claims upon society, such as she understood them to be.
That night she was visited by Mrs. Hale, whose chatter and protracted stay made it impossible to dwell upon her predicament or the fortune of the day. Before retiring, however, she sat down to think, and gave herself up to the most gloomy forebodings. Drouet had not put in an appearance. She had had no word from any quarter, she had spent a dollar of her precious sum in procuring food and paying car fare. It was evident that she would not endure long. Besides, she had discovered no resource.
In this situation her thoughts went out to her sister in Van Buren Street, whom she had not seen since the night of her flight, and to her home at Columbia City, which seemed now a part of something that could not be again. She looked for no refuge in that direction. Nothing but sorrow was brought her by thoughts of Hurstwood, which would return. That he could have chosen to dupe her in so ready a manner seemed a cruel thing.
Tuesday came, and with it appropriate indecision and speculation. She was in no mood, after her failure of the day before, to hasten forth upon her work-seeking errand, and yet she rebuked herself for what she considered her weakness the day before. Accordingly she started out to revisit the Chicago Opera House, but possessed scarcely enough courage to approach.
She did manage to inquire at the box-office, however.
"Manager of the company or the house?" asked the smartly dressed individual who took care of the tickets. He was favourably impressed by Carrie's looks.
"I don't know," said Carrie, taken back by the question.
"You couldn't see the manager of the house to-day, anyhow," volunteered the young man. "He's out of town."
He noted her puzzled look, and then added: "What is it you wish to see about?"
"I want to see about getting a position," she answered.
"You'd better see the manager of the company," he returned, "but he isn't here now."
"When will he be in?" asked Carrie, somewhat relieved by this information.
"Well, you might find him in between eleven and twelve. He's here after two o'clock."
Carrie thanked him and walked briskly out, while the young man gazed after her through one of the side windows of his gilded coop.
"Good-looking," he said to himself, and proceeded to visions of condescensions on her part which were exceedingly flattering to himself.
One of the principal comedy companies of the day was playing an engagement at the Grand Opera House. Here Carrie asked to see the manager of the company. She little knew the trivial authority of this individual, or that had there been a vacancy an actor would have been sent on from New York to fill it.
"His office is upstairs," said a man in the box-office.
Several persons were in the manager's office, two lounging near a window, another talking to an individual sitting at a roll-top desk-the manager. Carrie glanced nervously about, and began to fear that she should have to make her appeal before the assembled company, two of whom-the occupants of the window-were already observing her carefully.
"I can't do it," the manager was saying; "it's a rule of Mr. Frohman's never to allow visitors back of the stage. No, no!"
Carrie timidly waited, standing. There were chairs, but no one motioned her to be seated. The individual to whom the manager had been talking went away quite crestfallen. That luminary gazed earnestly at some papers before him, as if they were of the greatest concern.
"Did you see that in the 'Herald' this morning about Nat Goodwin, Harris?"
"No," said the person addressed. "What was it?"
"Made quite a curtain address at Hooley's last night. Better look it up."
Harris reached over to a table and began to look for the "Herald."
"What is it?" said the manager to Carrie, apparently noticing her for the first time. He thought he was going to be held up for free tickets.
Carrie summoned up all her courage, which was little at best. She realised that she was a novice, and felt as if a rebuff were certain. Of this she was so sure that she only wished now to pretend she had called for advice.
"Can you tell me how to go about getting on the stage?"
It was the best way after all to have gone about the matter. She was interesting, in a manner, to the occupant of the chair, and the simplicity of her request and attitude took his fancy. He smiled, as did the others in the room, who, however, made some slight effort to conceal their humour.
"I don't know," he answered, looking her brazenly over. "Have you ever had any experience upon the stage?"
"A little," answered Carrie. "I have taken part in amateur performances."
She thought she had to make some sort of showing in order to retain his interest.
"Never studied for the stage?" he said, putting on an air intended as much to impress his friends with his discretion as Carrie.
"No, sir."
"Well, I don't know," he answered, tipping lazily back in his chair while she stood before him. "What makes you want to get on the stage?"
She felt abashed at the man's daring, but could only smile in answer to his engaging smirk, and say:
"I need to make a living."
"Oh," he answered, rather taken by her trim appearance, and feeling as if he might scrape up an acquaintance with her. "That's a good reason, isn't it? Well, Chicago is not a good place for what you want to do. You ought to be in New York. There's more chance there. You could hardly expect to get started out here." Carrie smiled genially, grateful that he should condescend to advise her even so much. He noticed the smile, and put a slightly different construction on it. He thought he saw an easy chance for a little flirtation.
"Sit down," he said, pulling a chair forward from the side of his desk and dropping his voice so that the two men in the room should not hear. Those two gave each other the suggestion of a wink.
"Well, I'll be going, Barney," said one, breaking away and so addressing the manager. "See you this afternoon."
"All right," said the manager.
The remaining individual took up a paper as if to read.
"Did you have any idea what sort of part you would like to get?" asked the manager softly.
"Oh, no," said Carrie. "I would take anything to begin with."
"I see," he said. "Do you live here in the city?"
"Yes, sir."
The manager smiled most blandly.
"Have you ever tried to get in as a chorus girl?" he asked, assuming a more confidential air.
Carrie began to feel that there was something exuberant and unnatural in his manner.
"No," she said.
"That's the way most girls begin," he went on, "who go on the stage. It's a good way to get experience."
He was turning on her a glance of the companionable and persuasive manner.
"I didn't know that," said Carrie.
"It's a difficult thing," he went on, "but there's always a chance, you know." Then, as if he suddenly remembered, he pulled out his watch and consulted it. "I've an appointment at two," he said, "and I've got to go to lunch now. Would you care to come and dine with me? We can talk it over there."
"Oh, no," said Carrie, the whole motive of the man flashing on her at once. "I have an engagement myself."
"That's too bad," he said, realising that he had been a little beforehand in his offer and that Carrie was about to go away. "Come in later. I may know of something."
"Thank you," she answered, with some trepidation and went out.
"She was good-looking, wasn't she?" said the manager's companion, who had not caught all the details of the game he had played.
"Yes, in a way," said the other, sore to think the game had been lost. "She'd never make an actress, though. Just another chorus girl-that's all."
This little experience nearly destroyed her ambition to call upon the manager at the Chicago Opera House, but she decided to do so after a time. He was of a more sedate turn of mind. He said at once that there was no opening of any sort, and seemed to consider her search foolish.
"Chicago is no place to get a start," he said. "You ought to be in New York."
Still she persisted, and went to McVickar's, where she could not find any one. "The Old Homestead" was running there, but the person to whom she was referred was not to be found.
These little expeditions took up her time until quite four o'clock, when she was weary enough to go home. She felt as if she ought to continue and inquire elsewhere, but the results so far were too dispiriting. She took the car and arrived at Ogden Place in three-quarters of an hour, but decided to ride on to the West Side branch of the Post-office, where she was accustomed to receive Hurstwood's letters. There was one there now, written Saturday, which she tore open and read with mingled feelings. There was so much warmth in it and such tense complaint at her having failed to meet him, and her subsequent silence, that she rather pitied the man. That he loved her was evident enough. That he had wished and dared to do so, married as he was, was the evil. She felt as if the thing deserved an answer, and consequently decided that she would write and let him know that she knew of his married state and was justly incensed at his deception. She would tell him that it was all over between them.
At her room, the wording of this missive occupied her for some time, for she fell to the task at once. It was most difficult.
"You do not need to have me explain why I did not meet you," she wrote in part. "How could you deceive me so? You cannot expect me to have anything more to do with you. I wouldn't under any circumstances. Oh, how could you act so?" she added in a burst of feeling. "You have caused me more misery than you can think. I hope you will get over your infatuation for me. We must not meet any more. Good-bye."
She took the letter the next morning, and at the corner dropped it reluctantly into the letter-box, still uncertain as to whether she should do so or not. Then she took the car and went down town.
This was the dull season with the department stores, but she was listened to with more consideration than was usually accorded to young women applicants, owing to her neat and attractive appearance. She was asked the same old questions with which she was already familiar.
"What can you do? Have you ever worked in a retail store before? Are you experienced?"
At The Fair, See and Company's, and all the great stores it was much the same. It was the dull season, she might come in a little later, possibly they would like to have her.
When she arrived at the house at the end of the day, weary and disheartened, she discovered that Drouet had been there. His umbrella and light overcoat were gone. She thought she missed other things, but could not be sure. Everything had not been taken.
So his going was crystallising into staying. What was she to do now? Evidently she would be facing the world in the same old way within a day or two. Her clothes would get poor. She put her two hands together in her customary expressive way and pressed her fingers. Large tears gathered in her eyes and broke hot across her cheeks. She was alone, very much alone.
Drouet really had called, but it was with a very different mind from that which Carrie had imagined. He expected to find her, to justify his return by claiming that he came to get the remaining portion of his wardrobe, and before he got away again to patch up a peace.
Accordingly, when he arrived, he was disappointed to find Carrie out. He trifled about, hoping that she was somewhere in the neighbourhood and would soon return. He constantly listened, expecting to hear her foot on the stair.
When he did so, it was his intention to make believe that he had just come in and was disturbed at being caught. Then he would explain his need of his clothes and find out how things stood.
Wait as he did, however, Carrie did not come. From pottering around among the drawers, in momentary expectation of her arrival he changed to looking out of the window, and from that to resting himself in the rocking-chair. Still no Carrie. He began to grow restless and lit a cigar. After that he walked the floor. Then he looked out of the window and saw clouds gathering. He remembered an appointment at three. He began to think that it would be useless to wait, and got hold of his umbrella and light coat, intending to take these things, any way. It would scare her, he hoped. To-morrow he would come back for the others. He would find out how things stood.
As he started to go he felt truly sorry that he had missed her. There was a little picture of her on the wall, showing her arrayed in the little jacket he had first bought her-her face a little more wistful than he had seen it lately. He was really touched by it, and looked into the eyes of it with a rather rare feeling for him.
"You didn't do me right, Cad," he said, as if he were addressing her in the flesh.
Then he went to the door, took a good look around and went out.
Chapter XXVII. WHEN WATERS ENGULF US WE REACH FOR A STAR
It was when he returned from his disturbed stroll about the streets, after receiving the decisive note from McGregor, James and Hay, that Hurstwood found the letter Carrie had written him that morning. He thrilled intensely as he noted the handwriting, and rapidly tore it open.
"Then," he thought, "she loves me or she would not have written to me at all."
He was slightly depressed at the tenor of the note for the first few minutes, but soon recovered. "She wouldn't write at all if she didn't care for me."
This was his one resource against the depression which held him. He could extract little from the wording of the letter, but the spirit he thought he knew.
There was really something exceedingly human-if not pathetic-in his being thus relieved by a clearly worded reproof. He who had for so long remained satisfied with himself now looked outside of himself for comfort-and to such a source. The mystic cords of affection! How they bind us all.
The colour came to his cheeks. For the moment he forgot the letter from McGregor, James and Hay. If he could only have Carrie, perhaps he could get out of the whole entanglement-perhaps it would not matter. He wouldn't care what his wife did with herself if only he might not lose Carrie. He stood up and walked about, dreaming his delightful dream of a life continued with this lovely possessor of his heart.
It was not long, however, before the old worry was back for consideration, and with it what weariness! He thought of the morrow and the suit. He had done nothing, and here was the afternoon slipping away. It was now a quarter of four. At five the attorneys would have gone home. He still had the morrow until noon. Even as he thought, the last fifteen minutes passed away and it was five. Then he abandoned the thought of seeing them any more that day and turned to Carrie.
It is to be observed that the man did not justify himself to himself. He was not troubling about that. His whole thought was the possibility of persuading Carrie. Nothing was wrong in that. He loved her dearly. Their mutual happiness depended upon it. Would that Drouet were only away!
While he was thinking thus elatedly, he remembered that he wanted some clean linen in the morning.
This he purchased, together with a half-dozen ties, and went to the Palmer House. As he entered he thought he saw Drouet ascending the stairs with a key. Surely not Drouet! Then he thought, perhaps they had changed their abode temporarily. He went straight up to the desk.
"Is Mr. Drouet stopping here?" he asked of the clerk.
"I think he is," said the latter, consulting his private registry list. "Yes."
"Is that so?" exclaimed Hurstwood, otherwise concealing his astonishment. "Alone?" he added.
"Yes," said the clerk.
Hurstwood turned away and set his lips so as best to express and conceal his feelings.
"How's that?" he thought. "They've had a row."
He hastened to his room with rising spirits and changed his linen. As he did so, he made up his mind that if Carrie was alone, or if she had gone to another place, it behooved him to find out. He decided to call at once.
"I know what I'll do," he thought. "I'll go to the door and ask if Mr. Drouet is at home. That will bring out whether he is there or not and where Carrie is."
He was almost moved to some muscular display as he thought of it. He decided to go immediately after supper.
On coming down from his room at six, he looked carefully about to see if Drouet was present and then went out to lunch. He could scarcely eat, however, he was so anxious to be about his errand. Before starting he thought it well to discover where Drouet would be, and returned to his hotel.
"Has Mr. Drouet gone out?" he asked of the clerk.
"No," answered the latter, "he's in his room. Do you wish to send up a card?"
"No, I'll call around later," answered Hurstwood, and strolled out.
He took a Madison car and went direct to Ogden Place this time walking boldly up to the door. The chambermaid answered his knock.
"Is Mr. Drouet in?" said Hurstwood blandly.
"He is out of the city," said the girl, who had heard Carrie tell this to Mrs. Hale.
"Is Mrs. Drouet in?"
"No, she has gone to the theatre."
"Is that so?" said Hurstwood, considerably taken back; then, as if burdened with something important, "You don't know to which theatre?"
The girl really had no idea where she had gone, but not liking Hurstwood, and wishing to cause him trouble, answered: "Yes, Hooley's."
"Thank you," returned the manager, and, tipping his hat slightly, went away.
"I'll look in at Hooley's," thought he, but as a matter of fact he did not. Before he had reached the central portion of the city he thought the whole matter over and decided it would be useless. As much as he longed to see Carrie, he knew she would be with some one and did not wish to intrude with his plea there. A little later he might do so-in the morning. Only in the morning he had the lawyer question before him.
This little pilgrimage threw quite a wet blanket upon his rising spirits. He was soon down again to his old worry, and reached the resort anxious to find relief. Quite a company of gentlemen were making the place lively with their conversation. A group of Cook County politicians were conferring about a round cherry-wood table in the rear portion of the room. Several young merrymakers were chattering at the bar before making a belated visit to the theatre. A shabbily-genteel individual, with a red nose and an old high hat, was sipping a quiet glass of ale alone at one end of the bar. Hurstwood nodded to the politicians and went into his office.
About ten o'clock a friend of his, Mr. Frank L. Taintor, a local sport and racing man, dropped in, and seeing Hurstwood alone in his office came to the door.
"Hello, George!" he exclaimed.
"How are you, Frank?" said Hurstwood, somewhat relieved by the sight of him. "Sit down," and he motioned him to one of the chairs in the little room.
"What's the matter, George?" asked Taintor. "You look a little glum. Haven't lost at the track, have you?"
"I'm not feeling very well to-night. I had a slight cold the other day."
"Take whiskey, George," said Taintor. "You ought to know that."
Hurstwood smiled.
While they were still conferring there, several other of Hurstwood's friends entered, and not long after eleven, the theatres being out, some actors began to drop in-among them some notabilities.
Then began one of those pointless social conversations so common in American resorts where the would-be gilded attempt to rub off gilt from those who have it in abundance. If Hurstwood had one leaning, it was toward notabilities. He considered that, if anywhere, he belonged among them. He was too proud to toady, too keen not to strictly observe the plane he occupied when there were those present who did not appreciate him, but, in situations like the present, where he could shine as a gentleman and be received without equivocation as a friend and equal among men of known ability, he was most delighted. It was on such occasions, if ever, that he would "take something." When the social flavour was strong enough he would even unbend to the extent of drinking glass for glass with his associates, punctiliously observing his turn to pay as if he were an outsider like the others. If he ever approached intoxication-or rather that ruddy warmth and comfortableness which precedes the more sloven state-it was when individuals such as these were gathered about him, when he was one of a circle of chatting celebrities. To-night, disturbed as was his state, he was rather relieved to find company, and now that notabilities were gathered, he laid aside his troubles for the nonce, and joined in right heartily.
It was not long before the imbibing began to tell. Stories began to crop up-those ever-enduring, droll stories which form the major portion of the conversation among American men under such circumstances.
Twelve o'clock arrived, the hour for closing, and with it the company took leave. Hurstwood shook hands with them most cordially. He was very roseate physically. He had arrived at that state where his mind, though clear, was, nevertheless, warm in its fancies. He felt as if his troubles were not very serious. Going into his office, he began to turn over certain accounts, awaiting the departure of the bartenders and the cashier, who soon left.
It was the manager's duty, as well as his custom, after all were gone to see that everything was safely closed up for the night. As a rule, no money except the cash taken in after banking hours was kept about the place, and that was locked in the safe by the cashier, who, with the owners, was joint keeper of the secret combination, but, nevertheless, Hurstwood nightly took the precaution to try the cash drawers and the safe in order to see that they were tightly closed. Then he would lock his own little office and set the proper light burning near the safe, after which he would take his departure.
Never in his experience had he found anything out of order, but to-night, after shutting down his desk, he came out and tried the safe. His way was to give a sharp pull. This time the door responded. He was slightly surprised at that, and looking in found the money cases as left for the day, apparently unprotected. His first thought was, of course, to inspect the drawers and shut the door.
"I'll speak to Mayhew about this to-morrow," he thought.
The latter had certainly imagined upon going out a half-hour before that he had turned the knob on the door so as to spring the lock. He had never failed to do so before. But to-night Mayhew had other thoughts. He had been revolving the problem of a business of his own.
"I'll look in here," thought the manager, pulling out the money drawers. He did not know why he wished to look in there. It was quite a superfluous action, which another time might not have happened at all.
As he did so, a layer of bills, in parcels of a thousand, such as banks issue, caught his eye. He could not tell how much they represented, but paused to view them. Then he pulled out the second of the cash drawers. In that were the receipts of the day.
"I didn't know Fitzgerald and Moy ever left any money this way," his mind said to itself. "They must have forgotten it."
He looked at the other drawer and paused again.
"Count them," said a voice in his ear.
He put his hand into the first of the boxes and lifted the stack, letting the separate parcels fall. They were bills of fifty and one hundred dollars done in packages of a thousand. He thought he counted ten such.
"Why don't I shut the safe?" his mind said to itself, lingering. "What makes me pause here?"
For answer there came the strangest words:
"Did you ever have ten thousand dollars in ready money?"
Lo, the manager remembered that he had never had so much. All his property had been slowly accumulated, and now his wife owned that. He was worth more than forty thousand, all told-but she would get that.
He puzzled as he thought of these things, then pushed in the drawers and closed the door, pausing with his hand upon the knob, which might so easily lock it all beyond temptation. Still he paused. Finally he went to the windows and pulled down the curtains. Then he tried the door, which he had previously locked. What was this thing, making him suspicious? Why did he wish to move about so quietly. He came back to the end of the counter as if to rest his arm and think. Then he went and unlocked his little office door and turned on the light. He also opened his desk, sitting down before it, only to think strange thoughts.
"The safe is open," said a voice. "There is just the least little crack in it. The lock has not been sprung."
The manager floundered among a jumble of thoughts. Now all the entanglement of the day came back. Also the thought that here was a solution. That money would do it. If he had that and Carrie. He rose up and stood stock-still, looking at the floor.
"What about it?" his mind asked, and for answer he put his hand slowly up and scratched his head.
The manager was no fool to be led blindly away by such an errant proposition as this, but his situation was peculiar. Wine was in his veins. It had crept up into his head and given him a warm view of the situation. It also coloured the possibilities of ten thousand for him. He could see great opportunities with that. He could get Carrie. Oh, yes, he could! He could get rid of his wife. That letter, too, was waiting discussion to-morrow morning. He would not need to answer that. He went back to the safe and put his hand on the knob. Then he pulled the door open and took the drawer with the money quite out.
With it once out and before him, it seemed a foolish thing to think about leaving it. Certainly it would. Why, he could live quietly with Carrie for years.
Lord! what was that? For the first time he was tense, as if a stern hand had been laid upon his shoulder. He looked fearfully around. Not a soul was present. Not a sound. Some one was shuffling by on the sidewalk. He took the box and the money and put it back in the safe. Then he partly closed the door again.
To those who have never wavered in conscience, the predicament of the individual whose mind is less strongly constituted and who trembles in the balance between duty and desire is scarcely appreciable, unless graphically portrayed. Those who have never heard that solemn voice of the ghostly clock which ticks with awful distinctness, "thou shalt," "thou shalt not," "thou shalt," "thou shalt not," are in no position to judge. Not alone in sensitive, highly organised natures is such a mental conflict possible. The dullest specimen of humanity, when drawn by desire toward evil, is recalled by a sense of right, which is proportionate in power and strength to his evil tendency. We must remember that it may not be a knowledge of right, for no knowledge of right is predicated of the animal's instinctive recoil at evil. Men are still led by instinct before they are regulated by knowledge. It is instinct which recalls the criminal-it is instinct which gives the criminal his feeling of danger, his fear of wrong.
At every first adventure, then, into some untried evil, the mind wavers. The clock of thought ticks out its wish and its denial. To those who have never experienced such a mental dilemma, the following will appeal on the simple ground of revelation.
When Hurstwood put the money back, his nature again resumed its ease and daring. No one had observed him. He was quite alone. No one could tell what he wished to do. He could work this thing out for himself.
The imbibation of the evening had not yet worn off. Moist as was his brow, tremble as did his hand once after the nameless fright, he was still flushed with the fumes of liquor. He scarcely noticed that the time was passing. He went over his situation once again, his eye always seeing the money in a lump, his mind always seeing what it would do. He strolled into his little room, then to the door, then to the safe again. He put his hand on the knob and opened it. There was the money! Surely no harm could come from looking at it!
He took out the drawer again and lifted the bills. They were so smooth, so compact, so portable. How little they made, after all. He decided he would take them. Yes, he would. He would put them in his pocket. Then he looked at that and saw they would not go there. His hand satchel! To be sure, his hand satchel. They would go in that-all of it would. No one would think anything of it either. He went into the little office and took it from the shelf in the corner. Now he set it upon his desk and went out toward the safe. For some reason he did not want to fill it out in the big room. First he brought the bills and then the loose receipts of the day. He would take it all. He put the empty drawers back and pushed the iron door almost to, then stood beside it meditating.
The wavering of a mind under such circumstances is an almost inexplicable thing, and yet it is absolutely true. Hurstwood could not bring himself to act definitely. He wanted to think about it-to ponder over it, to decide whether it were best. He was drawn by such a keen desire for Carrie, driven by such a state of turmoil in his own affairs that he thought constantly it would be best, and yet he wavered. He did not know what evil might result from it to him-how soon he might come to grief. The true ethics of the situation never once occurred to him, and never would have, under any circumstances.
After he had all the money in the handbag, a revulsion of feeling seized him. He would not do it-no! Think of what a scandal it would make. The police! They would be after him. He would have to fly, and where? Oh, the terror of being a fugitive from justice! He took out the two boxes and put all the money back. In his excitement he forgot what he was doing, and put the sums in the wrong boxes. As he pushed the door to, he thought he remembered doing it wrong and opened the door again. There were the two boxes mixed.
He took them out and straightened the matter, but now the terror had gone. Why be afraid?
While the money was in his hand the lock clicked. It had sprung! Did he do it? He grabbed at the knob and pulled vigorously. It had closed. Heavens! he was in for it now, sure enough.
The moment he realised that the safe was locked for a surety, the sweat burst out upon his brow and he trembled violently. He looked about him and decided instantly. There was no delaying now.
"Supposing I do lay it on the top," he said, "and go away, they'll know who took it. I'm the last to close up. Besides, other things will happen."
At once he became the man of action.
"I must get out of this," he thought.
He hurried into his little room, took down his light overcoat and hat, locked his desk, and grabbed the satchel. Then he turned out all but one light and opened the door. He tried to put on his old assured air, but it was almost gone. He was repenting rapidly.
"I wish I hadn't done that," he said. "That was a mistake."
He walked steadily down the street, greeting a night watchman whom he knew who was trying doors. He must get out of the city, and that quickly.
"I wonder how the trains run?" he thought.
Instantly he pulled out his watch and looked. It was nearly half-past one.
At the first drugstore he stopped, seeing a long-distance telephone booth inside. It was a famous drugstore, and contained one of the first private telephone booths ever erected. "I want to use your 'phone a minute," he said to the night clerk.
The latter nodded.
"Give me 1643," he called to Central, after looking up the Michigan Central depot number. Soon he got the ticket agent.
"How do the trains leave here for Detroit?" he asked.
The man explained the hours.
"No more to-night?"
"Nothing with a sleeper. Yes, there is, too," he added. "There is a mail train out of here at three o'clock."
"All right," said Hurstwood. "What time does that get to Detroit?"
He was thinking if he could only get there and cross the river into Canada, he could take his time about getting to Montreal. He was relieved to learn that it would reach there by noon.
"Mayhew won't open the safe till nine," he thought. "They can't get on my track before noon."
Then he thought of Carrie. With what speed must he get her, if he got her at all. She would have to come along. He jumped into the nearest cab standing by.
"To Ogden Place," he said sharply. "I'll give you a dollar more if you make good time."
The cabby beat his horse into a sort of imitation gallop which was fairly fast, however. On the way Hurstwood thought what to do. Reaching the number, he hurried up the steps and did not spare the bell in waking the servant.
"Is Mrs. Drouet in?" he asked.
"Yes," said the astonished girl.
"Tell her to dress and come to the door at once. Her husband is in the hospital, injured, and wants to see her."
The servant girl hurried upstairs, convinced by the man's strained and emphatic manner.
"What!" said Carrie, lighting the gas and searching for her clothes.
"Mr. Drouet is hurt and in the hospital. He wants to see you. The cab's downstairs."
Carrie dressed very rapidly, and soon appeared below, forgetting everything save the necessities.
"Drouet is hurt," said Hurstwood quickly. "He wants to see you. Come quickly."
Carrie was so bewildered that she swallowed the whole story.
"Get in," said Hurstwood, helping her and jumping after.
The cabby began to turn the horse around. "Michigan Central depot," he said, standing up and speaking so low that Carrie could not hear, "as fast as you can go."
Chapter XXVIII. A PILGRIM, AN OUTLAW: THE SPIRIT DETAINED
The cab had not travelled a short block before Carrie, settling herself and thoroughly waking in the night atmosphere, asked:
"What's the matter with him? Is he hurt badly?"
"It isn't anything very serious," Hurstwood said solemnly. He was very much disturbed over his own situation, and now that he had Carrie with him, he only wanted to get safely out of reach of the law. Therefore he was in no mood for anything save such words as would further his plans distinctly.
Carrie did not forget that there was something to be settled between her and Hurstwood, but the thought was ignored in her agitation. The one thing was to finish this strange pilgrimage.
"Where is he?"
"Way out on the South Side," said Hurstwood. "We'll have to take the train. It's the quickest way."
Carrie said nothing, and the horse gambolled on. The weirdness of the city by night held her attention. She looked at the long receding rows of lamps and studied the dark, silent houses.
"How did he hurt himself?" she asked-meaning what was the nature of his injuries. Hurstwood understood. He hated to lie any more than necessary, and yet he wanted no protests until he was out of danger.
"I don't know exactly," he said. "They just called me up to go and get you and bring you out. They said there wasn't any need for alarm, but that I shouldn't fail to bring you."
The man's serious manner convinced Carrie, and she became silent, wondering.
Hurstwood examined his watch and urged the man to hurry. For one in so delicate a position he was exceedingly cool. He could only think of how needful it was to make the train and get quietly away. Carrie seemed quite tractable, and he congratulated himself.
In due time they reached the depot, and after helping her out he handed the man a five-dollar bill and hurried on.
"You wait here," he said to Carrie, when they reached the waiting-room, "while I get the tickets."
"Have I much time to catch that train for Detroit?" he asked of the agent.
"Four minutes," said the latter.
He paid for two tickets as circumspectly as possible.
"Is it far?" said Carrie, as he hurried back.
"Not very," he said. "We must get right in."
He pushed her before him at the gate, stood between her and the ticket man while the latter punched their tickets, so that she could not see, and then hurried after.
There was a long line of express and passenger cars and one or two common day coaches. As the train had only recently been made up and few passengers were expected, there were only one or two brakemen waiting. They entered the rear day coach and sat down. Almost immediately, "All aboard," resounded faintly from the outside, and the train started.
Carrie began to think it was a little bit curious-this going to a depot-but said nothing. The whole incident was so out of the natural that she did not attach too much weight to anything she imagined.
"How have you been?" asked Hurstwood gently, for he now breathed easier.
"Very well," said Carrie, who was so disturbed that she could not bring a proper attitude to bear in the matter. She was still nervous to reach Drouet and see what could be the matter. Hurstwood contemplated her and felt this. He was not disturbed that it should be so. He did not trouble because she was moved sympathetically in the matter. It was one of the qualities in her which pleased him exceedingly. He was only thinking how he should explain. Even this was not the most serious thing in his mind, however. His own deed and present flight were the great shadows which weighed upon him.
"What a fool I was to do that," he said over and over. "What a mistake!"
In his sober senses, he could scarcely realise that the thing had been done. He could not begin to feel that he was a fugitive from justice. He had often read of such things, and had thought they must be terrible, but now that the thing was upon him, he only sat and looked into the past. The future was a thing which concerned the Canadian line. He wanted to reach that. As for the rest he surveyed his actions for the evening, and counted them parts of a great mistake.
"Still," he said, "what could I have done?"
Then he would decide to make the best of it, and would begin to do so by starting the whole inquiry over again. It was a fruitless, harassing round, and left him in a queer mood to deal with the proposition he had in the presence of Carrie.
The train clacked through the yards along the lake front, and ran rather slowly to Twenty-fourth Street. Brakes and signals were visible without. The engine gave short calls with its whistle, and frequently the bell rang. Several brakemen came through, bearing lanterns. They were locking the vestibules and putting the cars in order for a long run.
Presently it began to gain speed, and Carrie saw the silent streets flashing by in rapid succession. The engine also began its whistle-calls of four parts, with which it signalled danger to important crossings.
"Is it very far?" asked Carrie.
"Not so very," said Hurstwood. He could hardly repress a smile at her simplicity. He wanted to explain and conciliate her, but he also wanted to be well out of Chicago.
In the lapse of another half-hour it became apparent to Carrie that it was quite a run to wherever he was taking her, anyhow.
"Is it in Chicago?" she asked nervously. They were now far beyond the city limits, and the train was scudding across the Indiana line at a great rate.
"No," he said, "not where we are going."
There was something in the way he said this which aroused her in an instant.
Her pretty brow began to contract.
"We are going to see Charlie, aren't we?" she asked.
He felt that the time was up. An explanation might as well come now as later. Therefore, he shook his head in the most gentle negative.
"What?" said Carrie. She was nonplussed at the possibility of the errand being different from what she had thought.
He only looked at her in the most kindly and mollifying way.
"Well, where are you taking me, then?" she asked, her voice showing the quality of fright.
"I'll tell you, Carrie, if you'll be quiet. I want you to come along with me to another city."
"Oh," said Carrie, her voice rising into a weak cry. "Let me off. I don't want to go with you."
She was quite appalled at the man's audacity. This was something which had never for a moment entered her head. Her one thought now was to get off and away. If only the flying train could be stopped, the terrible trick would be amended.
She arose and tried to push out into the aisle-anywhere. She knew she had to do something. Hurstwood laid a gentle hand on her.
"Sit still, Carrie," he said. "Sit still. It won't do you any good to get up here. Listen to me and I'll tell you what I'll do. Wait a moment."
She was pushing at his knees, but he only pulled her back. No one saw this little altercation, for very few persons were in the car, and they were attempting to doze.
"I won't," said Carrie, who was, nevertheless, complying against her will. "Let me go," she said. "How dare you?" and large tears began to gather in her eyes.
Hurstwood was now fully aroused to the immediate difficulty, and ceased to think of his own situation. He must do something with this girl, or she would cause him trouble. He tried the art of persuasion with all his powers aroused.
"Look here now, Carrie," he said, "you mustn't act this way. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I don't want to do anything to make you feel bad."
"Oh," sobbed Carrie, "oh, oh-oo-o!"
"There, there," he said, "you mustn't cry. Won't you listen to me? Listen to me a minute, and I'll tell you why I came to do this thing. I couldn't help it. I assure you I couldn't. Won't you listen?"
Her sobs disturbed him so that he was quite sure she did not hear a word he said.
"Won't you listen?" he asked.
"No, I won't," said Carrie, flashing up. "I want you to take me out of this, or I'll tell the conductor. I won't go with you. It's a shame," and again sobs of fright cut off her desire for expression.
Hurstwood listened with some astonishment. He felt that she had just cause for feeling as she did, and yet he wished that he could straighten this thing out quickly. Shortly the conductor would come through for the tickets. He wanted no noise, no trouble of any kind. Before everything he must make her quiet.
"You couldn't get out until the train stops again," said Hurstwood. "It won't be very long until we reach another station. You can get out then if you want to. I won't stop you. All I want you to do is to listen a moment. You'll let me tell you, won't you?"
Carrie seemed not to listen. She only turned her head toward the window, where outside all was black. The train was speeding with steady grace across the fields and through patches of wood. The long whistles came with sad, musical effect as the lonely woodland crossings were approached.
Now the conductor entered the car and took up the one or two fares that had been added at Chicago. He approached Hurstwood, who handed out the tickets. Poised as she was to act, Carrie made no move. She did not look about.
When the conductor had gone again Hurstwood felt relieved.
"You're angry at me because I deceived you," he said. "I didn't mean to, Carrie. As I live I didn't. I couldn't help it. I couldn't stay away from you after the first time I saw you."
He was ignoring the last deception as something that might go by the board. He wanted to convince her that his wife could no longer be a factor in their relationship. The money he had stolen he tried to shut out of his mind.
"Don't talk to me," said Carrie, "I hate you. I want you to go away from me. I am going to get out at the very next station."
She was in a tremble of excitement and opposition as she spoke.
"All right," he said, "but you'll hear me out, won't you? After all you have said about loving me, you might hear me. I don't want to do you any harm. I'll give you the money to go back with when you go. I merely want to tell you, Carrie. You can't stop me from loving you, whatever you may think."
He looked at her tenderly, but received no reply. "You think I have deceived you badly, but I haven't. I didn't do it willingly. I'm through with my wife. She hasn't any claims on me. I'll never see her any more. That's why I'm here to-night. That's why I came and got you."
"You said Charlie was hurt," said Carrie, savagely. "You deceived me. You've been deceiving me all the time, and now you want to force me to run away with you."
She was so excited that she got up and tried to get by him again. He let her, and she took another seat. Then he followed.
"Don't run away from me, Carrie," he said gently. "Let me explain. If you will only hear me out you will see where I stand. I tell you my wife is nothing to me. She hasn't been anything for years or I wouldn't have ever come near you. I'm going to get a divorce just as soon as I can. I'll never see her again. I'm done with all that. You're the only person I want. If I can have you I won't ever think of another woman again."
Carrie heard all this in a very ruffled state. It sounded sincere enough, however, despite all he had done. There was a tenseness in Hurstwood's voice and manner which could but have some effect. She did not want anything to do with him. He was married, he had deceived her once, and now again, and she thought him terrible. Still there is something in such daring and power which is fascinating to a woman, especially if she can be made to feel that it is all prompted by love of her.
The progress of the train was having a great deal to do with the solution of this difficult situation. The speeding wheels and disappearing country put Chicago farther and farther behind. Carrie could feel that she was being borne a long distance off-that the engine was making an almost through run to some distant city. She felt at times as if she could cry out and make such a row that some one would come to her aid; at other times it seemed an almost useless thing-so far was she from any aid, no matter what she did. All the while Hurstwood was endeavouring to formulate his plea in such a way that it would strike home and bring her into sympathy with him.
"I was simply put where I didn't know what else to do."
Carrie deigned no suggestion of hearing this.
"When I say you wouldn't come unless I could marry you, I decided to put everything else behind me and get you to come away with me. I'm going off now to another city. I want to go to Montreal for a while, and then anywhere you want to. We'll go and live in New York, if you say."
"I'll not have anything to do with you," said Carrie. "I want to get off this train. Where are we going?"
"To Detroit," said Hurstwood.
"Oh!" said Carrie, in a burst of anguish. So distant and definite a point seemed to increase the difficulty.
"Won't you come along with me?" he said, as if there was great danger that she would not. "You won't need to do anything but travel with me. I'll not trouble you in any way. You can see Montreal and New York, and then if you don't want to stay you can go back. It will be better than trying to go back to-night."
The first gleam of fairness shone in this proposition for Carrie. It seemed a plausible thing to do, much as she feared his opposition if she tried to carry it out. Montreal and New York! Even now she was speeding toward those great, strange lands, and could see them if she liked. She thought, but made no sign.
Hurstwood thought he saw a shade of compliance in this. He redoubled his ardour.
"Think," he said, "what I've given up. I can't go back to Chicago any more. I've got to stay away and live alone now, if you don't come with me. You won't go back on me entirely, will you, Carrie?"
"I don't want you to talk to me," she answered forcibly.
Hurstwood kept silent for a while.
Carrie felt the train to be slowing down. It was the moment to act if she was to act at all. She stirred uneasily.
"Don't think of going, Carrie," he said. "If you ever cared for me at all, come along and let's start right. I'll do whatever you say. I'll marry you, or I'll let you go back. Give yourself time to think it over. I wouldn't have wanted you to come if I hadn't loved you. I tell you, Carrie, before God, I can't live without you. I won't!"
There was the tensity of fierceness in the man's plea which appealed deeply to her sympathies. It was a dissolving fire which was actuating him now. He was loving her too intensely to think of giving her up in this, his hour of distress. He clutched her hand nervously and pressed it with all the force of an appeal.
The train was now all but stopped. It was running by some cars on a side track. Everything outside was dark and dreary. A few sprinkles on the window began to indicate that it was raining. Carrie hung in a quandary, balancing between decision and helplessness. Now the train stopped, and she was listening to his plea. The engine backed a few feet and all was still.
She wavered, totally unable to make a move. Minute after minute slipped by and still she hesitated, he pleading.
"Will you let me come back if I want to?" she asked, as if she now had the upper hand and her companion was utterly subdued.
"Of course," he answered, "you know I will."
Carrie only listened as one who has granted a temporary amnesty. She began to feel as if the matter were in her hands entirely.
The train was again in rapid motion. Hurstwood changed the subject.
"Aren't you very tired?" he said.
"No," she answered.
"Won't you let me get you a berth in the sleeper?"
She shook her head, though for all her distress and his trickery she was beginning to notice what she had always felt-his thoughtfulness.
"Oh, yes," he said, "you will feel so much better."
She shook her head.
"Let me fix my coat for you, anyway," and he arose and arranged his light coat in a comfortable position to receive her head.
"There," he said tenderly, "now see if you can't rest a little." He could have kissed her for her compliance. He took his seat beside her and thought a moment.
"I believe we're in for a heavy rain," he said.
"So it looks," said Carrie, whose nerves were quieting under the sound of the rain drops, driven by a gusty wind, as the train swept on frantically through the shadow to a newer world.
The fact that he had in a measure mollified Carrie was a source of satisfaction to Hurstwood, but it furnished only the most temporary relief. Now that her opposition was out of the way, he had all of his time to devote to the consideration of his own error.
His condition was bitter in the extreme, for he did not want the miserable sum he had stolen. He did not want to be a thief. That sum or any other could never compensate for the state which he had thus foolishly doffed. It could not give him back his host of friends, his name, his house and family, nor Carrie, as he had meant to have her. He was shut out from Chicago-from his easy, comfortable state. He had robbed himself of his dignity, his merry meetings, his pleasant evenings. And for what? The more he thought of it the more unbearable it became. He began to think that he would try and restore himself to his old state. He would return the miserable thievings of the night and explain. Perhaps Moy would understand. Perhaps they would forgive him and let him come back.
By noontime the train rolled into Detroit and he began to feel exceedingly nervous. The police must be on his track by now. They had probably notified all the police of the big cities, and detectives would be watching for him. He remembered instances in which defaulters had been captured. Consequently, he breathed heavily and paled somewhat. His hands felt as if they must have something to do. He simulated interest in several scenes without which he did not feel. He repeatedly beat his foot upon the floor.
Carrie noticed his agitation, but said nothing. She had no idea what it meant or that it was important.
He wondered now why he had not asked whether this train went on through to Montreal or some Canadian point. Perhaps he could have saved time. He jumped up and sought the conductor.
"Does any part of this train go to Montreal?" he asked.
"Yes, the next sleeper back does."
He would have asked more, but it did not seem wise, so he decided to inquire at the depot.
The train rolled into the yards, clanging and puffing.
"I think we had better go right on through to Montreal," he said to Carrie. "I'll see what the connections are when we get off."
He was exceedingly nervous, but did his best to put on a calm exterior. Carrie only looked at him with large, troubled eyes. She was drifting mentally, unable to say to herself what to do.
The train stopped and Hurstwood led the way out. He looked warily around him, pretending to look after Carrie. Seeing nothing that indicated studied observation, he made his way to the ticket office.
"The next train for Montreal leaves when?" he asked.
"In twenty minutes," said the man.
He bought two tickets and Pullman berths. Then he hastened back to Carrie.
"We go right out again," he said, scarcely noticing that Carrie looked tired and weary.
"I wish I was out of all this," she exclaimed gloomily.
"You'll feel better when we reach Montreal," he said.
"I haven't an earthly thing with me," said Carrie; "not even a handkerchief."
"You can buy all you want as soon as you get there, dearest," he explained. "You can call in a dressmaker."
Now the crier called the train ready and they got on. Hurstwood breathed a sigh of relief as it started. There was a short run to the river, and there they were ferried over. They had barely pulled the train off the ferry-boat when he settled back with a sigh.
"It won't be so very long now," he said, remembering her in his relief. "We get there the first thing in the morning."
Carrie scarcely deigned to reply.
"I'll see if there is a dining-car," he added. "I'm hungry."
Chapter XXIX. THE SOLACE OF TRAVEL: THE BOATS OF THE SEA
To the untravelled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love, it is the one thing which solaces and delights. Things new are too important to be neglected, and mind, which is a mere reflection of sensory impressions, succumbs to the flood of objects. Thus lovers are forgotten, sorrows laid aside, death hidden from view. There is a world of accumulated feeling back of the trite dramatic expression-"I am going away."
As Carrie looked out upon the flying scenery she almost forgot that she had been tricked into this long journey against her will and that she was without the necessary apparel for travelling. She quite forgot Hurstwood's presence at times, and looked away to homely farmhouses and cosey cottages in villages with wondering eyes. It was an interesting world to her. Her life had just begun. She did not feel herself defeated at all. Neither was she blasted in hope. The great city held much. Possibly she would come out of bondage into freedom-who knows? Perhaps she would be happy. These thoughts raised her above the level of erring. She was saved in that she was hopeful.
The following morning the train pulled safely into Montreal and they stepped down, Hurstwood glad to be out of danger, Carrie wondering at the novel atmosphere of the northern city. Long before, Hurstwood had been here, and now he remembered the name of the hotel at which he had stopped. As they came out of the main entrance of the depot he heard it called anew by a busman.
"We'll go right up and get rooms," he said.
At the clerk's office Hurstwood swung the register about while the clerk came forward. He was thinking what name he would put down. With the latter before him he found no time for hesitation. A name he had seen out of the car window came swiftly to him. It was pleasing enough. With an easy hand he wrote, "G. W. Murdock and wife." It was the largest concession to necessity he felt like making. His initials he could not spare.
When they were shown their room Carrie saw at once that he had secured her a lovely chamber.
"You have a bath there," said he. "Now you can clean up when you get ready."
Carrie went over and looked out the window, while Hurstwood looked at himself in the glass. He felt dusty and unclean. He had no trunk, no change of linen, not even a hair-brush.
"I'll ring for soap and towels," he said, "and send you up a hair-brush. Then you can bathe and get ready for breakfast. I'll go for a shave and come back and get you, and then we'll go out and look for some clothes for you."
He smiled good-naturedly as he said this.
"All right," said Carrie.
She sat down in one of the rocking-chairs, while Hurstwood waited for the boy, who soon knocked.
"Soap, towels, and a pitcher of ice-water."
"Yes, sir."
"I'll go now," he said to Carrie, coming toward her and holding out his hands, but she did not move to take them.
"You're not mad at me, are you?" he asked softly.
"Oh, no!" she answered, rather indifferently.
"Don't you care for me at all?"
She made no answer, but looked steadily toward the window.
"Don't you think you could love me a little?" he pleaded, taking one of her hands, which she endeavoured to draw away. "You once said you did."
"What made you deceive me so?" asked Carrie.
"I couldn't help it," he said, "I wanted you too much."
"You didn't have any right to want me," she answered, striking cleanly home.
"Oh, well, Carrie," he answered, "here I am. It's too late now. Won't you try and care for me a little?"
He looked rather worsted in thought as he stood before her.
She shook her head negatively.
"Let me start all over again. Be my wife from to-day on."
Carrie rose up as if to step away, he holding her hand. Now he slipped his arm about her and she struggled, but in vain. He held her quite close. Instantly there flamed up in his body the all compelling desire. His affection took an ardent form.
"Let me go," said Carrie, who was folded close to him.
"Won't you love me?" he said. "Won't you be mine from now on?"
Carrie had never been ill-disposed toward him. Only a moment before she had been listening with some complacency, remembering her old affection for him. He was so handsome, so daring!
Now, however, this feeling had changed to one of opposition, which rose feebly. It mastered her for a moment, and then, held close as she was, began to wane. Something else in her spoke. This man, to whose bosom she was being pressed, was strong; he was passionate, he loved her, and she was alone. If she did not turn to him-accept of his love-where else might she go? Her resistance half dissolved in the flood of his strong feeling.
She found him lifting her head and looking into her eyes. What magnetism there was she could never know. His many sins, however, were for the moment all forgotten.
He pressed her closer and kissed her, and she felt that further opposition was useless.
"Will you marry me?" she asked, forgetting how.
"This very day," he said, with all delight.
Now the hall-boy pounded on the door and he released his hold upon her regretfully.
"You get ready now, will you," he said, "at once?"
"Yes," she answered.
"I'll be back in three-quarters of an hour."
Carrie, flushed and excited, moved away as he admitted the boy.
Below stairs, he halted in the lobby to look for a barber shop. For the moment, he was in fine feather. His recent victory over Carrie seemed to atone for much he had endured during the last few days. Life seemed worth fighting for. This eastward flight from all things customary and attached seemed as if it might have happiness in store. The storm showed a rainbow at the end of which might be a pot of gold.
He was about to cross to a little red-and-white striped bar which was fastened up beside a door when a voice greeted him familiarly. Instantly his heart sank. "Why, hello, George, old man!" said the voice. "What are you doing down here?"
Hurstwood was already confronted, and recognised his friend Kenny, the stock-broker.
"Just attending to a little private matter," he answered, his mind working like a key-board of a telephone station. This man evidently did not know-he had not read the papers.
"Well, it seems strange to see you way up here," said Mr. Kenny genially. "Stopping here?"
"Yes," said Hurstwood uneasily, thinking of his handwriting on the register.
"Going to be in town long?"
"No, only a day or so."
"Is that so? Had your breakfast?"
"Yes," said Hurstwood, lying blandly. "I'm just going for a shave."
"Won't you come have a drink?"
"Not until afterwards," said the ex-manager. "I'll see you later. Are you stopping here?"
"Yes," said Mr. Kenny, and then, turning the word again added: "How are things out in Chicago?"
"About the same as usual," said Hurstwood, smiling genially.
"Wife with you?"
"No."
"Well, I must see more of you to-day. I'm just going in here for breakfast. Come in when you're through."
"I will," said Hurstwood, moving away. The whole conversation was a trial to him. It seemed to add complications with every word. This man called up a thousand memories. He represented everything he had left. Chicago, his wife, the elegant resort-all these were in his greeting and inquiries. And here he was in this same hotel expecting to confer with him, unquestionably waiting to have a good time with him. All at once the Chicago papers would arrive. The local papers would have accounts in them this very day. He forgot his triumph with Carrie in the possibility of soon being known for what he was, in this man's eyes, a safe-breaker. He could have groaned as he went into the barber shop. He decided to escape and seek a more secluded hotel.
Accordingly, when he came out he was glad to see the lobby clear, and hastened toward the stairs. He would get Carrie and go out by the ladies' entrance. They would have breakfast in some more inconspicuous place.
Across the lobby, however, another individual was surveying him. He was of a commonplace Irish type, small of stature, cheaply dressed, and with a head that seemed a smaller edition of some huge ward politician's. This individual had been evidently talking with the clerk, but now he surveyed the ex-manager keenly.
Hurstwood felt the long-range examination and recognised the type. Instinctively he felt that the man was a detective-that he was being watched. He hurried across, pretending not to notice, but in his mind was a world of thoughts. What would happen now? What could these people do? He began to trouble concerning the extradition laws. He did not understand them absolutely. Perhaps he could be arrested. Oh, if Carrie should find out! Montreal was too warm for him. He began to long to be out of it.
Carrie had bathed and was waiting when he arrived. She looked refreshed-more delightful than ever, but reserved. Since he had gone she had resumed somewhat of her cold attitude towards him. Love was not blazing in her heart. He felt it, and his troubles seemed increased. He could not take her in his arms; he did not even try. Something about her forbade it. In part his opinion was the result of his own experiences and reflections below stairs.
"You're ready, are you?" he said kindly.
"Yes," she answered.
"We'll go out for breakfast. This place down here doesn't appeal to me very much."
"All right," said Carrie.
They went out, and at the corner the commonplace Irish individual was standing, eyeing him. Hurstwood could scarcely refrain from showing that he knew of this chap's presence. The insolence in the fellow's eye was galling. Still they passed, and he explained to Carrie concerning the city. Another restaurant was not long in showing itself, and here they entered.
"What a queer town this is," said Carrie, who marvelled at it solely because it was not like Chicago.
"It isn't as lively as Chicago," said Hurstwood. "Don't you like it?"
"No," said Carrie, whose feelings were already localised in the great Western city.
"Well, it isn't as interesting," said Hurstwood.
"What's here?" asked Carrie, wondering at his choosing to visit this town.
"Nothing much," returned Hurstwood. "It's quite a resort. There's some pretty scenery about here."
Carrie listened, but with a feeling of unrest. There was much about her situation which destroyed the possibility of appreciation.
"We won't stay here long," said Hurstwood, who was now really glad to note her dissatisfaction. "You pick out your clothes as soon as breakfast is over and we'll run down to New York soon. You'll like that. It's a lot more like a city than any place outside Chicago."
He was really planning to slip out and away. He would see what these detectives would do-what move his employers at Chicago would make-then he would slip away-down to New York, where it was easy to hide. He knew enough about that city to know that its mysteries and possibilities of mystification were infinite.
The more he thought, however, the more wretched his situation became. He saw that getting here did not exactly clear up the ground. The firm would probably employ detectives to watch him-Pinkerton men or agents of Mooney and Boland. They might arrest him the moment he tried to leave Canada. So he might be compelled to remain here months, and in what a state!
Back at the hotel Hurstwood was anxious and yet fearful to see the morning papers. He wanted to know how far the news of his criminal deed had spread. So he told Carrie he would be up in a few moments, and went to secure and scan the dailies. No familiar or suspicious faces were about, and yet he did not like reading in the lobby, so he sought the main parlour on the floor above and, seated by a window there, looked them over. Very little was given to his crime, but it was there, several "sticks" in all, among all the riffraff of telegraphed murders, accidents, marriages, and other news. He wished, half sadly, that he could undo it all. Every moment of his time in this far-off abode of safety but added to his feeling that he had made a great mistake. There could have been an easier way out if he had only known.
He left the papers before going to the room, thinking thus to keep them out of the hands of Carrie.
"Well, how are you feeling?" he asked of her. She was engaged in looking out of the window.
"Oh, all right," she answered.
He came over, and was about to begin a conversation with her, when a knock came at their door.
"Maybe it's one of my parcels," said Carrie.
Hurstwood opened the door, outside of which stood the individual whom he had so thoroughly suspected.
"You're Mr. Hurstwood, are you?" said the latter, with a volume of affected shrewdness and assurance.
"Yes," said Hurstwood calmly. He knew the type so thoroughly that some of his old familiar indifference to it returned. Such men as these were of the lowest stratum welcomed at the resort. He stepped out and closed the door.
"Well, you know what I am here for, don't you?" said the man confidentially.
"I can guess," said Hurstwood softly.
"Well, do you intend to try and keep the money?"
"That's my affair," said Hurstwood grimly.
"You can't do it, you know," said the detective, eyeing him coolly.
"Look here, my man," said Hurstwood authoritatively, "you don't understand anything about this case, and I can't explain to you. Whatever I intend to do I'll do without advice from the outside. You'll have to excuse me."
"Well, now, there's no use of your talking that way," said the man, "when you're in the hands of the police. We can make a lot of trouble for you if we want to. You're not registered right in this house, you haven't got your wife with you, and the newspapers don't know you're here yet. You might as well be reasonable."
"What do you want to know?" asked Hurstwood.
"Whether you're going to send back that money or not."
Hurstwood paused and studied the floor.
"There's no use explaining to you about this," he said at last. "There's no use of your asking me. I'm no fool, you know. I know just what you can do and what you can't. You can create a lot of trouble if you want to. I know that all right, but it won't help you to get the money. Now, I've made up my mind what to do. I've already written Fitzgerald and Moy, so there's nothing I can say. You wait until you hear more from them."
All the time he had been talking he had been moving away from the door, down the corridor, out of the hearing of Carrie. They were now near the end where the corridor opened into the large general parlour.
"You won't give it up?" said the man.
The words irritated Hurstwood greatly. Hot blood poured into his brain. Many thoughts formulated themselves. He was no thief. He didn't want the money. If he could only explain to Fitzgerald and Moy, maybe it would be all right again.
"See here," he said, "there's no use my talking about this at all. I respect your power all right, but I'll have to deal with the people who know."
"Well, you can't get out of Canada with it," said the man.
"I don't want to get out," said Hurstwood. "When I get ready there'll be nothing to stop me for."
He turned back, and the detective watched him closely. It seemed an intolerable thing. Still he went on and into the room.
"Who was it?" asked Carrie.
"A friend of mine from Chicago."
The whole of this conversation was such a shock that, coming as it did after all the other worry of the past week, it sufficed to induce a deep gloom and moral revulsion in Hurstwood. What hurt him most was the fact that he was being pursued as a thief. He began to see the nature of that social injustice which sees but one side-often but a single point in a long tragedy. All the newspapers noted but one thing, his taking the money. How and wherefore were but indifferently dealt with. All the complications which led up to it were unknown. He was accused without being understood.
Sitting in his room with Carrie the same day, he decided to send the money back. He would write Fitzgerald and Moy, explain all, and then send it by express. Maybe they would forgive him. Perhaps they would ask him back. He would make good the false statement he had made about writing them. Then he would leave this peculiar town.
For an hour he thought over this plausible statement of the tangle. He wanted to tell them about his wife, but couldn't. He finally narrowed it down to an assertion that he was light-headed from entertaining friends, had found the safe open, and having gone so far as to take the money out, had accidentally closed it. This act he regretted very much. He was sorry he had put them to so much trouble. He would undo what he could by sending the money back-the major portion of it. The remainder he would pay up as soon as he could. Was there any possibility of his being restored? This he only hinted at.
The troubled state of the man's mind may be judged by the very construction of this letter. For the nonce he forgot what a painful thing it would be to resume his old place, even if it were given him. He forgot that he had severed himself from the past as by a sword, and that if he did manage to in some way reunite himself with it, the jagged line of separation and reunion would always show. He was always forgetting something-his wife, Carrie, his need of money, present situation, or something-and so did not reason clearly. Nevertheless, he sent the letter, waiting a reply before sending the money.
Meanwhile, he accepted his present situation with Carrie, getting what joy out of it he could.
Out came the sun by noon, and poured a golden flood through their open windows. Sparrows were twittering. There were laughter and song in the air. Hurstwood could not keep his eyes from Carrie. She seemed the one ray of sunshine in all his trouble. Oh, if she would only love him wholly-only throw her arms around him in the blissful spirit in which he had seen her in the little park in Chicago-how happy he would be! It would repay him; it would show him that he had not lost all. He would not care.
"Carrie," he said, getting up once and coming over to her, "are you going to stay with me from now on?"
She looked at him quizzically, but melted with sympathy as the value of the look upon his face forced itself upon her. It was love now, keen and strong-love enhanced by difficulty and worry. She could not help smiling.
"Let me be everything to you from now on," he said. "Don't make me worry any more. I'll be true to you. We'll go to New York and get a nice flat. I'll go into business again, and we'll be happy. Won't you be mine?"
Carrie listened quite solemnly. There was no great passion in her, but the drift of things and this man's proximity created a semblance of affection. She felt rather sorry for him-a sorrow born of what had only recently been a great admiration. True love she had never felt for him. She would have known as much if she could have analysed her feelings, but this thing which she now felt aroused by his great feeling broke down the barriers between them.
"You'll stay with me, won't you?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, nodding her head.
He gathered her to himself, imprinting kisses upon her lips and cheeks.
"You must marry me, though," she said.
"I'll get a license to-day," he answered.
"How?" she asked.
"Under a new name," he answered. "I'll take a new name and live a new life. From now on I'm Murdock."
"Oh, don't take that name," said Carrie.
"Why not?" he said.
"I don't like it."
"Well, what shall I take?" he asked.
"Oh, anything, only don't take that."
He thought a while, still keeping his arms about her, and then said:
"How would Wheeler do?"
"That's all right," said Carrie.
"Well, then, Wheeler," he said. "I'll get the license this afternoon."
They were married by a Baptist minister, the first divine they found convenient.
At last the Chicago firm answered. It was by Mr. Moy's dictation. He was astonished that Hurstwood had done this; very sorry that it had come about as it had. If the money were returned, they would not trouble to prosecute him, as they really bore him no ill-will. As for his returning, or their restoring him to his former position, they had not quite decided what the effect of it would be. They would think it over and correspond with him later, possibly, after a little time, and so on.
The sum and substance of it was that there was no hope, and they wanted the money with the least trouble possible. Hurstwood read his doom. He decided to pay $9,500 to the agent whom they said they would send, keeping $1,300 for his own use. He telegraphed his acquiescence, explained to the representative who called at the hotel the same day, took a certificate of payment, and told Carrie to pack her trunk. He was slightly depressed over this newest move at the time he began to make it, but eventually restored himself. He feared that even yet he might be seized and taken back, so he tried to conceal his movements, but it was scarcely possible. He ordered Carrie's trunk sent to the depot, where he had it sent by express to New York. No one seemed to be observing him, but he left at night. He was greatly agitated lest at the first station across the border or at the depot in New York there should be waiting for him an officer of the law.
Carrie, ignorant of his theft and his fears, enjoyed the entry into the latter city in the morning. The round green hills sentinelling the broad, expansive bosom of the Hudson held her attention by their beauty as the train followed the line of the stream. She had heard of the Hudson River, the great city of New York, and now she looked out, filling her mind with the wonder of it.
As the train turned east at Spuyten Duyvil and followed the east bank of the Harlem River, Hurstwood nervously called her attention to the fact that they were on the edge of the city. After her experience with Chicago, she expected long lines of cars-a great highway of tracks-and noted the difference. The sight of a few boats in the Harlem and more in the East River tickled her young heart. It was the first sign of the great sea. Next came a plain street with five-story brick flats, and then the train plunged into the tunnel.
"Grand Central Station!" called the trainman, as, after a few minutes of darkness and smoke, daylight reappeared. Hurstwood arose and gathered up his small grip. He was screwed up to the highest tension. With Carrie he waited at the door and then dismounted. No one approached him, but he glanced furtively to and fro as he made for the street entrance. So excited was he that he forgot all about Carrie, who fell behind, wondering at his self-absorption. As he passed through the depot proper the strain reached its climax and began to wane. All at once he was on the sidewalk, and none but cabmen hailed him. He heaved a great breath and turned, remembering Carrie.
"I thought you were going to run off and leave me," she said.
"I was trying to remember which car takes us to the Gilsey," he answered.
Carrie hardly heard him, so interested was she in the busy scene.
"How large is New York?" she asked.
"Oh a million or more," said Hurstwood.
He looked around and hailed a cab, but he did so in a changed way.
For the first time in years the thought that he must count these little expenses flashed through his mind. It was a disagreeable thing.
He decided he would lose no time living in hotels but would rent a flat. Accordingly he told Carrie, and she agreed.
"We'll look to-day, if you want to," she said.
Suddenly he thought of his experience in Montreal. At the more important hotels he would be certain to meet Chicagoans whom he knew. He stood up and spoke to the driver.
"Take me to the Belford," he said, knowing it to be less frequented by those whom he knew. Then he sat down.
"Where is the residence part?" asked Carrie, who did not take the tall five-story walls on either hand to be the abodes of families.
"Everywhere," said Hurstwood, who knew the city fairly well. "There are no lawns in New York. All these are houses."
"Well, then, I don't like it," said Carrie, who was coming to have a few opinions of her own.
Chapter XXX. THE KINGDOM OF GREATNESS: THE PILGRIM ADREAM
Whatever a man like Hurstwood could be in Chicago, it is very evident that he would be but an inconspicuous drop in an ocean like New York. In Chicago, whose population still ranged about 500,000, millionaires were not numerous. The rich had not become so conspicuously rich as to drown all moderate incomes in obscurity. The attention of the inhabitants was not so distracted by local celebrities in the dramatic, artistic, social, and religious fields as to shut the well-positioned man from view. In Chicago the two roads to distinction were politics and trade. In New York the roads were any one of a half-hundred, and each had been diligently pursued by hundreds, so that celebrities were numerous. The sea was already full of whales. A common fish must needs disappear wholly from view-remain unseen. In other words, Hurstwood was nothing.
There is a more subtle result of such a situation as this, which, though not always taken into account, produces the tragedies of the world. The great create an atmosphere which reacts badly upon the small. This atmosphere is easily and quickly felt. Walk among the magnificent residences, the splendid equipages, the gilded shops, restaurants, resorts of all kinds; scent the flowers, the silks, the wines; drink of the laughter springing from the soul of luxurious content, of the glances which gleam like light from defiant spears; feel the quality of the smiles which cut like glistening swords and of strides born of place, and you shall know of what is the atmosphere of the high and mighty. Little use to argue that of such is not the kingdom of greatness, but so long as the world is attracted by this and the human heart views this as the one desirable realm which it must attain, so long, to that heart, will this remain the realm of greatness. So long, also, will the atmosphere of this realm work its desperate results in the soul of man. It is like a chemical reagent. One day of it, like one drop of the other, will so affect and discolour the views, the aims, the desire of the mind, that it will thereafter remain forever dyed. A day of it to the untried mind is like opium to the untried body. A craving is set up which, if gratified, shall eternally result in dreams and death. Aye! dreams unfulfilled-gnawing, luring, idle phantoms which beckon and lead, beckon and lead, until death and dissolution dissolve their power and restore us blind to nature's heart.
A man of Hurstwood's age and temperament is not subject to the illusions and burning desires of youth, but neither has he the strength of hope which gushes as a fountain in the heart of youth. Such an atmosphere could not incite in him the cravings of a boy of eighteen, but in so far as they were excited, the lack of hope made them proportionately bitter. He could not fail to notice the signs of affluence and luxury on every hand. He had been to New York before and knew the resources of its folly. In part it was an awesome place to him, for here gathered all that he most respected on this earth-wealth, place, and fame. The majority of the celebrities with whom he had tipped glasses in his day as manager hailed from this self-centred and populous spot. The most inviting stories of pleasure and luxury had been told of places and individuals here. He knew it to be true that unconsciously he was brushing elbows with fortune the livelong day; that a hundred or five hundred thousand gave no one the privilege of living more than comfortably in so wealthy a place. Fashion and pomp required more ample sums, so that the poor man was nowhere. All this he realised, now quite sharply, as he faced the city, cut off from his friends, despoiled of his modest fortune, and even his name, and forced to begin the battle for place and comfort all over again. He was not old, but he was not so dull but that he could feel he soon would be. Of a sudden, then, this show of fine clothes, place, and power took on peculiar significance. It was emphasised by contrast with his own distressing state.
And it was distressing. He soon found that freedom from fear of arrest was not the sine qua non of his existence. That danger dissolved, the next necessity became the grievous thing. The paltry sum of thirteen hundred and some odd dollars set against the need of rent, clothing, food, and pleasure for years to come was a spectacle little calculated to induce peace of mind in one who had been accustomed to spend five times that sum in the course of a year. He thought upon the subject rather actively the first few days he was in New York, and decided that he must act quickly. As a consequence, he consulted the business opportunities advertised in the morning papers and began investigations on his own account.
That was not before he had become settled, however. Carrie and he went looking for a flat, as arranged, and found one in Seventy-eighth Street near Amsterdam Avenue. It was a five-story building, and their flat was on the third floor. Owing to the fact that the street was not yet built up solidly, it was possible to see east to the green tops of the trees in Central Park and west to the broad waters of the Hudson, a glimpse of which was to be had out of the west windows. For the privilege of six rooms and a bath, running in a straight line, they were compelled to pay thirty-five dollars a month-an average, and yet exorbitant, rent for a home at the time. Carrie noticed the difference between the size of the rooms here and in Chicago and mentioned it.
"You'll not find anything better, dear," said Hurstwood, "unless you go into one of the old-fashioned houses, and then you won't have any of these conveniences."
Carrie picked out the new abode because of its newness and bright wood-work. It was one of the very new ones supplied with steam heat, which was a great advantage. The stationary range, hot and cold water, dumb-waiter, speaking tubes, and call-bell for the janitor pleased her very much. She had enough of the instincts of a housewife to take great satisfaction in these things.
Hurstwood made arrangements with one of the instalment houses whereby they furnished the flat complete and accepted fifty dollars down and ten dollars a month. He then had a little plate, bearing the name G. W. Wheeler, made, which he placed on his letter-box in the hall. It sounded exceedingly odd to Carrie to be called Mrs. Wheeler by the janitor, but in time she became used to it and looked upon the name as her own.
These house details settled, Hurstwood visited some of the advertised opportunities to purchase an interest in some flourishing down-town bar. After the palatial resort in Adams Street, he could not stomach the commonplace saloons which he found advertised. He lost a number of days looking up these and finding them disagreeable. He did, however, gain considerable knowledge by talking, for he discovered the influence of Tammany Hall and the value of standing in with the police. The most profitable and flourishing places he found to be those which conducted anything but a legitimate business, such as that controlled by Fitzgerald and Moy. Elegant back rooms and private drinking booths on the second floor were usually adjuncts of very profitable places. He saw by portly keepers, whose shirt fronts shone with large diamonds, and whose clothes were properly cut, that the liquor business here, as elsewhere, yielded the same golden profit. At last he found an individual who had a resort in Warren Street, which seemed an excellent venture. It was fairly well-appearing and susceptible of improvement. The owner claimed the business to be excellent, and it certainly looked so.
"We deal with a very good class of people," he told Hurstwood. "Merchants, salesmen, and professionals. It's a well-dressed class. No bums. We don't allow 'em in the place."
Hurstwood listened to the cash-register ring, and watched the trade for a while.
"It's profitable enough for two, is it?" he asked.
"You can see for yourself if you're any judge of the liquor trade," said the owner. "This is only one of the two places I have. The other is down in Nassau Street. I can't tend to them both alone. If I had some one who knew the business thoroughly I wouldn't mind sharing with him in this one and letting him manage it."
"I've had experience enough," said Hurstwood blandly, but he felt a little diffident about referring to Fitzgerald and Moy.
"Well, you can suit yourself, Mr. Wheeler," said the proprietor.
He only offered a third interest in the stock, fixtures, and good-will, and this in return for a thousand dollars and managerial ability on the part of the one who should come in. There was no property involved, because the owner of the saloon merely rented from an estate.
The offer was genuine enough, but it was a question with Hurstwood whether a third interest in that locality could be made to yield one hundred and fifty dollars a month, which he figured he must have in order to meet the ordinary family expenses and be comfortable. It was not the time, however, after many failures to find what he wanted, to hesitate. It looked as though a third would pay a hundred a month now. By judicious management and improvement, it might be made to pay more. Accordingly he agreed to enter into partnership, and made over his thousand dollars, preparing to enter the next day.
His first inclination was to be elated, and he confided to Carrie that he thought he had made an excellent arrangement. Time, however, introduced food for reflection. He found his partner to be very disagreeable. Frequently he was the worse for liquor, which made him surly. This was the last thing which Hurstwood was used to in business. Besides, the business varied. It was nothing like the class of patronage which he had enjoyed in Chicago. He found that it would take a long time to make friends. These people hurried in and out without seeking the pleasures of friendship. It was no gathering or lounging place. Whole days and weeks passed without one such hearty greeting as he had been wont to enjoy every day in Chicago.
For another thing, Hurstwood missed the celebrities-those well-dressed, élite individuals who lend grace to the average bars and bring news from far-off and exclusive circles. He did not see one such in a month. Evenings, when still at his post, he would occasionally read in the evening papers incidents concerning celebrities whom he knew-whom he had drunk a glass with many a time. They would visit a bar like Fitzgerald and Moy's in Chicago, or the Hoffman House, uptown, but he knew that he would never see them down here. Again, the business did not pay as well as he thought. It increased a little, but he found he would have to watch his household expenses, which was humiliating.
In the very beginning it was a delight to go home late at night, as he did, and find Carrie. He managed to run up and take dinner with her between six and seven, and to remain home until nine o'clock in the morning, but the novelty of this waned after a time, and he began to feel the drag of his duties.
The first month had scarcely passed before Carrie said in a very natural way: "I think I'll go down this week and buy a dress.'
"What kind?" said Hurstwood.
"Oh, something for street wear."
"All right," he answered, smiling, although he noted mentally that it would be more agreeable to his finances if she didn't. Nothing was said about it the next day, but the following morning he asked:
"Have you done anything about your dress?"
"Not yet," said Carrie.
He paused a few moments, as if in thought, and then said:
"Would you mind putting it off a few days?"
"No," replied Carrie, who did not catch the drift of his remarks. She had never thought of him in connection with money troubles before. "Why?"
"Well, I'll tell you," said Hurstwood. "This investment of mine is taking a lot of money just now. I expect to get it all back shortly, but just at present I am running close."
"Oh!" answered Carrie. "Why, certainly, dear. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"It wasn't necessary," said Hurstwood.
For all her acquiescence, there was something about the way Hurstwood spoke which reminded Carrie of Drouet and his little deal which he was always about to put through. It was only the thought of a second, but it was a beginning. It was something new in her thinking of Hurstwood.
Other things followed from time to time, little things of the same sort, which in their cumulative effect were eventually equal to a full revelation. Carrie was not dull by any means. Two persons cannot long dwell together without coming to an understanding of one another. The mental difficulties of an individual reveal themselves whether he voluntarily confesses them or not. Trouble gets in the air and contributes gloom, which speaks for itself. Hurstwood dressed as nicely as usual, but they were the same clothes he had in Canada. Carrie noticed that he did not install a large wardrobe, though his own was anything but large. She noticed, also, that he did not suggest many amusements, said nothing about the food, seemed concerned about his business. This was not the easy Hurstwood of Chicago-not the liberal, opulent Hurstwood she had known. The change was too obvious to escape detection.
In time she began to feel that a change had come about, and that she was not in his confidence. He was evidently secretive and kept his own counsel. She found herself asking him questions about little things. This is a disagreeable state to a woman. Great love makes it seem reasonable, sometimes plausible, but never satisfactory. Where great love is not, a more definite and less satisfactory conclusion is reached.
As for Hurstwood, he was making a great fight against the difficulties of a changed condition. He was too shrewd not to realise the tremendous mistake he had made, and appreciate that he had done well in getting where he was, and yet he could not help contrasting his present state with his former, hour after hour, and day after day.
Besides, he had the disagreeable fear of meeting old-time friends, ever since one such encounter which he made shortly after his arrival in the city. It was in Broadway that he saw a man approaching him whom he knew. There was no time for simulating non-recognition. The exchange of glances had been too sharp, the knowledge of each other too apparent. So the friend, a buyer for one of the Chicago wholesale houses, felt, perforce, the necessity of stopping.
"How are you?" he said, extending his hand with an evident mixture of feeling and a lack of plausible interest.
"Very well," said Hurstwood, equally embarrassed. "How is it with you?"
"All right; I'm down here doing a little buying. Are you located here now?"
"Yes," said Hurstwood, "I have a place down in Warren Street."
"Is that so?" said the friend. "Glad to hear it. I'll come down and see you."
"Do," said Hurstwood.
"So long," said the other, smiling affably and going on.
"He never asked for my number," thought Hurstwood; "he wouldn't think of coming." He wiped his forehead, which had grown damp, and hoped sincerely he would meet no one else.
These things told upon his good-nature, such as it was. His one hope was that things would change for the better in a money way.
He had Carrie. His furniture was being paid for. He was maintaining his position. As for Carrie, the amusements he could give her would have to do for the present. He could probably keep up his pretensions sufficiently long without exposure to make good, and then all would be well. He failed therein to take account of the frailties of human nature-the difficulties of matrimonial life. Carrie was young. With him and with her varying mental states were common. At any moment the extremes of feeling might be anti-polarised at the dinner table. This often happens in the best regulated families. Little things brought out on such occasions need great love to obliterate them afterward. Where that is not, both parties count two and two and make a problem after a while.
Chapter XXXI. A PET OF GOOD FORTUNE: BROADWAY FLAUNTS ITS JOYS
The effect of the city and his own situation on Hurstwood was paralleled in the case of Carrie, who accepted the things which fortune provided with the most genial good-nature. New York, despite her first expression of disapproval, soon interested her exceedingly. Its clear atmosphere, more populous thoroughfares, and peculiar indifference struck her forcibly. She had never seen such a little flat as hers, and yet it soon enlisted her affection. The new furniture made an excellent showing, the sideboard which Hurstwood himself arranged gleamed brightly. The furniture for each room was appropriate, and in the so-called parlour, or front room, was installed a piano, because Carrie said she would like to learn to play. She kept a servant and developed rapidly in household tactics and information. For the first time in her life she felt settled, and somewhat justified in the eyes of society as she conceived of it. Her thoughts were merry and innocent enough. For a long while she concerned herself over the arrangement of New York flats, and wondered at ten families living in one building and all remaining strange and indifferent to each other. She also marvelled at the whistles of the hundreds of vessels in the harbour-the long, low cries of the Sound steamers and ferry-boats when fog was on. The mere fact that these things spoke from the sea made them wonderful. She looked much at what she could see of the Hudson from her west windows and of the great city building up rapidly on either hand. It was much to ponder over, and sufficed to entertain her for more than a year without becoming stale.
For another thing, Hurstwood was exceedingly interesting in his affection for her. Troubled as he was, he never exposed his difficulties to her. He carried himself with the same self-important air, took his new state with easy familiarity, and rejoiced in Carrie's proclivities and successes. Each evening he arrived promptly to dinner, and found the little dining-room a most inviting spectacle. In a way, the smallness of the room added to its luxury. It looked full and replete. The white-covered table was arrayed with pretty dishes and lighted with a four-armed candelabra, each light of which was topped with a red shade. Between Carrie and the girl the steaks and chops came out all right, and canned goods did the rest for a while. Carrie studied the art of making biscuit, and soon reached the stage where she could show a plate of light, palatable morsels for her labour.
In this manner the second, third, and fourth months passed. Winter came, and with it a feeling that indoors was best, so that the attending of theatres was not much talked of. Hurstwood made great efforts to meet all expenditures without a show of feeling one way or the other. He pretended that he was reinvesting his money in strengthening the business for greater ends in the future. He contented himself with a very moderate allowance of personal apparel, and rarely suggested anything for Carrie. Thus the first winter passed.
In the second year, the business which Hurstwood managed did increase somewhat. He got out of it regularly the $150 per month which he had anticipated. Unfortunately, by this time Carrie had reached certain conclusions, and he had scraped up a few acquaintances.
Being of a passive and receptive rather than an active and aggressive nature, Carrie accepted the situation. Her state seemed satisfactory enough. Once in a while they would go to a theatre together, occasionally in season to the beaches and different points about the city, but they picked up no acquaintances. Hurstwood naturally abandoned his show of fine manners with her and modified his attitude to one of easy familiarity. There were no misunderstandings, no apparent differences of opinion. In fact, without money or visiting friends, he led a life which could neither arouse jealousy nor comment. Carrie rather sympathised with his efforts and thought nothing upon her lack of entertainment such as she had enjoyed in Chicago. New York as a corporate entity and her flat temporarily seemed sufficient.
However, as Hurstwood's business increased, he, as stated, began to pick up acquaintances. He also began to allow himself more clothes. He convinced himself that his home life was very precious to him, but allowed that he could occasionally stay away from dinner. The first time he did this he sent a message saying that he would be detained. Carrie ate alone, and wished that it might not happen again. The second time, also, he sent word, but at the last moment. The third time he forgot entirely and explained afterwards. These events were months apart, each.
"Where were you, George?" asked Carrie, after the first absence.
"Tied up at the office," he said genially. "There were some accounts I had to straighten."
"I'm sorry you couldn't get home," she said kindly. "I was fixing to have such a nice dinner."
The second time he gave a similar excuse, but the third time the feeling about it in Carrie's mind was a little bit out of the ordinary.
"I couldn't get home," he said, when he came in later in the evening, "I was so busy."
"Couldn't you have sent me word?" asked Carrie.
"I meant to," he said, "but you know I forgot it until it was too late to do any good."
"And I had such a good dinner!" said Carrie.
Now, it so happened that from his observations of Carrie he began to imagine that she was of the thoroughly domestic type of mind. He really thought, after a year, that her chief expression in life was finding its natural channel in household duties. Notwithstanding the fact that he had observed her act in Chicago, and that during the past year he had only seen her limited in her relations to her flat and him by conditions which he made, and that she had not gained any friends or associates, he drew this peculiar conclusion. With it came a feeling of satisfaction in having a wife who could thus be content, and this satisfaction worked its natural result. That is, since he imagined he saw her satisfied, he felt called upon to give only that which contributed to such satisfaction. He supplied the furniture, the decorations, the food, and the necessary clothing. Thoughts of entertaining her, leading her out into the shine and show of life, grew less and less. He felt attracted to the outer world, but did not think she would care to go along. Once he went to the theatre alone. Another time he joined a couple of his new friends at an evening game of poker. Since his money-feathers were beginning to grow again he felt like sprucing about. All this, however, in a much less imposing way than had been his wont in Chicago. He avoided the gay places where he would be apt to meet those who had known him. Now, Carrie began to feel this in various sensory ways. She was not the kind to be seriously disturbed by his actions. Not loving him greatly, she could not be jealous in a disturbing way. In fact, she was not jealous at all. Hurstwood was pleased with her placid manner, when he should have duly considered it. When he did not come home it did not seem anything like a terrible thing to her. She gave him credit for having the usual allurements of men-people to talk to, places to stop, friends to consult with. She was perfectly willing that he should enjoy himself in his way, but she did not care to be neglected herself. Her state still seemed fairly reasonable, however. All she did observe was that Hurstwood was somewhat different.
Some time in the second year of their residence in Seventy-eighth Street the flat across the hall from Carrie became vacant, and into it moved a very handsome young woman and her husband, with both of whom Carrie afterwards became acquainted. This was brought about solely by the arrangement of the flats, which were united in one place, as it were, by the dumb-waiter. This useful elevator, by which fuel, groceries, and the like were sent up from the basement, and garbage and waste sent down, was used by both residents of one floor; that is, a small door opened into it from each flat.
If the occupants of both flats answered to the whistle of the janitor at the same time, they would stand face to face when they opened the dumb-waiter doors. One morning, when Carrie went to remove her paper, the newcomer, a handsome brunette of perhaps twenty-three years of age, was there for a like purpose. She was in a night-robe and dressing-gown, with her hair very much tousled, but she looked so pretty and good-natured that Carrie instantly conceived a liking for her. The newcomer did no more than smile shamefacedly, but it was sufficient. Carrie felt that she would like to know her, and a similar feeling stirred in the mind of the other, who admired Carrie's innocent face.
"That's a real pretty woman who has moved in next door," said Carrie to Hurstwood at the breakfast table.
"Who are they?" asked Hurstwood.
"I don't know," said Carrie. "The name on the bell is Vance. Some one over there plays beautifully. I guess it must be she."
"Well, you never can tell what sort of people you're living next to in this town, can you?" said Hurstwood, expressing the customary New York opinion about neighbours.
"Just think," said Carrie, "I have been in this house with nine other families for over a year and I don't know a soul. These people have been here over a month and I haven't seen any one before this morning."
"It's just as well," said Hurstwood. "You never know who you're going to get in with. Some of these people are pretty bad company."
"I expect so," said Carrie, agreeably.
The conversation turned to other things, and Carrie thought no more upon the subject until a day or two later, when, going out to market, she encountered Mrs. Vance coming in. The latter recognised her and nodded, for which Carrie returned a smile. This settled the probability of acquaintanceship. If there had been no faint recognition on this occasion, there would have been no future association.
Carrie saw no more of Mrs. Vance for several weeks, but she heard her play through the thin walls which divided the front rooms of the flats, and was pleased by the merry selection of pieces and the brilliance of their rendition. She could play only moderately herself, and such variety as Mrs. Vance exercised bordered, for Carrie, upon the verge of great art. Everything she had seen and heard thus far-the merest scraps and shadows-indicated that these people were, in a measure, refined and in comfortable circumstances. So Carrie was ready for any extension of the friendship which might follow.
One day Carrie's bell rang and the servant, who was in the kitchen, pressed the button which caused the front door of the general entrance on the ground floor to be electrically unlatched. When Carrie waited at her own door on the third floor to see who it might be coming up to call on her, Mrs. Vance appeared.
"I hope you'll excuse me," she said. "I went out a while ago and forgot my outside key, so I thought I'd ring your bell."
This was a common trick of other residents of the building, whenever they had forgotten their outside keys. They did not apologise for it, however.
"Certainly," said Carrie. "I'm glad you did. I do the same thing sometimes."
"Isn't it just delightful weather?" said Mrs. Vance, pausing for a moment.
Thus, after a few more preliminaries, this visiting acquaintance was well launched, and in the young Mrs. Vance Carrie found an agreeable companion.
On several occasions Carrie visited her and was visited. Both flats were good to look upon, though that of the Vances tended somewhat more to the luxurious.
"I want you to come over this evening and meet my husband," said Mrs. Vance, not long after their intimacy began. "He wants to meet you. You play cards, don't you?"
"A little," said Carrie.
"Well, we'll have a game of cards. If your husband comes home bring him over."
"He's not coming to dinner to-night," said Carrie.
"Well, when he does come we'll call him in."
Carrie acquiesced, and that evening met the portly Vance, an individual a few years younger than Hurstwood, and who owed his seemingly comfortable matrimonial state much more to his money than to his good looks. He thought well of Carrie upon the first glance and laid himself out to be genial, teaching her a new game of cards and talking to her about New York and its pleasures. Mrs. Vance played some upon the piano, and at last Hurstwood came.
"I am very glad to meet you," he said to Mrs. Vance when Carrie introduced him, showing much of the old grace which had captivated Carrie.
"Did you think your wife had run away?" said Mr. Vance, extending his hand upon introduction.
"I didn't know but what she might have found a better husband," said Hurstwood.
He now turned his attention to Mrs. Vance, and in a flash Carrie saw again what she for some time had subconsciously missed in Hurstwood-the adroitness and flattery of which he was capable. She also saw that she was not well dressed-not nearly as well dressed-as Mrs. Vance. These were not vague ideas any longer. Her situation was cleared up for her. She felt that her life was becoming stale, and therein she felt cause for gloom. The old helpful, urging melancholy was restored. The desirous Carrie was whispered to concerning her possibilities.
There were no immediate results to this awakening, for Carrie had little power of initiative; but, nevertheless, she seemed ever capable of getting herself into the tide of change where she would be easily borne along. Hurstwood noticed nothing. He had been unconscious of the marked contrasts which Carrie had observed.
He did not even detect the shade of melancholy which settled in her eyes. Worst of all, she now began to feel the loneliness of the flat and seek the company of Mrs. Vance, who liked her exceedingly.
"Let's go to the matinée this afternoon," said Mrs. Vance, who had stepped across into Carrie's flat one morning, still arrayed in a soft pink dressing-gown, which she had donned upon rising. Hurstwood and Vance had gone their separate ways nearly an hour before.
"All right," said Carrie, noticing the air of the petted and well-groomed woman in Mrs. Vance's general appearance. She looked as though she was dearly loved and her every wish gratified. "What shall we see?"
"Oh, I do want to see Nat Goodwin," said Mrs. Vance. "I do think he is the jolliest actor. The papers say this is such a good play."
"What time will we have to start?" asked Carrie.
"Let's go at once and walk down Broadway from Thirty-fourth Street," said Mrs. Vance. "It's such an interesting walk. He's at the Madison Square."
"I'll be glad to go," said Carrie. "How much will we have to pay for seats?"
"Not more than a dollar," said Mrs. Vance.
The latter departed, and at one o'clock reappeared, stunningly arrayed in a dark-blue walking dress, with a nobby hat to match. Carrie had gotten herself up charmingly enough, but this woman pained her by contrast. She seemed to have so many dainty little things which Carrie had not. There were trinkets of gold, an elegant green leather purse set with her initials, a fancy handkerchief, exceedingly rich in design, and the like. Carrie felt that she needed more and better clothes to compare with this woman, and that any one looking at the two would pick Mrs. Vance for her raiment alone. It was a trying, though rather unjust thought, for Carrie had now developed an equally pleasing figure, and had grown in comeliness until she was a thoroughly attractive type of her colour of beauty. There was some difference in the clothing of the two, both of quality and age, but this difference was not especially noticeable. It served, however, to augment Carrie's dissatisfaction with her state.
The walk down Broadway, then as now, was one of the remarkable features of the city. There gathered, before the matinée and afterwards, not only all the pretty women who love a showy parade, but the men who love to gaze upon and admire them. It was a very imposing procession of pretty faces and fine clothes. Women appeared in their very best hats, shoes, and gloves, and walked arm in arm on their way to the fine shops or theatres strung along from Fourteenth to Thirty-fourth Streets. Equally the men paraded with the very latest they could afford. A tailor might have secured hints on suit measurements, a shoemaker on proper lasts and colours, a hatter on hats. It was literally true that if a lover of fine clothes secured a new suit, it was sure to have its first airing on Broadway. So true and well understood was this fact, that several years later a popular song, detailing this and other facts concerning the afternoon parade on matinée days, and entitled "What Right Has He on Broadway?" was published, and had quite a vogue about the music-halls of the city.
In all her stay in the city, Carrie had never heard of this showy parade; had never even been on Broadway when it was taking place. On the other hand, it was a familiar thing to Mrs. Vance, who not only knew of it as an entity, but had often been in it, going purposely to see and be seen, to create a stir with her beauty and dispel any tendency to fall short in dressiness by contrasting herself with the beauty and fashion of the town.
Carrie stepped along easily enough after they got out of the car at Thirty-fourth Street, but soon fixed her eyes upon the lovely company which swarmed by and with them as they proceeded. She noticed suddenly that Mrs. Vance's manner had rather stiffened under the gaze of handsome men and elegantly dressed ladies, whose glances were not modified by any rules of propriety. To stare seemed the proper and natural thing. Carrie found herself stared at and ogled. Men in flawless top-coats, high hats, and silver-headed walking sticks elbowed near and looked too often into conscious eyes. Ladies rustled by in dresses of stiff cloth, shedding affected smiles and perfume. Carrie noticed among them the sprinkling of goodness and the heavy percentage of vice. The rouged and powdered cheeks and lips, the scented hair, the large, misty, and languorous eye, were common enough. With a start she awoke to find that she was in fashion's crowd, on parade in a show place-and such a show place! Jewellers' windows gleamed along the path with remarkable frequency. Florist shops, furriers, haberdashers, confectioners-all followed in rapid succession. The street was full of coaches. Pompous doormen in immense coats, shiny brass belts and buttons, waited in front of expensive salesrooms. Coachmen in tan boots, white tights, and blue jackets waited obsequiously for the mistresses of carriages who were shopping inside. The whole street bore the flavour of riches and show, and Carrie felt that she was not of it. She could not, for the life of her, assume the attitude and smartness of Mrs. Vance, who, in her beauty, was all assurance. She could only imagine that it must be evident to many that she was the less handsomely dressed of the two. It cut her to the quick, and she resolved that she would not come here again until she looked better. At the same time she longed to feel the delight of parading here as an equal. Ah, then she would be happy!
Chapter XXXII. THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR: A SEER TO TRANSLATE
Such feelings as were generated in Carrie by this walk put her in an exceedingly receptive mood for the pathos which followed in the play. The actor whom they had gone to see had achieved his popularity by presenting a mellow type of comedy, in which sufficient sorrow was introduced to lend contrast and relief to humour. For Carrie, as we well know, the stage had a great attraction. She had never forgotten her one histrionic achievement in Chicago. It dwelt in her mind and occupied her consciousness during many long afternoons in which her rocking-chair and her latest novel contributed the only pleasures of her state. Never could she witness a play without having her own ability vividly brought to consciousness. Some scenes made her long to be a part of them-to give expression to the feelings which she, in the place of the character represented, would feel. Almost invariably she would carry the vivid imaginations away with her and brood over them the next day alone. She lived as much in these things as in the realities which made up her daily life.
It was not often that she came to the play stirred to her heart's core by actualities. To-day a low song of longing had been set singing in her heart by the finery, the merriment, the beauty she had seen. Oh, these women who had passed her by, hundreds and hundreds strong, who were they? Whence came the rich, elegant dresses, the astonishingly coloured buttons, the knick-knacks of silver and gold? Where were these lovely creatures housed? Amid what elegancies of carved furniture, decorated walls, elaborate tapestries did they move? Where were their rich apartments, loaded with all that money could provide? In what stables champed these sleek, nervous horses and rested the gorgeous carriages? Where lounged the richly groomed footmen? Oh, the mansions, the lights, the perfume, the loaded boudoirs and tables! New York must be filled with such bowers, or the beautiful, insolent, supercilious creatures could not be. Some hothouses held them. It ached her to know that she was not one of them-that, alas, she had dreamed a dream and it had not come true. She wondered at her own solitude these two years past-her indifference to the fact that she had never achieved what she had expected.
The play was one of those drawing-room concoctions in which charmingly overdressed ladies and gentlemen suffer the pangs of love and jealousy amid gilded surroundings. Such bon-mots are ever enticing to those who have all their days longed for such material surroundings and have never had them gratified. They have the charm of showing suffering under ideal conditions. Who would not grieve upon a gilded chair? Who would not suffer amid perfumed tapestries, cushioned furniture, and liveried servants? Grief under such circumstances becomes an enticing thing. Carrie longed to be of it. She wanted to take her sufferings, whatever they were, in such a world, or failing that, at least to simulate them under such charming conditions upon the stage. So affected was her mind by what she had seen, that the play now seemed an extraordinarily beautiful thing. She was soon lost in the world it represented, and wished that she might never return. Between the acts she studied the galaxy of matinée attendants in front rows and boxes, and conceived a new idea of the possibilities of New York. She was sure she had not seen it all-that the city was one whirl of pleasure and delight.
Going out, the same Broadway taught her a sharper lesson. The scene she had witnessed coming down was now augmented and at its height. Such a crush of finery and folly she had never seen. It clinched her convictions concerning her state. She had not lived, could not lay claim to having lived, until something of this had come into her own life. Women were spending money like water; she could see that in every elegant shop she passed. Flowers, candy, jewelry, seemed the principal things in which the elegant dames were interested. And she-she had scarcely enough pin money to indulge in such outings as this a few times a month.
That night the pretty little flat seemed a commonplace thing. It was not what the rest of the world was enjoying. She saw the servant working at dinner with an indifferent eye. In her mind were running scenes of the play. Particularly she remembered one beautiful actress-the sweetheart who had been wooed and won. The grace of this woman had won Carrie's heart. Her dresses had been all that art could suggest, her sufferings had been so real. The anguish which she had portrayed Carrie could feel. It was done as she was sure she could do it. There were places in which she could even do better. Hence she repeated the lines to herself. Oh, if she could only have such a part, how broad would be her life! She, too, could act appealingly.
When Hurstwood came, Carrie was moody. She was sitting, rocking and thinking, and did not care to have her enticing imaginations broken in upon; so she said little or nothing.
"What's the matter, Carrie?" said Hurstwood after a time, noticing her quiet, almost moody state.
"Nothing," said Carrie. "I don't feel very well to-night."
"Not sick, are you?" he asked, approaching very close.
"Oh, no," she said, almost pettishly, "I just don't feel very good."
"That's too bad," he said, stepping away and adjusting his vest after his slight bending over. "I was thinking we might go to a show to-night."
"I don't want to go," said Carrie, annoyed that her fine visions should have thus been broken into and driven out of her mind. "I've been to the matinée this afternoon."
"Oh, you have?" said Hurstwood. "What was it?"
"A Gold Mine."
"How was it?"
"Pretty good," said Carrie.
"And you don't want to go again to-night?"
"I don't think I do," she said.
Nevertheless, wakened out of her melancholia and called to the dinner table, she changed her mind. A little food in the stomach does wonders. She went again, and in so doing temporarily recovered her equanimity. The great awakening blow had, however, been delivered. As often as she might recover from these discontented thoughts now, they would occur again. Time and repetition-ah, the wonder of it! The dropping water and the solid stone-how utterly it yields at last!
Not long after this matinée experience-perhaps a month-Mrs. Vance invited Carrie to an evening at the theatre with them. She heard Carrie say that Hurstwood was not coming home to dinner.
"Why don't you come with us? Don't get dinner for yourself. We're going down to Sherry's for dinner and then over to the Lyceum. Come along with us."
"I think I will," answered Carrie.
She began to dress at three o'clock for her departure at half-past five for the noted dining-room which was then crowding Delmonico's for position in society. In this dressing Carrie showed the influence of her association with the dashing Mrs. Vance. She had constantly had her attention called by the latter to novelties in everything which pertains to a woman's apparel.
"Are you going to get such and such a hat?" or, "Have you seen the new gloves with the oval pearl buttons?" were but sample phrases out of a large selection.
"The next time you get a pair of shoes, dearie," said Mrs. Vance, "get button, with thick soles and patent-leather tips. They're all the rage this fall."
"I will," said Carrie.
"Oh, dear, have you seen the new shirtwaists at Altman's? They have some of the loveliest patterns. I saw one there that I know would look stunning on you. I said so when I saw it."
Carrie listened to these things with considerable interest, for they were suggested with more of friendliness than is usually common between pretty women. Mrs. Vance liked Carrie's stable good-nature so well that she really took pleasure in suggesting to her the latest things.
"Why don't you get yourself one of those nice serge skirts they're selling at Lord & Taylor's?" she said one day. "They're the circular style, and they're going to be worn from now on. A dark blue one would look so nice on you."
Carrie listened with eager ears. These things never came up between her and Hurstwood. Nevertheless, she began to suggest one thing and another, which Hurstwood agreed to without any expression of opinion. He noticed the new tendency on Carrie's part, and finally, hearing much of Mrs. Vance and her delightful ways, suspected whence the change came. He was not inclined to offer the slightest objection so soon, but he felt that Carrie's wants were expanding. This did not appeal to him exactly, but he cared for her in his own way, and so the thing stood. Still, there was something in the details of the transactions which caused Carrie to feel that her requests were not a delight to him. He did not enthuse over the purchases. This led her to believe that neglect was creeping in, and so another small wedge was entered.
Nevertheless, one of the results of Mrs. Vance's suggestions was the fact that on this occasion Carrie was dressed somewhat to her own satisfaction. She had on her best, but there was comfort in the thought that if she must confine herself to a best, it was neat and fitting. She looked the well-groomed woman of twenty-one, and Mrs. Vance praised her, which brought colour to her plump cheeks and a noticeable brightness into her large eyes. It was threatening rain, and Mr. Vance, at his wife's request, had called a coach.
"Your husband isn't coming?" suggested Mr. Vance, as he met Carrie in his little parlour.
"No; he said he wouldn't be home for dinner."
"Better leave a little note for him, telling him where we are. He might turn up."
"I will," said Carrie, who had not thought of it before.
"Tell him we'll be at Sherry's until eight o'clock. He knows, though I guess."
Carrie crossed the hall with rustling skirts, and scrawled the note, gloves on. When she returned a newcomer was in the Vance flat.
"Mrs. Wheeler, let me introduce Mr. Ames, a cousin of mine," said Mrs. Vance. "He's going along with us, aren't you, Bob?"
"I'm very glad to meet you," said Ames, bowing politely to Carrie.
The latter caught in a glance the dimensions of a very stalwart figure. She also noticed that he was smooth-shaven, good looking, and young, but nothing more.
"Mr. Ames is just down in New York for a few days," put in Vance, "and we're trying to show him around a little."
"Oh, are you?" said Carrie, taking another glance at the newcomer.
"Yes; I am just on here from Indianapolis for a week or so," said young Ames, seating himself on the edge of a chair to wait while Mrs. Vance completed the last touches of her toilet.
"I guess you find New York quite a thing to see, don't you?" said Carrie, venturing something to avoid a possible deadly silence.
"It is rather large to get around in a week," answered Ames, pleasantly.
He was an exceedingly genial soul, this young man, and wholly free of affectation. It seemed to Carrie he was as yet only overcoming the last traces of the bashfulness of youth. He did not seem apt at conversation, but he had the merit of being well dressed and wholly courageous. Carrie felt as if it were not going to be hard to talk to him.
"Well, I guess we're ready now. The coach is outside."
"Come on, people," said Mrs. Vance, coming in smiling. "Bob, you'll have to look after Mrs. Wheeler."
"I'll try to," said Bob smiling, and edging closer to Carrie. "You won't need much watching, will you?" he volunteered, in a sort of ingratiating and help-me-out kind of way.
"Not very, I hope," said Carrie.
They descended the stairs, Mrs. Vance offering suggestions, and climbed into the open coach.
"All right," said Vance, slamming the coach door, and the conveyance rolled away.
"What is it we're going to see?" asked Ames.
"Sothern," said Vance, "in 'Lord Chumley.'"
"Oh, he is so good!" said Mrs. Vance. "He's just the funniest man."
"I notice the papers praise it," said Ames.
"I haven't any doubt," put in Vance, "but we'll all enjoy it very much."
Ames had taken a seat beside Carrie, and accordingly he felt it his bounden duty to pay her some attention. He was interested to find her so young a wife, and so pretty, though it was only a respectful interest. There was nothing of the dashing lady's man about him. He had respect for the married state, and thought only of some pretty marriageable girls in Indianapolis.
"Are you a born New Yorker?" asked Ames of Carrie.
"Oh, no; I've only been here for two years."
"Oh, well, you've had time to see a great deal of it, anyhow."
"I don't seem to have," answered Carrie. "It's about as strange to me as when I first came here."
"You're not from the West, are you?"
"Yes. I'm from Wisconsin," she answered.
"Well, it does seem as if most people in this town haven't been here so very long. I hear of lots of Indiana people in my line who are here."
"What is your line?" asked Carrie.
"I'm connected with an electrical company," said the youth.
Carrie followed up this desultory conversation with occasional interruptions from the Vances. Several times it became general and partially humorous, and in that manner the restaurant was reached.
Carrie had noticed the appearance of gayety and pleasure-seeking in the streets which they were following. Coaches were numerous, pedestrians many, and in Fifty-ninth Street the street cars were crowded. At Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue a blaze of lights from several new hotels which bordered the Plaza Square gave a suggestion of sumptuous hotel life. Fifth Avenue, the home of the wealthy, was noticeably crowded with carriages, and gentlemen in evening dress. At Sherry's an imposing doorman opened the coach door and helped them out. Young Ames held Carrie's elbow as he helped her up the steps. They entered the lobby already swarming with patrons, and then, after divesting themselves of their wraps, went into a sumptuous dining-room.
In all Carrie's experience she had never seen anything like this. In the whole time she had been in New York Hurstwood's modified state had not permitted his bringing her to such a place. There was an almost indescribable atmosphere about it which convinced the newcomer that this was the proper thing. Here was the place where the matter of expense limited the patrons to the moneyed or pleasure-loving class. Carrie had read of it often in the "Morning" and "Evening World." She had seen notices of dances, parties, balls, and suppers at Sherry's. The Misses So-and-so would give a party on Wednesday evening at Sherry's. Young Mr. So-and-so would entertain a party of friends at a private luncheon on the sixteenth, at Sherry's. The common run of conventional, perfunctory notices of the doings of society, which she could scarcely refrain from scanning each day, had given her a distinct idea of the gorgeousness and luxury of this wonderful temple of gastronomy. Now, at last, she was really in it. She had come up the imposing steps, guarded by the large and portly doorman. She had seen the lobby, guarded by another large and portly gentleman, and been waited upon by uniformed youths who took care of canes, overcoats, and the like. Here was the splendid dining-chamber, all decorated and aglow, where the wealthy ate. Ah, how fortunate was Mrs. Vance; young, beautiful, and well off-at least, sufficiently so to come here in a coach. What a wonderful thing it was to be rich.
Vance led the way through lanes of shining tables, at which were seated parties of two, three, four, five, or six. The air of assurance and dignity about it all was exceedingly noticeable to the novitiate. Incandescent lights, the reflection of their glow in polished glasses, and the shine of gilt upon the walls, combined into one tone of light which it requires minutes of complacent observation to separate and take particular note of. The white shirt fronts of the gentlemen, the bright costumes of the ladies, diamonds, jewels, fine feathers-all were exceedingly noticeable.
Carrie walked with an air equal to that of Mrs. Vance, and accepted the seat which the head waiter provided for her. She was keenly aware of all the little things that were done-the little genuflections and attentions of the waiters and head waiter which Americans pay for. The air with which the latter pulled out each chair, and the wave of the hand with which he motioned them to be seated, were worth several dollars in themselves.
Once seated, there began that exhibition of showy, wasteful, and unwholesome gastronomy as practised by wealthy Americans, which is the wonder and astonishment of true culture and dignity the world over. The large bill of fare held an array of dishes sufficient to feed an army, sidelined with prices which made reasonable expenditure a ridiculous impossibility-an order of soup at fifty cents or a dollar, with a dozen kinds to choose from; oysters in forty styles and at sixty cents the half-dozen; entrées, fish, and meats at prices which would house one over night in an average hotel. One dollar fifty and two dollars seemed to be the most common figures upon this most tastefully printed bill of fare.
Carrie noticed this, and in scanning it the price of spring chicken carried her back to that other bill of fare and far different occasion when, for the first time, she sat with Drouet in a good restaurant in Chicago. It was only momentary-a sad note as out of an old song-and then it was gone. But in that flash was seen the other Carrie-poor, hungry, drifting at her wits' ends, and all Chicago a cold and closed world, from which she only wandered because she could not find work.
On the walls were designs in colour, square spots of robin's-egg blue, set in ornate frames of gilt, whose corners were elaborate mouldings of fruit and flowers, with fat cupids hovering in angelic comfort. On the ceilings were coloured traceries with more gilt, leading to a centre where spread a cluster of lights-incandescent globes mingled with glittering prisms and stucco tendrils of gilt. The floor was of a reddish hue, waxed and polished, and in every direction were mirrors-tall, brilliant, bevel-edged mirrors-reflecting and re-reflecting forms, faces, and candelabra a score and a hundred times.
The tables were not so remarkable in themselves, and yet the imprint of Sherry upon the napery, the name of Tiffany upon the silverware, the name of Haviland upon the china, and over all the glow of the small, red-shaded candelabra and the reflected tints of the walls on garments and faces, made them seem remarkable. Each waiter added an air of exclusiveness and elegance by the manner in which he bowed, scraped, touched, and trifled with things. The exclusively personal attention which he devoted to each one, standing half bent, ear to one side, elbows akimbo, saying: "Soup-green turtle, yes. One portion, yes. Oysters-certainly-half-dozen-yes. Asparagus. Olives-yes."
It would be the same with each one, only Vance essayed to order for all, inviting counsel and suggestions. Carrie studied the company with open eyes. So this was high life in New York. It was so that the rich spent their days and evenings. Her poor little mind could not rise above applying each scene to all society. Every fine lady must be in the crowd on Broadway in the afternoon, in the theatre at the matinée, in the coaches and dining-halls at night. It must be glow and shine everywhere, with coaches waiting, and footmen attending, and she was out of it all. In two long years she had never even been in such a place as this.
Vance was in his element here, as Hurstwood would have been in former days. He ordered freely of soup, oysters, roast meats, and side dishes, and had several bottles of wine brought, which were set down beside the table in a wicker basket.
Ames was looking away rather abstractedly at the crowd and showed an interesting profile to Carrie. His forehead was high, his nose rather large and strong, his chin moderately pleasing. He had a good, wide, well-shaped mouth, and his dark-brown hair was parted slightly on one side. He seemed to have the least touch of boyishness to Carrie, and yet he was a man full grown.
"Do you know," he said, turning back to Carrie, after his reflection, "I sometimes think it is a shame for people to spend so much money this way."
Carrie looked at him a moment with the faintest touch of surprise at his seriousness. He seemed to be thinking about something over which she had never pondered.
"Do you?" she answered, interestedly.
"Yes," he said, "they pay so much more than these things are worth. They put on so much show."
"I don't know why people shouldn't spend when they have it," said Mrs. Vance.
"It doesn't do any harm," said Vance, who was still studying the bill of fare, though he had ordered.
Ames was looking away again, and Carrie was again looking at his forehead. To her he seemed to be thinking about strange things. As he studied the crowd his eye was mild.
"Look at that woman's dress over there," he said, again turning to Carrie, and nodding in a direction.
"Where?" said Carrie, following his eyes.
"Over there in the corner-way over. Do you see that brooch?"
"Isn't it large?" said Carrie.
"One of the largest clusters of jewels I have ever seen," said Ames.
"It is, isn't it?" said Carrie. She felt as if she would like to be agreeable to this young man, and also there came with it, or perhaps preceded it, the slightest shade of a feeling that he was better educated than she was-that his mind was better. He seemed to look it, and the saving grace in Carrie was that she could understand that people could be wiser. She had seen a number of people in her life who reminded her of what she had vaguely come to think of as scholars. This strong young man beside her, with his clear, natural look, seemed to get a hold of things which she did not quite understand, but approved of. It was fine to be so, as a man, she thought.
The conversation changed to a book that was having its vogue at the time-"Moulding a Maiden," by Albert Ross. Mrs. Vance had read it. Vance had seen it discussed in some of the papers.
"A man can make quite a strike writing a book," said Vance. "I notice this fellow Ross is very much talked about." He was looking at Carrie as he spoke.
"I hadn't heard of him," said Carrie, honestly.
"Oh, I have," said Mrs. Vance. "He's written lots of things. This last story is pretty good."
"He doesn't amount to much," said Ames.
Carrie turned her eyes toward him as to an oracle.
"His stuff is nearly as bad as 'Dora Thorne,'" concluded Ames.
Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear-eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding.
Yet there was nothing sarcastic or supercilious in the way Ames spoke. He had very little of that in him. Carrie felt that it was just kindly thought of a high order-the right thing to think, and wondered what else was right, according to him. He seemed to notice that she listened and rather sympathised with him, and from now on he talked mostly to her.
As the waiter bowed and scraped about, felt the dishes to see if they were hot enough, brought spoons and forks, and did all those little attentive things calculated to impress the luxury of the situation upon the diner, Ames also leaned slightly to one side and told her of Indianapolis in an intelligent way. He really had a very bright mind, which was finding its chief development in electrical knowledge. His sympathies for other forms of information, however, and for types of people, were quick and warm. The red glow on his head gave it a sandy tinge and put a bright glint in his eye. Carrie noticed all these things as he leaned toward her and felt exceedingly young. This man was far ahead of her. He seemed wiser than Hurstwood, saner and brighter than Drouet. He seemed innocent and clean, and she thought that he was exceedingly pleasant. She noticed, also, that his interest in her was a far-off one. She was not in his life, nor any of the things that touched his life, and yet now, as he spoke of these things, they appealed to her.
"I shouldn't care to be rich," he told her, as the dinner proceeded and the supply of food warmed up his sympathies; "not rich enough to spend my money this way."
"Oh, wouldn't you?" said Carrie, the, to her, new attitude forcing itself distinctly upon her for the first time.
"No," he said. "What good would it do? A man doesn't need this sort of thing to be happy."
Carrie thought of this doubtfully; but, coming from him, it had weight with her.
"He probably could be happy," she thought to herself, "all alone. He's so strong."
Mr. and Mrs. Vance kept up a running fire of interruptions, and these impressive things by Ames came at odd moments. They were sufficient, however, for the atmosphere that went with this youth impressed itself upon Carrie without words. There was something in him, or the world he moved in, which appealed to her. He reminded her of scenes she had seen on the stage-the sorrows and sacrifices that always went with she knew not what. He had taken away some of the bitterness of the contrast between this life and her life, and all by a certain calm indifference which concerned only him.
As they went out, he took her arm and helped her into the coach, and then they were off again, and so to the show.
During the acts Carrie found herself listening to him very attentively. He mentioned things in the play which she most approved of-things which swayed her deeply.
"Don't you think it rather fine to be an actor?" she asked once.
"Yes, I do," he said, "to be a good one. I think the theatre a great thing."
Just this little approval set Carrie's heart bounding. Ah, if she could only be an actress-a good one! This man was wise-he knew-and he approved of it. If she were a fine actress, such men as he would approve of her. She felt that he was good to speak as he had, although it did not concern her at all. She did not know why she felt this way.
At the close of the show it suddenly developed that he was not going back with them.
"Oh, aren't you?" said Carrie, with an unwarrantable feeling.
"Oh, no," he said; "I'm stopping right around here in Thirty-third Street."
Carrie could not say anything else, but somehow this development shocked her. She had been regretting the wane of a pleasant evening, but she had thought there was a half-hour more. Oh, the half-hours, the minutes of the world; what miseries and griefs are crowded into them!
She said good-bye with feigned indifference. What matter could it make? Still, the coach seemed lorn.
When she went into her own flat she had this to think about. She did not know whether she would ever see this man any more. What difference could it make-what difference could it make?
Hurstwood had returned, and was already in bed. His clothes were scattered loosely about. Carrie came to the door and saw him, then retreated. She did not want to go in yet a while. She wanted to think. It was disagreeable to her.
Back in the dining-room she sat in her chair and rocked. Her little hands were folded tightly as she thought. Through a fog of longing and conflicting desires she was beginning to see. Oh, ye legions of hope and pity-of sorrow and pain! She was rocking, and beginning to see.
Chapter XXXIII. WITHOUT THE WALLED CITY: THE SLOPE OF THE YEARS
The immediate result of this was nothing. Results from such things are usually long in growing. Morning brings a change of feeling. The existent condition invariably pleads for itself. It is only at odd moments that we get glimpses of the misery of things. The heart understands when it is confronted with contrasts. Take them away and the ache subsides.
Carrie went on, leading much this same life for six months thereafter or more. She did not see Ames any more. He called once upon the Vances, but she only heard about it through the young wife. Then he went West, and there was a gradual subsidence of whatever personal attraction had existed. The mental effect of the thing had not gone, however, and never would entirely. She had an ideal to contrast men by-particularly men close to her.
During all this time-a period rapidly approaching three years-Hurstwood had been moving along in an even path. There was no apparent slope downward, and distinctly none upward, so far as the casual observer might have seen. But psychologically there was a change, which was marked enough to suggest the future very distinctly indeed. This was in the mere matter of the halt his career had received when he departed from Chicago. A man's fortune or material progress is very much the same as his bodily growth. Either he is growing stronger, healthier, wiser, as the youth approaching manhood, or he is growing weaker, older, less incisive mentally, as the man approaching old age. There are no other states. Frequently there is a period between the cessation of youthful accretion and the setting in, in the case of the middle-aged man, of the tendency toward decay when the two processes are almost perfectly balanced and there is little doing in either direction. Given time enough, however, the balance becomes a sagging to the grave side. Slowly at first, then with a modest momentum, and at last the graveward process is in the full swing. So it is frequently with man's fortune. If its process of accretion is never halted, if the balancing stage is never reached, there will be no toppling. Rich men are, frequently, in these days, saved from this dissolution of their fortune by their ability to hire younger brains. These younger brains look upon the interests of the fortune as their own, and so steady and direct its progress. If each individual were left absolutely to the care of his own interests, and were given time enough in which to grow exceedingly old, his fortune would pass as his strength and will. He and his would be utterly dissolved and scattered unto the four winds of the heavens.
But now see wherein the parallel changes. A fortune, like a man, is an organism which draws to itself other minds and other strength than that inherent in the founder. Beside the young minds drawn to it by salaries, it becomes allied with young forces, which make for its existence even when the strength and wisdom of the founder are fading. It may be conserved by the growth of a community or of a state. It may be involved in providing something for which there is a growing demand. This removes it at once beyond the special care of the founder. It needs not so much foresight now as direction. The man wanes, the need continues or grows, and the fortune, fallen into whose hands it may, continues. Hence, some men never recognise the turning in the tide of their abilities. It is only in chance cases, where a fortune or a state of success is wrested from them, that the lack of ability to do as they did formerly becomes apparent. Hurstwood, set down under new conditions, was in a position to see that he was no longer young. If he did not, it was due wholly to the fact that his state was so well balanced that an absolute change for the worse did not show.
Not trained to reason or introspect himself, he could not analyse the change that was taking place in his mind, and hence his body, but he felt the depression of it. Constant comparison between his old state and his new showed a balance for the worse, which produced a constant state of gloom or, at least, depression. Now, it has been shown experimentally that a constantly subdued frame of mind produces certain poisons in the blood, called katastates, just as virtuous feelings of pleasure and delight produce helpful chemicals called anastates. The poisons generated by remorse inveigh against the system, and eventually produce marked physical deterioration. To these Hurstwood was subject.
In the course of time it told upon his temper. His eye no longer possessed that buoyant, searching shrewdness which had characterised it in Adams Street. His step was not as sharp and firm. He was given to thinking, thinking, thinking. The new friends he made were not celebrities. They were of a cheaper, a slightly more sensual and cruder, grade. He could not possibly take the pleasure in this company that he had in that of those fine frequenters of the Chicago resort. He was left to brood.
Slowly, exceedingly slowly, his desire to greet, conciliate, and make at home these people who visited the Warren Street place passed from him. More and more slowly the significance of the realm he had left began to be clear. It did not seem so wonderful to be in it when he was in it. It had seemed very easy for any one to get up there and have ample raiment and money to spend, but now that he was out of it, how far off it became. He began to see as one sees a city with a wall about it. Men were posted at the gates. You could not get in. Those inside did not care to come out to see who you were. They were so merry inside there that all those outside were forgotten, and he was on the outside.
Each day he could read in the evening papers of the doings within this walled city. In the notices of passengers for Europe he read the names of eminent frequenters of his old resort. In the theatrical column appeared, from time to time, announcements of the latest successes of men he had known. He knew that they were at their old gayeties. Pullmans were hauling them to and fro about the land, papers were greeting them with interesting mentions, the elegant lobbies of hotels and the glow of polished dining-rooms were keeping them close within the walled city. Men whom he had known, men whom he had tipped glasses with-rich men, and he was forgotten! Who was Mr. Wheeler? What was the Warren Street resort? Bah!
If one thinks that such thoughts do not come to so common a type of mind-that such feelings require a higher mental development-I would urge for their consideration the fact that it is the higher mental development that does away with such thoughts. It is the higher mental development which induces philosophy and that fortitude which refuses to dwell upon such things-refuses to be made to suffer by their consideration. The common type of mind is exceedingly keen on all matters which relate to its physical welfare-exceedingly keen. It is the unintellectual miser who sweats blood at the loss of a hundred dollars. It is the Epictetus who smiles when the last vestige of physical welfare is removed.
The time came, in the third year, when this thinking began to produce results in the Warren Street place. The tide of patronage dropped a little below what it had been at its best since he had been there. This irritated and worried him.
There came a night when he confessed to Carrie that the business was not doing as well this month as it had the month before. This was in lieu of certain suggestions she had made concerning little things she wanted to buy. She had not failed to notice that he did not seem to consult her about buying clothes for himself. For the first time, it struck her as a ruse, or that he said it so that she would not think of asking for things. Her reply was mild enough, but her thoughts were rebellious. He was not looking after her at all. She was depending for her enjoyment upon the Vances.
And now the latter announced that they were going away. It was approaching spring, and they were going North.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Vance to Carrie, "we think we might as well give up the flat and store our things. We'll be gone for the summer, and it would be a useless expense. I think we'll settle a little farther down town when we come back."
Carrie heard this with genuine sorrow. She had enjoyed Mrs. Vance's companionship so much. There was no one else in the house whom she knew. Again she would be all alone.
Hurstwood's gloom over the slight decrease in profits and the departure of the Vances came together. So Carrie had loneliness and this mood of her husband to enjoy at the same time. It was a grievous thing. She became restless and dissatisfied, not exactly, as she thought, with Hurstwood, but with life. What was it? A very dull round indeed. What did she have? Nothing but this narrow, little flat. The Vances could travel, they could do the things worth doing, and here she was. For what was she made, anyhow? More thought followed, and then tears-tears seemed justified, and the only relief in the world.
For another period this state continued, the twain leading a rather monotonous life, and then there was a slight change for the worse. One evening, Hurstwood, after thinking about a way to modify Carrie's desire for clothes and the general strain upon his ability to provide, said:
"I don't think I'll ever be able to do much with Shaughnessy."
"What's the matter?" said Carrie.
"Oh, he's a slow, greedy 'mick'! He won't agree to anything to improve the place, and it won't ever pay without it."
"Can't you make him?" said Carrie.
"No; I've tried. The only thing I can see, if I want to improve, is to get hold of a place of my own."
"Why don't you?" said Carrie.
"Well, all I have is tied up in there just now. If I had a chance to save a while I think I could open a place that would give us plenty of money."
"Can't we save?" said Carrie.
"We might try it," he suggested. "I've been thinking that if we'd take a smaller flat down town and live economically for a year, I would have enough, with what I have invested, to open a good place. Then we could arrange to live as you want to."
"It would suit me all right," said Carrie, who, nevertheless, felt badly to think it had come to this. Talk of a smaller flat sounded like poverty.
"There are lots of nice little flats down around Sixth Avenue, below Fourteenth Street. We might get one down there."
"I'll look at them if you say so," said Carrie.
"I think I could break away from this fellow inside of a year," said Hurstwood. "Nothing will ever come of this arrangement as it's going on now."
"I'll look around," said Carrie, observing that the proposed change seemed to be a serious thing with him.
The upshot of this was that the change was eventually effected; not without great gloom on the part of Carrie. It really affected her more seriously than anything that had yet happened. She began to look upon Hurstwood wholly as a man, and not as a lover or husband. She felt thoroughly bound to him as a wife, and that her lot was cast with his, whatever it might be; but she began to see that he was gloomy and taciturn, not a young, strong, and buoyant man. He looked a little bit old to her about the eyes and mouth now, and there were other things which placed him in his true rank, so far as her estimation was concerned. She began to feel that she had made a mistake. Incidentally, she also began to recall the fact that he had practically forced her to flee with him.
The new flat was located in Thirteenth Street, a half block west of Sixth Avenue, and contained only four rooms. The new neighbourhood did not appeal to Carrie as much. There were no trees here, no west view of the river. The street was solidly built up. There were twelve families here, respectable enough, but nothing like the Vances. Richer people required more space.
Being left alone in this little place, Carrie did without a girl. She made it charming enough, but could not make it delight her. Hurstwood was not inwardly pleased to think that they should have to modify their state, but he argued that he could do nothing. He must put the best face on it, and let it go at that.
He tried to show Carrie that there was no cause for financial alarm, but only congratulation over the chance he would have at the end of the year by taking her rather more frequently to the theatre and by providing a liberal table. This was for the time only. He was getting in the frame of mind where he wanted principally to be alone and to be allowed to think. The disease of brooding was beginning to claim him as a victim. Only the newspapers and his own thoughts were worth while. The delight of love had again slipped away. It was a case of live, now, making the best you can out of a very commonplace station in life.
The road downward has but few landings and level places. The very state of his mind, superinduced by his condition, caused the breach to widen between him and his partner. At last that individual began to wish that Hurstwood was out of it. It so happened, however, that a real estate deal on the part of the owner of the land arranged things even more effectually than ill-will could have schemed.
"Did you see that?" said Shaughnessy one morning to Hurstwood, pointing to the real estate column in a copy of the "Herald," which he held.
"No, what is it?" said Hurstwood, looking down the items of news.
"The man who owns this ground has sold it."
"You don't say so?" said Hurstwood.
He looked, and there was the notice. Mr. August Viele had yesterday registered the transfer of the lot, 25 x 75 feet, at the corner of Warren and Hudson Streets, to J. F. Slawson for the sum of $57,000.
"Our lease expires when?" asked Hurstwood, thinking. "Next February, isn't it?"
"That's right," said Shaughnessy.
"It doesn't say what the new man's going to do with it," remarked Hurstwood, looking back to the paper.
"We'll hear, I guess, soon enough," said Shaughnessy.
Sure enough, it did develop. Mr. Slawson owned the property adjoining, and was going to put up a modern office building. The present one was to be torn down. It would take probably a year and a half to complete the other one.
All these things developed by degrees, and Hurstwood began to ponder over what would become of the saloon. One day he spoke about it to his partner.
"Do you think it would be worth while to open up somewhere else in the neighbourhood?"
"What would be the use?" said Shaughnessy. "We couldn't get another corner around here."
"It wouldn't pay anywhere else, do you think?"
"I wouldn't try it," said the other. The approaching change now took on a most serious aspect to Hurstwood. Dissolution meant the loss of his thousand dollars, and he could not save another thousand in the time. He understood that Shaughnessy was merely tired of the arrangement, and would probably lease the new corner, when completed, alone. He began to worry about the necessity of a new connection and to see impending serious financial straits unless something turned up. This left him in no mood to enjoy his flat or Carrie, and consequently the depression invaded that quarter.
Meanwhile, he took such time as he could to look about, but opportunities were not numerous. More, he had not the same impressive personality which he had when he first came to New York. Bad thoughts had put a shade into his eyes which did not impress others favourably. Neither had he thirteen hundred dollars in hand to talk with. About a month later, finding that he had not made any progress, Shaughnessy reported definitely that Slawson would not extend the lease.
"I guess this thing's got to come to an end," he said, affecting an air of concern.
"Well, if it has, it has," answered Hurstwood, grimly. He would not give the other a key to his opinions, whatever they were. He should not have the satisfaction.
A day or two later he saw that he must say something to Carrie.
"You know," he said, "I think I'm going to get the worst of my deal down there."
"How is that?" asked Carrie in astonishment.
"Well, the man who owns the ground has sold it, and the new owner won't release it to us. The business may come to an end."
"Can't you start somewhere else?"
"There doesn't seem to be any place. Shaughnessy doesn't want to."
"Do you lose what you put in?"
"Yes," said Hurstwood, whose face was a study.
"Oh, isn't that too bad?" said Carrie.
"It's a trick," said Hurstwood. "That's all. They'll start another place there all right."
Carrie looked at him, and gathered from his whole demeanour what it meant. It was serious, very serious.
"Do you think you can get something else?" she ventured, timidly.
Hurstwood thought a while. It was all up with the bluff about money and investment. She could see now that he was "broke."
"I don't know," he said solemnly; "I can try."
Chapter XXXIV. THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES: A SAMPLE OF CHAFF
Carrie pondered over this situation as consistently as Hurstwood, once she got the facts adjusted in her mind. It took several days for her to fully realise that the approach of the dissolution of her husband's business meant commonplace struggle and privation. Her mind went back to her early venture in Chicago, the Hansons and their flat, and her heart revolted. That was terrible! Everything about poverty was terrible. She wished she knew a way out. Her recent experiences with the Vances had wholly unfitted her to view her own state with complacence. The glamour of the high life of the city had, in the few experiences afforded her by the former, seized her completely. She had been taught how to dress and where to go without having ample means to do either. Now, these things-ever-present realities as they were-filled her eyes and mind. The more circumscribed became her state, the more entrancing seemed this other. And now poverty threatened to seize her entirely and to remove this other world far upward like a heaven to which any Lazarus might extend, appealingly, his hands.
So, too, the ideal brought into her life by Ames remained. He had gone, but here was his word that riches were not everything; that there was a great deal more in the world than she knew; that the stage was good, and the literature she read poor. He was a strong man and clean-how much stronger and better than Hurstwood and Drouet she only half formulated to herself, but the difference was painful. It was something to which she voluntarily closed her eyes.
During the last three months of the Warren Street connection, Hurstwood took parts of days off and hunted, tracking the business advertisements. It was a more or less depressing business, wholly because of the thought that he must soon get something or he would begin to live on the few hundred dollars he was saving, and then he would have nothing to invest-he would have to hire out as a clerk.
Everything he discovered in his line advertised as an opportunity, was either too expensive or too wretched for him. Besides, winter was coming, the papers were announcing hardships, and there was a general feeling of hard times in the air, or, at least, he thought so. In his worry, other people's worries became apparent. No item about a firm failing, a family starving, or a man dying upon the streets, supposedly of starvation, but arrested his eye as he scanned the morning papers. Once the "World" came out with a flaring announcement about "80,000 people out of employment in New York this winter," which struck as a knife at his heart.
"Eighty thousand!" he thought. "What an awful thing that is."
This was new reasoning for Hurstwood. In the old days the world had seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to see similar things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did not hold his attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds hovering along the horizon of a clear day. They threatened to cover and obscure his life with chilly greyness. He tried to shake them off, to forget and brace up. Sometimes he said to himself, mentally:
"What's the use worrying? I'm not out yet. I've got six weeks more. Even if worst comes to worst, I've got enough to live on for six months."
Curiously, as he troubled over his future, his thoughts occasionally reverted to his wife and family. He had avoided such thoughts for the first three years as much as possible. He hated her, and he could get along without her. Let her go. He would do well enough. Now, however, when he was not doing well enough, he began to wonder what she was doing, how his children were getting along. He could see them living as nicely as ever, occupying the comfortable house and using his property.
"By George! it's a shame they should have it all," he vaguely thought to himself on several occasions. "I didn't do anything."
As he looked back now and analysed the situation which led up to his taking the money, he began mildly to justify himself. What had he done-what in the world-that should bar him out this way and heap such difficulties upon him? It seemed only yesterday to him since he was comfortable and well-to-do. But now it was all wrested from him.
"She didn't deserve what she got out of me, that is sure. I didn't do so much, if everybody could just know."
There was no thought that the facts ought to be advertised. It was only a mental justification he was seeking from himself-something that would enable him to bear his state as a righteous man.
One afternoon, five weeks before the Warren Street place closed up, he left the saloon to visit three or four places he saw advertised in the "Herald." One was down in Gold Street, and he visited that, but did not enter. It was such a cheap looking place he felt that he could not abide it. Another was on the Bowery, which he knew contained many showy resorts. It was near Grand Street, and turned out to be very handsomely fitted up. He talked around about investments for fully three-quarters of an hour with the proprietor, who maintained that his health was poor, and that was the reason he wished a partner.
"Well, now, just how much money would it take to buy a half interest here?" said Hurstwood, who saw seven hundred dollars as his limit.
"Three thousand," said the man.
Hurstwood's jaw fell.
"Cash?" he said.
"Cash."
He tried to put on an air of deliberation, as one who might really buy; but his eyes showed gloom. He wound up by saying he would think it over, and came away. The man he had been talking to sensed his condition in a vague way.
"I don't think he wants to buy," he said to himself. "He doesn't talk right."
The afternoon was as grey as lead and cold. It was blowing up a disagreeable winter wind. He visited a place far up on the east side, near Sixty-ninth Street, and it was five o'clock, and growing dim, when he reached there. A portly German kept this place.
"How about this ad of yours?" asked Hurstwood, who rather objected to the looks of the place.
"Oh, dat iss all over," said the German. "I vill not sell now."
"Oh, is that so?"
"Yes; dere is nothing to dat. It iss all over."
"Very well," said Hurstwood, turning around.
The German paid no more attention to him, and it made him angry.
"The crazy ass!" he said to himself. "What does he want to advertise for?"
Wholly depressed, he started for Thirteenth Street. The flat had only a light in the kitchen, where Carrie was working. He struck a match and, lighting the gas, sat down in the dining-room without even greeting her. She came to the door and looked in.
"It's you, is it?" she said, and went back.
"Yes," he said, without even looking up from the evening paper he had bought.
Carrie saw things were wrong with him. He was not so handsome when gloomy. The lines at the sides of the eyes were deepened. Naturally dark of skin, gloom made him look slightly sinister. He was quite a disagreeable figure.
Carrie set the table and brought in the meal.
"Dinner's ready," she said, passing him for something.
He did not answer, reading on.
She came in and sat down at her place, feeling exceedingly wretched.
"Won't you eat now?" she asked.
He folded his paper and drew near, silence holding for a time, except for the "Pass me's."
"It's been gloomy to-day, hasn't it?" ventured Carrie, after a time.
"Yes," he said.
He only picked at his food.
"Are you still sure to close up?" said Carrie, venturing to take up the subject which they had discussed often enough.
"Of course we are," he said, with the slightest modification of sharpness.
This retort angered Carrie. She had had a dreary day of it herself.
"You needn't talk like that," she said.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, pushing back from the table, as if to say more, but letting it go at that. Then he picked up his paper. Carrie left her seat, containing herself with difficulty. He saw she was hurt.
"Don't go 'way," he said, as she started back into the kitchen. "Eat your dinner."
She passed, not answering.
He looked at the paper a few moments, and then rose up and put on his coat.
"I'm going downtown, Carrie," he said, coming out. "I'm out of sorts to-night."
She did not answer.
"Don't be angry," he said. "It will be all right to-morrow."
He looked at her, but she paid no attention to him, working at her dishes.
"Good-bye!" he said finally, and went out.
This was the first strong result of the situation between them, but with the nearing of the last day of the business the gloom became almost a permanent thing. Hurstwood could not conceal his feelings about the matter. Carrie could not help wondering where she was drifting. It got so that they talked even less than usual, and yet it was not Hurstwood who felt any objection to Carrie. It was Carrie who shied away from him. This he noticed. It aroused an objection to her becoming indifferent to him. He made the possibility of friendly intercourse almost a giant task, and then noticed with discontent that Carrie added to it by her manner and made it more impossible.
At last the final day came. When it actually arrived, Hurstwood, who had got his mind into such a state where a thunderclap and raging storm would have seemed highly appropriate, was rather relieved to find that it was a plain, ordinary day. The sun shone, the temperature was pleasant. He felt, as he came to the breakfast table, that it wasn't so terrible, after all.
"Well," he said to Carrie, "to-day's my last day on earth."
Carrie smiled in answer to his humour.
Hurstwood glanced over his paper rather gayly. He seemed to have lost a load.
"I'll go down for a little while," he said after breakfast, "and then I'll look around. To-morrow I'll spend the whole day looking about. I think I can get something, now this thing's off my hands."
He went out smiling and visited the place. Shaughnessy was there. They had made all arrangements to share according to their interests. When, however, he had been there several hours, gone out three more, and returned, his elation had departed. As much as he had objected to the place, now that it was no longer to exist, he felt sorry. He wished that things were different.
Shaughnessy was coolly businesslike.
"Well," he said at five o'clock, "we might as well count the change and divide."
They did so. The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided.
"Good-night," said Hurstwood at the final moment, in a last effort to be genial.
"So long," said Shaughnessy, scarcely deigning a notice.
Thus the Warren Street arrangement was permanently concluded.
Carrie had prepared a good dinner at the flat, but after his ride up, Hurstwood was in a solemn and reflective mood.
"Well?" said Carrie, inquisitively.
"I'm out of that," he answered, taking off his coat.
As she looked at him, she wondered what his financial state was now. They ate and talked a little.
"Will you have enough to buy in anywhere else?" asked Carrie.
"No," he said. "I'll have to get something else and save up."
"It would be nice if you could get some place," said Carrie, prompted by anxiety and hope.
"I guess I will," he said reflectively.
For some days thereafter he put on his overcoat regularly in the morning and sallied forth. On these ventures he first consoled himself with the thought that with the seven hundred dollars he had he could still make some advantageous arrangement. He thought about going to some brewery, which, as he knew, frequently controlled saloons which they leased, and get them to help him. Then he remembered that he would have to pay out several hundred any way for fixtures and that he would have nothing left for his monthly expenses. It was costing him nearly eighty dollars a month to live.
"No," he said, in his sanest moments, "I can't do it. I'll get something else and save up."
This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest. Into a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money enough to buy.
Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of deluding. People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man of his age, stout and well dressed, must be well off. He appeared a comfortable owner of something, a man from whom the common run of mortals could well expect gratuities. Being now forty-three years of age, and comfortably built, walking was not easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years. His legs tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at the close of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued, produced this result.
The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he well understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it retarded his search. Not that he wished to be less well-appearing, but that he was ashamed to belie his appearance by incongruous appeals. So he hesitated, wondering what to do.
He thought of the hotels, but instantly he remembered that he had had no experience as a clerk, and, what was more important, no acquaintances or friends in that line to whom he could go. He did know some hotel owners in several cities, including New York, but they knew of his dealings with Fitzgerald and Moy. He could not apply to them. He thought of other lines suggested by large buildings or businesses which he knew of-wholesale groceries, hardware, insurance concerns, and the like-but he had had no experience.
How to go about getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have to go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, then, distinguished and affluent looking, announce that he was looking for something to do? He strained painfully at the thought. No, he could not do that.
He really strolled about, thinking, and then, the weather being cold, stepped into a hotel. He knew hotels well enough to know that any decent individual was welcome to a chair in the lobby. This was in the Broadway Central, which was then one of the most important hotels in the city. Taking a chair here was a painful thing to him. To think he should come to this! He had heard loungers about hotels called chairwarmers. He had called them that himself in his day. But here he was, despite the possibility of meeting some one who knew him, shielding himself from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel lobby.
"I can't do this way," he said to himself. "There's no use of my starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go. I'll think of some places and then look them up."
It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were sometimes open, but he put this out of his mind. Bartender-he, the ex-manager!
It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four he went home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in, but it was a feeble imitation. The rocking chair in the dining-room was comfortable. He sank into it gladly, with several papers he had bought, and began to read.
As she was going through the room to begin preparing dinner, Carrie said:
"The man was here for the rent to-day."
"Oh, was he?" said Hurstwood.
The least wrinkle crept into his brow as he remembered that this was February 2d, the time the man always called. He fished down in his pocket for his purse, getting the first taste of paying out when nothing is coming in. He looked at the fat, green roll as a sick man looks at the one possible saving cure. Then he counted off twenty-eight dollars.
"Here you are," he said to Carrie, when she came through again.
He buried himself in his papers and read. Oh, the rest of it-the relief from walking and thinking! What Lethean waters were these floods of telegraphed intelligence! He forgot his troubles, in part. Here was a young, handsome woman, if you might believe the newspaper drawing, suing a rich, fat, candy-making husband in Brooklyn for divorce. Here was another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off Prince's Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings in the theatrical world-the plays produced, the actors appearing, the managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing "King Lear." He read of the early departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, rocking in the warm room near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.
Chapter XXXV. THE PASSING OF EFFORT: THE VISAGE OF CARE
The next morning he looked over the papers and waded through a long list of advertisements, making a few notes. Then he turned to the male-help-wanted column, but with disagreeable feelings. The day was before him-a long day in which to discover something-and this was how he must begin to discover. He scanned the long column, which mostly concerned bakers, bushelmen, cooks, compositors, drivers, and the like, finding two things only which arrested his eye. One was a cashier wanted in a wholesale furniture house, and the other a salesman for a whiskey house. He had never thought of the latter. At once he decided to look that up.
The firm in question was Alsbery & Co., whiskey brokers.
He was admitted almost at once to the manager on his appearance.
"Good-morning, sir," said the latter, thinking at first that he was encountering one of his out-of-town customers.
"Good-morning," said Hurstwood. "You advertised, I believe, for a salesman?"
"Oh," said the man, showing plainly the enlightenment which had come to him. "Yes. Yes, I did."
"I thought I'd drop in," said Hurstwood, with dignity. "I've had some experience in that line myself."
"Oh, have you?" said the man. "What experience have you had?"
"Well, I've managed several liquor houses in my time. Recently I owned a third-interest in a saloon at Warren and Hudson streets."
"I see," said the man.
Hurstwood ceased, waiting for some suggestion.
"We did want a salesman," said the man. "I don't know as it's anything you'd care to take hold of, though."
"I see," said Hurstwood. "Well, I'm in no position to choose, just at present. If it were open, I should be glad to get it."
The man did not take kindly at all to his "No position to choose." He wanted some one who wasn't thinking of a choice or something better. Especially not an old man. He wanted some one young, active, and glad to work actively for a moderate sum. Hurstwood did not please him at all. He had more of an air than his employers.
"Well," he said in answer, "we'd be glad to consider your application. We shan't decide for a few days yet. Suppose you send us your references."
"I will," said Hurstwood.
He nodded good-morning and came away. At the corner he looked at the furniture company's address, and saw that it was in West Twenty-third Street. Accordingly, he went up there. The place was not large enough, however. It looked moderate, the men in it idle and small salaried. He walked by, glancing in, and then decided not to go in there.
"They want a girl, probably, at ten a week," he said.
At one o'clock he thought of eating, and went to a restaurant in Madison Square. There he pondered over places which he might look up. He was tired. It was blowing up grey again. Across the way, through Madison Square Park, stood the great hotels, looking down upon a busy scene. He decided to go over to the lobby of one and sit a while. It was warm in there and bright. He had seen no one he knew at the Broadway Central. In all likelihood he would encounter no one here. Finding a seat on one of the red plush divans close to the great windows which look out on Broadway's busy rout, he sat musing. His state did not seem so bad in here. Sitting still and looking out, he could take some slight consolation in the few hundred dollars he had in his purse. He could forget, in a measure, the weariness of the street and his tiresome searches. Still, it was only escape from a severe to a less severe state. He was still gloomy and disheartened. There, minutes seemed to go very slowly. An hour was a long, long time in passing. It was filled for him with observations and mental comments concerning the actual guests of the hotel, who passed in and out, and those more prosperous pedestrians whose good fortune showed in their clothes and spirits as they passed along Broadway, outside. It was nearly the first time since he had arrived in the city that his leisure afforded him ample opportunity to contemplate this spectacle. Now, being, perforce, idle himself, he wondered at the activity of others. How gay were the youths he saw, how pretty the women. Such fine clothes they all wore. They were so intent upon getting somewhere. He saw coquettish glances cast by magnificent girls. Ah, the money it required to train with such-how well he knew! How long it had been since he had had the opportunity to do so!
The clock outside registered four. It was a little early, but he thought he would go back to the flat.
This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that Carrie would think he was sitting around too much if he came home early. He hoped he wouldn't have to, but the day hung heavily on his hands. Over there he was on his own ground. He could sit in his rocking-chair and read. This busy, distracting, suggestive scene was shut out. He could read his papers. Accordingly, he went home. Carrie was reading, quite alone. It was rather dark in the flat, shut in as it was.
"You'll hurt your eyes," he said when he saw her.
After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some little report of his day.
"I've been talking with a wholesale liquor company," he said. "I may go on the road."
"Wouldn't that be nice!" said Carrie.
"It wouldn't be such a bad thing," he answered.
Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers-the "Evening World" and "Evening Sun." So now he merely picked his papers up, as he came by, without stopping.
He drew up his chair near the radiator and lighted the gas. Then it was as the evening before. His difficulties vanished in the items he so well loved to read.
The next day was even worse than the one before, because now he could not think of where to go. Nothing he saw in the papers he studied-till ten o'clock-appealed to him. He felt that he ought to go out, and yet he sickened at the thought. Where to, where to?
"You mustn't forget to leave me my money for this week," said Carrie, quietly.
They had an arrangement by which he placed twelve dollars a week in her hands, out of which to pay current expenses. He heaved a little sigh as she said this, and drew out his purse. Again he felt the dread of the thing. Here he was taking off, taking off, and nothing coming in.
"Lord!" he said, in his own thoughts, "this can't go on."
To Carrie he said nothing whatsoever. She could feel that her request disturbed him. To pay her would soon become a distressing thing.
"Yet, what have I got to do with it?" she thought. "Oh, why should I be made to worry?"
Hurstwood went out and made for Broadway. He wanted to think up some place. Before long, though, he reached the Grand Hotel at Thirty-first Street. He knew of its comfortable lobby. He was cold after his twenty blocks' walk.
"I'll go in their barber shop and get a shave," he thought.
Thus he justified himself in sitting down in here after his tonsorial treatment.
Again, time hanging heavily on his hands, he went home early, and this continued for several days, each day the need to hunt paining him, and each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness driving him into lobby idleness.
At last three days came in which a storm prevailed, and he did not go out at all. The snow began to fall late one afternoon. It was a regular flurry of large, soft, white flakes. In the morning it was still coming down with a high wind, and the papers announced a blizzard. From out the front windows one could see a deep, soft bedding.
"I guess I'll not try to go out to-day," he said to Carrie at breakfast. "It's going to be awful bad, so the papers say."
"The man hasn't brought my coal, either," said Carrie, who ordered by the bushel.
"I'll go over and see about it," said Hurstwood. This was the first time he had ever suggested doing an errand, but, somehow, the wish to sit about the house prompted it as a sort of compensation for the privilege.
All day and all night it snowed, and the city began to suffer from a general blockade of traffic. Great attention was given to the details of the storm by the newspapers, which played up the distress of the poor in large type.
Hurstwood sat and read by his radiator in the corner. He did not try to think about his need of work. This storm being so terrific, and tying up all things, robbed him of the need. He made himself wholly comfortable and toasted his feet.
Carrie observed his ease with some misgiving. For all the fury of the storm she doubted his comfort. He took his situation too philosophically.
Hurstwood, however, read on and on. He did not pay much attention to Carrie. She fulfilled her household duties and said little to disturb him.
The next day it was still snowing, and the next, bitter cold. Hurstwood took the alarm of the paper and sat still. Now he volunteered to do a few other little things. One was to go to the butcher, another to the grocery. He really thought nothing of these little services in connection with their true significance. He felt as if he were not wholly useless-indeed, in such a stress of weather, quite worth while about the house.
On the fourth day, however, it cleared, and he read that the storm was over. Now, however, he idled, thinking how sloppy the streets would be.
It was noon before he finally abandoned his papers and got under way. Owing to the slightly warmer temperature the streets were bad. He went across Fourteenth Street on the car and got a transfer south on Broadway. One little advertisement he had, relating to a saloon down in Pearl Street. When he reached the Broadway Central, however, he changed his mind.
"What's the use?" he thought, looking out upon the slop and snow. "I couldn't buy into it. It's a thousand to one nothing comes of it. I guess I'll get off," and off he got. In the lobby he took a seat and waited again, wondering what he could do.
While he was idly pondering, satisfied to be inside, a well-dressed man passed up the lobby, stopped, looked sharply, as if not sure of his memory, and then approached. Hurstwood recognised Cargill, the owner of the large stables in Chicago of the same name, whom he had last seen at Avery Hall, the night Carrie appeared there. The remembrance of how this individual brought up his wife to shake hands on that occasion was also on the instant clear.
Hurstwood was greatly abashed. His eyes expressed the difficulty he felt.
"Why, it's Hurstwood!" said Cargill, remembering now, and sorry that he had not recognised him quickly enough in the beginning to have avoided this meeting.
"Yes," said Hurstwood. "How are you?"
"Very well," said Cargill, troubled for something to talk about. "Stopping here?"
"No," said Hurstwood, "just keeping an appointment."
"I knew you had left Chicago. I was wondering what had become of you."
"Oh, I'm here now," answered Hurstwood, anxious to get away.
"Doing well, I suppose?"
"Excellent."
"Glad to hear it."
They looked at one another, rather embarrassed.
"Well, I have an engagement with a friend upstairs. I'll leave you. So long."
Hurstwood nodded his head.
"Damn it all," he murmured, turning toward the door. "I knew that would happen."
He walked several blocks up the street. His watch only registered 1.30. He tried to think of some place to go or something to do. The day was so bad he wanted only to be inside. Finally his feet began to feel wet and cold, and he boarded a car. This took him to Fifty-ninth Street, which was as good as anywhere else. Landed here, he turned to walk back along Seventh Avenue, but the slush was too much. The misery of lounging about with nowhere to go became intolerable. He felt as if he were catching cold.
Stopping at a corner, he waited for a car south bound. This was no day to be out; he would go home.
Carrie was surprised to see him at a quarter of three.
"It's a miserable day out," was all he said. Then he took off his coat and changed his shoes.
That night he felt a cold coming on and took quinine. He was feverish until morning, and sat about the next day while Carrie waited on him. He was a helpless creature in sickness, not very handsome in a dull-coloured bath gown and his hair uncombed. He looked haggard about the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed this, and it did not appeal to her. She wanted to be good-natured and sympathetic, but something about the man held her aloof.
Toward evening he looked so badly in the weak light that she suggested he go to bed.
"You'd better sleep alone," she said, "you'll feel better. I'll open your bed for you now."
"All right," he said.
As she did all these things, she was in a most despondent state.
"What a life! What a life!" was her one thought.
Once during the day, when he sat near the radiator, hunched up and reading, she passed through, and seeing him, wrinkled her brows. In the front room, where it was not so warm, she sat by the window and cried. This was the life cut out for her, was it? To live cooped up in a small flat with some one who was out of work, idle, and indifferent to her. She was merely a servant to him now, nothing more.
This crying made her eyes red, and when, in preparing his bed, she lighted the gas, and, having prepared it, called him in, he noticed the fact.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked, looking into her face. His voice was hoarse and his unkempt head only added to its grewsome quality.
"Nothing," said Carrie, weakly.
"You've been crying," he said.
"I haven't, either," she answered.
It was not for love of him, that he knew.
"You needn't cry," he said, getting into bed. "Things will come out all right."
In a day or two he was up again, but rough weather holding, he stayed in. The Italian newsdealer now delivered the morning papers, and these he read assiduously. A few times after that he ventured out, but meeting another of his old-time friends, he began to feel uneasy sitting about hotel corridors.
Every day he came home early, and at last made no pretence of going anywhere. Winter was no time to look for anything.
Naturally, being about the house, he noticed the way Carrie did things. She was far from perfect in household methods and economy, and her little deviations on this score first caught his eye. Not, however, before her regular demand for her allowance became a grievous thing. Sitting around as he did, the weeks seemed to pass very quickly. Every Tuesday Carrie asked for her money.
"Do you think we live as cheaply as we might?" he asked one Tuesday morning.
"I do the best I can," said Carrie.
Nothing was added to this at the moment, but the next day he said:
"Do you ever go to the Gansevoort Market over here?"
"I didn't know there was such a market," said Carrie.
"They say you can get things lots cheaper there."
Carrie was very indifferent to the suggestion. These were things which she did not like at all.
"How much do you pay for a pound of meat?" he asked one day.
"Oh, there are different prices," said Carrie. "Sirloin steak is twenty-two cents."
"That's steep, isn't it?" he answered.
So he asked about other things, until finally, with the passing days, it seemed to become a mania with him. He learned the prices and remembered them. His errand-running capacity also improved. It began in a small way, of course. Carrie, going to get her hat one morning, was stopped by him.
"Where are you going, Carrie?" he asked.
"Over to the baker's," she answered.
"I'd just as leave go for you," he said.
She acquiesced, and he went. Each afternoon he would go to the corner for the papers.
"Is there anything you want?" he would say.
By degrees she began to use him. Doing this, however, she lost the weekly payment of twelve dollars.
"You want to pay me to-day," she said one Tuesday, about this time.
"How much?" he asked.
She understood well enough what it meant.
"Well, about five dollars," she answered. "I owe the coal man."
The same day he said:
"I think this Italian up here on the corner sells coal at twenty-five cents a bushel. I'll trade with him."
Carrie heard this with indifference.
"All right," she said.
Then it came to be:
"George, I must have some coal to-day," or, "You must get some meat of some kind for dinner."
He would find out what she needed and order.
Accompanying this plan came skimpiness.
"I only got a half-pound of steak," he said, coming in one afternoon with his papers. "We never seem to eat very much."
These miserable details ate the heart out of Carrie. They blackened her days and grieved her soul. Oh, how this man had changed! All day and all day, here he sat, reading his papers. The world seemed to have no attraction. Once in a while he would go out, in fine weather, it might be four or five hours, between eleven and four. She could do nothing but view him with gnawing contempt.
It was apathy with Hurstwood, resulting from his inability to see his way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had only five hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling as if he could stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite period. Sitting around the house, he decided to wear some old clothes he had. This came first with the bad days. Only once he apologised in the very beginning:
"It's so bad to-day, I'll just wear these around." Eventually these became the permanent thing.
Also, he had been wont to pay fifteen cents for a shave, and a tip of ten cents. In his first distress, he cut down the tip to five, then to nothing. Later, he tried a ten-cent barber shop, and, finding that the shave was satisfactory, patronised regularly. Later still, he put off shaving to every other day, then to every third, and so on, until once a week became the rule. On Saturday he was a sight to see.
Of course, as his own self-respect vanished, it perished for him in Carrie. She could not understand what had gotten into the man. He had some money, he had a decent suit remaining, he was not bad looking when dressed up. She did not forget her own difficult struggle in Chicago, but she did not forget either that she had never ceased trying. He never tried. He did not even consult the ads in the papers any more.
Finally, a distinct impression escaped from her.
"What makes you put so much butter on the steak?" he asked her one evening, standing around in the kitchen.
"To make it good, of course," she answered.
"Butter is awful dear these days," he suggested.
"You wouldn't mind it if you were working," she answered.
He shut up after this, and went in to his paper, but the retort rankled in his mind. It was the first cutting remark that had come from her.
That same evening, Carrie, after reading, went off to the front room to bed. This was unusual. When Hurstwood decided to go, he retired, as usual, without a light. It was then that he discovered Carrie's absence.
"That's funny," he said; "maybe she's sitting up."
He gave the matter no more thought, but slept. In the morning she was not beside him. Strange to say, this passed without comment.
Night approaching, and a slightly more conversational feeling prevailing, Carrie said:
"I think I'll sleep alone to-night. I have a headache."
"All right," said Hurstwood.
The third night she went to her front bed without apologies.
This was a grim blow to Hurstwood, but he never mentioned it.
"All right," he said to himself, with an irrepressible frown, "let her sleep alone."
Chapter XXXVI. A GRIM RETROGRESSION: THE PHANTOM OF CHANCE
The Vances, who had been back in the city ever since Christmas, had not forgotten Carrie; but they, or rather Mrs. Vance, had never called on her, for the very simple reason that Carrie had never sent her address. True to her nature, she corresponded with Mrs. Vance as long as she still lived in Seventy-eighth Street, but when she was compelled to move into Thirteenth, her fear that the latter would take it as an indication of reduced circumstances caused her to study some way of avoiding the necessity of giving her address. Not finding any convenient method, she sorrowfully resigned the privilege of writing to her friend entirely. The latter wondered at this strange silence, thought Carrie must have left the city, and in the end gave her up as lost. So she was thoroughly surprised to encounter her in Fourteenth Street, where she had gone shopping. Carrie was there for the same purpose.
"Why, Mrs. Wheeler," said Mrs. Vance, looking Carrie over in a glance, "where have you been? Why haven't you been to see me? I've been wondering all this time what had become of you. Really, I-"
"I'm so glad to see you," said Carrie, pleased and yet nonplussed. Of all times, this was the worst to encounter Mrs. Vance. "Why, I'm living down town here. I've been intending to come and see you. Where are you living now?"
"In Fifty-eighth Street," said Mrs. Vance, "just off Seventh Avenue-218. Why don't you come and see me?"
"I will," said Carrie. "Really, I've been wanting to come. I know I ought to. It's a shame. But you know-"
"What's your number?" said Mrs. Vance.
"Thirteenth Street," said Carrie, reluctantly. "112 West."
"Oh," said Mrs. Vance, "that's right near here, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Carrie. "You must come down and see me some time."
"Well, you're a fine one," said Mrs. Vance, laughing, the while noting that Carrie's appearance had modified somewhat. "The address, too," she added to herself. "They must be hard up."
Still she liked Carrie well enough to take her in tow.
"Come with me in here a minute," she exclaimed, turning into a store.
When Carrie returned home, there was Hurstwood, reading as usual. He seemed to take his condition with the utmost nonchalance. His beard was at least four days old.
"Oh," thought Carrie, "if she were to come here and see him?"
She shook her head in absolute misery. It looked as if her situation was becoming unbearable.
Driven to desperation, she asked at dinner:
"Did you ever hear any more from that wholesale house?"
"No," he said. "They don't want an inexperienced man."
Carrie dropped the subject, feeling unable to say more.
"I met Mrs. Vance this afternoon," she said, after a time.
"Did, eh?" he answered.
"They're back in New York now," Carrie went on. "She did look so nice."
"Well, she can afford it as long as he puts up for it," returned Hurstwood. "He's got a soft job."
Hurstwood was looking into the paper. He could not see the look of infinite weariness and discontent Carrie gave him.
"She said she thought she'd call here some day."
"She's been long getting round to it, hasn't she?" said Hurstwood, with a kind of sarcasm.
The woman didn't appeal to him from her spending side.
"Oh, I don't know," said Carrie, angered by the man's attitude. "Perhaps I didn't want her to come."
"She's too gay," said Hurstwood, significantly. "No one can keep up with her pace unless they've got a lot of money."
"Mr. Vance doesn't seem to find it very hard."
"He may not now," answered Hurstwood, doggedly, well understanding the inference; "but his life isn't done yet. You can't tell what'll happen. He may get down like anybody else."
There was something quite knavish in the man's attitude. His eye seemed to be cocked with a twinkle upon the fortunate, expecting their defeat. His own state seemed a thing apart-not considered.
This thing was the remains of his old-time cocksureness and independence. Sitting in his flat, and reading of the doings of other people, sometimes this independent, undefeated mood came upon him. Forgetting the weariness of the streets and the degradation of search, he would sometimes prick up his ears. It was as if he said:
"I can do something. I'm not down yet. There's a lot of things coming to me if I want to go after them."
It was in this mood that he would occasionally dress up, go for a shave, and, putting on his gloves, sally forth quite actively. Not with any definite aim. It was more a barometric condition. He felt just right for being outside and doing something.
On such occasions, his money went also. He knew of several poker rooms down town. A few acquaintances he had in downtown resorts and about the City Hall. It was a change to see them and exchange a few friendly commonplaces.
He had once been accustomed to hold a pretty fair hand at poker. Many a friendly game had netted him a hundred dollars or more at the time when that sum was merely sauce to the dish of the game-not the all in all. Now, he thought of playing.
"I might win a couple of hundred. I'm not out of practice."
It is but fair to say that this thought had occurred to him several times before he acted upon it. The poker room which he first invaded was over a saloon in West Street, near one of the ferries. He had been there before. Several games were going. These he watched for a time and noticed that the pots were quite large for the ante involved.
"Deal me a hand," he said at the beginning of a new shuffle. He pulled up a chair and studied his cards. Those playing made that quiet study of him which is so unapparent, and yet invariably so searching.
Poor fortune was with him at first. He received a mixed collection without progression or pairs. The pot was opened.
"I pass," he said.
On the strength of this, he was content to lose his ante. The deals did fairly by him in the long run, causing him to come away with a few dollars to the good.
The next afternoon he was back again, seeking amusement and profit. This time he followed up three of a kind to his doom. There was a better hand across the table, held by a pugnacious Irish youth, who was a political hanger-on of the Tammany district in which they were located. Hurstwood was surprised at the persistence of this individual, whose bets came with a sang-froid which, if a bluff, was excellent art. Hurstwood began to doubt, but kept, or thought to keep, at least, the cool demeanour with which, in olden times, he deceived those psychic students of the gaming table, who seem to read thoughts and moods, rather than exterior evidences, however subtle. He could not down the cowardly thought that this man had something better and would stay to the end, drawing his last dollar into the pot, should he choose to go so far. Still, he hoped to win much-his hand was excellent. Why not raise it five more?
"I raise you three," said the youth.
"Make it five," said Hurstwood, pushing out his chips.
"Come again," said the youth, pushing out a small pile of reds.
"Let me have some more chips," said Hurstwood to the keeper in charge, taking out a bill.
A cynical grin lit up the face of his youthful opponent. When the chips were laid out, Hurstwood met the raise.
"Five again," said the youth.
Hurstwood's brow was wet. He was deep in now-very deep for him. Sixty dollars of his good money was up. He was ordinarily no coward, but the thought of losing so much weakened him. Finally he gave way. He would not trust to this fine hand any longer.
"I call," he said.
"A full house!" said the youth, spreading out his cards.
Hurstwood's hand dropped.
"I thought I had you," he said, weakly.
The youth raked in his chips, and Hurstwood came away, not without first stopping to count his remaining cash on the stair.
"Three hundred and forty dollars," he said.
With this loss and ordinary expenses, so much had already gone.
Back in the flat, he decided he would play no more.
Remembering Mrs. Vance's promise to call, Carrie made one other mild protest. It was concerning Hurstwood's appearance. This very day, coming home, he changed his clothes to the old togs he sat around in.
"What makes you always put on those old clothes?" asked Carrie.
"What's the use wearing my good ones around here?" he asked.
"Well, I should think you'd feel better." Then she added: "Some one might call."
"Who?" he said.
"Well, Mrs. Vance," said Carrie.
"She needn't see me," he answered, sullenly.
This lack of pride and interest made Carrie almost hate him.
"Oh," she thought, "there he sits. 'She needn't see me.' I should think he would be ashamed of himself."
The real bitterness of this thing was added when Mrs. Vance did call. It was on one of her shopping rounds. Making her way up the commonplace hall, she knocked at Carrie's door. To her subsequent and agonising distress, Carrie was out. Hurstwood opened the door, half-thinking that the knock was Carrie's. For once, he was taken honestly aback. The lost voice of youth and pride spoke in him.
"Why," he said, actually stammering, "how do you do?"
"How do you do?" said Mrs. Vance, who could scarcely believe her eyes. His great confusion she instantly perceived. He did not know whether to invite her in or not.
"Is your wife at home?" she inquired.
"No," he said, "Carrie's out; but won't you step in? She'll be back shortly."
"No-o," said Mrs. Vance, realising the change of it all. "I'm really very much in a hurry. I thought I'd just run up and look in, but I couldn't stay. Just tell your wife she must come and see me."
"I will," said Hurstwood, standing back, and feeling intense relief at her going. He was so ashamed that he folded his hands weakly, as he sat in the chair afterwards, and thought.
Carrie, coming in from another direction, thought she saw Mrs. Vance going away. She strained her eyes, but could not make sure.
"Was anybody here just now?" she asked of Hurstwood.
"Yes," he said guiltily; "Mrs. Vance."
"Did she see you?" she asked, expressing her full despair. This cut Hurstwood like a whip, and made him sullen.
"If she had eyes, she did. I opened the door."
"Oh," said Carrie, closing one hand tightly out of sheer nervousness. "What did she have to say?"
"Nothing," he answered. "She couldn't stay."
"And you looking like that!" said Carrie, throwing aside a long reserve.
"What of it?" he said, angering. "I didn't know she was coming, did I?"
"You knew she might," said Carrie. "I told you she said she was coming. I've asked you a dozen times to wear your other clothes. Oh, I think this is just terrible."
"Oh, let up," he answered. "What difference does it make? You couldn't associate with her, anyway. They've got too much money.
"Who said I wanted to?" said Carrie, fiercely.
"Well, you act like it, rowing around over my looks. You'd think I'd committed-"
Carrie interrupted:
"It's true," she said. "I couldn't if I wanted to, but whose fault is it? You're very free to sit and talk about who I could associate with. Why don't you get out and look for work?"
This was a thunderbolt in camp.
"What's it to you?" he said, rising, almost fiercely. "I pay the rent, don't I? I furnish the-"
"Yes, you pay the rent," said Carrie. "You talk as if there was nothing else in the world but a flat to sit around in. You haven't done a thing for three months except sit around and interfere here. I'd like to know what you married me for?"
"I didn't marry you," he said, in a snarling tone.
"I'd like to know what you did, then, in Montreal?" she answered.
"Well, I didn't marry you," he answered. "You can get that out of your head. You talk as though you didn't know."
Carrie looked at him a moment, her eyes distending. She had believed it was all legal and binding enough.
"What did you lie to me for, then?" she asked, fiercely. "What did you force me to run away with you for?"
Her voice became almost a sob.
"Force!" he said, with curled lip. "A lot of forcing I did."
"Oh!" said Carrie, breaking under the strain, and turning. "Oh, oh!" and she hurried into the front room.
Hurstwood was now hot and waked up. It was a great shaking up for him, both mental and moral. He wiped his brow as he looked around, and then went for his clothes and dressed. Not a sound came from Carrie; she ceased sobbing when she heard him dressing. She thought, at first, with the faintest alarm, of being left without money-not of losing him, though he might be going away permanently. She heard him open the top of the wardrobe and take out his hat. Then the dining-room door closed, and she knew he had gone.
After a few moments of silence, she stood up, dry-eyed, and looked out the window. Hurstwood was just strolling up the street, from the flat, toward Sixth Avenue.
The latter made progress along Thirteenth and across Fourteenth Street to Union Square.
"Look for work!" he said to himself. "Look for work! She tells me to get out and look for work."
He tried to shield himself from his own mental accusation, which told him that she was right.
"What a cursed thing that Mrs. Vance's call was, anyhow," he thought. "Stood right there, and looked me over. I know what she was thinking."
He remembered the few times he had seen her in Seventy-eight Street. She was always a swell-looker, and he had tried to put on the air of being worthy of such as she, in front of her. Now, to think she had caught him looking this way. He wrinkled his forehead in his distress.
"The devil!" he said a dozen times in an hour.
It was a quarter after four when he left the house. Carrie was in tears. There would be no dinner that night.
"What the deuce," he said, swaggering mentally to hide his own shame from himself. "I'm not so bad. I'm not down yet."
He looked around the square, and seeing the several large hotels, decided to go to one for dinner. He would get his papers and make himself comfortable there.
He ascended into the fine parlour of the Morton House, then one of the best New York hotels, and, finding a cushioned seat, read. It did not trouble him much that his decreasing sum of money did not allow of such extravagance. Like the morphine fiend, he was becoming addicted to his ease. Anything to relieve his mental distress, to satisfy his craving for comfort. He must do it. No thoughts for the morrow-he could not stand to think of it any more than he could of any other calamity. Like the certainty of death, he tried to shut the certainty of soon being without a dollar completely out of his mind, and he came very near doing it.
Well-dressed guests moving to and fro over the thick carpets carried him back to the old days. A young lady, a guest of the house, playing a piano in an alcove pleased him. He sat there reading.
His dinner cost him $1.50. By eight o'clock he was through, and then, seeing guests leaving and the crowd of pleasure-seekers thickening outside wondered where he should go. Not home. Carrie would be up. No, he would not go back there this evening. He would stay out and knock around as a man who was independent-not broke-well might. He bought a cigar, and went outside on the corner where other individuals were lounging-brokers, racing people, thespians-his own flesh and blood. As he stood there, he thought of the old evenings in Chicago, and how he used to dispose of them. Many's the game he had had. This took him to poker.
"I didn't do that thing right the other day," he thought, referring to his loss of sixty dollars. "I shouldn't have weakened. I could have bluffed that fellow down. I wasn't in form, that's what ailed me."
Then he studied the possibilities of the game as it had been played, and began to figure how he might have won, in several instances, by bluffing a little harder.
"I'm old enough to play poker and do something with it. I'll try my hand to-night."
Visions of a big stake floated before him. Supposing he did win a couple of hundred, wouldn't he be in it? Lots of sports he knew made their living at this game, and a good living, too.
"They always had as much as I had," he thought.
So off he went to a poker room in the neighbourhood, feeling much as he had in the old days. In this period of self-forgetfulness, aroused first by the shock of argument and perfected by a dinner in the hotel, with cocktails and cigars, he was as nearly like the old Hurstwood as he would ever be again. It was not the old Hurstwood-only a man arguing with a divided conscience and lured by a phantom.
This poker room was much like the other one, only it was a back room in a better drinking resort. Hurstwood watched a while, and then, seeing an interesting game, joined in. As before, it went easy for a while, he winning a few times and cheering up, losing a few pots and growing more interested and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured, on a trifling hand, to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. To his self-satisfaction intense and strong, he did it.
In the height of this feeling he began to think his luck was with him. No one else had done so well. Now came another moderate hand, and again he tried to open the jack-pot on it. There were others there who were almost reading his heart, so close was their observation.
"I have three of a kind," said one of the players to himself. "I'll just stay with that fellow to the finish."
The result was that bidding began.
"I raise you ten."
"Good."
"Ten more."
"Good."
"Ten again."
"Right you are."
It got to where Hurstwood had seventy-five dollars up. The other man really became serious. Perhaps this individual really did have a stiff hand.
"I call," he said.
Hurstwood showed his hand. He was done. The bitter fact that he had lost seventy-five dollars made him desperate.
"Let's have another pot," he said, grimly.
"All right," said the man.
Some of the other players quit, but observant loungers took their places. Time passed, and it came to twelve o'clock. Hurstwood held on, neither winning nor losing much. Then he grew weary, and on a last hand lost twenty more. He was sick at heart.
At a quarter after one in the morning he came out of the place. The chill, bare streets seemed a mockery of his state. He walked slowly west, little thinking of his row with Carrie. He ascended the stairs and went into his room as if there had been no trouble. It was his loss that occupied his mind. Sitting down on the bedside he counted his money. There was now but a hundred and ninety dollars and some change. He put it up and began to undress.
"I wonder what's getting into me, anyhow?" he said.
In the morning Carrie scarcely spoke and he felt as if he must go out again. He had treated her badly, but he could not afford to make up. Now desperation seized him, and for a day or two, going out thus, he lived like a gentleman-or what he conceived to be a gentleman-which took money. For his escapades he was soon poorer in mind and body, to say nothing of his purse, which had lost thirty by the process. Then he came down to cold, bitter sense again.
"The rent man comes to-day," said Carrie, greeting him thus indifferently three mornings later.
"He does?"
"Yes; this is the second," answered Carrie.
Hurstwood frowned. Then in despair he got out his purse.
"It seems an awful lot to pay for rent," he said.
He was nearing his last hundred dollars.
Chapter XXXVII. THE SPIRIT AWAKENS: NEW SEARCH FOR THE GATE
It would be useless to explain how in due time the last fifty dollars was in sight. The seven hundred, by his process of handling, had only carried them into June. Before the final hundred mark was reached he began to indicate that a calamity was approaching.
"I don't know," he said one day, taking a trivial expenditure for meat as a text, "it seems to take an awful lot for us to live."
"It doesn't seem to me," said Carrie, "that we spend very much."
"My money is nearly gone," he said, "and I hardly know where it's gone to."
"All that seven hundred dollars?" asked Carrie.
"All but a hundred."
He looked so disconsolate that it scared her. She began to see that she herself had been drifting. She had felt it all the time.
"Well, George," she exclaimed, "why don't you get out and look for something? You could find something."
"I have looked," he said. "You can't make people give you a place."
She gazed weakly at him and said: "Well, what do you think you will do? A hundred dollars won't last long."
"I don't know," he said. "I can't do any more than look."
Carrie became frightened over this announcement. She thought desperately upon the subject. Frequently she had considered the stage as a door through which she might enter that gilded state which she had so much craved. Now, as in Chicago, it came as a last resource in distress. Something must be done if he did not get work soon. Perhaps she would have to go out and battle again alone.
She began to wonder how one would go about getting a place. Her experience in Chicago proved that she had not tried the right way. There must be people who would listen to and try you-men who would give you an opportunity.
They were talking at the breakfast table, a morning or two later, when she brought up the dramatic subject by saying that she saw that Sarah Bernhardt was coming to this country. Hurstwood had seen it, too.
"How do people get on the stage, George?" she finally asked, innocently.
"I don't know," he said. "There must be dramatic agents."
Carrie was sipping coffee, and did not look up.
"Regular people who get you a place?"
"Yes, I think so," he answered.
Suddenly the air with which she asked attracted his attention.
"You're not still thinking about being an actress, are you?" he asked.
"No," she answered, "I was just wondering."
Without being clear, there was something in the thought which he objected to. He did not believe any more, after three years of observation, that Carrie would ever do anything great in that line. She seemed too simple, too yielding. His idea of the art was that it involved something more pompous. If she tried to get on the stage she would fall into the hands of some cheap manager and become like the rest of them. He had a good idea of what he meant by them. Carrie was pretty. She would get along all right, but where would he be?
"I'd get that idea out of my head, if I were you. It's a lot more difficult than you think."
Carrie felt this to contain, in some way, an aspersion upon her ability.
"You said I did real well in Chicago," she rejoined.
"You did," he answered, seeing that he was arousing opposition, "but Chicago isn't New York, by a big jump."
Carrie did not answer this at all. It hurt her.
"The stage," he went on, "is all right if you can be one of the big guns, but there's nothing to the rest of it. It takes a long while to get up."
"Oh, I don't know," said Carrie, slightly aroused.
In a flash, he thought he foresaw the result of this thing. Now, when the worst of his situation was approaching, she would get on the stage in some cheap way and forsake him. Strangely, he had not conceived well of her mental ability. That was because he did not understand the nature of emotional greatness. He had never learned that a person might be emotionally-instead of intellectually-great. Avery Hall was too far away for him to look back and sharply remember. He had lived with this woman too long.
"Well, I do," he answered. "If I were you I wouldn't think of it. It's not much of a profession for a woman."
"It's better than going hungry," said Carrie. "If you don't want me to do that, why don't you get work yourself?"
There was no answer ready for this. He had got used to the suggestion.
"Oh, let up," he answered.
The result of this was that she secretly resolved to try. It didn't matter about him. She was not going to be dragged into poverty and something worse to suit him. She could act. She could get something and then work up. What would he say then? She pictured herself already appearing in some fine performance on Broadway; of going every evening to her dressing-room and making up. Then she would come out at eleven o'clock and see the carriages ranged about, waiting for the people. It did not matter whether she was the star or not. If she were only once in, getting a decent salary, wearing the kind of clothes she liked, having the money to do with, going here and there as she pleased, how delightful it would all be. Her mind ran over this picture all the day long. Hurstwood's dreary state made its beauty become more and more vivid.
Curiously this idea soon took hold of Hurstwood. His vanishing sum suggested that he would need sustenance. Why could not Carrie assist him a little until he could get something?
He came in one day with something of this idea in his mind.
"I met John B. Drake to-day," he said. "He's going to open a hotel here in the fall. He says that he can make a place for me then."
"Who is he?" asked Carrie.
"He's the man that runs the Grand Pacific in Chicago."
"Oh," said Carrie.
"I'd get about fourteen hundred a year out of that."
"That would be good, wouldn't it?" she said, sympathetically.
"If I can only get over this summer," he added, "I think I'll be all right. I'm hearing from some of my friends again."
Carrie swallowed this story in all its pristine beauty. She sincerely wished he could get through the summer. He looked so hopeless.
"How much money have you left?"
"Only fifty dollars."
"Oh, mercy," she exclaimed, "what will we do? It's only twenty days until the rent will be due again."
Hurstwood rested his head on his hands and looked blankly at the floor.
"Maybe you could get something in the stage line?" he blandly suggested.
"Maybe I could," said Carrie, glad that some one approved of the idea.
"I'll lay my hand to whatever I can get," he said, now that he saw her brighten up. "I can get something."
She cleaned up the things one morning after he had gone, dressed as neatly as her wardrobe permitted, and set out for Broadway. She did not know that thoroughfare very well. To her it was a wonderful conglomeration of everything great and mighty. The theatres were there-these agencies must be somewhere about.
She decided to stop in at the Madison Square Theatre and ask how to find the theatrical agents. This seemed the sensible way. Accordingly, when she reached that theatre she applied to the clerk at the box office.
"Eh?" he said, looking out. "Dramatic agents? I don't know. You'll find them in the 'Clipper,' though. They all advertise in that."
"Is that a paper?" said Carrie.
"Yes," said the clerk, marvelling at such ignorance of a common fact. "You can get it at the news-stands," he added politely, seeing how pretty the inquirer was.
Carrie proceeded to get the "Clipper," and tried to find the agents by looking over it as she stood beside the stand. This could not be done so easily. Thirteenth Street was a number of blocks off, but she went back, carrying the precious paper and regretting the waste of time.
Hurstwood was already there, sitting in his place.
"Where were you?" he asked.
"I've been trying to find some dramatic agents."
He felt a little diffident about asking concerning her success. The paper she began to scan attracted his attention.
"What have you got there?" he asked.
"The 'Clipper.' The man said I'd find their addresses in here."
"Have you been all the way over to Broadway to find that out? I could have told you."
"Why didn't you?" she asked, without looking up.
"You never asked me," he returned.
She went hunting aimlessly through the crowded columns. Her mind was distracted by this man's indifference. The difficulty of the situation she was facing was only added to by all he did. Self-commiseration brewed in her heart. Tears trembled along her eyelids but did not fall. Hurstwood noticed something.
"Let me look."
To recover herself she went into the front room while he searched. Presently she returned. He had a pencil, and was writing upon an envelope.
"Here're three," he said.
Carrie took it and found that one was Mrs. Bermudez, another Marcus Jenks, a third Percy Weil. She paused only a moment, and then moved toward the door.
"I might as well go right away," she said, without looking back.
Hurstwood saw her depart with some faint stirrings of shame, which were the expression of a manhood rapidly becoming stultified. He sat a while, and then it became too much. He got up and put on his hat.
"I guess I'll go out," he said to himself, and went, strolling nowhere in particular, but feeling somehow that he must go.
Carrie's first call was upon Mrs. Bermudez, whose address was quite the nearest. It was an old-fashioned residence turned into offices. Mrs. Bermudez's offices consisted of what formerly had been a back chamber and a hall bedroom, marked "Private."
As Carrie entered she noticed several persons lounging about-men, who said nothing and did nothing.
While she was waiting to be noticed, the door of the hall bedroom opened and from it issued two very mannish-looking women, very tightly dressed, and wearing white collars and cuffs. After them came a portly lady of about forty-five, light-haired, sharp-eyed, and evidently good-natured. At least she was smiling.
"Now, don't forget about that," said one of the mannish women.
"I won't," said the portly woman. "Let's see," she added, "where are you the first week in February?"
"Pittsburg," said the woman.
"I'll write you there."
"All right," said the other, and the two passed out.
Instantly the portly lady's face became exceedingly sober and shrewd. She turned about and fixed on Carrie a very searching eye.
"Well," she said, "young woman, what can I do for you?"
"Are you Mrs. Bermudez?"
"Yes."
"Well," said Carrie, hesitating how to begin, "do you get places for persons upon the stage?"
"Yes."
"Could you get me one?"
"Have you ever had any experience?"
"A very little," said Carrie.
"Whom did you play with?"
"Oh, with no one," said Carrie. "It was just a show gotten-"
"Oh, I see," said the woman, interrupting her. "No, I don't know of anything now."
Carrie's countenance fell.
"You want to get some New York experience," concluded the affable Mrs. Bermudez. "We'll take your name, though."
Carrie stood looking while the lady retired to her office.
"What is your address?" inquired a young lady behind the counter, taking up the curtailed conversation.
"Mrs. George Wheeler," said Carrie, moving over to where she was writing. The woman wrote her address in full and then allowed her to depart at her leisure.
She encountered a very similar experience in the office of Mr. Jenks, only he varied it by saying at the close: "If you could play at some local house, or had a programme with your name on it, I might do something."
In the third place the individual asked:
"What sort of work do you want to do?"
"What do you mean?" said Carrie.
"Well, do you want to get in a comedy or on the vaudeville stage or in the chorus?"
"Oh, I'd like to get a part in a play," said Carrie.
"Well," said the man, "it'll cost you something to do that."
"How much?" said Carrie, who, ridiculous as it may seem, had not thought of this before.
"Well, that's for you to say," he answered shrewdly.
Carrie looked at him curiously. She hardly knew how to continue the inquiry.
"Could you get me a part if I paid?"
"If we didn't you'd get your money back."
"Oh," she said.
The agent saw he was dealing with an inexperienced soul, and continued accordingly.
"You'd want to deposit fifty dollars, anyway. No agent would trouble about you for less than that."
Carrie saw a light.
"Thank you," she said. "I'll think about it."
She started to go, and then bethought herself.
"How soon would I get a place?" she asked.
"Well, that's hard to say," said the man. "You might get one in a week, or it might be a month. You'd get the first thing that we thought you could do."
"I see," said Carrie, and then, half-smiling to be agreeable, she walked out.
The agent studied a moment, and then said to himself:
"It's funny how anxious these women are to get on the stage."
Carrie found ample food for reflection in the fifty-dollar proposition. "Maybe they'd take my money and not give me anything," she thought. She had some jewelry-a diamond ring and pin and several other pieces. She could get fifty dollars for those if she went to a pawnbroker.
Hurstwood was home before her. He had not thought she would be so long seeking.
"Well?" he said, not venturing to ask what news.
"I didn't find out anything to-day," said Carrie, taking off her gloves. "They all want money to get you a place."
"How much?" asked Hurstwood.
"Fifty dollars."
"They don't want anything, do they?"
"Oh, they're like everybody else. You can't tell whether they'd ever get you anything after you did pay them."
"Well, I wouldn't put up fifty on that basis," said Hurstwood, as if he were deciding, money in hand.
"I don't know," said Carrie. "I think I'll try some of the managers."
Hurstwood heard this, dead to the horror of it. He rocked a little to and fro, and chewed at his finger. It seemed all very natural in such extreme states. He would do better later on.
Chapter XXXVIII. IN ELF LAND DISPORTING: THE GRIM WORLD WITHOUT
When Carrie renewed her search, as she did the next day, going to the Casino, she found that in the opera chorus, as in other fields, employment is difficult to secure. Girls who can stand in a line and look pretty are as numerous as labourers who can swing a pick. She found there was no discrimination between one and the other of applicants, save as regards a conventional standard of prettiness and form. Their own opinion or knowledge of their ability went for nothing.
"Where shall I find Mr. Gray?" she asked of a sulky doorman at the stage entrance of the Casino.
"You can't see him now; he's busy."
"Do you know when I can see him?"
"Got an appointment with him?"
"No."
"Well, you'll have to call at his office."
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Carrie. "Where is his office?"
He gave her the number.
She knew there was no need of calling there now. He would not be in. Nothing remained but to employ the intermediate hours in search.
The dismal story of ventures in other places is quickly told. Mr. Daly saw no one save by appointment. Carrie waited an hour in a dingy office, quite in spite of obstacles, to learn this fact of the placid, indifferent Mr. Dorney.
"You will have to write and ask him to see you."
So she went away.
At the Empire Theatre she found a hive of peculiarly listless and indifferent individuals. Everything ornately upholstered, everything carefully finished, everything remarkably reserved.
At the Lyceum she entered one of those secluded, under-stairway closets, berugged and bepaneled, which causes one to feel the greatness of all positions of authority. Here was reserve itself done into a box-office clerk, a doorman, and an assistant, glorying in their fine positions.
"Ah, be very humble now-very humble indeed. Tell us what it is you require. Tell it quickly, nervously, and without a vestige of self-respect. If no trouble to us in any way, we may see what we can do."
This was the atmosphere of the Lyceum-the attitude, for that matter, of every managerial office in the city. These little proprietors of businesses are lords indeed on their own ground.
Carrie came away wearily, somewhat more abashed for her pains.
Hurstwood heard the details of the weary and unavailing search that evening.
"I didn't get to see any one," said Carrie. "I just walked, and walked, and waited around."
Hurstwood only looked at her.
"I suppose you have to have some friends before you can get in," she added, disconsolately.
Hurstwood saw the difficulty of this thing, and yet it did not seem so terrible. Carrie was tired and dispirited, but now she could rest. Viewing the world from his rocking-chair, its bitterness did not seem to approach so rapidly. To-morrow was another day.
To-morrow came, and the next, and the next.
Carrie saw the manager at the Casino once.
"Come around," he said, "the first of next week. I may make some changes then."
He was a large and corpulent individual, surfeited with good clothes and good eating, who judged women as another would horseflesh. Carrie was pretty and graceful. She might be put in even if she did not have any experience. One of the proprietors had suggested that the chorus was a little weak on looks.
The first of next week was some days off yet. The first of the month was drawing near. Carrie began to worry as she had never worried before.
"Do you really look for anything when you go out?" she asked Hurstwood one morning as a climax to some painful thoughts of her own.
"Of course I do," he said pettishly, troubling only a little over the disgrace of the insinuation.
"I'd take anything," she said, "for the present. It will soon be the first of the month again."
She looked the picture of despair.
Hurstwood quit reading his paper and changed his clothes.
"He would look for something," he thought. "He would go and see if some brewery couldn't get him in somewhere. Yes, he would take a position as bartender, if he could get it."
It was the same sort of pilgrimage he had made before. One or two slight rebuffs, and the bravado disappeared.
"No use," he thought. "I might as well go on back home."
Now that his money was so low, he began to observe his clothes and feel that even his best ones were beginning to look commonplace. This was a bitter thought.
Carrie came in after he did.
"I went to see some of the variety managers," she said, aimlessly. "You have to have an act. They don't want anybody that hasn't."
"I saw some of the brewery people to-day," said Hurstwood. "One man told me he'd try to make a place for me in two or three weeks."
In the face of so much distress on Carrie's part, he had to make some showing, and it was thus he did so. It was lassitude's apology to energy.
Monday Carrie went again to the Casino.
"Did I tell you to come around to-day?" said the manager, looking her over as she stood before him.
"You said the first of the week," said Carrie, greatly abashed.
"Ever had any experience?" he asked again, almost severely.
Carrie owned to ignorance.
He looked her over again as he stirred among some papers. He was secretly pleased with this pretty, disturbed-looking young woman. "Come around to the theatre to-morrow morning."
Carrie's heart bounded to her throat.
"I will," she said with difficulty. She could see he wanted her, and turned to go.
"Would he really put her to work? Oh, blessed fortune, could it be?"
Already the hard rumble of the city through the open windows became pleasant.
A sharp voice answered her mental interrogation, driving away all immediate fears on that score.
"Be sure you're there promptly," the manager said roughly. "You'll be dropped if you're not."
Carrie hastened away. She did not quarrel now with Hurstwood's idleness. She had a place-she had a place! This sang in her ears.
In her delight she was almost anxious to tell Hurstwood. But, as she walked homeward, and her survey of the facts of the case became larger, she began to think of the anomaly of her finding work in several weeks and his lounging in idleness for a number of months.
"Why don't he get something?" she openly said to herself. "If I can he surely ought to. It wasn't very hard for me."
She forgot her youth and her beauty. The handicap of age she did not, in her enthusiasm, perceive.
Thus, ever, the voice of success. Still, she could not keep her secret. She tried to be calm and indifferent, but it was a palpable sham.
"Well?" he said, seeing her relieved face.
"I have a place."
"You have?" he said, breathing a better breath.
"Yes."
"What sort of a place is it?" he asked, feeling in his veins as if now he might get something good also.
"In the chorus," she answered.
"Is it the Casino show you told me about?"
"Yes," she answered. "I begin rehearsing to-morrow."
There was more explanation volunteered by Carrie, because she was happy. At last Hurstwood said:
"Do you know how much you'll get?"
"No, I didn't want to ask," said Carrie. "I guess they pay twelve or fourteen dollars a week."
"About that, I guess," said Hurstwood.
There was a good dinner in the flat that evening, owing to the mere lifting of the terrible strain. Hurstwood went out for a shave, and returned with a fair-sized sirloin steak.
"Now, to-morrow," he thought, "I'll look around myself," and with renewed hope he lifted his eyes from the ground.
On the morrow Carrie reported promptly and was given a place in the line. She saw a large, empty, shadowy play-house, still redolent of the perfumes and blazonry of the night, and notable for its rich, oriental appearance. The wonder of it awed and delighted her. Blessed be its wondrous reality. How hard she would try to be worthy of it. It was above the common mass, above idleness, above want, above insignificance. People came to it in finery and carriages to see. It was ever a centre of light and mirth. And here she was of it. Oh, if she could only remain, how happy would be her days!
"What is your name?" said the manager, who was conducting the drill.
"Madenda," she replied, instantly mindful of the name Drouet had selected in Chicago. "Carrie Madenda."
"Well, now, Miss Madenda," he said, very affably, as Carrie thought, "you go over there."
Then he called to a young woman who was already of the company:
"Miss Clark, you pair with Miss Madenda."
This young lady stepped forward, so that Carrie saw where to go, and the rehearsal began.
Carrie soon found that while this drilling had some slight resemblance to the rehearsals as conducted at Avery Hall, the attitude of the manager was much more pronounced. She had marvelled at the insistence and superior airs of Mr. Millice, but the individual conducting here had the same insistence, coupled with almost brutal roughness. As the drilling proceeded, he seemed to wax exceedingly wroth over trifles, and to increase his lung power in proportion. It was very evident that he had a great contempt for any assumption of dignity or innocence on the part of these young women.
"Clark," he would call-meaning, of course, Miss Clark-"why don't you catch step there?"
"By fours, right! Right, I said, right! For heaven's sake, get on to yourself! Right!" and in saying this he would lift the last sounds into a vehement roar.
"Maitland! Maitland!" he called once.
A nervous, comely-dressed little girl stepped out. Carrie trembled for her out of the fulness of her own sympathies and fear.
"Yes, sir," said Miss Maitland.
"Is there anything the matter with your ears?"
"No, sir."
"Do you know what 'column left' means?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, what are you stumbling around the right for? Want to break up the line?"
"I was just-"
"Never mind what you were just. Keep your ears open."
Carrie pitied, and trembled for her turn.
Yet another suffered the pain of personal rebuke.
"Hold on a minute," cried the manager, throwing up his hands, as if in despair. His demeanour was fierce.
"Elvers," he shouted, "what have you got in your mouth?"
"Nothing," said Miss Elvers, while some smiled and stood nervously by.
"Well, are you talking?"
"No, sir."
"Well, keep your mouth still then. Now, all together again."
At last Carrie's turn came. It was because of her extreme anxiety to do all that was required that brought on the trouble.
She heard some one called.
"Mason," said the voice. "Miss Mason."
She looked around to see who it could be. A girl behind shoved her a little, but she did not understand.
"You, you!" said the manager. "Can't you hear?"
"Oh," said Carrie, collapsing, and blushing fiercely.
"Isn't your name Mason?" asked the manager.
"No, sir," said Carrie, "it's Madenda."
"Well, what's the matter with your feet? Can't you dance?"
"Yes, sir," said Carrie, who had long since learned this art.
"Why don't you do it then? Don't go shuffling along as if you were dead. I've got to have people with life in them."
Carrie's cheek burned with a crimson heat. Her lips trembled a little.
"Yes, sir," she said.
It was this constant urging, coupled with irascibility and energy, for three long hours. Carrie came away worn enough in body, but too excited in mind to notice it. She meant to go home and practise her evolutions as prescribed. She would not err in any way, if she could help it.
When she reached the flat Hurstwood was not there. For a wonder he was out looking for work, as she supposed. She took only a mouthful to eat and then practised on, sustained by visions of freedom from financial distress-"The sound of glory ringing in her ears."
When Hurstwood returned he was not so elated as when he went away, and now she was obliged to drop practice and get dinner. Here was an early irritation. She would have her work and this. Was she going to act and keep house?
"I'll not do it," she said, "after I get started. He can take his meals out."
Each day thereafter brought its cares. She found it was not such a wonderful thing to be in the chorus, and she also learned that her salary would be twelve dollars a week. After a few days she had her first sight of those high and mighties-the leading ladies and gentlemen. She saw that they were privileged and deferred to. She was nothing-absolutely nothing at all.
At home was Hurstwood, daily giving her cause for thought. He seemed to get nothing to do, and yet he made bold to inquire how she was getting along. The regularity with which he did this smacked of some one who was waiting to live upon her labour. Now that she had a visible means of support, this irritated her. He seemed to be depending upon her little twelve dollars.
"How are you getting along?" he would blandly inquire.
"Oh, all right," she would reply.
"Find it easy?"
"It will be all right when I get used to it."
His paper would then engross his thoughts.
"I got some lard," he would add, as an afterthought. "I thought maybe you might want to make some biscuit."
The calm suggestion of the man astonished her a little, especially in the light of recent developments. Her dawning independence gave her more courage to observe, and she felt as if she wanted to say things. Still she could not talk to him as she had to Drouet. There was something in the man's manner of which she had always stood in awe. He seemed to have some invisible strength in reserve.
One day, after her first week's rehearsal, what she expected came openly to the surface.
"We'll have to be rather saving," he said, laying down some meat he had purchased. "You won't get any money for a week or so yet."
"No," said Carrie, who was stirring a pan at the stove.
"I've only got the rent and thirteen dollars more," he added.
"That's it," she said to herself. "I'm to use my money now."
Instantly she remembered that she had hoped to buy a few things for herself. She needed clothes. Her hat was not nice.
"What will twelve dollars do towards keeping up this flat?" she thought. "I can't do it. Why doesn't he get something to do?"
The important night of the first real performance came. She did not suggest to Hurstwood that he come and see. He did not think of going. It would only be money wasted. She had such a small part.
The advertisements were already in the papers; the posters upon the bill-boards. The leading lady and many members were cited. Carrie was nothing.
As in Chicago, she was seized with stage fright as the very first entrance of the ballet approached, but later she recovered. The apparent and painful insignificance of the part took fear away from her. She felt that she was so obscure it did not matter. Fortunately, she did not have to wear tights. A group of twelve were assigned pretty golden-hued skirts which came only to a line about an inch above the knee. Carrie happened to be one of the twelve.
In standing about the stage, marching, and occasionally lifting up her voice in the general chorus, she had a chance to observe the audience and to see the inauguration of a great hit. There was plenty of applause, but she could not help noting how poorly some of the women of alleged ability did.
"I could do better than that," Carrie ventured to herself, in several instances. To do her justice, she was right.
After it was over she dressed quickly, and as the manager had scolded some others and passed her, she imagined she must have proved satisfactory. She wanted to get out quickly, because she knew but few, and the stars were gossiping. Outside were carriages and some correct youths in attractive clothing, waiting. Carrie saw that she was scanned closely. The flutter of an eyelash would have brought her a companion. That she did not give.
One experienced youth volunteered, anyhow.
"Not going home alone, are you?" he said.
Carrie merely hastened her steps and took the Sixth Avenue car. Her head was so full of the wonder of it that she had time for nothing else.
"Did you hear any more from the brewery?" she asked at the end of the week, hoping by the question to stir him on to action.
"No," he answered, "they're not quite ready yet. I think something will come of that, though."
She said nothing more then, objecting to giving up her own money, and yet feeling that such would have to be the case. Hurstwood felt the crisis, and artfully decided to appeal to Carrie. He had long since realised how good-natured she was, how much she would stand. There was some little shame in him at the thought of doing so, but he justified himself with the thought that he really would get something. Rent day gave him his opportunity.
"Well," he said, as he counted it out, "that's about the last of my money. I'll have to get something pretty soon."
Carrie looked at him askance, half-suspicious of an appeal.
"If I could only hold out a little longer I think I could get something. Drake is sure to open a hotel here in September."
"Is he?" said Carrie, thinking of the short month that still remained until that time.
"Would you mind helping me out until then?" he said appealingly. "I think I'll be all right after that time."
"No," said Carrie, feeling sadly handicapped by fate.
"We can get along if we economise. I'll pay you back all right."
"Oh, I'll help you," said Carrie, feeling quite hardhearted at thus forcing him to humbly appeal, and yet her desire for the benefit of her earnings wrung a faint protest from her.
"Why don't you take anything, George, temporarily?" she said. "What difference does it make? Maybe, after a while, you'll get something better."
"I will take anything," he said, relieved, and wincing under reproof. "I'd just as leave dig on the streets. Nobody knows me here."
"Oh, you needn't do that," said Carrie, hurt by the pity of it. "But there must be other things."
"I'll get something!" he said, assuming determination.
Then he went back to his paper.
Chapter XXXIX. OF LIGHTS AND OF SHADOWS: THE PARTING OF WORLDS
What Hurstwood got as the result of this determination was more self-assurance that each particular day was not the day. At the same time, Carrie passed through thirty days of mental distress.
Her need of clothes-to say nothing of her desire for ornaments-grew rapidly as the fact developed that for all her work she was not to have them. The sympathy she felt for Hurstwood, at the time he asked her to tide him over, vanished with these newer urgings of decency. He was not always renewing his request, but this love of good appearance was. It insisted, and Carrie wished to satisfy it, wished more and more that Hurstwood was not in the way.
Hurstwood reasoned, when he neared the last ten dollars, that he had better keep a little pocket change and not become wholly dependent for car-fare, shaves, and the like; so when this sum was still in his hand he announced himself as penniless.
"I'm clear out," he said to Carrie one afternoon. "I paid for some coal this morning, and that took all but ten or fifteen cents."
"I've got some money there in my purse."
Hurstwood went to get it, starting for a can of tomatoes. Carrie scarcely noticed that this was the beginning of the new order. He took out fifteen cents and bought the can with it. Thereafter it was dribs and drabs of this sort, until one morning Carrie suddenly remembered that she would not be back until close to dinner time.
"We're all out of flour," she said; "you'd better get some this afternoon. We haven't any meat, either. How would it do if we had liver and bacon?"
"Suits me," said Hurstwood.
"Better get a half or three-quarters of a pound of that."
"Half 'll be enough," volunteered Hurstwood.
She opened her purse and laid down a half dollar. He pretended not to notice it.
Hurstwood bought the flour-which all grocers sold in 3½-pound packages-for thirteen cents and paid fifteen cents for a half-pound of liver and bacon. He left the packages, together with the balance of twenty-two cents, upon the kitchen table, where Carrie found it. It did not escape her that the change was accurate. There was something sad in realising that, after all, all that he wanted of her was something to eat. She felt as if hard thoughts were unjust. Maybe he would get something yet. He had no vices.
That very evening, however, on going into the theatre, one of the chorus girls passed her all newly arrayed in a pretty mottled tweed suit, which took Carrie's eye. The young woman wore a fine bunch of violets and seemed in high spirits. She smiled at Carrie good-naturedly as she passed, showing pretty, even teeth, and Carrie smiled back.
"She can afford to dress well," thought Carrie, "and so could I, if I could only keep my money. I haven't a decent tie of any kind to wear."
She put out her foot and looked at her shoe reflectively. "I'll get a pair of shoes Saturday, anyhow; I don't care what happens."
One of the sweetest and most sympathetic little chorus girls in the company made friends with her because in Carrie she found nothing to frighten her away. She was a gay little Manon, unwitting of society's fierce conception of morality, but, nevertheless, good to her neighbour and charitable. Little license was allowed the chorus in the matter of conversation, but, nevertheless, some was indulged in.
"It's warm to-night, isn't it?" said this girl, arrayed in pink fleshings and an imitation golden helmet. She also carried a shining shield.
"Yes; it is," said Carrie, pleased that some one should talk to her.
"I'm almost roasting," said the girl.
Carrie looked into her pretty face, with its large blue eyes, and saw little beads of moisture.
"There's more marching in this opera than ever I did before," added the girl.
"Have you been in others?" asked Carrie, surprised at her experience.
"Lots of them," said the girl; "haven't you?"
"This is my first experience."
"Oh, is it? I thought I saw you the time they ran 'The Queen's Mate' here."
"No," said Carrie, shaking her head; "not me."
This conversation was interrupted by the blare of the orchestra and the sputtering of the calcium lights in the wings as the line was called to form for a new entrance. No further opportunity for conversation occurred, but the next evening, when they were getting ready for the stage, this girl appeared anew at her side.
"They say this show is going on the road next month."
"Is it?" said Carrie.
"Yes; do you think you'll go?"
"I don't know; I guess so, if they'll take me."
"Oh, they'll take you. I wouldn't go. They won't give you any more, and it will cost you everything you make to live. I never leave New York. There are too many shows going on here."
"Can you always get in another show?"
"I always have. There's one going on up at the Broadway this month. I'm going to try and get in that if this one really goes."
Carrie heard this with aroused intelligence. Evidently it wasn't so very difficult to get on. Maybe she also could get a place if this show went away. "Do they all pay about the same?" she asked.
"Yes. Sometimes you get a little more. This show doesn't pay very much."
"I get twelve," said Carrie.
"Do you?" said the girl. "They pay me fifteen, and you do more work than I do. I wouldn't stand it if I were you. They're just giving you less because they think you don't know. You ought to be making fifteen."
"Well, I'm not," said Carrie.
"Well, you'll get more at the next place if you want it," went on the girl, who admired Carrie very much. "You do fine, and the manager knows it."
To say the truth, Carrie did unconsciously move about with an air pleasing and somewhat distinctive. It was due wholly to her natural manner and total lack of self-consciousness.
"Do you suppose I could get more up at the Broadway?"
"Of course you can," answered the girl. "You come with me when I go. I'll do the talking."
Carrie heard this, flushing with thankfulness. She liked this little gaslight soldier. She seemed so experienced and self-reliant in her tinsel helmet and military accoutrements.
"My future must be assured if I can always get work this way," thought Carrie.
Still, in the morning, when her household duties would infringe upon her and Hurstwood sat there, a perfect load to contemplate, her fate seemed dismal and unrelieved. It did not take so very much to feed them under Hurstwood's close-measured buying, and there would possibly be enough for rent, but it left nothing else. Carrie bought the shoes and some other things, which complicated the rent problem very seriously. Suddenly, a week from the fatal day, Carrie realised that they were going to run short.
"I don't believe," she exclaimed, looking into her purse at breakfast, "that I'll have enough to pay the rent."
"How much have you?" inquired Hurstwood.
"Well, I've got twenty-two dollars, but there's everything to be paid for this week yet, and if I use all I get Saturday to pay this, there won't be any left for next week. Do you think your hotel man will open his hotel this month?"
"I think so," returned Hurstwood. "He said he would."
After a while, Hurstwood said:
"Don't worry about it. Maybe the grocer will wait. He can do that. We've traded there long enough to make him trust us for a week or two."
"Do you think he will?" she asked.
"I think so." On this account, Hurstwood, this very day, looked grocer Oeslogge clearly in the eye as he ordered a pound of coffee, and said:
"Do you mind carrying my account until the end of every week?"
"No, no, Mr. Wheeler," said Mr. Oeslogge. "Dat iss all right."
Hurstwood, still tactful in distress, added nothing to this. It seemed an easy thing. He looked out of the door, and then gathered up his coffee when ready and came away. The game of a desperate man had begun.
Rent was paid, and now came the grocer. Hurstwood managed by paying out of his own ten and collecting from Carrie at the end of the week. Then he delayed a day next time settling with the grocer, and so soon had his ten back, with Oeslogge getting his pay on this Thursday or Friday for last Saturday's bill.
This entanglement made Carrie anxious for a change of some sort. Hurstwood did not seem to realise that she had a right to anything. He schemed to make what she earned cover all expenses, but seemed not to trouble over adding anything himself.
"He talks about worrying," thought Carrie. "If he worried enough he couldn't sit there and wait for me. He'd get something to do. No man could go seven months without finding something if he tried."
The sight of him always around in his untidy clothes and gloomy appearance drove Carrie to seek relief in other places. Twice a week there were matinées, and then Hurstwood ate a cold snack, which he prepared himself. Two other days there were rehearsals beginning at ten in the morning and lasting usually until one. Now, to this Carrie added a few visits to one or two chorus girls, including the blue-eyed soldier of the golden helmet. She did it because it was pleasant and a relief from dulness of the home over which her husband brooded.
The blue-eyed soldier's name was Osborne-Lola Osborne. Her room was in Nineteenth Street near Fourth Avenue, a block now given up wholly to office buildings. Here she had a comfortable back room, looking over a collection of back yards in which grew a number of shade trees pleasant to see.
"Isn't your home in New York?" she asked of Lola one day.
"Yes; but I can't get along with my people. They always want me to do what they want. Do you live here?"
"Yes," said Carrie.
"With your family?"
Carrie was ashamed to say that she was married. She had talked so much about getting more salary and confessed to so much anxiety about her future, that now, when the direct question of fact was waiting, she could not tell this girl.
"With some relatives," she answered.
Miss Osborne took it for granted that, like herself, Carrie's time was her own. She invariably asked her to stay, proposing little outings and other things of that sort until Carrie began neglecting her dinner hours. Hurstwood noticed it, but felt in no position to quarrel with her. Several times she came so late as scarcely to have an hour in which to patch up a meal and start for the theatre.
"Do you rehearse in the afternoons?" Hurstwood once asked, concealing almost completely the cynical protest and regret which prompted it.
"No; I was looking around for another place," said Carrie.
As a matter of fact she was, but only in such a way as furnished the least straw of an excuse. Miss Osborne and she had gone to the office of the manager who was to produce the new opera at the Broadway and returned straight to the former's room, where they had been since three o'clock.
Carrie felt this question to be an infringement on her liberty. She did not take into account how much liberty she was securing. Only the latest step, the newest freedom, must not be questioned.
Hurstwood saw it all clearly enough. He was shrewd after his kind, and yet there was enough decency in the man to stop him from making any effectual protest. In his almost inexplicable apathy he was content to droop supinely while Carrie drifted out of his life, just as he was willing supinely to see opportunity pass beyond his control. He could not help clinging and protesting in a mild, irritating, and ineffectual way, however-a way that simply widened the breach by slow degrees.
A further enlargement of this chasm between them came when the manager, looking between the wings upon the brightly lighted stage where the chorus was going through some of its glittering evolutions, said to the master of the ballet:
"Who is that fourth girl there on the right-the one coming round at the end now?"
"Oh," said the ballet-master, "that's Miss Madenda."
"She's good looking. Why don't you let her head that line?"
"I will," said the man.
"Just do that. She'll look better there than the woman you've got."
"All right. I will do that," said the master.
The next evening Carrie was called out, much as if for an error.
"You lead your company to-night," said the master.
"Yes, sir," said Carrie.
"Put snap into it," he added. "We must have snap."
"Yes, sir," replied Carrie.
Astonished at this change, she thought that the heretofore leader must be ill; but when she saw her in the line, with a distinct expression of something unfavourable in her eye, she began to think that perhaps it was merit.
She had a chic way of tossing her head to one side, and holding her arms as if for action-not listlessly. In front of the line this showed up even more effectually.
"That girl knows how to carry herself," said the manager, another evening. He began to think that he should like to talk with her. If he hadn't made it a rule to have nothing to do with the members of the chorus, he would have approached her most unbendingly.
"Put that girl at the head of the white column," he suggested to the man in charge of the ballet.
This white column consisted of some twenty girls, all in snow-white flannel trimmed with silver and blue. Its leader was most stunningly arrayed in the same colours, elaborated, however, with epaulets and a belt of silver, with a short sword dangling at one side. Carrie was fitted for this costume, and a few days later appeared, proud of her new laurels. She was especially gratified to find that her salary was now eighteen instead of twelve.
Hurstwood heard nothing about this.
"I'll not give him the rest of my money," said Carrie. "I do enough. I am going to get me something to wear."
As a matter of fact, during this second month she had been buying for herself as recklessly as she dared, regardless of the consequences. There were impending more complications rent day, and more extension of the credit system in the neighbourhood. Now, however, she proposed to do better by herself.
Her first move was to buy a shirt waist, and in studying these she found how little her money would buy-how much, if she could only use all. She forgot that if she were alone she would have to pay for a room and board, and imagined that every cent of her eighteen could be spent for clothes and things that she liked.
At last she picked upon something, which not only used up all her surplus above twelve, but invaded that sum. She knew she was going too far, but her feminine love of finery prevailed. The next day Hurstwood said:
"We owe the grocer five dollars and forty cents this week."
"Do we?" said Carrie, frowning a little.
She looked in her purse to leave it.
"I've only got eight dollars and twenty cents altogether."
"We owe the milkman sixty cents," added Hurstwood.
"Yes, and there's the coal man," said Carrie.
Hurstwood said nothing. He had seen the new things she was buying; the way she was neglecting household duties; the readiness with which she was slipping out afternoons and staying. He felt that something was going to happen. All at once she spoke:
"I don't know," she said; "I can't do it all. I don't earn enough."
This was a direct challenge. Hurstwood had to take it up. He tried to be calm.
"I don't want you to do it all," he said. "I only want a little help until I can get something to do."
"Oh, yes," answered Carrie. "That's always the way. It takes more than I can earn to pay for things. I don't see what I'm going to do.
"Well, I've tried to get something," he exclaimed. What do you want me to do?"
"You couldn't have tried so very hard," said Carrie. "I got something."
"Well, I did," he said, angered almost to harsh words. "You needn't throw up your success to me. All I asked was a little help until I could get something. I'm not down yet. I'll come up all right."
He tried to speak steadily, but his voice trembled a little.
Carrie's anger melted on the instant. She felt ashamed.
"Well," she said, "here's the money," and emptied it out on the table. "I haven't got quite enough to pay it all. If they can wait until Saturday, though, I'll have some more."
"You keep it," said Hurstwood sadly. "I only want enough to pay the grocer."
She put it back, and proceeded to get dinner early and in good time. Her little bravado made her feel as if she ought to make amends.
In a little while their old thoughts returned to both.
"She's making more than she says," thought Hurstwood. "She says she's making twelve, but that wouldn't buy all those things. I don't care. Let her keep her money. I'll get something again one of these days. Then she can go to the deuce."
He only said this in his anger, but it prefigured a possible course of action and attitude well enough.
"I don't care," thought Carrie. "He ought to be told to get out and do something. It isn't right that I should support him."
In these days Carrie was introduced to several youths, friends of Miss Osborne, who were of the kind most aptly described as gay and festive. They called once to get Miss Osborne for an afternoon drive. Carrie was with her at the time.
"Come and go along," said Lola.
"No, I can't," said Carrie.
"Oh, yes, come and go. What have you got to do?"
"I have to be home by five," said Carrie.
"What for?"
"Oh, dinner."
"They'll take us to dinner," said Lola.
"Oh, no," said Carrie. "I won't go. I can't."
"Oh, do come. They're awful nice boys. We'll get you back in time. We're only going for a drive in Central Park." Carrie thought a while, and at last yielded.
"Now, I must be back by half-past four," she said.
The information went in one ear of Lola and out the other.
After Drouet and Hurstwood, there was the least touch of cynicism in her attitude toward young men-especially of the gay and frivolous sort. She felt a little older than they. Some of their pretty compliments seemed silly. Still, she was young in heart and body and youth appealed to her.
"Oh, we'll be right back, Miss Madenda," said one of the chaps, bowing. "You wouldn't think we'd keep you over time, now, would you?"
"Well, I don't know," said Carrie, smiling.
They were off for a drive-she, looking about and noticing fine clothing, the young men voicing those silly pleasantries and weak quips which pass for humour in coy circles. Carrie saw the great park parade of carriages, beginning at the Fifty-ninth Street entrance and winding past the Museum of Art to the exit at One Hundred and Tenth Street and Seventh Avenue. Her eye was once more taken by the show of wealth-the elaborate costumes, elegant harnesses, spirited horses, and, above all, the beauty. Once more the plague of poverty galled her, but now she forgot in a measure her own troubles so far as to forget Hurstwood. He waited until four, five, and even six. It was getting dark when he got up out of his chair.
"I guess she isn't coming home," he said, grimly.
"That's the way," he thought. "She's getting a start now. I'm out of it."
Carrie had really discovered her neglect, but only at a quarter after five, and the open carriage was now far up Seventh Avenue, near the Harlem River.
"What time is it?" she inquired. "I must be getting back."
"A quarter after five," said her companion, consulting an elegant, open-faced watch.
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Carrie. Then she settled back with a sigh. "There's no use crying over spilt milk," she said. "It's too late."
"Of course it is," said the youth, who saw visions of a fine dinner now, and such invigorating talk as would result in a reunion after the show. He was greatly taken with Carrie. "We'll drive down to Delmonico's now and have something there, won't we, Orrin?"
"To be sure," replied Orrin, gaily.
Carrie thought of Hurstwood. Never before had she neglected dinner without an excuse.
They drove back, and at 6.15 sat down to dine. It was the Sherry incident over again, the remembrance of which came painfully back to Carrie. She remembered Mrs. Vance, who had never called again after Hurstwood's reception, and Ames.
At this figure her mind halted. It was a strong, clean vision. He liked better books than she read, better people than she associated with. His ideals burned in her heart.
"It's fine to be a good actress," came distinctly back.
What sort of an actress was she?
"What are you thinking about, Miss Madenda?" inquired her merry companion. "Come, now, let's see if I can guess."
"Oh, no," said Carrie. "Don't try."
She shook it off and ate. She forgot, in part, and was merry. When it came to the after-theatre proposition, however, she shook her head.
"No," she said, "I can't. I have a previous engagement."
"Oh, now, Miss Madenda," pleaded the youth.
"No," said Carrie, "I can't. You've been so kind, but you'll have to excuse me."
The youth looked exceedingly crestfallen.
"Cheer up, old man," whispered his companion. "We'll go around, anyhow. She may change her mind."
Chapter XL. A PUBLIC DISSENSION: A FINAL APPEAL
There was no after-theatre lark, however, so far as Carrie was concerned. She made her way homeward, thinking about her absence. Hurstwood was asleep, but roused up to look as she passed through to her own bed.
"Is that you?" he said.
"Yes," she answered.
The next morning at breakfast she felt like apologising.
"I couldn't get home last evening," she said.
"Ah, Carrie," he answered, "what's the use saying that? I don't care. You needn't tell me that, though."
"I couldn't," said Carrie, her colour rising. Then, seeing that he looked as if he said "I know," she exclaimed: "Oh, all right. I don't care."
From now on, her indifference to the flat was even greater. There seemed no common ground on which they could talk to one another. She let herself be asked for expenses. It became so with him that he hated to do it. He preferred standing off the butcher and baker. He ran up a grocery bill of sixteen dollars with Oeslogge, laying in a supply of staple articles, so that they would not have to buy any of those things for some time to come. Then he changed his grocery. It was the same with the butcher and several others. Carrie never heard anything of this directly from him. He asked for such as he could expect, drifting farther and farther into a situation which could have but one ending.
In this fashion, September went by.
"Isn't Mr. Drake going to open his hotel?" Carrie asked several times.
"Yes. He won't do it before October, though, now."
Carrie became disgusted. "Such a man," she said to herself frequently. More and more she visited. She put most of her spare money in clothes, which, after all, was not an astonishing amount. At last the opera she was with announced its departure within four weeks. "Last two weeks of the Great Comic Opera success-The -," etc., was upon all billboards and in the newspapers, before she acted.
"I'm not going out on the road," said Miss Osborne.
Carrie went with her to apply to another manager.
"Ever had any experience?" was one of his questions.
"I'm with the company at the Casino now."
"Oh, you are?" he said.
The end of this was another engagement at twenty per week.
Carrie was delighted. She began to feel that she had a place in the world. People recognised ability.
So changed was her state that the home atmosphere became intolerable. It was all poverty and trouble there, or seemed to be, because it was a load to bear. It became a place to keep away from. Still she slept there, and did a fair amount of work, keeping it in order. It was a sitting place for Hurstwood. He sat and rocked, rocked and read, enveloped in the gloom of his own fate. October went by, and November. It was the dead of winter almost before he knew it, and there he sat.
Carrie was doing better, that he knew. Her clothes were improved now, even fine. He saw her coming and going, sometimes picturing to himself her rise. Little eating had thinned him somewhat. He had no appetite. His clothes, too, were a poor man's clothes. Talk about getting something had become even too threadbare and ridiculous for him. So he folded his hands and waited-for what, he could not anticipate.
At last, however, troubles became too thick. The hounding of creditors, the indifference of Carrie, the silence of the flat, and presence of winter, all joined to produce a climax. It was effected by the arrival of Oeslogge, personally, when Carrie was there.
"I call about my bill," said Mr. Oeslogge.
Carrie was only faintly surprised.
"How much is it?" she asked.
"Sixteen dollars," he replied.
"Oh, that much?" said Carrie. "Is this right?" she asked, turning to Hurstwood.
"Yes," he said.
"Well, I never heard anything about it."
She looked as if she thought he had been contracting some needless expense.
"Well, we had it all right," he answered. Then he went to the door. "I can't pay you anything on that to-day," he said, mildly.
"Well, when can you?" said the grocer.
"Not before Saturday, anyhow," said Hurstwood.
"Huh!" returned the grocer. "This is fine. I must have that. I need the money."
Carrie was standing farther back in the room, hearing it all. She was greatly distressed. It was so bad and commonplace. Hurstwood was annoyed also.
"Well," he said, "there's no use talking about it now. If you'll come in Saturday, I'll pay you something on it."
The grocery man went away.
"How are we going to pay it?" asked Carrie, astonished by the bill. "I can't do it."
"Well, you don't have to," he said. "He can't get what he can't get. He'll have to wait."
"I don't see how we ran up such a bill as that," said Carrie.
"Well, we ate it," said Hurstwood.
"It's funny," she replied, still doubting.
"What's the use of your standing there and talking like that, now?" he asked. "Do you think I've had it alone? You talk as if I'd taken something."
"Well, it's too much, anyhow," said Carrie. "I oughtn't to be made to pay for it. I've got more than I can pay for now."
"All right," replied Hurstwood, sitting down in silence. He was sick of the grind of this thing.
Carrie went out and there he sat, determining to do something.
There had been appearing in the papers about this time rumours and notices of an approaching strike on the trolley lines in Brooklyn. There was general dissatisfaction as to the hours of labour required and the wages paid. As usual-and for some inexplicable reason-the men chose the winter for the forcing of the hand of their employers and the settlement of their difficulties.
Hurstwood had been reading of this thing, and wondering concerning the huge tie-up which would follow. A day or two before this trouble with Carrie, it came. On a cold afternoon, when everything was grey and it threatened to snow, the papers announced that the men had been called out on all the lines. Being so utterly idle, and his mind filled with the numerous predictions which had been made concerning the scarcity of labour this winter and the panicky state of the financial market, Hurstwood read this with interest. He noted the claims of the striking motormen and conductors, who said that they had been wont to receive two dollars a day in times past, but that for a year or more "trippers" had been introduced, which cut down their chance of livelihood one-half, and increased their hours of servitude from ten to twelve, and even fourteen. These "trippers" were men put on during the busy and rush hours, to take a car out for one trip. The compensation paid for such a trip was only twenty-five cents. When the rush or busy hours were over, they were laid off. Worst of all, no man might know when he was going to get a car. He must come to the barns in the morning and wait around in fair and foul weather until such time as he was needed. Two trips were an average reward for so much waiting-a little over three hours' work for fifty cents. The work of waiting was not counted.
The men complained that this system was extending, and that the time was not far off when but a few out of 7,000 employees would have regular two-dollar-a-day work at all. They demanded that the system be abolished, and that ten hours be considered a day's work, barring unavoidable delays, with $2.25 pay. They demanded immediate acceptance of these terms, which the various trolley companies refused.
Hurstwood at first sympathised with the demands of these men-indeed, it is a question whether he did not always sympathise with them to the end, belie him as his actions might. Reading nearly all the news, he was attracted first by the scare-heads with which the trouble was noted in the "World." He read it fully-the names of the seven companies involved, the number of men.
"They're foolish to strike in this sort of weather," he thought to himself. "Let 'em win if they can, though."
The next day there was even a larger notice of it. "Brooklynites Walk," said the "World." "Knights of Labour Tie up the Trolley Lines Across the Bridge." "About Seven Thousand Men Out."
Hurstwood read this, formulating to himself his own idea of what would be the outcome. He was a great believer in the strength of corporations.
"They can't win," he said, concerning the men. "They haven't any money. The police will protect the companies. They've got to. The public has to have its cars."
He didn't sympathise with the corporations, but strength was with them. So was property and public utility.
"Those fellows can't win," he thought.
Among other things, he noticed a circular issued by one of the companies, which read:
ATLANTIC AVENUE RAILROAD
SPECIAL NOTICE
The motormen and conductors and other employees of this company having abruptly left its service, an opportunity is now given to all loyal men who have struck against their will to be reinstated, providing they will make their applications by twelve o'clock noon on Wednesday, January 16th. Such men will be given employment in the order in which such applications are received, and runs and positions assigned them accordingly. Otherwise, they will be considered discharged, and every vacancy will be filled by a new man as soon as his services can be secured.
Benjamin Norton,
President.
He also noted among the want ads. one which read:
WANTED.-50 skilled motormen, accustomed to Westinghouse system, to run U.S. mail cars only, in the City of Brooklyn; protection guaranteed.
He noted particularly in each the "protection guaranteed." It signified to him the unassailable power of the companies.
"They've got the militia on their side," he thought. "There isn't anything those men can do."
While this was still in his mind, the incident with Oeslogge and Carrie occurred. There had been a good deal to irritate him, but this seemed much the worst. Never before had she accused him of stealing-or very near that. She doubted the naturalness of so large a bill. And he had worked so hard to make expenses seem light. He had been "doing" butcher and baker in order not to call on her. He had eaten very little-almost nothing.
"Damn it all!" he said. "I can get something. I'm not down yet."
He thought that he really must do something now. It was too cheap to sit around after such an insinuation as this. Why, after a little, he would be standing anything.
He got up and looked out the window into the chilly street. It came gradually into his mind, as he stood there, to go to Brooklyn.
"Why not?" his mind said. "Any one can get work over there. You'll get two a day."
"How about accidents?" said a voice. "You might get hurt."
"Oh, there won't be much of that," he answered. "They've called out the police. Any one who wants to run a car will be protected all right."
"You don't know how to run a car," rejoined the voice.
"I won't apply as a motorman," he answered. "I can ring up fares all right."
"They'll want motormen, mostly."
"They'll take anybody; that I know."
For several hours he argued pro and con with this mental counsellor, feeling no need to act at once in a matter so sure of profit.
In the morning he put on his best clothes, which were poor enough, and began stirring about, putting some bread and meat into a page of a newspaper. Carrie watched him, interested in this new move.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Over to Brooklyn," he answered. Then, seeing her still inquisitive, he added: "I think I can get on over there."
"On the trolley lines?" said Carrie, astonished.
"Yes," he rejoined.
"Aren't you afraid?" she asked.
"What of?" he answered. "The police are protecting them."
"The paper said four men were hurt yesterday."
"Yes," he returned; "but you can't go by what the papers say. They'll run the cars all right."
He looked rather determined now, in a desolate sort of way, and Carrie felt very sorry. Something of the old Hurstwood was here-the least shadow of what was once shrewd and pleasant strength. Outside, it was cloudy and blowing a few flakes of snow.
"What a day to go over there," thought Carrie.
Now he left before she did, which was a remarkable thing, and tramped eastward to Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue, where he took the car. He had read that scores of applicants were applying at the office of the Brooklyn City Railroad building and were being received. He made his way there by horse-car and ferry-a dark, silent man-to the offices in question. It was a long way, for no cars were running, and the day was cold; but he trudged along grimly. Once in Brooklyn, he could clearly see and feel that a strike was on. People showed it in their manner. Along the routes of certain tracks not a car was running. About certain corners and nearby saloons small groups of men were lounging. Several spring wagons passed him, equipped with plain wooden chairs, and labelled "Flatbush" or "Prospect Park. Fare, Ten Cents." He noticed cold and even gloomy faces. Labour was having its little war.
When he came near the office in question, he saw a few men standing about, and some policemen. On the far corners were other men-whom he took to be strikers-watching. All the houses were small and wooden, the streets poorly paved. After New York, Brooklyn looked actually poor and hard-up.
He made his way into the heart of the small group, eyed by policemen and the men already there. One of the officers addressed him.
"What are you looking for?"
"I want to see if I can get a place."
"The offices are up those steps," said the bluecoat. His face was a very neutral thing to contemplate. In his heart of hearts, he sympathised with the strikers and hated this "scab." In his heart of hearts, also, he felt the dignity and use of the police force, which commanded order. Of its true social significance, he never once dreamed. His was not the mind for that. The two feelings blended in him-neutralised one another and him. He would have fought for this man as determinedly as for himself, and yet only so far as commanded. Strip him of his uniform, and he would have soon picked his side.
Hurstwood ascended a dusty flight of steps and entered a small, dust-coloured office, in which were a railing, a long desk, and several clerks.
"Well, sir?" said a middle-aged man, looking up at him from the long desk.
"Do you want to hire any men?" inquired Hurstwood.
"What are you-a motorman?"
"No; I'm not anything," said Hurstwood.
He was not at all abashed by his position. He knew these people needed men. If one didn't take him, another would. This man could take him or leave him, just as he chose.
"Well, we prefer experienced men, of course," said the man. He paused, while Hurstwood smiled indifferently. Then he added: "Still, I guess you can learn. What is your name?"
"Wheeler," said Hurstwood.
The man wrote an order on a small card. "Take that to our barns," he said, "and give it to the foreman. He'll show you what to do."
Hurstwood went down and out. He walked straight away in the direction indicated, while the policemen looked after.
"There's another wants to try it," said Officer Kiely to Officer Macey.
"I have my mind he'll get his fill," returned the latter, quietly.
They had been in strikes before.
Chapter XLI. THE STRIKE
The barn at which Hurstwood applied was exceedingly short-handed, and was being operated practically by three men as directors. There were a lot of green hands around-queer, hungry-looking men, who looked as if want had driven them to desperate means. They tried to be lively and willing, but there was an air of hang-dog diffidence about the place.
Hurstwood went back through the barns and out into a large, enclosed lot, where were a series of tracks and loops. A half-dozen cars were there, manned by instructors, each with a pupil at the lever. More pupils were waiting at one of the rear doors of the barn.
In silence Hurstwood viewed this scene, and waited. His companions took his eye for a while, though they did not interest him much more than the cars. They were an uncomfortable-looking gang, however. One or two were very thin and lean. Several were quite stout. Several others were rawboned and sallow, as if they had been beaten upon by all sorts of rough weather.
"Did you see by the paper they are going to call out the militia?" Hurstwood heard one of them remark.
"Oh, they'll do that," returned the other. "They always do."
"Think we're liable to have much trouble?" said another, whom Hurstwood did not see.
"Not very."
"That Scotchman that went out on the last car," put in a voice, "told me that they hit him in the ear with a cinder."
A small, nervous laugh accompanied this.
"One of those fellows on the Fifth Avenue line must have had a hell of a time, according to the papers," drawled another. "They broke his car windows and pulled him off into the street 'fore the police could stop 'em."
"Yes; but there are more police around to-day," was added by another.
Hurstwood hearkened without much mental comment. These talkers seemed scared to him. Their gabbling was feverish-things said to quiet their own minds. He looked out into the yard and waited.
Two of the men got around quite near him, but behind his back. They were rather social, and he listened to what they said.
"Are you a railroad man?" said one.
"Me? No. I've always worked in a paper factory."
"I had a job in Newark until last October," returned the other, with reciprocal feeling.
There were some words which passed too low to hear. Then the conversation became strong again.
"I don't blame these fellers for striking," said one. "They've got the right of it, all right, but I had to get something to do."
"Same here," said the other. "If I had any job in Newark I wouldn't be over here takin' chances like these."
"It's hell these days, ain't it?" said the man. "A poor man ain't nowhere. You could starve, by God, right in the streets, and there ain't most no one would help you."
"Right you are," said the other. "The job I had I lost 'cause they shut down. They run all summer and lay up a big stock, and then shut down."
Hurstwood paid some little attention to this. Somehow, he felt a little superior to these two-a little better off. To him these were ignorant and commonplace, poor sheep in a driver's hand.
"Poor devils," he thought, speaking out of the thoughts and feelings of a bygone period of success.
"Next," said one of the instructors.
"You're next," said a neighbour, touching him.
He went out and climbed on the platform. The instructor took it for granted that no preliminaries were needed.
"You see this handle," he said, reaching up to an electric cut-off, which was fastened to the roof. "This throws the current off or on. If you want to reverse the car you turn it over here. If you want to send it forward, you put it over here. If you want to cut off the power, you keep it in the middle."
Hurstwood smiled at the simple information.
"Now, this handle here regulates your speed. To here," he said, pointing with his finger, "gives you about four miles an hour. This is eight. When it's full on, you make about fourteen miles an hour."
Hurstwood watched him calmly. He had seen motormen work before. He knew just about how they did it, and was sure he could do as well, with a very little practice.
The instructor explained a few more details, and then said:
"Now, we'll back her up."
Hurstwood stood placidly by, while the car rolled back into the yard.
"One thing you want to be careful about, and that is to start easy. Give one degree time to act before you start another. The one fault of most men is that they always want to throw her wide open. That's bad. It's dangerous, too. Wears out the motor. You don't want to do that."
"I see," said Hurstwood.
He waited and waited, while the man talked on.
"Now you take it," he said, finally.
The ex-manager laid hand to the lever and pushed it gently, as he thought. It worked much easier than he imagined, however, with the result that the car jerked quickly forward, throwing him back against the door. He straightened up sheepishly, while the instructor stopped the car with the brake.
"You want to be careful about that," was all he said.
Hurstwood found, however, that handling a brake and regulating speed were not so instantly mastered as he had imagined. Once or twice he would have ploughed through the rear fence if it had not been for the hand and word of his companion. The latter was rather patient with him, but he never smiled.
"You've got to get the knack of working both arms at once," he said. "It takes a little practice."
One o'clock came while he was still on the car practising, and he began to feel hungry. The day set in snowing, and he was cold. He grew weary of running to and fro on the short track.
They ran the car to the end and both got off. Hurstwood went into the barn and sought a car step, pulling out his paper-wrapped lunch from his pocket. There was no water and the bread was dry, but he enjoyed it. There was no ceremony about dining. He swallowed and looked about, contemplating the dull, homely labour of the thing. It was disagreeable-miserably disagreeable-in all its phases. Not because it was bitter, but because it was hard. It would be hard to any one, he thought.
After eating, he stood about as before, waiting until his turn came.
The intention was to give him an afternoon of practice, but the greater part of the time was spent in waiting about.
At last evening came, and with it hunger and a debate with himself as to how he should spend the night. It was half-past five. He must soon eat. If he tried to go home, it would take him two hours and a half of cold walking and riding. Besides he had orders to report at seven the next morning, and going home would necessitate his rising at an unholy and disagreeable hour. He had only something like a dollar and fifteen cents of Carrie's money, with which he had intended to pay the two weeks' coal bill before the present idea struck him.
"They must have some place around here," he thought. "Where does that fellow from Newark stay?"
Finally he decided to ask. There was a young fellow standing near one of the doors in the cold, waiting a last turn. He was a mere boy in years-twenty-one about-but with a body lank and long, because of privation. A little good living would have made this youth plump and swaggering.
"How do they arrange this, if a man hasn't any money?" inquired Hurstwood, discreetly.
The fellow turned a keen, watchful face on the inquirer.
"You mean eat?" he replied.
"Yes, and sleep. I can't go back to New York to-night."
"The foreman 'll fix that if you ask him, I guess. He did me."
"That so?"
"Yes. I just told him I didn't have anything. Gee, I couldn't go home. I live way over in Hoboken."
Hurstwood only cleared his throat by way of acknowledgment.
"They've got a place upstairs here, I understand. I don't know what sort of a thing it is. Purty tough, I guess. He gave me a meal ticket this noon. I know that wasn't much."
Hurstwood smiled grimly, and the boy laughed.
"It ain't no fun, is it?" he inquired, wishing vainly for a cheery reply.
"Not much," answered Hurstwood.
"I'd tackle him now," volunteered the youth. "He may go 'way."
Hurstwood did so.
"Isn't there some place I can stay around here to-night?" he inquired. "If I have to go back to New York, I'm afraid I won't."
"There're some cots upstairs," interrupted the man, "if you want one of them."
"That'll do," he assented.
He meant to ask for a meal ticket, but the seemingly proper moment never came, and he decided to pay himself that night.
"I'll ask him in the morning."
He ate in a cheap restaurant in the vicinity, and, being cold and lonely, went straight off to seek the loft in question. The company was not attempting to run cars after nightfall. It was so advised by the police.
The room seemed to have been a lounging place for night workers. There were some nine cots in the place, two or three wooden chairs, a soap box, and a small, round-bellied stove, in which a fire was blazing. Early as he was, another man was there before him. The latter was sitting beside the stove warming his hands.
Hurstwood approached and held out his own toward the fire. He was sick of the bareness and privation of all things connected with his venture, but was steeling himself to hold out. He fancied he could for a while.
"Cold, isn't it?" said the early guest.
"Rather."
A long silence.
"Not much of a place to sleep in, is it?" said the man.
"Better than nothing," replied Hurstwood.
Another silence.
"I believe I'll turn in," said the man.
Rising, he went to one of the cots and stretched himself, removing only his shoes, and pulling the one blanket and dirty old comforter over him in a sort of bundle. The sight disgusted Hurstwood, but he did not dwell on it, choosing to gaze into the stove and think of something else. Presently he decided to retire, and picked a cot, also removing his shoes.
While he was doing so, the youth who had advised him to come here entered, and, seeing Hurstwood, tried to be genial.
"Better'n nothin'," he observed, looking around.
Hurstwood did not take this to himself. He thought it to be an expression of individual satisfaction, and so did not answer. The youth imagined he was out of sorts, and set to whistling softly. Seeing another man asleep, he quit that and lapsed into silence.
Hurstwood made the best of a bad lot by keeping on his clothes and pushing away the dirty covering from his head, but at last he dozed in sheer weariness. The covering became more and more comfortable, its character was forgotten, and he pulled it about his neck and slept. In the morning he was aroused out of a pleasant dream by several men stirring about in the cold, cheerless room. He had been back in Chicago in fancy, in his own comfortable home. Jessica had been arranging to go somewhere, and he had been talking with her about it. This was so clear in his mind, that he was startled now by the contrast of this room. He raised his head, and the cold, bitter reality jarred him into wakefulness.
"Guess I'd better get up," he said.
There was no water on this floor. He put on his shoes in the cold and stood up, shaking himself in his stiffness. His clothes felt disagreeable, his hair bad.
"Hell!" he muttered, as he put on his hat.
Downstairs things were stirring again.
He found a hydrant, with a trough which had once been used for horses, but there was no towel here, and his handkerchief was soiled from yesterday. He contented himself with wetting his eyes with the ice-cold water. Then he sought the foreman, who was already on the ground.
"Had your breakfast yet?" inquired that worthy.
"No," said Hurstwood.
"Better get it, then; your car won't be ready for a little while."
Hurstwood hesitated.
"Could you let me have a meal ticket?" he asked with an effort.
"Here you are," said the man, handing him one.
He breakfasted as poorly as the night before on some fried steak and bad coffee. Then he went back.
"Here," said the foreman, motioning him, when he came in. "You take this car out in a few minutes."
Hurstwood climbed up on the platform in the gloomy barn and waited for a signal. He was nervous, and yet the thing was a relief. Anything was better than the barn.
On this the fourth day of the strike, the situation had taken a turn for the worse. The strikers, following the counsel of their leaders and the newspapers, had struggled peaceably enough. There had been no great violence done. Cars had been stopped, it is true, and the men argued with. Some crews had been won over and led away, some windows broken, some jeering and yelling done; but in no more than five or six instances had men been seriously injured. These by crowds whose acts the leaders disclaimed.
Idleness, however, and the sight of the company, backed by the police, triumphing, angered the men. They saw that each day more cars were going on, each day more declarations were being made by the company officials that the effective opposition of the strikers was broken. This put desperate thoughts in the minds of the men. Peaceful methods meant, they saw, that the companies would soon run all their cars and those who had complained would be forgotten. There was nothing so helpful to the companies as peaceful methods. All at once they blazed forth, and for a week there was storm and stress. Cars were assailed, men attacked, policemen struggled with, tracks torn up, and shots fired, until at last street fights and mob movements became frequent, and the city was invested with militia.
Hurstwood knew nothing of the change of temper.
"Run your car out," called the foreman, waving a vigorous hand at him. A green conductor jumped up behind and rang the bell twice as a signal to start. Hurstwood turned the lever and ran the car out through the door into the street in front of the barn. Here two brawny policemen got up beside him on the platform-one on either hand.
At the sound of a gong near the barn door, two bells were given by the conductor and Hurstwood opened his lever.
The two policemen looked about them calmly.
"'Tis cold, all right, this morning," said the one on the left, who possessed a rich brogue.
"I had enough of it yesterday," said the other. "I wouldn't want a steady job of this."
"Nor I."
Neither paid the slightest attention to Hurstwood, who stood facing the cold wind, which was chilling him completely, and thinking of his orders.
"Keep a steady gait," the foreman had said. "Don't stop for any one who doesn't look like a real passenger. Whatever you do, don't stop for a crowd."
The two officers kept silent for a few moments.
"The last man must have gone through all right," said the officer on the left. "I don't see his car anywhere."
"Who's on there?" asked the second officer, referring, of course, to its complement of policemen.
"Schaeffer and Ryan."
There was another silence, in which the car ran smoothly along. There were not so many houses along this part of the way. Hurstwood did not see many people either. The situation was not wholly disagreeable to him. If he were not so cold, he thought he would do well enough.
He was brought out of this feeling by the sudden appearance of a curve ahead, which he had not expected. He shut off the current and did an energetic turn at the brake, but not in time to avoid an unnaturally quick turn. It shook him up and made him feel like making some apologetic remarks, but he refrained.
"You want to look out for them things," said the officer on the left, condescendingly.
"That's right," agreed Hurstwood, shamefacedly.
"There's lots of them on this line," said the officer on the right. Around the corner a more populated way appeared. One or two pedestrians were in view ahead. A boy coming out of a gate with a tin milk bucket gave Hurstwood his first objectionable greeting.
"Scab!" he yelled. "Scab!"
Hurstwood heard it, but tried to make no comment, even to himself. He knew he would get that, and much more of the same sort, probably.
At a corner farther up a man stood by the track and signalled the car to stop.
"Never mind him," said one of the officers. "He's up to some game."
Hurstwood obeyed. At the corner he saw the wisdom of it. No sooner did the man perceive the intention to ignore him, than he shook his fist.
"Ah, you bloody coward!" he yelled.
Some half dozen men, standing on the corner, flung taunts and jeers after the speeding car.
Hurstwood winced the least bit. The real thing was slightly worse than the thoughts of it had been.
Now came in sight, three or four blocks farther on, a heap of something on the track.
"They've been at work, here, all right," said one of the policemen.
"We'll have an argument, maybe," said the other.
Hurstwood ran the car close and stopped. He had not done so wholly, however, before a crowd gathered about. It was composed of ex-motormen and conductors in part, with a sprinkling of friends and sympathisers.
"Come off the car, pardner," said one of the men in a voice meant to be conciliatory. "You don't want to take the bread out of another man's mouth, do you?"
Hurstwood held to his brake and lever, pale and very uncertain what to do.
"Stand back," yelled one of the officers, leaning over the platform railing. "Clear out of this, now. Give the man a chance to do his work."
"Listen, pardner," said the leader, ignoring the policeman and addressing Hurstwood. "We're all working men, like yourself. If you were a regular motorman, and had been treated as we've been, you wouldn't want any one to come in and take your place, would you? You wouldn't want any one to do you out of your chance to get your rights, would you?"
"Shut her off! shut her off!" urged the other of the policemen, roughly. "Get out of this, now," and he jumped the railing and landed before the crowd and began shoving. Instantly the other officer was down beside him.
"Stand back, now," they yelled. "Get out of this. What the hell do you mean? Out, now."
It was like a small swarm of bees.
"Don't shove me," said one of the strikers, determinedly. "I'm not doing anything."
"Get out of this!" cried the officer, swinging his club. "I'll give ye a bat on the sconce. Back, now."
"What the hell!" cried another of the strikers, pushing the other way, adding at the same time some lusty oaths.
Crack came an officer's club on his forehead. He blinked his eyes blindly a few times, wabbled on his legs, threw up his hands, and staggered back. In return, a swift fist landed on the officer's neck.
Infuriated by this, the latter plunged left and right, laying about madly with his club. He was ably assisted by his brother of the blue, who poured ponderous oaths upon the troubled waters. No severe damage was done, owing to the agility of the strikers in keeping out of reach. They stood about the sidewalk now and jeered.
"Where is the conductor?" yelled one of the officers, getting his eye on that individual, who had come nervously forward to stand by Hurstwood. The latter had stood gazing upon the scene with more astonishment than fear.
"Why don't you come down here and get these stones off the track?" inquired the officer. "What you standing there for? Do you want to stay here all day? Get down."
Hurstwood breathed heavily in excitement and jumped down with the nervous conductor as if he had been called.
"Hurry up, now," said the other policeman.
Cold as it was, these officers were hot and mad. Hurstwood worked with the conductor, lifting stone after stone and warming himself by the work.
"Ah, you scab, you!" yelled the crowd. "You coward! Steal a man's job, will you? Rob the poor, will you, you thief? We'll get you yet, now. Wait."
Not all of this was delivered by one man. It came from here and there, incorporated with much more of the same sort and curses.
"Work, you blackguards," yelled a voice. "Do the dirty work. You're the suckers that keep the poor people down!"
"May God starve ye yet," yelled an old Irish woman, who now threw open a nearby window and stuck out her head.
"Yes, and you," she added, catching the eye of one of the policemen. "You bloody, murtherin' thafe! Crack my son over the head, will you, you hardhearted, murtherin' divil? Ah, ye-"
But the officer turned a deaf ear.
"Go to the devil, you old hag," he half muttered as he stared round upon the scattered company.
Now the stones were off, and Hurstwood took his place again amid a continued chorus of epithets. Both officers got up beside him and the conductor rang the bell, when, bang! bang! through window and door came rocks and stones. One narrowly grazed Hurstwood's head. Another shattered the window behind.
"Throw open your lever," yelled one of the officers, grabbing at the handle himself.
Hurstwood complied and the car shot away, followed by a rattle of stones and a rain of curses.
"That - - - - hit me in the neck," said one of the officers. "I gave him a good crack for it, though."
"I think I must have left spots on some of them," said the other.
"I know that big guy that called us a - - - -" said the first. "I'll get him yet for that."
"I thought we were in for it sure, once there," said the second.
Hurstwood, warmed and excited, gazed steadily ahead. It was an astonishing experience for him. He had read of these things, but the reality seemed something altogether new. He was no coward in spirit. The fact that he had suffered this much now rather operated to arouse a stolid determination to stick it out. He did not recur in thought to New York or the flat. This one trip seemed a consuming thing.
They now ran into the business heart of Brooklyn uninterrupted. People gazed at the broken windows of the car and at Hurstwood in his plain clothes. Voices called "scab" now and then, as well as other epithets, but no crowd attacked the car. At the downtown end of the line, one of the officers went to call up his station and report the trouble.
"There's a gang out there," he said, "laying for us yet. Better send some one over there and clean them out."
The car ran back more quietly-hooted, watched, flung at, but not attacked. Hurstwood breathed freely when he saw the barns.
"Well," he observed to himself, "I came out of that all right."
The car was turned in and he was allowed to loaf a while, but later he was again called. This time a new team of officers was aboard. Slightly more confident, he sped the car along the commonplace streets and felt somewhat less fearful. On one side, however, he suffered intensely. The day was raw, with a sprinkling of snow and a gusty wind, made all the more intolerable by the speed of the car. His clothing was not intended for this sort of work. He shivered, stamped his feet, and beat his arms as he had seen other motormen do in the past, but said nothing. The novelty and danger of the situation modified in a way his disgust and distress at being compelled to be here, but not enough to prevent him from feeling grim and sour. This was a dog's life, he thought. It was a tough thing to have to come to.
The one thought that strengthened him was the insult offered by Carrie. He was not down so low as to take all that, he thought. He could do something-this, even-for a while. It would get better. He would save a little.
A boy threw a clod of mud while he was thus reflecting and hit him upon the arm. It hurt sharply and angered him more than he had been any time since morning.
"The little cur!" he muttered.
"Hurt you?" asked one of the policemen.
"No," he answered.
At one of the corners, where the car slowed up because of a turn, an ex-motorman, standing on the sidewalk, called to him:
"Won't you come out, pardner, and be a man? Remember we're fighting for decent day's wages, that's all. We've got families to support." The man seemed most peaceably inclined.
Hurstwood pretended not to see him. He kept his eyes straight on before and opened the lever wide. The voice had something appealing in it.
All morning this went on and long into the afternoon. He made three such trips. The dinner he had was no stay for such work and the cold was telling on him. At each end of the line he stopped to thaw out, but he could have groaned at the anguish of it. One of the barnmen, out of pity, loaned him a heavy cap and a pair of sheepskin gloves, and for once he was extremely thankful.
On the second trip of the afternoon he ran into a crowd about half way along the line, that had blocked the car's progress with an old telegraph pole.
"Get that thing off the track," shouted the two policemen.
"Yah, yah, yah!" yelled the crowd. "Get it off yourself."
The two policemen got down and Hurstwood started to follow.
"You stay there," one called. "Some one will run away with your car."
Amid the babel of voices, Hurstwood heard one close beside him.
"Come down, pardner, and be a man. Don't fight the poor. Leave that to the corporations."
He saw the same fellow who had called to him from the corner. Now, as before, he pretended not to hear him.
"Come down," the man repeated gently. "You don't want to fight poor men. Don't fight at all." It was a most philosophic and jesuitical motorman.
A third policeman joined the other two from somewhere and some one ran to telephone for more officers. Hurstwood gazed about, determined but fearful.
A man grabbed him by the coat.
"Come off of that," he exclaimed, jerking at him and trying to pull him over the railing.
"Let go," said Hurstwood, savagely.
"I'll show you-you scab!" cried a young Irishman, jumping up on the car and aiming a blow at Hurstwood. The latter ducked and caught it on the shoulder instead of the jaw.
"Away from here," shouted an officer, hastening to the rescue, and adding, of course, the usual oaths.
Hurstwood recovered himself, pale and trembling. It was becoming serious with him now. People were looking up and jeering at him. One girl was making faces.
He began to waver in his resolution, when a patrol wagon rolled up and more officers dismounted. Now the track was quickly cleared and the release effected.
"Let her go now, quick," said the officer, and again he was off.
The end came with a real mob, which met the car on its return trip a mile or two from the barns. It was an exceedingly poor-looking neighbourhood. He wanted to run fast through it, but again the track was blocked. He saw men carrying something out to it when he was yet a half-dozen blocks away.
"There they are again!" exclaimed one policeman.
"I'll give them something this time," said the second officer, whose patience was becoming worn. Hurstwood suffered a qualm of body as the car rolled up. As before, the crowd began hooting, but now, rather than come near, they threw things. One or two windows were smashed and Hurstwood dodged a stone.
Both policemen ran out toward the crowd, but the latter replied by running toward the car. A woman-a mere girl in appearance-was among these, bearing a rough stick. She was exceedingly wrathful and struck at Hurstwood, who dodged. Thereupon, her companions, duly encouraged, jumped on the car and pulled Hurstwood over. He had hardly time to speak or shout before he fell.
"Let go of me," he said, falling on his side.
"Ah, you sucker," he heard some one say. Kicks and blows rained on him. He seemed to be suffocating. Then two men seemed to be dragging him off and he wrestled for freedom.
"Let up," said a voice, "you're all right. Stand up."
He was let loose and recovered himself. Now he recognised two officers. He felt as if he would faint from exhaustion. Something was wet on his chin. He put up his hand and felt, then looked. It was red.
"They cut me," he said, foolishly, fishing for his handkerchief.
"Now, now," said one of the officers. "It's only a scratch."
His senses became cleared now and he looked around. He was standing in a little store, where they left him for the moment. Outside, he could see, as he stood wiping his chin, the car and the excited crowd. A patrol wagon was there, and another.
He walked over and looked out. It was an ambulance, backing in.
He saw some energetic charging by the police and arrests being made.
"Come on, now, if you want to take your car," said an officer, opening the door and looking in. He walked out, feeling rather uncertain of himself. He was very cold and frightened.
"Where's the conductor?" he asked.
"Oh, he's not here now," said the policeman.
Hurstwood went toward the car and stepped nervously on. As he did so there was a pistol shot. Something stung his shoulder.
"Who fired that?" he heard an officer exclaim. "By God! who did that?" Both left him, running toward a certain building. He paused a moment and then got down.
"George!" exclaimed Hurstwood, weakly, "this is too much for me."
He walked nervously to the corner and hurried down a side street.
"Whew!" he said, drawing in his breath.
A half block away, a small girl gazed at him.
"You'd better sneak," she called.
He walked homeward in a blinding snowstorm, reaching the ferry by dusk. The cabins were filled with comfortable souls, who studied him curiously. His head was still in such a whirl that he felt confused. All the wonder of the twinkling lights of the river in a white storm passed for nothing. He trudged doggedly on until he reached the flat. There he entered and found the room warm. Carrie was gone. A couple of evening papers were lying on the table where she left them. He lit the gas and sat down. Then he got up and stripped to examine his shoulder. It was a mere scratch. He washed his hands and face, still in a brown study, apparently, and combed his hair. Then he looked for something to eat, and finally, his hunger gone, sat down in his comfortable rocking-chair. It was a wonderful relief.
He put his hand to his chin, forgetting, for the moment, the papers.
"Well," he said, after a time, his nature recovering itself, "that's a pretty tough game over there."
Then he turned and saw the papers. With half a sigh he picked up the "World."
"Strike Spreading in Brooklyn," he read. "Rioting Breaks Out in all Parts of the City."
He adjusted his paper very comfortably and continued. It was the one thing he read with absorbing interest.
Chapter XLII. A TOUCH OF SPRING: THE EMPTY SHELL
Those who look upon Hurstwood's Brooklyn venture as an error of judgment will none the less realise the negative influence on him of the fact that he had tried and failed. Carrie got a wrong idea of it. He said so little that she imagined he had encountered nothing worse than the ordinary roughness-quitting so soon in the face of this seemed trifling. He did not want to work.
She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem. There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple of laughter:
"Well, who are you?"
It merely happened to be Carrie who was courtesying before him. It might as well have been any of the others, so far as he was concerned. He expected no answer and a dull one would have been reproved. But Carrie, whose experience and belief in herself gave her daring, courtesied sweetly again and answered:
"I am yours truly."
It was a trivial thing to say, and yet something in the way she did it caught the audience, which laughed heartily at the mock-fierce potentate towering before the young woman. The comedian also liked it, hearing the laughter.
"I thought your name was Smith," he returned, endeavouring to get the last laugh.
Carrie almost trembled for her daring after she had said this. All members of the company had been warned that to interpolate lines or "business" meant a fine or worse. She did not know what to think.
As she was standing in her proper position in the wings, awaiting another entry, the great comedian made his exit past her and paused in recognition.
"You can just leave that in hereafter," he remarked, seeing how intelligent she appeared. "Don't add any more, though."
"Thank you," said Carrie, humbly. When he went on she found herself trembling violently.
"Well, you're in luck," remarked another member of the chorus. "There isn't another one of us has got a line."
There was no gainsaying the value of this. Everybody in the company realised that she had got a start. Carrie hugged herself when next evening the lines got the same applause. She went home rejoicing, knowing that soon something must come of it. It was Hurstwood who, by his presence, caused her merry thoughts to flee and replaced them with sharp longings for an end of distress.
The next day she asked him about his venture.
"They're not trying to run any cars except with police. They don't want anybody just now-not before next week."
Next week came, but Carrie saw no change. Hurstwood seemed more apathetic than ever. He saw her off mornings to rehearsals and the like with the utmost calm. He read and read. Several times he found himself staring at an item, but thinking of something else. The first of these lapses that he sharply noticed concerned a hilarious party he had once attended at a driving club, of which he had been a member. He sat, gazing downward, and gradually thought he heard the old voices and the clink of glasses.
"You're a dandy, Hurstwood," his friend Walker said. He was standing again well dressed, smiling, good-natured, the recipient of encores for a good story.
All at once he looked up. The room was so still it seemed ghostlike. He heard the clock ticking audibly and half suspected that he had been dozing. The paper was so straight in his hands, however, and the items he had been reading so directly before him, that he rid himself of the doze idea. Still, it seemed peculiar. When it occurred a second time, however, it did not seem quite so strange.
Butcher and grocery man, baker and coal man-not the group with whom he was then dealing, but those who had trusted him to the limit-called. He met them all blandly, becoming deft in excuse. At last he became bold, pretended to be out, or waved them off.
"They can't get blood out of a turnip," he said, "if I had it I'd pay them."
Carrie's little soldier friend, Miss Osborne, seeing her succeeding, had become a sort of satellite. Little Osborne could never of herself amount to anything. She seemed to realise it in a sort of pussy-like way and instinctively concluded to cling with her soft little claws to Carrie.
"Oh, you'll get up," she kept telling Carrie with admiration. "You're so good."
Timid as Carrie was, she was strong in capability. The reliance of others made her feel as if she must, and when she must she dared. Experience of the world and of necessity was in her favour. No longer the lightest word of a man made her head dizzy. She had learned that men could change and fail. Flattery in its most palpable form had lost its force with her. It required superiority-kindly superiority-to move her-the superiority of a genius like Ames.
"I don't like the actors in our company," she told Lola one day. "They're all so struck on themselves."
"Don't you think Mr. Barclay's pretty nice?" inquired Lola, who had received a condescending smile or two from that quarter.
"Oh, he's nice enough," answered Carrie; "but he isn't sincere. He assumes such an air."
Lola felt for her first hold upon Carrie in the following manner:
"Are you paying room-rent where you are?"
"Certainly," answered Carrie. "Why?"
"I know where I could get the loveliest room and bath, cheap. It's too big for me, but it would be just right for two, and the rent is only six dollars a week for both."
"Where?" said Carrie.
"In Seventeenth Street."
"Well, I don't know as I'd care to change," said Carrie, who was already turning over the three-dollar rate in her mind. She was thinking if she had only herself to support this would leave her seventeen for herself.
Nothing came of this until after the Brooklyn adventure of Hurstwood's and her success with the speaking part. Then she began to feel as if she must be free. She thought of leaving Hurstwood and thus making him act for himself, but he had developed such peculiar traits she feared he might resist any effort to throw him off. He might hunt her out at the show and hound her in that way. She did not wholly believe that he would, but he might. This, she knew, would be an embarrassing thing if he made himself conspicuous in any way. It troubled her greatly.
Things were precipitated by the offer of a better part. One of the actresses playing the part of a modest sweetheart gave notice of leaving and Carrie was selected.
"How much are you going to get?" asked Miss Osborne, on hearing the good news.
"I didn't ask him," said Carrie.
"Well, find out. Goodness, you'll never get anything if you don't ask. Tell them you must have forty dollars, anyhow."
"Oh, no," said Carrie.
"Certainly!" exclaimed Lola. "Ask 'em, anyway."
Carrie succumbed to this prompting, waiting, however, until the manager gave her notice of what clothing she must have to fit the part.
"How much do I get?" she inquired.
"Thirty-five dollars," he replied.
Carrie was too much astonished and delighted to think of mentioning forty. She was nearly beside herself, and almost hugged Lola, who clung to her at the news.
"It isn't as much as you ought to get," said the latter, "especially when you've got to buy clothes."
Carrie remembered this with a start. Where to get the money? She had none laid up for such an emergency. Rent day was drawing near.
"I'll not do it," she said, remembering her necessity. "I don't use the flat. I'm not going to give up my money this time. I'll move."
Fitting into this came another appeal from Miss Osborne, more urgent than ever.
"Come live with me, won't you?" she pleaded. "We can have the loveliest room. It won't cost you hardly anything that way."
"I'd like to," said Carrie, frankly.
"Oh, do," said Lola. "We'll have such a good time."
Carrie thought a while.
"I believe I will," she said, and then added: "I'll have to see first, though."
With the idea thus grounded, rent day approaching, and clothes calling for instant purchase, she soon found excuse in Hurstwood's lassitude. He said less and drooped more than ever.
As rent day approached, an idea grew in him. It was fostered by the demands of creditors and the impossibility of holding up many more. Twenty-eight dollars was too much for rent. "It's hard on her," he thought. "We could get a cheaper place."
Stirred with this idea, he spoke at the breakfast table.
"Don't you think we pay too much rent here?" he asked.
"Indeed I do," said Carrie, not catching his drift.
"I should think we could get a smaller place," he suggested. "We don't need four rooms."
Her countenance, had he been scrutinising her, would have exhibited the disturbance she felt at this evidence of his determination to stay by her. He saw nothing remarkable in asking her to come down lower.
"Oh, I don't know," she answered, growing wary.
"There must be places around here where we could get a couple of rooms, which would do just as well."
Her heart revolted. "Never!" she thought. Who would furnish the money to move? To think of being in two rooms with him! She resolved to spend her money for clothes quickly, before something terrible happened. That very day she did it. Having done so, there was but one other thing to do.
"Lola," she said, visiting her friend, "I think I'll come."
"Oh, jolly!" cried the latter.
"Can we get it right away?" she asked, meaning the room.
"Certainly," cried Lola.
They went to look at it. Carrie had saved ten dollars from her expenditures-enough for this and her board beside. Her enlarged salary would not begin for ten days yet-would not reach her for seventeen. She paid half of the six dollars with her friend.
"Now, I've just enough to get on to the end of the week," she confided.
"Oh, I've got some," said Lola. "I've got twenty-five dollars, if you need it."
"No," said Carrie. "I guess I'll get along."
They decided to move Friday, which was two days away. Now that the thing was settled, Carrie's heart misgave her. She felt very much like a criminal in the matter. Each day looking at Hurstwood, she had realised that, along with the disagreeableness of his attitude, there was something pathetic.
She looked at him the same evening she had made up her mind to go, and now he seemed not so shiftless and worthless, but run down and beaten upon by chance. His eyes were not keen, his face marked, his hands flabby. She thought his hair had a touch of grey. All unconscious of his doom, he rocked and read his paper, while she glanced at him.
Knowing that the end was so near, she became rather solicitous.
"Will you go over and get some canned peaches?" she asked Hurstwood, laying down a two-dollar bill.
"Certainly," he said, looking in wonder at the money.
"See if you can get some nice asparagus," she added. "I'll cook it for dinner."
Hurstwood rose and took the money, slipping on his overcoat and getting his hat. Carrie noticed that both of these articles of apparel were old and poor looking in appearance. It was plain enough before, but now it came home with peculiar force. Perhaps he couldn't help it, after all. He had done well in Chicago. She remembered his fine appearance the days he had met her in the park. Then he was so sprightly, so clean. Had it been all his fault?
He came back and laid the change down with the food.
"You'd better keep it," she observed. "We'll need other things."
"No," he said, with a sort of pride; "you keep it."
"Oh, go on and keep it," she replied, rather unnerved. "There'll be other things."
He wondered at this, not knowing the pathetic figure he had become in her eyes. She restrained herself with difficulty from showing a quaver in her voice.
To say truly, this would have been Carrie's attitude in any case. She had looked back at times upon her parting from Drouet and had regretted that she had served him so badly. She hoped she would never meet him again, but she was ashamed of her conduct. Not that she had any choice in the final separation. She had gone willingly to seek him, with sympathy in her heart, when Hurstwood had reported him ill. There was something cruel somewhere, and not being able to track it mentally to its logical lair, she concluded with feeling that he would never understand what Hurstwood had done and would see hard-hearted decision in her deed; hence her shame. Not that she cared for him. She did not want to make any one who had been good to her feel badly.
She did not realise what she was doing by allowing these feelings to possess her. Hurstwood, noticing the kindness, conceived better of her. "Carrie's good-natured, anyhow," he thought.
Going to Miss Osborne's that afternoon, she found that little lady packing and singing.
"Why don't you come over with me to-day?" she asked.
"Oh, I can't," said Carrie. "I'll be there Friday. Would you mind lending me the twenty-five dollars you spoke of?"
"Why, no," said Lola, going for her purse.
"I want to get some other things," said Carrie.
"Oh, that's all right," answered the little girl, good-naturedly, glad to be of service. It had been days since Hurstwood had done more than go to the grocery or to the news-stand. Now the weariness of indoors was upon him-had been for two days-but chill, grey weather had held him back. Friday broke fair and warm. It was one of those lovely harbingers of spring, given as a sign in dreary winter that earth is not forsaken of warmth and beauty. The blue heaven, holding its one golden orb, poured down a crystal wash of warm light. It was plain, from the voice of the sparrows, that all was halcyon outside. Carrie raised the front windows, and felt the south wind blowing.
"It's lovely out to-day," she remarked.
"Is it?" said Hurstwood.
After breakfast, he immediately got his other clothes.
"Will you be back for lunch?" asked Carrie nervously.
"No," he said.
He went out into the streets and tramped north, along Seventh Avenue, idly fixing upon the Harlem River as an objective point. He had seen some ships up there, the time he had called upon the brewers. He wondered how the territory thereabouts was growing.
Passing Fifty-ninth Street, he took the west side of Central Park, which he followed to Seventy-eighth Street. Then he remembered the neighbourhood and turned over to look at the mass of buildings erected. It was very much improved. The great open spaces were filling up. Coming back, he kept to the Park until 110th Street, and then turned into Seventh Avenue again, reaching the pretty river by one o'clock.
There it ran winding before his gaze, shining brightly in the clear light, between the undulating banks on the right and the tall, tree-covered heights on the left. The spring-like atmosphere woke him to a sense of its loveliness, and for a few moments he stood looking at it, folding his hands behind his back. Then he turned and followed it toward the east side, idly seeking the ships he had seen. It was four o'clock before the waning day, with its suggestion of a cooler evening, caused him to return. He was hungry and would enjoy eating in the warm room.
When he reached the flat by half-past five, it was still dark. He knew that Carrie was not there, not only because there was no light showing through the transom, but because the evening papers were stuck between the outside knob and the door. He opened with his key and went in. Everything was still dark. Lighting the gas, he sat down, preparing to wait a little while. Even if Carrie did come now, dinner would be late. He read until six, then got up to fix something for himself.
As he did so, he noticed that the room seemed a little queer. What was it? He looked around, as if he missed something, and then saw an envelope near where he had been sitting. It spoke for itself, almost without further action on his part.
Reaching over, he took it, a sort of chill settling upon him even while he reached. The crackle of the envelope in his hands was loud. Green paper money lay soft within the note.
"Dear George," he read, crunching the money in one hand, "I'm going away. I'm not coming back any more. It's no use trying to keep up the flat; I can't do it. I wouldn't mind helping you, if I could, but I can't support us both, and pay the rent. I need what little I make to pay for my clothes. I'm leaving twenty dollars. It's all I have just now. You can do whatever you like with the furniture. I won't want it.-CARRIE."
He dropped the note and looked quietly round. Now he knew what he missed. It was the little ornamental clock, which was hers. It had gone from the mantelpiece. He went into the front room, his bedroom, the parlour, lighting the gas as he went. From the chiffonier had gone the knick-knacks of silver and plate. From the table-top, the lace coverings. He opened the wardrobe-no clothes of hers. He opened the drawers-nothing of hers. Her trunk was gone from its accustomed place. Back in his own room hung his old clothes, just as he had left them. Nothing else was gone.
He stepped into the parlour and stood for a few moments looking vacantly at the floor. The silence grew oppressive. The little flat seemed wonderfully deserted. He wholly forgot that he was hungry, that it was only dinner-time. It seemed later in the night.
Suddenly, he found that the money was still in his hands. There were twenty dollars in all, as she had said. Now he walked back, leaving the lights ablaze, and feeling as if the flat were empty.
"I'll get out of this," he said to himself.
Then the sheer loneliness of his situation rushed upon him in full.
"Left me!" he muttered, and repeated, "left me!"
The place that had been so comfortable, where he had spent so many days of warmth, was now a memory. Something colder and chillier confronted him. He sank down in his chair, resting his chin in his hand-mere sensation, without thought, holding him.
Then something like a bereaved affection and self-pity swept over him.
"She needn't have gone away," he said. "I'd have got something."
He sat a long while without rocking, and added quite clearly, out loud:
"I tried, didn't I?"
At midnight he was still rocking, staring at the floor.
Chapter XLIII. THE WORLD TURNS FLATTERER: AN EYE IN THE DARK
Installed in her comfortable room, Carrie wondered how Hurstwood had taken her departure. She arranged a few things hastily and then left for the theatre, half expecting to encounter him at the door. Not finding him, her dread lifted, and she felt more kindly toward him. She quite forgot him until about to come out, after the show, when the chance of his being there frightened her. As day after day passed and she heard nothing at all, the thought of being bothered by him passed. In a little while she was, except for occasional thoughts, wholly free of the gloom with which her life had been weighed in the flat.
It is curious to note how quickly a profession absorbs one. Carrie became wise in theatrical lore, hearing the gossip of little Lola. She learned what the theatrical papers were, which ones published items about actresses and the like. She began to read the newspaper notices, not only of the opera in which she had so small a part, but of others. Gradually the desire for notice took hold of her. She longed to be renowned like others, and read with avidity all the complimentary or critical comments made concerning others high in her profession. The showy world in which her interest lay completely absorbed her.
It was about this time that the newspapers and magazines were beginning to pay that illustrative attention to the beauties of the stage which has since become fervid. The newspapers, and particularly the Sunday newspapers, indulged in large decorative theatrical pages, in which the faces and forms of well-known theatrical celebrities appeared, enclosed with artistic scrolls. The magazines also or at least one or two of the newer ones-published occasional portraits of pretty stars, and now and again photos of scenes from various plays. Carrie watched these with growing interest. When would a scene from her opera appear? When would some paper think her photo worth while?
The Sunday before taking her new part she scanned the theatrical pages for some little notice. It would have accorded with her expectations if nothing had been said, but there in the squibs, tailing off several more substantial items, was a wee notice. Carrie read it with a tingling body:
"The part of Katisha, the country maid, in 'The Wives of Abdul' at the Broadway, heretofore played by Inez Carew, will be hereafter filled by Carrie Madenda, one of the cleverest members of the chorus."
Carrie hugged herself with delight. Oh, wasn't it just fine! At last! The first, the long-hoped for, the delightful notice! And they called her clever. She could hardly restrain herself from laughing loudly. Had Lola seen it?
"They've got a notice here of the part I'm going to play to-morrow night," said Carrie to her friend.
"Oh, jolly! Have they?" cried Lola, running to her. "That's all right," she said, looking. "You'll get more now, if you do well. I had my picture in the 'World' once."
"Did you?" asked Carrie.
"Did I? Well, I should say," returned the little girl. "They had a frame around it."
Carrie laughed.
"They've never published my picture."
"But they will," said Lola. "You'll see. You do better than most that get theirs in now."
Carrie felt deeply grateful for this. She almost loved Lola for the sympathy and praise she extended. It was so helpful to her-so almost necessary.
Fulfilling her part capably brought another notice in the papers that she was doing her work acceptably. This pleased her immensely. She began to think the world was taking note of her.
The first week she got her thirty-five dollars, it seemed an enormous sum. Paying only three dollars for room rent seemed ridiculous. After giving Lola her twenty-five, she still had seven dollars left. With four left over from previous earnings, she had eleven. Five of this went to pay the regular installment on the clothes she had to buy. The next week she was even in greater feather. Now, only three dollars need be paid for room rent and five on her clothes. The rest she had for food and her own whims.
"You'd better save a little for summer," cautioned Lola. "We'll probably close in May."
"I intend to," said Carrie.
The regular entrance of thirty-five dollars a week to one who has endured scant allowances for several years is a demoralising thing. Carrie found her purse bursting with good green bills of comfortable denominations. Having no one dependent upon her, she began to buy pretty clothes and pleasing trinkets, to eat well, and to ornament her room. Friends were not long in gathering about. She met a few young men who belonged to Lola's staff. The members of the opera company made her acquaintance without the formality of introduction. One of these discovered a fancy for her. On several occasions he strolled home with her.
"Let's stop in and have a rarebit," he suggested one midnight.
"Very well," said Carrie.
In the rosy restaurant, filled with the merry lovers of late hours, she found herself criticising this man. He was too stilted, too self-opinionated. He did not talk of anything that lifted her above the common run of clothes and material success. When it was all over, he smiled most graciously.
"Got to go straight home, have you?" he said.
"Yes," she answered, with an air of quiet understanding.
"She's not so inexperienced as she looks," he thought, and thereafter his respect and ardour were increased.
She could not help sharing in Lola's love for a good time. There were days when they went carriage riding, nights when after the show they dined, afternoons when they strolled along Broadway, tastefully dressed. She was getting in the metropolitan whirl of pleasure.
At last her picture appeared in one of the weeklies. She had not known of it, and it took her breath. "Miss Carrie Madenda," it was labelled. "One of the favourites of 'The Wives of Abdul' company." At Lola's advice she had had some pictures taken by Sarony. They had got one there. She thought of going down and buying a few copies of the paper, but remembered that there was no one she knew well enough to send them to. Only Lola, apparently, in all the world was interested.
The metropolis is a cold place socially, and Carrie soon found that a little money brought her nothing. The world of wealth and distinction was quite as far away as ever. She could feel that there was no warm, sympathetic friendship back of the easy merriment with which many approached her. All seemed to be seeking their own amusement, regardless of the possible sad consequence to others. So much for the lessons of Hurstwood and Drouet.
In April she learned that the opera would probably last until the middle or the end of May, according to the size of the audiences. Next season it would go on the road. She wondered if she would be with it. As usual, Miss Osborne, owing to her moderate salary, was for securing a home engagement.
"They're putting on a summer play at the Casino," she announced, after figuratively putting her ear to the ground. "Let's try and get in that."
"I'm willing," said Carrie.
They tried in time and were apprised of the proper date to apply again. That was May 16th. Meanwhile their own show closed May 5th.
"Those that want to go with the show next season," said the manager, "will have to sign this week."
"Don't you sign," advised Lola. "I wouldn't go."
"I know," said Carrie, "but maybe I can't get anything else."
"Well, I won't," said the little girl, who had a resource in her admirers. "I went once and I didn't have anything at the end of the season."
Carrie thought this over. She had never been on the road.
"We can get along," added Lola. "I always have."
Carrie did not sign.
The manager who was putting on the summer skit at the Casino had never heard of Carrie, but the several notices she had received, her published picture, and the programme bearing her name had some little weight with him. He gave her a silent part at thirty dollars a week.
"Didn't I tell you?" said Lola. "It doesn't do you any good to go away from New York. They forget all about you if you do."
Now, because Carrie was pretty, the gentlemen who made up the advance illustrations of shows about to appear for the Sunday papers selected Carrie's photo along with others to illustrate the announcement. Because she was very pretty, they gave it excellent space and drew scrolls about it. Carrie was delighted. Still, the management did not seem to have seen anything of it. At least, no more attention was paid to her than before. At the same time there seemed very little in her part. It consisted of standing around in all sorts of scenes, a silent little Quakeress. The author of the skit had fancied that a great deal could be made of such a part, given to the right actress, but now, since it had been doled out to Carrie, he would as leave have had it cut out.
"Don't kick, old man," remarked the manager. "If it don't go the first week we will cut it out."
Carrie had no warning of this halcyon intention. She practised her part ruefully, feeling that she was effectually shelved. At the dress rehearsal she was disconsolate.
"That isn't so bad," said the author, the manager noting the curious effect which Carrie's blues had upon the part. "Tell her to frown a little more when Sparks dances."
Carrie did not know it, but there was the least show of wrinkles between her eyes and her mouth was puckered quaintly.
"Frown a little more, Miss Madenda," said the stage manager.
Carrie instantly brightened up, thinking he had meant it as a rebuke.
"No; frown," he said. "Frown as you did before."
Carrie looked at him in astonishment.
"I mean it," he said. "Frown hard when Mr. Sparks dances. I want to see how it looks."
It was easy enough to do. Carrie scowled. The effect was something so quaint and droll it caught even the manager.
"That is good," he said. "If she'll do that all through, I think it will take."
Going over to Carrie, he said:
"Suppose you try frowning all through. Do it hard. Look mad. It'll make the part really funny."
On the opening night it looked to Carrie as if there were nothing to her part, after all. The happy, sweltering audience did not seem to see her in the first act. She frowned and frowned, but to no effect. Eyes were riveted upon the more elaborate efforts of the stars.
In the second act, the crowd, wearied by a dull conversation, roved with its eyes about the stage and sighted her. There she was, grey-suited, sweet-faced, demure, but scowling. At first the general idea was that she was temporarily irritated, that the look was genuine and not fun at all. As she went on frowning, looking now at one principal and now at the other, the audience began to smile. The portly gentlemen in the front rows began to feel that she was a delicious little morsel. It was the kind of frown they would have loved to force away with kisses. All the gentlemen yearned toward her. She was capital.
At last, the chief comedian, singing in the centre of the stage, noticed a giggle where it was not expected. Then another and another. When the place came for loud applause it was only moderate. What could be the trouble? He realised that something was up.
All at once, after an exit, he caught sight of Carrie. She was frowning alone on the stage and the audience was giggling and laughing.
"By George, I won't stand that!" thought the thespian. "I'm not going to have my work cut up by some one else. Either she quits that when I do my turn or I quit."
"Why, that's all right," said the manager, when the kick came. "That's what she's supposed to do. You needn't pay any attention to that."
"But she ruins my work."
"No, she don't," returned the former, soothingly. "It's only a little fun on the side."
"It is, eh?" exclaimed the big comedian. "She killed my hand all right. I'm not going to stand that."
"Well, wait until after the show. Wait until to-morrow. We'll see what we can do."
The next act, however, settled what was to be done. Carrie was the chief feature of the play. The audience, the more it studied her, the more it indicated its delight. Every other feature paled beside the quaint, teasing, delightful atmosphere which Carrie contributed while on the stage. Manager and company realised she had made a hit.
The critics of the daily papers completed her triumph. There were long notices in praise of the quality of the burlesque, touched with recurrent references to Carrie. The contagious mirth of the thing was repeatedly emphasised.
"Miss Madenda presents one of the most delightful bits of character work ever seen on the Casino stage," observed the stage critic of the "Sun." "It is a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery which warms like good wine. Evidently the part was not intended to take precedence, as Miss Madenda is not often on the stage, but the audience, with the characteristic perversity of such bodies, selected for itself. The little Quakeress was marked for a favourite the moment she appeared, and thereafter easily held attention and applause. The vagaries of fortune are indeed curious."
The critic of the "Evening World," seeking as usual to establish a catch phrase which should "go" with the town, wound up by advising: "If you wish to be merry, see Carrie frown."
The result was miraculous so far as Carrie's fortune was concerned. Even during the morning she received a congratulatory message from the manager.
"You seem to have taken the town by storm," he wrote. "This is delightful. I am as glad for your sake as for my own."
The author also sent word.
That evening when she entered the theatre the manager had a most pleasant greeting for her.
"Mr. Stevens," he said, referring to the author, "is preparing a little song, which he would like you to sing next week."
"Oh, I can't sing," returned Carrie.
"It isn't anything difficult. 'It's something that is very simple,' he says, 'and would suit you exactly.'"
"Of course, I wouldn't mind trying," said Carrie, archly.
"Would you mind coming to the box-office a few moments before you dress?" observed the manager, in addition. "There's a little matter I want to speak to you about."
"Certainly," replied Carrie.
In that latter place the manager produced a paper.
"Now, of course," he said, "we want to be fair with you in the matter of salary. Your contract here only calls for thirty dollars a week for the next three months. How would it do to make it, say, one hundred and fifty a week and extend it for twelve months?"
"Oh, very well," said Carrie, scarcely believing her ears.
"Supposing, then, you just sign this."
Carrie looked and beheld a new contract made out like the other one, with the exception of the new figures of salary and time. With a hand trembling from excitement she affixed her name.
"One hundred and fifty a week!" she murmured, when she was again alone. She found, after all-as what millionaire has not?-that there was no realising, in consciousness, the meaning of large sums. It was only a shimmering, glittering phrase in which lay a world of possibilities.
Down in a third-rate Bleecker Street hotel, the brooding Hurstwood read the dramatic item covering Carrie's success, without at first realising who was meant. Then suddenly it came to him and he read the whole thing over again.
"That's her, all right, I guess," he said.
Then he looked about upon a dingy, moth-eaten hotel lobby.
"I guess she's struck it," he thought, a picture of the old shiny, plush-covered world coming back, with its lights, its ornaments, its carriages, and flowers. Ah, she was in the walled city now! Its splendid gates had opened, admitting her from a cold, dreary outside. She seemed a creature afar off-like every other celebrity he had known.
"Well, let her have it," he said. "I won't bother her."
It was the grim resolution of a bent, bedraggled, but unbroken pride.
Chapter XLIV. AND THIS IS NOT ELF LAND: WHAT GOLD WILL NOT BUY
When Carrie got back on the stage, she found that over night her dressing-room had been changed.
"You are to use this room, Miss Madenda," said one of the stage lackeys.
No longer any need of climbing several flights of steps to a small coop shared with another. Instead, a comparatively large and commodious chamber with conveniences not enjoyed by the small fry overhead. She breathed deeply and with delight. Her sensations were more physical than mental. In fact, she was scarcely thinking at all. Heart and body were having their say.
Gradually the deference and congratulation gave her a mental appreciation of her state. She was no longer ordered, but requested, and that politely. The other members of the cast looked at her enviously as she came out arrayed in her simple habit, which she wore all through the play. All those who had supposedly been her equals and superiors now smiled the smile of sociability, as much as to say: "How friendly we have always been." Only the star comedian whose part had been so deeply injured stalked by himself. Figuratively, he could not kiss the hand that smote him.
Doing her simple part, Carrie gradually realised the meaning of the applause which was for her, and it was sweet. She felt mildly guilty of something-perhaps unworthiness. When her associates addressed her in the wings she only smiled weakly. The pride and daring of place were not for her. It never once crossed her mind to be reserved or haughty-to be other than she had been. After the performances she rode to her room with Lola, in a carriage provided.
Then came a week in which the first fruits of success were offered to her lips-bowl after bowl. It did not matter that her splendid salary had not begun. The world seemed satisfied with the promise. She began to get letters and cards. A Mr. Withers-whom she did not know from Adam-having learned by some hook or crook where she resided, bowed himself politely in.
"You will excuse me for intruding," he said; "but have you been thinking of changing your apartments?"
"I hadn't thought of it," returned Carrie.
"Well, I am connected with the Wellington-the new hotel on Broadway. You have probably seen notices of it in the papers."
Carrie recognised the name as standing for one of the newest and most imposing hostelries. She had heard it spoken of as having a splendid restaurant.
"Just so," went on Mr. Withers, accepting her acknowledgment of familiarity. "We have some very elegant rooms at present which we would like to have you look at, if you have not made up your mind where you intend to reside for the summer. Our apartments are perfect in every detail-hot and cold water, private baths, special hall service for every floor, elevators, and all that. You know what our restaurant is."
Carrie looked at him quietly. She was wondering whether he took her to be a millionaire.
"What are your rates?" she inquired.
"Well, now, that is what I came to talk with you privately about. Our regular rates are anywhere from three to fifty dollars a day."
"Mercy!" interrupted Carrie. "I couldn't pay any such rate as that."
"I know how you feel about it," exclaimed Mr. Withers, halting. "But just let me explain. I said those are our regular rates. Like every other hotel we make special ones however. Possibly you have not thought about it, but your name is worth something to us."
"Oh!" ejaculated Carrie, seeing at a glance.
"Of course. Every hotel depends upon the repute of its patrons. A well-known actress like yourself," and he bowed politely, while Carrie flushed, "draws attention to the hotel, and-although you may not believe it-patrons."
"Oh, yes," returned Carrie, vacantly, trying to arrange this curious proposition in her mind.
"Now," continued Mr. Withers, swaying his derby hat softly and beating one of his polished shoes upon the floor, "I want to arrange, if possible, to have you come and stop at the Wellington. You need not trouble about terms. In fact, we need hardly discuss them. Anything will do for the summer-a mere figure-anything that you think you could afford to pay."
Carrie was about to interrupt, but he gave her no chance.
"You can come to-day or to-morrow-the earlier the better-and we will give you your choice of nice, light, outside rooms-the very best we have."
"You're very kind," said Carrie, touched by the agent's extreme affability. "I should like to come very much. I would want to pay what is right, however. I shouldn't want to-"
"You need not trouble about that at all," interrupted Mr. Withers. "We can arrange that to your entire satisfaction at any time. If three dollars a day is satisfactory to you, it will be so to us. All you have to do is to pay that sum to the clerk at the end of the week or month, just as you wish, and he will give you a receipt for what the rooms would cost if charged for at our regular rates."
The speaker paused.
"Suppose you come and look at the rooms," he added.
"I'd be glad to," said Carrie, "but I have a rehearsal this morning."
"I did not mean at once," he returned. "Any time will do. Would this afternoon be inconvenient?"
"Not at all," said Carrie.
Suddenly she remembered Lola, who was out at the time.
"I have a room-mate," she added, "who will have to go wherever I do. I forgot about that."
"Oh, very well," said Mr. Withers, blandly. "It is for you to say whom you want with you. As I say, all that can be arranged to suit yourself."
He bowed and backed toward the door.
"At four, then, we may expect you?"
"Yes," said Carrie.
"I will be there to show you," and so Mr. Withers withdrew.
After rehearsal Carrie informed Lola.
"Did they really?" exclaimed the latter, thinking of the Wellington as a group of managers. "Isn't that fine? Oh, jolly! It's so swell. That's where we dined that night we went with those two Cushing boys. Don't you know?"
"I remember," said Carrie.
"Oh, it's as fine as it can be."
"We'd better be going up there," observed Carrie later in the afternoon.
The rooms which Mr. Withers displayed to Carrie and Lola were three and bath-a suite on the parlour floor. They were done in chocolate and dark red, with rugs and hangings to match. Three windows looked down into busy Broadway on the east, three into a side street which crossed there. There were two lovely bedrooms, set with brass and white enamel beds, white ribbon-trimmed chairs and chiffoniers to match. In the third room, or parlour, was a piano, a heavy piano lamp, with a shade of gorgeous pattern, a library table, several huge easy rockers, some dado book shelves, and a gilt curio case, filled with oddities. Pictures were upon the walls, soft Turkish pillows upon the divan footstools of brown plush upon the floor. Such accommodations would ordinarily cost a hundred dollars a week.
"Oh, lovely!" exclaimed Lola, walking about.
"It is comfortable," said Carrie, who was lifting a lace curtain and looking down into crowded Broadway.
The bath was a handsome affair, done in white enamel, with a large, blue-bordered stone tub and nickel trimmings. It was bright and commodious, with a bevelled mirror set in the wall at one end and incandescent lights arranged in three places.
"Do you find these satisfactory?" observed Mr. Withers.
"Oh, very," answered Carrie.
"Well, then, any time you find it convenient to move in, they are ready. The boy will bring you the keys at the door."
Carrie noted the elegantly carpeted and decorated hall, the marbled lobby, and showy waiting-room. It was such a place as she had often dreamed of occupying.
"I guess we'd better move right away, don't you think so?" she observed to Lola, thinking of the commonplace chamber in Seventeenth Street.
"Oh, by all means," said the latter.
The next day her trunks left for the new abode.
Dressing, after the matinée on Wednesday, a knock came at her dressing-room door.
Carrie looked at the card handed by the boy and suffered a shock of surprise.
"Tell her I'll be right out," she said softly. Then, looking at the card, added: "Mrs. Vance."
"Why, you little sinner," the latter exclaimed, as she saw Carrie coming toward her across the now vacant stage. "How in the world did this happen?"
Carrie laughed merrily. There was no trace of embarrassment in her friend's manner. You would have thought that the long separation had come about accidentally.
"I don't know," returned Carrie, warming, in spite of her first troubled feelings, toward this handsome, good-natured young matron.
"Well, you know, I saw your picture in the Sunday paper, but your name threw me off. I thought it must be you or somebody that looked just like you, and I said: 'Well, now, I will go right down there and see.' I was never more surprised in my life. How are you, anyway?"
"Oh, very well," returned Carrie. "How have you been?"
"Fine. But aren't you a success! Dear, oh! All the papers talking about you. I should think you would be just too proud to breathe. I was almost afraid to come back here this afternoon."
"Oh, nonsense," said Carrie, blushing. "You know I'd be glad to see you."
"Well, anyhow, here you are. Can't you come up and take dinner with me now? Where are you stopping?"
"At the Wellington," said Carrie, who permitted herself a touch of pride in the acknowledgment.
"Oh, are you?" exclaimed the other, upon whom the name was not without its proper effect.
Tactfully, Mrs. Vance avoided the subject of Hurstwood, of whom she could not help thinking. No doubt Carrie had left him. That much she surmised.
"Oh, I don't think I can," said Carrie, "to-night. I have so little time. I must be back here by 7.30. Won't you come and dine with me?"
"I'd be delighted, but I can't to-night," said Mrs. Vance studying Carrie's fine appearance. The latter's good fortune made her seem more than ever worthy and delightful in the other's eyes. "I promised faithfully to be home at six." Glancing at the small gold watch pinned to her bosom, she added: "I must be going, too. Tell me when you're coming up, if at all."
"Why, any time you like," said Carrie.
"Well, to-morrow then. I'm living at the Chelsea now."
"Moved again?" exclaimed Carrie, laughing.
"Yes. You know I can't stay six months in one place. I just have to move. Remember now-half-past five."
"I won't forget," said Carrie, casting a glance at her as she went away. Then it came to her that she was as good as this woman now-perhaps better. Something in the other's solicitude and interest made her feel as if she were the one to condescend.
Now, as on each preceding day, letters were handed her by the doorman at the Casino. This was a feature which had rapidly developed since Monday. What they contained she well knew. Mash notes were old affairs in their mildest form. She remembered having received her first one far back in Columbia City. Since then, as a chorus girl, she had received others-gentlemen who prayed for an engagement. They were common sport between her and Lola, who received some also. They both frequently made light of them.
Now, however, they came thick and fast. Gentlemen with fortunes did not hesitate to note, as an addition to their own amiable collection of virtues, that they had their horses and carriages. Thus one:
"I have a million in my own right. I could give you every luxury. There isn't anything you could ask for that you couldn't have. I say this, not because I want to speak of my money, but because I love you and wish to gratify your every desire. It is love that prompts me to write. Will you not give me one half-hour in which to plead my cause?"
Such of these letters as came while Carrie was still in the Seventeenth Street place were read with more interest-though never delight-than those which arrived after she was installed in her luxurious quarters at the Wellington. Even there her vanity-or that self-appreciation which, in its more rabid form, is called vanity-was not sufficiently cloyed to make these things wearisome. Adulation, being new in any form, pleased her. Only she was sufficiently wise to distinguish between her old condition and her new one. She had not had fame or money before. Now they had come. She had not had adulation and affectionate propositions before. Now they had come. Wherefore? She smiled to think that men should suddenly find her so much more attractive. In the least way it incited her to coolness and indifference.
"Do look here," she remarked to Lola. "See what this man says: 'If you will only deign to grant me one half-hour,'" she repeated, with an imitation of languor. "The idea. Aren't men silly?"
"He must have lots of money, the way he talks," observed Lola. "That's what they all say," said Carrie, innocently.
"Why don't you see him," suggested Lola, "and hear what he has to say?"
"Indeed I won't," said Carrie. "I know what he'd say. I don't want to meet anybody that way."
Lola looked at her with big, merry eyes.
"He couldn't hurt you," she returned. "You might have some fun with him."
Carrie shook her head.
"You're awfully queer," returned the little, blue-eyed soldier.
Thus crowded fortune. For this whole week, though her large salary had not yet arrived, it was as if the world understood and trusted her. Without money-or the requisite sum, at least-she enjoyed the luxuries which money could buy. For her the doors of fine places seemed to open quite without the asking. These palatial chambers, how marvellously they came to her. The elegant apartments of Mrs. Vance in the Chelsea-these were hers. Men sent flowers, love notes, offers of fortune. And still her dreams ran riot. The one hundred and fifty! the one hundred and fifty! What a door to an Aladdin's cave it seemed to be. Each day, her head almost turned by developments, her fancies of what her fortune must be, with ample money, grew and multiplied. She conceived of delights which were not-saw lights of joy that never were on land or sea. Then, at last, after a world of anticipation, came her first installment of one hundred and fifty dollars.
It was paid to her in greenbacks-three twenties, six tens, and six fives. Thus collected it made a very convenient roll. It was accompanied by a smile and a salutation from the cashier who paid it.
"Ah, yes," said the latter, when she applied; "Miss Madenda-one hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a success the show seems to have made."
"Yes, indeed," returned Carrie.
Right after came one of the insignificant members of the company, and she heard the changed tone of address.
"How much?" said the same cashier, sharply. One, such as she had only recently been, was waiting for her modest salary. It took her back to the few weeks in which she had collected-or rather had received-almost with the air of a domestic, four-fifty per week from a lordly foreman in a shoe factory-a man who, in distributing the envelopes, had the manner of a prince doling out favours to a servile group of petitioners. She knew that out in Chicago this very day the same factory chamber was full of poor homely-clad girls working in long lines at clattering machines; that at noon they would eat a miserable lunch in a half-hour; that Saturday they would gather, as they had when she was one of them, and accept the small pay for work a hundred times harder than she was now doing. Oh, it was so easy now! The world was so rosy and bright. She felt so thrilled that she must needs walk back to the hotel to think, wondering what she should do.
It does not take money long to make plain its impotence, providing the desires are in the realm of affection. With her one hundred and fifty in hand, Carrie could think of nothing particularly to do. In itself, as a tangible, apparent thing which she could touch and look upon, it was a diverting thing for a few days, but this soon passed. Her hotel bill did not require its use. Her clothes had for some time been wholly satisfactory. Another day or two and she would receive another hundred and fifty. It began to appear as if this were not so startlingly necessary to maintain her present state. If she wanted to do anything better or move higher she must have more-a great deal more.
Now a critic called to get up one of those tinsel interviews which shine with clever observations, show up the wit of critics, display the folly of celebrities, and divert the public. He liked Carrie, and said so, publicly-adding, however, that she was merely pretty, good-natured, and lucky. This cut like a knife. The "Herald," getting up an entertainment for the benefit of its free ice fund, did her the honour to beg her to appear along with celebrities for nothing. She was visited by a young author, who had a play which he thought she could produce. Alas, she could not judge. It hurt her to think it. Then she found she must put her money in the bank for safety, and so moving, finally reached the place where it struck her that the door to life's perfect enjoyment was not open.
Gradually she began to think it was because it was summer. Nothing was going on much save such entertainments as the one in which she was the star. Fifth Avenue was boarded up where the rich had deserted their mansions. Madison Avenue was little better. Broadway was full of loafing thespians in search of next season's engagements. The whole city was quiet and her nights were taken up with her work. Hence the feeling that there was little to do.
"I don't know," she said to Lola one day, sitting at one of the windows which looked down into Broadway, "I get lonely; don't you?"
"No," said Lola, "not very often. You won't go anywhere. That's what's the matter with you."
"Where can I go?"
"Why, there're lots of places," returned Lola, who was thinking of her own lightsome tourneys with the gay youths. "You won't go with anybody."
"I don't want to go with these people who write to me. I know what kind they are."
"You oughtn't to be lonely," said Lola, thinking of Carrie's success. "There're lots would give their ears to be in your shoes."
Carrie looked out again at the passing crowd.
"I don't know," she said.
Unconsciously her idle hands were beginning to weary.
Chapter XLV. CURIOUS SHIFTS OF THE POOR
The gloomy Hurstwood, sitting in his cheap hotel, where he had taken refuge with seventy dollars-the price of his furniture-between him and nothing, saw a hot summer out and a cool fall in, reading. He was not wholly indifferent to the fact that his money was slipping away. As fifty cents after fifty cents were paid out for a day's lodging he became uneasy, and finally took a cheaper room-thirty-five cents a day-to make his money last longer. Frequently he saw notices of Carrie. Her picture was in the "World" once or twice, and an old "Herald" he found in a chair informed him that she had recently appeared with some others at a benefit for something or other. He read these things with mingled feelings. Each one seemed to put her farther and farther away into a realm which became more imposing as it receded from him. On the billboards, too, he saw a pretty poster, showing her as the Quaker Maid, demure and dainty. More than once he stopped and looked at these, gazing at the pretty face in a sullen sort of way. His clothes were shabby, and he presented a marked contrast to all that she now seemed to be.
Somehow, so long as he knew she was at the Casino, though he had never any intention of going near her, there was a subconscious comfort for him-he was not quite alone. The show seemed such a fixture that, after a month or two, he began to take it for granted that it was still running. In September it went on the road and he did not notice it. When all but twenty dollars of his money was gone, he moved to a fifteen-cent lodging-house in the Bowery, where there was a bare lounging-room filled with tables and benches as well as some chairs. Here his preference was to close his eyes and dream of other days, a habit which grew upon him. It was not sleep at first, but a mental hearkening back to scenes and incidents in his Chicago life. As the present became darker, the past grew brighter, and all that concerned it stood in relief.
He was unconscious of just how much this habit had hold of him until one day he found his lips repeating an old answer he had made to one of his friends. They were in Fitzgerald and Moy's. It was as if he stood in the door of his elegant little office, comfortably dressed, talking to Sagar Morrison about the value of South Chicago real estate in which the latter was about to invest.
"How would you like to come in on that with me?" he heard Morrison say.
"Not me," he answered, just as he had years before. "I have my hands full now."
The movement of his lips aroused him. He wondered whether he had really spoken. The next time he noticed anything of the sort he really did talk.
"Why don't you jump, you bloody fool?" he was saying. "Jump!"
It was a funny English story he was telling to a company of actors. Even as his voice recalled him, he was smiling. A crusty old codger, sitting near by, seemed disturbed; at least, he stared in a most pointed way. Hurstwood straightened up. The humour of the memory fled in an instant and he felt ashamed. For relief, he left his chair and strolled out into the streets.
One day, looking down the ad. columns of the "Evening World," he saw where a new play was at the Casino. Instantly, he came to a mental halt. Carrie had gone! He remembered seeing a poster of her only yesterday, but no doubt it was one left uncovered by the new signs. Curiously, this fact shook him up. He had almost to admit that somehow he was depending upon her being in the city. Now she was gone. He wondered how this important fact had skipped him. Goodness knows when she would be back now. Impelled by a nervous fear, he rose and went into the dingy hall, where he counted his remaining money, unseen. There were but ten dollars in all.
He wondered how all these other lodging-house people around him got along. They didn't seem to do anything. Perhaps they begged-unquestionably they did. Many was the dime he had given to such as they in his day. He had seen other men asking for money on the streets. Maybe he could get some that way. There was horror in this thought.
Sitting in the lodging-house room, he came to his last fifty cents. He had saved and counted until his health was affected. His stoutness had gone. With it, even the semblance of a fit in his clothes. Now he decided he must do something, and, walking about, saw another day go by, bringing him down to his last twenty cents-not enough to eat for the morrow.
Summoning all his courage, he crossed to Broadway and up to the Broadway Central hotel. Within a block he halted, undecided. A big, heavy-faced porter was standing at one of the side entrances, looking out. Hurstwood purposed to appeal to him. Walking straight up, he was upon him before he could turn away.
"My friend," he said, recognising even in his plight the man's inferiority, "is there anything about this hotel that I could get to do?"
The porter stared at him the while he continued to talk.
"I'm out of work and out of money and I've got to get something,-it doesn't matter what. I don't care to talk about what I've been, but if you'd tell me how to get something to do, I'd be much obliged to you. It wouldn't matter if it only lasted a few days just now. I've got to have something."
The porter still gazed, trying to look indifferent. Then, seeing that Hurstwood was about to go on, he said:
"I've nothing to do with it. You'll have to ask inside."
Curiously, this stirred Hurstwood to further effort.
"I thought you might tell me."
The fellow shook his head irritably.
Inside went the ex-manager and straight to an office off the clerk's desk. One of the managers of the hotel happened to be there. Hurstwood looked him straight in the eye.
"Could you give me something to do for a few days?" he said. "I'm in a position where I have to get something at once."
The comfortable manager looked at him, as much as to say: "Well, I should judge so."
"I came here," explained Hurstwood, nervously, "because I've been a manager myself in my day. I've had bad luck in a way but I'm not here to tell you that. I want something to do, if only for a week."
The man imagined he saw a feverish gleam in the applicant's eye.
"What hotel did you manage?" he inquired.
"It wasn't a hotel," said Hurstwood. "I was manager of Fitzgerald and Moy's place in Chicago for fifteen years."
"Is that so?" said the hotel man. "How did you come to get out of that?"
The figure of Hurstwood was rather surprising in contrast to the fact.
"Well, by foolishness of my own. It isn't anything to talk about now. You could find out if you wanted to. I'm 'broke' now and, if you will believe me, I haven't eaten anything to-day."
The hotel man was slightly interested in this story. He could hardly tell what to do with such a figure, and yet Hurstwood's earnestness made him wish to do something.
"Call Olsen," he said, turning to the clerk.
In reply to a bell and a disappearing hall-boy, Olsen, the head porter, appeared.
"Olsen," said the manager, "is there anything downstairs you could find for this man to do? I'd like to give him something."
"I don't know, sir," said Olsen. "We have about all the help we need. I think I could find something, sir, though, if you like."
"Do. Take him to the kitchen and tell Wilson to give him something to eat."
"All right, sir," said Olsen.
Hurstwood followed. Out of the manager's sight, the head porter's manner changed.
"I don't know what the devil there is to do," he observed.
Hurstwood said nothing. To him the big trunk hustler was a subject for private contempt.
"You're to give this man something to eat," he observed to the cook.
The latter looked Hurstwood over, and seeing something keen and intellectual in his eyes, said:
"Well, sit down over there."
Thus was Hurstwood installed in the Broadway Central, but not for long. He was in no shape or mood to do the scrub work that exists about the foundation of every hotel. Nothing better offering, he was set to aid the fireman, to work about the basement, to do anything and everything that might offer. Porters, cooks, firemen, clerks-all were over him. Moreover his appearance did not please these individuals-his temper was too lonely-and they made it disagreeable for him.
With the stolidity and indifference of despair, however, he endured it all, sleeping in an attic at the roof of the house, eating what the cook gave him, accepting a few dollars a week, which he tried to save. His constitution was in no shape to endure.
One day the following February he was sent on an errand to a large coal company's office. It had been snowing and thawing and the streets were sloppy. He soaked his shoes in his progress and came back feeling dull and weary. All the next day he felt unusually depressed and sat about as much as possible, to the irritation of those who admired energy in others.
In the afternoon some boxes were to be moved to make room for new culinary supplies. He was ordered to handle a truck. Encountering a big box, he could not lift it.
"What's the matter there?" said the head porter. "Can't you handle it?"
He was straining to lift it, but now he quit.
"No," he said, weakly.
The man looked at him and saw that he was deathly pale.
"Not sick, are you?" he asked.
"I think I am," returned Hurstwood.
"Well, you'd better go sit down, then."
This he did, but soon grew rapidly worse. It seemed all he could do to crawl to his room, where he remained for a day.
"That man Wheeler's sick," reported one of the lackeys to the night clerk.
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know. He's got a high fever."
The hotel physician looked at him.
"Better send him to Bellevue," he recommended. "He's got pneumonia."
Accordingly, he was carted away.
In three weeks the worst was over, but it was nearly the first of May before his strength permitted him to be turned out. Then he was discharged.
No more weakly looking object ever strolled out into the spring sunshine than the once hale, lusty manager. All his corpulency had fled. His face was thin and pale, his hands white, his body flabby. Clothes and all, he weighed but one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Some old garments had been given him-a cheap brown coat and misfit pair of trousers. Also some change and advice. He was told to apply to the charities.
Again he resorted to the Bowery lodging-house, brooding over where to look. From this it was but a step to beggary.
"What can a man do?" he said. "I can't starve."
His first application was in sunny Second Avenue. A well-dressed man came leisurely strolling toward him out of Stuyvesant Park. Hurstwood nerved himself and sidled near.
"Would you mind giving me ten cents?" he said, directly. "I'm in a position where I must ask some one."
The man scarcely looked at him, fished in his vest pocket and took out a dime.
"There you are," he said.
"Much obliged," said Hurstwood, softly, but the other paid no more attention to him.
Satisfied with his success and yet ashamed of his situation, he decided that he would only ask for twenty-five cents more, since that would be sufficient. He strolled about sizing up people, but it was long before just the right face and situation arrived. When he asked, he was refused. Shocked by this result, he took an hour to recover and then asked again. This time a nickel was given him. By the most watchful effort he did get twenty cents more, but it was painful.
The next day he resorted to the same effort, experiencing a variety of rebuffs and one or two generous receptions. At last it crossed his mind that there was a science of faces, and that a man could pick the liberal countenance if he tried.
It was no pleasure to him, however, this stopping of passers-by. He saw one man taken up for it and now troubled lest he should be arrested. Nevertheless, he went on, vaguely anticipating that indefinite something which is always better.
It was with a sense of satisfaction, then, that he saw announced one morning the return of the Casino Company, "with Miss Carrie Madenda." He had thought of her often enough in days past. How successful she was-how much money she must have! Even now, however, it took a severe run of ill luck to decide him to appeal to her. He was truly hungry before he said:
"I'll ask her. She won't refuse me a few dollars."
Accordingly, he headed for the Casino one afternoon, passing it several times in an effort to locate the stage entrance. Then he sat in Bryant Park, a block away, waiting. "She can't refuse to help me a little," he kept saying to himself.
Beginning with half-past six, he hovered like a shadow about the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, pretending always to be a hurrying pedestrian and yet fearful lest he should miss his object. He was slightly nervous, too, now that the eventful hour had arrived; but being weak and hungry, his ability to suffer was modified. At last he saw that the actors were beginning to arrive, and his nervous tension increased, until it seemed as if he could not stand much more.
Once he thought he saw Carrie coming and moved forward, only to see that he was mistaken.
"She can't be long, now," he said to himself, half fearing to encounter her and equally depressed at the thought that she might have gone in by another way. His stomach was so empty that it ached.
Individual after individual passed him, nearly all well dressed, almost all indifferent. He saw coaches rolling by, gentlemen passing with ladies-the evening's merriment was beginning in this region of theatres and hotels.
Suddenly a coach rolled up and the driver jumped down to open the door. Before Hurstwood could act, two ladies flounced across the broad walk and disappeared in the stage door. He thought he saw Carrie, but it was so unexpected, so elegant and far away, he could hardly tell. He waited a while longer, growing feverish with want, and then seeing that the stage door no longer opened, and that a merry audience was arriving, he concluded it must have been Carrie and turned away.
"Lord," he said, hastening out of the street into which the more fortunate were pouring, "I've got to get something."
At that hour, when Broadway is wont to assume its most interesting aspect, a peculiar individual invariably took his stand at the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Broadway-a spot which is also intersected by Fifth Avenue. This was the hour when the theatres were just beginning to receive their patrons. Fire signs announcing the night's amusements blazed on every hand. Cabs and carriages, their lamps gleaming like yellow eyes, pattered by. Couples and parties of three and four freely mingled in the common crowd, which poured by in a thick stream, laughing and jesting. On Fifth Avenue were loungers-a few wealthy strollers, a gentleman in evening dress with his lady on his arm, some club-men passing from one smoking-room to another. Across the way the great hotels showed a hundred gleaming windows, their cafés and billiard-rooms filled with a comfortable, well-dressed, and pleasure-loving throng. All about was the night, pulsating with the thoughts of pleasure and exhilaration-the curious enthusiasm of a great city bent upon finding joy in a thousand different ways.
This unique individual was no less than an ex-soldier turned religionist, who, having suffered the whips and privations of our peculiar social system, had concluded that his duty to the God which he conceived lay in aiding his fellow-man. The form of aid which he chose to administer was entirely original with himself. It consisted of securing a bed for all such homeless wayfarers as should apply to him at this particular spot, though he had scarcely the wherewithal to provide a comfortable habitation for himself. Taking his place amid this lightsome atmosphere, he would stand, his stocky figure cloaked in a great cape overcoat, his head protected by a broad slouch hat, awaiting the applicants who had in various ways learned the nature of his charity. For a while he would stand alone, gazing like any idler upon an ever-fascinating scene. On the evening in question, a policeman passing saluted him as "captain," in a friendly way. An urchin who had frequently seen him before, stopped to gaze. All others took him for nothing out of the ordinary, save in the matter of dress, and conceived of him as a stranger whistling and idling for his own amusement.
As the first half-hour waned, certain characters appeared. Here and there in the passing crowds one might see, now and then, a loiterer edging interestedly near. A slouchy figure crossed the opposite corner and glanced furtively in his direction. Another came down Fifth Avenue to the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, took a general survey, and hobbled off again. Two or three noticeable Bowery types edged along the Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square, but did not venture over. The soldier, in his cape overcoat, walked a short line of ten feet at his corner, to and fro, indifferently whistling.
As nine o'clock approached, some of the hubbub of the earlier hour passed. The atmosphere of the hotels was not so youthful. The air, too, was colder. On every hand curious figures were moving-watchers and peepers, without an imaginary circle, which they seemed afraid to enter-a dozen in all. Presently, with the arrival of a keener sense of cold, one figure came forward. It crossed Broadway from out the shadow of Twenty-sixth Street, and, in a halting, circuitous way, arrived close to the waiting figure. There was something shamefaced or diffident about the movement, as if the intention were to conceal any idea of stopping until the very last moment. Then suddenly, close to the soldier, came the halt.
The captain looked in recognition, but there was no especial greeting. The newcomer nodded slightly and murmured something like one who waits for gifts. The other simply motioned toward the edge of the walk.
"Stand over there," he said.
By this the spell was broken. Even while the soldier resumed his short, solemn walk, other figures shuffled forward. They did not so much as greet the leader, but joined the one, sniffling and hitching and scraping their feet.
"Cold, ain't it?"
"I'm glad winter's over."
"Looks as though it might rain."
The motley company had increased to ten. One or two knew each other and conversed. Others stood off a few feet, not wishing to be in the crowd and yet not counted out. They were peevish, crusty, silent, eying nothing in particular and moving their feet.
There would have been talking soon, but the soldier gave them no chance. Counting sufficient to begin, he came forward.
"Beds, eh, all of you?"
There was a general shuffle and murmur of approval.
"Well, line up here. I'll see what I can do. I haven't a cent myself."
They fell into a sort of broken, ragged line. One might see, now, some of the chief characteristics by contrast. There was a wooden leg in the line. Hats were all drooping, a group that would ill become a second-hand Hester Street basement collection. Trousers were all warped and frayed at the bottom and coats worn and faded. In the glare of the store lights, some of the faces looked dry and chalky; others were red with blotches and puffed in the cheeks and under the eyes; one or two were rawboned and reminded one of railroad hands. A few spectators came near, drawn by the seemingly conferring group, then more and more, and quickly there was a pushing, gaping crowd. Some one in the line began to talk.
"Silence!" exclaimed the captain. "Now, then, gentlemen, these men are without beds. They have to have some place to sleep to-night. They can't lie out in the streets. I need twelve cents to put one of them to bed. Who will give it to me?"
No reply.
"Well, we'll have to wait here, boys, until some one does. Twelve cents isn't so very much for one man."
"Here's fifteen," exclaimed a young man, peering forward with strained eyes. "It's all I can afford."
"All right. Now I have fifteen. Step out of the line," and seizing one by the shoulder, the captain marched him off a little way and stood him up alone.
Coming back, he resumed his place and began again.
"I have three cents left. These men must be put to bed somehow. There are"-counting-"one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve men. Nine cents more will put the next man to bed; give him a good, comfortable bed for the night. I go right along and look after that myself. Who will give me nine cents?"
One of the watchers, this time a middle-aged man, handed him a five-cent piece.
"Now, I have eight cents. Four more will give this man a bed. Come, gentlemen. We are going very slow this evening. You all have good beds. How about these?"
"Here you are," remarked a bystander, putting a coin into his hand.
"That," said the captain, looking at the coin, "pays for two beds for two men and gives me five on the next one. Who will give me seven cents more?"
"I will," said a voice.
Coming down Sixth Avenue this evening, Hurstwood chanced to cross east through Twenty-sixth Street toward Third Avenue. He was wholly disconsolate in spirit, hungry to what he deemed an almost mortal extent, weary, and defeated. How should he get at Carrie now? It would be eleven before the show was over. If she came in a coach, she would go away in one. He would need to interrupt under most trying circumstances. Worst of all, he was hungry and weary, and at best a whole day must intervene, for he had not heart to try again to-night. He had no food and no bed.
When he neared Broadway, he noticed the captain's gathering of wanderers, but thinking it to be the result of a street preacher or some patent medicine fakir, was about to pass on. However, in crossing the street toward Madison Square Park, he noticed the line of men whose beds were already secured, stretching out from the main body of the crowd. In the glare of the neighbouring electric light he recognised a type of his own kind-the figures whom he saw about the streets and in the lodging-houses, drifting in mind and body like himself. He wondered what it could be and turned back.
There was the captain curtly pleading as before. He heard with astonishment and a sense of relief the oft-repeated words: "These men must have a bed." Before him was the line of unfortunates whose beds were yet to be had, and seeing a newcomer quietly edge up and take a position at the end of the line, he decided to do likewise. What use to contend? He was weary to-night. It was a simple way out of one difficulty, at least. To-morrow, maybe, he would do better.
Back of him, where some of those were whose beds were safe, a relaxed air was apparent. The strain of uncertainty being removed, he heard them talking with moderate freedom and some leaning toward sociability. Politics, religion, the state of the government, some newspaper sensations, and the more notorious facts the world over, found mouthpieces and auditors there. Cracked and husky voices pronounced forcibly upon odd matters. Vague and rambling observations were made in reply.
There were squints, and leers, and some dull, ox-like stares from those who were too dull or too weary to converse.
Standing tells. Hurstwood became more weary waiting. He thought he should drop soon and shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. At last his turn came. The man ahead had been paid for and gone to the blessed line of success. He was now first, and already the captain was talking for him.
"Twelve cents, gentlemen-twelve cents puts this man to bed. He wouldn't stand here in the cold if he had any place to go."
Hurstwood swallowed something that rose to his throat. Hunger and weakness had made a coward of him.
"Here you are," said a stranger, handing money to the captain.
Now the latter put a kindly hand on the ex-manager's shoulder. "Line up over there," he said.
Once there, Hurstwood breathed easier. He felt as if the world were not quite so bad with such a good man in it. Others seemed to feel like himself about this.
"Captain's a great feller, ain't he?" said the man ahead-a little, woebegone, helpless-looking sort of individual, who looked as though he had ever been the sport and care of fortune.
"Yes," said Hurstwood, indifferently.
"Huh! there's a lot back there yet," said a man farther up, leaning out and looking back at the applicants for whom the captain was pleading.
"Yes. Must be over a hundred to-night," said another.
"Look at the guy in the cab," observed a third.
A cab had stopped. Some gentleman in evening dress reached out a bill to the captain, who took it with simple thanks and turned away to his line. There was a general craning of necks as the jewel in the white shirt front sparkled and the cab moved off. Even the crowd gaped in awe.
"That fixes up nine men for the night," said the captain, counting out as many of the line near him. "Line up over there. Now, then, there are only seven. I need twelve cents."
Money came slowly. In the course of time the crowd thinned out to a meagre handful. Fifth Avenue, save for an occasional cab or foot passenger, was bare. Broadway was thinly peopled with pedestrians. Only now and then a stranger passing noticed the small group, handed out a coin, and went away, unheeding.
The captain remained stolid and determined. He talked on, very slowly, uttering the fewest words and with a certain assurance, as though he could not fail.
"Come; I can't stay out here all night. These men are getting tired and cold. Some one give me four cents."
There came a time when he said nothing at all. Money was handed him, and for each twelve cents he singled out a man and put him in the other line. Then he walked up and down as before, looking at the ground.
The theatres let out. Fire signs disappeared. A clock struck eleven. Another half-hour and he was down to the last two men.
"Come, now," he exclaimed to several curious observers; "eighteen cents will fix us all up for the night. Eighteen cents. I have six. Somebody give me the money. Remember, I have to go over to Brooklyn yet to-night. Before that I have to take these men down and put them to bed. Eighteen cents."
No one responded. He walked to and fro, looking down for several minutes, occasionally saying softly: "Eighteen cents." It seemed as if this paltry sum would delay the desired culmination longer than all the rest had. Hurstwood, buoyed up slightly by the long line of which he was a part, refrained with an effort from groaning, he was so weak.
At last a lady in opera cape and rustling skirts came down Fifth Avenue, accompanied by her escort. Hurstwood gazed wearily, reminded by her both of Carrie in her new world and of the time when he had escorted his own wife in like manner.
While he was gazing, she turned and, looking at the remarkable company, sent her escort over. He came, holding a bill in his fingers, all elegant and graceful.
"Here you are," he said.
"Thanks," said the captain, turning to the two remaining applicants. "Now we have some for to-morrow night," he added.
Therewith he lined up the last two and proceeded to the head, counting as he went.
"One hundred and thirty-seven," he announced. "Now, boys, line up. Right dress there. We won't be much longer about this. Steady, now."
He placed himself at the head and called out "Forward." Hurstwood moved with the line. Across Fifth Avenue, through Madison Square by the winding paths, east on Twenty-third Street, and down Third Avenue wound the long, serpentine company. Midnight pedestrians and loiterers stopped and stared as the company passed. Chatting policemen, at various corners, stared indifferently or nodded to the leader, whom they had seen before. On Third Avenue they marched, a seemingly weary way, to Eighth Street, where there was a lodging-house, closed, apparently, for the night. They were expected, however.
Outside in the gloom they stood, while the leader parleyed within. Then doors swung open and they were invited in with a "Steady, now."
Some one was at the head showing rooms, so that there was no delay for keys. Toiling up the creaky stairs, Hurstwood looked back and saw the captain, watching; the last one of the line being included in his broad solicitude. Then he gathered his cloak about him and strolled out into the night.
"I can't stand much of this," said Hurstwood, whose legs ached him painfully, as he sat down upon the miserable bunk in the small, lightless chamber allotted to him. "I've got to eat, or I'll die."
Chapter XLVI. STIRRING TROUBLED WATERS
Playing in New York one evening on this her return, Carrie was putting the finishing touches to her toilet before leaving for the night, when a commotion near the stage door caught her ear. It included a familiar voice.
"Never mind, now. I want to see Miss Madenda."
"You'll have to send in your card."
"Oh, come off! Here."
A half-dollar was passed over, and now a knock came at her dressing-room door. Carrie opened it.
"Well, well!" said Drouet. "I do swear! Why, how are you? I knew that was you the moment I saw you."
Carrie fell back a pace, expecting a most embarrassing conversation.
"Aren't you going to shake hands with me? Well, you're a dandy! That's all right, shake hands."
Carrie put out her hand, smiling, if for nothing more than the man's exuberant good-nature. Though older, he was but slightly changed. The same fine clothes, the same stocky body, the same rosy countenance.
"That fellow at the door there didn't want to let me in, until I paid him. I knew it was you, all right. Say, you've got a great show. You do your part fine. I knew you would. I just happened to be passing to-night and thought I'd drop in for a few minutes. I saw your name on the programme, but I didn't remember it until you came on the stage. Then it struck me all at once. Say, you could have knocked me down with a feather. That's the same name you used out there in Chicago, isn't it?"
"Yes," answered Carrie, mildly, overwhelmed by the man's assurance.
"I knew it was, the moment I saw you. Well, how have you been, anyhow?"
"Oh, very well," said Carrie, lingering in her dressing-room. She was rather dazed by the assault. "How have you been?"
"Me? Oh, fine. I'm here now."
"Is that so?" said Carrie.
"Yes. I've been here for six months. I've got charge of a branch here."
"How nice!"
"Well, when did you go on the stage, anyhow?" inquired Drouet.
"About three years ago," said Carrie.
"You don't say so! Well, sir, this is the first I've heard of it. I knew you would, though. I always said you could act-didn't I?"
Carrie smiled.
"Yes, you did," she said.
"Well, you do look great," he said. "I never saw anybody improve so. You're taller, aren't you?"
"Me? Oh, a little, maybe."
He gazed at her dress, then at her hair, where a becoming hat was set jauntily, then into her eyes, which she took all occasion to avert. Evidently he expected to restore their old friendship at once and without modification.
"Well," he said, seeing her gather up her purse, handkerchief, and the like, preparatory to departing, "I want you to come out to dinner with me; won't you? I've got a friend out here."
"Oh, I can't," said Carrie. "Not to-night. I have an early engagement to-morrow."
"Aw, let the engagement go. Come on. I can get rid of him. I want to have a good talk with you."
"No, no," said Carrie; "I can't. You mustn't ask me any more. I don't care for a late dinner."
"Well, come on and have a talk, then, anyhow."
"Not to-night," she said, shaking her head. "We'll have a talk some other time."
As a result of this, she noticed a shade of thought pass over his face, as if he were beginning to realise that things were changed. Good-nature dictated something better than this for one who had always liked her.
"You come around to the hotel to-morrow," she said, as sort of penance for error. "You can take dinner with me."
"All right," said Drouet, brightening. "Where are you stopping?"
"At the Waldorf," she answered, mentioning the fashionable hostelry then but newly erected.
"What time?"
"Well, come at three," said Carrie, pleasantly.
The next day Drouet called, but it was with no especial delight that Carrie remembered her appointment. However, seeing him, handsome as ever, after his kind, and most genially disposed, her doubts as to whether the dinner would be disagreeable were swept away. He talked as volubly as ever.
"They put on a lot of lugs here, don't they?" was his first remark.
"Yes; they do," said Carrie.
Genial egotist that he was, he went at once into a detailed account of his own career.
"I'm going to have a business of my own pretty soon," he observed in one place. "I can get backing for two hundred thousand dollars."
Carrie listened most good-naturedly.
"Say," he said, suddenly; "where is Hurstwood now?"
Carrie flushed a little.
"He's here in New York, I guess," she said. "I haven't seen him for some time."
Drouet mused for a moment. He had not been sure until now that the ex-manager was not an influential figure in the background. He imagined not; but this assurance relieved him. It must be that Carrie had got rid of him-as well she ought, he thought.
"A man always makes a mistake when he does anything like that," he observed.
"Like what?" said Carrie, unwitting of what was coming.
"Oh, you know," and Drouet waved her intelligence, as it were, with his hand.
"No, I don't," she answered. "What do you mean?"
"Why that affair in Chicago-the time he left."
"I don't know what you are talking about," said Carrie. Could it be he would refer so rudely to Hurstwood's flight with her?
"Oho!" said Drouet, incredulously. "You knew he took ten thousand dollars with him when he left, didn't you?"
"What!" said Carrie. "You don't mean to say he stole money, do you?"
"Why," said Drouet, puzzled at her tone, "you knew that, didn't you?"
"Why, no," said Carrie. "Of course I didn't."
"Well, that's funny," said Drouet. "He did, you know. It was in all the papers."
"How much did you say he took?" said Carrie.
"Ten thousand dollars. I heard he sent most of it back afterwards, though."
Carrie looked vacantly at the richly carpeted floor. A new light was shining upon all the years since her enforced flight. She remembered now a hundred things that indicated as much. She also imagined that he took it on her account. Instead of hatred springing up there was a kind of sorrow generated. Poor fellow! What a thing to have had hanging over his head all the time.
At dinner Drouet, warmed up by eating and drinking and softened in mood, fancied he was winning Carrie to her old-time good-natured regard for him. He began to imagine it would not be so difficult to enter into her life again, high as she was. Ah, what a prize! he thought. How beautiful, how elegant, how famous! In her theatrical and Waldorf setting, Carrie was to him the all desirable.
"Do you remember how nervous you were that night at the Avery?" he asked.
Carrie smiled to think of it.
"I never saw anybody do better than you did then, Cad," he added ruefully, as he leaned an elbow on the table; "I thought you and I were going to get along fine those days."
"You mustn't talk that way," said Carrie, bringing in the least touch of coldness.
"Won't you let me tell you-"
"No," she answered, rising. "Besides, it's time I was getting ready for the theatre. I'll have to leave you. Come, now."
"Oh, stay a minute," pleaded Drouet. "You've got plenty of time."
"No," said Carrie, gently.
Reluctantly Drouet gave up the bright table and followed. He saw her to the elevator and, standing there, said:
"When do I see you again?"
"Oh, some time, possibly," said Carrie. "I'll be here all summer. Good-night!"
The elevator door was open.
"Good-night!" said Drouet, as she rustled in.
Then he strolled sadly down the hall, all his old longing revived, because she was now so far off. The merry frou-frou of the place spoke all of her. He thought himself hardly dealt with. Carrie, however, had other thoughts.
That night it was that she passed Hurstwood, waiting at the Casino, without observing him.
The next night, walking to the theatre, she encountered him face to face. He was waiting, more gaunt than ever, determined to see her, if he had to send in word. At first she did not recognise the shabby, baggy figure. He frightened her, edging so close, a seemingly hungry stranger.
"Carrie," he half whispered, "can I have a few words with you?"
She turned and recognised him on the instant. If there ever had lurked any feeling in her heart against him, it deserted her now. Still, she remembered what Drouet said about his having stolen the money.
"Why, George," she said; "what's the matter with you?"
"I've been sick," he answered. "I've just got out of the hospital. For God's sake, let me have a little money, will you?"
"Of course," said Carrie, her lip trembling in a strong effort to maintain her composure. "But what's the matter with you, anyhow?"
She was opening her purse, and now pulled out all the bills in it-a five and two twos.
"I've been sick, I told you," he said, peevishly, almost resenting her excessive pity. It came hard to him to receive it from such a source.
"Here," she said. "It's all I have with me."
"All right," he answered, softly. "I'll give it back to you some day."
Carrie looked at him, while pedestrians stared at her. She felt the strain of publicity. So did Hurstwood.
"Why don't you tell me what's the matter with you?" she asked, hardly knowing what to do. "Where are you living?"
"Oh, I've got a room down in the Bowery," he answered. "There's no use trying to tell you here. I'm all right now."
He seemed in a way to resent her kindly inquiries-so much better had fate dealt with her.
"Better go on in," he said. "I'm much obliged, but I won't bother you any more."
She tried to answer, but he turned away and shuffled off toward the east.
For days this apparition was a drag on her soul before it began to wear partially away. Drouet called again, but now he was not even seen by her. His attentions seemed out of place.
"I'm out," was her reply to the boy.
So peculiar, indeed, was her lonely, self-withdrawing temper, that she was becoming an interesting figure in the public eye-she was so quiet and reserved.
Not long after the management decided to transfer the show to London. A second summer season did not seem to promise well here.
"How would you like to try subduing London?" asked her manager, one afternoon.
"It might be just the other way," said Carrie.
"I think we'll go in June," he answered.
In the hurry of departure, Hurstwood was forgotten. Both he and Drouet were left to discover that she was gone. The latter called once, and exclaimed at the news. Then he stood in the lobby, chewing the ends of his moustache. At last he reached a conclusion-the old days had gone for good.
"She isn't so much," he said; but in his heart of hearts he did not believe this.
Hurstwood shifted by curious means through a long summer and fall. A small job as janitor of a dance hall helped him for a month. Begging, sometimes going hungry, sometimes sleeping in the park, carried him over more days. Resorting to those peculiar charities, several of which, in the press of hungry search, he accidentally stumbled upon, did the rest. Toward the dead of winter, Carrie came back, appearing on Broadway in a new play; but he was not aware of it. For weeks he wandered about the city, begging, while the fire sign, announcing her engagement, blazed nightly upon the crowded street of amusements. Drouet saw it, but did not venture in.
About this time Ames returned to New York. He had made a little success in the West, and now opened a laboratory in Wooster Street. Of course, he encountered Carrie through Mrs. Vance; but there was nothing responsive between them. He thought she was still united to Hurstwood, until otherwise informed. Not knowing the facts then, he did not profess to understand, and refrained from comment.
With Mrs. Vance, he saw the new play, and expressed himself accordingly.
"She ought not to be in comedy," he said. "I think she could do better than that."
One afternoon they met at the Vances' accidentally, and began a very friendly conversation. She could hardly tell why the one-time keen interest in him was no longer with her. Unquestionably, it was because at that time he had represented something which she did not have; but this she did not understand. Success had given her the momentary feeling that she was now blessed with much of which he would approve. As a matter of fact, her little newspaper fame was nothing at all to him. He thought she could have done better, by far.
"You didn't go into comedy-drama, after all?" he said, remembering her interest in that form of art.
"No," she answered; "I haven't, so far."
He looked at her in such a peculiar way that she realised she had failed. It moved her to add: "I want to, though."
"I should think you would," he said. "You have the sort of disposition that would do well in comedy-drama."
It surprised her that he should speak of disposition. Was she, then, so clearly in his mind?
"Why?" she asked.
"Well," he said, "I should judge you were rather sympathetic in your nature."
Carrie smiled and coloured slightly. He was so innocently frank with her that she drew nearer in friendship. The old call of the ideal was sounding.
"I don't know," she answered, pleased, nevertheless, beyond all concealment.
"I saw your play," he remarked. "It's very good."
"I'm glad you liked it."
"Very good, indeed," he said, "for a comedy."
This is all that was said at the time, owing to an interruption, but later they met again. He was sitting in a corner after dinner, staring at the floor, when Carrie came up with another of the guests. Hard work had given his face the look of one who is weary. It was not for Carrie to know the thing in it which appealed to her.
"All alone?" she said.
"I was listening to the music."
"I'll be back in a moment," said her companion, who saw nothing in the inventor.
Now he looked up in her face, for she was standing a moment, while he sat.
"Isn't that a pathetic strain?" he inquired, listening.
"Oh, very," she returned, also catching it, now that her attention was called.
"Sit down," he added, offering her the chair beside him.
They listened a few moments in silence, touched by the same feeling, only hers reached her through the heart. Music still charmed her as in the old days.
"I don't know what it is about music," she started to say, moved by the inexplicable longings which surged within her; "but it always makes me feel as if I wanted something-I-"
"Yes," he replied; "I know how you feel."
Suddenly he turned to considering the peculiarity of her disposition, expressing her feelings so frankly.
"You ought not to be melancholy," he said.
He thought a while, and then went off into a seemingly alien observation which, however, accorded with their feelings.
"The world is full of desirable situations, but, unfortunately, we can occupy but one at a time. It doesn't do us any good to wring our hands over the far-off things."
The music ceased and he arose, taking a standing position before her, as if to rest himself.
"Why don't you get into some good, strong comedy-drama?" he said. He was looking directly at her now, studying her face. Her large, sympathetic eyes and pain-touched mouth appealed to him as proofs of his judgment.
"Perhaps I shall," she returned.
"That's your field," he added.
"Do you think so?"
"Yes," he said; "I do. I don't suppose you're aware of it, but there is something about your eyes and mouth which fits you for that sort of work."
Carrie thrilled to be taken so seriously. For the moment, loneliness deserted her. Here was praise which was keen and analytical.
"It's in your eyes and mouth," he went on abstractedly. "I remember thinking, the first time I saw you, that there was something peculiar about your mouth. I thought you were about to cry."
"How odd," said Carrie, warm with delight. This was what her heart craved.
"Then I noticed that that was your natural look, and to-night I saw it again. There's a shadow about your eyes, too, which gives your face much this same character. It's in the depth of them, I think."
Carrie looked straight into his face, wholly aroused.
"You probably are not aware of it," he added.
She looked away, pleased that he should speak thus, longing to be equal to this feeling written upon her countenance. It unlocked the door to a new desire. She had cause to ponder over this until they met again-several weeks or more. It showed her she was drifting away from the old ideal which had filled her in the dressing-rooms of the Avery stage and thereafter, for a long time. Why had she lost it?
"I know why you should be a success," he said, another time, "if you had a more dramatic part. I've studied it out-"
"What is it?" said Carrie.
"Well," he said, as one pleased with a puzzle, "the expression in your face is one that comes out in different things. You get the same thing in a pathetic song, or any picture which moves you deeply. It's a thing the world likes to see, because it's a natural expression of its longing."
Carrie gazed without exactly getting the import of what he meant.
"The world is always struggling to express itself," he went on. "Most people are not capable of voicing their feelings. They depend upon others. That is what genius is for. One man expresses their desires for them in music; another one in poetry; another one in a play. Sometimes nature does it in a face-it makes the face representative of all desire. That's what has happened in your case."
He looked at her with so much of the import of the thing in his eyes that she caught it. At least, she got the idea that her look was something which represented the world's longing. She took it to heart as a creditable thing, until he added:
"That puts a burden of duty on you. It so happens that you have this thing. It is no credit to you-that is, I mean, you might not have had it. You paid nothing to get it. But now that you have it, you must do something with it."
"What?" asked Carrie.
"I should say, turn to the dramatic field. You have so much sympathy and such a melodious voice. Make them valuable to others. It will make your powers endure."
Carrie did not understand this last. All the rest showed her that her comedy success was little or nothing.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Why, just this. You have this quality in your eyes and mouth and in your nature. You can lose it, you know. If you turn away from it and live to satisfy yourself alone, it will go fast enough. The look will leave your eyes. Your mouth will change. Your power to act will disappear. You may think they won't, but they will. Nature takes care of that."
He was so interested in forwarding all good causes that he sometimes became enthusiastic, giving vent to these preachments. Something in Carrie appealed to him. He wanted to stir her up.
"I know," she said, absently, feeling slightly guilty of neglect.
"If I were you," he said, "I'd change."
The effect of this was like roiling helpless waters. Carrie troubled over it in her rocking-chair for days.
"I don't believe I'll stay in comedy so very much longer," she eventually remarked to Lola.
"Oh, why not?" said the latter.
"I think," she said, "I can do better in a serious play."
"What put that idea in your head?"
"Oh, nothing," she answered; "I've always thought so."
Still, she did nothing-grieving. It was a long way to this better thing-or seemed so-and comfort was about her; hence the inactivity and longing.
Chapter XLVII. THE WAY OF THE BEATEN: A HARP IN THE WIND
In the city, at that time, there were a number of charities similar in nature to that of the captain's, which Hurstwood now patronised in a like unfortunate way. One was a convent mission-house of the Sisters of Mercy in Fifteenth Street-a row of red brick family dwellings, before the door of which hung a plain wooden contribution box, on which was painted the statement that every noon a meal was given free to all those who might apply and ask for aid. This simple announcement was modest in the extreme, covering, as it did, a charity so broad. Institutions and charities are so large and so numerous in New York that such things as this are not often noticed by the more comfortably situated. But to one whose mind is upon the matter, they grow exceedingly under inspection. Unless one were looking up this matter in particular, he could have stood at Sixth Avenue and Fifteenth Street for days around the noon hour and never have noticed that out of the vast crowd that surged along that busy thoroughfare there turned out, every few seconds, some weather-beaten, heavy-footed specimen of humanity, gaunt in countenance and dilapidated in the matter of clothes. The fact is none the less true, however, and the colder the day the more apparent it became. Space and a lack of culinary room in the mission-house, compelled an arrangement which permitted of only twenty-five or thirty eating at one time, so that a line had to be formed outside and an orderly entrance effected. This caused a daily spectacle which, however, had become so common by repetition during a number of years that now nothing was thought of it. The men waited patiently, like cattle, in the coldest weather-waited for several hours before they could be admitted. No questions were asked and no service rendered. They ate and went away again, some of them returning regularly day after day the winter through.
A big, motherly looking woman invariably stood guard at the door during the entire operation and counted the admissible number. The men moved up in solemn order. There was no haste and no eagerness displayed. It was almost a dumb procession. In the bitterest weather this line was to be found here. Under an icy wind there was a prodigious slapping of hands and a dancing of feet. Fingers and the features of the face looked as if severely nipped by the cold. A study of these men in broad light proved them to be nearly all of a type. They belonged to the class that sit on the park benches during the endurable days and sleep upon them during the summer nights. They frequent the Bowery and those down-at-the-heels East Side streets where poor clothes and shrunken features are not singled out as curious. They are the men who are in the lodging-house sitting-rooms during bleak and bitter weather and who swarm about the cheaper shelters which only open at six in a number of the lower East Side streets. Miserable food, ill-timed and greedily eaten, had played havoc with bone and muscle. They were all pale, flabby, sunken-eyed, hollow-chested, with eyes that glinted and shone and lips that were a sickly red by contrast. Their hair was but half attended to, their ears anæmic in hue, and their shoes broken in leather and run down at heel and toe. They were of the class which simply floats and drifts, every wave of people washing up one, as breakers do driftwood upon a stormy shore.
For nearly a quarter of a century, in another section of the city, Fleischmann, the baker, had given a loaf of bread to any one who would come for it to the side door of his restaurant at the corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, at midnight. Every night during twenty years about three hundred men had formed in line and at the appointed time marched past the doorway, picked their loaf from a great box placed just outside, and vanished again into the night. From the beginning to the present time there had been little change in the character or number of these men. There were two or three figures that had grown familiar to those who had seen this little procession pass year after year. Two of them had missed scarcely a night in fifteen years. There were about forty, more or less, regular callers. The remainder of the line was formed of strangers. In times of panic and unusual hardships there were seldom more than three hundred. In times of prosperity, when little is heard of the unemployed, there were seldom less. The same number, winter and summer, in storm or calm, in good times and bad, held this melancholy midnight rendezvous at Fleischmann's bread box.
At both of these two charities, during the severe winter which was now on, Hurstwood was a frequent visitor. On one occasion it was peculiarly cold, and finding no comfort in begging about the streets, he waited until noon before seeking this free offering to the poor. Already, at eleven o'clock of this morning, several such as he had shambled forward out of Sixth Avenue, their thin clothes flapping and fluttering in the wind. They leaned against the iron railing which protects the walls of the Ninth Regiment Armory, which fronts upon that section of Fifteenth Street, having come early in order to be first in. Having an hour to wait, they at first lingered at a respectful distance; but others coming up, they moved closer in order to protect their right of precedence. To this collection Hurstwood came up from the west out of Seventh Avenue and stopped close to the door, nearer than all the others. Those who had been waiting before him, but farther away, now drew near, and by a certain stolidity of demeanour, no words being spoken, indicated that they were first.
Seeing the opposition to his action, he looked sullenly along the line, then moved out, taking his place at the foot. When order had been restored, the animal feeling of opposition relaxed.
"Must be pretty near noon," ventured one.
"It is," said another. "I've been waiting nearly an hour."
"Gee, but it's cold!"
They peered eagerly at the door, where all must enter. A grocery man drove up and carried in several baskets of eatables. This started some words upon grocery men and the cost of food in general.
"I see meat's gone up," said one.
"If there wuz war, it would help this country a lot."
The line was growing rapidly. Already there were fifty or more, and those at the head, by their demeanour, evidently congratulated themselves upon not having so long to wait as those at the foot. There was much jerking of heads, and looking down the line.
"It don't matter how near you get to the front, so long as you're in the first twenty-five," commented one of the first twenty-five. "You all go in together."
"Humph!" ejaculated Hurstwood, who had been so sturdily displaced.
"This here Single Tax is the thing," said another. "There ain't going to be no order till it comes."
For the most part there was silence; gaunt men shuffling, glancing, and beating their arms.
At last the door opened and the motherly-looking sister appeared. She only looked an order. Slowly the line moved up and, one by one, passed in, until twenty-five were counted. Then she interposed a stout arm, and the line halted, with six men on the steps. Of these the ex-manager was one. Waiting thus, some talked, some ejaculated concerning the misery of it; some brooded, as did Hurstwood. At last he was admitted, and, having eaten, came away, almost angered because of his pains in getting it.
At eleven o'clock of another evening, perhaps two weeks later, he was at the midnight offering of a loaf-waiting patiently. It had been an unfortunate day with him, but now he took his fate with a touch of philosophy. If he could secure no supper, or was hungry late in the evening, here was a place he could come. A few minutes before twelve, a great box of bread was pushed out, and exactly on the hour a portly, round-faced German took position by it, calling "Ready." The whole line at once moved forward each taking his loaf in turn and going his separate way. On this occasion, the ex-manager ate his as he went plodding the dark streets in silence to his bed.
By January he had about concluded that the game was up with him. Life had always seemed a precious thing, but now constant want and weakened vitality had made the charms of earth rather dull and inconspicuous. Several times, when fortune pressed most harshly, he thought he would end his troubles; but with a change of weather, or the arrival of a quarter or a dime, his mood would change, and he would wait. Each day he would find some old paper lying about and look into it, to see if there was any trace of Carrie, but all summer and fall he had looked in vain. Then he noticed that his eyes were beginning to hurt him, and this ailment rapidly increased until, in the dark chambers of the lodgings he frequented, he did not attempt to read. Bad and irregular eating was weakening every function of his body. The one recourse left him was to doze when a place offered and he could get the money to occupy it.
He was beginning to find, in his wretched clothing and meagre state of body, that people took him for a chronic type of bum and beggar. Police hustled him along, restaurant and lodging-house keepers turned him out promptly the moment he had his due; pedestrians waved him off. He found it more and more difficult to get anything from anybody.
At last he admitted to himself that the game was up. It was after a long series of appeals to pedestrians, in which he had been refused and refused-every one hastening from contact.
"Give me a little something, will you, mister?" he said to the last one. "For God's sake, do; I'm starving."
"Aw, get out," said the man, who happened to be a common type himself. "You're no good. I'll give you nawthin'."
Hurstwood put his hands, red from cold, down in his pockets. Tears came into his eyes.
"That's right," he said; "I'm no good now. I was all right. I had money. I'm going to quit this," and, with death in his heart, he started down toward the Bowery. People had turned on the gas before and died; why shouldn't he? He remembered a lodging-house where there were little, close rooms, with gas-jets in them, almost pre-arranged, he thought, for what he wanted to do, which rented for fifteen cents. Then he remembered that he had no fifteen cents.
On the way he met a comfortable-looking gentleman, coming, clean-shaven, out of a fine barber shop.
"Would you mind giving me a little something?" he asked this man boldly.
The gentleman looked him over and fished for a dime. Nothing but quarters were in his pocket.
"Here," he said, handing him one, to be rid of him. "Be off, now."
Hurstwood moved on, wondering. The sight of the large, bright coin pleased him a little. He remembered that he was hungry and that he could get a bed for ten cents. With this, the idea of death passed, for the time being, out of his mind. It was only when he could get nothing but insults that death seemed worth while.
One day, in the middle of the winter, the sharpest spell of the season set in. It broke grey and cold in the first day, and on the second snowed. Poor luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by nightfall, and this he had spent for food. At evening he found himself at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his face Bowery-ward. Especially fatigued because of the wandering propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk. An old, thin coat was turned up about his red ears-his cracked derby hat was pulled down until it turned them outward. His hands were in his pockets.
"I'll just go down Broadway," he said to himself.
When he reached Forty-second Street, the fire signs were already blazing brightly. Crowds were hastening to dine. Through bright windows, at every corner, might be seen gay companies in luxuriant restaurants. There were coaches and crowded cable cars.
In his weary and hungry state, he should never have come here. The contrast was too sharp. Even he was recalled keenly to better things. "What's the use?" he thought. "It's all up with me. I'll quit this."
People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure. Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not beg of anybody.
Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign, and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware, and, above all, the comfortable crowd. Weak as his mind had become, his hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this. He stopped stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered foolishly in.
"Eat," he mumbled. "That's right, eat. Nobody else wants any."
Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it had.
"It's mighty cold," he said. "Awful cold."
At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire, Carrie's name. "Carrie Madenda," it read, "and the Casino Company." All the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire. It was so bright that it attracted Hurstwood's gaze. He looked up, and then at a large, gilt-framed posterboard, on which was a fine lithograph of Carrie, lifesize.
Hurstwood gazed at it a moment, snuffling and hunching one shoulder, as if something were scratching him. He was so run down, however, that his mind was not exactly clear.
He approached that entrance and went in.
"Well?" said the attendant, staring at him. Seeing him pause, he went over and shoved him. "Get out of here," he said.
"I want to see Miss Madenda," he said.
"You do, eh?" the other said, almost tickled at the spectacle. "Get out of here," and he shoved him again. Hurstwood had no strength to resist.
"I want to see Miss Madenda," he tried to explain, even as he was being hustled away. "I'm all right. I-"
The man gave him a last push and closed the door. As he did so, Hurstwood slipped and fell in the snow. It hurt him, and some vague sense of shame returned. He began to cry and swear foolishly.
"God damned dog!" he said. "Damned old cur," wiping the slush from his worthless coat. "I-I hired such people as you once."
Now a fierce feeling against Carrie welled up-just one fierce, angry thought before the whole thing slipped out of his mind.
"She owes me something to eat," he said. "She owes it to me."
Hopelessly he turned back into Broadway again and slopped onward and away, begging, crying, losing track of his thoughts, one after another, as a mind decayed and disjointed is wont to do.
It was truly a wintry evening, a few days later, when his one distinct mental decision was reached. Already, at four o'clock, the sombre hue of night was thickening the air. A heavy snow was falling-a fine picking, whipping snow, borne forward by a swift wind in long, thin lines. The streets were bedded with it-six inches of cold, soft carpet, churned to a dirty brown by the crush of teams and the feet of men. Along Broadway men picked their way in ulsters and umbrellas. Along the Bowery, men slouched through it with collars and hats pulled over their ears. In the former thoroughfare businessmen and travellers were making for comfortable hotels. In the latter, crowds on cold errands shifted past dingy stores, in the deep recesses of which lights were already gleaming. There were early lights in the cable cars, whose usual clatter was reduced by the mantle about the wheels. The whole city was muffled by this fast-thickening mantle.
In her comfortable chambers at the Waldorf, Carrie was reading at this time "Père Goriot," which Ames had recommended to her. It was so strong, and Ames's mere recommendation had so aroused her interest, that she caught nearly the full sympathetic significance of it. For the first time, it was being borne in upon her how silly and worthless had been her earlier reading, as a whole. Becoming wearied, however, she yawned and came to the window, looking out upon the old winding procession of carriages rolling up Fifth Avenue.
"Isn't it bad?" she observed to Lola.
"Terrible!" said that little lady, joining her. "I hope it snows enough to go sleigh riding."
"Oh, dear," said Carrie, with whom the sufferings of Father Goriot were still keen. "That's all you think of. Aren't you sorry for the people who haven't anything to-night?"
"Of course I am," said Lola; "but what can I do? I haven't anything."
Carrie smiled.
"You wouldn't care, if you had," she returned.
"I would, too," said Lola. "But people never gave me anything when I was hard up."
"Isn't it just awful?" said Carrie, studying the winter's storm.
"Look at that man over there," laughed Lola, who had caught sight of some one falling down. "How sheepish men look when they fall, don't they?"
"We'll have to take a coach to-night," answered Carrie absently.
In the lobby of the Imperial, Mr. Charles Drouet was just arriving, shaking the snow from a very handsome ulster. Bad weather had driven him home early and stirred his desire for those pleasures which shut out the snow and gloom of life. A good dinner, the company of a young woman, and an evening at the theatre were the chief things for him.
"Why, hello, Harry!" he said, addressing a lounger in one of the comfortable lobby chairs. "How are you?"
"Oh, about six and six," said the other. "Rotten weather, isn't it?"
"Well, I should say," said the other. "I've been just sitting here thinking where I'd go to-night."
"Come along with me," said Drouet. "I can introduce you to something dead swell."
"Who is it?" said the other.
"Oh, a couple of girls over here in Fortieth Street. We could have a dandy time. I was just looking for you."
"Supposing you get 'em and take 'em out to dinner?"
"Sure," said Drouet. "Wait'll I go upstairs and change my clothes."
"Well, I'll be in the barber shop," said the other. "I want to get a shave."
"All right," said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the elevator. The old butterfly was as light on the wing as ever.
On an incoming vestibuled Pullman, speeding at forty miles an hour through the snow of the evening, were three others, all related.
"First call for dinner in the dining-car," a Pullman servitor was announcing, as he hastened through the aisle in snow-white apron and jacket.
"I don't believe I want to play any more," said the youngest, a black-haired beauty, turned supercilious by fortune, as she pushed a euchre hand away from her.
"Shall we go into dinner?" inquired her husband, who was all that fine raiment can make.
"Oh, not yet," she answered. "I don't want to play any more, though."
"Jessica," said her mother, who was also a study in what good clothing can do for age, "push that pin down in your tie-it's coming up."
Jessica obeyed, incidentally touching at her lovely hair and looking at a little jewel-faced watch. Her husband studied her, for beauty, even cold, is fascinating from one point of view.
"Well, we won't have much more of this weather," he said. "It only takes two weeks to get to Rome."
Mrs. Hurstwood nestled comfortably in her corner and smiled. It was so nice to be the mother-in-law of a rich young man-one whose financial state had borne her personal inspection.
"Do you suppose the boat will sail promptly?" asked Jessica, "if it keeps up like this?"
"Oh, yes," answered her husband. "This won't make any difference."
Passing down the aisle came a very fair-haired banker's son, also of Chicago, who had long eyed this supercilious beauty. Even now he did not hesitate to glance at her, and she was conscious of it. With a specially conjured show of indifference, she turned her pretty face wholly away. It was not wifely modesty at all. By so much was her pride satisfied.
At this moment Hurstwood stood before a dirty four story building in a side street quite near the Bowery, whose one-time coat of buff had been changed by soot and rain. He mingled with a crowd of men-a crowd which had been, and was still, gathering by degrees.
It began with the approach of two or three, who hung about the closed wooden doors and beat their feet to keep them warm. They had on faded derby hats with dents in them. Their misfit coats were heavy with melted snow and turned up at the collars. Their trousers were mere bags, frayed at the bottom and wobbling over big, soppy shoes, torn at the sides and worn almost to shreds. They made no effort to go in, but shifted ruefully about, digging their hands deep in their pockets and leering at the crowd and the increasing lamps. With the minutes, increased the number. There were old men with grizzled beards and sunken eyes, men who were comparatively young but shrunken by diseases, men who were middle-aged. None were fat. There was a face in the thick of the collection which was as white as drained veal. There was another red as brick. Some came with thin, rounded shoulders, others with wooden legs, still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them. There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red, blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance.
In the drive of the wind and sleet they pushed in on one another. There were wrists, unprotected by coat or pocket, which were red with cold. There were ears, half covered by every conceivable semblance of a hat, which still looked stiff and bitten. In the snow they shifted, now one foot, now another, almost rocking in unison.
With the growth of the crowd about the door came a murmur. It was not conversation, but a running comment directed at any one in general. It contained oaths and slang phrases.
"By damn, I wish they'd hurry up."
"Look at the copper watchin'."
"Maybe it ain't winter, nuther!"
"I wisht I was in Sing Sing."
Now a sharper lash of wind cut down and they huddled closer. It was an edging, shifting, pushing throng. There was no anger, no pleading, no threatening words. It was all sullen endurance, unlightened by either wit or good fellowship.
A carriage went jingling by with some reclining figure in it. One of the men nearest the door saw it.
"Look at the bloke ridin'."
"He ain't so cold."
"Eh, eh, eh!" yelled another, the carriage having long since passed out of hearing.
Little by little the night crept on. Along the walk a crowd turned out on its way home. Men and shop-girls went by with quick steps. The cross-town cars began to be crowded. The gas lamps were blazing, and every window bloomed ruddy with a steady flame. Still the crowd hung about the door, unwavering.
"Ain't they ever goin' to open up?" queried a hoarse voice, suggestively.
This seemed to renew the general interest in the closed door, and many gazed in that direction. They looked at it as dumb brutes look, as dogs paw and whine and study the knob. They shifted and blinked and muttered, now a curse, now a comment. Still they waited and still the snow whirled and cut them with biting flakes. On the old hats and peaked shoulders it was piling. It gathered in little heaps and curves and no one brushed it off. In the centre of the crowd the warmth and steam melted it, and water trickled off hat rims and down noses, which the owners could not reach to scratch. On the outer rim the piles remained unmelted. Hurstwood, who could not get in the centre, stood with head lowered to the weather and bent his form.
A light appeared through the transom overhead. It sent a thrill of possibility through the watchers. There was a murmur of recognition. At last the bars grated inside and the crowd pricked up its ears. Footsteps shuffled within and it murmured again. Some one called: "Slow up there, now," and then the door opened. It was push and jam for a minute, with grim, beast silence to prove its quality, and then it melted inward, like logs floating, and disappeared. There were wet hats and wet shoulders, a cold, shrunken, disgruntled mass, pouring in between bleak walls. It was just six o'clock and there was supper in every hurrying pedestrian's face. And yet no supper was provided here-nothing but beds.
Hurstwood laid down his fifteen cents and crept off with weary steps to his allotted room. It was a dingy affair-wooden, dusty, hard. A small gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner.
"Hm!" he said, clearing his throat and locking the door.
Now he began leisurely to take off his clothes, but stopped first with his coat, and tucked it along the crack under the door. His vest he arranged in the same place. His old wet, cracked hat he laid softly upon the table. Then he pulled off his shoes and lay down.
It seemed as if he thought a while, for now he arose and turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness, hidden from view. After a few moments, in which he reviewed nothing, but merely hesitated, he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. Even then he stood there, hidden wholly in that kindness which is night, while the uprising fumes filled the room. When the odour reached his nostrils, he quit his attitude and fumbled for the bed. "What's the use?" he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.
And now Carrie had attained that which in the beginning seemed life's object, or, at least, such fraction of it as human beings ever attain of their original desires. She could look about on her gowns and carriage, her furniture and bank account. Friends there were, as the world takes it-those who would bow and smile in acknowledgment of her success. For these she had once craved. Applause there was, and publicity-once far off, essential things, but now grown trivial and indifferent. Beauty also-her type of loveliness-and yet she was lonely. In her rocking-chair she sat, when not otherwise engaged-singing and dreaming.
Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional nature-the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels. Of one come the men of action-generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreamers-artists all.
As harps in the wind, the latter respond to every breath of fancy, voicing in their moods all the ebb and flow of the ideal.
Man has not yet comprehended the dreamer any more than he has the ideal. For him the laws and morals of the world are unduly severe. Ever hearkening to the sound of beauty, straining for the flash of its distant wings, he watches to follow, wearying his feet in travelling. So watched Carrie, so followed, rocking and singing.
And it must be remembered that reason had little part in this. Chicago dawning, she saw the city offering more of loveliness than she had ever known, and instinctively, by force of her moods alone, clung to it. In fine raiment and elegant surroundings, men seemed to be contented. Hence, she drew near these things. Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood; the world of fashion and the world of stage-these were but incidents. Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for. Time proved the representation false.
Oh, the tangle of human life! How dimly as yet we see. Here was Carrie, in the beginning poor, unsophisticated, emotional; responding with desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as by a wall. Laws to say: "Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely, but draw not nigh unless by righteousness." Convention to say: "You shall not better your situation save by honest labour." If honest labour be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast the first stone? Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more often directs the steps of the erring. Not evil, but goodness more often allures the feeling mind unused to reason.
Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy. As when Drouet took her, she had thought: "Now I am lifted into that which is best"; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way: "Now am I happy." But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake of its folly, she now found herself alone. Her purse was open to him whose need was greatest. In her walks on Broadway, she no longer thought of the elegance of the creatures who passed her. Had they more of that peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be envied.
Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more. Of Hurstwood's death she was not even aware. A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others, his nameless body to the Potter's Field.
Thus passed all that was of interest concerning these twain in their relation to her. Their influence upon her life is explicable alone by the nature of her longings. Time was when both represented for her all that was most potent in earthly success. They were the personal representatives of a state most blessed to attain-the titled ambassadors of comfort and peace, aglow with their credentials. It is but natural that when the world which they represented no longer allured her, its ambassadors should be discredited. Even had Hurstwood returned in his original beauty and glory, he could not now have allured her. She had learned that in his world, as in her own present state, was not happiness.
Sitting alone, she was now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day when she would be led forth among dreams become real. Ames had pointed out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if accomplished, would lie others for her. It was forever to be the pursuit of that radiance of delight which tints the distant hilltops of the world.
Oh, Carrie, Carrie! Oh, blind strivings of the human heart! Onward onward, it saith, and where beauty leads, there it follows. Whether it be the tinkle of a lone sheep bell o'er some quiet landscape, or the glimmer of beauty in sylvan places, or the show of soul in some passing eye, the heart knows and makes answer, following. It is when the feet weary and hope seems vain that the heartaches and the longings arise. Know, then, that for you is neither surfeit nor content. In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

PART I
CHAPTER I
No such throng had ever before been seen in the building during all its eight years of existence. People were wedged together most uncomfortably upon the seats; they stood packed in the aisles and overflowed the galleries; at the back, in the shadows underneath these galleries, they formed broad, dense masses about the doors, through which it would be hopeless to attempt a passage.
The light, given out from numerous tin-lined circles of flaring gas-jets arranged on the ceiling, fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces-some framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded or crowned with shining baldness-but all alike under the spell of a dominant emotion which held features in abstracted suspense and focussed every eye upon a common objective point.
The excitement of expectancy reigned upon each row of countenances, was visible in every attitude-nay, seemed a part of the close, overheated atmosphere itself.
An observer, looking over these compact lines of faces and noting the uniform concentration of eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed that they were watching for either the jury's verdict in some peculiarly absorbing criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers in a great lottery. These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting throng-the hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of some adverse decree.
But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Bishop was about to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the coming year. This list was evidently written in a hand strange to him, and the slow, near-sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and then adjusted them over his nose with annoying deliberation, was now silently rehearsing his task to himself-the while the clergymen round about ground their teeth and restlessly shuffled their feet in impatience.
Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage, there were a great many of these clergymen. A dozen or more dignified, and for the most part elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop in the pulpit. As many others, not quite so staid in mien, and indeed with here and there almost a suggestion of frivolity in their postures, were seated on the steps leading down from this platform. A score of their fellows sat facing the audience, on chairs tightly wedged into the space railed off round the pulpit; and then came five or six rows of pews, stretching across the whole breadth of the church, and almost solidly filled with preachers of the Word.
There were very old men among these-bent and decrepit veterans who had known Lorenzo Dow, and had been ordained by elders who remembered Francis Asbury and even Whitefield. They sat now in front places, leaning forward with trembling and misshapen hands behind their hairy ears, waiting to hear their names read out on the superannuated list, it might be for the last time.
The sight of these venerable Fathers in Israel was good to the eyes, conjuring up, as it did, pictures of a time when a plain and homely people had been served by a fervent and devoted clergy-by preachers who lacked in learning and polish, no doubt, but who gave their lives without dream of earthly reward to poverty and to the danger and wearing toil of itinerant missions through the rude frontier settlements. These pictures had for their primitive accessories log-huts, rough household implements, coarse clothes, and patched old saddles which told of weary years of journeying; but to even the least sympathetic vision there shone upon them the glorified light of the Cross and Crown. Reverend survivors of the heroic times, their very presence there-sitting meekly at the altar-rail to hear again the published record of their uselessness and of their dependence upon church charity-was in the nature of a benediction.
The large majority of those surrounding these patriarchs were middle-aged men, generally of a robust type, with burly shoulders, and bushing beards framing shaven upper lips, and who looked for the most part like honest and prosperous farmers attired in their Sunday clothes. As exceptions to this rule, there were scattered stray specimens of a more urban class, worthies with neatly trimmed whiskers, white neckcloths, and even indications of hair-oil-all eloquent of citified charges; and now and again the eye singled out a striking and scholarly face, at once strong and simple, and instinctively referred it to the faculty of one of the several theological seminaries belonging to the Conference.
The effect of these faces as a whole was toward goodness, candor, and imperturbable self-complacency rather than learning or mental astuteness; and curiously enough it wore its pleasantest aspect on the countenances of the older men. The impress of zeal and moral worth seemed to diminish by regular gradations as one passed to younger faces; and among the very beginners, who had been ordained only within the past day or two, this decline was peculiarly marked. It was almost a relief to note the relative smallness of their number, so plainly was it to be seen that they were not the men their forbears had been.
And if those aged, worn-out preachers facing the pulpit had gazed instead backward over the congregation, it may be that here too their old eyes would have detected a difference-what at least they would have deemed a decline.
But nothing was further from the minds of the members of the First M. E. Church of Tecumseh than the suggestion that they were not an improvement on those who had gone before them. They were undoubtedly the smartest and most important congregation within the limits of the Nedahma Conference, and this new church edifice of theirs represented alike a scale of outlay and a standard of progressive taste in devotional architecture unique in the Methodism of that whole section of the State. They had a right to be proud of themselves, too. They belonged to the substantial order of the community, with perhaps not so many very rich men as the Presbyterians had, but on the other hand with far fewer extremely poor folk than the Baptists were encumbered with. The pews in the first four rows of their church rented for one hundred dollars apiece-quite up to the Presbyterian highwater mark-and they now had almost abolished free pews altogether. The oyster suppers given by their Ladies' Aid Society in the basement of the church during the winter had established rank among the fashionable events in Tecumseh's social calendar.
A comprehensive and satisfied perception of these advantages was uppermost in the minds of this local audience, as they waited for the Bishop to begin his reading. They had entertained this Bishop and his Presiding Elders, and the rank and file of common preachers, in a style which could not have been remotely approached by any other congregation in the Conference. Where else, one would like to know, could the Bishop have been domiciled in a Methodist house where he might have a sitting-room all to himself, with his bedroom leading out of it? Every clergyman present had been provided for in a private residence-even down to the Licensed Exhorters, who were not really ministers at all when you came to think of it, and who might well thank their stars that the Conference had assembled among such open-handed people. There existed a dim feeling that these Licensed Exhorters-an uncouth crew, with country store-keepers and lumbermen and even a horse-doctor among their number-had taken rather too much for granted, and were not exhibiting quite the proper degree of gratitude over their reception.
But a more important issue hung now imminent in the balance-was Tecumseh to be fairly and honorably rewarded for her hospitality by being given the pastor of her choice?
All were agreed-at least among those who paid pew-rents-upon the great importance of a change in the pulpit of the First M. E. Church. A change in persons must of course take place, for their present pastor had exhausted the three-year maximum of the itinerant system, but there was needed much more than that. For a handsome and expensive church building like this, and with such a modern and go-ahead congregation, it was simply a vital necessity to secure an attractive and fashionable preacher. They had held their own against the Presbyterians these past few years only by the most strenuous efforts, and under the depressing disadvantage of a minister who preached dreary out-of-date sermons, and who lacked even the most rudimentary sense of social distinctions. The Presbyterians had captured the new cashier of the Adams County Bank, who had always gone to the Methodist Church in the town he came from, but now was lost solely because of this tiresome old fossil of theirs; and there were numerous other instances of the same sort, scarcely less grievous. That this state of things must be altered was clear.
The unusually large local attendance upon the sessions of the Conference had given some of the more guileless of visiting brethren a high notion of Tecumseh's piety; and perhaps even the most sophisticated stranger never quite realized how strictly it was to be explained by the anxiety to pick out a suitable champion for the fierce Presbyterian competition. Big gatherings assembled evening after evening to hear the sermons of those selected to preach, and the church had been almost impossibly crowded at each of the three Sunday services. Opinions had naturally differed a good deal during the earlier stages of this scrutiny, but after last night's sermon there could be but one feeling. The man for Tecumseh was the Reverend Theron Ware.
The choice was an admirable one, from points of view much more exalted than those of the local congregation.
You could see Mr. Ware sitting there at the end of the row inside the altar-rail-the tall, slender young man with the broad white brow, thoughtful eyes, and features moulded into that regularity of strength which used to characterize the American Senatorial type in those far-away days of clean-shaven faces and moderate incomes before the War. The bright-faced, comely, and vivacious young woman in the second side pew was his wife-and Tecumseh noted with approbation that she knew how to dress. There were really no two better or worthier people in the building than this young couple, who sat waiting along with the rest to hear their fate. But unhappily they had come to know of the effort being made to bring them to Tecumseh; and their simple pride in the triumph of the husband's fine sermon had become swallowed up in a terribly anxious conflict of hope and fear. Neither of them could maintain a satisfactory show of composure as the decisive moment approached. The vision of translation from poverty and obscurity to such a splendid post as this-truly it was too dazzling for tranquil nerves.
The tedious Bishop had at last begun to call his roll of names, and the good people of Tecumseh mentally ticked them off, one by one, as the list expanded. They felt that it was like this Bishop-an unimportant and commonplace figure in Methodism, not to be mentioned in the same breath with Simpson and Janes and Kingsley-that he should begin with the backwoods counties, and thrust all these remote and pitifully rustic stations ahead of their own metropolitan charge. To these they listened but listlessly-indifferent alike to the joy and to the dismay which he was scattering among the divines before him.
The announcements were being doled out with stumbling hesitation. After each one a little half-rustling movement through the crowded rows of clergymen passed mute judgment upon the cruel blow this brother had received, the reward justly given to this other, the favoritism by which a third had profited. The Presiding Elders, whose work all this was, stared with gloomy and impersonal abstraction down upon the rows of blackcoated humanity spread before them. The ministers returned this fixed and perfunctory gaze with pale, set faces, only feebly masking the emotions which each new name stirred somewhere among them. The Bishop droned on laboriously, mispronouncing words and repeating himself as if he were reading a catalogue of unfamiliar seeds.
"First church of Tecumseh-Brother Abram G. Tisdale!"
There was no doubt about it! These were actually the words that had been uttered. After all this outlay, all this lavish hospitality, all this sacrifice of time and patience in sitting through those sermons, to draw from the grab-bag nothing better than-a Tisdale!
A hum of outraged astonishment-half groan, half wrathful snort bounded along from pew to pew throughout the body of the church. An echo of it reached the Bishop, and so confused him that he haltingly repeated the obnoxious line. Every local eye turned as by intuition to where the calamitous Tisdale sat, and fastened malignantly upon him.
Could anything be worse? This Brother Tisdale was past fifty-a spindling, rickety, gaunt old man, with a long horse-like head and vacantly solemn face, who kept one or the other of his hands continually fumbling his bony jaw. He had been withdrawn from routine service for a number of years, doing a little insurance canvassing on his own account, and also travelling for the Book Concern. Now that he wished to return to parochial work, the richest prize in the whole list, Tecumseh, was given to him-to him who had never been asked to preach at a Conference, and whose archaic nasal singing of "Greenland's Icy Mountains" had made even the Licensed Exhorters grin! It was too intolerably dreadful to think of!
An embittered whisper to the effect that Tisdale was the Bishop's cousin ran round from pew to pew. This did not happen to be true, but indignant Tecumseh gave it entire credit. The throngs about the doors dwindled as by magic, and the aisles cleared. Local interest was dead; and even some of the pewholders rose and made their way out. One of these murmured audibly to his neighbors as he departed that HIS pew could be had now for sixty dollars.
So it happened that when, a little later on, the appointment of Theron Ware to Octavius was read out, none of the people of Tecumseh either noted or cared. They had been deeply interested in him so long as it seemed likely that he was to come to them-before their clearly expressed desire for him had been so monstrously ignored. But now what became of him was no earthly concern of theirs.
After the Doxology had been sung and the Conference formally declared ended, the Wares would fain have escaped from the flood of handshakings and boisterous farewells which spread over the front part of the church. But the clergymen were unusually insistent upon demonstrations of cordiality among themselves-the more, perhaps, because it was evident that the friendliness of their local hosts had suddenly evaporated-and, of all men in the world, the present incumbent of the Octavius pulpit now bore down upon them with noisy effusiveness, and defied evasion.
"Brother Ware-we have never been interduced-but let me clasp your hand! And-Sister Ware, I presume-yours too!"
He was a portly man, who held his head back so that his face seemed all jowl and mouth and sandy chin-whisker. He smiled broadly upon them with half-closed eyes, and shook hands again.
"I said to 'em," he went on with loud pretence of heartiness, "the minute I heerd your name called out for our dear Octavius, 'I must go over an' interduce myself.' It will be a heavy cross to part with those dear people, Brother Ware, but if anything could wean me to the notion, so to speak, it would be the knowledge that you are to take up my labors in their midst. Perhaps-ah-perhaps they ARE jest a trifle close in money matters, but they come out strong on revivals. They'll need a good deal o' stirrin' up about parsonage expenses, but, oh! such seasons of grace as we've experienced there together!" He shook his head, and closed his eyes altogether, as if transported by his memories.
Brother Ware smiled faintly in decorous response, and bowed in silence; but his wife resented the unctuous beaming of content on the other's wide countenance, and could not restrain her tongue.
"You seem to bear up tolerably well under this heavy cross, as you call it," she said sharply.
"The will o' the Lord, Sister Ware-the will o' the Lord!" he responded, disposed for the instant to put on his pompous manner with her, and then deciding to smile again as he moved off. The circumstance that he was to get an additional three hundred dollars yearly in his new place was not mentioned between them.
By a mutual impulse the young couple, when they had at last gained the cool open air, crossed the street to the side where over-hanging trees shaded the infrequent lamps, and they might be comparatively alone. The wife had taken her husband's arm, and pressed closely upon it as they walked. For a time no word passed, but finally he said, in a grave voice,-
"It is hard upon you, poor girl."
Then she stopped short, buried her face against his shoulder, and fell to sobbing.
He strove with gentle, whispered remonstrance to win her from this mood, and after a few moments she lifted her head and they resumed their walk, she wiping her eyes as they went.
"I couldn't keep it in a minute longer!" she said, catching her breath between phrases. "Oh, WHY do they behave so badly to us, Theron?"
He smiled down momentarily upon her as they moved along, and patted her hand.
"Somebody must have the poor places, Alice," he said consolingly. "I am a young man yet, remember. We must take our turn, and be patient. For 'we know that all things work together for good.'"
"And your sermon was so head-and-shoulders above all the others!" she went on breathlessly. "Everybody said so! And Mrs. Parshall heard it so DIRECT that you were to be sent here, and I know she told everybody how much I was lotting on it-I wish we could go right off tonight without going to her house-I shall be ashamed to look her in the face-and of course she knows we're poked off to that miserable Octavius.-Why, Theron, they tell me it's a worse place even than we've got now!"
"Oh, not at all," he put in reassuringly. "It has grown to be a large town-oh, quite twice the size of Tyre. It's a great Irish place, I've heard. Our own church seems to be a good deal run down there. We must build it up again; and the salary is better-a little."
But he too was depressed, and they walked on toward their temporary lodging in a silence full of mutual grief. It was not until they had come within sight of this goal that he prefaced by a little sigh of resignation these further words,-
"Come-let us make the best of it, my girl! After all, we are in the hands of the Lord."
"Oh, don't, Theron!" she said hastily. "Don't talk to me about the Lord tonight; I can't bear it!"
CHAPTER II
"Theron! Come out here! This is the funniest thing we have heard yet!"
Mrs. Ware stood on the platform of her new kitchen stoop. The bright flood of May-morning sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form, clad in a simple, fresh-starched calico gown, and shone in golden patches upon her light-brown hair. She had a smile on her face, as she looked down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step-a smile of a doubtful sort, stormily mirthful.
"Come out a minute, Theron!" she called again; and in obedience to the summons the tall lank figure of her husband appeared in the open doorway behind her. A long loose, open dressing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow, clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning undress expression of youthful good-nature. He leaned against the door-sill, crossed his large carpet slippers, and looked up into the sky, drawing a long satisfied breath.
"What a beautiful morning!" he exclaimed. "The elms over there are full of robins. We must get up earlier these mornings, and take some walks."
His wife indicated the boy with the milk-pail on his arm, by a wave of her hand.
"Guess what he tells me!" she said. "It wasn't a mistake at all, our getting no milk yesterday or the Sunday before. It seems that that's the custom here, at least so far as the parsonage is concerned."
"What's the matter, boy?" asked the young minister, drawling his words a little, and putting a sense of placid irony into them. "Don't the cows give milk on Sunday, then?"
The boy was not going to be chaffed. "Oh, I'll bring you milk fast enough on Sundays, if you give me the word," he said with nonchalance. "Only it won't last long."
"How do you mean-'won't last long'?", asked Mrs. Ware, briskly.
The boy liked her-both for herself, and for the doughnuts fried with her own hands, which she gave him on his morning round. He dropped his half-defiant tone.
"The thing of it's this," he explained. "Every new minister starts in saying we can deliver to this house on Sundays, an' then gives us notice to stop before the month's out. It's the trustees that does it."
The Rev. Theron Ware uncrossed his feet and moved out on to the stoop beside his wife. "What's that you say?" he interjected. "Don't THEY take milk on Sundays?"
"Nope!" answered the boy.
The young couple looked each other in the face for a puzzled moment, then broke into a laugh.
"Well, we'll try it, anyway," said the preacher. "You can go on bringing it Sundays till-till-"
"Till you cave in an' tell me to stop," put in the boy. "All right!" and he was off on the instant, the dipper jangling loud incredulity in his pail as he went.
The Wares exchanged another glance as he disappeared round the corner of the house, and another mutual laugh seemed imminent. Then the wife's face clouded over, and she thrust her under-lip a trifle forward out of its place in the straight and gently firm profile.
"It's just what Wendell Phillips said," she declared. "'The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.'"
The young minister stroked his chin thoughtfully, and let his gaze wander over the backyard in silence. The garden parts had not been spaded up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth, broken only by last year's cabbage-stumps and the general litter of dead roots and vegetation. The door of the tenantless chicken-coop hung wide open. Before it was a great heap of ashes and cinders, soaked into grimy hardness by the recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient chopping-block, round which were scattered old weather-beaten hardwood knots which had defied the axe, parts of broken barrels and packing-boxes, and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and general rubbish. It was pleasanter to lift the eyes, and look across the neighbors' fences to the green, waving tops of the elms on the street beyond. How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning sunlight, and with what matchless charm came the song of the robins, freshly installed in their haunts among the new pale-green leaves! Above them, in the fresh, scented air, glowed the great blue dome, radiant with light and the purification of spring.
Theron lifted his thin, long-fingered hand, and passed it in a slow arch of movement to comprehend this glorious upper picture.
"What matter anyone's ideas of hell," he said, in soft, grave tones, "when we have that to look at, and listen to, and fill our lungs with? It seems to me that we never FEEL quite so sure of God's goodness at other times as we do in these wonderful new mornings of spring."
The wife followed his gesture, and her eyes rested for a brief moment, with pleased interest, upon the trees and the sky. Then they reverted, with a harsher scrutiny, to the immediate foreground.
"Those Van Sizers ought to be downright ashamed of themselves," she said, "to leave everything in such a muss as this. You MUST see about getting a man to clean up the yard, Theron. It's no use your thinking of doing it yourself. In the first place, it wouldn't look quite the thing, and, second, you'd never get at it in all your born days. Or if a man would cost too much, we might get a boy. I daresay Harvey would come around, after he'd finished with his milk-route in the forenoon. We could give him his dinner, you know, and I'd bake him some cookies. He's got the greatest sweet-tooth you ever heard of. And then perhaps if we gave him a quarter, or say half a dollar, he'd be quite satisfied. I'll speak to him in the morning. We can save a dollar or so that way."
"I suppose every little does help," commented Mr. Ware, with a doleful lack of conviction. Then his face brightened. "I tell you what let's do!" he exclaimed. "Get on your street dress, and we'll take a long walk, way out into the country. You've never seen the basin, where they float the log-rafts in, or the big sawmills. The hills beyond give you almost mountain effects, they are so steep; and they say there's a sulphur spring among the slate on the hill-side, somewhere, with trees all about it; and we could take some sandwiches with us-"
"You forget," put in Mrs. Ware,-"those trustees are coming at eleven."
"So they are!" assented the young minister, with something like a sigh. He cast another reluctant, lingering glance at the sunlit elm boughs, and, turning, went indoors.
He loitered for an aimless minute in the kitchen, where his wife, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, now resumed the interrupted washing of the breakfast dishes-perhaps with vague visions of that ever-receding time to come when they might have a hired girl to do such work. Then he wandered off into the room beyond, which served them alike as living-room and study, and let his eye run along the two rows of books that constituted his library. He saw nothing which he wanted to read. Finally he did take down "Paley's Evidences," and seated himself in the big armchair-that costly and oversized anomaly among his humble house-hold gods; but the book lay unopened on his knee, and his eyelids half closed themselves in sign of revery.
This was his third charge-this Octavius which they both knew they were going to dislike so much.
The first had been in the pleasant dairy and hop country many miles to the south, on another watershed and among a different kind of people. Perhaps, in truth, the grinding labor, the poverty of ideas, the systematic selfishness of later rural experience, had not been lacking there; but they played no part in the memories which now he passed in tender review. He recalled instead the warm sunshine on the fertile expanse of fields; the sleek, well-fed herds of "milkers" coming lowing down the road under the maples; the prosperous and hospitable farmhouses, with their orchards in blossom and their spacious red barns; the bountiful boiled dinners which cheery housewives served up with their own skilled hands. Of course, he admitted to himself, it would not be the same if he were to go back there again. He was conscious of having moved along-was it, after all, an advance?-to a point where it was unpleasant to sit at table with the unfragrant hired man, and still worse to encounter the bucolic confusion between the functions of knives and forks. But in those happy days-young, zealous, himself farm-bred-these trifles had been invisible to him, and life there among those kindly husbandmen had seemed, by contrast with the gaunt surroundings and gloomy rule of the theological seminary, luxuriously abundant and free.
It was there too that the crowning blessedness of his youth-nay, should he not say of all his days?-had come to him. There he had first seen Alice Hastings,-the bright-eyed, frank-faced, serenely self-reliant girl, who now, less than four years thereafter, could be heard washing the dishes out in the parsonage kitchen.
How wonderful she had seemed to him then! How beautiful and all-beneficent the miracle still appeared! Though herself the daughter of a farmer, her presence on a visit within the borders of his remote country charge had seemed to make everything, there a hundred times more countrified than it had ever been before. She was fresh from the refinements of a town seminary: she read books; it was known that she could play upon the piano. Her clothes, her manners, her way of speaking, the readiness of her thoughts and sprightly tongue-not least, perhaps, the imposing current understanding as to her father's wealth-placed her on a glorified pinnacle far away from the girls of the neighborhood. These honest and good-hearted creatures indeed called ceaseless attention to her superiority by their deference and open-mouthed admiration, and treated it as the most natural thing in the world that their young minister should be visibly "taken" with her.
Theron Ware, in truth, left this first pastorate of his the following spring, in a transfiguring halo of romance. His new appointment was to Tyre-a somewhat distant village of traditional local pride and substance-and he was to be married only a day or so before entering upon his pastoral duties there. The good people among whom he had begun his ministry took kindly credit to themselves that he had met his bride while she was "visiting round" their countryside. In part by jocose inquiries addressed to the expectant groom, in part by the confidences of the postmaster at the corners concerning the bulk and frequency of the correspondence passing between Theron and the now remote Alice-they had followed the progress of the courtship through the autumn and winter with friendly zest. When he returned from the Conference, to say good-bye and confess the happiness that awaited him, they gave him a "donation"-quite as if he were a married pastor with a home of his own, instead of a shy young bachelor, who received his guests and their contributions in the house where he boarded.
He went away with tears of mingled regret and proud joy in his eyes, thinking a good deal upon their predictions of a distinguished career before him, feeling infinitely strengthened and upborne by the hearty fervor of their God-speed, and taking with him nearly two wagon-loads of vegetables, apples, canned preserves, assorted furniture, glass dishes, cheeses, pieced bedquilts, honey, feathers, and kitchen utensils.
Of the three years' term in Tyre, it was pleasantest to dwell upon the beginning.
The young couple-after being married out at Alice's home in an adjoining county, under the depressing conditions of a hopelessly bedridden mother, and a father and brothers whose perceptions were obviously closed to the advantages of a matrimonial connection with Methodism-came straight to the house which their new congregation rented as a parsonage. The impulse of reaction from the rather grim cheerlessness of their wedding lent fresh gayety to their lighthearted, whimsical start at housekeeping. They had never laughed so much in all their lives as they did now in these first months-over their weird ignorance of domestic details; with its mishaps, mistakes, and entertaining discoveries; over the comical super-abundances and shortcomings of their "donation" outfit; over the thousand and one quaint experiences of their novel relation to each other, to the congregation, and to the world of Tyre at large.
Theron, indeed, might be said never to have laughed before. Up to that time no friendly student of his character, cataloguing his admirable qualities, would have thought of including among them a sense of humor, much less a bent toward levity. Neither his early strenuous battle to get away from the farm and achieve such education as should serve to open to him the gates of professional life, nor the later wave of religious enthusiasm which caught him up as he stood on the border-land of manhood, and swept him off into a veritable new world of views and aspirations, had been a likely school of merriment. People had prized him for his innocent candor and guileless mind, for his good heart, his pious zeal, his modesty about gifts notably above the average, but it had occurred to none to suspect in him a latent funny side.
But who could be solemn where Alice was?-Alice in a quandary over the complications of her cooking stove; Alice boiling her potatoes all day, and her eggs for half an hour; Alice ordering twenty pounds of steak and half a pound of sugar, and striving to extract a breakfast beverage from the unground coffee-bean? Clearly not so tenderly fond and sympathetic a husband as Theron. He began by laughing because she laughed, and grew by swift stages to comprehend, then frankly to share, her amusement. From this it seemed only a step to the development of a humor of his own, doubling, as it were, their sportive resources. He found himself discovering a new droll aspect in men and things; his phraseology took on a dryly playful form, fittingly to present conceits which danced up, unabashed, quite into the presence of lofty and majestic truths. He got from this nothing but satisfaction; it obviously involved increased claims to popularity among his parishioners, and consequently magnified powers of usefulness, and it made life so much more a joy and a thing to be thankful for. Often, in the midst of the exchange of merry quip and whimsical suggestion, bright blossoms on that tree of strength and knowledge which he felt expanding now with a mighty outward pushing in all directions, he would lapse into deep gravity, and ponder with a swelling heart the vast unspeakable marvel of his blessedness, in being thus enriched and humanized by daily communion with the most worshipful of womankind.
This happy and good young couple took the affections of Tyre by storm. The Methodist Church there had at no time held its head very high among the denominations, and for some years back had been in a deplorably sinking state, owing first to the secession of the Free Methodists and then to the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the community by marrying a black man to a white woman. But the Wares changed all this. Within a month the report of Theron's charm and force in the pulpit was crowding the church building to its utmost capacity-and that, too, with some of Tyre's best people. Equally winning was the atmosphere of jollity and juvenile high spirits which pervaded the parsonage under these new conditions, and which Theron and Alice seemed to diffuse wherever they went.
Thus swimmingly their first year sped, amid universal acclaim. Mrs. Ware had a recognized social place, quite outside the restricted limits of Methodism, and shone in it with an unflagging brilliancy altogether beyond the traditions of Tyre. Delightful as she was in other people's houses, she was still more naively fascinating in her own quaint and somewhat harum-scarum domicile; and the drab, two-storied, tin-roofed little parsonage might well have rattled its clapboards to see if it was not in dreamland-so gay was the company, so light were the hearts, which it sheltered in these new days. As for Theron, the period was one of incredible fructification and output. He scarcely recognized for his own the mind which now was reaching out on all sides with the arms of an octopus, exploring unsuspected mines of thought, bringing in rich treasures of deduction, assimilating, building, propounding as if by some force quite independent of him. He could not look without blinking timidity at the radiance of the path stretched out before him, leading upward to dazzling heights of greatness.
At the end of this first year the Wares suddenly discovered that they were eight hundred dollars in debt.
The second year was spent in arriving, by slow stages and with a cruel wealth of pathetic detail, at a realization of what being eight hundred dollars in debt meant.
It was not in their elastic and buoyant natures to grasp the full significance of the thing at once, or easily. Their position in the social structure, too, was all against clear-sightedness in material matters. A general, for example, uniformed and in the saddle, advancing through the streets with his staff in the proud wake of his division's massed walls of bayonets, cannot be imagined as quailing at the glance thrown at him by his tailor on the sidewalk. Similarly, a man invested with sacerdotal authority, who baptizes, marries, and buries, who delivers judgments from the pulpit which may not be questioned in his hearing, and who receives from all his fellow-men a special deference of manner and speech, is in the nature of things prone to see the grocer's book and the butcher's bill through the little end of the telescope.
The Wares at the outset had thought it right to trade as exclusively as possible with members of their own church society. This loyalty became a principal element of martyrdom. Theron had his creditors seated in serried rows before him, Sunday after Sunday. Alice had her critics consolidated among those whom it was her chief duty to visit and profess friendship for. These situations now began, by regular gradations, to unfold their terrors. At the first intimation of discontent, the Wares made what seemed to them a sweeping reduction in expenditure. When they heard that Brother Potter had spoken of them as "poor pay," they dismissed their hired girl. A little later, Theron brought himself to drop a laboriously casual suggestion as to a possible increase of salary, and saw with sinking spirits the faces of the stewards freeze with dumb disapprobation. Then Alice paid a visit to her parents, only to find her brothers doggedly hostile to the notion of her being helped, and her father so much under their influence that the paltry sum he dared offer barely covered the expenses of her journey. With another turn of the screw, they sold the piano she had brought with her from home, and cut themselves down to the bare necessities of life, neither receiving company nor going out. They never laughed now, and even smiles grew rare.
By this time Theron's sermons, preached under that stony glare of people to whom he owed money, had degenerated to a pitiful level of commonplace. As a consequence, the attendance became once more confined to the insufficient membership of the church, and the trustees complained of grievously diminished receipts. When the Wares, grown desperate, ventured upon the experiment of trading outside the bounds of the congregation, the trustees complained again, this time peremptorily.
Thus the second year dragged itself miserably to an end. Nor was relief possible, because the Presiding Elder knew something of the circumstances, and felt it his duty to send Theron back for a third year, to pay his debts, and drain the cup of disciplinary medicine to its dregs.
The worst has been told. Beginning in utter blackness, this third year, in the second month, brought a change as welcome as it was unlooked for. An elderly and important citizen of Tyre, by name Abram Beekman, whom Theron knew slightly, and had on occasions seen sitting in one of the back pews near the door, called one morning at the parsonage, and electrified its inhabitants by expressing a desire to wipe off all their old scores for them, and give them a fresh start in life. As he put the suggestion, they could find no excuse for rejecting it. He had watched them, and heard a good deal about them, and took a fatherly sort of interest in them. He did not deprecate their regarding the aid he proffered them in the nature of a loan, but they were to make themselves perfectly easy about it, and never return it at all unless they could spare it sometime with entire convenience, and felt that they wanted to do so. As this amazing windfall finally took shape, it enabled the Wares to live respectably through the year, and to leave Tyre with something over one hundred dollars in hand.
It enabled them, too, to revive in a chastened form their old dream of ultimate success and distinction for Theron. He had demonstrated clearly enough to himself, during that brief season of unrestrained effulgence, that he had within him the making of a great pulpit orator. He set to work now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and master all the principles which underlie this art, and all the tricks that adorn its superstructure. He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, addressing those people who had so darkened his life and crushed the first happiness out of his home, he withheld himself from any oratorical display which could afford them gratification. He put aside, as well; the thought of attracting once more the non-Methodists of Tyre, whose early enthusiasm had spread such pitfalls for his unwary feet. He practised effects now by piecemeal, with an alert ear, and calculation in every tone. An ambition, at once embittered and tearfully solicitous, possessed him.
He reflected now, this morning, with a certain incredulous interest, upon that unworthy epoch in his life history, which seemed so far behind him, and yet had come to a close only a few weeks ago. The opportunity had been given him, there at the Tecumseh Conference, to reveal his quality. He had risen to its full limit of possibilities, and preached a great sermon in a manner which he at least knew was unapproachable. He had made his most powerful bid for the prize place, had trebly deserved success-and had been banished instead to Octavius!
The curious thing was that he did not resent his failure. Alice had taken it hard, but he himself was conscious of a sense of spiritual gain. The influence of the Conference, with its songs and seasons of prayer and high pressure of emotional excitement, was still strong upon him. It seemed years and years since the religious side of him had been so stirred into motion. He felt, as he lay back in the chair, and folded his hands over the book on his knee, that he had indeed come forth from the fire purified and strengthened. The ministry to souls diseased beckoned him with a new and urgent significance. He smiled to remember that Mr. Beekman, speaking in his shrewd and pointed way, had asked him whether, looking it all over, he didn't think it would be better for him to study law, with a view to sliding out of the ministry when a good chance offered. It amazed him now to recall that he had taken this hint seriously, and even gone to the length of finding out what books law-students began upon.
Thank God! all that was past and gone now. The Call sounded, resonant and imperative, in his ears, and there was no impulse of his heart, no fibre of his being, which did not stir in devout response. He closed his eyes, to be the more wholly alone with the Spirit, that moved him.
The jangling of a bell in the hallway broke sharply upon his meditations, and on the instant his wife thrust in her head from the kitchen.
"You'll have to go to the door, Theron!" she warned him, in a loud, swift whisper. "I'm not fit to be seen. It is the trustees."
"All right," he said, and rose slowly from sprawling recumbency to his feet. "I'll go."
"And don't forget," she added strenuously; "I believe in Levi Gorringe! I've seen him go past here with his rod and fish-basket twice in eight days, and that's a good sign. He's got a soft side somewhere. And just keep a stiff upper lip about the gas, and don't you let them jew you down a solitary cent on that sidewalk."
"All right," said Theron, again, and moved reluctantly toward the hall door.
CHAPTER III
When the three trustees had been shown in by the Rev. Mr. Ware, and had taken seats, an awkward little pause ensued. The young minister looked doubtingly from one face to another, the while they glanced with inquiring interest about the room, noting the pictures and appraising the furniture in their minds.
The obvious leader of the party, Loren Pierce, a rich quarryman, was an old man of medium size and mean attire, with a square, beardless face as hard and impassive in expression as one of his blocks of limestone. The irregular, thin-lipped mouth, slightly sunken, and shut with vice-like firmness, the short snub nose, and the little eyes squinting from half-closed lids beneath slightly marked brows, seemed scarcely to attain to the dignity of features, but evaded attention instead, as if feeling that they were only there at all from plain necessity, and ought not to be taken into account. Mr. Pierce's face did not know how to smile-what was the use of smiles?-but its whole surface radiated secretiveness. Portrayed on canvas by a master brush, with a ruff or a red robe for masquerade, generations of imaginative amateurs would have seen in it vast reaching plots, the skeletons of a dozen dynastic cupboards, the guarded mysteries of half a century's international diplomacy. The amateurs would have been wrong again. There was nothing behind Mr. Pierce's juiceless countenance more weighty than a general determination to exact seven per cent for his money, and some specific notions about capturing certain brickyards which were interfering with his quarry-sales. But Octavius watched him shamble along its sidewalks quite as the Vienna of dead and forgotten yesterday might have watched Metternich.
Erastus Winch was of a breezier sort-a florid, stout, and sandy man, who spent most of his life driving over evil country roads in a buggy, securing orders for dairy furniture and certain allied lines of farm utensils. This practice had given him a loud voice and a deceptively hearty manner, to which the other avocation of cheese-buyer, which he pursued at the Board of Trade meetings every Monday afternoon, had added a considerable command of persuasive yet non-committal language. To look at him, still more to hear him, one would have sworn he was a good fellow, a trifle rough and noisy, perhaps, but all right at bottom. But the County Clerk of Dearborn County could have told you of agriculturists who knew Erastus from long and unhappy experience, and who held him to be even a tighter man than Loren Pierce in the matter of a mortgage.
The third trustee, Levi Gorringe, set one wondering at the very first glance what on earth he was doing in that company. Those who had known him longest had the least notion; but it may be added that no one knew him well. He was a lawyer, and had lived in Octavius for upwards of ten years; that is to say, since early manhood. He had an office on the main street, just under the principal photograph gallery. Doubtless he was sometimes in this office; but his fellow-townsmen saw him more often in the street doorway, with the stairs behind him, and the flaring show-cases of the photographer on either side, standing with his hands in his pockets and an unlighted cigar in his mouth, looking at nothing in particular. About every other day he went off after breakfast into the country roundabout, sometimes with a rod, sometimes with a gun, but always alone. He was a bachelor, and slept in a room at the back of his office, cooking some of his meals himself, getting others at a restaurant close by. Though he had little visible practice, he was understood to be well-to-do and even more, and people tacitly inferred that he "shaved notes." The Methodists of Octavius looked upon him as a queer fish, and through nearly a dozen years had never quite outgrown their hebdomadal tendency to surprise at seeing him enter their church. He had never, it is true, professed religion, but they had elected him as a trustee now for a number of terms, all the same-partly because he was their only lawyer, partly because he, like both his colleagues, held a mortgage on the church edifice and lot. In person, Mr. Gorringe was a slender man, with a skin of a clear, uniform citron tint, black waving hair, and dark gray eyes, and a thin, high-featured face. He wore a mustache and pointed chin-tuft; and, though he was of New England parentage and had never been further south than Ocean Grove, he presented a general effect of old Mississippian traditions and tastes startlingly at variance with the standards of Dearborn County Methodism. Nothing could convince some of the elder sisters that he was not a drinking man.
The three visitors had completed their survey of the room now; and Loren Pierce emitted a dry, harsh little cough, as a signal that business was about to begin. At this sound, Winch drew up his feet, and Gorringe untied a parcel of account-books and papers that he held on his knee. Theron felt that his countenance must be exhibiting to the assembled brethren an unfortunate sense of helplessness in their hands. He tried to look more resolute, and forced his lips into a smile.
"Brother Gorringe allus acts as Seckertary," said Erastus Winch, beaming broadly upon the minister, as if the mere mention of the fact promoted jollity. "That's it, Brother Gorringe,-take your seat at Brother Ware's desk. Mind the Dominie's pen don't play tricks on you, an' start off writin' out sermons instid of figgers." The humorist turned to Theron as the lawyer walked over to the desk at the window. "I allus have to caution him about that," he remarked with great joviality. "An' do YOU look out afterwards, Brother Ware, or else you'll catch that pen o' yours scribblin' lawyer's lingo in place o' the Word."
Theron felt bound to exhibit a grin in acknowledgment of this pleasantry. The lawyer's change of position had involved some shifting of the others' chairs, and the young minister found himself directly confronted by Brother Pierce's hard and colorless old visage. Its little eyes were watching him, as through a mask, and under their influence the smile of politeness fled from his lips. The lawyer on his right, the cheese-buyer to the left, seemed to recede into distance as he for the moment returned the gaze of the quarryman. He waited now for him to speak, as if the others were of no importance.
"We are a plain sort o' folks up in these parts," said Brother Pierce, after a slight further pause. His voice was as dry and rasping as his cough, and its intonations were those of authority. "We walk here," he went on, eying the minister with a sour regard, "in a meek an' humble spirit, in the straight an' narrow way which leadeth unto life. We ain't gone traipsin' after strange gods, like some people that call themselves Methodists in other places. We stick by the Discipline an' the ways of our fathers in Israel. No new-fangled notions can go down here. Your wife'd better take them flowers out of her bunnit afore next Sunday."
Silence possessed the room for a few moments, the while Theron, pale-faced and with brows knit, studied the pattern of the ingrain carpet. Then he lifted his head, and nodded it in assent. "Yes," he said; "we will do nothing by which our 'brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.'"
Brother Pierce's parchment face showed no sign of surprise or pleasure at this easy submission. "Another thing: We don't want no book-learnin' or dictionary words in our pulpit," he went on coldly. "Some folks may stomach 'em; we won't. Them two sermons o' yours, p'r'aps they'd do down in some city place; but they're like your wife's bunnit here, they're too flowery to suit us. What we want to hear is the plain, old-fashioned Word of God, without any palaver or 'hems and ha's. They tell me there's some parts where hell's treated as played-out-where our ministers don't like to talk much about it because people don't want to hear about it. Such preachers ought to be put out. They ain't Methodists at all. What we want here, sir, is straight-out, flat-footed hell-the burnin' lake o' fire an' brim-stone. Pour it into 'em, hot an' strong. We can't have too much of it. Work in them awful deathbeds of Voltaire an' Tom Paine, with the Devil right there in the room, reachin' for 'em, an' they yellin' for fright; that's what fills the anxious seat an' brings in souls hand over fist."
Theron's tongue dallied for an instant with the temptation to comment upon these old-wife fables, which were so dear to the rural religious heart when he and I were boys. But it seemed wiser to only nod again, and let his mentor go on.
"We ain't had no trouble with the Free Methodists here," continued Brother Pierce, "jest because we kept to the old paths, an' seek for salvation in the good old way. Everybody can shout 'Amen!' as loud and as long as the Spirit moves him, with us. Some one was sayin' you thought we ought to have a choir and an organ. No, sirree! No such tom-foolery for us! You'll only stir up feelin' agin yourself by hintin' at such things. And then, too, our folks don't take no stock in all that pack o' nonsense about science, such as tellin' the age of the earth by crackin' up stones. I've b'en in the quarry line all my life, an' I know it's all humbug! Why, they say some folks are goin' round now preachin' that our grandfathers were all monkeys. That comes from departin' from the ways of our forefathers, an puttin' in organs an' choirs, an' deckin' our women-folks out with gewgaws, an' apin' the fashions of the worldly. I shouldn't wonder if them kind did have some monkey blood in 'em. You'll find we're a different sort here."
The young minister preserved silence for a little, until it became apparent that the old trustee had had his say out. Even then he raised his head slowly, and at last made answer in a hesitating and irresolute way.
"You have been very frank," he said. "I am obliged to you. A clergyman coming to a new charge cannot be better served than by having laid before him a clear statement of the views and-and spiritual tendencies-of his new flock, quite at the outset. I feel it to be of especial value in this case, because I am young in years and in my ministry, and am conscious of a great weakness of the flesh. I can see how daily contact with a people so attached to the old, simple, primitive Methodism of Wesley and Asbury may be a source of much strength to me. I may take it," he added upon second thought, with an inquiring glance at Mr. Winch, "that Brother Pierce's description of our charge, and its tastes and needs, meets with your approval?"
Erastus Winch nodded his head and smiled expansively. "Whatever Brother Pierce says, goes!" he declared. The lawyer, sitting behind at the desk by the window, said nothing.
"The place is jest overrun with Irish," Brother Pierce began again. "They've got two Catholic churches here now to our one, and they do jest as they blamed please at the Charter elections. It'd be a good idee to pitch into Catholics in general whenever you can. You could make a hit that way. I say the State ought to make 'em pay taxes on their church property. They've no right to be exempted, because they ain't Christians at all. They're idolaters, that's what they are! I know 'em! I've had 'em in my quarries for years, an' they ain't got no idee of decency or fair dealin'. Every time the price of stone went up, every man of 'em would jine to screw more wages out o' me. Why, they used to keep account o' the amount o' business I done, an' figger up my profits, an' have the face to come an' talk to me about 'em, as if that had anything to do with wages. It's my belief their priests put 'em up to it. People don't begin to reelize-that church of idolatry 'll be the ruin o' this country, if it ain't checked in time. Jest you go at 'em hammer 'n' tongs! I've got Eyetalians in the quarries now. They're sensible fellows: they know when they're well off-a dollar a day, an' they're satisfied, an' everything goes smooth."
"But they're Catholics, the same as the Irish," suddenly interjected the lawyer, from his place by the window. Theron pricked up his ears at the sound of his voice. There was an anti-Pierce note in it, so to speak, which it did him good to hear. The consciousness of sympathy began on the instant to inspire him with courage.
"I know some people SAY they are," Brother Pierce guardedly retorted "but I've summered an' wintered both kinds, an' I hold to it they're different. I grant ye, the Eyetalians ARE some given to jabbin' knives into each other, but they never git up strikes, an' they don't grumble about wages. Why, look at the way they live-jest some weeds an' yarbs dug up on the roadside, an' stewed in a kettle with a piece o' fat the size o' your finger, an' a loaf o' bread, an' they're happy as a king. There's some sense in THAT; but the Irish, they've got to have meat an' potatoes an' butter jest as if-as if-"
"As if they'd b'en used to 'em at home," put in Mr. Winch, to help his colleague out.
The lawyer ostentatiously drew up his chair to the desk, and began turning over the leaves of his biggest book. "It's getting on toward noon, gentlemen," he said, in an impatient voice.
The business meeting which followed was for a considerable time confined to hearing extracts from the books and papers read in a swift and formal fashion by Mr. Gorringe. If this was intended to inform the new pastor of the exact financial situation in Octavius, it lamentably failed of its purpose. Theron had little knowledge of figures; and though he tried hard to listen, and to assume an air of comprehension, he did not understand much of what he heard. In a general way he gathered that the church property was put down at $12,000, on which there was a debt of $4,800. The annual expenses were $2,250, of which the principal items were $800 for his salary, $170 for the rent of the parsonage, and $319 for interest on the debt. It seemed that last year the receipts had fallen just under $2,000, and they now confronted the necessity of making good this deficit during the coming year, as well as increasing the regular revenues. Without much discussion, it was agreed that they should endeavor to secure the services of a celebrated "debt-raiser," early in the autumn, and utilize him in the closing days of a revival.
Theron knew this "debt-raiser," and had seen him at work-a burly, bustling, vulgar man who took possession of the pulpit as if it were an auctioneer's block, and pursued the task of exciting liberality in the bosoms of the congregation by alternating prayer, anecdote, song, and cheap buffoonery in a manner truly sickening. Would it not be preferable, he feebly suggested, to raise the money by a festival, or fair, or some other form of entertainment which the ladies could manage?
Brother Pierce shook his head with contemptuous emphasis. "Our women-folks ain't that kind," he said. "They did try to hold a sociable once, but nobody came, and we didn't raise more 'n three or four dollars. It ain't their line. They lack the worldly arts. As the Discipline commands, they avoid the evil of putting on gold and costly apparel, and taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus."
"Well-of course-if you prefer the 'debt-raiser'-" Theron began, and took the itemized account from Gorringe's knee as an excuse for not finishing the hateful sentence.
He looked down the foolscap sheet, line by line, with no special sense of what it signified, until his eye caught upon this little section of the report, bracketed by itself in the Secretary's neat hand:
 INTEREST CHARGE.
 First mortgage @7.. $ 70
 Second mortgage @6.. 102
 Third mortgage @7.. 147
 - -
 $4,800 $319
It was no news to him that the three mortgages on the church property were held by the three trustees. But as he looked once more, another feature of the thing struck him as curious.
"I notice that the rates of interest vary," he remarked without thinking, and then wished the words unsaid, for the two trustees in view moved uneasily on their seats.
"Oh, that's nothing," exclaimed Erastus Winch, with a boisterous display of jollity. "It's only Brother Gorringe's pleasant little way of making a contribution to our funds. You will notice that, at the date of all these mortgages, the State rate of interest was seven per cent. Since then it's b'en lowered to six. Well, when that happened, you see, Brother Gorringe, not being a professin' member, and so not bound by our rules, he could just as well as not let his interest down a cent. But Brother Pierce an' me, we talked it over, an' we made up our minds we were tied hand an' foot by our contract. You know how strong the Discipline lays it down that we must be bound to the letter of our agreements. That bein' so, we seen it in the light of duty not to change what we'd set our hands to. That's how it is, Brother Ware."
"I understand," said Theron, with an effort at polite calmness of tone. "And-is there anything else?"
"There's this," broke in Brother Pierce: "we're commanded to be law-abiding people, an' seven per cent WAS the law an' would be now if them ragamuffins in the Legislation-"
"Surely we needn't go further into that," interrupted the minister, conscious of a growing stiffness in his moral spine. "Have we any other business before us?"
Brother Pierce's little eyes snapped, and the wrinkles in his forehead deepened angrily. "Business?" he demanded. "Yes, plenty of it. We've got to reduce expenses. We're nigh onto $300 behind-hand this minute. Besides your house-rent, you get $800 free an' clear-that is $15.38 every week, an' only you an' your wife to keep out of it. Why, when I was your age, young man, and after that too, I was glad to get $4 a week."
"I don't think my salary is under discussion, Mr. Pierce-"
"BROTHER Pierce!" suggested Winch, in a half-shuckling undertone.
"Brother Pierce, then!" echoed Theron, impatiently. "The Quarterly Conference and the Estimating Committee deal with that. The trustees have no more to do with it than the man in the moon."
"Come, come, Brother Ware," put in Erastus Winch, "we mustn't have no hard feelin's. Brotherly love is what we're all lookin' after. Brother Pierce's meanin' wasn't agin your drawin' your full salary, every cent of it, only-only there are certain little things connected with the parsonage here that we feel you ought to bear. F'r instance, there's the new sidewalk we had to lay in front of the house here only a month ago. Of course, if the treasury was flush we wouldn't say a word about it. An' then there's the gas bill here. Seein' as you get your rent for nothin', it don't seem much to ask that you should see to lightin' the place yourself."
"No, I don't think that either is a proper charge upon me," interposed Theron. "I decline to pay them."
"We can have the gas shut off," remarked Brother Pierce, coldly.
"As soon as you like," responded the minister, sitting erect and tapping the carpet nervously with his foot. "Only you must understand that I will take the whole matter to the Quarterly Conference in July. I already see a good many other interesting questions about the financial management of this church which might be appropriately discussed there."
"Oh, come, Brother Ware!" broke in Trustee Winch, with a somewhat agitated assumption of good-feeling. "Surely these are matters we ought to settle amongst ourselves. We never yet asked outsiders to meddle with our business here. It's our motto, Brother Ware. I say, if you've got a motto, stand by it."
"Well, my motto," said Theron, "is to be behaved decently to by those with whom I have to deal; and I also propose to stand by it."
Brother Pierce rose gingerly to his feet, with the hesitation of an old man not sure about his knees. When he had straightened himself, he put on his hat, and eyed the minister sternly from beneath its brim.
"The Lord gives us crosses grievous to our natur'," he said, "an' we're told to bear 'em cheerfully as long as they're on our backs; but there ain't nothin' said agin our unloadin' 'em in the ditch the minute we git the chance. I guess you won't last here more 'n a twelvemonth."
He pulled his soft and discolored old hat down over his brows with a significantly hostile nod, and, turning, stumped toward the hall-door without offering to shake hands.
The other trustees had risen likewise, in tacit recognition that the meeting was over. Winch clasped the minister's hand in his own broad, hard palm, and squeezed it in an exuberant grip. "Don't mind his little ways, Brother Ware," he urged in a loud, unctuous whisper, with a grinning backward nod: "he's a trifle skittish sometimes when you don't give him free rein; but he's all wool an' a yard wide when it comes to right-down hard-pan religion. My love to Sister Ware;" and he followed the senior trustee into the hall.
Mr. Gorringe had been tying up his books and papers. He came now with the bulky parcel under his arm, and his hat and stick in the other hand. He could give little but his thumb to Theron to shake. His face wore a grave expression, and not a line relaxed as, catching the minister's look, he slowly covered his left eye in a deliberate wink.
"Well?-and how did it go off?" asked Alice, from where she knelt by the oven door, a few minutes later.
For answer, Theron threw himself wearily into the big old farm rocking-chair on the other side of the stove, and shook his head with a lengthened sigh.
"If it wasn't for that man Gorringe of yours," he said dejectedly, "I think I should feel like going off-and learning a trade."
CHAPTER IV
On the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware sat alone in the preacher's pew through the morning service, and everybody noted that the roses had been taken from her bonnet. In the evening she was absent, and after the doxology and benediction several people, under the pretence of solicitude for her health, tried to pump her husband as to the reason. He answered their inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity: she had stayed at home because she did not feel like coming out-this and nothing more.
The congregation dispersed under a gossip-laden cloud of consciousness that there must be something queer about Sister Ware. There was a tolerably general agreement, however, that the two sermons of the day had been excellent. Not even Loren Pierce's railing commentary on the pastor's introduction of an outlandish word like "epitome"-clearly forbidden by the Discipline's injunction to plain language understood of the people-availed to sap the satisfaction of the majority.
Theron himself comprehended that he had pleased the bulk of his auditors; the knowledge left him curiously hot and cold. On the one hand, there was joy in the apparent prospect that the congregation would back him up in a stand against the trustees, if worst came to worst. But, on the other hand, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It had been a source of bitter humiliation to him to see his wife sitting there beneath the pulpit, shorn by despotic order of the adornments natural to her pretty head. But he had even greater pain in contemplating the effect it had produced on Alice herself. She had said not a word on the subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed to him eloquent of deep feeling about it. He made sure that she blamed him for having defended his own gas and sidewalk rights with successful vigor, but permitted the sacrifice of her poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself. Was it too late to make the error good? He ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he returned to the parsonage and found her reading an old weekly newspaper by the light of the kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there would be no great danger in putting those roses back into her bonnet. Without lifting her eyes from the paper, she answered that she had no earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and went on with her reading.
At breakfast the next morning Theron found himself in command of an unusual fund of humorous good spirits, and was at pains to make the most of it, passing whimsical comments on subjects which the opening day suggested, recalling quaint and comical memories of the past, and striving his best to force Alice into a laugh. Formerly her merry temper had always ignited at the merest spark of gayety. Now she gave his jokes only a dutiful half-smile, and uttered scarcely a word in response to his running fire of talk. When the meal was finished, she went silently to work to clear away the dishes.
Theron turned over in his mind the project of offering to help her, as he had done so often in those dear old days when they laughingly began life together. Something decided this project in the negative for him, and after lingering moments he put on his hat and went out for a walk.
Not even the most doleful and trying hour of his bitter experience in Tyre had depressed him like this. Looking back upon these past troubles, he persuaded himself that he had borne them all with a light and cheerful heart, simply because Alice had been one with him in every thought and emotion. How perfect, how ideally complete, their sympathy had always been! With what absolute unity of mind and soul they had trod that difficult path together! And now-henceforth-was it to be different? The mere suggestion of such a thing chilled his veins. He said aloud to himself as he walked that life would be an intolerable curse if Alice were to cease sharing it with him in every conceivable phase.
He had made his way out of town, and tramped along the country hill-road for a considerable distance, before a merciful light began to lessen the shadows in the picture of gloom with which his mind tortured itself. All at once he stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about him. The broad valley lay warm and tranquil in the May sunshine at his feet. In the thicket up the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chattering shrilly, and the birds sang in a tireless choral confusion. Theron smiled, and drew a long breath. The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly taken in and made a part of his new mood. He listened, smiled once more, and then started in a leisurely way back toward Octavius.
How could he have been so ridiculous as to fancy that Alice-his Alice-had been changed into someone else? He marvelled now at his own perverse folly. She was overworked-tired out-that was all. The task of moving in, of setting the new household to rights, had been too much for her. She must have a rest. They must get in a hired girl.
Once this decision about a servant fixed itself in the young minister's mind, it drove out the last vestage of discomfort. He strode along now in great content, revolving idly a dozen different plans for gilding and beautifying this new life of leisure into which his sanguine thoughts projected Alice. One of these particularly pleased him, and waxed in definiteness as he turned it over and over. He would get another piano for her, in place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre. That beneficient modern invention, the instalment plan, made this quite feasible-so easy, in fact, that it almost seemed as if he should find his wife playing on the new instrument when he got home. He would stop in at the music store and see about it that very day.
Of course, now that these important resolutions had been taken, it would be a good thing if he could do something to bring in some extra money. This was by no means a new notion. He had mused over the possibility in a formless way ever since that memorable discovery of indebtedness in Tyre, and had long ago recognized the hopelessness of endeavor in every channel save that of literature. Latterly his fancy had been stimulated by reading an account of the profits which Canon Farrar had derived from his "Life of Christ." If such a book could command such a bewildering multitude of readers, Theron felt there ought to be a chance for him. So clear did constant rumination render this assumption that the young pastor in time had come to regard this prospective book of his as a substantial asset, which could be realized without trouble whenever he got around to it.
He had not, it is true, gone to the length of seriously considering what should be the subject of his book. That had not seemed to him to matter much, so long as it was scriptural. Familiarity with the process of extracting a fixed amount of spiritual and intellectual meat from any casual text, week after week, had given him an idea that any one of many subjects would do, when the time came for him to make a choice. He realized now that the time for a selection had arrived, and almost simultaneously found himself with a ready-made decision in his mind. The book should be about Abraham!
Theron Ware was extremely interested in the mechanism of his own brain, and followed its workings with a lively curiosity. Nothing could be more remarkable, he thought, than to thus discover that, on the instant of his formulating a desire to know what he should write upon, lo, and behold! there his mind, quite on its own initiative, had the answer waiting for him! When he had gone a little further, and the powerful range of possibilities in the son's revolt against the idolatry of his father, the image-maker, in the exodus from the unholy city of Ur, and in the influence of the new nomadic life upon the little deistic family group, had begun to unfold itself before him, he felt that the hand of Providence was plainly discernible in the matter. The book was to be blessed from its very inception.
Walking homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the sidewalk and his mind all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work, and impatience to be at it, he came abruptly upon a group of men and boys who occupied the whole path, and were moving forward so noiselessly that he had not heard them coming. He almost ran into the leader of this little procession, and began a stammering apology, the final words of which were left unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his talk were all the faces he saw.
In the centre of the group were four working-men, bearing between them an extemporized litter of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across them with spikes. Most of what this litter held was covered by another blanket, rounded in coarse folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath its farther end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown upward at such an angle as to hide everything beyond to those in front. The tall young minister, stepping aside and standing tip-toe, could see sloping downward behind this hedge of beard a pinched and chalk-like face, with wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, were moving ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking sound.
Theron instinctively joined himself to those who followed the litter-a motley dozen of street idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers explained to him that the man was one of Jerry Madden's workmen in the wagon-shops, who had been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his employer's house, and, being unused to such work, had fallen from the top and broken all his bones. They would have cared for him at Madden's house, but he had insisted upon being taken home. His name was MacEvoy, and he was Joey MacEvoy's father, and likewise Jim's and Hughey's and Martin's. After a pause the lad, a bright-eyed, freckled, barefooted wee Irishman, volunteered the further information that his big brother had run to bring "Father Forbess," on the chance that he might be in time to administer "extry munction."
The way of the silent little procession led through back streets-where women hanging up clothes in the yards hurried to the gates, their aprons full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed at the passers-by-and came to a halt at last in an irregular and muddy lane, before one of a half dozen shanties reared among the ash-heaps and debris of the town's most bedraggled outskirts.
A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already warned by some messenger of calamity, stood waiting on the roadside bank. There were whimpering children clinging to her skirts, and a surrounding cluster of women of the neighborhood, some of the more elderly of whom, shrivelled little crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their eyes, were beginning in a low-murmured minor the wail which presently should rise into the keen of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no moan, and her broad ruddy face was stern in expression rather than sorrowful. When the litter stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an instant on her husband's wet brow, and looked-one could have sworn impassively-into his staring eyes. Then, still without a word, she waved the bearers toward the door, and led the way herself.
Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself, a minute later, inside a dark and ill-smelling room, the air of which was humid with the steam from a boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other ways improved by the presence of a jostling score of women, all straining their gaze upon the open door of the only other apartment-the bed-chamber. Through this they could see the workmen laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of the wife and old Maggie Quirk as they strove to remove the garments from his crushed limbs. As the neighbors watched what could be seen of these proceedings, they whispered among themselves eulogies of the injured man's industry and good temper, his habit of bringing his money home to his wife, and the way he kept his Father Mathew pledge and attended to his religious duties. They admitted freely that, by the light of his example, their own husbands and sons left much to be desired, and from this wandered easily off into domestic digressions of their own. But all the while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron made out, after he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many of them were telling their beads even while they kept the muttered conversation alive. None of them paid any attention to him, or seemed to regard his presence there as unusual.
Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of a different class. The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of red hair beneath it. In another moment there had edged along through the throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the owner of this hat and wonderful hair. She was clad in light and pleasing spring attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized silver handle of a quaint pattern. She looked at him, and he saw that her face was of a lengthened oval, with a luminous rose-tinted skin, full red lips, and big brown, frank eyes with heavy auburn lashes. She made a grave little inclination of her head toward him, and he bowed in response. Since her arrival, he noted, the chattering of the others had entirely ceased.
"I followed the others in, in the hope that I might be of some assistance," he ventured to explain to her in a low murmur, feeling that at last here was some one to whom an explanation of his presence in this Romish house was due. "I hope they won't feel that I have intruded."
She nodded her head as if she quite understood. "They'll take the will for the deed," she whispered back. "Father Forbes will be here in a minute. Do you know is it too late?"
Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the commanding bulk of a newcomer's figure. The flash of a silk hat, and the deferential way in which the assembled neighbors fell back to clear a passage, made his identity clear. Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed way as this priest of a strange church advanced across the room-a broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height, with a shapely, strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor, and a firm, commanding tread. He carried in his hands, besides his hat, a small leather-bound case. To this and to him the women courtesied and bowed their heads as he passed.
"Come with me," whispered the tall girl with the parasol to Theron; and he found himself pushing along in her wake until they intercepted the priest just outside the bedroom door. She touched Father Forbes on the arm.
"Just to tell you that I am here," she said. The priest nodded with a grave face, and passed into the other room. In a minute or two the workmen, Mrs. MacEvoy, and her helper came out, and the door was shut behind them.
"He is making his confession," explained the young lady. "Stay here for a minute."
She moved over to where the woman of the house stood, glum-faced and tearless, and whispered something to her. A confused movement among the crowd followed, and out of it presently resulted a small table, covered with a white cloth, and bearing on it two unlighted candles, a basin of water, and a spoon, which was brought forward and placed in readiness before the closed door. Some of those nearest this cleared space were kneeling now, and murmuring a low buzz of prayer to the click of beads on their rosaries.
The door opened, and Theron saw the priest standing in the doorway with an uplifted hand. He wore now a surplice, with a purple band over his shoulders, and on his pale face there shone a tranquil and tender light.
One of the workmen fetched from the stove a brand, lighted the two candles, and bore the table with its contents into the bedroom. The young woman plucked Theron's sleeve, and he dumbly followed her into the chamber of death, making one of the group of a dozen, headed by Mrs. MacEvoy and her children, which filled the little room, and overflowed now outward to the street door. He found himself bowing with the others to receive the sprinkled holy water from the priest's white fingers; kneeling with the others for the prayers; following in impressed silence with the others the strange ceremonial by which the priest traced crosses of holy oil with his thumb upon the eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands, and feet of the dying man, wiping off the oil with a piece of cotton-batting each time after he had repeated the invocation to forgiveness for that particular sense. But most of all he was moved by the rich, novel sound of the Latin as the priest rolled it forth in the ASPERGES ME, DOMINE, and MISEREATUR VESTRI OMNIPOTENS DEUS, with its soft Continental vowels and liquid R's. It seemed to him that he had never really heard Latin before. Then the astonishing young woman with the red hair declaimed the CONFITEOR, vigorously and with a resonant distinctness of enunciation. It was a different Latin, harsher and more sonorous; and while it still dominated the murmured undertone of the other's prayers, the last moment came.
Theron had stood face to face with death at many other bedsides; no other final scene had stirred him like this. It must have been the girl's Latin chant, with its clanging reiteration of the great names-BEATUM MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, SANCTOS APOSTOLOS PETRUM ET PAULUM-invoked with such proud confidence in this squalid little shanty, which so strangely affected him.
He came out with the others at last-the candles and the folded hands over the crucifix left behind-and walked as one in a dream. Even by the time that he had gained the outer doorway, and stood blinking at the bright light and filling his lungs with honest air once more, it had begun to seem incredible to him that he had seen and done all this.
CHAPTER V
While Mr. Ware stood thus on the doorstep, through a minute of formless musing, the priest and the girl came out, and, somewhat to his confusion, made him one of their party. He felt himself flushing under the idea that they would think he had waited for them-was thrusting himself upon them. The notion prompted him to bow frigidly in response to Father Forbes' pleasant "I am glad to meet you, sir," and his outstretched hand.
"I dropped in by the-the merest accident," Theron said. "I met them bringing the poor man home, and-and quite without thinking, I obeyed the impulse to follow them in, and didn't realize-"
He stopped short, annoyed by the reflection that this was his second apology. The girl smiled placidly at him, the while she put up her parasol.
"It did me good to see you there," she said, quite as if she had known him all her life. "And so it did the rest of us."
Father Forbes permitted himself a soft little chuckle, approving rather than mirthful, and patted her on the shoulder with the air of being fifty years her senior instead of fifteen. To the minister's relief, he changed the subject as the three started together toward the road.
"Then, again, no doctor was sent for!" he exclaimed, as if resuming a familiar subject with the girl. Then he turned to Theron. "I dare-say you have no such trouble; but with our poorer people it is very vexing. They will not call in a physician, but hurry off first for the clergyman. I don't know that it is altogether to avoid doctor's bills, but it amounts to that in effect. Of course in this case it made no difference; but I have had to make it a rule not to go out at night unless they bring me a physician's card with his assurance that it is a genuine affair. Why, only last winter, I was routed up after midnight, and brought off in the mud and pelting rain up one of the new streets on the hillside there, simply because a factory girl who was laced too tight had fainted at a dance. I slipped and fell into a puddle in the darkness, ruined a new overcoat, and got drenched to the skin; and when I arrived the girl had recovered and was dancing away again, thirteen to the dozen. It was then that I made the rule. I hope, Mr. Ware, that Octavius is producing a pleasant impression upon you so far?"
"I scarcely know yet," answered Theron. The genial talk of the priest, with its whimsical anecdote, had in truth passed over his head. His mind still had room for nothing but that novel death-bed scene, with the winged captain of the angelic host, the Baptist, the glorified Fisherman and the Preacher, all being summoned down in the pomp of liturgical Latin to help MacEvoy to die. "If you don't mind my saying so," he added hesitatingly, "what I have just seen in there DID make a very powerful impression upon me."
"It is a very ancient ceremony," said the priest; "probably Persian, like the baptismal form, although, for that matter, we can never dig deep enough for the roots of these things. They all turn up Turanian if we probe far enough. Our ways separate here, I'm afraid. I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Ware. Pray look in upon me, if you can as well as not. We are near neighbors, you know."
Father Forbes had shaken hands, and moved off up another street some distance, before the voice of the girl recalled Theron to himself.
"Of course you knew HIM by name," she was saying, "and he knew you by sight, and had talked of you; but MY poor inferior sex has to be introduced. I am Celia Madden. My father has the wagon-shops, and I-I play the organ at the church."
"I-I am delighted to make your acquaintance," said Theron, conscious as he spoke that he had slavishly echoed the formula of the priest. He could think of nothing better to add than, "Unfortunately, we have no organ in our church."
The girl laughed, as they resumed their walk down the street. "I'm afraid I couldn't undertake two," she said, and laughed again. Then she spoke more seriously. "That ceremony must have interested you a good deal, never having seen it before. I saw that it was all new to you, and so I made bold to take you under my wing, so to speak."
"You were very kind," said the young minister. "It was really a great experience for me. May-may I ask, is it a part of your functions, in the church, I mean, to attend these last rites?"
"Mercy, no!" replied the girl, spinning the parasol on her shoulder and smiling at the thought. "No; it was only because MacEvoy was one of our workmen, and really came by his death through father sending him up to trim a tree. Ann MacEvoy will never forgive us that, the longest day she lives. Did you notice her? She wouldn't speak to me. After you came out, I tried to tell her that we would look out for her and the children; but all she would say to me was: 'An' fwat would a wheelwright, an' him the father of a family, be doin' up a tree?'"
They had come now upon the main street of the village, with its flagstone sidewalk overhung by a lofty canopy of elm-boughs. Here, for the space of a block, was concentrated such fashionable elegance of mansions and ornamental lawns as Octavius had to offer; and it was presented with the irregularity so characteristic of our restless civilization. Two or three of the houses survived untouched from the earlier days-prim, decorous structures, each with its gabled centre and lower wings, each with its row of fluted columns supporting the classical roof of a piazza across its whole front, each vying with the others in the whiteness of those wooden walls enveloping its bright green blinds. One had to look over picket fences to see these houses, and in doing so caught the notion that they thus railed themselves off in pride at being able to remember before the railroad came to the village, or the wagon-works were thought of.
Before the neighboring properties the fences had been swept away, so that one might stroll from the sidewalk straight across the well-trimmed sward to any one of a dozen elaborately modern doorways. Some of the residences, thus frankly proffering friendship to the passer-by, were of wood painted in drabs and dusky reds, with bulging windows which marked the native yearning for the mediaeval, and shingles that strove to be accounted tiles. Others-a prouder, less pretentious sort-were of brick or stone, with terra-cotta mouldings set into the walls, and with real slates covering the riot of turrets and peaks and dormer peepholes overhead.
Celia Madden stopped in front of the largest and most important-looking of these new edifices, and said, holding out her hand: "Here I am, once more. Good-morning, Mr. Ware."
Theron hoped that his manner did not betray the flash of surprise he felt in discovering that his new acquaintance lived in the biggest house in Octavius. He remembered now that some one had pointed it out as the abode of the owner of the wagon factories; but it had not occurred to him before to associate this girl with that village magnate. It was stupid of him, of course, because she had herself mentioned her father. He looked at her again with an awkward smile, as he formally shook the gloved hand she gave him, and lifted his soft hat. The strong noon sunlight, forcing its way down between the elms, and beating upon her parasol of lace-edged, creamy silk, made a halo about her hair and face at once brilliant and tender. He had not seen before how beautiful she was. She nodded in recognition of his salute, and moved up the lawn walk, spinning the sunshade on her shoulder.
Though the parsonage was only three blocks away, the young minister had time to think about a good many things before he reached home.
First of all, he had to revise in part the arrangement of his notions about the Irish. Save for an occasional isolated and taciturn figure among the nomadic portion of the hired help in the farm country, Theron had scarcely ever spoken to a person of this curiously alien race before. He remembered now that there had been some dozen or more Irish families in Tyre, quartered in the outskirts among the brickyards, but he had never come in contact with any of them, or given to their existence even a passing thought. So far as personal acquaintance went, the Irish had been to him only a name.
But what a sinister and repellent name! His views on this general subject were merely those common to his communion and his environment. He took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people-qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on this point. His boyhood had been spent in those bitter days when social, political, and blood prejudices were fused at white heat in the public crucible together. When he went to the Church Seminary, it was a matter of course that every member of the faculty was a Republican, and that every one of his classmates had come from a Republican household. When, later on, he entered the ministry, the rule was still incredulous of exceptions. One might as well have looked in the Nedahma Conference for a divergence of opinion on the Trinity as for a difference in political conviction. Indeed, even among the laity, Theron could not feel sure that he had ever known a Democrat; that is, at all closely. He understood very little about politics, it is true. If he had been driven into a corner, and forced to attempt an explanation of this tremendous partisan unity in which he had a share, he would probably have first mentioned the War-the last shots of which were fired while he was still in petticoats. Certainly his second reason, however, would have been that the Irish were on the other side.
He had never before had occasion to formulate, even in his own thoughts, this tacit race and religious aversion in which he had been bred. It rose now suddenly in front of him, as he sauntered from patch to patch of sunlight under the elms, like some huge, shadowy, and symbolic monument. He looked at it with wondering curiosity, as at something he had heard of all his life, but never seen before-an abhorrent spectacle, truly! The foundations upon which its dark bulk reared itself were ignorance, squalor, brutality and vice. Pigs wallowed in the mire before its base, and burrowing into this base were a myriad of narrow doors, each bearing the hateful sign of a saloon, and giving forth from its recesses of night the sounds of screams and curses. Above were sculptured rows of lowering, ape-like faces from Nast's and Keppler's cartoons, and out of these sprang into the vague upper gloom-on the one side, lamp-posts from which negroes hung by the neck, and on the other gibbets for dynamiters and Molly Maguires, and between the two glowed a spectral picture of some black-robed tonsured men, with leering satanic masks, making a bonfire of the Bible in the public schools.
Theron stared this phantasm hard in the face, and recognized it for a very tolerable embodiment of what he had heretofore supposed he thought about the Irish. For an instant, the sight of it made him shiver, as if the sunny May had of a sudden lapsed back into bleak December. Then he smiled, and the bad vision went off into space. He saw instead Father Forbes, in the white and purple vestments, standing by poor MacEvoy's bedside, with his pale, chiselled, luminous, uplifted face, and he heard only the proud, confident clanging of the girl's recital,-BEATUM MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, PETRUM ET PAULUM-EM!-AM!-UM!-like strokes on a great resonant alarm-bell, attuned for the hearing of heaven. He caught himself on the very verge of feeling that heaven must have heard.
Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside, with a parting admission that it had been undoubtedly picturesque and impressive, and that it had been a valuable experience to him to see it. At least the Irish, with all their faults, must have a poetic strain, or they would not have clung so tenaciously to those curious and ancient forms. He recalled having heard somewhere, or read, it might be, that they were a people much given to songs and music. And the young lady, that very handsome and friendly Miss Madden, had told him that she was a musician! He had a new pleasure in turning this over in his mind. Of all the closed doors which his choice of a career had left along his pathway, no other had for him such a magical fascination as that on which was graven the lute of Orpheus. He knew not even the alphabet of music, and his conceptions of its possibilities ran but little beyond the best of the hymn-singing he had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the longing for it raised on occasion such mutiny in his soul that more than once he had specifically prayed against it as a temptation.
Dangerous though some of its tendencies might be, there was no gainsaying the fact that a love for music was in the main an uplifting influence-an attribute of cultivation. The world was the sweeter and more gentle for it. And this brought him to musing upon the odd chance that the two people of Octavius who had given him the first notion of polish and intellectual culture in the town should be Irish. The Romish priest must have been vastly surprised at his intrusion, yet had been at the greatest pains to act as if it were quite the usual thing to have Methodist ministers assist at Extreme Unction. And the young woman-how gracefully, with what delicacy, had she comprehended his position and robbed it of all its possible embarrassments! It occurred to him that they must have passed, there in front of her home, the very tree from which the luckless wheelwright had fallen some hours before; and the fact that she had forborne to point it out to him took form in his mind as an added proof of her refinement of nature.
The midday dinner was a little more than ready when Theron reached home, and let himself in by the front door. On Mondays, owing to the moisture and "clutter" of the weekly washing in the kitchen, the table was laid in the sitting-room, and as he entered from the hall the partner of his joys bustled in by the other door, bearing the steaming platter of corned beef, dumplings, cabbages, and carrots, with arms bared to the elbows, and a red face. It gave him great comfort, however, to note that there were no signs of the morning's displeasure remaining on this face; and he immediately remembered again those interrupted projects of his about the piano and the hired girl.
"Well! I'd just about begun to reckon that I was a widow," said Alice, putting down her fragrant burden. There was such an obvious suggestion of propitiation in her tone that Theron went around and kissed her. He thought of saying something about keeping out of the way because it was "Blue Monday," but held it back lest it should sound like a reproach.
"Well, what kind of a washerwoman does THIS one turn out to be?" he asked, after they were seated, and he had invoked a blessing and was cutting vigorously into the meat.
"Oh, so-so," replied Alice; "she seems to be particular, but she's mortal slow. If I hadn't stood right over her, we shouldn't have had the clothes out till goodness knows when. And of course she's Irish!"
"Well, what of THAT?" asked the minister, with a fine unconcern.
Alice looked up from her plate, with knife and fork suspended in air. "Why, you know we were talking only the other day of what a pity it was that none of our own people went out washing," she said. "That Welsh woman we heard of couldn't come, after all; and they say, too, that she presumes dreadfully upon the acquaintance, being a church member, you know. So we simply had to fall back on the Irish. And even if they do go and tell their priest everything they see and hear, why, there's one comfort, they can tell about US and welcome. Of course I see to it she doesn't snoop around in here."
Theron smiled. "That's all nonsense about their telling such things to their priests," he said with easy confidence.
"Why, you told me so yourself," replied Alice, briskly. "And I've always understood so, too; they're bound to tell EVERYTHING in confession. That's what gives the Catholic Church such a tremendous hold. You've spoken of it often."
"It must have been by way of a figure of speech," remarked Theron, not with entire directness. "Women are great hands to separate one's observations from their context, and so give them meanings quite unintended. They are also great hands," he added genially, "or at least one of them is, at making the most delicious dumplings in the world. I believe these are the best even you ever made."
Alice was not unmindful of the compliment, but her thoughts were on other things. "I shouldn't like that woman's priest, for example," she said, "to know that we had no piano."
"But if he comes and stands outside our house every night and listens-as of course he will," said Theron, with mock gravity, "it is only a question of time when he must reach that conclusion for himself. Our only chance, however, is that there are some sixteen hundred other houses for him to watch, so that he may not get around to us for quite a spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on earth do you suppose Father Forbes knows or cares about our poor little affairs, or those of any other Protestant household in this whole village? He has his work to do, just as I have mine-only his is ten times as exacting in everything except sermons-and you may be sure he is only too glad when it is over each day, without bothering about things that are none of his business."
"All the same I'm afraid of them," said Alice, as if argument were exhausted.
CHAPTER VI
On the following morning young Mr. Ware anticipated events by inscribing in his diary for the day, immediately after breakfast, these remarks: "Arranged about piano. Began work upon book."
The date indeed deserved to be distinguished from its fellows. Theron was so conscious of its importance that he not only prophesied in the little morocco-bound diary which Alice had given him for Christmas, but returned after he had got out upon the front steps of the parsonage to have his hat brushed afresh by her.
"Wonders will never cease," she said jocosely. "With you getting particular about your clothes, there isn't anything in this wide world that can't happen now!"
"One doesn't go out to bring home a piano every day," he made answer. "Besides, I want to make such an impression upon the man that he will deal gently with that first cash payment down. Do you know," he added, watching her turn the felt brim under the wisp-broom's strokes, "I'm thinking some of getting me a regular silk stove-pipe hat."
"Why don't you, then?" she rejoined, but without any ring of glad acquiescence in her tone. He fancied that her face lengthened a little, and he instantly ascribed it to recollections of the way in which the roses had been bullied out of her own headgear.
"You are quite sure, now, pet," he made haste to change the subject, "that the hired girl can wait just as well as not until fall?"
"Oh, MY, yes!" Alice replied, putting the hat on his head, and smoothing back his hair behind his ears. "She'd only be in the way now. You see, with hot weather coming on, there won't be much cooking. We'll take all our meals out here, and that saves so much work that really what remains is hardly more than taking care of a bird-cage. And, besides, not having her will almost half pay for the piano."
"But when cold weather comes, you're sure you'll consent?" he urged.
"Like a shot!" she assured him, and, after a happy little caress, he started out again on his momentous mission.
"Thurston's" was a place concerning which opinions differed in Octavius. That it typified progress, and helped more than any other feature of the village to bring it up to date, no one indeed disputed. One might move about a great deal, in truth, and hear no other view expressed. But then again one might stumble into conversation with one small storekeeper after another, and learn that they united in resenting the existence of "Thurston's," as rival farmers might join to curse a protracted drought. Each had his special flaming grievance. The little dry-goods dealers asked mournfully how they could be expected to compete with an establishment which could buy bankrupt stocks at a hundred different points, and make a profit if only one-third of the articles were sold for more than they would cost from the jobber? The little boot and shoe dealers, clothiers, hatters, and furriers, the small merchants in carpets, crockery, and furniture, the venders of hardware and household utensils, of leathern goods and picture-frames, of wall-paper, musical instruments, and even toys-all had the same pathetically unanswerable question to propound. But mostly they put it to themselves, because the others were at "Thurston's."
The Rev. Theron Ware had entertained rather strong views on this subject, and that only a week or two ago. One of his first acquaintances in Octavius had been the owner of the principal book-store in the place-a gentle and bald old man who produced the complete impression of a bibliophile upon what the slightest investigation showed to be only a meagre acquaintance with publishers' circulars. But at least he had the air of loving his business, and the young minister had enjoyed a long talk with, or rather, at him. Out of this talk had come the information that the store was losing money. Not even the stationery department now showed a profit worth mentioning. When Octavius had contained only five thousand inhabitants, it boasted four book-stores, two of them good ones. Now, with a population more than doubled, only these latter two survived, and they must soon go to the wall. The reason? It was in a nutshell. A book which sold at retail for one dollar and a half cost the bookseller ninety cents. If it was at all a popular book, "Thurston's" advertised it at eighty-nine cents-and in any case at a profit of only two or three cents. Of course it was done to widen the establishment's patronage-to bring people into the store. Equally of course, it was destroying the book business and debauching the reading tastes of the community. Without the profits from the light and ephemeral popular literature of the season, the book-store proper could not keep up its stock of more solid works, and indeed could not long keep open at all. On the other hand, "Thurston's" dealt with nothing save the demand of the moment, and offered only the books which were the talk of the week. Thus, in plain words, the book trade was going to the dogs, and it was the same with pretty nearly every other trade.
Theron was indignant at this, and on his return home told Alice that he desired her to make no purchases whatever at "Thurston's." He even resolved to preach a sermon on the subject of the modern idea of admiring the great for crushing the small, and sketched out some notes for it which he thought solved the problem of flaying the local abuse without mentioning it by name. They had lain on his desk now for ten days or more, and on only the previous Friday he had speculated upon using them that coming Sunday.
On this bright and cheerful Tuesday morning he walked with a blithe step unhesitatingly down the main street to "Thurston's," and entered without any show of repugnance the door next to the window wherein, flanked by dangling banjos and key-bugles built in pyramids, was displayed the sign, "Pianos on the Instalment Plan."
He was recognized by some responsible persons, and treated with distinguished deference. They were charmed with the intelligence that he desired a piano, and fascinated by his wish to pay for it only a little at a time. They had special terms for clergymen, and made him feel as if these were being extended to him on a silver charger by kneeling admirers.
It was so easy to buy things here that he was a trifle disturbed to find his flowing course interrupted by his own entire ignorance as to what kind of piano he wanted. He looked at all they had in stock, and heard them played upon. They differed greatly in price, and, so he fancied, almost as much in tone. It discouraged him to note, however, that several of those he thought the finest in tone were among the very cheapest in the lot. Pondering this, and staring in hopeless puzzlement from one to another of the big black shiny monsters, he suddenly thought of something.
"I would rather not decide for myself," he said, "I know so little about it. If you don't mind, I will have a friend of mine, a skilled musician, step in and make a selection. I have so much confidence in-in her judgment." He added hurriedly, "It will involve only a day or two's delay."
The next moment he was sorry he had spoken. What would they think when they saw the organist of the Catholic church come to pick out a piano for the Methodist parsonage? And how could he decorously prefer the request to her to undertake this task? He might not meet her again for ages, and to his provincial notions writing would have seemed out of the question. And would it not be disagreeable to have her know that he was buying a piano by part payments? Poor Alice's dread of the washerwoman's gossip occurred to him, at this, and he smiled in spite of himself. Then all at once the difficulty vanished. Of course it would come all right somehow. Everything did.
He was on firmer ground, buying the materials for the new book, over on the stationery side. His original intention had been to bestow this patronage upon the old bookseller, but these suavely smart people in "Thurston's" had had the effect of putting him on his honor when they asked, "Would there be anything else?" and he had followed them unresistingly.
He indulged to the full his whim that everything entering into the construction of "Abraham" should be spick-and-span. He watched with his own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white paper being sliced down by the cutter into single sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid his hand upon the spotless bulk, so wooingly did it invite him to begin. He tried a score of pens before the right one came to hand. When a box of these had been laid aside, with ink and pen-holders and a little bronze inkstand, he made a sign that the outfit was complete. Or no-there must be some blotting-paper. He had always used those blotting-pads given away by insurance companies-his congregations never failed to contain one or more agents, who had these to bestow by the armful-but the book deserved a virgin blotter.
Theron stood by while all these things were being tied up together in a parcel. The suggestion that they should be sent almost hurt him. Oh, no, he would carry them home himself. So strongly did they appeal to his sanguine imagination that he could not forbear hinting to the man who had shown him the pianos and was now accompanying him to the door that this package under his arm represented potentially the price of the piano he was going to have. He did it in a roundabout way, with one of his droll, hesitating smiles. The man did not understand at all, and Theron had not the temerity to repeat the remark. He strode home with the precious bundle as fast as he could.
"I thought it best, after all, not to commit myself to a selection," he explained about the piano at dinner-time. "In such a matter as this, the opinion of an expert is everything. I am going to have one of the principal musicians of the town go and try them all, and tell me which we ought to have."
"And while he's about it," said Alice, "you might ask him to make a little list of some of the new music. I've got way behind the times, being without a piano so long. Tell him not any VERY difficult pieces, you know."
"Yes, I know," put in Theron, almost hastily, and began talking of other things. His conversation was of the most rambling and desultory sort, because all the while the two lobes of his brain, as it were, kept up a dispute as to whether Alice ought to have been told that this "principal musician" was of her own sex. It would certainly have been better, at the outset, he decided; but to mention it now would be to invest the fact with undue importance. Yes, that was quite clear; only the clearer it became, from one point of view, the shadier it waxed from the other. The problem really disturbed the young minister's mind throughout the meal, and his abstraction became so marked at last that his wife commented upon it.
"A penny for your thoughts!" she said, with cheerful briskness. This ancient formula of the farm-land had always rather jarred on Theron. It presented itself now to his mind as a peculiarly aggravating banality.
"I am going to begin my book this afternoon," he remarked impressively. "There is a great deal to think about."
It turned out that there was even more to think about than he had imagined. After hours of solitary musing at his desk, or of pacing up and down before his open book-shelves, Theron found the first shadows of a May-day twilight beginning to fall upon that beautiful pile of white paper, still unstained by ink. He saw the book he wanted to write before him, in his mental vision, much more distinctly than ever, but the idea of beginning it impetuously, and hurling it off hot and glowing week by week, had faded away like a dream.
This long afternoon, spent face to face with a project born of his own brain but yesterday, yet already so much bigger than himself, was really a most fruitful time for the young clergyman. The lessons which cut most deeply into our consciousness are those we learn from our children. Theron, in this first day's contact with the offspring of his fancy, found revealed to him an unsuspected and staggering truth. It was that he was an extremely ignorant and rudely untrained young man, whose pretensions to intellectual authority among any educated people would be laughed at with deserved contempt.
Strangely enough, after he had weathered the first shock, this discovery did not dismay Theron Ware. The very completeness of the conviction it carried with it, saturated his mind with a feeling as if the fact had really been known to him all along. And there came, too, after a little, an almost pleasurable sense of the importance of the revelation. He had been merely drifting in fatuous and conceited blindness. Now all at once his eyes were open; he knew what he had to do. Ignorance was a thing to be remedied, and he would forthwith bend all his energies to cultivating his mind till it should blossom like a garden. In this mood, Theron mentally measured himself against the more conspicuous of his colleagues in the Conference. They also were ignorant, clownishly ignorant: the difference was that they were doomed by native incapacity to go on all their lives without ever finding it out. It was obvious to him that his case was better. There was bright promise in the very fact that he had discovered his shortcomings.
He had begun the afternoon by taking down from their places the various works in his meagre library which bore more or less relation to the task in hand. The threescore books which constituted his printed possessions were almost wholly from the press of the Book Concern; the few exceptions were volumes which, though published elsewhere, had come to him through that giant circulating agency of the General Conference, and wore the stamp of its approval. Perhaps it was the sight of these half-filled shelves which started this day's great revolution in Theron's opinions of himself. He had never thought much before about owning books. He had been too poor to buy many, and the conditions of canvassing about among one's parishioners which the thrifty Book Concern imposes upon those who would have without buying, had always repelled him. Now, suddenly, as he moved along the two shelves, he felt ashamed at their beggarly showing.
"The Land and the Book," in three portly volumes, was the most pretentious of the aids which he finally culled from his collection. Beside it he laid out "Bible Lands," "Rivers and Lakes of Scripture," "Bible Manners and Customs," the "Genesis and Exodus" volume of Whedon's Commentary, some old numbers of the "Methodist Quarterly Review," and a copy of "Josephus" which had belonged to his grandmother, and had seen him through many a weary Sunday afternoon in boyhood. He glanced casually through these, one by one, as he took them down, and began to fear that they were not going to be of so much use as he had thought. Then, seating himself, he read carefully through the thirteen chapters of Genesis which chronicle the story of the founder of Israel.
Of course he had known this story from his earliest years. In almost every chapter he came now upon a phrase or an incident which had served him as the basis for a sermon. He had preached about Hagar in the wilderness, about Lot's wife, about the visit of the angels, about the intended sacrifice of Isaac, about a dozen other things suggested by the ancient narrative. Somehow this time it all seemed different to him. The people he read about were altered to his vision. Heretofore a poetic light had shone about them, where indeed they had not glowed in a halo of sanctification. Now, by some chance, this light was gone, and he saw them instead as untutored and unwashed barbarians, filled with animal lusts and ferocities, struggling by violence and foul chicanery to secure a foothold in a country which did not belong to them-all rude tramps and robbers of the uncivilized plain.
The apparent fact that Abram was a Chaldean struck him with peculiar force. How was it, he wondered, that this had never occurred to him before? Examining himself, he found that he had supposed vaguely that there had been Jews from the beginning, or at least, say, from the flood. But, no, Abram was introduced simply as a citizen of the Chaldean town of Ur, and there was no hint of any difference in race between him and his neighbors. It was specially mentioned that his brother, Lot's father, died in Ur, the city of his nativity. Evidently the family belonged there, and were Chaldeans like the rest.
I do not cite this as at all a striking discovery, but it did have a curious effect upon Theron Ware. Up to that very afternoon, his notion of the kind of book he wanted to write had been founded upon a popular book called "Ruth the Moabitess," written by a clergyman he knew very well, the Rev. E. Ray Mifflin. This model performance troubled itself not at all with difficult points, but went swimmingly along through scented summer seas of pretty rhetoric, teaching nothing, it is true, but pleasing a good deal and selling like hot cakes. Now, all at once Theron felt that he hated that sort of book. HIS work should be of a vastly different order. He might fairly assume, he thought, that if the fact that Abram was a Chaldean was new to him, it would fall upon the world in general as a novelty. Very well, then, there was his chance. He would write a learned book, showing who the Chaldeans were, and how their manners and beliefs differed from, and influenced-
It was at this psychological instant that the wave of self-condemnation suddenly burst upon and submerged the young clergyman. It passed again, leaving him staring fixedly at the pile of books he had taken down from the shelves, and gasping a little, as if for breath. Then the humorous side of the thing, perversely enough, appealed to him, and he grinned feebly to himself at the joke of his having imagined that he could write learnedly about the Chaldeans, or anything else. But, no, it shouldn't remain a joke! His long mobile face grew serious under the new resolve. He would learn what there was to be learned about the Chaldeans. He rose and walked up and down the room, gathering fresh strength of purpose as this inviting field of research spread out its vistas before him. Perhaps-yes, he would incidentally explore the mysteries of the Moabitic past as well, and thus put the Rev. E. Ray Mifflin to confusion on his own subject. That would in itself be a useful thing, because Mifflin wore kid gloves at the Conference, and affected an intolerable superiority of dress and demeanor, and there would be general satisfaction among the plainer and worthier brethren at seeing him taken down a peg.
Now for the first time there rose distinctly in Theron's mind that casual allusion which Father Forbes had made to the Turanians. He recalled, too, his momentary feeling of mortification at not knowing who the Turanians were, at the time. Possibly, if he had probed this matter more deeply, now as he walked and pondered in the little living-room, he might have traced the whole of the afternoon's mental experiences to that chance remark of the Romish priest. But this speculation did not detain him. He mused instead upon the splendid library Father Forbes must have.
"Well, how does the book come on? Have you got to 'my Lady Keturah' yet?'"
It was Alice who spoke, opening the door from the kitchen, and putting in her head with a pretence of great and solemn caution, but with a correcting twinkle in her eyes.
"I haven't got to anybody yet," answered Theron, absently. "These big things must be approached slowly."
"Come out to supper, then, while the beans are hot," said Alice.
The young minister sat through this other meal, again in deep abstraction. His wife pursued her little pleasantry about Keturah, the second wife, urging him with mock gravity to scold her roundly for daring to usurp Sarah's place, but Theron scarcely heard her, and said next to nothing. He ate sparingly, and fidgeted in his seat, waiting with obvious impatience for the finish of the meal. At last he rose abruptly.
"I've got a call to make-something with reference to the book," he said. "I'll run out now, I think, before it gets dark."
He put on his hat, and strode out of the house as if his errand was of the utmost urgency. Once upon the street, however, his pace slackened. There was still a good deal of daylight outside, and he loitered aimlessly about, walking with bowed head and hands clasped behind him, until dusk fell. Then he squared his shoulders, and started straight as the crow flies toward the residence of Father Forbes.
CHAPTER VII
The new Catholic church was the largest and most imposing public building in Octavius. Even in its unfinished condition, with a bald roofing of weather-beaten boards marking on the stunted tower the place where a spire was to begin later on, it dwarfed every other edifice of the sort in the town, just as it put them all to shame in the matter of the throngs it drew, rain or shine, to its services.
These facts had not heretofore been a source of satisfaction to the Rev. Theron Ware. He had even alluded to the subject in terms which gave his wife the impression that he actively deplored the strength and size of the Catholic denomination in this new home of theirs, and was troubled in his mind about Rome generally. But this evening he walked along the extended side of the big structure, which occupied nearly half the block, and then, turning the corner, passed in review its wide-doored, looming front, without any hostile emotions whatever. In the gathering dusk it seemed more massive than ever before, but he found himself only passively considering the odd statement he had heard that all Catholic Church property was deeded absolutely in the name of the Bishop of the diocese.
Only a narrow passage-way separated the church from the pastorate-a fine new brick residence standing flush upon the street. Theron mounted the steps, and looked about for a bell-pull. Search revealed instead a little ivory button set in a ring of metal work. He picked at this for a time with his finger-nail, before he made out the injunction, printed across it, to push. Of course! how stupid of him! This was one of those electric bells he had heard so much of, but which had not as yet made their way to the class of homes he knew. For custodians of a mediaeval superstition and fanaticism, the Catholic clergy seemed very much up to date. This bell made him feel rather more a countryman than ever.
The door was opened by a tall gaunt woman, who stood in black relief against the radiance of the hall-way while Theron, choosing his words with some diffidence, asked if the Rev. Mr. Forbes was in.
"He is" came the hush-voiced answer. "He's at dinner, though."
It took the young minister a second or two to bring into association in his mind this evening hour and this midday meal. Then he began to say that he would call again-it was nothing special-but the woman suddenly cut him short by throwing the door wide open.
"It's Mr. Ware, is it not?" she asked, in a greatly altered tone. "Sure, he'd not have you go away. Come inside-do, sir!-I'll tell him."
Theron, with a dumb show of reluctance, crossed the threshold. He noted now that the woman, who had bustled down the hall on her errand, was gray-haired and incredibly ugly, with a dark sour face, glowering black eyes, and a twisted mouth. Then he saw that he was not alone in the hall-way. Three men and two women, all poorly clad and obviously working people, were seated in meek silence on a bench beyond the hat-rack. They glanced up at him for an instant, then resumed their patient study of the linoleum pattern on the floor at their feet.
"And will you kindly step in, sir?" the elderly Gorgon had returned to ask. She led Mr. Ware along the hall-way to a door near the end, and opened it for him to pass before her.
He entered a room in which for the moment he could see nothing but a central glare of dazzling light beating down from a great shaded lamp upon a circular patch of white table linen. Inside this ring of illumination points of fire sparkled from silver and porcelain, and two bars of burning crimson tracked across the cloth in reflection from tall glasses filled with wine. The rest of the room was vague darkness; but the gloom seemed saturated with novel aromatic odors, the appetizing scent of which bore clear relation to what Theron's blinking eyes rested upon.
He was able now to discern two figures at the table, outside the glowing circle of the lamp. They had both risen, and one came toward him with cordial celerity, holding out a white plump hand in greeting. He took this proffered hand rather limply, not wholly sure in the half-light that this really was Father Forbes, and began once more that everlasting apology to which he seemed doomed in the presence of the priest. It was broken abruptly off by the other's protesting laughter.
"My dear Mr. Ware, I beg of you," the priest urged, chuckling with hospitable mirth, "don't, don't apologize! I give you my word, nothing in the world could have pleased us better than your joining us here tonight. It was quite dramatic, your coming in as you did. We were speaking of you at that very moment. Oh, I forgot-let me make you acquainted with my friend-my very particular friend, Dr. Ledsmar. Let me take your hat; pray draw up a chair. Maggie will have a place laid for you in a minute."
"Oh, I assure you-I couldn't think of it-I've just eaten my-my-dinner," expostulated Theron. He murmured more inarticulate remonstrances a moment later, when the grim old domestic appeared with plates, serviette, and tableware for his use, but she went on spreading them before him as if she heard nothing. Thus committed against a decent show of resistance, the young minister did eat a little here and there of what was set before him, and was human enough to regret frankly that he could not eat more. It seemed to him very remarkable cookery, transfiguring so simple a thing as a steak, for example, quite out of recognition, and investing the humble potato with a charm he had never dreamed of. He wondered from time to time if it would be polite to ask how the potatoes were cooked, so that he might tell Alice.
The conversation at the table was not continuous, or even enlivened. After the lapses into silence became marked, Theron began to suspect that his refusal to drink wine had annoyed them-the more so as he had drenched a large section of table-cloth in his efforts to manipulate a siphon instead. He was greatly relieved, therefore, when Father Forbes explained in an incidental way that Dr. Ledsmar and he customarily ate their meals almost without a word.
"It's a philosophic fad of his," the priest went on smilingly, "and I have fallen in with it for the sake of a quiet life; so that when we do have company-that is to say, once in a blue moon-we display no manners to speak of."
"I had always supposed-that is, I've always heard-that it was more healthful to talk at meals," said Theron. "Of course-what I mean-I took it for granted all physicians thought so."
Dr. Ledsmar laughed. "That depends so much upon the quality of the meals!" he remarked, holding his glass up to the light.
He seemed a man of middle age and an equable disposition. Theron, stealing stray glances at him around the lampshade, saw most distinctly of all a broad, impressive dome of skull, which, though obviously the result of baldness, gave the effect of quite belonging to the face. There were gold-rimmed spectacles, through which shone now and again the vivid sparkle of sharp, alert eyes, and there was a nose of some sort not easy to classify, at once long and thick. The rest was thin hair and short round beard, mouse-colored where the light caught them, but losing their outlines in the shadows of the background. Theron had not heard of him among the physicians of Octavius. He wondered if he might not be a doctor of something else than medicine, and decided upon venturing the question.
"Oh, yes, it is medicine," replied Ledsmar. "I am a doctor three or four times over, so far as parchments can make one. In some other respects, though, I should think I am probably less of a doctor than anybody else now living. I haven't practised-that is, regularly-for many years, and I take no interest whatever in keeping abreast of what the profession regards as its progress. I know nothing beyond what was being taught in the sixties, and that I am glad to say I have mostly forgotten."
"Dear me!" said Theron. "I had always supposed that Science was the most engrossing of pursuits-that once a man took it up he never left it."
"But that would imply a connection between Science and Medicine!" commented the doctor. "My dear sir, they are not even on speaking terms."
"Shall we go upstairs?" put in the priest, rising from his chair. "It will be more comfortable to have our coffee there-unless indeed, Mr. Ware, tobacco is unpleasant to you?"
"Oh, my, no!" the young minister exclaimed, eager to free himself from the suggestion of being a kill-joy. "I don't smoke myself; but I am very fond of the odor, I assure you."
Father Forbes led the way out. It could be seen now that he wore a long house-gown of black silk, skilfully moulded to his erect, shapely, and rounded form. Though he carried this with the natural grace of a proud and beautiful belle, there was no hint of the feminine in his bearing, or in the contour of his pale, firm-set, handsome face. As he moved through the hall-way, the five people whom Theron had seen waiting rose from their bench, and two of the women began in humble murmurs, "If you please, Father," and "Good-evening to your Riverence;" but the priest merely nodded and passed on up the staircase, followed by his guests. The people sat down on their bench again.
A few minutes later, reclining at his ease in a huge low chair, and feeling himself unaccountably at home in the most luxuriously appointed and delightful little room he had ever seen, the Rev. Theron Ware sipped his unaccustomed coffee and embarked upon an explanation of his errand. Somehow the very profusion of scholarly symbols about him-the great dark rows of encased and crowded book-shelves rising to the ceiling, the classical engravings upon the wall, the revolving book-case, the reading-stand, the mass of littered magazines, reviews, and papers at either end of the costly and elaborate writing-desk-seemed to make it the easier for him to explain without reproach that he needed information about Abram. He told them quite in detail the story of his book.
The two others sat watching him through a faint haze of scented smoke, with polite encouragement on their faces. Father Forbes took the added trouble to nod understandingly at the various points of the narrative, and when it was finished gave one of his little approving chuckles.
"This skirts very closely upon sorcery," he said smilingly. "Do you know, there is perhaps not another man in the country who knows Assyriology so thoroughly as our friend here, Dr. Ledsmar."
"That's putting it too strong," remarked the Doctor. "I only follow at a distance-a year or two behind. But I daresay I can help you. You are quite welcome to anything I have: my books cover the ground pretty well up to last year. Delitzsch is very interesting; but Baudissin's 'Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte' would come closer to what you need. There are several other important Germans-Schrader, Bunsen, Duncker, Hommel, and so on."
"Unluckily I-I don't read German readily," Theron explained with diffidence.
"That's a pity," said the doctor, "because they do the best work-not only in this field, but in most others. And they do so much that the mass defies translation. Well, the best thing outside of German of course is Sayce. I daresay you know him, though."
The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head mournfully. "I don't seem to know any one," he murmured.
The others exchanged glances.
"But if I may ask, Mr. Ware," pursued the doctor, regarding their guest with interest through his spectacles, "why do you specially hit upon Abraham? He is full of difficulties-enough, just now, at any rate, to warn off the bravest scholar. Why not take something easier?"
Theron had recovered something of his confidence. "Oh, no," he said, "that is just what attracts me to Abraham. I like the complexities and contradictions in his character. Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode of Hagar: see the splendid contrast between the craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightforward godliness of his later years. No, all those difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to know-of course you would know-do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional details of the man himself and his sayings and doings-little things which help, you know, to round out one's conception of the individual?"
Again the priest and the doctor stole a furtive glance across the young minister's head. It was Father Forbes who replied.
"I fear that you are taking our friend Abraham too literally, Mr. Ware," he said, in that gentle semblance of paternal tones which seemed to go so well with his gown. "Modern research, you know, quite wipes him out of existence as an individual. The word 'Abram' is merely an eponym-it means 'exalted father.' Practically all the names in the Genesis chronologies are what we call eponymous. Abram is not a person at all: he is a tribe, a sept, a clan. In the same way, Shem is not intended for a man; it is the name of a great division of the human race. Heber is simply the throwing back into allegorical substance, so to speak, of the Hebrews; Heth of the Hittites; Asshur of Assyria."
"But this is something very new, this theory, isn't it?" queried Theron.
The priest smiled and shook his head. "Bless you, no! My dear sir, there is nothing new. Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Darwinian theory more than two thousand years ago. As for this eponym thing, why Saint Augustine called attention to it fifteen hundred years ago. In his 'De Civitate Dei,' he expressly says of these genealogical names, 'GENTES NON HOMINES;' that is, 'peoples, not persons.' It was as obvious to him-as much a commonplace of knowledge-as it was to Ezekiel eight hundred years before him."
"It seems passing strange that we should not know it now, then," commented Theron; "I mean, that everybody shouldn't know it."
Father Forbes gave a little purring chuckle. "Ah, there we get upon contentious ground," he remarked. "Why should 'everybody' be supposed to know anything at all? What business is it of 'everybody's' to know things? The earth was just as round in the days when people supposed it to be flat, as it is now. So the truth remains always the truth, even though you give a charter to ten hundred thousand separate numskulls to examine it by the light of their private judgment, and report that it is as many different varieties of something else. But of course that whole question of private judgment versus authority is No-Man's-Land for us. We were speaking of eponyms."
"Yes," said Theron; "it is very interesting."
"There is a curious phase of the subject which hasn't been worked out much," continued the priest. "Probably the Germans will get at that too, sometime. They are doing the best Irish work in other fields, as it is. I spoke of Heber and Heth, in Genesis, as meaning the Hebrews and the Hittites. Now my own people, the Irish, have far more ancient legends and traditions than any other nation west of Athens; and you find in their myth of the Milesian invasion and conquest two principal leaders called Heber and Ith, or Heth. That is supposed to be comparatively modern-about the time of Solomon's Temple. But these independent Irish myths go back to the fall of the Tower of Babel, and they have there an ancestor, grandson of Japhet, named Fenius Farsa, and they ascribe to him the invention of the alphabet. They took their ancient name of Feine, the modern Fenian, from him. Oddly enough, that is the name which the Romans knew the Phoenicians by, and to them also is ascribed the invention of the alphabet. The Irish have a holy salmon of knowledge, just like the Chaldean man-fish. The Druids' tree-worship is identical with that of the Chaldeans-those pagan groves, you know, which the Jews were always being punished for building. You see, there is nothing new. Everything is built on the ruins of something else. Just as the material earth is made up of countless billions of dead men's bones, so the mental world is all alive with the ghosts of dead men's thoughts and beliefs, the wraiths of dead races' faiths and imaginings."
Father Forbes paused, then added with a twinkle in his eye: "That peroration is from an old sermon of mine, in the days when I used to preach. I remember rather liking it, at the time."
"But you still preach?" asked the Rev. Mr. Ware, with lifted brows.
"No! no more! I only talk now and again," answered the priest, with what seemed a suggestion of curtness. He made haste to take the conversation back again. "The names of these dead-and-gone things are singularly pertinacious, though. They survive indefinitely. Take the modern name Marmaduke, for example. It strikes one as peculiarly modern, up-to-date, doesn't it? Well, it is the oldest name on earth-thousands of years older than Adam. It is the ancient Chaldean Meridug, or Merodach. He was the young god who interceded continually between the angry, omnipotent Ea, his father, and the humble and unhappy Damkina, or Earth, who was his mother. This is interesting from another point of view, because this Merodach or Marmaduke is, so far as we can see now, the original prototype of our 'divine intermediary' idea. I daresay, though, that if we could go back still other scores of centuries, we should find whole receding series of types of this Christ-myth of ours."
Theron Ware sat upright at the fall of these words, and flung a swift, startled look about the room-the instinctive glance of a man unexpectedly confronted with peril, and casting desperately about for means of defence and escape. For the instant his mind was aflame with this vivid impression-that he was among sinister enemies, at the mercy of criminals. He half rose under the impelling stress of this feeling, with the sweat standing on his brow, and his jaw dropped in a scared and bewildered stare.
Then, quite as suddenly, the sense of shock was gone; and it was as if nothing at all had happened. He drew a long breath, took another sip of his coffee, and found himself all at once reflecting almost pleasurably upon the charm of contact with really educated people. He leaned back in the big chair again, and smiled to show these men of the world how much at his ease he was. It required an effort, he discovered, but he made it bravely, and hoped he was succeeding.
"It hasn't been in my power to at all lay hold of what the world keeps on learning nowadays about its babyhood," he said. "All I have done is to try to preserve an open mind, and to maintain my faith that the more we know, the nearer we shall approach the Throne."
Dr. Ledsmar abruptly scuffled his feet on the floor, and took out his watch. "I'm afraid-" he began.
"No, no! There's plenty of time," remarked the priest, with his soft half-smile and purring tones. "You finish your cigar here with Mr. Ware, and excuse me while I run down and get rid of the people in the hall."
Father Forbes tossed his cigar-end into the fender. Then he took from the mantel a strange three-cornered black-velvet cap, with a dangling silk tassel at the side, put it on his head, and went out.
Theron, being left alone with the doctor, hardly knew what to do or say. He took up a paper from the floor beside him, but realized that it would be impolite to go farther, and laid it on his knee. Some trace of that earlier momentary feeling that he was in hostile hands came back, and worried him. He lifted himself upright in the chair, and then became conscious that what really disturbed him was the fact that Dr. Ledsmar had turned in his seat, crossed his legs, and was contemplating him with a gravely concentrated scrutiny through his spectacles.
This uncomfortable gaze kept itself up a long way beyond the point of good manners; but the doctor seemed not to mind that at all.
CHAPTER VIII
When Dr. Ledsmar finally spoke, it was in a kindlier tone than the young minister had looked for. "I had half a notion of going to hear you preach the other evening," he said; "but at the last minute I backed out. I daresay I shall pluck up the courage, sooner or later, and really go. It must be fully twenty years since I last heard a sermon, and I had supposed that that would suffice for the rest of my life. But they tell me that you are worth while; and, for some reason or other, I find myself curious on the subject."
Involved and dubious though the compliment might be, Theron felt himself flushing with satisfaction. He nodded his acknowledgment, and changed the topic.
"I was surprised to hear Father Forbes say that he did not preach," he remarked.
"Why should he?" asked the doctor, indifferently. "I suppose he hasn't more than fifteen parishioners in a thousand who would understand him if he did, and of these probably twelve would join in a complaint to his Bishop about the heterodox tone of his sermon. There is no point in his going to all that pains, merely to incur that risk. Nobody wants him to preach, and he has reached an age where personal vanity no longer tempts him to do so. What IS wanted of him is that he should be the paternal, ceremonial, authoritative head and centre of his flock, adviser, monitor, overseer, elder brother, friend, patron, seigneur-whatever you like-everything except a bore. They draw the line at that. You see how diametrically opposed this Catholic point of view is to the Protestant."
"The difference does seem extremely curious to me," said Theron. "Now, those people in the hall-"
"Go on," put in the doctor, as the other faltered hesitatingly. "I know what you were going to say. It struck you as odd that he should let them wait on the bench there, while he came up here to smoke."
Theron smiled faintly. "I WAS thinking that my-my parishioners wouldn't have taken it so quietly. But of course-it is all so different!"
"As chalk from cheese!" said Dr. Ledsmar, lighting a fresh cigar. "I daresay every one you saw there had come either to take the pledge, or see to it that one of the others took it. That is the chief industry in the hall, so far as I have observed. Now discipline is an important element in the machinery here. Coming to take the pledge implies that you have been drunk and are now ashamed. Both states have their values, but they are opposed. Sitting on that bench tends to develop penitence to the prejudice of alcoholism. But at no stage would it ever occur to the occupant of the bench that he was the best judge of how long he was to sit there, or that his priest should interrupt his dinner or general personal routine, in order to administer that pledge. Now, I daresay you have no people at all coming to 'swear off.'"
The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head. "No; if a man with us got as bad as all that, he wouldn't come near the church at all. He'd simply drop out, and there would be an end to it."
"Quite so," interjected the doctor. "That is the voluntary system. But these fellows can't drop out. There's no bottom to the Catholic Church. Everything that's in, stays in. If you don't mind my saying so-of course I view you all impartially from the outside-but it seems logical to me that a church should exist for those who need its help, and not for those who by their own profession are so good already that it is they who help the church. Now, you turn a man out of your church who behaves badly: that must be on the theory that his remaining in would injure the church, and that in turn involves the idea that it is the excellent character of the parishioners which imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics' conception, you see, is quite the converse. Such virtue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it. Some come every day, some only once a year, some perhaps never between their baptism and their funeral. But they all have a right here, the professional burglar every whit as much as the speckless saint. The only stipulation is that they oughtn't to come under false pretences: the burglar is in honor bound not to pass himself off to his priest as the saint. But that is merely a moral obligation, established in the burglar's own interest. It does him no good to come unless he feels that he is playing the rules of the game, and one of these is confession. If he cheats there, he knows that he is cheating nobody but himself, and might much better have stopped away altogether."
Theron nodded his head comprehendingly. He had a great many views about the Romanish rite of confession which did not at all square with this statement of the case, but this did not seem a specially fit time for bringing them forth. There was indeed a sense of languid repletion in his mind, as if it had been overfed and wanted to lie down for awhile. He contented himself with nodding again, and murmuring reflectively, "Yes, it is all strangely different."
His tone was an invitation to silence; and the doctor turned his attention to the cigar, studying its ash for a minute with an air of deep meditation, and then solemnly blowing out a slow series of smoke-rings. Theron watched him with an indolent, placid eye, wondering lazily if it was, after all, so very pleasant to smoke.
There fell upon this silence-with a softness so delicate that it came almost like a progression in the hush-the sound of sweet music. For a little, strain and source were alike indefinite-an impalpable setting to harmony of the mellowed light, the perfumed opalescence of the air, the luxury and charm of the room. Then it rose as by a sweeping curve of beauty, into a firm, calm, severe melody, delicious to the ear, but as cold in the mind's vision as moonlit sculpture. It went on upward with stately collectedness of power, till the atmosphere seemed all alive with the trembling consciousness of the presence of lofty souls, sternly pure and pitilessly great.
Theron found himself moved as he had never been before. He almost resented the discovery, when it was presented to him by the prosaic, mechanical side of his brain, that he was listening to organ-music, and that it came through the open window from the church close by. He would fain have reclined in his chair and closed his eyes, and saturated himself with the uttermost fulness of the sensation. Yet, in absurd despite of himself, he rose and moved over to the window.
Only a narrow alley separated the pastorate from the church; Mr. Ware could have touched with a walking-stick the opposite wall. Indirectly facing him was the arched and mullioned top of a great window. A dim light from within shone through the more translucent portions of the glass below, throwing out faint little bars of party-colored radiance upon the blackness of the deep passage-way. He could vaguely trace by these the outlines of some sort of picture on the window. There were human figures in it, and-yes-up here in the centre, nearest him, was a woman's head. There was a halo about it, engirdling rich, flowing waves of reddish hair, the lights in which glowed like flame. The face itself was barely distinguishable, but its half-suggested form raised a curious sense of resemblance to some other face. He looked at it closely, blankly, the noble music throbbing through his brain meanwhile.
"It's that Madden girl!" he suddenly heard a voice say by his side. Dr. Ledsmar had followed him to the window, and was close at his shoulder.
Theron's thoughts were upon the puzzling shadowed lineaments on the stained glass. He saw now in a flash the resemblance which had baffled him. "It IS like her, of course," he said.
"Yes, unfortunately, it IS just like her," replied the doctor, with a hostile note in his voice. "Whenever I am dining here, she always goes in and kicks up that racket. She knows I hate it."
"Oh, you mean that it is she who is playing," remarked Theron. "I thought you referred to-at least-I was thinking of-"
His sentence died off in inconsequence. He had a feeling that he did not want to talk with the doctor about the stained-glass likeness. The music had sunk away now into fragmentary and unconnected passages, broken here and there by abrupt stops. Dr. Ledsmar stretched an arm out past him and shut the window. "Let's hear as little of the row as we can," he said, and the two went back to their chairs.
"Pardon me for the question," the Rev. Mr. Ware said, after a pause which began to affect him as constrained, "but something you said about dining-you don't live here, then? In the house, I mean?"
The doctor laughed-a characteristically abrupt, dry little laugh, which struck Theron at once as bearing a sort of black-sheep relationship to the priest's habitual chuckle. "That must have been puzzling you no end," he said-"that notion that the pastorate kept a devil's advocate on the premises. No, Mr. Ware, I don't live here. I inhabit a house of my own-you may have seen it-an old-fashioned place up beyond the race-course, with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden. But I dine here three or four times a week. It is an old arrangement of ours. Vincent and I have been friends for many years now. We are quite alone in the world, we two-much to our mutual satisfaction. You must come up and see me some time; come up and have a look over the books we were speaking of."
"I am much obliged," said Theron, without enthusiasm. The thought of the doctor by himself did not attract him greatly.
The reservation in his tone seemed to interest the doctor. "I suppose you are the first man I have asked in a dozen years," he remarked, frankly willing that the young minister should appreciate the favor extended him. "It must be fully that since anybody but Vincent Forbes has been under my roof; that is, of my own species, I mean."
"You live there quite alone," commented Theron.
"Quite-with my dogs and cats and lizards-and my Chinaman. I mustn't forget him." The doctor noted the inquiry in the other's lifted brows, and smilingly explained. "He is my solitary servant. Possibly he might not appeal to you much; but I can assure you he used to interest Octavius a great deal when I first brought him here, ten years ago or so. He afforded occupation for all the idle boys in the village for a twelve-month at least. They used to lie in wait for him all day long, with stones or horse-chestnuts or snowballs, according to the season. The Irishmen from the wagon-works nearly killed him once or twice, but he patiently lived it all down. The Chinaman has the patience to live everything down-the Caucasian races included. He will see us all to bed, will that gentleman with the pigtail!"
The music over in the church had lifted itself again into form and sequence, and defied the closed window. If anything, it was louder than before, and the sonorous roar of the bass-pedals seemed to be shaking the very walls. It was something with a big-lunged, exultant, triumphing swing in it-something which ought to have been sung on the battlefield at the close of day by the whole jubilant army of victors. It was impossible to pretend not to be listening to it; but the doctor submitted with an obvious scowl, and bit off the tip of his third cigar with an annoyed air.
"You don't seem to care much for music," suggested Mr. Ware, when a lull came.
Dr. Ledsmar looked up, lighted match in hand. "Say musicians!" he growled. "Has it ever occurred to you," he went on, between puffs at the flame, "that the only animals who make the noises we call music are of the bird family-a debased offshoot of the reptilian creation-the very lowest types of the vertebrata now in existence? I insist upon the parallel among humans. I have in my time, sir, had considerable opportunities for studying close at hand the various orders of mammalia who devote themselves to what they describe as the arts. It may sound a harsh judgement, but I am convinced that musicians stand on the very bottom rung of the ladder in the sub-cellar of human intelligence, even lower than painters and actors."
This seemed such unqualified nonsense to the Rev. Mr. Ware that he offered no comment whatever upon it. He tried instead to divert his thoughts to the stormy strains which rolled in through the vibrating brickwork, and to picture to himself the large, capable figure of Miss Madden seated in the half-light at the organ-board, swaying to and fro in a splendid ecstasy of power as she evoked at will this superb and ordered uproar. But the doctor broke insistently in upon his musings.
"All art, so-called, is decay," he said, raising his voice. "When a race begins to brood on the beautiful-so-called-it is a sign of rot, of getting ready to fall from the tree. Take the Jews-those marvellous old fellows-who were never more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen hundred years. Why? They were forbidden by their most fundamental law to make sculptures or pictures. That was at a time when the Egyptians, when the Assyrians, and other Semites, were running to artistic riot. Every great museum in the world now has whole floors devoted to statues from the Nile, and marvellous carvings from the palaces of Sargon and Assurbanipal. You can get the artistic remains of the Jews during that whole period into a child's wheelbarrow. They had the sense and strength to penalize art; they alone survived. They saw the Egyptians go, the Assyrians go, the Greeks go, the late Romans go, the Moors in Spain go-all the artistic peoples perish. They remained triumphing over all. Now at last their long-belated apogee is here; their decline is at hand. I am told that in this present generation in Europe the Jews are producing a great lot of young painters and sculptors and actors, just as for a century they have been producing famous composers and musicians. That means the end of the Jews!"
"What! have you only got as far as that?" came the welcome interruption of a cheery voice. Father Forbes had entered the room, and stood looking down with a whimsical twinkle in his eye from one to the other of his guests.
"You must have been taken over the ground at a very slow pace, Mr. Ware," he continued, chuckling softly, "to have arrived merely at the collapse of the New Jerusalem. I fancied I had given him time enough to bring you straight up to the end of all of us, with that Chinaman of his gently slapping our graves with his pigtail. That's where the doctor always winds up, if he's allowed to run his course."
"It has all been very interesting, extremely so, I assure you," faltered Theron. It had become suddenly apparent to him that he desired nothing so much as to make his escape-that he had indeed only been waiting for the host's return to do so.
He rose at this, and explained that he must be going. No special effort being put forth to restrain him, he presently made his way out, Father Forbes hospitably following him down to the door, and putting a very gracious cordiality into his adieux.
The night was warm and black. Theron stood still in it the moment the pastorate door had closed; the sudden darkness was so thick that it was as if he had closed his eyes. His dominant sensation was of a deep relief and rest after some undue fatigue. It crossed his mind that drunken men probably felt like that as they leaned against things on their way home. He was affected himself, he saw, by the weariness and half-nausea following a mental intoxication. The conceit pleased him, and he smiled to himself as he turned and took the first homeward steps. It must be growing late, he thought. Alice would be wondering as she waited.
There was a street lamp at the corner, and as he walked toward it he noted all at once that his feet were keeping step to the movement of the music proceeding from the organ within the church-a vaguely processional air, marked enough in measure, but still with a dreamy effect. It became a pleasure to identify his progress with the quaint rhythm of sound as he sauntered along. He discovered, as he neared the light, that he was instinctively stepping over the seams in the flagstone sidewalk as he had done as a boy. He smiled again at this. There was something exceptionally juvenile and buoyant about his mood, now that he examined it. He set it down as a reaction from that doctor's extravagant and incendiary talk. One thing was certain-he would never be caught up at that house beyond the race-course, with its reptiles and its Chinaman. Should he ever even go to the pastorate again? He decided not to quite definitely answer THAT in the negative, but as he felt now, the chances were all against it.
Turning the corner, and walking off into the shadows along the side of the huge church building, Theron noted, almost at the end of the edifice, a small door-the entrance to a porch coming out to the sidewalk-which stood wide open. A thin, pale, vertical line of light showed that the inner door, too, was ajar.
Through this wee aperture the organ-music, reduced and mellowed by distance, came to him again with that same curious, intimate, personal relation which had so moved him at the start, before the doctor closed the window. It was as if it was being played for him alone.
He paused for a doubting minute or two, with bowed head, listening to the exquisite harmony which floated out to caress and soothe and enfold him. There was no spiritual, or at least pious, effect in it now. He fancied that it must be secular music, or, if not, then something adapted to marriage ceremonies-rich, vivid, passionate, a celebration of beauty and the glory of possession, with its ruling note of joy only heightened by soft, wooing interludes, and here and there the tremor of a fond, timid little sob.
Theron turned away irresolutely, half frightened at the undreamt-of impression this music was making upon him. Then, all at once, he wheeled and stepped boldly into the porch, pushing the inner door open and hearing it rustle against its leathern frame as it swung to behind him.
He had never been inside a Catholic church before.
CHAPTER IX
Jeremiah Madden was supposed to be probably the richest man in Octavius. There was no doubt at all about his being its least pretentious citizen.
The huge and ornate modern mansion which he had built, putting to shame every other house in the place, gave an effect of ostentation to the Maddens as a family; it seemed only to accentuate the air of humility which enveloped Jeremiah as with a garment. Everybody knew some version of the many tales afloat which, in a kindly spirit, illustrated the incongruity between him and his splendid habitation. Some had it that he slept in the shed. Others told whimsical stories of his sitting alone in the kitchen evenings, smoking his old clay pipe, and sorrowing because the second Mrs. Madden would not suffer the pigs and chickens to come in and bear him company. But no matter how comic the exaggeration, these legends were invariably amiable. It lay in no man's mouth to speak harshly of Jeremiah Madden.
He had been born a Connemara peasant, and he would die one. When he was ten years old he had seen some of his own family, and most of his neighbors, starve to death. He could remember looking at the stiffened figure of a woman stretched on the stones by the roadside, with the green stain of nettles on her white lips. A girl five years or so older than himself, also a Madden and distantly related, had started in despair off across the mountains to the town where it was said the poor-law officers were dealing out food. He could recall her coming back next day, wild-eyed with hunger and the fever; the officers had refused her relief because her bare legs were not wholly shrunken to the bone. "While there's a calf on the shank, there's no starvation," they had explained to her. The girl died without profiting by this official apothegm. The boy found it burned ineffaceably upon his brain. Now, after a lapse of more than forty years, it seemed the thing that he remembered best about Ireland.
He had drifted westward as an unconsidered, unresisting item in that vast flight of the famine years. Others whom he rubbed against in that melancholy exodus, and deemed of much greater promise than himself, had done badly. Somehow he did well. He learned the wheelwright's trade, and really that seemed all there was to tell. The rest had been calm and sequent progression-steady employment as a journeyman first; then marriage and a house and lot; the modest start as a master; the move to Octavius and cheap lumber; the growth of his business, always marked of late years stupendous-all following naturally, easily, one thing out of another. Jeremiah encountered the idea among his fellows, now and again, that he was entitled to feel proud of all this. He smiled to himself at the thought, and then sent a sigh after the smile. What was it all but empty and transient vanity? The score of other Connemara boys he had known-none very fortunate, several broken tragically in prison or the gutter, nearly all now gone the way of flesh-were as good as he. He could not have it in his heart to take credit for his success; it would have been like sneering over their poor graves.
Jeremiah Madden was now fifty-three-a little man of a reddened, weather-worn skin and a meditative, almost saddened, aspect. He had blue eyes, but his scanty iron-gray hair showed raven black in its shadows. The width and prominence of his cheek-bones dominated all one's recollections of his face. The long vertical upper-lip and irregular teeth made, in repose, an unshapely mouth; its smile, though, sweetened the whole countenance. He wore a fringe of stiff, steel-colored beard, passing from ear to ear under his chin. His week-day clothes were as simple as his workaday manners, fitting his short black pipe and his steadfast devotion to his business. On Sundays he dressed with a certain rigor of respectability, all in black, and laid aside tobacco, at least to the public view. He never missed going to the early Low Mass, quite alone. His family always came later, at the ten o'clock High Mass.
There had been, at one time or another, a good many members of this family. Two wives had borne Jeremiah Madden a total of over a dozen children. Of these there survived now only two of the first Mrs. Madden's offspring-Michael and Celia-and a son of the present wife, who had been baptized Terence, but called himself Theodore. This minority of the family inhabited the great new house on Main Street. Jeremiah went every Sunday afternoon by himself to kneel in the presence of the majority, there where they lay in Saint Agnes' consecrated ground. If the weather was good, he generally extended his walk through the fields to an old deserted Catholic burial-field, which had been used only in the first years after the famine invasion, and now was clean forgotten. The old wagon-maker liked to look over the primitive, neglected stones which marked the graves of these earlier exiles. Fully half of the inscriptions mentioned his County Galway-there were two naming the very parish adjoining his. The latest date on any stone was of the remoter 'fifties. They had all been stricken down, here in this strange land with its bitter winters, while the memory of their own soft, humid, gentle west-coast air was fresh within them. Musing upon the clumsy sculpture, with its "R.I.P.," or "Pray for the Soul of," half to be guessed under the stain and moss of a generation, there would seem to him but a step from this present to that heart-rending, awful past. What had happened between was a meaningless vision-as impersonal as the passing of the planets overhead. He rarely had an impulse to tears in the new cemetery, where his ten children were. He never left this weed-grown, forsaken old God's-acre dry-eyed.
One must not construct from all this the image of a melancholy man, as his fellows met and knew him. Mr. Madden kept his griefs, racial and individual, for his own use. To the men about him in the offices and the shops he presented day after day, year after year, an imperturbable cheeriness of demeanor. He had been always fortunate in the selection of lieutenants and chief helpers. Two of these had grown now into partners, and were almost as much a part of the big enterprise as Jeremiah himself. They spoke often of their inability to remember any unjust or petulant word of his-much less any unworthy deed. Once they had seen him in a great rage, all the more impressive because he said next to nothing. A thoughtless fellow told a dirty story in the presence of some apprentices; and Madden, listening to this, drove the offender implacably from his employ. It was years now since any one who knew him had ventured upon lewd pleasantries in his hearing. Jokes of the sort which women might hear he was very fond of though he had not much humor of his own. Of books he knew nothing whatever, and he made only the most perfunctory pretence now and again of reading the newspapers.
The elder son Michael was very like his father-diligent, unassuming, kindly, and simple-a plain, tall, thin red man of nearly thirty, who toiled in paper cap and rolled-up shirt-sleeves as the superintendent in the saw-mill, and put on no airs whatever as the son of the master. If there was surprise felt at his not being taken into the firm as a partner, he gave no hint of sharing it. He attended to his religious duties with great zeal, and was President of the Sodality as a matter of course. This was regarded as his blind side; and young employees who cultivated it, and made broad their phylacteries under his notice, certainly had an added chance of getting on well in the works. To some few whom he knew specially well, Michael would confess that if he had had the brains for it, he should have wished to be a priest. He displayed no inclination to marry.
The other son, Terence, was some eight years younger, and seemed the product of a wholly different race. The contrast between Michael's sandy skin and long gaunt visage and this dark boy's handsome, rounded face, with its prettily curling black hair, large, heavily fringed brown eyes, and delicately modelled features, was not more obvious than their temperamental separation. This second lad had been away for years at school,-indeed, at a good many schools, for no one seemed to manage to keep him long. He had been with the Jesuits at Georgetown, with the Christian Brothers at Manhattan; the sectarian Mt. St. Mary's and the severely secular Annapolis had both been tried, and proved misfits. The young man was home again now, and save that his name had become Theodore, he appeared in no wise changed from the beautiful, wilful, bold, and showy boy who had gone away in his teens. He was still rather small for his years, but so gracefully moulded in form, and so perfectly tailored, that the fact seemed rather an advantage than otherwise. He never dreamed of going near the wagon-works, but he did go a good deal-in fact, most of the time-to the Nedahma Club. His mother spoke often to her friends about her fears for his health. He never spoke to his friends about his mother at all.
The second Mrs. Madden did not, indeed, appeal strongly to the family pride. She had been a Miss Foley, a dress-maker, and an old maid. Jeremiah had married her after a brief widowerhood, principally because she was the sister of his parish priest, and had a considerable reputation for piety. It was at a time when the expansion of his business was promising certain wealth, and suggesting the removal to Octavius. He was conscious of a notion that his obligations to social respectability were increasing; it was certain that the embarrassments of a motherless family were. Miss Foley had shown a good deal of attention to his little children. She was not ill-looking; she bore herself with modesty; she was the priest's sister-the niece once removed of a vicar-general. And so it came about.
Although those most concerned did not say so, everybody could see from the outset the pity of its ever having come about at all. The pious and stiffly respectable priest's sister had been harmless enough as a spinster. It made the heart ache to contemplate her as a wife. Incredibly narrow-minded, ignorant, suspicious, vain, and sour-tempered, she must have driven a less equable and well-rooted man than Jeremiah Madden to drink or flight. He may have had his temptations, but they made no mark on the even record of his life. He only worked the harder, concentrating upon his business those extra hours which another sort of home-life would have claimed instead. The end of twenty years found him a rich man, but still toiling pertinaciously day by day, as if he had his wage to earn. In the great house which had been built to please, or rather placate, his wife, he kept to himself as much as possible. The popular story of his smoking alone in the kitchen was more or less true; only Michael as a rule sat with him, too weak-lunged for tobacco himself, but reading stray scraps from the papers to the lonely old man, and talking with him about the works, the while Jeremiah meditatively sucked his clay pipe. One or two evenings in the week the twain spent up in Celia's part of the house, listening with the awe of simple, honest mechanics to the music she played for them.
Celia was to them something indefinably less, indescribably more, than a daughter and sister. They could not think there had ever been anything like her before in the world; the notion of criticising any deed or word of hers would have appeared to them monstrous and unnatural.
She seemed to have come up to this radiant and wise and marvellously talented womanhood of hers, to their minds, quite spontaneously. There had been a little Celia-a red-headed, sulky, mutinous slip of a girl, always at war with her step-mother, and affording no special comfort or hope to the rest of the family. Then there was a long gap, during which the father, four times a year, handed Michael a letter he had received from the superioress of a distant convent, referring with cold formality to the studies and discipline by which Miss Madden might profit more if she had been better brought up, and enclosing a large bill. Then all at once they beheld a big Celia, whom they spoke of as being home again, but who really seemed never to have been there before-a tall, handsome, confident young woman, swift of tongue and apprehension, appearing to know everything there was to be known by the most learned, able to paint pictures, carve wood, speak in divers languages, and make music for the gods, yet with it all a very proud lady, one might say a queen.
The miracle of such a Celia as this impressed itself even upon the step-mother. Mrs. Madden had looked forward with a certain grim tightening of her combative jaws to the home-coming of the "red-head." She felt herself much more the fine lady now than she had been when the girl went away. She had her carriage now, and the magnificent new house was nearly finished, and she had a greater number of ailments, and spent far more money on doctor's bills, than any other lady in the whole section. The flush of pride in her greatest achievement up to date-having the most celebrated of New York physicians brought up to Octavius by special train-still prickled in her blood. It was in all the papers, and the admiration of the flatterers and "soft-sawdherers"-wives of Irish merchants and smaller professional men who formed her social circle-was raising visions in her poor head of going next year with Theodore to Saratoga, and fastening the attention of the whole fashionable republic upon the variety and resources of her invalidism. Mrs. Madden's fancy did not run to the length of seeing her step-daughter also at Saratoga; it pictured her still as the sullen and hated "red-head," moping defiantly in corners, or courting by her insolence the punishments which leaped against their leash in the step-mother's mind to get at her.
The real Celia, when she came, fairly took Mrs. Madden's breath away. The peevish little plans for annoyance and tyranny, the resolutions born of ignorant and jealous egotism, found themselves swept out of sight by the very first swirl of Celia's dress-train, when she came down from her room robed in peacock blue. The step-mother could only stare.
Now, after two years of it, Mrs. Madden still viewed her step-daughter with round-eyed uncertainty, not unmixed with wrathful fear. She still drove about behind two magnificent horses; the new house had become almost tiresome by familiarity; her pre-eminence in the interested minds of the Dearborn County Medical Society was as towering as ever, but somehow it was all different. There was a note of unreality nowadays in Mrs. Donnelly's professions of wonder at her bearing up under her multiplied maladies; there was almost a leer of mockery in the sympathetic smirk with which the Misses Mangan listened to her symptoms. Even the doctors, though they kept their faces turned toward her, obviously did not pay much attention; the people in the street seemed no longer to look at her and her equipage at all. Worst of all, something of the meaning of this managed to penetrate her own mind. She caught now and again a dim glimpse of herself as others must have been seeing her for years-as a stupid, ugly, boastful, and bad-tempered old nuisance. And it was always as if she saw this in a mirror held up by Celia.
Of open discord there had been next to none. Celia would not permit it, and showed this so clearly from the start that there was scarcely need for her saying it. It seemed hardly necessary for her to put into words any of her desires, for that matter. All existing arrangements in the Madden household seemed to shrink automatically and make room for her, whichever way she walked. A whole quarter of the unfinished house set itself apart for her. Partitions altered themselves; door-ways moved across to opposite sides; a recess opened itself, tall and deep, for it knew not what statue-simply because, it seemed, the Lady Celia willed it so.
When the family moved into this mansion, it was with a consciousness that the only one who really belonged there was Celia. She alone could behave like one perfectly at home. It seemed entirely natural to the others that she should do just what she liked, shut them off from her portion of the house, take her meals there if she felt disposed, and keep such hours as pleased her instant whim. If she awakened them at midnight by her piano, or deferred her breakfast to the late afternoon, they felt that it must be all right, since Celia did it. She had one room furnished with only divans and huge, soft cushions, its walls covered with large copies of statuary not too strictly clothed, which she would suffer no one, not even the servants, to enter. Michael fancied sometimes, when he passed the draped entrance to this sacred chamber, that the portiere smelt of tobacco, but he would not have spoken of it, even had he been sure. Old Jeremiah, whose established habit it was to audit minutely the expenses of his household, covered over round sums to Celia's separate banking account, upon the mere playful hint of her holding her check-book up, without a dream of questioning her.
That the step-mother had joy, or indeed anything but gall and wormwood, out of all this is not to be pretended. There lingered along in the recollection of the family some vague memories of her having tried to assert an authority over Celia's comings and goings at the outset, but they grouped themselves as only parts of the general disorder of moving and settling, which a fort-night or so quite righted. Mrs. Madden still permitted herself a certain license of hostile comment when her step-daughter was not present, and listened with gratification to what the women of her acquaintance ventured upon saying in the same spirit; but actual interference or remonstrance she never offered nowadays. The two rarely met, for that matter, and exchanged only the baldest and curtest forms of speech.
Celia Madden interested all Octavius deeply. This she must have done in any case, if only because she was the only daughter of its richest citizen. But the bold, luxuriant quality of her beauty, the original and piquant freedom of her manners, the stories told in gossip about her lawlessness at home, her intellectual attainments, and artistic vagaries-these were even more exciting. The unlikelihood of her marrying any one-at least any Octavian-was felt to add a certain romantic zest to the image she made on the local perceptions. There was no visible young Irishman at all approaching the social and financial standard of the Maddens; it was taken for granted that a mixed marriage was quite out of the question in this case. She seemed to have more business about the church than even the priest. She was always playing the organ, or drilling the choir, or decorating the altars with flowers, or looking over the robes of the acolytes for rents and stains, or going in or out of the pastorate. Clearly this was not the sort of girl to take a Protestant husband.
The gossip of the town concerning her was, however, exclusively Protestant. The Irish spoke of her, even among themselves, but seldom. There was no occasion for them to pretend to like her: they did not know her, except in the most distant and formal fashion. Even the members of the choir, of both sexes, had the sense of being held away from her at haughty arm's length. No single parishioner dreamed of calling her friend. But when they referred to her, it was always with a cautious and respectful reticence. For one thing, she was the daughter of their chief man, the man they most esteemed and loved. For another, reservations they may have had in their souls about her touched close upon a delicately sore spot. It could not escape their notice that their Protestant neighbors were watching her with vigilant curiosity, and with a certain tendency to wink when her name came into conversation along with that of Father Forbes. It had never yet got beyond a tendency-the barest fluttering suggestion of a tempted eyelid-but the whole Irish population of the place felt themselves to be waiting, with clenched fists but sinking hearts, for the wink itself.
The Rev. Theron Ware had not caught even the faintest hint of these overtures to suspicion.
When he had entered the huge, dark, cool vault of the church, he could see nothing at first but a faint light up over the gallery, far at the other end. Then, little by little, his surroundings shaped themselves out of the gloom. To his right was a rail and some broad steps rising toward a softly confused mass of little gray vertical bars and the pale twinkle of tiny spots of gilded reflection, which he made out in the dusk to be the candles and trappings of the altar. Overhead the great arches faded away from foundations of dimly discernible capitals into utter blackness. There was a strange medicinal odor-as of cubeb cigarettes-in the air.
After a little pause, he tiptoed noiselessly up the side aisle toward the end of the church-toward the light above the gallery. This radiance from a single gas-jet expanded as he advanced, and spread itself upward over a burnished row of monster metal pipes, which went towering into the darkness like giants. They were roaring at him now-a sonorous, deafening, angry bellow, which made everything about him vibrate. The gallery balustrade hid the keyboard and the organist from view. There were only these jostling brazen tubes, as big round as trees and as tall, trembling with their own furious thunder. It was for all the world as if he had wandered into some vast tragical, enchanted cave, and was being drawn against his will-like fascinated bird and python-toward fate at the savage hands of these swollen and enraged genii.
He stumbled in the obscure light over a kneeling-bench, making a considerable racket. On the instant the noise from the organ ceased, and he saw the black figure of a woman rise above the gallery-rail and look down.
"Who is it?" the indubitable voice of Miss Madden demanded sharply.
Theron had a sudden sheepish notion of turning and running. With the best grace he could summon, he called out an explanation instead.
"Wait a minute. I'm through now. I'm coming down," she returned. He thought there was a note of amusement in her tone.
She came to him a moment later, accompanied by a thin, tall man, whom Theron could barely see in the dark, now that the organ-light too was gone. This man lighted a match or two to enable them to make their way out.
When they were on the sidewalk, Celia spoke: "Walk on ahead, Michael!" she said. "I have some matters to speak of with Mr. Ware."
CHAPTER X
"Well, what did you think of Dr. Ledsmar?"
The girl's abrupt question came as a relief to Theron. They were walking along in a darkness so nearly complete that he could see next to nothing of his companion. For some reason, this seemed to suggest a sort of impropriety. He had listened to the footsteps of the man ahead-whom he guessed to be a servant-and pictured him as intent upon getting up early next morning to tell everybody that the Methodist minister had stolen into the Catholic church at night to walk home with Miss Madden. That was going to be very awkward-yes, worse than awkward! It might mean ruin itself. She had mentioned aloud that she had matters to talk over with him: that of course implied confidences, and the man might put heaven only knew what construction on that. It was notorious that servants did ascribe the very worst motives to those they worked for. The bare thought of the delight an Irish servant would have in also dragging a Protestant clergyman into the thing was sickening. And what could she want to talk to him about, anyway? The minute of silence stretched itself out upon his nerves into an interminable period of anxious unhappiness. Her mention of the doctor at last somehow, seemed to lighten the situation.
"Oh, I thought he was very smart." he made haste to answer. "Wouldn't it be better-to-keep close to your man? He-may-think we've gone some other way."
"It wouldn't matter if he did," remarked Celia. She appeared to comprehend his nervousness and take pity on it, for she added, "It is my brother Michael, as good a soul as ever lived. He is quite used to my ways."
The Rev. Mr. Ware drew a long comforting breath. "Oh, I see! He went with you to-bring you home."
"To blow the organ," said the girl in the dark, correctingly. "But about that doctor; did you like him?"
"Well," Theron began, "'like' is rather a strong word for so short an acquaintance. He talked very well; that is, fluently. But he is so different from any other man I have come into contact with that-"
"What I wanted you to say was that you hated him," put in Celia, firmly.
"I don't make a practice of saying that of anybody," returned Theron, so much at his ease again that he put an effect of gentle, smiling reproof into the words. "And why specially should I make an exception for him?"
"Because he's a beast!"
Theron fancied that he understood. "I noticed that he seemed not to have much of an ear for music," he commented, with a little laugh. "He shut down the window when you began to play. His doing so annoyed me, because I-I wanted very much to hear it all. I never heard such music before. I-I came into the church to hear more of it; but then you stopped!"
"I will play for you some other time," Celia said, answering the reproach in his tone. "But tonight I wanted to talk with you instead."
She kept silent, in spite of this, so long now that Theron was on the point of jestingly asking when the talk was to begin. Then she put a question abruptly-
"It is a conventional way of putting it, but are you fond of poetry, Mr. Ware?"
"Well, yes, I suppose I am," replied Theron, much mystified. "I can't say that I am any great judge; but I like the things that I like-and-"
"Meredith," interposed Celia, "makes one of his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is like talking on tiptoe; like animals in cages, always going to one end and back again. Does it impress you that way?"
"I don't know that it does," said he, dubiously. It seemed, however, to be her whim to talk literature, and he went on: "I've hardly read Meredith at all. I once borrowed his 'Lucile,' but somehow I never got interested in it. I heard a recitation of his once, though-a piece about a dead wife, and the husband and another man quarrelling as to whose portrait was in the locket on her neck, and of their going up to settle the dispute, and finding that it was the likeness of a third man, a young priest-and though it was very striking, it didn't give me a thirst to know his other poems. I fancied I shouldn't like them. But I daresay I was wrong. As I get older, I find that I take less narrow views of literature-that is, of course, of light literature-and that-that-"
Celia mercifully stopped him. "The reason I asked you was-" she began, and then herself paused. "Or no,-never mind that-tell me something else. Are you fond of pictures, statuary, the beautiful things of the world? Do great works of art, the big achievements of the big artists, appeal to you, stir you up?"
"Alas! that is something I can only guess at myself," answered Theron, humbly. "I have always lived in little places. I suppose, from your point of view, I have never seen a good painting in my life. I can only say this, though-that it has always weighed on my mind as a great and sore deprivation, this being shut out from knowing what others mean when they talk and write about art. Perhaps that may help you to get at what you are after. If I ever went to New York, I feel that one of the first things I should do would be to see all the picture galleries; is that what you meant? And-would you mind telling me-why you-?"
"Why I asked you?" Celia supplied his halting question. "No, I DON'T mind. I have a reason for wanting to know-to satisfy myself whether I had guessed rightly or not-about the kind of man you are. I mean in the matter of temperament and bent of mind and tastes."
The girl seemed to be speaking seriously, and without intent to offend. Theron did not find any comment ready, but walked along by her side, wondering much what it was all about.
"I daresay you think me 'too familiar on short acquaintance,'" she continued, after a little.
"My dear Miss Madden!" he protested perfunctorily.
"No; it is a matter of a good deal of importance," she went on. "I can see that you are going to be thrown into friendship, close contact, with Father Forbes. He likes you, and you can't help liking him. There is nobody else in this raw, overgrown, empty-headed place for you and him TO like, nobody except that man, that Dr. Ledsmar. And if you like HIM, I shall hate you! He has done mischief enough already. I am counting on you to help undo it, and to choke him off from doing more. It would be different if you were an ordinary Orthodox minister, all encased like a terrapin in prejudices and nonsense. Of course, if you had been THAT kind, we should never have got to know you at all. But when I saw you in MacEvoy's cottage there, it was plain that you were one of US-I mean a MAN, and not a marionette or a mummy. I am talking very frankly to you, you see. I want you on my side, against that doctor and his heartless, bloodless science."
"I feel myself very heartily on your side," replied Theron. She had set their progress at a slower pace, now that the lights of the main street were drawing near, as if to prolong their talk. All his earlier reservations had fled. It was almost as if she were a parishioner of his own. "I need hardly tell you that the doctor's whole attitude toward-toward revelation-was deeply repugnant to me. It doesn't make it any the less hateful to call it science. I am afraid, though," he went on hesitatingly, "that there are difficulties in the way of my helping, as you call it. You see, the very fact of my being a Methodist minister, and his being a Catholic priest, rather puts my interference out of the question."
"No; that doesn't matter a button," said Celia, lightly. "None of us think of that at all."
"There is the other embarrassment, then," pursued Theron, diffidently, "that Father Forbes is a vastly broader and deeper scholar-in all these matters-than I am. How could I possibly hope to influence him by my poor arguments? I don't know even the alphabet of the language he thinks in-on these subjects, I mean."
"Of course you don't!" interposed the girl, with a confidence which the other, for all his meekness, rather winced under. "That wasn't what I meant at all. We don't want arguments from our friends: we want sympathies, sensibilities, emotional bonds. The right person's silence is worth more for companionship than the wisest talk in the world from anybody else. It isn't your mind that is needed here, or what you know; it is your heart, and what you feel. You are full of poetry, of ideals, of generous, unselfish impulses. You see the human, the warm-blooded side of things. THAT is what is really valuable. THAT is how you can help!"
"You overestimate me sadly," protested Theron, though with considerable tolerance for her error in his tone. "But you ought to tell me something about this Dr. Ledsmar. He spoke of being an old friend of the pr-of Father Forbes."
"Oh, yes, they've always known each other; that is, for many years. They were professors together in a college once, heaven only knows how long ago. Then they separated, I fancy they quarrelled, too, before they parted. The doctor came here, where some relative had left him the place he lives in. Then in time the Bishop chanced to send Father Forbes here-that was about three years ago,-and the two men after a while renewed their old relations. They dine together; that is the doctor's stronghold. He knows more about eating than any other man alive, I believe. He studies it as you would study a language. He has taught old Maggie, at the pastorate there, to cook like the mother of all the Delmonicos. And while they sit and stuff themselves, or loll about afterward like gorged snakes, they think it is smart to laugh at all the sweet and beautiful things in life, and to sneer at people who believe in ideals, and to talk about mankind being merely a fortuitous product of fermentation, and twaddle of that sort. It makes me sick!"
"I can readily see," said Theron, with sympathy, "how such a cold, material, and infidel influence as that must shock and revolt an essentially religious temperament like yours."
Miss Madden looked up at him. They had turned into the main street, and there was light enough for him to detect something startlingly like a grin on her beautiful face.
"But I'm not religious at all, you know," he heard her say. "I'm as Pagan as-anything! Of course there are forms to be observed, and so on; I rather like them than otherwise. I can make them serve very well for my own system; for I am myself, you know, an out-an-out Greek."
"Why, I had supposed that you were full blooded Irish," the Rev. Mr. Ware found himself remarking, and then on the instant was overwhelmed by the consciousness that he had said a foolish thing. Precisely where the folly lay he did not know, but it was impossible to mistake the gesture of annoyance which his companion had instinctively made at his words. She had widened the distance between them now, and quickened her step. They went on in silence till they were within a block of her house. Several people had passed them who Theron felt sure must have recognized them both.
"What I meant was," the girl all at once began, drawing nearer again, and speaking with patient slowness, "that I find myself much more in sympathy with the Greek thought, the Greek theology of the beautiful and the strong, the Greek philosophy of life, and all that, than what is taught nowadays. Personally, I take much more stock in Plato than I do in Peter. But of course it is a wholly personal affair; I had no business to bother you with it. And for that matter, I oughtn't to have troubled you with any of our-"
"I assure you, Miss Madden!" the young minister began, with fervor.
"No," she broke in, in a resigned and even downcast tone; "let it all be as if I hadn't spoken. Don't mind anything I have said. If it is to be, it will be. You can't say more than that, can you?"
She looked into his face again, and her large eyes produced an impression of deep melancholy, which Theron found himself somehow impelled to share. Things seemed all at once to have become very sad indeed.
"It is one of my unhappy nights," she explained, in gloomy confidence. "I get them every once in a while-as if some vicious planet or other was crossing in front of my good star-and then I'm a caution to snakes. I shut myself up-that's the only thing to do-and have it out with myself I didn't know but the organ-music would calm me down, but it hasn't. I shan't sleep a wink tonight, but just rage around from one room to another, piling all the cushions from the divans on to the floor, and then kicking them away again. Do YOU ever have fits like that?"
Theron was able to reply with a good conscience in the negative. It occurred to him to add, with jocose intent: "I am curious to know, do these fits, as you call them, occupy a prominent part in Grecian philosophy as a general rule?"
Celia gave a little snort, which might have signified amusement, but did not speak until they were upon her own sidewalk. "There is my brother, waiting at the gate," she said then, briefly.
"Well, then, I will bid you good-night here, I think," Theron remarked, coming to a halt, and offering his hand. "It must be getting very late, and my-that is-I have to be up particularly early tomorrow. So good-night; I hope you will be feeling ever so much better in spirits in the morning."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," replied the girl, listlessly. "It's a very paltry little affair, this life of ours, at the best of it. Luckily it's soon done with-like a bad dream."
"Tut! Tut! I won't have you talk like that!" interrupted Theron, with a swift and smart assumption of authority. "Such talk isn't sensible, and it isn't good. I have no patience with it!"
"Well, try and have a little patience with ME, anyway, just for tonight," said Celia, taking the reproof with gentlest humility, rather to her censor's surprise. "I really am unhappy tonight, Mr. Ware, very unhappy. It seems as if all at once the world had swelled out in size a thousandfold, and that poor me had dwindled down to the merest wee little red-headed atom-the most helpless and forlorn and lonesome of atoms at that." She seemed to force a sorrowful smile on her face as she added: "But all the same it has done me good to be with you-I am sure it has-and I daresay that by tomorrow I shall be quite out of the blues. Good-night, Mr. Ware. Forgive my making such an exhibition of myself I WAS going to be such a fine early Greek, you know, and I have turned out only a late Milesian-quite of the decadence. I shall do better next time. And good-night again, and ever so many thanks."
She was walking briskly away toward the gate now, where the shadowy Michael still patiently stood. Theron strode off in the opposite direction, taking long, deliberate steps, and bowing his head in thought. He had his hands behind his back, as was his wont, and the sense of their recent contact with her firm, ungloved hands was, curiously enough, the thing which pushed itself uppermost in his mind. There had been a frank, almost manly vigor in her grasp; he said to himself that of course that came from her playing so much on the keyboard; the exercise naturally would give her large, robust hands.
Suddenly he remembered about the piano; he had quite forgotten to solicit her aid in selecting it. He turned, upon the impulse, to go back. She had not entered the gate as yet, but stood, shiningly visible under the street lamp, on the sidewalk, and she was looking in his direction. He turned again like a shot, and started homeward.
The front door of the parsonage was unlocked, and he made his way on tiptoe through the unlighted hall to the living-room. The stuffy air here was almost suffocating with the evil smell of a kerosene lamp turned down too low. Alice sat asleep in her old farmhouse rocking-chair, with an inelegant darning-basket on the table by her side. The whole effect of the room was as bare and squalid to Theron's newly informed eye as the atmosphere was offensive to his nostrils. He coughed sharply, and his wife sat up and looked at the clock. It was after eleven.
"Where on earth have you been?" she asked, with a yawn, turning up the wick of her sewing-lamp again.
"You ought never to turn down a light like that," said Theron, with a complaining note in his voice. "It smells up the whole place. I never dreamed of your sitting up for me like this. You ought to have gone to bed."
"But how could I guess that you were going to be so late?," she retorted. "And you haven't told me where you were. Is this book of yours going to keep you up like this right along?"
The episode of the book was buried in the young minister's mind beneath such a mass of subsequent experiences that it required an effort for him to grasp what she was talking about. It seemed as if months had elapsed since he was in earnest about that book; and yet he had left the house full of it only a few hours before. He shook his wits together, and made answer-
"Oh, bless you, no! Only there arose a very curious question. You have no idea, literally no conception, of the interesting and important problems which are raised by the mere fact of Abraham leaving the city of Ur. It's amazing, I assure you. I hadn't realized it myself."
"Well," remarked Alice, rising-and with good-humor and petulance struggling sleepily ill her tone-"all I've got to say is, that if Abraham hasn't anything better to do than to keep young ministers of the gospel out, goodness knows where, till all hours of the night, I wish to gracious he'd stayed in the city of Ur right straight along."
"You have no idea what a scholarly man Dr. Ledsmar is," Theron suddenly found himself inspired to volunteer. "He has the most marvellous collection of books-a whole library devoted to this very subject-and he has put them all quite freely at my disposal. Extremely kind of him, isn't it?"
"Ledsmar? Ledsmar?" queried Alice. "I don't seem to remember the name. He isn't the little man with the birthmark, who sits in the pew behind the Lovejoys, is he? I think some one said he was a doctor."
"Yes, a horse doctor!" said Theron, with a sniff. "No; you haven't seen this Dr. Ledsmar at all. I-I don't know that he attends any church regularly. I scraped his acquaintance quite by accident. He is really a character. He lives in the big house, just beyond the race-course, you know-the one with the tower at the back-"
"No, I don't know. How should I? I've hardly poked my nose outside of the yard since I have been here."
"Well, you shall go," said the husband, consolingly. "You HAVE been cooped up here too much, poor girl. I must take you out more, really. I don't know that I could take you to the doctor's place-without an invitation, I mean. He is very queer about some things. He lives there all alone, for instance, with only a Chinaman for a servant. He told me I was almost the only man he had asked under his roof for years. He isn't a practising physician at all, you know. He is a scientist; he makes experiments with lizards-and things."
"Theron," the wife said, pausing lamp in hand on her way to the bedroom, "do you be careful, now! For all you know this doctor may be a loose man, or pretty near an infidel. You've got to be mighty particular in such matters, you know, or you'll have the trustees down on you like a 'thousand of bricks.'"
"I will thank the trustees to mind their own business," said Theron, stiffly, and the subject dropped.
The bedroom window upstairs was open, and upon the fresh night air was borne in the shrill, jangling sound of a piano, being played off somewhere in the distance, but so vehemently that the noise imposed itself upon the silence far and wide. Theron listened to this as he undressed. It proceeded from the direction of the main street, and he knew, as by instinct, that it was the Madden girl who was playing. The incongruity of the hour escaped his notice. He mused instead upon the wild and tropical tangle of moods, emotions, passions, which had grown up in that strange temperament. He found something very pathetic in that picture she had drawn of herself in forecast, roaming disconsolate through her rooms the livelong night, unable to sleep. The woful moan of insomnia seemed to make itself heard in every strain from her piano.
Alice heard it also, but being unillumined, she missed the romantic pathos. "I call it disgraceful," she muttered from her pillow, "for folks to be banging away on a piano at this time of night. There ought to be a law to prevent it."
"It may be some distressed soul," said Theron, gently, "seeking relief from the curse of sleeplessness."
The wife laughed, almost contemptuously. "Distressed fiddlesticks!" was her only other comment.
The music went on for a long time-rising now to strident heights, now sinking off to the merest tinkling murmur, and broken ever and again by intervals of utter hush. It did not prevent Alice from at once falling sound asleep; but Theron lay awake, it seemed to him, for hours, listening tranquilly, and letting his mind wander at will through the pleasant antechambers of Sleep, where are more unreal fantasies than Dreamland itself affords.
PART II
CHAPTER XI
For some weeks the Rev. Theron Ware saw nothing of either the priest or the doctor, or the interesting Miss Madden.
There were, indeed, more urgent matters to think about. June had come; and every succeeding day brought closer to hand the ordeal of his first Quarterly Conference in Octavius. The waters grew distinctly rougher as his pastoral bark neared this difficult passage.
He would have approached the great event with an easier mind if he could have made out just how he stood with his congregation. Unfortunately nothing in his previous experiences helped him in the least to measure or guess at the feelings of these curious Octavians. Their Methodism seemed to be sound enough, and to stick quite to the letter of the Discipline, so long as it was expressed in formulae. It was its spirit which he felt to be complicated by all sorts of conditions wholly novel to him.
The existence of a line of street-cars in the town, for example, would not impress the casual thinker as likely to prove a rock in the path of peaceful religion. Theron, in his simplicity, had even thought, when he first saw these bobtailed cars bumping along the rails in the middle of the main street, that they must be a great convenience to people living in the outskirts, who wished to get in to church of a Sunday morning. He was imprudent enough to mention this in conversation with one of his new parishioners. Then he learned, to his considerable chagrin, that when this line was built, some years before, a bitter war of words had been fought upon the question of its being worked on the Sabbath day. The then occupant of the Methodist pulpit had so distinguished himself above the rest by the solemnity and fervor of his protests against this insolent desecration of God's day that the Methodists of Octavius still felt themselves peculiarly bound to hold this horse-car line, its management, and everything connected with it, in unbending aversion. At least once a year they were accustomed to expect a sermon denouncing it and all its impious Sunday patrons. Theron made a mental resolve that this year they should be disappointed.
Another burning problem, which he had not been called upon before to confront, he found now entangled with the mysterious line which divided a circus from a menagerie. Those itinerant tent-shows had never come his way heretofore, and he knew nothing of that fine balancing proportion between ladies in tights on horseback and cages full of deeply educational animals, which, even as the impartial rain, was designed to embrace alike the just and the unjust. There had arisen inside the Methodist society of Octavius some painful episodes, connected with members who took their children "just to see the animals," and were convicted of having also watched the Rose-Queen of the Arena, in her unequalled flying leap through eight hoops, with an ardent and unashamed eye. One of these cases still remained on the censorial docket of the church; and Theron understood that he was expected to name a committee of five to examine and try it. This he neglected to do.
He was no longer at all certain that the congregation as a whole liked his sermons. The truth was, no doubt, that he had learned enough to cease regarding the congregation as a whole. He could still rely upon carrying along with him in his discourses from the pulpit a large majority of interested and approving faces. But here, unhappily, was a case where the majority did not rule. The minority, relatively small in numbers, was prodigious in virile force.
More than twenty years had now elapsed since that minor schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the result of which was the independent body known as Free Methodists, had relieved the parent flock of its principal disturbing element. The rupture came fittingly at that time when all the "isms" of the argumentative fifties were hurled violently together into the melting-pot of civil war. The great Methodist Church, South, had broken bodily off on the question of State Rights. The smaller and domestic fraction of Free Methodism separated itself upon an issue which may be most readily described as one of civilization. The seceders resented growth in material prosperity; they repudiated the introduction of written sermons and organ-music; they deplored the increasing laxity in meddlesome piety, the introduction of polite manners in the pulpit and classroom, and the development of even a rudimentary desire among the younger people of the church to be like others outside in dress and speech and deportment. They did battle as long as they could, inside the fold, to restore it to the severely straight and narrow path of primitive Methodism. When the adverse odds became too strong for them, they quitted the church and set up a Bethel for themselves.
Octavius chanced to be one of the places where they were able to hold their own within the church organization. The Methodism of the town had gone along without any local secession. It still held in full fellowship the radicals who elsewhere had followed their unbridled bent into the strongest emotional vagaries-where excited brethren worked themselves up into epileptic fits, and women whirled themselves about in weird religious ecstasies, like dervishes of the Orient, till they fell headlong in a state of trance. Octavian Methodism was spared extravagances of this sort, it is true, but it paid a price for the immunity. The people whom an open split would have taken away remained to leaven and dominate the whole lump. This small advanced section, with its men of a type all the more aggressive from its narrowness, and women who went about solemnly in plain gray garments, with tight-fitting, unadorned, mouse-colored sunbonnets, had not been able wholly to enforce its views upon the social life of the church members, but of its controlling influence upon their official and public actions there could be no doubt.
The situation had begun to unfold itself to Theron from the outset. He had recognized the episodes of the forbidden Sunday milk and of the flowers in poor Alice's bonnet as typical of much more that was to come. No week followed without bringing some new fulfilment of this foreboding. Now, at the end of two months, he knew well enough that the hitherto dominant minority was hostile to him and his ministry, and would do whatever it could against him.
Though Theron at once decided to show fight, and did not at all waver in that resolve, his courage was in the main of a despondent sort. Sometimes it would flutter up to the point of confidence, or at least hopefulness, when he met with substantial men of the church who obviously liked him, and whom he found himself mentally ranging on his side, in the struggle which was to come. But more often it was blankly apparent to him that, the moment flags were flying and drums on the roll, these amiable fair-weather friends would probably take to their heels.
Still, such as they were, his sole hope lay in their support. He must make the best of them. He set himself doggedly to the task of gathering together all those who were not his enemies into what, when the proper time came, should be known as the pastor's party. There was plenty of apostolic warrant for this. If there had not been, Theron felt that the mere elementary demands of self-defence would have justified his use of strategy.
The institution of pastoral calling, particularly that inquisitorial form of it laid down in the Discipline, had never attracted Theron. He and Alice had gone about among their previous flocks in quite a haphazard fashion, without thought of system, much less of deliberate purpose. Theron made lists now, and devoted thought and examination to the personal tastes and characteristics of the people to be cultivated. There were some, for example, who would expect him to talk pretty much as the Discipline ordained-that is, to ask if they had family prayer, to inquire after their souls, and generally to minister grace to his hearers-and these in turn subdivided themselves into classes, ranging from those who would wish nothing else to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor. There were others whom he would please much better by not talking shop at all. Although he could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily paper that he might have a perpetually renewed source of good conversational topics for these more worldly calls. He also bought several pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted to be entirely harmless, and he made a large mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat to remind him not to go out calling without some of this in his pocket for the children.
Alice, he felt, was not helping him in this matter as effectively as he could have wished. Her attitude toward the church in Octavius might best be described by the word "sulky." Great allowance was to be made, he realized, for her humiliation over the flowers in her bonnet. That might justify her, fairly enough, in being kept away from meeting now and again by headaches, or undefined megrims. But it ought not to prevent her from going about and making friends among the kindlier parishioners who would welcome such a thing, and whom he from time to time indicated to her. She did go to some extent, it is true, but she produced, in doing so, an effect of performing a duty. He did not find traces anywhere of her having created a brilliant social impression. When they went out together, he was peculiarly conscious of having to do the work unaided.
This was not at all like the Alice of former years, of other charges. Why, she had been, beyond comparison, the most popular young woman in Tyre. What possessed her to mope like this in Octavius?
Theron looked at her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle. It could not be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life had she been looking so well. She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a flower-garden. She was out the better part of every day, rain or shine, digging, transplanting, pruning, pottering generally about among her plants and shrubs. This work in the open air had given her an aspect of physical well-being which it was impossible to be mistaken about.
Her husband was glad, of course, that she had found some occupation which at once pleased her and so obviously conduced to health. This was so much a matter of course, in fact, that he said to himself over and over again that he was glad. Only-only, sometimes the thought WOULD force itself upon his attention that if she did not spend so much of her time in her own garden, she would have more time to devote to winning friends for them in the Garden of the Lord-friends whom they were going to need badly.
The young minister, in taking anxious stock of the chances for and against him, turned over often in his mind the fact that he had already won rank as a pulpit orator. His sermons had attracted almost universal attention at Tyre, and his achievement before the Conference at Tecumseh, if it did fail to receive practical reward, had admittedly distanced all the other preaching there. It was a part of the evil luck pursuing him that here in this perversely enigmatic Octavius his special gift seemed to be of no use whatever. There were times, indeed, when he was tempted to think that bad preaching was what Octavius wanted.
Somewhere he had heard of a Presbyterian minister, in charge of a big city church, who managed to keep well in with a watchfully Orthodox congregation, and at the same time establish himself in the affections of the community at large, by simply preaching two kinds of sermons. In the morning, when almost all who attended were his own communicants, he gave them very cautious and edifying doctrinal discourses, treading loyally in the path of the Westminster Confession. To the evening assemblages, made up for the larger part of outsiders, he addressed broadly liberal sermons, literary in form, and full of respectful allusions to modern science and the philosophy of the day. Thus he filled the church at both services, and put money in its treasury and his own fame before the world. There was of course the obvious danger that the pious elders who in the forenoon heard infant damnation vigorously proclaimed, would revolt when they heard after supper that there was some doubt about even adults being damned at all. But either because the same people did not attend both services, or because the minister's perfect regularity in the morning was each week regarded as a retraction of his latest vagaries of an evening, no trouble ever came.
Theron had somewhat tentatively tried this on in Octavius. It was no good. His parishioners were of the sort who would have come to church eight times a day on Sunday, instead of two, if occasion offered. The hope that even a portion of them would stop away, and that their places would be taken in the evening by less prejudiced strangers who wished for intellectual rather than theological food, fell by the wayside. The yearned-for strangers did not come; the familiar faces of the morning service all turned up in their accustomed places every evening. They were faces which confused and disheartened Theron in the daytime. Under the gaslight they seemed even harder and more unsympathetic. He timorously experimented with them for an evening or two, then abandoned the effort.
Once there had seemed the beginning of a chance. The richest banker in Octavius-a fat, sensual, hog-faced old bachelor-surprised everybody one evening by entering the church and taking a seat. Theron happened to know who he was; even if he had not known, the suppressed excitement visible in the congregation, the way the sisters turned round to look, the way the more important brethren put their heads together and exchanged furtive whispers-would have warned him that big game was in view. He recalled afterward with something like self-disgust the eager, almost tremulous pains he himself took to please this banker. There was a part of the sermon, as it had been written out, which might easily give offence to a single man of wealth and free notions of life. With the alertness of a mental gymnast, Theron ran ahead, excised this portion, and had ready when the gap was reached some very pretty general remarks, all the more effective and eloquent, he felt, for having been extemporized. People said it was a good sermon; and after the benediction and dispersion some of the officials and principal pew-holders remained to talk over the likelihood of a capture having been effected. Theron did not get away without having this mentioned to him, and he was conscious of sharing deeply the hope of the brethren-with the added reflection that it would be a personal triumph for himself into the bargain. He was ashamed of this feeling a little later, and of his trick with the sermon. But this chastening product of introspection was all the fruit which the incident bore. The banker never came again.
Theron returned one afternoon, a little earlier than usual, from a group of pastoral calls. Alice, who was plucking weeds in a border at the shady side of the house, heard his step, and rose from her labors. He was walking slowly, and seemed weary. He took off his high hat, as he saw her, and wiped his brow. The broiling June sun was still high overhead. Doubtless it was its insufferable heat which was accountable for the worn lines in his face and the spiritless air which the wife's eye detected. She went to the gate, and kissed him as he entered.
"I believe if I were you," she said, "I'd carry an umbrella such scorching days as this. Nobody'd think anything of it. I don't see why a minister shouldn't carry one as much as a woman carries a parasol."
Theron gave her a rueful, meditative sort of smile. "I suppose people really do think of us as a kind of hybrid female," he remarked. Then, holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of relief at finding himself in the shade, and looked about him.
"Why, you've got more posies here, on this one side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole yard," he said, after a little. "Let's see-I know that one: that's columbine, isn't it? And that's London pride, and that's ragged robin. I don't know any of the others."
Alice recited various unfamiliar names, as she pointed out the several plants which bore them, and he listened with a kindly semblance of interest.
They strolled thus to the rear of the house, where thick clumps of fragrant pinks lined both sides of the path. She picked some of these for him, and gave him more names with which to label the considerable number of other plants he saw about him.
"I had no idea we were so well provided as all this," he commented at last. "Those Van Sizers must have been tremendous hands for flowers. You were lucky in following such people."
"Van Sizers!" echoed Alice, with contempt. "All they left was old tomato cans and clamshells. Why, I've put in every blessed one of these myself, all except those peonies, there, and one brier on the side wall."
"Good for you!" exclaimed Theron, approvingly. Then it occurred to him to ask, "But where did you get them all? Around among our friends?"
"Some few," responded Alice, with a note of hesitation in her voice. "Sister Bult gave me the verbenas, there, and the white pinks were a present from Miss Stevens. But most of them Levi Gorringe was good enough to send me-from his garden."
"I didn't know that Gorringe had a garden," said Theron. "I thought he lived over his law-office, in the brick block, there."
"Well, I don't know that it's exactly HIS," explained Alice; "but it's a big garden somewhere outside, where he can have anything he likes." She went on with a little laugh: "I didn't like to question him too closely, for fear he'd think I was looking a gift horse in the mouth-or else hinting for more. It was quite his own offer, you know. He picked them all out for me, and brought them here, and lent me a book telling me just what to do with each one. And in a few days, now, I am to have another big batch of plants-dahlias and zinnias and asters and so on; I'm almost ashamed to take them. But it's such a change to find some one in this Octavius who isn't all self!"
"Yes, Gorringe is a good fellow," said Theron. "I wish he was a professing member." Then some new thought struck him. "Alice," he exclaimed, "I believe I'll go and see him this very afternoon. I don't know why it hasn't occurred to me before: he's just the man whose advice I need most. He knows these people here; he can tell me what to do."
"Aren't you too tired now?" suggested Alice, as Theron put on his hat.
"No, the sooner the better," he replied, moving now toward the gate.
"Well," she began, "if I were you, I wouldn't say too much about-that is, I-but never mind."
"What is it?" asked her husband.
"Nothing whatever," replied Alice, positively. "It was only some nonsense of mine;" and Theron, placidly accepting the feminine whim, went off down the street again.
CHAPTER XII
The Rev. Mr. Ware found Levi Gorringe's law-office readily enough, but its owner was not in. He probably would be back again, though, in a quarter of an hour or so, the boy said, and the minister at once decided to wait.
Theron was interested in finding that this office-boy was no other than Harvey-the lad who brought milk to the parsonage every morning. He remembered now that he had heard good things of this urchin, as to the hard work he did to help his mother, the Widow Semple, in her struggle to keep a roof over her head; and also bad things, in that he did not come regularly either to church or Sunday-school. The clergyman recalled, too, that Harvey had impressed him as a character.
"Well, sonny, are you going to be a lawyer?" he asked, as he seated himself by the window, and looked about him, first at the dusty litter of old papers, pamphlets, and tape-bound documents in bundles which crowded the stuffy chamber, and then at the boy himself.
Harvey was busy at a big box-a rough pine dry-goods box which bore the flaring label of an express company, and also of a well-known seed firm in a Western city, and which the boy had apparently just opened. He was lifting from it, and placing on the table after he had shaken off the sawdust and moss in which they were packed, small parcels of what looked in the fading light to be half-dried plants.
"Well, I don't know-I rather guess not," he made answer, as he pursued his task. "So far as I can make out, this wouldn't be the place to start in at, if I WAS going to be a lawyer. A boy can learn here first-rate how to load cartridges and clean a gun, and braid trout-flies on to leaders, but I don't see much law laying around loose. Anyway," he went on, "I couldn't afford to read law, and not be getting any wages. I have to earn money, you know."
Theron felt that he liked the boy. "Yes," he said, with a kindly tone; "I've heard that you are a good, industrious youngster. I daresay Mr. Gorringe will see to it that you get a chance to read law, and get wages too."
"Oh, I can read all there is here and welcome," the boy explained, stepping toward the window to decipher the label on a bundle of roots in his hand, "but that's no good unless there's regular practice coming into the office all the while. THAT'S how you learn to be a lawyer. But Gorringe don't have what I call a practice at all. He just sees men in the other room there, with the door shut, and whatever there is to do he does it all himself."
The minister remembered a stray hint somewhere that Mr. Gorringe was a money-lender-what was colloquially called a "note-shaver." To his rustic sense, there was something not quite nice about that occupation. It would be indecorous, he felt, to encourage further talk about it from the boy.
"What are you doing there?" he inquired, to change the subject.
"Sorting out some plants," replied Harvey. "I don't know what's got into Gorringe lately. This is the third big box he's had since I've been here-that is, in six weeks-besides two baskets full of rose-bushes. I don't know what he does with them. He carries them off himself somewhere. I've had kind of half a notion that he's figurin' on getting married. I can't think of anything else that would make a man spend money like water-just for flowers and bushes. They do get foolish, you know, when they've got marriage on the brain."
Theron found himself only imperfectly following the theories of the young philosopher. It was his fact that monopolized the minister's attention.
"But as I understand it," he remarked hesitatingly, "Brother Gorringe-or rather Mr. Gorringe-gets all the plants he wants, everything he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside. I don't know that it is exactly his; but I remember hearing something to that effect."
The boy slapped the last litter off his hands, and, as he came to the window, shook his head. "These don't come from no garden outside," he declared. "They come from the dealers', and he pays solid cash for 'em. The invoice for this lot alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents. There it is on the table. You can see it for yourself."
Mr. Ware did not offer to look. "Very likely these are for the garden I was speaking of," he said. "Of course you can't go on taking plants out of a garden indefinitely without putting others in."
"I don't know anything about any garden that he takes plants out of," answered Harvey, and looked meditatively for a minute or two out upon the street below. Then he turned to the minister. "Your wife's doing a good deal of gardening this spring, I notice," he said casually. "You'd hardly think it was the same place, she's fixed it up so. If she wants any extra hoeing done, I can always get off Saturday afternoons."
"I will remember," said Theron. He also looked out of the window; and nothing more was said until, a few moments later, Mr. Gorringe himself came in.
The lawyer seemed both surprised and pleased at discovering the identity of his visitor, with whom he shook hands in almost an excess of cordiality. He spread a large newspaper over the pile of seedling plants on the table, pushed the packing-box under the table with his foot, and said almost peremptorily to the boy, "You can go now!" Then he turned again to Theron.
"Well, Mr. Ware, I'm glad to see you," he repeated, and drew up a chair by the window. "Things are going all right with you, I hope."
Theron noted again the waving black hair, the dark skin, and the carefully trimmed mustache and chin-tuft which gave the lawyer's face a combined effect of romance and smartness. No; it was the eyes, cool, shrewd, dark-gray eyes, which suggested this latter quality. The recollection of having seen one of them wink, in deliberate hostility of sarcasm, when those other trustees had their backs turned, came mercifully at the moment to recall the young minister to his errand.
"I thought I would drop in and have a chat with you," he said, getting better under way as he went on. "Quarterly Conference is only a fortnight off, and I am a good deal at sea about what is going to happen."
"I'm not a church member, you know," interposed Gorringe. "That shuts me out of the Quarterly Conference."
"Alas, yes!" said Theron. "I wish it didn't. I'm afraid I'm not going to have any friends to spare there."
"What are you afraid of?" asked the lawyer, seeming now to be wholly at his ease again "They can't eat you."
"No, they keep me too lean for that," responded Theron, with a pensive smile. "I WAS going to ask, you know, for an increase of salary, or an extra allowance. I don't see how I can go on as it is. The sum fixed by the last Quarterly Conference of the old year, and which I am getting now, is one hundred dollars less than my predecessor had. That isn't fair, and it isn't right. But so far from its looking as if I could get an increase, the prospect seems rather that they will make me pay for the gas and that sidewalk. I never recovered more than about half of my moving expenses, as you know, and-and, frankly, I don't know which way to turn. It keeps me miserable all the while."
"That's where you're wrong," said Mr. Gorringe. "If you let things like that worry you, you'll keep a sore skin all your life. You take my advice and just go ahead your own gait, and let other folks do the worrying. They ARE pretty close-fisted here, for a fact, but you can manage to rub along somehow. If you should get into any real difficulties, why, I guess-" the lawyer paused to smile in a hesitating, significant way-"I guess some road out can be found all right. The main thing is, don't fret, and don't allow your wife to-to fret either."
He stopped abruptly. Theron nodded in recognition of his amiable tone, and then found the nod lengthening itself out into almost a bow as the thought spread through his mind that this had been nothing more nor less than a promise to help him with money if worst came to worst. He looked at Levi Gorringe, and said to himself that the intuition of women was wonderful. Alice had picked him out as a friend of theirs merely by seeing him pass the house.
"Yes," he said; "I am specially anxious to keep my wife from worrying. She was surrounded in her girlhood by a good deal of what, relatively, we should call luxury, and that makes it all the harder for her to be a poor minister's wife. I had quite decided to get her a hired girl, come what might, but she thinks she'd rather get on without one. Her health is better, I must admit, than it was when we came here. She works out in her garden a great deal, and that seems to agree with her."
"Octavius is a healthy place-that's generally admitted," replied the lawyer, with indifference. He seemed not to be interested in Mrs. Ware's health, but looked intently out through the window at the buildings opposite, and drummed with his fingers on the arms of his chair.
Theron made haste to revert to his errand. "Of course, your not being in the Quarterly Conference," he said, "renders certain things impossible. But I didn't know but you might have some knowledge of how matters are going, what plans the officials of the church had; they seem to have agreed to tell me nothing."
"Well, I HAVE heard this much," responded Gorringe. "They're figuring on getting the Soulsbys here to raise the debt and kind o' shake things up generally. I guess that's about as good as settled. Hadn't you heard of it?"
"Not a breath!" exclaimed Theron, mournfully. "Well," he added upon reflection, "I'm sorry, downright sorry. The debt-raiser seems to me about the lowest-down thing we produce. I've heard of those Soulsbys; I think I saw HIM indeed once at Conference, but I believe SHE is the head of the firm."
"Yes; she wears the breeches, I understand," said Gorringe sententiously.
"I HAD hoped," the young minister began with a rueful sigh, "in fact, I felt quite confident at the outset that I could pay off this debt, and put the church generally on a new footing, by giving extra attention to my pulpit work. It is hardly for me to say it, but in other places where I have been, my preaching has been rather-rather a feature in the town itself. I have always been accustomed to attract to our services a good many non-members, and that, as you know, helps tremendously from a money point of view. But somehow that has failed here. I doubt if the average congregations are a whit larger now than they were when I came in April. I know the collections are not."
"No," commented the lawyer, slowly; "you'll never do anything in that line in Octavius. You might, of course, if you were to stay here and work hard at it for five or six years-"
"Heaven forbid!" groaned Mr. Ware.
"Quite so," put in the other. "The point is that the Methodists here are a little set by themselves. I don't know that they like one another specially, but I do know that they are not what you might call popular with people outside. Now, a new preacher at the Presbyterian church, or even the Baptist-he might have a chance to create talk, and make a stir. But Methodist-no! People who don't belong won't come near the Methodist church here so long as there's any other place with a roof on it to go to. Give a dog a bad name, you know. Well, the Methodists here have got a bad name; and if you could preach like Henry Ward Beecher himself you wouldn't change it, or get folks to come and hear you."
"I see what you mean," Theron responded. "I'm not particularly surprised myself that Octavius doesn't love us, or look to us for intellectual stimulation. I myself leave that pulpit more often than otherwise feeling like a wet rag-utterly limp and discouraged. But, if you don't mind my speaking of it, YOU don't belong, and yet YOU come."
It was evident that the lawyer did not mind. He spoke freely in reply. "Oh, yes, I've got into the habit of it. I began going when I first came here, and-and so it grew to be natural for me to go. Then, of course, being the only lawyer you have, a considerable amount of my business is mixed up in one way or another with your membership; you see those are really the things which settle a man in a rut, and keep him there."
"I suppose your people were Methodists," said Theron, to fill in the pause, "and that is how you originally started with us."
Levi Gorringe shook his head. He leaned back, half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together, and almost smiled as if something in retrospect pleased and moved him.
"No," he said; "I went to the church first to see a girl who used to go there. It was long before your time. All her family moved away years ago. You wouldn't know any of them. I was younger then, and I didn't know as much as I do now. I worshipped the very ground that girl walked on, and like a fool I never gave her so much as a hint of it. Looking back now, I can see that I might have had her if I'd asked her. But I went instead and sat around and looked at her at church and Sunday-school and prayer-meetings Thursday nights, and class-meetings after the sermon. She was devoted to religion and church work; and, thinking it would please her, I joined the church on probation. Men can fool themselves easier than they can other people. I actually believed at the time that I had experienced religion. I felt myself full of all sorts of awakenings of the soul and so forth. But it was really that girl. You see I'm telling you the thing just as it was. I was very happy. I think it was the happiest time of my life. I remember there was a love-feast while I was on probation; and I sat down in front, right beside her, and we ate the little square chunks of bread and drank the water together, and I held one corner of her hymn-book when we stood up and sang. That was the nearest I ever got to her, or to full membership in the church. That very next week, I think it was, we learned that she had got engaged to the minister's son-a young man who had just become a minister himself. They got married, and went away-and I-somehow I never took up my membership when the six months' probation was over. That's how it was."
"It is very interesting," remarked Theron, softly, after a little silence-"and very full of human nature."
"Well, now you see," said the lawyer, "what I mean when I say that there hasn't been another minister here since, that I should have felt like telling this story to. They wouldn't have understood it at all. They would have thought it was blasphemy for me to say straight out that what I took for experiencing religion was really a girl. But you are different. I felt that at once, the first time I saw you. In a pulpit or out of it, what I like in a human being is that he SHOULD be human."
"It pleases me beyond measure that you should like me, then" returned the young minister, with frank gratification shining on his face. "The world is made all the sweeter and more lovable by these-these elements of romance. I am not one of those who would wish to see them banished or frowned upon. I don't mind admitting to you that there is a good deal in Methodism-I mean the strict practice of its letter which you find here in Octavius-that is personally distasteful to me. I read the other day of an English bishop who said boldly, publicly, that no modern nation could practise the principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount and survive for twenty-four hours."
"Ha, ha! That's good!" laughed the lawyer.
"I felt that it was good, too," pursued Theron. "I am getting to see a great many things differently, here in Octavius. Our Methodist Discipline is like the Beatitudes-very helpful and beautiful, if treated as spiritual suggestion, but more or less of a stumbling-block if insisted upon literally. I declare!" he added, sitting up in his chair, "I never talked like this to a living soul before in all my life. Your confidences were contagious."
The Rev. Mr. Ware rose as he spoke, and took up his hat.
"Must you be going?" asked the lawyer, also rising. "Well, I'm glad I haven't shocked you. Come in oftener when you are passing. And if you see anything I can help you in, always tell me."
The two men shook hands, with an emphatic and lingering clasp.
"I am glad," said Theron, "that you didn't stop coming to church just because you lost the girl."
Levi Gorringe answered the minister's pleasantry with a smile which curled his mustache upward, and expanded in little wrinkles at the ends of his eyes. "No," he said jestingly. "I'm death on collecting debts; and I reckon that the church still owes me a girl. I'll have one yet."
So, with merriment the echoes of which pleasantly accompanied Theron down the stairway, the two men parted.
CHAPTER XIII
Though time lagged in passing with a slowness which seemed born of studied insolence, there did arrive at last a day which had something definitive about it to Theron's disturbed and restless mind. It was a Thursday, and the prayer-meeting to be held that evening would be the last before the Quarterly Conference, now only four days off.
For some reason, the young minister found himself dwelling upon this fact, and investing it with importance. But yesterday the Quarterly Conference had seemed a long way ahead. Today brought it alarmingly close to hand. He had not heretofore regarded the weekly assemblage for prayer and song as a thing calling for preparation, or for any preliminary thought. Now on this Thursday morning he went to his desk after breakfast, which was a sign that he wanted the room to himself, quite as if he had the task of a weighty sermon before him. He sat at the desk all the forenoon, doing no writing, it is true, but remembering every once in a while, when his mind turned aside from the book in his hands, that there was that prayer-meeting in the evening.
Sometimes he reached the point of vaguely wondering why this strictly commonplace affair should be forcing itself thus upon his attention. Then, with a kind of mental shiver at the recollection that this was Thursday, and that the great struggle came on Monday, he would go back to his book.
There were a half-dozen volumes on the open desk before him. He had taken them out from beneath a pile of old "Sunday-School Advocates" and church magazines, where they had lain hidden from Alice's view most of the week. If there had been a locked drawer in the house, he would have used it instead to hold these books, which had come to him in a neat parcel, which also contained an amiable note from Dr. Ledsmar, recalling a pleasant evening in May, and expressing the hope that the accompanying works would be of some service. Theron had glanced at the backs of the uppermost two, and discovered that their author was Renan. Then he had hastily put the lot in the best place he could think of to escape his wife's observation.
He realized now that there had been no need for this secrecy. Of the other four books, by Sayce, Budge, Smith, and Lenormant, three indeed revealed themselves to be published under religious auspices. As for Renan, he might have known that the name would be meaningless to Alice. The feeling that he himself was not much wiser in this matter than his wife may have led him to pass over the learned text-books on Chaldean antiquity, and even the volume of Renan which appeared to be devoted to Oriental inscriptions, and take up his other book, entitled in the translation, "Recollections of my Youth." This he rather glanced through, at the outset, following with a certain inattention the introductory sketches and essays, which dealt with an unfamiliar, and, to his notion, somewhat preposterous Breton racial type. Then, little by little, it dawned upon him that there was a connected story in all this; and suddenly he came upon it, out in the open, as it were. It was the story of how a deeply devout young man, trained from his earliest boyhood for the sacred office, and desiring passionately nothing but to be worthy of it, came to a point where, at infinite cost of pain to himself and of anguish to those dearest to him, he had to declare that he could no longer believe at all in revealed religion.
Theron Ware read this all with an excited interest which no book had ever stirred in him before. Much of it he read over and over again, to make sure that he penetrated everywhere the husk of French habits of thought and Catholic methods in which the kernel was wrapped. He broke off midway in this part of the book to go out to the kitchen to dinner, and began the meal in silence. To Alice's questions he replied briefly that he was preparing himself for the evening's prayer-meeting. She lifted her brows in such frank surprise at this that he made a further and somewhat rambling explanation about having again taken up the work on his book-the book about Abraham.
"I thought you said you'd given that up altogether," she remarked.
"Well," he said, "I WAS discouraged about it for a while. But a man never does anything big without getting discouraged over and over again while he's doing it. I don't say now that I shall write precisely THAT book-I'm merely reading scientific works about the period, just now-but if not that, I shall write some other book. Else how will you get that piano?" he added, with an attempt at a smile.
"I thought you had given that up, too!" she replied ruefully. Then before he could speak, she went on: "Never mind the piano; that can wait. What I've got on my mind just now isn't piano; it's potatoes. Do you know, I saw some the other day at Rasbach's, splendid potatoes-these are some of them-and fifteen cents a bushel cheaper than those dried-up old things Brother Barnum keeps, and so I bought two bushels. And Sister Barnum met me on the street this morning, and threw it in my face that the Discipline commands us to trade with each other. Is there any such command?"
"Yes," said the husband. "It's Section 33. Don't you remember? I looked it up in Tyre. We are to 'evidence our desire of salvation by doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning so to be; by employing them preferably to others; buying one of another; helping each other in business'-and so on. Yes, it's all there."
"Well, I told her I didn't believe it was," put in Alice, "and I said that even if it was, there ought to be another section about selling potatoes to their minister for more than they're worth-potatoes that turn all green when you boil them, too. I believe I'll read up that old Discipline myself, and see if it hasn't got some things that I can talk back with."
"The very section before that, Number 32, enjoins members against 'uncharitable or unprofitable conversation-particularly speaking evil of magistrates or ministers.' You'd have 'em there, I think." Theron had begun cheerfully enough, but the careworn, preoccupied look returned now to his face. "I'm sorry if we've fallen out with the Barnums," he said. "His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday-school superintendent, is a member of the Quarterly Conference, you know, and I've been hoping that he was on my side. I've been taking a good deal of pains to make up to him."
He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which impressed Alice. "If you think it will do any good," she volunteered, "I'll go and call on the Davises this very afternoon. I'm sure to find her at home,-she's tied hand and foot with that brood of hers-and you'd better give me some of that candy for them."
Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and relapsed into silence. When the meal was over, he brought out the confectionery to his wife, and without a word went back to that remarkable book.
When Alice returned toward the close of day, to prepare the simple tea which was always laid a half-hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays, she found her husband where she had left him, still busy with those new scientific works. She recounted to him some incidents of her call upon Mrs. Davis, as she took off her hat and put on the big kitchen apron-how pleased Mrs. Davis seemed to be; how her affection for her sister-in-law, the grocer's wife, disclosed itself to be not even skin-deep; how the children leaped upon the candy as if they had never seen any before; and how, in her belief, Mr. Davis would be heart and soul on Theron's side at the Conference.
To her surprise, the young minister seemed not at all interested. He hardly looked at her during her narrative, but reclined in the easy-chair with his head thrown back, and an abstracted gaze wandering aimlessly about the ceiling. When she avowed her faith in the Sunday-school superintendent's loyal partisanship, which she did with a pardonable pride in having helped to make it secure, her husband even closed his eyes, and moved his head with a gesture which plainly bespoke indifference.
"I expected you'd be tickled to death," she remarked, with evident disappointment.
"I've a bad headache," he explained, after a minute's pause.
"No wonder!" Alice rejoined, sympathetically enough, but with a note of reproof as well. "What can you expect, staying cooped up in here all day long, poring over those books? People are all the while remarking that you study too much. I tell them, of course, that you're a great hand for reading, and always were; but I think myself it would be better if you got out more, and took more exercise, and saw people. You know lots and slathers more than THEY do now, or ever will, if you never opened another book."
Theron regarded her with an expression which she had never seen on his face before. "You don't realize what you are saying," he replied slowly. He sighed as he added, with increased gravity, "I am the most ignorant man alive!"
Alice began a little laugh of wifely incredulity, and then let it die away as she recognized that he was really troubled and sad in his mind. She bent over to kiss him lightly on the brow, and tiptoed her way out into the kitchen.
"I believe I will let you make my excuses at the prayer-meeting this evening," he said all at once, as the supper came to an end. He had eaten next to nothing during the meal, and had sat in a sort of brown-study from which Alice kindly forbore to arouse him. "I don't know-I hardly feel equal to it. They won't take it amiss-for once-if you explain to them that I-I am not at all well."
"Oh, I do hope you're not coming down with anything!" Alice had risen too, and was gazing at him with a solicitude the tenderness of which at once comforted, and in some obscure way jarred on his nerves. "Is there anything I can do-or shall I go for a doctor? We've got mustard in the house, and senna-I think there's some senna left-and Jamaica ginger."
Theron shook his head wearily at her. "Oh, no,-no!" he expostulated. "It isn't anything that needs drugs, or doctors either. It's just mental worry and fatigue, that's all. An evening's quiet rest in the big chair, and early to bed-that will fix me up all right."
"But you'll read; and that will make your head worse," said Alice.
"No, I won't read any more," he promised her, walking slowly into the sitting-room, and settling himself in the big chair, the while she brought out a pillow from the adjoining best bedroom, and adjusted it behind his head. "That's nice! I'll just lie quiet here, and perhaps doze a little till you come back. I feel in the mood for the rest; it will do me all sorts of good."
He closed his eyes; and Alice, regarding his upturned face anxiously, decided that already it looked more at peace than awhile ago.
"Well, I hope you'll be better when I get back," she said, as she began preparations for the evening service. These consisted in combing stiffly back the strands of light-brown hair which, during the day, had exuberantly loosened themselves over her temples into something almost like curls; in fastening down upon this rebellious hair a plain brown-straw bonnet, guiltless of all ornament save a binding ribbon of dull umber hue; and in putting on a thin dark-gray shawl and a pair of equally subdued lisle-thread gloves. Thus attired, she made a mischievous little grimace of dislike at her puritanical image in the looking-glass over the mantel, and then turned to announce her departure.
"Well, I'm off," she said. Theron opened his eyes to take in this figure of his wife dressed for prayer-meeting, and then closed them again abruptly. "All right," he murmured, and then he heard the door shut behind her.
Although he had been alone all day, there seemed to be quite a unique value and quality in this present solitude. He stretched out his legs on the opposite chair, and looked lazily about him, with the feeling that at last he had secured some leisure, and could think undisturbed to his heart's content. There were nearly two hours of unbroken quiet before him; and the mere fact of his having stepped aside from the routine of his duty to procure it; marked it in his thoughts as a special occasion, which ought in the nature of things to yield more than the ordinary harvest of mental profit.
Theron's musings were broken in upon from time to time by rumbling outbursts of hymn-singing from the church next door. Surely, he said to himself, there could be no other congregation in the Conference, or in all Methodism, which sang so badly as these Octavians did. The noise, as it came to him now and again, divided itself familiarly into a main strain of hard, high, sharp, and tinny female voices, with three or four concurrent and clashing branch strains of part-singing by men who did not know how. How well he already knew these voices! Through two wooden walls he could detect the conceited and pushing note of Brother Lovejoy, who tried always to drown the rest out, and the lifeless, unmeasured weight of shrill clamor which Sister Barnum hurled into every chorus, half closing her eyes and sticking out her chin as she did so. They drawled their hymns too, these people, till Theron thought he understood that injunction in the Discipline against singing too slowly. It had puzzled him heretofore; now he felt that it must have been meant in prophecy for Octavius.
It was impossible not to recall in contrast that other church music he had heard, a month before, and the whole atmosphere of that other pastoral sitting room, from which he had listened to it. The startled and crowded impressions of that strange evening had been lying hidden in his mind all this while, driven into a corner by the pressure of more ordinary, everyday matters. They came forth now, and passed across his brain-no longer confusing and distorted, but in orderly and intelligible sequence. Their earlier effect had been one of frightened fascination. Now he looked them over calmly as they lifted themselves, one by one, and found himself not shrinking at all, or evading anything, but dwelling upon each in turn as a natural and welcome part of the most important experience of his life.
The young minister had arrived, all at once, at this conclusion. He did not question at all the means by which he had reached it. Nothing was clearer to his mind than the conclusion itself-that his meeting, with the priest and the doctor was the turning-point in his career. They had lifted him bodily out of the slough of ignorance, of contact with low minds and sordid, narrow things, and put him on solid ground. This book he had been reading-this gentle, tender, lovable book, which had as much true piety in it as any devotional book he had ever read, and yet, unlike all devotional books, put its foot firmly upon everything which could not be proved in human reason to be true-must be merely one of a thousand which men like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar knew by heart. The very thought that he was on the way now to know them, too, made Theron tremble. The prospect wooed him, and he thrilled in response, with the wistful and delicate eagerness of a young lover.
Somehow, the fact that the priest and the doctor were not religious men, and that this book which had so impressed and stirred him was nothing more than Renan's recital of how he, too, ceased to be a religious man, did not take a form which Theron could look square in the face. It wore the shape, instead, of a vague premise that there were a great many different kinds of religions-the past and dead races had multiplied these in their time literally into thousands-and that each no doubt had its central support of truth somewhere for the good men who were in it, and that to call one of these divine and condemn all the others was a part fit only for untutored bigots. Renan had formally repudiated Catholicism, yet could write in his old age with the deepest filial affection of the Mother Church he had quitted. Father Forbes could talk coolly about the "Christ-myth" without even ceasing to be a priest, and apparently a very active and devoted priest. Evidently there was an intellectual world, a world of culture and grace, of lofty thoughts and the inspiring communion of real knowledge, where creeds were not of importance, and where men asked one another, not "Is your soul saved?" but "Is your mind well furnished?" Theron had the sensation of having been invited to become a citizen of this world. The thought so dazzled him that his impulses were dragging him forward to take the new oath of allegiance before he had had time to reflect upon what it was he was abandoning.
The droning of the Doxology from the church outside stirred Theron suddenly out of his revery. It had grown quite dark, and he rose and lit the gas. "Blest be the Tie that Binds," they were singing. He paused, with hand still in air, to listen. That well-worn phrase arrested his attention, and gave itself a new meaning. He was bound to those people, it was true, but he could never again harbor the delusion that the tie between them was blessed. There was vaguely present in his mind the consciousness that other ties were loosening as well. Be that as it might, one thing was certain. He had passed definitely beyond pretending to himself that there was anything spiritually in common between him and the Methodist Church of Octavius. The necessity of his keeping up the pretence with others rose on the instant like a looming shadow before his mental vision. He turned away from it, and bent his brain to think of something else.
The noise of Alice opening the front door came as a pleasant digression. A second later it became clear from the sound of voices that she had brought some one back with her, and Theron hastily stretched himself out again in the armchair, with his head back in the pillow, and his feet on the other chair. He had come mighty near forgetting that he was an invalid, and he protected himself the further now by assuming an air of lassitude verging upon prostration.
"Yes; there's a light burning. It's all right," he heard Alice say. She entered the room, and Theron's head was too bad to permit him to turn it, and see who her companion was.
"Theron dear," Alice began, "I knew you'd be glad to see HER, even if you were out of sorts; and I persuaded her just to run in for a minute. Let me introduce you to Sister Soulsby. Sister Soulsby-my husband."
The Rev. Mr. Ware sat upright with an energetic start, and fastened upon the stranger a look which conveyed anything but the satisfaction his wife had been so sure about. It was at the first blush an undisguised scowl, and only some fleeting memory of that reflection about needing now to dissemble, prevented him from still frowning as he rose to his feet, and perfunctorily held out his hand.
"Delighted, I'm sure," he mumbled. Then, looking up, he discovered that Sister Soulsby knew he was not delighted, and that she seemed not to mind in the least.
"As your good lady said, I just ran in for a moment," she remarked, shaking his limp hand with a brisk, business-like grasp, and dropping it. "I hate bothering sick people, but as we're to be thrown together a good deal this next week or so, I thought I'd like to lose no time in saying 'howdy.' I won't keep you up now. Your wife has been sweet enough to ask me to move my trunk over here in the morning, so that you'll see enough of me and to spare."
Theron looked falteringly into her face, as he strove for words which should sufficiently mask the disgust this intelligence stirred within him. A debt-raiser in the town was bad enough! A debt-raiser quartered in the very parsonage!-he ground his teeth to think of it.
Alice read his hesitation aright. "Sister Soulsby went to the hotel," she hastily put in; "and Loren Pierce was after her to come and stay at his house, and I ventured to tell her that I thought we could make her more comfortable here." She accompanied this by so daring a grimace and nod that her husband woke up to the fact that a point in Conference politics was involved.
He squeezed a doubtful smile upon his features. "We shall both do our best," he said. It was not easy, but he forced increasing amiability into his glance and tone. "Is Brother Soulsby here, too?" he asked.
The debt-raiser shook her head-again the prompt, decisive movement, so like a busy man of affairs. "No," she answered. "He's doing supply down on the Hudson this week, but he'll be here in time for the Sunday morning love-feast. I always like to come on ahead, and see how the land lies. Well, good-night! Your head will be all right in the morning."
Precisely what she meant by this assurance, Theron did not attempt to guess. He received her adieu, noted the masterful manner in which she kissed his wife, and watched her pass out into the hall, with the feeling uppermost that this was a person who decidedly knew her way about. Much as he was prepared to dislike her, and much as he detested the vulgar methods her profession typified, he could not deny that she seemed a very capable sort of woman.
This mental concession did not prevent his fixing upon Alice, when she returned to the room, a glance of obvious disapproval.
"Theron," she broke forth, to anticipate his reproach, "I did it for the best. The Pierces would have got her if I hadn't cut in. I thought it would help to have her on our side. And, besides, I like her. She's the first sister I've seen since we've been in this hole that's had a kind word for me-or-or sympathized with me! And-and-if you're going to be offended-I shall cry!"
There were real tears on her lashes, ready to make good the threat. "Oh, I guess I wouldn't," said Theron, with an approach to his old, half-playful manner. "If you like her, that's the chief thing."
Alice shook her tear-drops away. "No," she replied, with a wistful smile; "the chief thing is to have her like you. She's as smart as a steel trap-that woman is-and if she took the notion, I believe she could help get us a better place."
CHAPTER XIV
The ensuing week went by with a buzz and whirl, circling about Theron Ware's dizzy consciousness like some huge, impalpable teetotum sent spinning under Sister Soulsby's resolute hands. Whenever his vagrant memory recurred to it, in after months, he began by marvelling, and ended with a shudder of repulsion.
It was a week crowded with events, which seemed to him to shoot past so swiftly that in effect they came all of a heap. He never essayed the task, in retrospect, of arranging them in their order of sequence. They had, however, a definite and interdependent chronology which it is worth the while to trace.
Mrs. Soulsby brought her trunk round to the parsonage bright and early on Friday morning, and took up her lodgement in the best bedroom, and her headquarters in the house at large, with a cheerful and business-like manner. She desired nothing so much, she said, as that people should not put themselves out on her account, or allow her to get in their way. She appeared to mean this, too, and to have very good ideas about securing its realization.
During both Friday and the following day, indeed, Theron saw her only at the family meals. There she displayed a hearty relish for all that was set before her which quite won Mrs. Ware's heart, and though she talked rather more than Theron found himself expecting from a woman, he could not deny that her conversation was both seemly and entertaining. She had evidently been a great traveller, and referred to things she had seen in Savannah or Montreal or Los Angeles in as matter-of-fact fashion as he could have spoken of a visit to Tecumseh. Theron asked her many questions about these and other far-off cities, and her answers were all so pat and showed so keen and clear an eye that he began in spite of himself to think of her with a certain admiration.
She in turn plied him with inquiries about the principal pew-holders and members of his congregation-their means, their disposition, and the measure of their devotion. She put these queries with such intelligence, and seemed to assimilate his replies with such an alert understanding, that the young minister was spurred to put dashes of character in his descriptions, and set forth the idiosyncrasies and distinguishing earmarks of his flock with what he felt afterward might have been too free a tongue. But at the time her fine air of appreciation led him captive. He gossiped about his parishioners as if he enjoyed it. He made a specially happy thumb-nail sketch for her of one of his trustees, Erastus Winch, the loud-mouthed, ostentatiously jovial, and really cold-hearted cheese-buyer. She was particularly interested in hearing about this man. The personality of Winch seemed to have impressed her, and she brought the talk back to him more than once, and prompted Theron to the very threshold of indiscretion in his confidences on the subject.
Save at meal-times, Sister Soulsby spent the two days out around among the Methodists of Octavius. She had little or nothing to say about what she thus saw and heard, but used it as the basis for still further inquiries. She told more than once, however, of how she had been pressed here or there to stay to dinner or supper, and how she had excused herself. "I've knocked about too much," she would explain to the Wares, "not to fight shy of random country cooking. When I find such a born cook as you are-well I know when I'm well off." Alice flushed with pleased pride at this, and Theron himself felt that their visitor showed great good sense. By Saturday noon, the two women were calling each other by their first names. Theron learned with a certain interest that Sister Soulsby's Christian name was Candace.
It was only natural that he should give even more thought to her than to her quaint and unfamiliar old Ethiopian name. She was undoubtedly a very smart woman. To his surprise she had never introduced in her talk any of the stock religious and devotional phrases which official Methodists so universally employed in mutual converse. She might have been an insurance agent, or a school-teacher, visiting in a purely secular household, so little parade of cant was there about her.
He caught himself wondering how old she was. She seemed to have been pretty well over the whole American continent, and that must take years of time. Perhaps, however, the exertion of so much travel would tend to age one in appearance. Her eyes were still youthful-decidedly wise eyes, but still juvenile. They had sparkled with almost girlish merriment at some of his jokes. She turned them about a good deal when she spoke, making their glances fit and illustrate the things she said. He had never met any one whose eyes played so constant and prominent a part in their owner's conversation. Theron had never seen a play; but he had encountered the portraits of famous queens of the drama several times in illustrated papers or shop windows, and it occurred to him that some of the more marked contortions of Sister Soulsby's eyes-notably a trick she had of rolling them swiftly round and plunging them, so to speak, into an intent, yearning, one might almost say devouring, gaze at the speaker-were probably employed by eminent actresses like Ristori and Fanny Davenport.
The rest of Sister Soulsby was undoubtedly subordinated in interest to those eyes of hers. Sometimes her face seemed to be reviving temporarily a comeliness which had been constant in former days; then again it would look decidedly, organically, plain. It was the worn and loose-skinned face of a nervous, middle-aged woman, who had had more than her share of trouble, and drank too much tea. She wore the collar of her dress rather low; and Theron found himself wondering at this, because, though long and expansive, her neck certainly showed more cords and cavities than consorted with his vague ideal of statuesque beauty. Then he wondered at himself for thinking about it, and abruptly reined up his fancy, only to find that it was playing with speculations as to whether her yellowish complexion was due to that tea-drinking or came to her as a legacy of Southern blood.
He knew that she was born in the South because she said so. From the same source he learned that her father had been a wealthy planter, who was ruined by the war, and sank into a premature grave under the weight of his accumulated losses. The large dark rings around her eyes grew deeper still in their shadows when she told about this, and her ordinarily sharp voice took on a mellow cadence, with a soft, drawling accent, turning U's into O's, and having no R's to speak of. Theron had imbibed somewhere in early days the conviction that the South was the land of romance, of cavaliers and gallants and black eyes flashing behind mantillas and outspread fans, and somehow when Sister Soulsby used this intonation she suggested all these things.
But almost all her talk was in another key-a brisk, direct, idiomatic manner of speech, with an intonation hinting at no section in particular. It was merely that of the city-dweller as distinguished from the rustic. She was of about Alice's height, perhaps a shade taller. It did not escape the attention of the Wares that she wore clothes of a more stylish cut and a livelier arrangement of hues than any Alice had ever dared own, even in lax-minded Tyre. The two talked of this in their room on Friday night; and Theron explained that congregations would tolerate things of this sort with a stranger which would be sharply resented in the case of local folk whom they controlled. It was on this occasion that Alice in turn told Theron she was sure Mrs. Soulsby had false teeth-a confidence which she immediately regretted as an act of treachery to her sex.
On Saturday afternoon, toward evening, Brother Soulsby arrived, and was guided to the parsonage by his wife, who had gone to the depot to meet him. They must have talked over the situation pretty thoroughly on the way, for by the time the new-comer had washed his face and hands and put on a clean collar, Sister Soulsby was ready to announce her plan of campaign in detail.
Her husband was a man of small stature and, like herself, of uncertain age. He had a gentle, if rather dry, clean-shaven face, and wore his dust-colored hair long behind. His little figure was clad in black clothes of a distinctively clerical fashion, and he had a white neck-cloth neatly tied under his collar. The Wares noted that he looked clean and amiable rather than intellectually or spiritually powerful, as he took the vacant seat between theirs, and joined them in concentrating attention upon Mrs. Soulsby.
This lady, holding herself erect and alert on the edge of the low, big easy-chair had the air of presiding over a meeting.
"My idea is," she began, with an easy implication that no one else's idea was needed, "that your Quarterly Conference, when it meets on Monday, must be adjourned to Tuesday. We will have the people all out tomorrow morning to love-feast, and announcement can be made there, and at the morning service afterward, that a series of revival meetings are to be begun that same evening. Mr. Soulsby and I can take charge in the evening, and we'll see to it that THAT packs the house-fills the church to overflowing Monday evening. Then we'll quietly turn the meeting into a debt-raising convention, before they know where they are, and we'll wipe off the best part of the load. Now, don't you see," she turned her eyes full upon Theron as she spoke, "you want to hold your Quarterly Conference AFTER this money's been raised, not before."
"I see what you mean," Mr. Ware responded gravely. "But-"
"But what!" Sister Soulsby interjected, with vivacity.
"Well," said Theron, picking his words, "in the first place, it rests with the Presiding Elder to say whether an adjournment can be made until Tuesday, not with me."
"That's all right. Leave that to me," said the lady.
"In the second place," Theron went on, still more hesitatingly, "there seems a certain-what shall I say?-indirection in-in-"
"In getting them together for a revival, and springing a debt-raising on them?" Sister Soulsby put in. "Why, man alive, that's the best part of it. You ought to be getting some notion by this time what these Octavius folks of yours are like. I've only been here two days, but I've got their measure down to an allspice. Supposing you were to announce tomorrow that the debt was to be raised Monday. How many men with bank-accounts would turn up, do you think? You could put them all in your eye, sir-all in your eye!"
"Very possibly you're right," faltered the young minister.
"Right? Why, of course I'm right," she said, with placid confidence. "You've got to take folks as you find them; and you've got to find them the best way you can. One place can be worked, managed, in one way, and another needs quite a different way, and both ways would be dead frosts-complete failures-in a third."
Brother Soulsby coughed softly here, and shuffled his feet for an instant on the carpet. His wife resumed her remarks with slightly abated animation, and at a slower pace.
"My experience," she said, "has shown me that the Apostle was right. To properly serve the cause, one must be all things to all men. I have known very queer things indeed turn out to be means of grace. You simply CAN'T get along without some of the wisdom of the serpent. We are commanded to have it, for that matter. And now, speaking of that, do you know when the Presiding Elder arrives in town today, and where he is going to eat supper and sleep?"
Theron shook his head. "All I know is he isn't likely to come here," he said, and added sadly, "I'm afraid he's not an admirer of mine."
"Perhaps that's not all his fault," commented Sister Soulsby. "I'll tell you something. He came in on the same train as my husband, and that old trustee Pierce of yours was waiting for him with his buggy, and I saw like a flash what was in the wind, and the minute the train stopped I caught the Presiding Elder, and invited him in your name to come right here and stay; told him you and Alice were just set on his coming-wouldn't take no for an answer. Of course he couldn't come-I knew well enough he had promised old Pierce-but we got in our invitation anyway, and it won't do you any harm. Now, that's what I call having some gumption-wisdom of the serpent, and so on."
"I'm sure," remarked Alice, "I should have been mortified to death if he had come. We lost the extension-leaf to our table in moving, and four is all it'll seat decently."
Sister Soulsby smiled winningly into the wife's honest face. "Don't you see, dear," she explained patiently, "I only asked him because I knew he couldn't come. A little butter spreads a long way, if it's only intelligently warmed."
"It was certainly very ingenious of you," Theron began almost stiffly. Then he yielded to the humanities, and with a kindling smile added, "And it was as kind as kind could be. I'm afraid you're wrong about it's doing me any good, but I can see how well you meant it, and I'm grateful."
"We COULD have sneaked in the kitchen table, perhaps, while he was out in the garden, and put on the extra long tablecloth," interjected Alice, musingly.
Sister Soulsby smiled again at Sister Ware, but without any words this time; and Alice on the instant rose, with the remark that she must be going out to see about supper.
"I'm going to insist on coming out to help you," Mrs. Soulsby declared, "as soon as I've talked over one little matter with your husband. Oh, yes, you must let me this time. I insist!"
As the kitchen door closed behind Mrs. Ware, a swift and apparently significant glance shot its way across from Sister Soulsby's roving, eloquent eyes to the calmer and smaller gray orbs of her husband. He rose to his feet, made some little explanation about being a gardener himself, and desiring to inspect more closely some rhododendrons he had noticed in the garden, and forthwith moved decorously out by the other door into the front hall. They heard his footsteps on the gravel beneath the window before Mrs. Soulsby spoke again.
"You're right about the Presiding Elder, and you're wrong," she said. "He isn't what one might call precisely in love with you. Oh, I know the story-how you got into debt at Tyre, and he stepped in and insisted on your being denied Tecumseh and sent here instead."
"HE was responsible for that, then, was he?" broke in Theron, with contracted brows.
"Why, don't you make any effort to find out anything at ALL?" she asked pertly enough, but with such obvious good-nature that he could not but have pleasure in her speech. "Why, of course he did it! Who else did you suppose?"
"Well," said the young minister, despondently, "if he's as much against me as all that, I might as well hang up my fiddle and go home."
Sister Soulsby gave a little involuntary groan of impatience. She bent forward, and, lifting her eyes, rolled them at him in a curve of downward motion which suggested to his fancy the image of two eagles in a concerted pounce upon a lamb.
"My friend," she began, with a new note of impressiveness in her voice, "if you'll pardon my saying it, you haven't got the spunk of a mouse. If you're going to lay down, and let everybody trample over you just as they please, you're right! You MIGHT as well go home. But now here, this is what I wanted to say to you: Do you just keep your hands off these next few days, and leave this whole thing to me. I'll pull it into shipshape for you. No-wait a minute-don't interrupt now. I have taken a liking to you. You've got brains, and you've got human nature in you, and heart. What you lack is SABE-common-sense. You'll get that, too, in time, and meanwhile I'm not going to stand by and see you cut up and fed to the dogs for want of it. I'll get you through this scrape, and put you on your feet again, right-side-up-with care, because, as I said, I like you. I like your wife, too, mind. She's a good, honest little soul, and she worships the very ground you tread on. Of course, as long as people WILL marry in their teens, the wrong people will get yoked up together. But that's neither here nor there. She's a kind sweet little body, and she's devoted to you, and it isn't every intellectual man that gets even that much. But now it's a go, is it? You promise to keep quiet, do you, and leave the whole show absolutely to me? Shake hands on it."
Sister Soulsby had risen, and stood now holding out her hand in a frank, manly fashion. Theron looked at the hand, and made mental notes that there were a good many veins discernible on the small wrist, and that the forearm seemed to swell out more than would have been expected in a woman producing such a general effect of leanness. He caught the shine of a thin bracelet-band of gold under the sleeve. A delicate, significant odor just hinted its presence in the air about this outstretched arm-something which was not a perfume, yet deserved as gracious a name.
He rose to his feet, and took the proffered hand with a deliberate gesture, as if he had been cautiously weighing all the possible arguments for and against this momentous compact.
"I promise," he said gravely, and the two palms squeezed themselves together in an earnest clasp.
"Right you are," exclaimed the lady, once more with cheery vivacity. "Mind, when it's all over, I'm going to give you a good, serious, downright talking to-a regular hoeing-over. I'm not sure I shan't give you a sound shaking into the bargain. You need it. And now I'm going out to help Alice."
The Reverend Mr. Ware remained standing after his new friend had left the room, and his meditative face wore an even unusual air of abstraction. He strolled aimlessly over, after a time, to the desk by the window, and stood there looking out at the slight figure of Brother Soulsby, who was bending over and attentively regarding some pink blossoms on a shrub through what seemed to be a pocket magnifying-glass.
What remained uppermost in his mind was not this interesting woman's confident pledge of championship in his material difficulties. He found himself dwelling instead upon her remark about the incongruous results of early marriages. He wondered idly if the little man in the white tie, fussing out there over that rhododendron-bush, had figured in her thoughts as an example of these evils. Then he reflected that they had been mentioned in clear relation to talk about Alice.
Now that he faced this question, it was as if he had been consciously ignoring and putting it aside for a long time. How was it, he asked himself now, that Alice, who had once seemed so bright and keen-witted, who had in truth started out immeasurably his superior in swiftness of apprehension and readiness in humorous quips and conceits, should have grown so dull? For she was undoubtedly slow to understand things nowadays. Her absurd lugging in of the extension-table problem, when the great strategic point of that invitation foisted upon the Presiding Elder came up, was only the latest sample of a score of these heavy-minded exhibitions that recalled themselves to him. And outsiders were apparently beginning to notice it. He knew by intuition what those phrases, "good, honest little soul" and "kind, sweet little body" signified, when another woman used them to a husband about his wife. The very employment of that word "little" was enough, considering that there was scarcely more than a hair's difference between Mrs. Soulsby and Alice, and that they were both rather tall than otherwise, as the stature of women went.
What she had said about the chronic misfortunes of intellectual men in such matters gave added point to those meaning phrases. Nobody could deny that geniuses and men of conspicuous talent had as a rule, all through history, contracted unfortunate marriages. In almost every case where their wives were remembered at all, it was on account of their abnormal stupidity, or bad temper, or something of that sort. Take Xantippe, for example, and Shakespeare's wife, and-and-well, there was Byron, and Bulwer-Lytton, and ever so many others.
Of course there was nothing to be done about it. These things happened, and one could only put the best possible face on them, and live one's appointed life as patiently and contentedly as might be. And Alice undoubtedly merited all the praise which had been so generously bestowed upon her. She was good and honest and kindly, and there could be no doubt whatever as to her utter devotion to him. These were tangible, solid qualities, which must always secure respect for her. It was true that she no longer seemed to be very popular among people. He questioned whether men, for instance, like Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar would care much about her. Visions of the wifeless and academic calm in which these men spent their lives-an existence consecrated to literature and knowledge and familiarity with all the loftiest and noblest thoughts of the past-rose and enveloped him in a cloud of depression. No such lot would be his! He must labor along among ignorant and spiteful narrow-minded people to the end of his days, pocketing their insults and fawning upon the harsh hands of jealous nonentities who happened to be his official masters, just to keep a roof over his head-or rather Alice's. He must sacrifice everything to this, his ambitions, his passionate desires to do real good in the world on a large scale, his mental freedom, yes, even his chance of having truly elevating, intellectual friendships. For it was plain enough that the men whose friendship would be of genuine and stimulating profit to him would not like her. Now that he thought of it, she seemed latterly to make no friends at all.
Suddenly, as he watched in a blank sort of way Brother Soulsby take out a penknife, and lop an offending twig from a rose-bush against the fence, something occurred to him. There was a curious exception to that rule of Alice's isolation. She had made at least one friend. Levi Gorringe seemed to like her extremely.
As if his mind had been a camera, Theron snapped a shutter down upon this odd, unbidden idea, and turned away from the window.
The sounds of an active, almost strenuous conversation in female voices came from the kitchen. Theron opened the door noiselessly, and put in his head, conscious of something furtive in his intention.
"You must dreen every drop of water off the spinach, mind, before you put it over, or else-"
It was Sister Soulsby's sharp and penetrating tones which came to him. Theron closed the door again, and surrendered himself once more to the circling whirl of his thoughts.
CHAPTER XV
A love-feast at nine in the morning opened the public services of a Sunday still memorable in the annals of Octavius Methodism.
This ceremony, which four times a year preceded the sessions of the Quarterly Conference, was not necessarily an event of importance. It was an occasion upon which the brethren and sisters who clung to the old-fashioned, primitive ways of the itinerant circuit-riders, let themselves go with emphasized independence, putting up more vehement prayers than usual, and adding a special fervor of noise to their "Amens!" and other interjections-and that was all.
It was Theron's first love-feast in Octavius, and as the big class-room in the church basement began to fill up, and he noted how the men with ultra radical views and the women clad in the most ostentatious drabs and grays were crowding into the front seats, he felt his spirits sinking. He had literally to force himself from sentence to sentence, when the time came for him to rise and open the proceedings with an exhortation. He had eagerly offered this function to the Presiding Elder, the Rev. Aziel P. Larrabee, who sat in severe silence on the little platform behind him, but had been informed that the dignitary would lead off in giving testimony later on. So Theron, feeling all the while the hostile eyes of the Elder burning holes in his back, dragged himself somehow through the task. He had never known any such difficulty of speech before. The relief was almost overwhelming when he came to the customary part where all are adjured to be as brief as possible in witnessing for the Lord, because the time belongs to all the people, and the Discipline forbids the feast to last more than ninety minutes. He delivered this injunction to brevity with marked earnestness, and then sat down abruptly.
There was some rather boisterous singing, during which the stewards, beginning with the platform, passed plates of bread cut in small cubes, and water in big plated pitchers and tumblers, about among the congregation, threading their way between the long wooden benches ordinarily occupied at this hour by the children of the Sunday-school, and helping each brother and sister in turn. They held by the old custom, here in Octavius, and all along the seats the sexes alternated, as they do at a polite dinner-table.
Theron impassively watched the familiar scene. The early nervousness had passed away. He felt now that he was not in the least afraid of these people, even with the Presiding Elder thrown in. Folks who sang with such unintelligence, and who threw themselves with such undignified fervor into this childish business of the bread and water, could not be formidable antagonists for a man of intellect. He had never realized before what a spectacle the Methodist love-feast probably presented to outsiders. What must they think of it!
He had noticed that the Soulsbys sat together, in the centre and toward the front. Next to Brother Soulsby sat Alice. He thought she looked pale and preoccupied, and set it down in passing to her innate distaste for the somber garments she was wearing, and for the company she perforce found herself in. Another head was in the way, and for a time Theron did not observe who sat beside Alice on the other side. When at last he saw that it was Levi Gorringe, his instinct was to wonder what the lawyer must be saying to himself about these noisy and shallow enthusiasts. A recurring emotion of loyalty to the simple people among whom, after all, he had lived his whole life, prompted him to feel that it wasn't wholly nice of Gorringe to come and enjoy this revelation of their foolish side, as if it were a circus. There was some vague memory in his mind which associated Gorringe with other love-feasts, and with a cynical attitude toward them. Oh, yes! he had told how he went to one just for the sake of sitting beside the girl he admired-and was pursuing.
The stewards had completed their round, and the loud, discordant singing came to an end. There ensued a little pause, during which Theron turned to the Presiding Elder with a gesture of invitation to take charge of the further proceedings. The Elder responded with another gesture, calling his attention to something going on in front.
Brother and Sister Soulsby, to the considerable surprise of everybody, had risen to their feet, and were standing in their places, quite motionless, and with an air of professional self-assurance dimly discernible under a large show of humility. They stood thus until complete silence had been secured. Then the woman, lifting her head, began to sing. The words were "Rock of Ages," but no one present had heard the tune to which she wedded them. Her voice was full and very sweet, and had in it tender cadences which all her hearers found touching. She knew how to sing, and she put forth the words so that each was distinctly intelligible. There came a part where Brother Soulsby, lifting his head in turn, took up a tuneful second to her air. Although the two did not, as one could hear by listening closely, sing the same words at the same time, they produced none the less most moving and delightful harmonies of sound.
The experience was so novel and charming that listeners ran ahead in their minds to fix the number of verses there were in the hymn, and to hope that none would be left out. Toward the end, when some of the intolerably self-conceited local singers, fancying they had caught the tune, started to join in, they were stopped by an indignant "sh-h!" which rose from all parts of the class-room; and the Soulsbys, with a patient and pensive kindliness written on their uplifted faces, gave that verse over again.
What followed seemed obviously restrained and modified by the effect of this unlooked-for and tranquillizing overture. The Presiding Elder was known to enjoy visits to old-fashioned congregations like that of Octavius, where he could indulge to the full his inner passion for high-pitched passionate invocations and violent spiritual demeanor, but this time he spoke temperately, almost soothingly. The most tempestuous of the local witnesses for the Lord gave in their testimony in relatively pacific tones, under the influence of the spell which good music had laid upon the gathering. There was the deepest interest as to what the two visitors would do in this way. Brother Soulsby spoke first, very briefly and in well rounded and well-chosen, if conventional, phrases. His wife, following him, delivered in a melodious monotone some equally hackneyed remarks. The assemblage, listening in rapt attention, felt the suggestion of reserved power in every sentence she uttered, and burst forth, as she dropped into her seat, in a loud chorus of approving ejaculations. The Soulsbys had captured Octavius with their first outer skirmish line.
Everything seemed to move forward now with a new zest and spontaneity. Theron had picked out for the occasion the best of those sermons which he had prepared in Tyre, at the time when he was justifying his ambition to be accounted a pulpit orator. It was orthodox enough, but had been planned as the framework for picturesque and emotional rhetoric rather than doctrinal edification. He had never dreamed of trying it on Octavius before, and only on the yesterday had quavered at his own daring in choosing it now. Nothing but the desire to show Sister Soulsby what was in him had held him to the selection.
Something of this same desire no doubt swayed and steadied him now in the pulpit. The labored slowness of his beginning seemed to him to be due to nervous timidity, until suddenly, looking down into those big eyes of Sister Soulsby's, which were bent gravely upon him from where she sat beside Alice in the minister's pew, he remembered that it was instead the studied deliberation which art had taught him. He went on, feeling more and more that the skill and histrionic power of his best days were returning to him, were as marked as ever-nay, had never triumphed before as they were triumphing now. The congregation watched and listened with open, steadfast eyes and parted lips. For the first time in all that weary quarter, their faces shone. The sustaining sparkle of their gaze lifted him to a peroration unrivalled in his own recollection of himself.
He sat down, and bent his head forward upon the open Bible, breathing hard, but suffused with a glow of satisfaction. His ears caught the music of that sighing rustle through the audience which bespeaks a profound impression. He could scarcely keep the fingers of his hands, covering his bowed face in a devotional posture as they were, from drumming a jubilant tattoo. His pulses did this in every vein, throbbing with excited exultation. The insistent whim seized him, as he still bent thus before his people, to whisper to his own heart, "At last!-The dogs!"
The announcement that in the evening a series of revival meetings was to be inaugurated, had been made at the love-feast, and it was repeated now from the pulpit, with the added statement that for the once the class-meetings usually following this morning service would be suspended. Then Theron came down the steps, conscious after a fashion that the Presiding Elder had laid a propitiatory hand on his shoulder and spoken amiably about the sermon, and that several groups of more or less important parishioners were waiting in the aisle and the vestibule to shake hands and tell him how much they had enjoyed the sermon. His mind perversely kept hold of the thought that all this came too late. He politely smiled his way along out, and, overtaking the Soulsbys and his wife near the parsonage gate, went in with them.
At the cold, picked-up noonday meal which was the Sunday rule of the house, Theron rather expected that his guests would talk about the sermon, or at any rate about the events of the morning. A Sabbath chill seemed to have settled upon both their tongues. They ate almost in silence, and their sparse remarks touched upon topics far removed from church affairs. Alice too, seemed strangely disinclined to conversation. The husband knew her face and its varying moods so well that he could see she was laboring under some very powerful and deep emotion. No doubt it was the sermon, the oratorical swing of which still tingled in his own blood, that had so affected her. If she had said so, it would have pleased him, but she said nothing.
After dinner, Brother Soulsby disappeared in his bedroom, with the remark that he guessed he would lie down awhile. Sister Soulsby put on her bonnet, and, explaining that she always prepared herself for an evening's work by a long solitary walk, quitted the house. Alice, after she had put the dinner things away, went upstairs, and stayed there. Left to himself, Theron spent the afternoon in the easy-chair, and, in the intervals of confused introspection, read "Recollections of my Youth" through again from cover to cover.
He went through the remarkable experiences attending the opening of the revival, when evening came, as one in a dream. Long before the hour for the service arrived, the sexton came in to tell him that the church was already nearly full, and that it was going to be impossible to present any distinction in the matter of pews. When the party from the parsonage went over-after another cold and mostly silent meal-it was to find the interior of the church densely packed, and people being turned away from the doors.
Theron was supposed to preside over what followed, and he did sit on the central chair in the pulpit, between the Presiding Elder and Brother Soulsby, and on the several needful occasions did rise and perfunctorily make the formal remarks required of him. The Elder preached a short, but vigorously phrased sermon. The Soulsbys sang three or four times-on each occasion with familiar hymnal words set to novel, concerted music-and then separately exhorted the assemblage. The husband's part seemed well done. If his speech lacked some of the fire of the divine girdings which older Methodists recalled, it still led straight, and with kindling fervency, up to a season of power. The wife took up the word as he sat down. She had risen from one of the side-seats; and, speaking as she walked, she moved forward till she stood within the altar-rail, immediately under the pulpit, and from this place, facing the listening throng, she delivered her harangue. Those who watched her words most intently got the least sense of meaning from them. The phrases were all familiar enough-"Jesus a very present help," "Sprinkled by the Blood," "Comforted by the Word," "Sanctified by the Spirit," "Born into the Kingdom," and a hundred others-but it was as in the case of her singing: the words were old; the music was new.
What Sister Soulsby said did not matter. The way she said it-the splendid, searching sweep of her great eyes; the vibrating roll of her voice, now full of tears, now scornful, now boldly, jubilantly triumphant; the sympathetic swaying of her willowy figure under the stress of her eloquence-was all wonderful. When she had finished, and stood, flushed and panting, beneath the shadow of the pulpit, she held up a hand deprecatingly as the resounding "Amens!" and "Bless the Lords!" began to well up about her.
"You have heard us sing," she said, smiling to apologize for her shortness of breath. "Now we want to hear you sing!"
Her husband had risen as she spoke, and on the instant, with a far greater volume of voice than they had hitherto disclosed, the two began "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," in the old, familiar tune. It did not need Sister Soulsby's urgent and dramatic gesture to lift people to their feet. The whole assemblage sprang up, and, under the guidance of these two powerful leading voices, thundered the hymn out as Octavius had never heard it before.
While its echoes were still alive, the woman began speaking again. "Don't sit down!" she cried. "You would stand up if the President of the United States was going by, even if he was only going fishing. How much more should you stand up in honor of living souls passing forward to find their Saviour!"
The psychological moment was upon them. Groans and cries arose, and a palpable ferment stirred the throng. The exhortation to sinners to declare themselves, to come to the altar, was not only on the revivalist's lips: it seemed to quiver in the very air, to be borne on every inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the brethren. A young woman, with a dazed and startled look in her eyes, rose in the body of the church tremblingly hesitated for a moment, and then, with bowed head and blushing cheeks, pressed her way out from the end of a crowded pew and down the aisle to the rail. A triumphant outburst of welcoming ejaculations swelled to the roof as she knelt there, and under its impetus others followed her example. With interspersed snatches of song and shouted encouragements the excitement reached its height only when twoscore people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon their knees about the rail, and in the space opening upon the aisle. Above the confusion of penitential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmurings of members whose conviction of entire sanctity kept them in their seats, could be heard the voices of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and the elderly deacons of the church, who moved about among the kneeling mourners, bending over them and patting their shoulders, and calling out to them: "Fasten your thoughts on Jesus!" "Oh, the Precious Blood!" "Blessed be His Name!" "Seek Him, and you shall find Him!" "Cling to Jesus, and Him Crucified!"
The Rev. Theron Ware did not, with the others, descend from the pulpit. Seated where he could not see Sister Soulsby, he had failed utterly to be moved by the wave of enthusiasm she had evoked. What he heard her say disappointed him. He had expected from her more originality, more spice of her own idiomatic, individual sort. He viewed with a cold sense of aloofness the evidences of her success when they began to come forward and abase themselves at the altar. The instant resolve that, come what might, he would not go down there among them, sprang up ready-made in his mind. He saw his two companions pass him and descend the pulpit stairs, and their action only hardened his resolution. If an excuse were needed, he was presiding, and the place to preside in was the pulpit. But he waived in his mind the whole question of an excuse.
After a little, he put his hand over his face, leaning the elbow forward on the reading-desk. The scene below would have thrilled him to the marrow six months-yes, three months ago. He put a finger across his eyes now, to half shut it out. The spectacle of these silly young "mourners"-kneeling they knew not why, trembling at they could not tell what, pledging themselves frantically to dogmas and mysteries they knew nothing of, under the influence of a hubbub of outcries as meaningless in their way, and inspiring in much the same way, as the racket of a fife and drum corps-the spectacle saddened and humiliated him now. He was conscious of a dawning sense of shame at being even tacitly responsible for such a thing. His fancy conjured up the idea of Dr. Ledsmar coming in and beholding this maudlin and unseemly scene, and he felt his face grow hot at the bare thought.
Looking through his fingers, Theron all at once saw something which caught at his breath with a sharp clutch. Alice had risen from the minister's pew-the most conspicuous one in the church-and was moving down the aisle toward the rail, her uplifted face chalk-like in its whiteness, and her eyes wide-open, looking straight ahead.
The young pastor could scarcely credit his sight. He thrust aside his hand, and bent forward, only to see his wife sink upon her knees among the rest, and to hear this notable accession to the "mourners" hailed by a tumult of approving shouts. Then, remembering himself, he drew back and put up his hand, shutting out the strange scene altogether. To see nothing at all was a relief, and under cover he closed his eyes, and bit his teeth together.
A fresh outburst of thanksgivings, spreading noisily through the congregation, prompted him to peer through his fingers again. Levi Gorringe was making his way down the aisle-was at the moment quite in front. Theron found himself watching this man with the stern composure of a fatalist. The clamant brethren down below were stirred to new excitement by the thought that the sceptical lawyer, so long with them, yet not of them, had been humbled and won by the outpourings of the Spirit. Theron's perceptions were keener. He knew that Gorringe was coming forward to kneel beside Alice; The knowledge left him curiously undisturbed. He saw the lawyer advance, gently insinuate himself past the form of some kneeling mourner who was in his way, and drop on his knees close beside the bowed figure of Alice. The two touched shoulders as they bent forward beneath Sister Soulsby's outstretched hands, held over them as in a blessing. Theron looked fixedly at them, and professed to himself that he was barely interested.
A little afterward, he was standing up in his place, and reading aloud a list of names which one of the stewards had given him. They were the names of those who had asked that evening to be taken into the church as members on probation. The sounds of the recent excitement were all hushed now, save as two or three enthusiasts in a corner raised their voices in abrupt greeting of each name in its turn, but Theron felt somehow that this noise had been transferred to the inside of his head. A continuous buzzing went on there, so that the sound of his voice was far-off and unfamiliar in his ears.
He read through the list-comprising some fifteen items-and pronounced the names with great distinctness. It was necessary to take pains with this, because the only name his blurred eyes seemed to see anywhere on the foolscap sheet was that of Levi Gorringe. When he had finished and was taking his seat, some one began speaking to him from the body of the church. He saw that this was the steward, who was explaining to him that the most important name of the lot-that of Brother Gorringe-had not been read out.
Theron smiled and shook his head. Then, when the Presiding Elder touched him on the arm, and assured him that he had not mentioned the name in question, he replied quite simply, and with another smile, "I thought it was the only name I did read out."
Then he sat down abruptly, and let his head fall to one side. There were hurried movements inside the pulpit, and people in the audience had begun to stand up wonderingly, when the Presiding Elder, with uplifted hands, confronted them.
"We will omit the Doxology, and depart quietly after the benediction," he said. "Brother Ware seems to have been overcome by the heat."
CHAPTER XVI
When Theron woke next morning, Alice seemed to have dressed and left the room-a thing which had never happened before.
This fact connected itself at once in his brain with the recollection of her having made an exhibition of herself the previous evening-going forward before all eyes to join the unconverted and penitent sinners, as if she were some tramp or shady female, instead of an educated lady, a professing member from her girlhood, and a minister's wife. It crossed his mind that probably she had risen and got away noiselessly, for very shame at looking him in the face, after such absurd behavior.
Then he remembered more, and grasped the situation. He had fainted in church, and had been brought home and helped to bed. Dim memories of unaccustomed faces in the bedroom, of nauseous drugs and hushed voices, came to him out of the night-time. Now that he thought of it, he was a sick man. Having settled this, he went off to sleep again, a feverish and broken sleep, and remained in this state most of the time for the following twenty-four hours. In the brief though numerous intervals of waking, he found certain things clear in his mind. One was that he was annoyed with Alice, but would dissemble his feelings. Another was that it was much pleasanter to be ill than to be forced to attend and take part in those revival meetings. These two ideas came and went in a lazy, drowsy fashion, mixing themselves up with other vagrant fancies, yet always remaining on top.
In the evening the singing from the church next door filled his room. The Soulsbys' part of it was worth keeping awake for. He turned over and deliberately dozed when the congregation sang.
Alice came up a number of times during the day to ask how he felt, and to bring him broth or toast-water. On several occasions, when he heard her step, the perverse inclination mastered him to shut his eyes, and pretend to be asleep, so that she might tip-toe out again. She had a depressed and thoughtful air, and spoke to him like one whose mind was on something else. Neither of them alluded to what had happened the previous evening. Toward the close of the long day, she came to ask him whether he would prefer her to remain in the house, instead of attending the meeting.
"Go, by all means," he said almost curtly.
The Presiding Elder and the Sunday-school superintendent called early Tuesday morning at the parsonage to make brotherly inquiries, and Theron was feeling so much better that he himself suggested their coming upstairs to see him. The Elder was in good spirits; he smiled approvingly, and even put in a jocose word or two while the superintendent sketched for the invalid in a cheerful way the leading incidents of the previous evening.
There had been an enormous crowd, even greater than that of Sunday night, and everybody had been looking forward to another notable and exciting season of grace. These expectations were especially heightened when Sister Soulsby ascended the pulpit stairs and took charge of the proceedings. She deferred to Paul's views about women preachers on Sundays, she said; but on weekdays she had just as much right to snatch brands from the burning as Paul, or Peter, or any other man. She went on like that, in a breezy, off-hand fashion which tickled the audience immensely, and led to the liveliest anticipations of what would happen when she began upon the evening's harvest of souls.
But it was something else that happened. At a signal from Sister Soulsby the steward got up, and, in an unconcerned sort of way, went through the throng to the rear of the church, locked the doors, and put the keys in their pockets. The sister dryly explained now to the surprised congregation that there was a season for all things, and that on the present occasion they would suspend the glorious work of redeeming fallen human nature, and take up instead the equally noble task of raising some fifteen hundred dollars which the church needed in its business. The doors would only be opened again when this had been accomplished.
The brethren were much taken aback by this trick, and they permitted themselves to exchange a good many scowling and indignant glances, the while their professional visitors sang another of their delightfully novel sacred duets. Its charm of harmony for once fell upon unsympathetic ears. But then Sister Soulsby began another monologue, defending this way of collecting money, chaffing the assemblage with bright-eyed impudence on their having been trapped, and scoring, one after another, neat and jocose little personal points on local characteristics, at which everybody but the individual touched grinned broadly. She was so droll and cheeky, and withal effective in her talk, that she quite won the crowd over. She told a story about a woodchuck which fairly brought down the house.
"A man," she began, with a quizzical twinkle in her eye, "told me once about hunting a woodchuck with a pack of dogs, and they chased it so hard that it finally escaped only by climbing a butternut-tree. 'But, my friend,' I said to him, 'woodchucks can't climb trees-butternut-trees or any other kind-and you know it!' All he said in reply to me was: 'This woodchuck had to climb a tree!' And that's the way with this congregation. You think you can't raise $1,500, but you've GOT to."
So it went on. She set them all laughing; and then, with a twist of the eyes and a change of voice, lo, and behold, she had them nearly crying in the same breath. Under the pressure of these jumbled emotions, brethren began to rise up in their pews and say what they would give. The wonderful woman had something smart and apt to say about each fresh contribution, and used it to screw up the general interest a notch further toward benevolent hysteria. With songs and jokes and impromptu exhortations and prayers she kept the thing whirling, until a sort of duel of generosity began between two of the most unlikely men-Erastus Winch and Levi Gorringe. Everybody had been surprised when Winch gave his first $50; but when he rose again, half an hour afterward, and said that, owing to the high public position of some of the new members on probation, he foresaw a great future for the church, and so felt moved to give another $25, there was general amazement. Moved by a common instinct, all eyes were turned upon Levi Gorringe, and he, without the slightest hesitation, stood up and said he would give $100. There was something in his tone which must have annoyed Brother Winch, for he shot up like a dart, and called out, "Put me down for fifty more;" and that brought Gorringe to his feet with an added $50, and then the two went on raising each other till the assemblage was agape with admiring stupefaction.
This gladiatorial combat might have been going on till now, the Sunday-school superintendent concluded, if Winch hadn't subsided. The amount of the contributions hadn't been figured up yet, for Sister Soulsby kept the list; but there had been a tremendous lot of money raised. Of that there could be no doubt.
The Presiding Elder now told Theron that the Quarterly Conference had been adjourned yesterday till today. He and Brother Davis were even now on their way to attend the session in the church next door. The Elder added, with an obvious kindly significance, that though Theron was too ill to attend it, he guessed his absence would do him no harm. Then the two men left the room, and Theron went to sleep again.
Another almost blank period ensued, this time lasting for forty-eight hours. The young minister was enfolded in the coils of a fever of some sort, which Brother Soulsby, who had dabbled considerably in medicine, admitted that he was puzzled about. Sometimes he thought that it was typhoid, and then again there were symptoms which looked suspiciously like brain fever. The Methodists of Octavius counted no physician among their numbers, and when, on the second day, Alice grew scared, and decided, with Brother Soulsby's assent, to call in professional advice, the only doctor's name she could recall was that of Ledsmar. She was conscious of an instinctive dislike for the vague image of him her fancy had conjured up, but the reflection that he was Theron's friend, and so probably would be more moderate in his charges, decided her.
Brother Soulsby showed a most comforting tact and swiftness of apprehension when Alice, in mentioning Dr. Ledsmar's name, disclosed by her manner a fear that his being sent for would create talk among the church people. He volunteered at once to act as messenger himself, and, with no better guide than her dim hints at direction, found the doctor and brought him back to the parsonage.
Dr. Ledsmar expressly disclaimed to Soulsby all pretence of professional skill, and made him understand that he went along solely because he liked Mr. Ware, and was interested in him, and in any case would probably be of as much use as the wisest of strange physicians-a view which the little revivalist received with comprehending nods of tacit acquiescence. Ledsmar came, and was taken up to the sick-room. He sat on the bedside and talked with Theron awhile, and then went downstairs again. To Alice's anxious inquiries, he replied that it seemed to him merely a case of over-work and over-worry, about which there was not the slightest occasion for alarm.
"But he says the strangest things," the wife put in. "He has been quite delirious at times."
"That means only that his brain is taking a rest as well as his body," remarked Ledsmar. "That is Nature's way of securing an equilibrium of repose-of recuperation. He will come out of it with his mind all the fresher and clearer."
"I don't believe he knows shucks!" was Alice's comment when she closed the street door upon Dr. Ledsmar. "Anybody could have come in and looked at a sick man and said, 'Leave him alone.' You expect something more from a doctor. It's his business to say what to do. And I suppose he'll charge two dollars for just telling me that my husband was resting!"
"No," said Brother Soulsby, "he said he never practised, and that he would come only as a friend."
"Well, it isn't my idea of a friend-not to prescribe a single thing," protested Alice.
Yet it seemed that no prescription was needed, after all. The next morning Theron woke to find himself feeling quite restored in spirits and nerves. He sat up in bed, and after an instant of weakly giddiness, recognized that he was all right again. Greatly pleased, he got up, and proceeded to dress himself. There were little recurring hints of faintness and vertigo, while he was shaving, but he had the sense to refer these to the fact that he was very, very hungry. He went downstairs, and smiled with the pleased pride of a child at the surprise which his appearance at the door created. Alice and the Soulsbys were at breakfast. He joined them, and ate voraciously, declaring that it was worth a month's illness to have things taste so good once more.
"You still look white as a sheet," said Alice, warningly. "If I were you, I'd be careful in my diet for a spell yet."
For answer, Theron let Sister Soulsby help him again to ham and eggs. He talked exclusively to Sister Soulsby, or rather invited her by his manner to talk to him, and listened and watched her with indolent content. There was a sort of happy and purified languor in his physical and mental being, which needed and appreciated just this-to sit next a bright and attractive woman at a good breakfast, and be ministered to by her sprightly conversation, by the flash of her informing and inspiring eyes, and the nameless sense of support and repose which her near proximity exhaled. He felt himself figuratively leaning against Sister Soulsby's buoyant personality, and resting.
Brother Soulsby, like the intelligent creature he was, ate his breakfast in peace; but Alice would interpose remarks from time to time. Theron was conscious of a certain annoyance at this, and knew that he was showing it by an exaggerated display of interest in everything Sister Soulsby said, and persisted in it. There trembled in the background of his thoughts ever and again the recollection of a grievance against his wife-an offence which she had committed-but he put it aside as something to be grappled and dealt with when he felt again like taking up the serious and disagreeable things of life. For the moment, he desired only to be amused by Sister Soulsby. Her casual mention of the fact that she and her husband were taking their departure that very day, appealed to him as an added reason for devoting his entire attention to her.
"You mustn't forget that famous talking-to you threatened me with-that 'regular hoeing-over,' you know," he reminded her, when he found himself alone with her after breakfast. He smiled as he spoke, in frank enjoyment of the prospect.
Sister Soulsby nodded, and aided with a roll of her eyes the effect of mock-menace in her uplifted forefinger. "Oh, never fear," she cried. "You'll catch it hot and strong. But that'll keep till afternoon. Tell me, do you feel strong enough to go in next door and attend the trustees' meeting this forenoon? It's rather important that you should be there, if you can spur yourself up to it. By the way, you haven't asked what happened at the Quarterly Conference yesterday."
Theron sighed, and made a little grimace of repugnance. "If you knew how little I cared!" he said. "I did hope you'd forget all about mentioning that-and everything else connected with-the next door. You talk so much more interestingly about other things."
"Here's gratitude for you!" exclaimed Sister Soulsby, with a gay simulation of despair. "Why, man alive, do you know what I've done for you? I got around on the Presiding Elder's blind side, I captured old Pierce, I wound Winch right around my little finger, I worked two or three of the class-leaders-all on your account. The result was you went through as if you'd had your ears pinned back, and been greased all over. You've got an extra hundred dollars added to your salary; do you hear? On the sixth question of the order of business the Elder ruled that the recommendation of the last conference's estimating committee could be revised, and so you're in clover. And very friendly things were said about you, too."
"It was very kind of you," said Theron. "I am really extremely grateful to you." He shook her by the hand to make up for what he realized to be a lack of fervor in his tones.
"Well, then," Sister Soulsby replied, "you pull yourself together, and take your place as chairman of the trustees' meeting, and see to it that, whatever comes up, you side with old Pierce and Winch."
"Oh, THEY'RE my friends now, are they?" asked Theron, with a faint play of irony about his lips.
"Yes, that's your ticket this election," she answered briskly, "and mind you vote it straight. Don't bother about reasons now. Just take it from me, as the song says, 'that things have changed since Willie died.' That's all. And then come back here, and this afternoon we'll have a good old-fashioned jaw."
The Rev. Mr. Ware, walking with ostentatious feebleness, and forcing a conventional smile upon his wan face, duly made his unexpected appearance at the trustees' meeting in one of the smaller classrooms. He received their congratulations gravely, and shook hands with all three. It required an effort to do this impartially, because, upon sight of Levi Gorringe, there rose up suddenly within him an emotion of fierce dislike and enmity. In some enigmatic way his thoughts had kept themselves away from Gorringe ever since Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron seemed able in a flash of time to coordinate many recollections of Gorringe-the early liking Alice had professed for him, the mystery of those purchased plants in her garden, the story of the girl he had lost in church, his offer to lend him money, the way in which he had sat beside Alice at the love-feast and followed her to the altar-rail in the evening. These raced abreast through the young minister's brain, yet with each its own image, and its relation to the others clearly defined.
He found the nerve, all the same, to take this third trustee by the hand, and to thank him for his congratulations, and even to say, with a surface smile of welcome, "It is BROTHER Gorringe, now, I remember."
The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind. In most places this would have been transacted by the stewards; but in Octavius these minor officials had degenerated into mere ceremonial abstractions, who humbly ratified, or by arrangement anticipated, the will of the powerful, mortgage-owning trustees. Theron sat languidly at the head of the table while these common-place matters passed in their course, noting the intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from his secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted on his coming.
All at once he sat up straight, with an instinctive warning in his mind that here was the thing. Gorringe had taken up the subject of the "debt-raising" evening, and read out its essentials as they had been embodied in a report of the stewards. The gross sum obtained, in cash and promises, was $1,860. The stewards had collected of this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all in during the ensuing quarter. There were, also, the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the increases of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25 in the apportioned contribution of the charge toward the Presiding Elder's maintenance, the two latter items of which the Quarterly Conference had sanctioned.
"I want to hear the names of the subscribers and their amounts read out," put in Brother Pierce.
When this was done, it became apparent that much more than half of the entire amount had been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe's $450 and Erastus Winch's $425 left only $985 to be divided up among some seventy or eighty other members of the congregation.
Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of these subordinate names. "They're of no concern whatever," he said, despite the fact that his own might have been reached in time. "Those first names are what I was getting at. Have those two first amounts, the big ones, be'n paid?"
"One has-the other not," replied Gorringe.
"PRE-cisely," remarked the senior trustee. "And I'm goin' to move that it needn't be paid, either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin' out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that evening, it was under a complete misapprehension. He'd be'n on the Cheese Board that same Monday afternoon, and he'd done what he thought was a mighty big stroke of business, and he felt liberal according. I know just what that feelin' is myself. If I'd be'n makin' a mint o' money, instead o' losin' all the while, as I do, I'd 'a' done just the same. But the next day, lo, and behold, Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake-he hadn't made a single penny."
"Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction," put in Erastus Winch, defiantly.
"Just so," Brother Pierce went on. "He lost money. You have his own word for it. Well, then, I say it would be a burning shame for us to consent to touch one penny of what he offered to give, in the fullness of his heart, while he was laborin' under that delusion. And I move he be not asked for it. We've got quite as much as we need, without it. I put my motion."
"That is, YOU don't put it," suggested Winch, correctingly. "You move it, and Brother Ware, whom we're all so glad to see able to come and preside-he'll put it."
There was a moment's silence. "You've heard the motion," said Theron, tentatively, and then paused for possible remarks. He was not going to meddle in this thing himself, and Gorringe was the only other who might have an opinion to offer. The necessities of the situation forced him to glance at the lawyer inquiringly. He did so, and turned his eyes away again like a shot. Gorringe was looking him squarely in the face, and the look was freighted with satirical contempt.
The young minister spoke between clinched teeth. "All those in favor will say aye."
Brothers Pierce and Winch put up a simultaneous and confident "Aye."
"No, you don't!" interposed the lawyer, with deliberate, sneering emphasis. "I decidedly protest against Winch's voting. He's directly interested, and he mustn't vote. Your chairman knows that perfectly well."
"Yes, I think Brother Winch ought not to vote," decided Theron, with great calmness. He saw now what was coming, and underneath his surface composure there were sharp flutterings.
"Very well, then," said Gorringe. "I vote no, and it's a tie. It rests with the chairman now to cast the deciding vote, and say whether this interesting arrangement shall go through or not."
"Me?" said Theron, eying the lawyer with a cool self-control which had come all at once to him. "Me? Oh, I vote Aye."
CHAPTER XVII
"Well, I did what you told me to do," Theron Ware remarked to Sister Soulsby, when at last they found themselves alone in the sitting-room after the midday meal.
It had taken not a little strategic skirmishing to secure the room to themselves for the hospitable Alice, much touched by the thought of her new friend's departure that very evening had gladly proposed to let all the work stand over until night, and devote herself entirely to Sister Soulsby. When, finally, Brother Soulsby conceived and deftly executed the coup of interesting her in the budding of roses, and then leading her off into the garden to see with her own eyes how it was done, Theron had a sense of being left alone with a conspirator. The notion impelled him to plunge at once into the heart of their mystery.
"I did what you told me to do," he repeated, looking up from his low easy-chair to where she sat by the desk; "and I dare say you won't be surprised when I add that I have no respect for myself for doing it."
"And yet you would go and do it right over again, eh?" the woman said, in bright, pert tones, nodding her head, and smiling at him with roguish, comprehending eyes. "Yes, that's the way we're built. We spend our lives doing that sort of thing."
"I don't know that you would precisely grasp my meaning," said the young minister, with a polite effort in his words to mask the untoward side of the suggestion. "It is a matter of conscience with me; and I am pained and shocked at myself."
Sister Soulsby drummed for an absent moment with her thin, nervous fingers on the desk-top. "I guess maybe you'd better go and lie down again," she said gently. "You're a sick man, still, and it's no good your worrying your head just now with things of this sort. You'll see them differently when you're quite yourself again."
"No, no," pleaded Theron. "Do let us have our talk out! I'm all right. My mind is clear as a bell. Truly, I've really counted on this talk with you."
"But there's something else to talk about, isn't there, besides-besides your conscience?" she asked. Her eyes bent upon him a kindly pressure as she spoke, which took all possible harshness from her meaning.
Theron answered the glance rather than her words. "I know that you are my friend," he said simply.
Sister Soulsby straightened herself, and looked down upon him with a new intentness. "Well, then," she began, "let's thrash this thing out right now, and be done with it. You say it's hurt your conscience to do just one little hundredth part of what there was to be done here. Ask yourself what you mean by that. Mind, I'm not quarrelling, and I'm not thinking about anything except just your own state of mind. You think you soiled your hands by doing what you did. That is to say, you wanted ALL the dirty work done by other people. That's it, isn't it?"
"The Rev. Mr. Ware sat up, in turn, and looked doubtingly into his companion's face.
"Oh, we were going to be frank, you know," she added, with a pleasant play of mingled mirth and honest liking in her eyes.
"No," he said, picking his words, "my point would rather be that-that there ought not to have been any of what you yourself call this-this 'dirty work.' THAT is my feeling."
"Now we're getting at it," said Sister Soulsby, briskly. "My dear friend, you might just as well say that potatoes are unclean and unfit to eat because manure is put into the ground they grow in. Just look at the case. Your church here was running behind every year. Your people had got into a habit of putting in nickels instead of dimes, and letting you sweat for the difference. That's a habit, like tobacco, or biting your fingernails, or anything else. Either you were all to come to smash here, or the people had to be shaken up, stood on their heads, broken of their habit. It's my business-mine and Soulsby's-to do that sort of thing. We came here and we did it-did it up brown, too. We not only raised all the money the church needs, and to spare, but I took a personal shine to you, and went out of my way to fix up things for you. It isn't only the extra hundred dollars, but the whole tone of the congregation is changed toward you now. You'll see that they'll be asking to have you back here, next spring. And you're solid with your Presiding Elder, too. Well, now, tell me straight-is that worth while, or not?"
"I've told you that I am very grateful," answered the minister, "and I say it again, and I shall never be tired of repeating it. But-but it was the means I had in mind."
"Quite so," rejoined the sister, patiently. "If you saw the way a hotel dinner was cooked, you wouldn't be able to stomach it. Did you ever see a play? In a theatre, I mean. I supposed not. But you'll understand when I say that the performance looks one way from where the audience sit, and quite a different way when you are behind the scenes. THERE you see that the trees and houses are cloth, and the moon is tissue paper, and the flying fairy is a middle-aged woman strung up on a rope. That doesn't prove that the play, out in front, isn't beautiful and affecting, and all that. It only shows that everything in this world is produced by machinery-by organization. The trouble is that you've been let in on the stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you're so green-if you'll pardon me-that you want to sit down and cry because the trees ARE cloth, and the moon IS a lantern. And I say, don't be such a goose!"
"I see what you mean," Theron said, with an answering smile. He added, more gravely, "All the same, the Winch business seems to me-"
"Now the Winch business is my own affair," Sister Soulsby broke in abruptly. "I take all the responsibility for that. You need know nothing about it. You simply voted as you did on the merits of the case as he presented them-that's all."
"But-" Theron began, and then paused. Something had occurred to him, and he knitted his brows to follow its course of expansion in his mind. Suddenly he raised his head. "Then you arranged with Winch to make those bogus offers-just to lead others on?" he demanded.
Sister Soulsby's large eyes beamed down upon him in reply, at first in open merriment, then more soberly, till their regard was almost pensive.
"Let us talk of something else," she said. "All that is past and gone. It has nothing to do with you, anyway. I've got some advice to give you about keeping up this grip you've got on your people."
The young minister had risen to his feet while she spoke. He put his hands in his pockets, and with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the room. After a turn or two he came to the desk, and leaned against it.
"I doubt if it's worth while going into that," he said, in the solemn tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She waited to hear more, apparently. "I think I shall go away-give up the ministry," he added.
Sister Soulsby's eyes revealed no such shock of consternation as he, unconsciously, had looked for. They remained quite calm; and when she spoke, they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read to be a gaze of affectionate melancholy-one might say pity. She shook her head slowly.
"No-don't let any one else hear you say that," she replied. "My poor young friend, it's no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to school yourself to move along smoothly, and not fret, and get the best of what's going. I've known others who felt as you do-of course there are times when every young man of brains and high notions feels that way-but there's no help for it. Those who tried to get out only broke themselves. Those who stayed in, and made the best of it-well, one of them will be a bishop in another ten years."
Theron had started walking again. "But the moral degradation of it!" he snapped out at her over his shoulder. "I'd rather earn the meanest living, at an honest trade, and be free from it."
"That may all be," responded Sister Soulsby. "But it isn't a question of what you'd rather do. It's what you can do. How could you earn a living? What trade or business do you suppose you could take up now, and get a living out of? Not one, my man, not one."
Theron stopped and stared at her. This view of his capabilities came upon him with the force and effect of a blow.
"I don't discover, myself," he began stumblingly, "that I'm so conspicuously inferior to the men I see about me who do make livings, and very good ones, too."
"Of course you're not," she replied with easy promptness; "you're greatly the other way, or I shouldn't be taking this trouble with you. But you're what you are because you're where you are. The moment you try on being somewhere else, you're done for. In all this world nobody else comes to such unmerciful and universal grief as the unfrocked priest."
The phrase sent Theron's fancy roving. "I know a Catholic priest," he said irrelevantly, "who doesn't believe an atom in-in things."
"Very likely," said Sister Soulsby. "Most of us do. But you don't hear him talking about going and earning his living, I'll bet! Or if he does, he takes powerful good care not to go, all the same. They've got horse-sense, those priests. They're artists, too. They know how to allow for the machinery behind the scenes."
"But it's all so different," urged the young minister; "the same things are not expected of them. Now I sat the other night and watched those people you got up around the altar-rail, groaning and shouting and crying, and the others jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister Lovejoy-did you see her?-coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her eyes shut, like a whirling dervish-I positively believe it was all that made me ill. I couldn't stand it. I can't stand it now. I won't go back to it! Nothing shall make me!"
"Oh-h, yes, you will," she rejoined soothingly. "There's nothing else to do. Just put a good face on it, and make up your mind to get through by treading on as few corns as possible, and keeping your own toes well in, and you'll be surprised how easy it'll all come to be. You were speaking of the revival business. Now that exemplifies just what I was saying-it's a part of our machinery. Now a church is like everything else,-it's got to have a boss, a head, an authority of some sort, that people will listen to and mind. The Catholics are different, as you say. Their church is chuck-full of authority-all the way from the Pope down to the priest-and accordingly they do as they're told. But the Protestants-your Methodists most of all-they say 'No, we won't have any authority, we won't obey any boss.' Very well, what happens? We who are responsible for running the thing, and raising the money and so on-we have to put on a spurt every once in a while, and work up a general state of excitement; and while it's going, don't you see that THAT is the authority, the motive power, whatever you like to call it, by which things are done? Other denominations don't need it. We do, and that's why we've got it."
"But the mean dishonesty of it all!" Theron broke forth. He moved about again, his bowed face drawn as with bodily suffering. "The low-born tricks, the hypocrisies! I feel as if I could never so much as look at these people here again without disgust."
"Oh, now that's where you make your mistake," Sister Soulsby put in placidly. "These people of yours are not a whit worse than other people. They've got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest of us. Take them by and large, they're quite on a par with other folks the whole country through."
"I don't believe there's another congregation in the Conference where-where this sort of thing would have been needed, or, I might say, tolerated," insisted Theron.
"Perhaps you're right," the other assented; "but that only shows that your people here are different from the others-not that they're worse. You don't seem to realize: Octavius, so far as the Methodists are concerned, is twenty or thirty years behind the times. Now that has its advantages and its disadvantages. The church here is tough and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it. It scours the rust and mildew off from their piety, and they go back singing and shouting. But of course it's had a different effect with you. You're razor-steel instead of scythe-steel, and the grinding's been too rough and violent for you. But you see what I mean. These people here really take their primitive Methodism seriously. To them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a genuine thing. Well, don't you see, when people just know that they're saved, it doesn't seem to them to matter so much what they do. They feel that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted in the interest of people so supernaturally good as they are. That's pure human nature. It's always been like that."
Theron paused in his walk to look absently at her. "That thought," he said, in a vague, slow way, "seems to be springing up in my path, whichever way I turn. It oppresses me, and yet it fascinates me-this idea that the dead men have known more than we know, done more than we do; that there is nothing new anywhere; that-"
"Never mind the dead men," interposed Sister Soulsby. "Just you come and sit down here. I hate to have you straddling about the room when I'm trying to talk to you."
Theron obeyed, and as he sank into the low seat, Sister Soulsby drew up her chair, and put her hand on his shoulder. Her gaze rested upon his with impressive steadiness.
"And now I want to talk seriously to you, as a friend," she began. "You mustn't breathe to any living soul the shadow of a hint of this nonsense about leaving the ministry. I could see how you were feeling-I saw the book you were reading the first time I entered this room-and that made me like you; only I expected to find you mixing up more worldly gumption with your Renan. Well, perhaps I like you all the better for not having it-for being so delightfully fresh. At any rate, that made me sail in and straighten your affairs for you. And now, for God's sake, keep them straight. Just put all notions of anything else out of your head. Watch your chief men and women, and be friends with them. Keep your eye open for what they think you ought to do, and do it. Have your own ideas as much as you like, read what you like, say 'Damn' under your breath as much as you like, but don't let go of your job. I've knocked about too much, and I've seen too many promising young fellows cut their own throats for pure moonshine, not to have a right to say that."
Theron could not be insensible to the friendly hand on his shoulder, or to the strenuous sincerity of the voice which thus adjured him.
"Well," he said vaguely, smiling up into her earnest eyes, "if we agree that it IS moonshine."
"See here!" she exclaimed, with renewed animation, patting his shoulder in a brisk, automatic way, to point the beginnings of her confidences: "I'll tell you something. It's about myself. I've got a religion of my own, and it's got just one plank in it, and that is that the time to separate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment Day, and that it can't be done a minute before."
The young minister took in the thought, and turned it about in his mind, and smiled upon it.
"And that brings me to what I'm going to tell you," Sister Soulsby continued. She leaned back in her chair, and crossed her knees so that one well-shaped and artistically shod foot poised itself close to Theron's hand. Her eyes dwelt upon his face with an engaging candor.
"I began life," she said, "as a girl by running away from a stupid home with a man that I knew was married already. After that, I supported myself for a good many years-generally, at first, on the stage. I've been a front-ranker in Amazon ballets, and I've been leading lady in comic opera companies out West. I've told fortunes in one room of a mining-camp hotel where the biggest game of faro in the Territory went on in another. I've been a professional clairvoyant, and I've been a professional medium, and I've been within one vote of being indicted by a grand jury, and the money that bought that vote was put up by the smartest and most famous train-gambler between Omaha and 'Frisco, a gentleman who died in his boots and took three sheriff's deputies along with him to Kingdom-Come. Now, that's MY record."
Theron looked earnestly at her, and said nothing.
"And now take Soulsby," she went on. "Of course I take it for granted there's a good deal that he has never felt called upon to mention. He hasn't what you may call a talkative temperament. But there is also a good deal that I do know. He's been an actor, too, and to this day I'd back him against Edwin Booth himself to recite 'Clarence's Dream.' And he's been a medium, and then he was a travelling phrenologist, and for a long time he was advance agent for a British Blondes show, and when I first saw him he was lecturing on female diseases-and he had HIS little turn with a grand jury too. In fact, he was what you may call a regular bad old rooster."
Again Theron suffered the pause to lapse without comment-save for an amorphous sort of conversation which he felt to be going on between his eyes and those of Sister Soulsby.
"Well, then," she resumed, "so much for us apart. Now about us together. We liked each other from the start. We compared notes, and we found that we had both soured on living by fakes, and that we were tired of the road, and wanted to settle down and be respectable in our old age. We had a little money-enough to see us through a year or two. Soulsby had always hungered and longed to own a garden and raise flowers, and had never been able to stay long enough in one place to see so much as a bean-pod ripen. So we took a little place in a quiet country village down on the Southern Tier, and he planted everything three deep all over the place, and I bought a roomful of cheap good books, and we started in. We took to it like ducks to water for a while, and I don't say that we couldn't have stood it out, just doing nothing, to this very day; but as luck would have it, during the first winter there was a revival at the local Methodist church, and we went every evening-at first just to kill time, and then because we found we liked the noise and excitement and general racket of the thing. After it was all over each of us found that the other had been mighty near going up to the rail and joining the mourners. And another thing had occurred to each of us, too-that is, what tremendous improvements there were possible in the way that amateur revivalist worked up his business. This stuck in our crops, and we figured on it all through the winter.-Well, to make a long story short, we finally went into the thing ourselves."
"Tell me one thing," interposed Theron. "I'm anxious to understand it all as we go along. Were you and he at any time sincerely converted?-that is, I mean, genuinely convicted of sin and conscious of-you know what I mean!"
"Oh, bless you, yes," responded Sister Soulsby. "Not only once-dozens of times-I may say every time. We couldn't do good work if we weren't. But that's a matter of temperament-of emotions."
"Precisely. That was what I was getting at," explained Theron.
"Well, then, hear what I was getting at," she went on. "You were talking very loudly here about frauds and hypocrisies and so on, a few minutes ago. Now I say that Soulsby and I do good, and that we're good fellows. Now take him, for example. There isn't a better citizen in all Chemung County than he is, or a kindlier neighbor, or a better or more charitable man. I've known him to stay up a whole winter's night in a poor Irishman's stinking and freezing stable, trying to save his cart-horse for him, that had been seized with some sort of fit. The man's whole livelihood, and his family's, was in that horse; and when it died, Soulsby bought him another, and never told even ME about it. Now that I call real piety, if you like."
"So do I," put in Theron, cordially.
"And this question of fraud," pursued his companion,-"look at it in this light. You heard us sing. Well, now, I was a singer, of course, but Soulsby hardly knew one note from another. I taught him to sing, and he went at it patiently and diligently, like a little man. And I invented that scheme of finding tunes which the crowd didn't know, and so couldn't break in on and smother. I simply took Chopin-he is full of sixths, you know-and I got all sorts of melodies out of his waltzes and mazurkas and nocturnes and so on, and I trained Soulsby just to sing those sixths so as to make the harmony, and there you are. He couldn't sing by himself any more than a crow, but he's got those sixths of his down to a hair. Now that's machinery, management, organization. We take these tunes, written by a devil-may-care Pole who was living with George Sand openly at the time, and pass 'em off on the brethren for hymns. It's a fraud, yes; but it's a good fraud. So they are all good frauds. I say frankly that I'm glad that the change and the chance came to help Soulsby and me to be good frauds."
"And the point is that I'm to be a good fraud, too," commented the young minister.
She had risen, and he got to his feet as well. He instinctively sought for her hand, and pressed it warmly, and held it in both his, with an exuberance of gratitude and liking in his manner.
Sister Soulsby danced her eyes at him with a saucy little shake of the head. "I'm afraid you'll never make a really GOOD fraud," she said. "You haven't got it in you. Your intentions are all right, but your execution is hopelessly clumsy. I came up to your bedroom there twice while you were sick, just to say 'howdy,' and you kept your eyes shut, and all the while a blind horse could have told that you were wide awake."
"I must have thought it was my wife," said Theron.
PART III
CHAPTER XVIII
When the lingering dusk finally settled down upon this long summer evening, the train bearing the Soulsbys homeward was already some score of miles on its way, and the Methodists of Octavius had nearly finished their weekly prayer-meeting.
After the stirring events of the revival, it was only to be expected that this routine, home-made affair should suffer from a reaction. The attendance was larger than usual, perhaps, but the proceedings were spiritless and tame. Neither the pastor nor his wife was present at the beginning, and the class-leader upon whom control devolved made but feeble headway against the spell of inertia which the hot night-air laid upon the gathering. Long pauses intervened between the perfunctory praise-offerings and supplications, and the hymns weariedly raised from time to time fell again in languor by the wayside.
Alice came in just as people were beginning to hope that some one would start the Doxology, and bring matters to a close. Her appearance apparently suggested this to the class-leader, for in a few moments the meeting had been dismissed, and some of the members, on their way out, were shaking hands with their minister's wife, and expressing the polite hope that he was better. The worried look in her face, and the obvious stains of recent tears upon her cheeks imparted an added point and fervor to these inquiries, but she replied to all in tones of studied tranquillity that, although not feeling well enough to attend prayer-meeting, Brother Ware was steadily recovering strength, and confidently expected to be in complete health by Sunday. They left her, and could hardly wait to get into the vestibule to ask one another in whispers what on earth she could have been crying about.
Meanwhile Brother Ware improved his convalescent state by pacing slowly up and down under the elms on the side of the street opposite the Catholic church. There were no houses here for a block and more; the sidewalk was broken in many places, so that passers-by avoided it; the overhanging boughs shrouded it all in obscurity; it was preeminently a place to be alone in.
Theron had driven to the depot with his guests an hour before, and after a period of pleasant waiting on the platform, had said good-bye to them as the train moved away. Then he turned to Alice, who had also accompanied them in the carriage, and was conscious of a certain annoyance at her having come. That long familiar talk of the afternoon had given him the feeling that he was entitled to bid farewell to Sister Soulsby-to both the Soulsbys-by himself.
"I am afraid folks will think it strange-neither of us attending the prayer-meeting," he said, with a suggestion of reproof in his tone, as they left the station-yard.
"If we get back in time, I'll run in for a minute," answered Alice, with docility.
"No-no," he broke in. "I'm not equal to walking so fast. You run on ahead, and explain matters, and I will come along slowly."
"The hack we came in is still there in the yard," the wife suggested. "We could drive home in that. I don't believe it would cost more than a quarter-and if you're feeling badly-"
"But I am NOT feeling badly," Theron replied, with frank impatience. "Only I feel-I feel that being alone with my thoughts would be good for me."
"Oh, certainly-by all means!" Alice had said, and turned sharply on her heel.
Being alone with these thoughts, Theron strolled aimlessly about, and did not think at all. The shadows gathered, and fireflies began to disclose their tiny gleams among the shrubbery in the gardens. A lamp-lighter came along, and passed him, leaving in his wake a straggling double line of lights, glowing radiantly against the black-green of the trees. This recalled to Theron that he had heard that the town council lit the street lamps by the almanac, and economized gas when moonshine was due. The idea struck him as droll, and he dwelt upon it in various aspects, smiling at some of its comic possibilities. Looking up in the middle of one of these whimsical conceits, the sportive impulse died suddenly within him. He realized that it was dark, and that the massive black bulk reared against the sky on the other side of the road was the Catholic church. The other fact, that he had been there walking to and fro for some time, was borne in upon him more slowly. He turned, and resumed the pacing up and down with a still more leisurely step, musing upon the curious way in which people's minds all unconsciously follow about where instincts and intuitions lead.
No doubt it was what Sister Soulsby had said about Catholics which had insensibly guided his purposeless stroll in this direction. What a woman that was! Somehow the purport of her talk-striking, and even astonishing as he had found it-did not stand out so clearly in his memory as did the image of the woman herself. She must have been extremely pretty once. For that matter she still was a most attractive-looking woman. It had been a genuine pleasure to have her in the house-to see her intelligent responsive face at the table-to have it in one's power to make drafts at will upon the fund of sympathy and appreciation, of facile mirth and ready tenderness in those big eyes of hers. He liked that phrase she had used about herself-"a good fellow." It seemed to fit her to a "t." And Soulsby was a good fellow too. All at once it occurred to him to wonder whether they were married or not.
But really that was no affair of his, he reflected. A citizen of the intellectual world should be above soiling his thoughts with mean curiosities of that sort, and he drove the impertinent query down again under the surface of his mind. He refused to tolerate, as well, sundry vagrant imaginings which rose to cluster about and literalize the romance of her youth which Sister Soulsby had so frankly outlined. He would think upon nothing but her as he knew her,-the kindly, quick-witted, capable and charming woman who had made such a brilliant break in the monotony of life at that dull parsonage of his. The only genuine happiness in life must consist in having bright, smart, attractive women like that always about.
The lights were visible now in the upper rooms of Father Forbes' pastorate across the way. Theron paused for a second to consider whether he wanted to go over and call on the priest. He decided that mentally he was too fagged and flat for such an undertaking. He needed another sort of companionship-some restful, soothing human contact, which should exact nothing from him in return, but just take charge of him, with soft, wise words and pleasant plays of fancy, and jokes and-and-something of the general effect created by Sister Soulsby's eyes. The thought expanded itself, and he saw that he had never realized before-nay, never dreamt before-what a mighty part the comradeship of talented, sweet-natured and beautiful women must play in the development of genius, the achievement of lofty aims, out in the great world of great men. To know such women-ah, that would never fall to his hapless lot.
The priest's lamps blinked at him through the trees. He remembered that priests were supposed to be even further removed from the possibilities of such contact than he was himself. His memory reverted to that horribly ugly old woman whom Father Forbes had spoken of as his housekeeper. Life under the same roof with such a hag must be even worse than-worse than-
The young minister did not finish the comparison, even in the privacy of his inner soul. He stood instead staring over at the pastorate, in a kind of stupor of arrested thought. The figure of a woman passed in view at the nearest window-a tall figure with pale summer clothes of some sort, and a broad summer hat-a flitting effect of diaphanous shadow between him and the light which streamed from the casement.
Theron felt a little shiver run over him, as if the delicate coolness of the changing night-air had got into his blood. The window was open, and his strained hearing thought it caught the sound of faint laughter. He continued to gaze at the place where the vision had appeared, the while a novel and strange perception unfolded itself upon his mind.
He had come there in the hope of encountering Celia Madden.
Now that he looked this fact in the face, there was nothing remarkable about it. In truth, it was simplicity itself. He was still a sick man, weak in body and dejected in spirits. The thought of how unhappy and unstrung he was came to him now with an insistent pathos that brought tears to his eyes. He was only obeying the universal law of nature-the law which prompts the pallid spindling sprout of the potato in the cellar to strive feebly toward the light.
From where he stood in the darkness he stretched out his hands in the direction of that open window. The gesture was his confession to the overhanging boughs, to the soft night-breeze, to the stars above-and it bore back to him something of the confessional's vague and wistful solace. He seemed already to have drawn down into his soul a taste of the refreshment it craved. He sighed deeply, and the hot moisture smarted again upon his eyelids, but this time not all in grief. With his tender compassion for himself there mingled now a flutter of buoyant prescience, of exquisite expectancy.
Fate walked abroad this summer night. The street door of the pastorate opened, and in the flood of illumination which spread suddenly forth over the steps and sidewalk, Theron saw again the tall form, with the indefinitely light-hued flowing garments and the wide straw hat. He heard a tuneful woman's voice call out "Good-night, Maggie," and caught no response save the abrupt closing of the door, which turned everything black again with a bang. He listened acutely for another instant, and then with long, noiseless strides made his way down his deserted side of the street. He moderated his pace as he turned to cross the road at the corner, and then, still masked by the trees, halted altogether, in a momentary tumult of apprehension. No-yes-it was all right. The girl sauntered out from the total darkness into the dim starlight of the open corner.
"Why, bless me, is that you, Miss Madden?"
Celia seemed to discern readily enough, through the accents of surprise, the identity of the tall, slim man who addressed her from the shadows.
"Good-evening, Mr. Ware," she said, with prompt affability. "I'm so glad to find you out again. We heard you were ill."
"I have been very ill," responded Theron, as they shook hands and walked on together. He added, with a quaver in his voice, "I am still far from strong. I really ought not to be out at all. But-but the longing for-for-well, I COULDN'T stay in any longer. Even if it kills me, I shall be glad I came out tonight."
"Oh, we won't talk of killing," said Celia. "I don't believe in illnesses myself."
"But you believe in collapses of the nerves," put in Theron, with gentle sadness, "in moral and spiritual and mental breakdowns. I remember how I was touched by the way you told me YOU suffered from them. I had to take what you said then for granted. I had had no experience of it myself. But now I know what it is." He drew a long, pathetic sigh. "Oh, DON'T I know what it is!" he repeated gloomily.
"Come, my friend, cheer up," Celia purred at him, in soothing tones. He felt that there was a deliciously feminine and sisterly intuition in her speech, and in the helpful, nurse-like way in which she drew his arm through hers. He leaned upon this support, and was glad of it in every fibre of his being.
"Do you remember? You promised-that last time I saw you-to play for me," he reminded her. They were passing the little covered postern door at the side and rear of the church as he spoke, and he made a half halt to point the coincidence.
"Oh, there's no one to blow the organ," she said, divining his suggestion. "And I haven't the key-and, besides, the organ is too heavy and severe for an invalid. It would overwhelm you tonight."
"Not as you would know how to play it for me," urged Theron, pensively. "I feel as if good music to-night would make me well again. I am really very ill and weak-and unhappy!"
The girl seemed moved by the despairing note in his voice. She invited him by a sympathetic gesture to lean even more directly on her arm.
"Come home with me, and I'll play Chopin to you," she said, in compassionate friendliness. "He is the real medicine for bruised and wounded nerves. You shall have as much of him as you like."
The idea thus unexpectedly thrown forth spread itself like some vast and inexpressibly alluring vista before Theron's imagination. The spice of adventure in it fascinated his mind as well, but for a shrinking moment the flesh was weak.
"I'm afraid your people would-would think it strange," he faltered-and began also to recall that he had some people of his own who would be even more amazed.
"Nonsense," said Celia, in fine, bold confidence, and with a reassuring pressure on his arm. "I allow none of my people to question what I do. They never dream of such a preposterous thing. Besides, you will see none of them. Mrs. Madden is at the seaside, and my father and brother have their own part of the house. I shan't listen for a minute to your not coming. Come, I'm your doctor. I'm to make you well again."
There was further conversation, and Theron more or less knew that he was bearing a part in it, but his whole mind seemed concentrated, in a sort of delicious terror, upon the wonderful experience to which every footstep brought him nearer. His magnetized fancy pictured a great spacious parlor, such as a mansion like the Maddens' would of course contain, and there would be a grand piano, and lace curtains, and paintings in gold frames, and a chandelier, and velvet easy-chairs, and he would sit in one of these, surrounded by all the luxury of the rich, while Celia played to him. There would be servants about, he presumed, and very likely they would recognize him, and of course they would talk about it to Tom, Dick and Harry afterward. But he said to himself defiantly that he didn't care.
He withdrew his arm from hers as they came upon the well-lighted main street. He passed no one who seemed to know him. Presently they came to the Madden place, and Celia, without waiting for the gravelled walk, struck obliquely across the lawn. Theron, who had been lagging behind with a certain circumspection, stepped briskly to her side now. Their progress over the soft, close-cropped turf in the dark together, with the scent of lilies and perfumed shrubs heavy on the night air, and the majestic bulk of the big silent house rising among the trees before them, gave him a thrilling sense of the glory of individual freedom.
"I feel a new man already," he declared, as they swung along on the grass. He breathed a long sigh of content, and drew nearer, so that their shoulders touched now and again as they walked. In a minute more they were standing on the doorstep, and Theron heard the significant jingle of a bunch of keys which his companion was groping for in her elusive pocket. He was conscious of trembling a little at the sound.
It seemed that, unlike other people, the Maddens did not have their parlor on the ground-floor, opening off the front hall. Theron stood in the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had lit one of several candles which were in their hand-sticks on a sort of sideboard next the hat-rack. She beckoned him with a gesture of her head, and he followed her up a broad staircase, magnificent in its structural appointments of inlaid woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the stair-rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-flicker, that the young country minister could think of no word but "palatial" to fit it all.
At the head of the flight, Celia led the way along a wide corridor to where it ended. Here, stretched from side to side, and suspended from broad hoops of a copper-like metal, was a thick curtain, of a uniform color which Theron at first thought was green, and then decided must be blue. She pushed its heavy folds aside, and unlocked another door. He passed under the curtain behind her, and closed the door.
The room into which he had made his way was not at all after the fashion of any parlor he had ever seen. In the obscure light it was difficult to tell what it resembled. He made out what he took to be a painter's easel, standing forth independently in the centre of things. There were rows of books on rude, low shelves. Against one of the two windows was a big, flat writing-table-or was it a drawing-table?-littered with papers. Under the other window was a carpenter's bench, with a large mound of something at one end covered with a white cloth. On a table behind the easel rose a tall mechanical contrivance, the chief feature of which was a thick upright spiral screw. The floor was of bare wood stained brown. The walls of this queer room had photographs and pictures, taken apparently from illustrated papers, pinned up at random for their only ornament.
Celia had lighted three or four other candles on the mantel. She caught the dumfounded expression with which her guest was surveying his surroundings, and gave a merry little laugh.
"This is my workshop," she explained. "I keep this for the things I do badly-things I fool with. If I want to paint, or model in clay, or bind books, or write, or draw, or turn on the lathe, or do some carpentering, here's where I do it. All the things that make a mess which has to be cleaned up-they are kept out here-because this is as far as the servants are allowed to come."
She unlocked still another door as she spoke-a door which was also concealed behind a curtain.
"Now," she said, holding up the candle so that its reddish flare rounded with warmth the creamy fulness of her chin and throat, and glowed upon her hair in a flame of orange light-"now I will show you what is my very own."
CHAPTER XIX
Theron Ware looked about him with frankly undisguised astonishment.
The room in which he found himself was so dark at first that it yielded little to the eye, and that little seemed altogether beyond his comprehension. His gaze helplessly followed Celia and her candle about as she busied herself in the work of illumination. When she had finished, and pinched out the taper, there were seven lights in the apartment-lights beaming softly through half-opaque alternating rectangles of blue and yellow glass. They must be set in some sort of lanterns around against the wall, he thought, but the shape of these he could hardly make out.
Gradually his sight adapted itself to this subdued light, and he began to see other things. These queer lamps were placed, apparently, so as to shed a special radiance upon some statues which stood in the corners of the chamber, and upon some pictures which were embedded in the walls. Theron noted that the statues, the marble of which lost its aggressive whiteness under the tinted lights, were mostly of naked men and women; the pictures, four or five in number, were all variations of a single theme-the Virgin Mary and the Child.
A less untutored vision than his would have caught more swiftly the scheme of color and line in which these works of art bore their share. The walls of the room were in part of flat upright wooden columns, terminating high above in simple capitals, and they were all painted in pale amber and straw and primrose hues, irregularly wavering here and there toward suggestions of white. Between these pilasters were broader panels of stamped leather, in gently varying shades of peacock blue. These contrasted colors vaguely interwove and mingled in what he could see of the shadowed ceiling far above. They were repeated in the draperies and huge cushions and pillows of the low, wide divan which ran about three sides of the room. Even the floor, where it revealed itself among the scattered rugs, was laid in a mosaic pattern of matched woods, which, like the rugs, gave back these same shifting blues and uncertain yellows.
The fourth side of the apartment was broken in outline at one end by the door through which they had entered, and at the other by a broad, square opening, hung with looped-back curtains of a thin silken stuff. Between the two apertures rose against the wall what Theron took at first glance to be an altar. There were pyramidal rows of tall candles here on either side, each masked with a little silken hood; below, in the centre, a shelf-like projection supported what seemed a massive, carved casket, and in the beautiful intricacies of this, and the receding canopy of delicate ornamentation which depended above it, the dominant color was white, deepening away in its shadows, by tenderly minute gradations, to the tints which ruled the rest of the room.
Celia lighted some of the high, thick tapers in these candelabra, and opened the top of the casket. Theron saw with surprise that she had uncovered the keyboard of a piano. He viewed with much greater amazement her next proceeding-which was to put a cigarette between her lips, and, bending over one of the candles with it for an instant, turn to him with a filmy, opalescent veil of smoke above her head.
"Make yourself comfortable anywhere," she said, with a gesture which comprehended all the divans and pillows in the place. "Will you smoke?"
"I have never tried since I was a little boy," said Theron, "but I think I could. If you don't mind, I should like to see."
Lounging at his ease on the oriental couch, Theron experimented cautiously upon the unaccustomed tobacco, and looked at Celia with what he felt to be the confident quiet of a man of the world. She had thrown aside her hat, and in doing so had half released some of the heavy strands of hair coiled at the back of her head. His glance instinctively rested upon this wonderful hair of hers. There was no mistaking the sudden fascination its disorder had for his eye.
She stood before him with the cigarette poised daintily between thumb and finger of a shapely hand, and smiled comprehendingly down on her guest.
"I suffered the horrors of the damned with this hair of mine when I was a child," she said. "I daresay all children have a taste for persecuting red-heads; but it's a specialty with Irish children. They get hold somehow of an ancient national superstition, or legend, that red hair was brought into Ireland by the Danes. It's been a term of reproach with us since Brian Boru's time to call a child a Dane. I used to be pursued and baited with it every day of my life, until the one dream of my ambition was to get old enough to be a Sister of Charity, so that I might hide my hair under one of their big beastly white linen caps. I've got rather away from that ideal since, I'm afraid," she added, with a droll downward curl of her lip.
"Your hair is very beautiful," said Theron, in the calm tone of a connoisseur.
"I like it myself," Celia admitted, and blew a little smoke-ring toward him. "I've made this whole room to match it. The colors, I mean," she explained, in deference to his uplifted brows. "Between us, we make up what Whistler would call a symphony. That reminds me-I was going to play for you. Let me finish the cigarette first."
Theron felt grateful for her reticence about the fact that he had laid his own aside. "I have never seen a room at all like this," he remarked. "You are right; it does fit you perfectly."
She nodded her sense of his appreciation. "It is what I like," she said. "It expresses ME. I will not have anything about me-or anybody either-that I don't like. I suppose if an old Greek could see it, it would make him sick, but it represents what I mean by being a Greek. It is as near as an Irishman can get to it."
"I remember your puzzling me by saying that you were a Greek."
Celia laughed, and tossed the cigarette-end away. "I'd puzzle you more, I'm afraid, if I tried to explain to you what I really meant by it. I divide people up into two classes, you know-Greeks and Jews. Once you get hold of that principle, all other divisions and classifications, such as by race or language or nationality, seem pure foolishness. It is the only true division there is. It is just as true among negroes or wild Indians who never heard of Greece or Jerusalem, as it is among white folks. That is the beauty of it. It works everywhere, always."
"Try it on me," urged Theron, with a twinkling eye. "Which am I?"
"Both," said the girl, with a merry nod of the head. "But now I'll play. I told you you were to hear Chopin. I prescribe him for you. He is the Greekiest of the Greeks. THERE was a nation where all the people were artists, where everybody was an intellectual aristocrat, where the Philistine was as unknown, as extinct, as the dodo. Chopin might have written his music for them."
"I am interested in Shopang," put in Theron, suddenly recalling Sister Soulsby's confidences as to the source of her tunes. "He lived with-what's his name-George something. We were speaking about him only this afternoon."
Celia looked down into her visitor's face at first inquiringly, then with a latent grin about her lips. "Yes-George something," she said, in a tone which mystified him.
The Rev. Mr. Ware was sitting up, a minute afterward, in a ferment of awakened consciousness that he had never heard the piano played before. After a little, he noiselessly rearranged the cushions, and settled himself again in a recumbent posture. It was beyond his strength to follow that first impulse, and keep his mind abreast with what his ears took in. He sighed and lay back, and surrendered his senses to the mere unthinking charm of it all.
It was the Fourth Prelude that was singing in the air about him-a simple, plaintive strain wandering at will over a surface of steady rhythmic movement underneath, always creeping upward through mysteries of sweetness, always sinking again in cadences of semi-tones. With only a moment's pause, there came the Seventh Waltz-a rich, bold confusion which yet was not confused. Theron's ears dwelt with eager delight upon the chasing medley of swift, tinkling sounds, but it left his thoughts free.
From where he reclined, he turned his head to scrutinize, one by one, the statues in the corners. No doubt they were beautiful-for this was a department in which he was all humility-and one of them, the figure of a broad-browed, stately, though thick-waisted woman, bending slightly forward and with both arms broken off, was decently robed from the hips downward. The others were not robed at all. Theron stared at them with the erratic, rippling jangle of the waltz in his ears, and felt that he possessed a new and disturbing conception of what female emancipation meant in these later days. Roving along the wall, his glance rested again upon the largest of the Virgin pictures-a full-length figure in sweeping draperies, its radiant, aureoled head upturned in rapt adoration, its feet resting on a crescent moon which shone forth in bluish silver through festooned clouds of cherubs. The incongruity between the unashamed statues and this serene incarnation of holy womanhood jarred upon him for the instant. Then his mind went to the piano.
Without a break the waltz had slowed and expanded into a passage of what might be church music, an exquisitely modulated and gently solemn chant, through which a soft, lingering song roved capriciously, forcing the listener to wonder where it was coming out, even while it caressed and soothed to repose.
He looked from the Madonna to Celia. Beyond the carelessly drooping braids and coils of hair which blazed between the candles, he could see the outline of her brow and cheek, the noble contour of her lifted chin and full, modelled throat, all pink as the most delicate rose leaf is pink, against the cool lights of the altar-like wall. The sight convicted him in the court of his own soul as a prurient and mean-minded rustic. In the presence of such a face, of such music, there ceased to be any such thing as nudity, and statues no more needed clothes than did those slow, deep, magnificent chords which came now, gravely accumulating their spell upon him.
"It is all singing!" the player called out to him over her shoulder, in a minute of rest. "That is what Chopin does-he sings!"
She began, with an effect of thinking of something else, the Sixth Nocturne, and Theron at first thought she was not playing anything in particular, so deliberately, haltingly, did the chain of charm unwind itself into sequence. Then it came closer to him than the others had done. The dreamy, wistful, meditative beauty of it all at once oppressed and inspired him. He saw Celia's shoulders sway under the impulse of the RUBATO license-the privilege to invest each measure with the stress of the whole, to loiter, to weep, to run and laugh at will-and the music she made spoke to him as with a human voice. There was the wooing sense of roses and moonlight, of perfumes, white skins, alluring languorous eyes, and then-
"You know this part, of course," he heard her say.
On the instant they had stepped from the dark, scented, starlit garden, where the nightingale sang, into a great cathedral. A sombre and lofty anthem arose, and filled the place with the splendor of such dignified pomp of harmony and such suggestions of measureless choral power and authority that Theron sat abruptly up, then was drawn resistlessly to his feet. He stood motionless in the strange room, feeling most of all that one should kneel to hear such music.
"This you'll know too-the funeral march from the Second Sonata," she was saying, before he realized that the end of the other had come. He sank upon the divan again, bending forward and clasping his hands tight around his knees. His heart beat furiously as he listened to the weird, mediaeval processional, with its wild, clashing chords held down in the bondage of an orderly sadness. There was a propelling motion in the thing-a sense of being borne bodily along-which affected him like dizziness. He breathed hard through the robust portions of stern, vigorous noise, and rocked himself to and fro when, as rosy morn breaks upon a storm-swept night, the drums are silenced for the sweet, comforting strain of solitary melody. The clanging minor harmonies into which the march relapses came to their abrupt end. Theron rose once more, and moved with a hesitating step to the piano.
"I want to rest a little," he said, with his hand on her shoulder.
"Whew! so do I," exclaimed Celia, letting her hands fall with an exaggerated gesture of weariness. "The sonatas take it out of one! They are hideously difficult, you know. They are rarely played."
"I didn't know," remarked Theron. She seemed not to mind his hand upon her shoulder, and he kept it there. "I didn't know anything about music at all. What I do know now is that-that this evening is an event in my life."
She looked up at him and smiled. He read unsuspected tendernesses and tolerances of friendship in the depths of her eyes, which emboldened him to stir the fingers of that audacious hand in a lingering, caressing trill upon her shoulder. The movement was of the faintest, but having ventured it, he drew his hand abruptly away.
"You are getting on," she said to him. There was an enigmatic twinkle in the smile with which she continued to regard him. "We are Hellenizing you at a great rate."
A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She shifted her eyes toward vacancy with a swift, abstracted glance, reflected for a moment, then let a sparkling half-wink and the dimpling beginnings of an almost roguish smile mark her assent to the conceit, whatever it might be.
"I will be with you in a moment," he heard her say; and while the words were still in his ears she had risen and passed out of sight through the broad, open doorway to the right. The looped curtains fell together behind her. Presently a mellow light spread over their delicately translucent surface-a creamy, undulating radiance which gave the effect of moving about among the myriad folds of the silk.
Theron gazed at these curtains for a little, then straightened his shoulders with a gesture of decision, and, turning on his heel, went over and examined the statues in the further corners minutely.
"If you would like some more, I will play you the Berceuse now."
Her voice came to him with a delicious shock. He wheeled round and beheld her standing at the piano, with one hand resting, palm upward, on the keys. She was facing him. Her tall form was robed now in some shapeless, clinging drapery, lustrous and creamy and exquisitely soft, like the curtains. The wonderful hair hung free and luxuriant about her neck and shoulders, and glowed with an intensity of fiery color which made all the other hues of the room pale and vague. A fillet of faint, sky-like blue drew a gracious span through the flame of red above her temples, and from this there rose the gleam of jewels. Her head inclined gently, gravely, toward him-with the posture of that armless woman in marble he had been studying-and her brown eyes, regarding him from the shadows, emitted light.
"It is a lullaby-the only one he wrote," she said, as Theron, pale-faced and with tightened lips, approached her. "No-you mustn't stand there," she added, sinking into the seat before the instrument; "go back and sit where you were."
The most perfect of lullabies, with its swaying abandonment to cooing rhythm, ever and again rising in ripples to the point of insisting on something, one knows not what, and then rocking, melting away once more, passed, so to speak, over Theron's head. He leaned back upon the cushions, and watched the white, rounded forearm which the falling folds of this strange, statue-like drapery made bare.
There was more that appealed to his mood in the Third Ballade. It seemed to him that there were words going along with it-incoherent and impulsive yet very earnest words, appealing to him in strenuous argument and persuasion. Each time he almost knew what they said, and strained after their meaning with a passionate desire, and then there would come a kind of cuckoo call, and everything would swing dancing off again into a mockery of inconsequence.
Upon the silence there fell the pure, liquid, mellifluous melody of a soft-throated woman singing to her lover.
"It is like Heine-simply a love-poem," said the girl, over her shoulder.
Theron followed now with all his senses, as she carried the Ninth Nocturne onward. The stormy passage, which she banged finely forth, was in truth a lover's quarrel; and then the mild, placid flow of sweet harmonies into which the furore sank, dying languorously away upon a silence all alive with tender memories of sound-was that not also a part of love?
They sat motionless through a minute-the man on the divan, the girl at the piano-and Theron listened for what he felt must be the audible thumping of his heart.
Then, throwing back her head, with upturned face, Celia began what she had withheld for the last-the Sixteenth Mazurka. This strange foreign thing she played with her eyes closed, her head tilted obliquely so that Theron could see the rose-tinted, beautiful countenance, framed as if asleep in the billowing luxuriance of unloosed auburn hair. He fancied her beholding visions as she wrought the music-visions full of barbaric color and romantic forms. As his mind swam along with the gliding, tricksy phantom of a tune, it seemed as if he too could see these visions-as if he gazed at them through her eyes.
It could not be helped. He lifted himself noiselessly to his feet, and stole with caution toward her. He would hear the rest of this weird, voluptuous fantasy standing thus, so close behind her that he could look down upon her full, uplifted lace-so close that, if she moved, that glowing nimbus of hair would touch him.
There had been some curious and awkward pauses in this last piece, which Theron, by some side cerebration, had put down to her not watching what her fingers did. There came another of these pauses now-an odd, unaccountable halt in what seemed the middle of everything. He stared intently down upon her statuesque, dreaming face during the hush, and caught his breath as he waited. There fell at last a few faltering ascending notes, making a half-finished strain, and then again there was silence.
Celia opened her eyes, and poured a direct, deep gaze into the face above hers. Its pale lips were parted in suspense, and the color had faded from its cheeks.
"That is the end," she said, and, with a turn of her lithe body, stood swiftly up, even while the echoes of the broken melody seemed panting in the air about her for completion.
Theron put his hands to his face, and pressed them tightly against eyes and brow for an instant. Then, throwing them aside with an expansive downward sweep of the arms, and holding them clenched, he returned Celia's glance. It was as if he had never looked into a woman's eyes before.
"It CAN'T be the end!" he heard himself saying, in a low voice charged with deep significance. He held her gaze in the grasp of his with implacable tenacity. There was a trouble about breathing, and the mosaic floor seemed to stir under his feet. He clung defiantly to the one idea of not releasing her eyes.
"How COULD it be the end?" he demanded, lifting an uncertain hand to his breast as he spoke, and spreading it there as if to control the tumultuous fluttering of his heart. "Things don't end that way!"
A sharp, blinding spasm of giddiness closed upon and shook him, while the brave words were on his lips. He blinked and tottered under it, as it passed, and then backed humbly to his divan and sat down, gasping a little, and patting his hand on his heart. There was fright written all over his whitened face.
"We-we forgot that I am a sick man," he said feebly, answering Celia's look of surprised inquiry with a forced, wan smile. "I was afraid my heart had gone wrong."
She scrutinized him for a further moment, with growing reassurance in her air. Then, piling up the pillows and cushions behind him for support, for all the world like a big sister again, she stepped into the inner room, and returned with a flagon of quaint shape and a tiny glass. She poured this latter full to the brim of a thick yellowish, aromatic liquid, and gave it him to drink.
"This Benedictine is all I happen to have," she said. "Swallow it down. It will do you good."
Theron obeyed her. It brought tears to his eyes; but, upon reflection, it was grateful and warming. He did feel better almost immediately. A great wave of comfort seemed to enfold him as he settled himself back on the divan. For that one flashing instant he had thought that he was dying. He drew a long grateful breath of relief, and smiled his content.
Celia had seated herself beside him, a little away. She sat with her head against the wall, and one foot curled under her, and almost faced him.
"I dare say we forced the pace a little," she remarked, after a pause, looking down at the floor, with the puckers of a ruminating amusement playing in the corners of her mouth. "It doesn't do for a man to get to be a Greek all of a sudden. He must work along up to it gradually."
He remembered the music. "Oh, if I only knew how to tell you," he murmured ecstatically, "what a revelation your playing has been to me! I had never imagined anything like it. I shall think of it to my dying day."
He began to remember as well the spirit that was in the air when the music ended. The details of what he had felt and said rose vaguely in his mind. Pondering them, his eye roved past Celia's white-robed figure to the broad, open doorway beyond. The curtains behind which she had disappeared were again parted and fastened back. A dim light was burning within, out of sight, and its faint illumination disclosed a room filled with white marbles, white silks, white draperies of varying sorts, which shaped themselves, as he looked, into the canopy and trappings of an extravagantly over-sized and sumptuous bed. He looked away again.
"I wish you would tell me what you really mean by that Greek idea of yours," he said with the abruptness of confusion.
Celia did not display much enthusiasm in the tone of her answer. "Oh," she said almost indifferently, "lots of things. Absolute freedom from moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition that beauty is the only thing in life that is worth while. The courage to kick out of one's life everything that isn't worth while; and so on."
"But," said Theron, watching the mingled delicacy and power of the bared arm and the shapely grace of the hand which she had lifted to her face, "I am going to get you to teach it ALL to me." The memories began crowding in upon him now, and the baffling note upon which the mazurka had stopped short chimed like a tuning-fork in his ears. "I want to be a Greek myself, if you're one. I want to get as close to you-to your ideal, that is, as I can. You open up to me a whole world that I had not even dreamed existed. We swore our friendship long ago, you know: and now, after tonight-you and the music have decided me. I am going to put the things out of MY life that are not worthwhile. Only you must help me; you must tell me how to begin."
He looked up as he spoke, to enforce the almost tender entreaty of his words. The spectacle of a yawn, only fractionally concealed behind those talented fingers, chilled his soft speech, and sent a flush over his face. He rose on the instant.
Celia was nothing abashed at his discovery. She laughed gayly in confession of her fault, and held her hand out to let him help her disentangle her foot from her draperies, and get off the divan. It seemed to be her meaning that he should continue holding her hand after she was also standing.
"You forgive me, don't you?" she urged smilingly. "Chopin always first excites me, then sends me to sleep. You see how YOU sleep tonight!"
The brown, velvety eyes rested upon him, from under their heavy lids, with a languorous kindliness. Her warm, large palm clasped his in frank liking.
"I don't want to sleep at all," Mr. Ware was impelled to say. "I want to lie awake and think about-about everything all over again."
She smiled drowsily. "And you're sure you feel strong enough to walk home?"
"Yes," he replied, with a lingering dilatory note, which deepened upon reflection into a sigh. "Oh, yes."
He followed her and her candle down the magnificent stairway again. She blew the light out in the hall, and, opening the front door, stood with him for a silent moment on the threshold. Then they shook hands once more, and with a whispered good-night, parted.
Celia, returning to the blue and yellow room, lighted a cigarette and helped herself to some Benedictine in the glass which Theron had used. She looked meditatively at this little glass for a moment, turning it about in her fingers with a smile. The smile warmed itself suddenly into a joyous laugh. She tossed the glass aside, and, holding out her flowing skirts with both hands, executed a swinging pirouette in front of the gravely beautiful statue of the armless woman.
CHAPTER XX
It was apparent to the Rev. Theron Ware, from the very first moment of waking next morning, that both he and the world had changed over night. The metamorphosis, in the harsh toils of which he had been laboring blindly so long, was accomplished. He stood forth, so to speak, in a new skin, and looked about him, with perceptions of quite an altered kind, upon what seemed in every way a fresh existence. He lacked even the impulse to turn round and inspect the cocoon from which he had emerged. Let the past bury the past. He had no vestige of interest in it.
The change was not premature. He found himself not in the least confused by it, or frightened. Before he had finished shaving, he knew himself to be easily and comfortably at home in his new state, and master of all its requirements.
It seemed as if Alice, too, recognized that he had become another man, when he went down and took his chair at the breakfast table. They had exchanged no words since their parting in the depot-yard the previous evening-an event now faded off into remote vagueness in Theron's mind. He smiled brilliantly in answer to the furtive, half-sullen, half-curious glance she stole at him, as she brought the dishes in.
"Ah! potatoes warmed up in cream!" he said, with hearty pleasure in his tone. "What a mind-reader you are, to be sure!"
"I'm glad you're feeling so much better," she said briefly, taking her seat.
"Better?" he returned. "I'm a new being!"
She ventured to look him over more freely, upon this assurance. He perceived and catalogued, one by one, the emotions which the small brain was expressing through those shallow blue eyes of hers. She was turning over this, that, and the other hostile thought and childish grievance-most of all she was dallying with the idea of asking him where he had been till after midnight. He smiled affably in the face of this scattering fire of peevish glances, and did not dream of resenting any phase of them all.
"I am going down to Thurston's this morning, and order that piano sent up today," he announced presently, in a casual way.
"Why, Theron, can we afford it?" the wife asked, regarding him with surprise.
"Oh, easily enough," he replied light-heartedly. "You know they've increased my salary."
She shook her head. "No, I didn't. How should I? You don't realize it," she went on, dolefully, "but you're getting so you don't tell me the least thing about your affairs nowadays."
Theron laughed aloud. "You ought to be grateful-such melancholy affairs as mine have been till now," he declared-"that is, if it weren't absurd to think such a thing." Then, more soberly, he explained: "No, my girl, it is you who don't realize. I am carrying big projects in my mind-big, ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great things depend. They no doubt make me seem preoccupied and absent-minded; but it is a wife's part to understand, and make allowances, and not intrude trifles which may throw everything out of gear. Don't think I'm scolding, my girl. I only speak to reassure you and-and help you to comprehend. Of course I know that you wouldn't willingly embarrass my-my career."
"Of course not," responded Alice, dubiously; "but-but-"
"But what? Theron felt compelled by civility to say, though on the instant he reproached himself for the weakness of it.
"Well-I hardly know how to say it," she faltered, "but it was nicer in the old days, before you bothered your head about big projects, and your career, as you call it, and were just a good, earnest, simple young servant of the Lord. Oh, Theron!" she broke forth suddenly, with tearful zeal, "I get sometimes lately almost scared lest you should turn out to be a-a BACKSLIDER!"
The husband sat upright, and hardened his countenance. But yesterday the word would have had in it all sorts of inherited terrors for him. This morning's dawn of a new existence revealed it as merely an empty and stupid epithet.
"These are things not to be said," he admonished her, after a moment's pause, and speaking with carefully measured austerity. "Least of all are they to be said to a clergyman-by his wife."
It was on the tip of Alice's tongue to retort, "Better by his wife than by outsiders!" but she bit her lips, and kept the gibe back. A rebuke of this form and gravity was a novelty in their relations. The fear that it had been merited troubled, even while it did not convince, her mind, and the puzzled apprehension was to be read plainly enough on her face.
Theron, noting it, saw a good deal more behind. Really, it was amazing how much wiser he had grown all at once. He had been married for years, and it was only this morning that he suddenly discovered how a wife ought to be handled. He continued to look sternly away into space for a little. Then his brows relaxed slowly and under the visible influence of melting considerations. He nodded his head, turned toward her abruptly, and broke the silence with labored amiability.
"Come, come-the day began so pleasantly-it was so good to feel well again-let us talk about the piano instead. That is," he added, with an obvious overture to playfulness, "if the thought of having a piano is not too distasteful to you."
Alice yielded almost effusively to his altered mood. They went together into the sitting-room, to measure and decide between the two available spaces which were at their disposal, and he insisted with resolute magnanimity on her settling this question entirely by herself. When at last he mentioned the fact that it was Friday, and he would look over some sermon memoranda before he went out, Alice retired to the kitchen in openly cheerful spirits.
Theron spread some old manuscript sermons before him on his desk, and took down his scribbling-book as well. But there his application flagged, and he surrendered himself instead, chin on hand, to staring out at the rhododendron in the yard. He recalled how he had seen Soulsby patiently studying this identical bush. The notion of Soulsby, not knowing at all how to sing, yet diligently learning those sixths, brought a smile to his mind; and then he seemed to hear Celia calling out over her shoulder, "That's what Chopin does-he sings!" The spirit of that wonderful music came back to him, enfolded him in its wings. It seemed to raise itself up-a palpable barrier between him and all that he had known and felt and done before. That was his new birth-that marvellous night with the piano. The conceit pleased him-not the less because there flashed along with it the thought that it was a poet that had been born. Yes; the former country lout, the narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping about in the dark after silly superstitions, cringing at the scowl of mean Pierces and Winches, was dead. There was an end of him, and good riddance. In his place there had been born a Poet-he spelled the word out now unabashed-a child of light, a lover of beauty and sweet sounds, a recognizable brother to Renan and Chopin-and Celia!
Out of the soothing, tenderly grateful revery, a practical suggestion suddenly took shape. He acted upon it without a moment's delay, getting out his letter-pad, and writing hurriedly-
"Dear Miss Madden,-Life will be more tolerable to me if before nightfall I can know that there is a piano under my roof. Even if it remains dumb, it will be some comfort to have it here and look at it, and imagine how a great master might make it speak.
"Would it be too much to beg you to look in at Thurston's, say at eleven this forenoon, and give me the inestimable benefit of your judgment in selecting an instrument?
"Do not trouble to answer this, for I am leaving home now, but shall call at Thurston's at eleven, and wait.
"Thanking you in anticipation,
"I am-"
Here Theron's fluency came to a sharp halt. There were adverbs enough and to spare on the point of his pen, but the right one was not easy to come at. "Gratefully," "faithfully," "sincerely," "truly"-each in turn struck a false note. He felt himself not quite any of these things. At last he decided to write just the simple word "yours," and then wavered between satisfaction at his boldness, dread lest he had been over-bold, and, worst of the lot, fear that she would not notice it one way or the other-all the while he sealed and addressed the letter, put it carefully in an inner pocket, and got his hat.
There was a moment's hesitation as to notifying the kitchen of his departure. The interests of domestic discipline seemed to point the other way. He walked softly through the hall, and let himself out by the front door without a sound.
Down by the canal bridge he picked out an idle boy to his mind-a lad whose aspect appeared to promise intelligence as a messenger, combined with large impartiality in sectarian matters. He was to have ten cents on his return; and he might report himself to his patron at the bookstore yonder.
Theron was grateful to the old bookseller for remaining at his desk in the rear. There was a tacit compliment in the suggestion that he was not a mere customer, demanding instant attention. Besides, there was no keeping "Thurston's" out of conversations in this place.
Loitering along the shelves, the young minister's eye suddenly found itself arrested by a name on a cover. There were a dozen narrow volumes in uniform binding, huddled together under a cardboard label of "Eminent Women Series." Oddly enough, one of these bore the title "George Sand." Theron saw there must be some mistake, as he took the book down, and opened it. His glance hit by accident upon the name of Chopin. Then he read attentively until almost the stroke of eleven.
"We have to make ourselves acquainted with all sorts of queer phases of life," he explained in self-defence to the old bookseller, then counting out the money for the book from his lean purse. He smiled as he added, "There seems something almost wrong about taking advantage of the clergyman's discount for a life of George Sand."
"I don't know," answered the other, pleasantly. "Guess she wasn't so much different from the rest of 'em-except that she didn't mind appearances. We know about her. We don't know about the others."
"I must hurry," said Theron, turning on his heel. The haste with which he strode out of the store, crossed the street, and made his way toward Thurston's, did not prevent his thinking much upon the astonishing things he had encountered in this book. Their relation to Celia forced itself more and more upon his mind. He could recall the twinkle in her eye, the sub-mockery in her tone, as she commented with that half-contemptuous "Yes-George something!" upon his blundering ignorance. His mortification at having thus exposed his dull rusticity was swallowed up in conjectures as to just what her tolerant familiarity with such things involved. He had never before met a young unmarried woman who would have confessed to him any such knowledge. But then, of course, he had never known a girl who resembled Celia in any other way. He recognized vaguely that he must provide himself with an entire new set of standards by which to measure and comprehend her. But it was for the moment more interesting to wonder what her standards were. Did she object to George Sand's behavior? Or did she sympathize with that sort of thing? Did those statues, and the loose-flowing diaphonous toga and unbound hair, the cigarettes, the fiery liqueur, the deliberately sensuous music-was he to believe that they signified-?
"Good-morning, Mr. Ware. You have managed by a miracle to hit on one of my punctual days," said Celia.
She was standing on the doorstep, at the entrance to the musical department of Thurston's. He had not noticed before the fact that the sun was shining. The full glare of its strong light, enveloping her figure as she stood, and drawing the dazzled eye for relief to the bower of softened color, close beneath her parasol of creamy silk and lace, was what struck him now first of all. It was as if Celia had brought the sun with her.
Theron shook hands with her, and found joy in the perception, that his own hand trembled. He put boldly into words the thought that came to him.
"It was generous of you," he said, "to wait for me out here, where all might delight in the sight of you, instead of squandering the privilege on a handful of clerks inside."
Miss Madden beamed upon him, and nodded approval.
"Alcibiades never turned a prettier compliment," she remarked. They went in together at this, and Theron made a note of the name.
During the ensuing half-hour, the young minister followed about even more humbly than the clerks in Celia's commanding wake. There were a good many pianos in the big show-room overhead, and Theron found himself almost awed by their size and brilliancy of polish, and the thought of the tremendous sum of money they represented altogether. Not so with the organist. She ordered them rolled around this way or that, as if they had been so many checkers on a draught-board. She threw back their covers with the scant ceremony of a dispensary dentist opening paupers' mouths. She exploited their several capacities with masterful hands, not deigning to seat herself, but just slightly bending forward, and sweeping her fingers up and down their keyboards-able, domineering fingers which pounded, tinkled, meditated, assented, condemned, all in a flash, and amid what affected the layman's ears as a hopelessly discordant hubbub.
Theron moved about in the group, nursing her parasol in his arms, and watching her. The exaggerated deference which the clerks and salesmen showed to her as the rich Miss Madden, seemed to him to be mixed with a certain assertion of the claims of good-fellowship on the score of her being a musician. There undoubtedly was a sense of freemasonry between them. They alluded continually in technical terms to matters of which he knew nothing, and were amused at remarks of hers which to him carried no meaning whatever. It was evident that the young men liked her, and that their liking pleased her. It thrilled him to think that she knew he liked her, too, and to recall what abundant proofs she had given that here, also, she had pleasure in the fact. He clung insistently to the memory of these evidences. They helped him to resist a disagreeable tendency to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among these pianoforte experts.
When it was all over, Celia waved the others aside, and talked with Theron. "I suppose you want me to tell you the truth," she said. "There's nothing here really good. It is always much better to buy of the makers direct."
"Do they sell on the instalment plan?" he asked. There was a wistful effect in his voice which caught her attention.
She looked away-out through the window on the street below-for a moment. Then her eyes returned to his, and regarded him with a comforting, friendly, half-motherly glance, recalling for all the world the way Sister Soulsby had looked at him at odd times.
"Oh, you want it at once-I see," she remarked softly. "Well, this Adelberger is the best value for the money."
Mr. Ware followed her finger, and beheld with dismay that it pointed toward the largest instrument in the room-a veritable leviathan among pianos. The price of this had been mentioned as $600. He turned over the fact that this was two-thirds his yearly salary, and found the courage to shake his head.
"It would be too large-much too large-for the room," he explained. "And, besides, it is more than I like to pay-or CAN pay, for that matter." It was pitiful to be explaining such details, but there was no help for it.
They picked out a smaller one, which Celia said was at least of fair quality. "Now leave all the bargaining to me," she adjured him. "These prices that they talk about in the piano trade are all in the air. There are tremendous discounts, if one knows how to insist upon them. All you have to do is to tell them to send it to your house-you wanted it today, you said?"
"Yes-in memory of yesterday," he murmured.
She herself gave the directions, and Thurston's people, now all salesmen again, bowed grateful acquiescence. Then she sailed regally across the room and down the stairs, drawing Theron in her train. The hirelings made salaams to him as well; it would have been impossible to interpose anything so trivial and squalid as talk about terms and dates of payment.
"I am ever so much obliged to you," he said fervently, in the comparative solitude of the lower floor. She had paused to look at something in the book-department.
"Of course I was entirely at your service; don't mention it," she replied, reaching forth her hand in an absent way for her parasol.
He held up instead the volume he had purchased. "Guess what that is! You never would guess in this wide world!" His manner was surcharged with a sense of the surreptitious.
"Well, then, there's no good trying, IS there?" commented Celia, her glance roving again toward the shelves.
"It is a life of George Sand," whispered Theron. "I've been reading it this morning-all the Chopin part-while I was waiting for you."
To his surprise, there was an apparently displeased contraction of her brows as he made this revelation. For the instant, a dreadful fear of having offended her seized upon and sickened him. But then her face cleared, as by magic. She smiled, and let her eyes twinkle in laughter at him, and lifted a forefinger in the most winning mockery of admonition.
"Naughty! naughty!" she murmured back, with a roguishly solemn wink.
He had no response ready for this, but mutely handed her the parasol. The situation had suddenly grown too confused for words, or even sequent thoughts. Uppermost across the hurly-burly of his mind there scudded the singular reflection that he should never hear her play on that new piano of his. Even as it flashed by out of sight, he recognized it for one of the griefs of his life; and the darkness which followed seemed nothing but a revolt against the idea of having a piano at all. He would countermand the order. He would-but she was speaking again.
They had strolled toward the door, and her voice was as placidly conventional as if the talk had never strayed from the subject of pianos. Theron with an effort pulled himself together, and laid hold of her words.
"I suppose you will be going the other way," she was saying. "I shall have to be at the church all day. We have just got a new Mass over from Vienna, and I'm head over heels in work at it. I can have Father Forbes to myself today, too. That bear of a doctor has got the rheumatism, and can't come out of his cave, thank Heaven!"
And then she was receding from view, up the sunlit, busy sidewalk, and Theron, standing on the doorstep, ruefully rubbed his chin. She had said he was going the other way, and, after a little pause, he made her words good, though each step he took seemed all in despite of his personal inclinations. Some of the passers-by bowed to him, and one or two paused as if to shake hands and exchange greetings. He nodded responses mechanically, but did not stop. It was as if he feared to interrupt the process of lifting his reluctant feet and propelling them forward, lest they should wheel and scuttle off in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER XXI
Deliberate as his progress was, the diminishing number of store-fronts along the sidewalk, and the increasing proportion of picket-fences enclosing domestic lawns, forced upon Theron's attention the fact that he was nearing home. It was a trifle past the hour for his midday meal. He was not in the least hungry; still less did he feel any desire just now to sit about in that library living-room of his. Why should he go home at all? There was no reason whatever-save that Alice would be expecting him. Upon reflection, that hardly amounted to a reason. Wives, with their limited grasp of the realities of life, were always expecting their husbands to do things which it turned out not to be feasible for them to do. The customary male animal spent a considerable part of his life in explaining to his mate why it had been necessary to disappoint or upset her little plans for his comings and goings. It was in the very nature of things that it should be so.
Sustained by these considerations, Mr. Ware slackened his steps, then halted irresolutely, and after a minute's hesitation, entered the small temperance restaurant before which, as by intuition, he had paused. The elderly woman who placed on the tiny table before him the tea and rolls he ordered, was entirely unknown to him, he felt sure, yet none the less she smiled at him, and spoke almost familiarly-"I suppose Mrs. Ware is at the seaside, and you are keeping bachelor's hall?"
"Not quite that," he responded stiffly, and hurried through the meagre and distasteful repast, to avoid any further conversation.
There was an idea underlying her remark, however, which recurred to him when he had paid his ten cents and got out on the street again. There was something interesting in the thought of Alice at the seaside. Neither of them had ever laid eyes on salt water, but Theron took for granted the most extravagant landsman's conception of its curative and invigorating powers. It was apparent to him that he was going to pay much greater attention to Alice's happiness and well-being in the future than he had latterly done. He had bought her, this very day, a superb new piano. He was going to simply insist on her having a hired girl. And this seaside notion-why, that was best of all.
His fancy built up pleasant visions of her feasting her delighted eyes upon the marvel of a great ocean storm, or roaming along a beach strewn with wonderful marine shells, exhibiting an innocent joy in their beauty. The fresh sea-breeze blew through her hair, as he saw her in mind's eye, and brought the hardy flush of health back upon her rather pallid cheeks. He was prepared already hardly to know her, so robust and revivified would she have become, by the time he went down to the depot to meet her on her return.
For his imagination stopped short of seeing himself at the seaside. It sketched instead pictures of whole weeks of solitary academic calm, alone with his books and his thoughts. The facts that he had no books, and that nobody dreamed of interfering with his thoughts, subordinated themselves humbly to his mood. The prospect, as he mused fondly upon it, expanded to embrace the priest's and the doctor's libraries; the thoughts which he longed to be alone with involved close communion with their thoughts. It could not but prove a season of immense mental stimulation and ethical broadening. It would have its lofty poetic and artistic side as well; the languorous melodies of Chopin stole over his revery, as he dwelt upon these things, and soft azure and golden lights modelled forth the exquisite outlines of tall marble forms.
He opened the gate leading to Dr. Ledsmar's house. His walk had brought him quite out of the town, and up, by a broad main highway which yet took on all sorts of sylvan charms, to a commanding site on the hillside. Below, in the valley, lay Octavius, at one end half-hidden in factory smoke, at the other, where narrow bands of water gleamed upon the surface of a broad plain piled symmetrically with lumber, presenting an oddly incongruous suggestion of forest odors and the simplicity of the wilderness. In the middle distance, on gradually rising ground, stretched a wide belt of dense, artificial foliage, peeping through which tiled turrets and ornamented chimneys marked the polite residences of those who, though they neither stoked the furnace fires to the west, nor sawed the lumber on the east, lived in purple and fine linen from the profits of this toil. Nearer at hand, pastures with grazing cows on the one side of the road, and the nigh, weather-stained board fence of the race-course on the other, completed the jumble of primitive rusticity and urban complications characterizing the whole picture.
Dr. Ledsmar's house, toward which Theron's impulses had been secretly leading him ever since Celia's parting remark about the rheumatism, was of that spacious and satisfying order of old-fashioned houses which men of leisure and means built for themselves while the early traditions of a sparse and contented homogeneous population were still strong in the Republic. There was a hospitable look about its wide veranda, its broad, low bulk, and its big, double front door, which did not fit at all with the sketch of a man-hating recluse that the doctor had drawn of himself.
Theron had prepared his mind for the effect of being admitted by a Chinaman, and was taken somewhat aback when the door was opened by the doctor himself. His reception was pleasant enough, almost cordial, but the sense of awkwardness followed him into his host's inner room and rested heavily upon his opening speech.
"I heard, quite by accident, that you were ill," he said, laying aside his hat.
"It's nothing at all," replied Ledsmar. "Merely a stiff shoulder that I wear from time to time in memory of my father. It ought to be quite gone by nightfall. It was good of you to come, all the same. Sit down if you can find a chair. As usual, we are littered up to our eyes here. That's it-throw those things on the floor."
Mr. Ware carefully deposited an armful of pamphlets on the rug at his feet, and sat down. Litter was indeed the word for what he saw about him. Bookcases, chairs, tables, the corners of the floor, were all buried deep under disorderly strata of papers, diagrams, and opened books. One could hardly walk about without treading on them. The dust which danced up into the bar of sunshine streaming in from the window, as the doctor stepped across to another chair, gave Theron new ideas about the value of Chinese servants.
"I must thank you, first of all, doctor," he began, "for your kindness in coming when I was ill. 'I was sick, and ye visited me.'"
"You mustn't think of it that way," said Ledsmar; "your friend came for me, and of course I went; and gladly too. There was nothing that I could do, or that anybody could do. Very interesting man, that friend of yours. And his wife, too-both quite out of the common. I don't know when I've seen two such really genuine people. I should like to have known more of them. Are they still here?"
"They went yesterday," Theron replied. His earlier shyness had worn off, and he felt comfortably at his ease. "I don't know," he went on, "that the word 'genuine' is just what would have occurred to me to describe the Soulsbys. They are very interesting people, as you say-MOST interesting-and there was a time, I dare say, when I should have believed in their sincerity. But of course I saw them and their performance from the inside-like one on the stage of a theatre, you know, instead of in the audience, and-well, I understand things better than I used to."
The doctor looked over his spectacles at him with a suggestion of inquiry in his glance, and Theron continued: "I had several long talks with her; she told me very frankly the whole story of her life-and and it was decidedly queer, I can assure you! I may say to you-you will understand what I mean-that since my talk with you, and the books you lent me, I see many things differently. Indeed, when I think upon it sometimes my old state of mind seems quite incredible to me. I can use no word for my new state short of illumination."
Dr. Ledsmar continued to regard his guest with that calm, interrogatory scrutiny of his. He did not seem disposed to take up the great issue of illumination. "I suppose," he said after a little, "no woman can come in contact with a priest for any length of time WITHOUT telling him the 'story of her life,' as you call it. They all do it. The thing amounts to a law."
The young minister's veins responded with a pleasurable thrill to the use of the word "priest" in obvious allusion to himself. "Perhaps in fairness I ought to explain," he said, "that in her case it was only done in the course of a long talk about myself. I might say that it was by way of kindly warning to me. She saw how I had become unsettled in many-many of my former views-and she was nervous lest this should lead me to-to-"
"To throw up the priesthood," the doctor interposed upon his hesitation. "Yes, I know the tribe. Why, my dear sir, your entire profession would have perished from the memory of mankind, if it hadn't been for women. It is a very curious subject. Lots of thinkers have dipped into it, but no one has gone resolutely in with a search-light and exploited the whole thing. Our boys, for instance, traverse in their younger years all the stages of the childhood of the race. They have terrifying dreams of awful monsters and giant animals of which they have never so much as heard in their waking hours; they pass through the lust for digging caves, building fires, sleeping out in the woods, hunting with bows and arrows-all remote ancestral impulses; they play games with stones, marbles, and so on at regular stated periods of the year which they instinctively know, just as they were played in the Bronze Age, and heaven only knows how much earlier. But the boy goes through all this, and leaves it behind him-so completely that the grown man feels himself more a stranger among boys of his own place who are thinking and doing precisely the things he thought and did a few years before, than he would among Kurds or Esquimaux. But the woman is totally different. She is infinitely more precocious as a girl. At an age when her slow brother is still stubbing along somewhere in the neolithic period, she has flown way ahead to a kind of mediaeval stage, or dawn of mediaevalism, which is peculiarly her own. Having got there, she stays there; she dies there. The boy passes her, as the tortoise did the hare. He goes on, if he is a philosopher, and lets her remain in the dark ages, where she belongs. If he happens to be a fool, which is customary, he stops and hangs around in her vicinity."
Theron smiled. "We priests," he said, and paused again to enjoy the words-"I suppose I oughtn't to inquire too closely just where we belong in the procession."
"We are considering the question impersonally," said the doctor. "First of all, what you regard as religion is especially calculated to attract women. They remain as superstitious today, down in the marrow of their bones, as they were ten thousand years ago. Even the cleverest of them are secretly afraid of omens, and respect auguries. Think of the broadest women you know. One of them will throw salt over her shoulder if she spills it. Another drinks money from her cup by skimming the bubbles in a spoon. Another forecasts her future by the arrangement of tea-grounds. They make the constituency to which an institution based on mysteries, miracles, and the supernatural generally, would naturally appeal. Secondly, there is the personality of the priest."
"Yes," assented Ware. There rose up before him, on the instant, the graceful, portly figure and strong, comely face of Father Forbes.
"Women are not a metaphysical people. They do not easily follow abstractions. They want their dogmas and religious sentiments embodied in a man, just as they do their romantic fancies. Of course you Protestants, with your married clergy, see less of the effects of this than celibates do, but even with you there is a great deal in it. Why, the very institution of celibacy itself was forced upon the early Christian Church by the scandal of rich Roman ladies loading bishops and handsome priests with fabulous gifts until the passion for currying favor with women of wealth, and marrying them or wheedling their fortunes from them, debauched the whole priesthood. You should read your Jerome."
"I will-certainly," said the listener, resolving to remember the name and refer it to the old bookseller.
"Well, whatever laws one sect or another makes, the woman's attitude toward the priest survives. She desires to see him surrounded by flower-pots and candles, to have him smelling of musk. She would like to curl his hair, and weave garlands in it. Although she is not learned enough to have ever heard of such things, she intuitively feels in his presence a sort of backwash of the old pagan sensuality and lascivious mysticism which enveloped the priesthood in Greek and Roman days. Ugh! It makes one sick!"
Dr. Ledsmar rose, as he spoke, and dismissed the topic with a dry little laugh. "Come, let me show you round a bit," he said. "My shoulder is easier walking than sitting."
"Have you never written a book yourself?" asked Theron, getting to his feet.
"I have a thing on serpent-worship," the scientist replied-"written years ago."
"I can't tell you how I should enjoy reading it," urged the other.
The doctor laughed again. "You'll have to learn German, then, I 'm afraid. It is still in circulation in Germany, I believe, on its merits as a serious book. I haven't a copy of the edition in English. THAT was all exhausted by collectors who bought it for its supposed obscenity, like Burton's 'Arabian Nights.' Come this way, and I will show you my laboratory."
They moved out of the room, and through a passage, Ledsmar talking as he led the way. "I took up that subject, when I was at college, by a curious chance. I kept a young monkey in my rooms, which had been born in captivity. I brought home from a beer hall-it was in Germany-some pretzels one night, and tossed one toward the monkey. He jumped toward it, then screamed and ran back shuddering with fright. I couldn't understand it at first. Then I saw that the curled pretzel, lying there on the floor, was very like a little coiled-up snake. The monkey had never seen a snake, but it was in his blood to be afraid of one. That incident changed my whole life for me. Up to that evening, I had intended to be a lawyer."
Theron did not feel sure that he had understood the point of the anecdote. He looked now, without much interest, at some dark little tanks containing thick water, a row of small glass cases with adders and other lesser reptiles inside, and a general collection of boxes, jars, and similar receptacles connected with the doctor's pursuits. Further on was a smaller chamber, with a big empty furnace, and shelves bearing bottles and apparatus like a drugstore.
It was pleasanter in the conservatory-a low, spacious structure with broad pathways between the plants, and an awning over the sunny side of the roof. The plants were mostly orchids, he learned. He had read of them, but never seen any before. No doubt they were curious; but he discovered nothing to justify the great fuss made about them. The heat grew oppressive inside, and he was glad to emerge into the garden. He paused under the grateful shade of a vine-clad trellis, took off his hat, and looked about him with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed old-fashioned and natural and delightfully free from pretence in the big, overgrown field of flowers and shrubs.
Theron recalled with some surprise Celia's indictment of the doctor as a man with no poetry in his soul. "You must be extremely fond of flowers," he remarked.
Dr. Ledsmar shrugged his well shoulder. "They have their points," he said briefly. "These are all dioecious here. Over beyond are monoecious species. My work is to test the probabilities for or against Darwin's theory that hermaphroditism in plants is a late by-product of these earlier forms."
"And is his theory right?" asked Mr. Ware, with a polite show of interest.
"We may know in the course of three or four hundred years," replied Ledsmar. He looked up into his guest's face with a quizzical half-smile. "That is a very brief period for observation when such a complicated question as sex is involved," he added. "We have been studying the female of our own species for some hundreds of thousands of years, and we haven't arrived at the most elementary rules governing her actions."
They had moved along to a bed of tall plants, the more forward of which were beginning to show bloom. "Here another task will begin next month," the doctor observed. "These are salvias, pentstemons, and antirrhinums, or snapdragons, planted very thick for the purpose. Humble-bees bore holes through their base, to save the labor of climbing in and out of the flowers, and we don't quite know yet why some hive-bees discover and utilize these holes at once, while others never do. It may be merely the old-fogy conservatism of the individual, or there may be a law in it."
These seemed very paltry things for a man of such wisdom to bother his head about. Theron looked, as he was bidden, at the rows of hives shining in the hot sun on a bench along the wall, but offered no comment beyond a casual, "My mother was always going to keep bees, but somehow she never got around to it. They say it pays very well, though."
"The discovery of the reason why no bee will touch the nectar of the EPIPACTIS LATIFOLIA, though it is sweet to our taste, and wasps are greedy for it, WOULD pay," commented the doctor. "Not like a blue rhododendron, in mere money, but in recognition. Lots of men have achieved a half-column in the 'Encyclopedia Britannica' on a smaller basis than that."
They stood now at the end of the garden, before a small, dilapidated summer-house. On the bench inside, facing him, Theron saw a strange recumbent figure stretched at full length, apparently sound asleep, or it might be dead. Looking closer, with a startled surprise, he made out the shaven skull and outlandish garb of a Chinaman. He turned toward his guide in the expectation of a scene.
The doctor had already taken out a note-book and pencil, and was drawing his watch from his pocket. He stepped into the summer-house, and, lifting the Oriental's limp arm, took account of his pulse. Then, with head bowed low, side-wise, he listened for the heart-action. Finally, he somewhat brusquely pushed back one of the Chinaman's eyelids, and made a minute inspection of what the operation disclosed. Returning to the light, he inscribed some notes in his book, put it back in his pocket, and came out. In answer to Theron's marvelling stare, he pointed toward a pipe of odd construction lying on the floor beneath the sleeper.
"This is one of my regular afternoon duties," he explained, again with the whimsical half-smile. "I am increasing his dose monthly by regular stages, and the results promise to be rather remarkable. Heretofore, observations have been made mostly on diseased or morbidly deteriorated subjects. This fellow of mine is strong as an ox, perfectly nourished, and watched over intelligently. He can assimilate opium enough to kill you and me and every other vertebrate creature on the premises, without turning a hair, and he hasn't got even fairly under way yet."
The thing was unpleasant, and the young minister turned away. They walked together up the path toward the house. His mind was full now of the hostile things which Celia had said about the doctor. He had vaguely sympathized with her then, upon no special knowledge of his own. Now he felt that his sentiments were vehemently in accord with hers. The doctor WAS a beast.
And yet-as they moved slowly along through the garden the thought took sudden shape in his mind-it would be only justice for him to get also the doctor's opinion of Celia. Even while they offended and repelled him, he could not close his eyes to the fact that the doctor's experiments and occupations were those of a patient and exact man of science-a philosopher. And what he had said about women-there was certainly a great deal of acumen and shrewd observation in that. If he would only say what he really thought about Celia, and about her relations with the priest! Yes, Theron recognized now there was nothing else that he so much needed light upon as those puzzling ties between Celia and Father Forbes.
He paused, with a simulated curiosity, about one of the flower-beds. "Speaking of women and religion"-he began, in as casual a tone as he could command-"I notice curiously enough in my own case, that as I develop in what you may call the-the other direction, my wife, who formerly was not especially devote, is being strongly attracted by the most unthinking and hysterical side of-of our church system."
The doctor looked at him, nodded, and stooped to nip some buds from a stalk in the bed.
"And another case," Theron went on-"of course it was all so new and strange to me-but the position which Miss Madden seems to occupy about the Catholic Church here-I suppose you had her in mind when you spoke."
Ledsmar stood up. "My mind has better things to busy itself with than mad asses of that description," he replied. "She is not worth talking about-a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness. If she were even a type, she might be worth considering; but she is simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money. Her father is a decent man. He ought to have her whipped."
Mr. Ware drew himself erect, as he listened to these outrageous words. It would be unmanly, he felt, to allow such comments upon an absent friend to pass unrebuked. Yet there was the courtesy due to a host to be considered. His mind, fluttering between these two extremes, alighted abruptly upon a compromise. He would speak so as to show his disapproval, yet not so as to prevent his finding out what he wanted to know. The desire to hear Ledsmar talk about Celia and the priest seemed now to have possessed him for a long time, to have dictated his unpremeditated visit out here, to have been growing in intensity all the while he pretended to be interested in orchids and bees and the drugged Chinaman. It tugged passionately at his self-control as he spoke.
"I cannot in the least assent to your characterization of the lady," he began with rhetorical dignity.
"Bless me!" interposed the doctor, with deceptive cheerfulness, "that is not required of you at all. It is a strictly personal opinion, offered merely as a contribution to the general sum of hypotheses."
"But," Theron went on, feeling his way, "of course, I gathered that evening that you had prejudices in the matter; but these are rather apart from the point I had in view. We were speaking, you will remember, of the traditional attitude of women toward priests-wanting to curl their hair and put flowers in it, you know, and that suggested to me some individual illustrations, and it occurred to me to wonder just what were the relations between Miss Madden and-and Father Forbes. She said this morning, for instance-I happened to meet her, quite by accident-that she was going to the church to practise a new piece, and that she could have Father Forbes to herself all day. Now that would be quite an impossible remark in our-that is, in any Protestant circles-and purely as a matter of comparison, I was curious to ask you just how much there was in it. I ask you, because going there so much you have had exceptional opportunities for-"
A sharp exclamation from his companion interrupted the clergyman's hesitating monologue. It began like a high-pitched, violent word, but dwindled suddenly into a groan of pain. The doctor's face, too, which had on the flash of Theron's turning seemed given over to unmixed anger, took on an expression of bodily suffering instead.
"My shoulder has grown all at once excessively painful," he said hastily. "I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me, Mr. Ware."
Carrying the afflicted side with ostentatious caution, he led the way without ado round the house to the front gate on the road. He had put his left hand under his coat to press it against his aching shoulder, and his right hung palpably helpless. This rendered it impossible for him to shake hands with his guest in parting.
"You're sure there's nothing I can do," said Theron, lingering on the outer side of the gate. "I used to rub my father's shoulders and back; I'd gladly-"
"Oh, not for worlds!" groaned the doctor. His anguish was so impressive that Theron, as he walked down the road, quite missed the fact that there had been no invitation to come again.
Dr. Ledsmar stood for a minute or two, his gaze meditatively following the retreating figure. Then he went in, opening the front door with his right hand, and carrying himself once more as if there were no such thing as rheumatism in the world. He wandered on through the hall into the laboratory, and stopped in front of the row of little tanks full of water.
Some deliberation was involved in whatever his purpose might be, for he looked from one tank to another with a pondering, dilatory gaze. At last he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and drew forth a long, slim, yellowish-green lizard, with a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil head. The reptile squirmed and doubled itself backward around his wrist, darting out and in with dizzy swiftness its tiny forked tongue.
The doctor held the thing up to the light, and, scrutinizing it through his spectacles, nodded his head in sedate approval. A grim smile curled in his beard.
"Yes, you are the type," he murmured to it, with evident enjoyment in the conceit. "Your name isn't Johnny any more. It's the Rev. Theron Ware."
CHAPTER XXII
The annual camp-meeting of the combined Methodist districts of Octavius and Thessaly was held this year in the second half of September, a little later than usual. Of the nine days devoted to this curious survival of primitive Wesleyanism, the fifth fell upon a Saturday. On the noon of that day the Rev. Theron Ware escaped for some hours from the burden of work and incessant observation which he shared with twenty other preachers, and walked alone in the woods.
The scene upon which he turned his back was one worth looking at. A spacious, irregularly defined clearing in the forest lay level as a tennis-court, under the soft haze of autumn sunlight. In the centre was a large, roughly constructed frame building, untouched by paint, but stained and weather-beaten with time. Behind it were some lines of horse-sheds, and still further on in that direction, where the trees began, the eye caught fragmentary glimpses of low roofs and the fronts of tiny cottages, withdrawn from full view among the saplings and underbrush. At the other side of the clearing, fully fourscore tents were pitched, some gray and mended, others dazzlingly white in their newness. The more remote of these tents fell into an orderly arrangement of semi-circular form, facing that part of the engirdling woods where the trees were largest, and their canopy of overhanging foliage was lifted highest from the ground. Inside this half-ring of tents were many rounded rows of benches, which followed in narrowing lines the idea of an amphitheatre cut in two. In the centre, just under the edge of the roof of boughs, rose a wooden pagoda, in form not unlike an open-air stand for musicians. In front of this, and leading from it on the level of its floor, there projected a platform, railed round with aggressively rustic woodwork. The nearest benches came close about this platform.
At the hour when Theron started away, there were few enough signs of life about this encampment. The four or five hundred people who were in constant residence were eating their dinners in the big boarding-house, or the cottages or the tents. It was not the time of day for strangers. Even when services were in progress by daylight, the regular attendants did not make much of a show, huddled in a gray-black mass at the front of the auditorium, by comparison with the great green and blue expanses of nature about them.
The real spectacle was in the evening when, as the shadows gathered, big clusters of kerosene torches, hung on the trees facing the audience were lighted. The falling darkness magnified the glow of the lights, and the size and importance of what they illumined. The preacher, bending forward over the rails of the platform, and fastening his eyes upon the abashed faces of those on the "anxious seat" beneath him, borrowed an effect of druidical mystery from the wall of blackness about him, from the flickering reflections on the branches far above, from the cool night air which stirred across the clearing. The change was in the blood of those who saw and heard him, too. The decorum and half-heartedness of their devotions by day deepened under the glare of the torches into a fervent enthusiasm, even before the services began. And if there was in the rustic pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could stir their pulses, they sang and groaned and bellowed out their praises with an almost barbarous license, such as befitted the wilderness.
But in the evening not all were worshippers. For a dozen miles round on the country-side, young farm-workers and their girls regarded the camp-meeting as perhaps the chief event of the year-no more to be missed than the country fair or the circus, and offering, from many points of view, more opportunities for genuine enjoyment than either. Their behavior when they came was pretty bad-not the less so because all the rules established by the Presiding Elders for the regulation of strangers took it for granted that they would act as viciously as they knew how. These sight-seers sometimes ventured to occupy the back benches where the light was dim. More often they stood outside, in the circular space between the tents and the benches, and mingled cat-calls, drovers' yelps, and all sorts of mocking cries and noises with the "Amens" of the earnest congregation. Their rough horse-play on the fringe of the sanctified gathering was grievous enough; everybody knew that much worse things went on further out in the surrounding darkness. Indeed, popular report gave to these external phases of the camp-meeting an even more evil fame than attached to the later moonlight husking-bees, or the least reputable of the midwinter dances at Dave Randall's low halfway house.
Cynics said that the Methodists found consolation for this scandal in the large income they derived from their unruly visitors' gate-money. This was unfair. No doubt the money played its part, but there was something else far more important. The pious dwellers in the camp, intent upon reviving in their poor modern way the character and environment of the heroic early days, felt the need of just this hostile and scoffing mob about them to bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs was pre-eminently a fighting religion, which languished in peaceful fair weather, but flamed high in the storm. The throng of loafers and light-minded worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering interruptions and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon the scene a kind of visible personal devil, with whom the chosen could do battle face to face. The daylight services became more and more perfunctory, as the sojourn in the woods ran its course, and interest concentrated itself upon the night meetings, for the reason that THEN came the fierce wrestle with a Beelzebub of flesh and blood. And it was not so one-sided a contest, either!
No evening passed without its victories for the pulpit. Careless or mischievous young people who were pushed into the foremost ranks of the mockers, and stood grinning and grimacing under the lights, would of a sudden feel a spell clamped upon them. They would hear a strange, quavering note in the preacher's voice, catch the sense of a piercing, soul-commanding gleam in his eye-not at all to be resisted. These occult forces would take control of them, drag them forward as in a dream to the benches under the pulpit, and abase them there like worms in the dust. And then the preacher would descend, and the elders advance, and the torch-fires would sway and dip before the wind of the mighty roar that went up in triumph from the brethren.
These combats with Satan at close quarters, if they made the week-day evenings exciting, reacted with an effect of crushing dulness upon the Sunday services. The rule was to admit no strangers to the grounds from Saturday night to Monday morning. Every year attempts were made to rescind or modify this rule, and this season at least three-fourths of the laymen in attendance had signed a petition in favor of opening the gates. The two Presiding Elders, supported by a dozen of the older preachers, resisted the change, and they had the backing of the more bigoted section of the congregation from Octavius. The controversy reached a point where Theron's Presiding Elder threatened to quit the grounds, and the leaders of the open-Sunday movement spoke freely of the ridiculous figure which its cranks and fanatics made poor Methodism cut in the eyes of modern go-ahead American civilization. Then Theron Ware saw his opportunity, and preached an impromptu sermon upon the sanctity of the Sabbath, which ended all discussion. Sometimes its arguments seemed to be on one side, sometimes on the other, but always they were clothed with so serene a beauty of imagery, and moved in such a lofty and rarefied atmosphere of spiritual exaltation, that it was impossible to link them to so sordid a thing as this question of gate-money. When he had finished, nobody wanted the gates opened. The two factions found that the difference between them had melted out of existence. They sat entranced by the charm of the sermon; then, glancing around at the empty benches, glaringly numerous in the afternoon sunlight, they whispered regrets that ten thousand people had not been there to hear that marvellous discourse. Theron's conquest was of exceptional dimensions. The majority, whose project he had defeated, were strangers who appreciated and admired his effort most. The little minority of his own flock, though less susceptible to the influence of graceful diction and delicately balanced rhetoric, were proud of the distinction he had reflected upon them, and delighted with him for having won their fight. The Presiding Elders wrung his hand with a significant grip. The extremists of his own charge beamed friendship upon him for the first time. He was the veritable hero of the week.
The prestige of this achievement made it the easier for Theron to get away by himself next day, and walk in the woods. A man of such power had a right to solitude. Those who noted his departure from the camp remembered with pleasure that he was to preach again on the morrow. He was going to commune with God in the depths of the forest, that the Message next day might be clearer and more luminous still.
Theron strolled for a little, with an air of aimlessness, until he was well outside the more or less frequented neighborhood of the camp. Then he looked at the sun and the lay of the land with that informing scrutiny of which the farm-bred boy never loses the trick, turned, and strode at a rattling pace down the hillside. He knew nothing personally of this piece of woodland-a spur of the great Adirondack wilderness thrust southward into the region of homesteads and dairies and hop-fields-but he had prepared himself by a study of the map, and he knew where he wanted to go. Very Soon he hit upon the path he had counted upon finding, and at this he quickened his gait.
Three months of the new life had wrought changes in Theron. He bore himself more erectly, for one thing; his shoulders were thrown back, and seemed thicker. The alteration was even more obvious in his face. The effect of lank, wistful, sallow juvenility had vanished. It was the countenance of a mature, well-fed, and confident man, firmer and more rounded in its outlines, and with a glow of health on its whole surface. Under the chin were the suggestions of fulness which bespeak an easy mind. His clothes were new; the frock-coat fitted him, and the thin, dark-colored autumn overcoat, with its silk lining exposed at the breast, gave a masculine bulk and shape to his figure. He wore a shining tall hat, and, in haste though he was, took pains not to knock it against low-hanging branches.
All had gone well-more than well-with him. The second Quarterly Conference had passed without a ripple. Both the attendance and the collections at his church were larger than ever before, and the tone of the congregation toward him was altered distinctly for the better. As for himself, he viewed with astonished delight the progress he had made in his own estimation. He had taken Sister Soulsby's advice, and the results were already wonderful. He had put aside, once and for all, the thousand foolish trifles and childish perplexities which formerly had racked his brain, and worried him out of sleep and strength. He borrowed all sorts of books boldly now from the Octavius public library, and could swim with a calm mastery and enjoyment upon the deep waters into which Draper and Lecky and Laing and the rest had hurled him. He dallied pleasurably, a little languorously, with a dozen aspects of the case against revealed religion, ranging from the mild heterodoxy of Andover's qualms to the rude Ingersoll's rollicking negation of God himself, as a woman of coquetry might play with as many would-be lovers. They amused him; they were all before him to choose; and he was free to postpone indefinitely the act of selection. There was a sense of the luxurious in this position which softened bodily as well as mental fibres. He ceased to grow indignant at things below or outside his standards, and he bought a small book which treated of the care of the hand and finger nails.
Alice had accepted with deference his explanation that shapely hands played so important a part in pulpit oratory. For that matter, she now accepted whatever he said or did with admirable docility. It was months since he could remember her venturing upon a critical attitude toward him.
She had not wished to leave home, for the seaside or any other resort, during the summer, but had worked outside in her garden more than usual. This was inexpensive, and it seemed to do her as much good as a holiday could have done. Her new devotional zeal was now quite an odd thing; it had not slackened at all from the revival pitch. At the outset she had tried several times to talk with her husband upon this subject. He had discouraged conversation about her soul and its welfare, at first obliquely, then, under compulsion, with some directness. His thoughts were absorbed, he said, by the contemplation of vast, abstract schemes of creation and the government of the universe, and it only diverted and embarrassed his mind to try to fasten it upon the details of personal salvation. Thereafter the topic was not broached between them.
She bestowed a good deal of attention, too, upon her piano. The knack of a girlish nimbleness of touch had returned to her after a few weeks, and she made music which Theron supposed was very good-for her. It pleased him, at all events, when he sat and listened to it; but he had a far greater pleasure, as he listened, in dwelling upon the memories of the yellow and blue room which the sounds always brought up. Although three months had passed, Thurston's had never asked for the first payment on the piano, or even sent in a bill. This impressed him as being peculiarly graceful behavior on his part, and he recognized its delicacy by not going near Thurston's at all.
An hour's sharp walk, occasionally broken by short cuts across open pastures, but for the most part on forest paths, brought Theron to the brow of a small knoll, free from underbrush, and covered sparsely with beech-trees. The ground was soft with moss and the powdered remains of last year's foliage; the leaves above him were showing the first yellow stains of autumn. A sweet smell of ripening nuts was thick upon the air, and busy rustlings and chirpings through the stillness told how the chipmunks and squirrels were attending to their harvest.
Theron had no ears for these noises of the woodland. He had halted, and was searching through the little vistas offered between the stout gray trunks of the beeches for some sign of a more sophisticated sort. Yes! there were certainly voices to be heard, down in the hollow. And now, beyond all possibility of mistake, there came up to him the low, rhythmic throb of music. It was the merest faint murmur of music, made up almost wholly of groaning bass notes, but it was enough. He moved down the slope, swiftly at first, then with increasing caution. The sounds grew louder as he advanced, until he could hear the harmony of the other strings in its place beside the uproar of the big fiddles, and distinguish from both the measured noise of many feet moving as one.
He reached a place from which, himself unobserved, he could overlook much of what he had come to see.
The bottom of the glade below him lay out in the full sunshine, as flat and as velvety in its fresh greenness as a garden lawn. Its open expanse was big enough to accommodate several distinct crowds, and here the crowds were-one massed about an enclosure in which young men were playing at football, another gathered further off in a horse-shoe curve at the end of a baseball diamond, and a third thronging at a point where the shade of overhanging woods began, focussed upon a centre of interest which Theron could not make out. Closer at hand, where a shallow stream rippled along over its black-slate bed, some little boys, with legs bared to the thighs, were paddling about, under the charge of two men clad in long black gowns. There were others of these frocked monitors scattered here and there upon the scene-pallid, close-shaven, monkish figures, who none the less wore modern hats, and superintended with knowledge the games of the period. Theron remembered that these were the Christian Brothers, the semi-monastic teachers of the Catholic school.
And this was the picnic of the Catholics of Octavius. He gazed in mingled amazement and exhilaration upon the spectacle. There seemed to be literally thousands of people on the open fields before him, and apparently there were still other thousands in the fringes of the woods round about. The noises which arose from this multitude-the shouts of the lads in the water, the playful squeals of the girls in the swings, the fused uproar of the more distant crowds, and above all the diligent, ordered strains of the dance-music proceeding from some invisible distance in the greenwood-charmed his ears with their suggestion of universal merriment. He drew a long breath-half pleasure, half wistful regret-as he remembered that other gathering in the forest which he had left behind.
At any rate, it should be well behind him today, whatever the morrow might bring! Evidently he was on the wrong side of the circle for the headquarters of the festivities. He turned and walked to the right through the beeches, making a detour, under cover, of the crowds at play. At last he rounded the long oval of the clearing, and found himself at the very edge of that largest throng of all, which had been too far away for comprehension at the beginning. There was no mystery now. A rough, narrow shed, fully fifty feet in length, imposed itself in an arbitrary line across the face of this crowd, dividing it into two compact halves. Inside this shed, protected all round by a waist-high barrier of boards, on top of which ran a flat, table-like covering, were twenty men in their shirt-sleeves, toiling ceaselessly to keep abreast of the crowd's thirst for beer. The actions of these bartenders greatly impressed Theron. They moved like so many machines, using one hand, apparently, to take money and give change, and with the other incessantly sweeping off rows of empty glasses, and tossing forward in their place fresh, foaming glasses five at a time. Hundreds of arms and hands were continually stretched out, on both sides of the shed, toward this streaming bar, and through the babel of eager cries rose without pause the racket of mallets tapping new kegs.
Theron had never seen any considerable number of his fellow-citizens engaged in drinking lager beer before. His surprise at the facility of those behind the bar began to yield, upon observation, to a profound amazement at the thirst of those before it. The same people seemed to be always in front, emptying the glasses faster than the busy men inside could replenish them, and clamoring tirelessly for more. Newcomers had to force their way to the bar by violent efforts, and once there they stayed until pushed bodily aside. There were actually women to be seen here and there in the throng, elbowing and shoving like the rest for a place at the front. Some of the more gallant young men fought their way outward, from time to time, carrying for safety above their heads glasses of beer which they gave to young and pretty girls standing on the fringe of the crowd, among the trees.
Everywhere a remarkable good-humor prevailed. Once a sharp fight broke out, just at the end of the bar nearest Theron, and one young man was knocked down. A rush of the onlookers confused everything before the minister's eyes for a minute, and then he saw the aggrieved combatant up on his legs again, consenting under the kindly pressure of the crowd to shake hands with his antagonist, and join him in more beer. The incident caught his fancy. There was something very pleasingly human, he thought, in this primitive readiness to resort to fisticuffs, and this frank and genial reconciliation.
Perhaps there was something contagious in this wholesale display of thirst, for the Rev. Mr. Ware became conscious of a notion that he should like to try a glass of beer. He recalled having heard that lager was really a most harmless beverage. Of course it was out of the question that he should show himself at the bar. Perhaps some one would bring him out a glass, as if he were a pretty girl. He looked about for a possible messenger. Turning, he found himself face to face with two smiling people, into whose eyes he stared for an instant in dumfounded blankness. Then his countenance flashed with joy, and he held out both hands in greeting. It was Father Forbes and Celia.
"We stole down upon you unawares," said the priest, in his cheeriest manner. He wore a brown straw hat, and loose clothes hardly at all clerical in form, and had Miss Madden's arm drawn lightly within his own. "We could barely believe our eyes-that it could be you whom we saw, here among the sinners!"
"I am in love with your sinners," responded Theron, as he shook hands with Celia, and trusted himself to look fully into her eyes. "I've had five days of the saints, over in another part of the woods, and they've bored the head off me."
CHAPTER XXIII
At the command of Father Forbes, a lad who was loitering near them went down through the throng to the bar, and returned with three glasses of beer. It pleased the Rev. Mr. Ware that the priest should have taken it for granted that he would do as the others did. He knocked his glass against theirs in compliance with a custom strange to him, but which they seemed to understand very well. The beer itself was not so agreeable to the taste as he had expected, but it was cold and refreshing.
When the boy had returned with the glasses, the three stood for a moment in silence, meditatively watching the curious scene spread below them. Beyond the bar, Theron could catch now through the trees regularly recurring glimpses of four or five swings in motion. These were nearest him, and clearest to the vision as well, at the instant when they reached their highest forward point. The seats were filled with girls, some of them quite grown young women, and their curving upward sweep through the air was disclosing at its climax a remarkable profusion of white skirts and black stockings. The sight struck him as indecorous in the extreme, and he turned his eyes away. They met Celia's; and there was something latent in their brown depths which prompted him, after a brief dalliance of interchanging glances, to look again at the swings.
"That old maid Curran is really too ridiculous, with those white stockings of hers," remarked Celia; "some friend ought to tell her to dye them."
"Or pad them," suggested Father Forbes, with a gay little chuckle. "I daresay the question of swings and ladies' stockings hardly arises with you, over at the camp-meeting, Mr. Ware?"
Theron laughed aloud at the conceit. "I should say not!" he replied.
"I'm just dying to see a camp-meeting!" said Celia. "You hear such racy accounts of what goes on at them."
"Don't go, I beg of you!" urged Theron, with doleful emphasis. "Don't let's even talk about them. I should like to feel this afternoon as if there was no such thing within a thousand miles of me as a camp-meeting. Do you know, all this interests me enormously. It is a revelation to me to see these thousands of good, decent, ordinary people, just frankly enjoying themselves like human beings. I suppose that in this whole huge crowd there isn't a single person who will mention the subject of his soul to any other person all day long."
"I should think the assumption was a safe one," said the priest, smilingly, "unless," he added on afterthought, "it be by way of a genial profanity. There used to be some old Clare men who said 'Hell to my soul!' when they missed at quoits, but I haven't heard it for a long time. I daresay they're all dead."
"I shall never forget that death-bed-where I saw you first," remarked Theron, musingly. "I date from that experience a whole new life. I have been greatly struck lately, in reading our 'Northern Christian Advocate' to see in the obituary notices of prominent Methodists how over and over again it is recorded that they got religion in their youth through being frightened by some illness of their own, or some epidemic about them. The cholera year of 1832 seems to have made Methodists hand over fist. Even to this day our most successful revivalists, those who work conversions wholesale wherever they go, do it more by frightful pictures of hell-fire surrounding the sinner's death-bed than anything else. You could hear the same thing at our camp-meeting tonight, if you were there."
"There isn't so much difference as you think," said Father Forbes, dispassionately. "Your people keep examining their souls, just as children keep pulling up the bulbs they have planted to see are there any roots yet. Our people are more satisfied to leave their souls alone, once they have been planted, so to speak, by baptism. But fear of hell governs them both, pretty much alike. As I remember saying to you once before, there is really nothing new under the sun. Even the saying isn't new. Though there seem to have been the most tremendous changes in races and civilizations and religions, stretching over many thousands of years, yet nothing is in fact altered very much. Where religions are concerned, the human race are still very like savages in a dangerous wood in the dark, telling one another ghost stories around a camp-fire. They have always been like that."
"What nonsense!" cried Celia. "I have no patience with such gloomy rubbish. The Greeks had a religion full of beauty and happiness and light-heartedness, and they weren't frightened of death at all. They made the image of death a beautiful boy, with a torch turned down. Their greatest philosophers openly preached and practised the doctrine of suicide when one was tired of life. Our own early Church was full of these broad and beautiful Greek ideas. You know that yourself! And it was only when your miserable Jeromes and Augustines and Cyrils brought in the abominable meannesses and cruelties of the Jewish Old Testament, and stamped out the sane and lovely Greek elements in the Church, that Christians became the poor, whining, cowardly egotists they are, troubling about their little tin-pot souls, and scaring themselves in their churches by skulls and crossbones."
"My dear Celia," interposed the priest, patting her shoulder gently, "we will have no Greek debate today. Mr. Ware has been permitted to taboo camp-meetings, and I claim the privilege to cry off on Greeks. Look at those fellows down there, trampling over one another to get more beer. What have they to do with Athens, or Athens with them? I take it, Mr. Ware," he went on, with a grave face but a twinkling eye, "that what we are observing here in front of us is symbolical of a great ethical and theological revolution, which in time will modify and control the destiny of the entire American people. You see those young Irishmen there, struggling like pigs at a trough to get their fill of German beer. That signifies a conquest of Teuton over Kelt more important and far-reaching in its results than the landing of Hengist and Horsa. The Kelt has come to grief heretofore-or at least been forced to play second fiddle to other races-because he lacked the right sort of a drink. He has in his blood an excess of impulsive, imaginative, even fantastic qualities. It is much easier for him to make a fool of himself, to begin with, than it is for people of slower wits and more sluggish temperaments. When you add whiskey to that, or that essence of melancholia which in Ireland they call 'porther,' you get the Kelt at his very weakest and worst. These young men down there are changing all that. They have discovered lager. Already many of them can outdrink the Germans at their own beverage. The lager-drinking Irishman in a few generations will be a new type of humanity-the Kelt at his best. He will dominate America. He will be THE American. And his church-with the Italian element thrown clean out of it, and its Pope living, say, in Baltimore or Georgetown-will be the Church of America."
"Let us have some more lager at once," put in Celia. "This revolution can't be hurried forward too rapidly."
Theron could not feel sure how much of the priest's discourse was in jest, how much in earnest. "It seems to me," he said, "that as things are going, it doesn't look much as if the America of the future will trouble itself about any kind of a church. The march of science must very soon produce a universal scepticism. It is in the nature of human progress. What all intelligent men recognize today, the masses must surely come to see in time."
Father Forbes laughed outright this time. "My dear Mr. Ware," he said, as they touched glasses again, and sipped the fresh beer that had been brought them, "of all our fictions there is none so utterly baseless and empty as this idea that humanity progresses. The savage's natural impression is that the world he sees about him was made for him, and that the rest of the universe is subordinated to him and his world, and that all the spirits and demons and gods occupy themselves exclusively with him and his affairs. That idea was the basis of every pagan religion, and it is the basis of the Christian religion, simply because it is the foundation of human nature. That foundation is just as firm and unshaken today as it was in the Stone Age. It will always remain, and upon it will always be built some kind of a religious superstructure. 'Intelligent men,' as you call them, really have very little influence, even when they all pull one way. The people as a whole soon get tired of them. They give too much trouble. The most powerful forces in human nature are self-protection and inertia. The middle-aged man has found out that the chief wisdom in life is to bend to the pressures about him, to shut up and do as others do. Even when he thinks he has rid his own mind of superstitions, he sees that he will best enjoy a peaceful life by leaving other peoples' superstitions alone. That is always the ultimate view of the crowd."
"But I don't see," observed Theron, "granting that all this is true, how you think the Catholic Church will come out on top. I could understand it of Unitarianism, or Universalism, or the Episcopal Church, where nobody seems to have to believe particularly in anything except the beauty of its burial service, but I should think the very rigidity of the Catholic creed would make it impossible. There everything is hard and fast; nothing is elastic; there is no room for compromise."
"The Church is always compromising," explained the priest, "only it does it so slowly that no one man lives long enough to quite catch it at the trick. No; the great secret of the Catholic Church is that it doesn't debate with sceptics. No matter what points you make against it, it is never betrayed into answering back. It simply says these things are sacred mysteries, which you are quite free to accept and be saved, or reject and be damned. There is something intelligible and fine about an attitude like that. When people have grown tired of their absurd and fruitless wrangling over texts and creeds which, humanly speaking, are all barbaric nonsense, they will come back to repose pleasantly under the Catholic roof, in that restful house where things are taken for granted. There the manners are charming, the service excellent, the decoration and upholstery most acceptable to the eye, and the music"-he made a little mock bow here to Celia-"the music at least is divine. There you have nothing to do but be agreeable, and avoid scandal, and observe the convenances. You are no more expected to express doubts about the Immaculate Conception than you are to ask the lady whom you take down to dinner how old she is. Now that is, as I have said, an intelligent and rational church for people to have. As the Irish civilize themselves-you observe them diligently engaged in the process down below there-and the social roughness of their church becomes softened and ameliorated, Americans will inevitably be attracted toward it. In the end, it will embrace them all, and be modified by them, and in turn influence their development, till you will have a new nation and a new national church, each representative of the other."
"And all this is to be done by lager beer!" Theron ventured to comment, jokingly. He was conscious of a novel perspiration around the bridge of his nose, which was obviously another effect of the drink.
The priest passed the pleasantry by. "No," he said seriously; "what you must see is that there must always be a church. If one did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. It is needed, first and foremost, as a police force. It is needed, secondly, so to speak, as a fire insurance. It provides the most even temperature and pure atmosphere for the growth of young children. It furnishes the best obtainable social machinery for marrying off one's daughters, getting to know the right people, patching up quarrels, and so on. The priesthood earn their salaries as the agents for these valuable social arrangements. Their theology is thrown in as a sort of intellectual diversion, like the ritual of a benevolent organization. There are some who get excited about this part of it, just as one hears of Free-Masons who believe that the sun rises and sets to exemplify their ceremonies. Others take their duties more quietly, and, understanding just what it all amounts to, make the best of it, like you and me."
Theron assented to the philosophy and the compliment by a grave bow. "Yes, that is the idea-to make the best of it," he said, and fastened his regard boldly this time upon the swings.
"We were both ordained by our bishops," continued the priest, "at an age when those worthy old gentlemen would not have trusted our combined wisdom to buy a horse for them."
"And I was married," broke in Theron, with an eagerness almost vehement, "when I had only just been ordained! At the worst, YOU had only the Church fastened upon your back, before you were old enough to know what you wanted. It is easy enough to make the best of THAT, but it is different with me."
A marked silence followed this outburst. The Rev. Mr. Ware had never spoken of his marriage to either of these friends before; and something in their manner seemed to suggest that they did not find the subject inviting, now that it had been broached. He himself was filled with a desire to say more about it. He had never clearly realized before what a genuine grievance it was. The moisture at the top of his nose merged itself into tears in the corners of his eyes, as the cruel enormity of the sacrifice he had made in his youth rose before him. His whole life had been fettered and darkened by it. He turned his gaze from the swings toward Celia, to claim the sympathy he knew she would feel for him.
But Celia was otherwise engaged. A young man had come up to her-a tall and extremely thin young man, soberly dressed, and with a long, gaunt, hollow-eyed face, the skin of which seemed at once florid and pale. He had sandy hair and the rough hands of a workman; but he was speaking to Miss Madden in the confidential tones of an equal.
"I can do nothing at all with him," this newcomer said to her. "He'll not be said by me. Perhaps he'd listen to you!"
"It's likely I'll go down there!" said Celia. "He may do what he likes for all me! Take my advice, Michael, and just go your way, and leave him to himself. There was a time when I would have taken out my eyes for him, but it was love wasted and thrown away. After the warnings he's had, if he WILL bring trouble on himself, let's make it no affair of ours."
Theron had found himself exchanging glances of inquiry with this young man. "Mr. Ware," said Celia, here, "let me introduce you to my brother Michael-my full brother."
Mr. Ware remembered him now, and began, in response to the other's formal bow, to say something about their having met in the dark, inside the church. But Celia held up her hand. "I'm afraid, Mr. Ware," she said hurriedly, "that you are in for a glimpse of the family skeleton. I will apologize for the infliction in advance."
Wonderingly, Theron followed her look, and saw another young man who had come up the path from the crowd below, and was close upon them. The minister recognized in him a figure which had seemed to be the centre of almost every group about the bar that he had studied in detail. He was a small, dapper, elegantly attired youth, with dark hair, and the handsome, regularly carved face of an actor. He advanced with a smiling countenance and unsteady step-his silk hat thrust back upon his head, his frock-coat and vest unbuttoned, and his neckwear disarranged-and saluted the company with amiability.
"I saw you up here, Father Forbes," he said, with a thickened and erratic utterance. "Whyn't you come down and join us? I'm setting 'em up for everybody. You got to take care of the boys, you know. I'll blow in the last cent I've got in the world for the boys, every time, and they know it. They're solider for me than they ever were for anybody. That's how it is. If you stand by the boys, the boys'll stand by you. I'm going to the Assembly for this district, and they ain't nobody can stop me. The boys are just red hot for me. Wish you'd come down, Father Forbes, and address a few words to the meeting-just mention that I'm a candidate, and say I'm bound to win, hands down. That'll make you solid with the boys, and we'll be all good fellows together. Come on down!"
The priest affably disengaged his arm from the clutch which the speaker had laid upon it, and shook his head in gentle deprecation. "No, no; you must excuse me, Theodore," he said. "We mustn't meddle in politics, you know."
"Politics be damned!" urged Theodore, grabbing the priest's other arm, and tugging at it stoutly to pull him down the path. "I say, boys" he shouted to those below, "here's Father Forbes, and he's going to come down and address the meeting. Come on, Father! Come down, and have a drink with the boys!"
It was Celia who sharply pulled his hand away from the priest's arm this time. "Go away with you!" she snapped in low, angry tones at the intruder. "You should be ashamed of yourself! If you can't keep sober yourself, you can at least keep your hands off the priest. I should think you'd have more decency, when you're in such a state as this, than to come where I am. If you've no respect for yourself, you might have that much respect for me! And before strangers, too!
"Oh, I mustn't come where YOU are, eh?" remarked the peccant Theodore, straightening himself with an elaborate effort. "You've bought these woods, have you? I've got a hundred friends here, all the same, for every one you'll ever have in your life, Red-head, and don't you forget it."
"Go and spend your money with them, then, and don't come insulting decent people," said Celia.
"Before strangers, too!" the young man called out, with beery sarcasm. "Oh, we'll take care of the strangers all right." He had not seemed to be aware of Theron's presence, much less his identity, before; but he turned to him now with a knowing grin. "I'm running for the Assembly, Mr. Ware," he said, speaking loudly and with deliberate effort to avoid the drunken elisions and comminglings to which his speech tended, "and I want you to fix up the Methodists solid for me. I'm going to drive over to the camp-meeting tonight, me and some of the boys in a barouche, and I'll put a twenty-dollar bill on their plate. Here it is now, if you want to see it."
As the young man began fumbling in a vest-pocket, Theron gathered his wits together.
"You'd better not go this evening," he said, as convincingly as he knew how; "because the gates will be closed very early, and the Saturday-evening services are of a particularly special nature, quite reserved for those living on the grounds."
"Rats!" said Theodore, raising his head, and abandoning the search for the bill. "Why don't you speak out like a man, and say you think I'm too drunk?"
"I don't think that is a question which need arise between us, Mr. Madden," murmured Theron, confusedly.
"Oh, don't you make any mistake! A hell of a lot of questions arise between us, Mr. Ware," cried Theodore, with a sudden accession of vigor in tone and mien. "And one of 'em is-go away from me, Michael!-one of 'em is, I say, why don't you leave our girls alone? They've got their own priests to make fools of themselves over, without any sneak of a Protestant parson coming meddling round them. You're a married man into the bargain; and you've got in your house this minute a piano that my sister bought and paid for. Oh, I've seen the entry in Thurston's books! You have the cheek to talk to me about being drunk-why-"
These remarks were never concluded, for Father Forbes here clapped a hand abruptly over the offending mouth, and flung his free arm in a tight grip around the young man's waist. "Come with me, Michael!" he said, and the two men led the reluctant and resisting Theodore at a sharp pace off into the woods.
Theron and Celia stood and watched them disappear among the undergrowth. "It's the dirty Foley blood that's in him," he heard her say, as if between clenched teeth.
The girl's big brown eyes, when Theron looked into them again, were still fixed upon the screen of foliage, and dilated like those of a Medusa mask. The blood had gone away, and left the fair face and neck as white, it seemed to him, as marble. Even her lips, fiercely bitten together, appeared colorless. The picture of consuming and powerless rage which she presented, and the shuddering tremor which ran over her form, as visible as the quivering track of a gust of wind across a pond, awed and frightened him.
Tenderness toward her helpless state came too, and uppermost. He drew her arm into his, and turned their backs upon the picnic scene.
"Let us walk a little up the path into the woods," he said, "and get away from all this."
"The further away the better," she answered bitterly, and he felt the shiver run through her again as she spoke.
The methodical waltz-music from that unseen dancing platform rose again above all other sounds. They moved up the woodland path, their steps insensibly falling into the rhythm of its strains, and vanished from sight among the trees.
CHAPTER XXIV
Theron and Celia walked in silence for some minutes, until the noises of the throng they had left behind were lost. The path they followed had grown indefinite among the grass and creepers of the forest carpet; now it seemed to end altogether in a little copse of young birches, the delicately graceful stems of which were clustered about a parent stump, long since decayed and overgrown with lichens and layers of thick moss.
As the two paused, the girl suddenly sank upon her knees, then threw herself face forward upon the soft green bark which had formed itself above the roots of the ancient mother-tree. Her companion looked down in pained amazement at what he saw. Her body shook with the violence of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief Her hands, with stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny vines, and tore them by the roots. The half-stifled sounds of weeping that arose from where her face grovelled in the leaves were terrible to his ears. He knew not what to say or do, but gazed in resourceless suspense at the strange figure she made. It seemed a cruelly long time that she lay there, almost at his feet, struggling fiercely with the fury that was in her.
All at once the paroxysms passed away, the sounds of wild weeping ceased. Celia sat up, and with her handkerchief wiped the tears and leafy fragments from her face. She rearranged her hat and the braids of her hair with swift, instinctive touches, brushed the woodland debris from her front, and sprang to her feet.
"I'm all right now," she said briskly. There was palpable effort in her light tone, and in the stormy sort of smile which she forced upon her blotched and perturbed countenance, but they were only too welcome to Theron's anxious mood.
"Thank God!" he blurted out, all radiant with relief. "I feared you were going to have a fit-or something."
Celia laughed, a little artificially at first, then with a genuine surrender to the comic side of his visible fright. The mirth came back into the brown depths of her eyes again, and her face cleared itself of tear-stains and the marks of agitation. "I AM a nice quiet party for a Methodist minister to go walking in the woods with, am I not?" she cried, shaking her skirts and smiling at him.
"I am not a Methodist minister-please!" answered Theron-"at least not today-and here-with you! I am just a man-nothing more-a man who has escaped from lifelong imprisonment, and feels for the first time what it is to be free!"
"Ah, my friend," Celia said, shaking her head slowly, "I'm afraid you deceive yourself. You are not by any means free. You are only looking out of the window of your prison, as you call it. The doors are locked, just the same."
"I will smash them!" he declared, with confidence. "Or for that matter, I HAVE smashed them-battered them to pieces. You don't realize what progress I have made, what changes there have been in me since that night, you remember that wonderful night! I am quite another being, I assure you! And really it dates from way beyond that-why, from the very first evening, when I came to you in the church. The window in Father Forbes' room was open, and I stood by it listening to the music next door, and I could just faintly see on the dark window across the alley-way a stained-glass picture of a woman. I suppose it was the Virgin Mary. She had hair like yours, and your face, too; and that is why I went into the church and found you. Yes, that is why."
Celia regarded him with gravity. "You will get yourself into great trouble, my friend," she said.
"That's where you're wrong," put in Theron. "Not that I'd mind any trouble in this wide world, so long as you called me 'my friend,' but I'm not going to get into any at all. I know a trick worth two of that. I've learned to be a showman. I can preach now far better than I used to, and I can get through my work in half the time, and keep on the right side of my people, and get along with perfect smoothness. I was too green before. I took the thing seriously, and I let every mean-fisted curmudgeon and crazy fanatic worry me, and keep me on pins and needles. I don't do that any more. I've taken a new measure of life. I see now what life is really worth, and I'm going to have my share of it. Why should I deliberately deny myself all possible happiness for the rest of my days, simply because I made a fool of myself when I was in my teens? Other men are not eternally punished like that, for what they did as boys, and I won't submit to it either. I will be as free to enjoy myself as-as Father Forbes."
Celia smiled softly, and shook her head again. "Poor man, to call HIM free!" she said: "why, he is bound hand and foot. You don't in the least realize how he is hedged about, the work he has to do, the thousand suspicious eyes that watch his every movement, eager to bring the Bishop down upon him. And then think of his sacrifice-the great sacrifice of all-to never know what love means, to forswear his manhood, to live a forlorn, celibate life-you have no idea how sadly that appeals to a woman."
"Let us sit down here for a little," said Theron; "we seem at the end of the path." She seated herself on the root-based mound, and he reclined at her side, with an arm carelessly extended behind her on the moss.
"I can see what you mean," he went on, after a pause. "But to me, do you know, there is an enormous fascination in celibacy. You forget that I know the reverse of the medal. I know how the mind can be cramped, the nerves harassed, the ambitions spoiled and rotted, the whole existence darkened and belittled, by-by the other thing. I have never talked to you before about my marriage."
"I don't think we'd better talk about it now," observed Celia. "There must be many more amusing topics."
He missed the spirit of her remark. "You are right," he said slowly. "It is too sad a thing to talk about. But there! it is my load, and I bear it, and there's nothing more to be said."
Theron drew a heavy sigh, and let his fingers toy abstractedly with a ribbon on the outer edge of Celia's penumbra of apparel.
"No," she said. "We mustn't snivel, and we mustn't sulk. When I get into a rage it makes me ill, and I storm my way through it and tear things, but it doesn't last long, and I come out of it feeling all the better. I don't know that I've ever seen your wife. I suppose she hasn't got red hair?"
"I think it's a kind of light brown," answered Theron, with an effect of exerting his memory.
"It seems that you only take notice of hair in stained-glass windows," was Celia's comment.
"Oh-h!" he murmured reproachfully, "as if-as if-but I won't say what I was going to."
"That's not fair!" she said. The little touch of whimsical mockery which she gave to the serious declaration was delicious to him. "You have me at such a disadvantage! Here am I rattling out whatever comes into my head, exposing all my lightest emotions, and laying bare my very heart in candor, and you meditate, you turn things over cautiously in your mind, like a second Machiavelli. I grow afraid of you; you are so subtle and mysterious in your reserves."
Theron gave a tug at the ribbon, to show the joy he had in her delicate chaff. "No, it is you who are secretive," he said. "You never told me about-about the piano."
The word was out! A minute before it had seemed incredible to him that he should ever have the courage to utter it-but here it was. He laid firm hold upon the ribbon, which it appeared hung from her waist, and drew himself a trifle nearer to her. "I could never have consented to take it, I'm afraid," he went on in a low voice, "if I had known. And even as it is, I fear it won't be possible."
"What are you afraid of?" asked Celia. "Why shouldn't you take it? People in your profession never do get anything unless it's given to them, do they? I've always understood it was like that. I've often read of donation parties-that's what they're called, isn't it?-where everybody is supposed to bring some gift to the minister. Very well, then, I've simply had a donation party of my own, that's all. Unless you mean that my being a Catholic makes a difference. I had supposed you were quite free from that kind of prejudice."
"So I am! Believe me, I am!" urged Theron. "When I'm with you, it seems impossible to realize that there are people so narrow and contracted in their natures as to take account of such things. It is another atmosphere that I breathe near you. How could you imagine that such a thought-about our difference of creed-would enter my head? In fact," he concluded with a nervous half-laugh, "there isn't any such difference. Whatever your religion is, it's mine too. You remember-you adopted me as a Greek."
"Did I?" she rejoined. "Well, if that's the case, it leaves you without a leg to stand on. I challenge you to find any instance where a Greek made any difficulties about accepting a piano from a friend. But seriously-while we are talking about it-you introduced the subject: I didn't-I might as well explain to you that I had no such intention, when I picked the instrument out. It was later, when I was talking to Thurston's people about the price, that the whim seized me. Now it is the one fixed rule of my life to obey my whims. Whatever occurs to me as a possibly pleasant thing to do, straight like a hash, I go and do it. It is the only way that a person with means, with plenty of money, can preserve any freshness of character. If they stop to think what it would be prudent to do, they get crusted over immediately. That is the curse of rich people-they teach themselves to distrust and restrain every impulse toward unusual actions. They get to feel that it is more necessary for them to be cautious and conventional than it is for others. I would rather work at a wash-tub than occupy that attitude toward my bank account. I fight against any sign of it that I detect rising in my mind. The instant a wish occurs to me, I rush to gratify it. That is my theory of life. That accounts for the piano; and I don't see that you've anything to say about it at all."
It seemed very convincing, this theory of life. Somehow, the thought of Miss Madden's riches had never before assumed prominence in Theron's mind. Of course her father was very wealthy, but it had not occurred to him that the daughter's emancipation might run to the length of a personal fortune. He knew so little of rich people and their ways!
He lifted his head, and looked up at Celia with an awakened humility and awe in his glance. The glamour of a separate banking-account shone upon her. Where the soft woodland light played in among the strands of her disordered hair, he saw the veritable gleam of gold. A mysterious new suggestion of power blended itself with the beauty of her face, was exhaled in the faint perfume of her garments. He maintained a timorous hold upon the ribbon, wondering at his hardihood in touching it, or being near her at all.
"What surprises me," he heard himself saying, "is that you are contented to stay in Octavius. I should think that you would travel-go abroad-see the beautiful things of the world, surround yourself with the luxuries of big cities-and that sort of thing."
Celia regarded the forest prospect straight in front of her with a pensive gaze. "Sometime-no doubt I will sometime," she said abstractedly.
"One reads so much nowadays," he went on, "of American heiresses going to Europe and marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you will do that too. Princes would fight one another for you."
The least touch of a smile softened for an instant the impassivity of her countenance. Then she stared harder than ever at the vague, leafy distance. "That is the old-fashioned idea," she said, in a musing tone, "that women must belong to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues, or race-horses. You don't understand, my friend, that I have a different view. I am myself, and I belong to myself, exactly as much as any man. The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the slightest property rights in me is as preposterous, as ridiculous, as-what shall I say?-as the notion of your being taken out with a chain on your neck and sold by auction as a slave, down on the canal bridge. I should be ashamed to be alive for another day, if any other thought were possible to me."
"That is not the generally accepted view, I should think," faltered Theron.
"No more is it the accepted view that young married Methodist ministers should sit out alone in the woods with red-headed Irish girls. No, my friend, let us find what the generally accepted views are, and as fast as we find them set our heels on them. There is no other way to live like real human beings. What on earth is it to me that other women crawl about on all-fours, and fawn like dogs on any hand that will buckle a collar onto them, and toss them the leavings of the table? I am not related to them. I have nothing to do with them. They cannot make any rules for me. If pride and dignity and independence are dead in them, why, so much the worse for them! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it is no reason why I should get down and grovel also. No; I at least stand erect on my legs."
Mr. Ware sat up, and stared confusedly, with round eyes and parted lips, at his companion. Instinctively his brain dragged forth to the surface those epithets which the doctor had hurled in bitter contempt at her-"mad ass, a mere bundle of egotism, ignorance, and red-headed lewdness." The words rose in their order on his memory, hard and sharp-edged, like arrow-heads. But to sit there, quite at her side; to breathe the same air, and behold the calm loveliness of her profile; to touch the ribbon of her dress-and all the while to hold these poisoned darts of abuse levelled in thought at her breast-it was monstrous. He could have killed the doctor at that moment. With an effort, he drove the foul things from his mind-scattered them back into the darkness. He felt that he had grown pale, and wondered if she had heard the groan that seemed to have been forced from him in the struggle. Or was the groan imaginary?
Celia continued to sit unmoved, composedly looking upon vacancy. Theron's eyes searched her face in vain for any sign of consciousness that she had astounded and bewildered him. She did not seem to be thinking of him at all. The proud calm of her thoughtful countenance suggested instead occupation with lofty and remote abstractions and noble ideals. Contemplating her, he suddenly perceived that what she had been saying was great, wonderful, magnificent. An involuntary thrill ran through his veins at recollection of her words. His fancy likened it to the sensation he used to feel as a youth, when the Fourth of July reader bawled forth that opening clause: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary," etc. It was nothing less than another Declaration of Independence he had been listening to.
He sank again recumbent at her side, and stretched the arm behind her, nearer than before. "Apparently, then, you will never marry." His voice trembled a little.
"Most certainly not!" said Celia.
"You spoke so feelingly a little while ago," he ventured along, with hesitation, "about how sadly the notion of a priest's sacrificing himself-never knowing what love meant-appealed to a woman. I should think that the idea of sacrificing herself would seem to her even sadder still."
"I don't remember that we mentioned THAT," she replied. "How do you mean-sacrificing herself?"
Theron gathered some of the outlying folds of her dress in his hand, and boldly patted and caressed them. "You, so beautiful and so free, with such fine talents and abilities," he murmured; "you, who could have the whole world at your feet-are you, too, never going to know what love means? Do you call that no sacrifice? To me it is the most terrible that my imagination can conceive."
Celia laughed-a gentle, amused little laugh, in which Theron's ears traced elements of tenderness. "You must regulate that imagination of yours," she said playfully. "It conceives the thing that is not. Pray, when"-and here, turning her head, she bent down upon his face a gaze of arch mock-seriousness-"pray, when did I describe myself in these terms? When did I say that I should never know what love meant?"
For answer Theron laid his head down upon his arm, and closed his eyes, and held his face against the draperies encircling her. "I cannot think!" he groaned.
The thing that came uppermost in his mind, as it swayed and rocked in the tempest of emotion, was the strange reminiscence of early childhood in it all. It was like being a little boy again, nestling in an innocent, unthinking transport of affection against his mother's skirts. The tears he felt scalding his eyes were the spontaneous, unashamed tears of a child; the tremulous and exquisite joy which spread, wave-like, over him, at once reposeful and yearning, was full of infantile purity and sweetness. He had not comprehended at all before what wellsprings of spiritual beauty, what limpid depths of idealism, his nature contained.
"We were speaking of our respective religions," he heard Celia say, as imperturbably as if there had been no digression worth mentioning.
"Yes," he assented, and moved his head so that he looked up at her back hair, and the leaves high above, mottled against the sky. The wish to lie there, where now he could just catch the rose-leaf line of her under-chin as well, was very strong upon him. "Yes?" he repeated.
"I cannot talk to you like that," she said; and he sat up again shamefacedly.
"Yes-I think we were speaking of religions-some time ago," he faltered, to relieve the situation. The dreadful thought that she might be annoyed began to oppress him.
"Well, you said whatever my religion was, it was yours too. That entitles you at least to be told what the religion is. Now, I am a Catholic."
Theron, much mystified, nodded his head. Could it be possible-was there coming a deliberate suggestion that he should become a convert? "Yes-I know," he murmured.
"But I should explain that I am only a Catholic in the sense that its symbolism is pleasant to me. You remember what Schopenhauer said-you cannot have the water by itself: you must also have the jug that it is in. Very well; the Catholic religion is my jug. I put into it the things I like. They were all there long ago, thousands of years ago. The Jews threw them out; we will put them back again. We will restore art and poetry and the love of beauty, and the gentle, spiritual, soulful life. The Greeks had it; and Christianity would have had it too, if it hadn't been for those brutes they call the Fathers. They loved ugliness and dirt and the thought of hell-fire. They hated women. In all the earlier stages of the Church, women were very prominent in it. Jesus himself appreciated women, and delighted to have them about him, and talk with them and listen to them. That was the very essence of the Greek spirit; and it breathed into Christianity at its birth a sweetness and a grace which twenty generations of cranks and savages like Paul and Jerome and Tertullian weren't able to extinguish. But the very man, Cyril, who killed Hypatia, and thus began the dark ages, unwittingly did another thing which makes one almost forgive him. To please the Egyptians, he secured the Church's acceptance of the adoration of the Virgin. It is that idea which has kept the Greek spirit alive, and grown and grown, till at last it will rule the world. It was only epileptic Jews who could imagine a religion without sex in it."
"I remember the pictures of the Virgin in your room," said Theron, feeling more himself again. "I wondered if they quite went with the statues."
The remark won a smile from Celia's lips.
"They get along together better than you suppose," she answered. "Besides, they are not all pictures of Mary. One of them, standing on the moon, is of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms. Another might as well be Mahamie, bearing the miraculously born Buddha, or Olympias with her child Alexander, or even Perictione holding her babe Plato-all these were similar cases, you know. Almost every religion had its Immaculate Conception. What does it all come to, except to show us that man turns naturally toward the worship of the maternal idea? That is the deepest of all our instincts-love of woman, who is at once daughter and wife and mother. It is that that makes the world go round."
Brave thoughts shaped themselves in Theron's mind, and shone forth in a confident yet wistful smile on his face.
"It is a pity you cannot change estates with me for one minute," he said, in steady, low tone. "Then you would realize the tremendous truth of what you have been saying. It is only your intellect that has reached out and grasped the idea. If you were in my place, you would discover that your heart was bursting with it as well."
Celia turned and looked at him.
"I myself," he went on, "would not have known, half an hour ago, what you meant by the worship of the maternal idea. I am much older than you. I am a strong, mature man. But when I lay down there, and shut my eyes-because the charm and marvel of this whole experience had for the moment overcome me-the strangest sensation seized upon me. It was absolutely as if I were a boy again, a good, pure-minded, fond little child, and you were the mother that I idolized."
Celia had not taken her eyes from his face. "I find myself liking you better at this moment," she said, with gravity, "than I have ever liked you before."
Then, as by a sudden impulse, she sprang to her feet. "Come!" she cried, her voice and manner all vivacity once more, "we have been here long enough."
Upon the instant, as Theron was more laboriously getting up, it became apparent to them both that perhaps they had been there too long.
A boy with a gun under his arm, and two gray squirrels tied by the tails slung across his shoulder, stood at the entrance to the glade, some dozen paces away, regarding them with undisguised interest. Upon the discovery that he was in turn observed, he resumed his interrupted progress through the woods, whistling softly as he went, and vanished among the trees.
"Heavens above!" groaned Theron, shudderingly.
"Know him?" he went on, in answer to the glance of inquiry on his companion's face. "I should think I did! He spades my-my wife's garden for her. He used to bring our milk. He works in the law office of one of my trustees-the one who isn't friendly to me, but is very friendly indeed with my-with Mrs. Ware. Oh, what shall I do? It may easily mean my ruin!"
Celia looked at him attentively. The color had gone out of his face, and with it the effect of earnestness and mental elevation which, a minute before, had caught her fancy. "Somehow, I fear that I do not like you quite so much just now, my friend," she remarked.
"In God's name, don't say that!" urged Theron. He raised his voice in agitated entreaty. "You don't know what these people are-how they would leap at the barest hint of a scandal about me. In my position I am a thousand times more defenceless than any woman. Just a single whisper, and I am done for!"
"Let me point out to you, Mr. Ware," said Celia, slowly, "that to be seen sitting and talking with me, whatever doubts it may raise as to a gentleman's intellectual condition, need not necessarily blast his social reputation beyond all hope whatever."
Theron stared at her, as if he had not grasped her meaning. Then he winced visibly under it, and put out his hands to implore her. "Forgive me! Forgive me!" he pleaded. "I was beside myself for the moment with the fright of the thing. Oh, say you do forgive me, Celia!" He made haste to support this daring use of her name. "I have been so happy today-so deeply, so vastly happy-like the little child I spoke of-and that is so new in my lonely life-that-the suddenness of the thing-it just for the instant unstrung me. Don't be too hard on me for it! And I had hoped, too-I had had such genuine heartfelt pleasure in the thought-that, an hour or two ago, when you were unhappy, perhaps it had been some sort of consolation to you that I was with you."
Celia was looking away. When he took her hand she did not withdraw it, but turned and nodded in musing general assent to what he had said. "Yes, we have both been unstrung, as you call it, today," she said, decidedly out of pitch. "Let each forgive the other, and say no more about it."
She took his arm, and they retraced their steps along the path, again in silence. The labored noise of the orchestra, as it were, returned to meet them. They halted at an intersecting footpath.
"I go back to my slavery-my double bondage," said Theron, letting his voice sink to a sigh. "But even if I am put on the rack for it, I shall have had one day of glory."
"I think you may kiss me, in memory of that one day-or of a few minutes in that day," said Celia.
Their lips brushed each other in a swift, almost perfunctory caress.
Theron went his way at a hurried pace, the sobered tones of her "good-bye" beating upon his brain with every measure of the droning waltz-music.
PART IV
CHAPTER XXV
The memory of the kiss abode with Theron. Like Aaron's rod, it swallowed up one by one all competing thoughts and recollections, and made his brain its slave.
Even as he strode back through the woods to the camp-meeting, it was the kiss that kept his feet in motion, and guided their automatic course. All along the watches of the restless night, it was the kiss that bore him sweet company, and wandered with him from one broken dream of bliss to another. Next day, it was the kiss that made of life for him a sort of sunlit wonderland. He preached his sermon in the morning, and took his appointed part in the other services of afternoon and evening, apparently to everybody's satisfaction: to him it was all a vision.
When the beautiful full moon rose, this Sunday evening, and glorified the clearing and the forest with its mellow harvest radiance, he could have groaned with the burden of his joy. He went out alone into the light, and bared his head to it, and stood motionless for a long time. In all his life, he had never been impelled as powerfully toward earnest and soulful thanksgiving. The impulse to kneel, there in the pure, tender moonlight, and lift up offerings of praise to God, kept uppermost in his mind. Some formless resignation restrained him from the act itself, but the spirit of it hallowed his mood. He gazed up at the broad luminous face of the satellite. "You are our God," he murmured. "Hers and mine! You are the most beautiful of heavenly creatures, as she is of the angels on earth. I am speechless with reverence for you both."
It was not until the camp-meeting broke up, four days later, and Theron with the rest returned to town, that the material aspects of what had happened, and might be expected to happen, forced themselves upon his mind. The kiss was a child of the forest. So long as Theron remained in the camp, the image of the kiss, which was enshrined in his heart and ministered to by all his thoughts, continued enveloped in a haze of sylvan mystery, like a dryad. Suggestions of its beauty and holiness came to him in the odors of the woodland, at the sight of wild flowers and water-lilies. When he walked alone in unfamiliar parts of the forest, he carried about with him the half-conscious idea of somewhere coming upon a strange, hidden pool which mortal eye had not seen before-a deep, sequestered mere of spring-fed waters, walled in by rich, tangled growths of verdure, and bearing upon its virgin bosom only the shadows of the primeval wilderness, and the light of the eternal skies. His fancy dwelt upon some such nook as the enchanted home of the fairy that possessed his soul. The place, though he never found it, became real to him. As he pictured it, there rose sometimes from among the lily-pads, stirring the translucent depths and fluttering over the water's surface drops like gems, the wonderful form of a woman, with pale leaves wreathed in her luxuriant red hair, and a skin which gave forth light.
With the homecoming to Octavius, his dreams began to take more account of realities. In a day or two he was wide awake, and thinking hard. The kiss was as much as ever the ceaseless companion of his hours, but it no longer insisted upon shrouding itself in vines and woodland creepers, or outlining itself in phosphorescent vagueness against mystic backgrounds of nymph-haunted glades. It advanced out into the noonday, and assumed tangible dimensions and substance. He saw that it was related to the facts of his daily life, and had, in turn, altered his own relations to all these facts.
What ought he to do? What COULD he do? Apparently, nothing but wait. He waited for a week-then for another week. The conclusion that the initiative had been left to him began to take shape in his mind. From this it seemed but a step to the passionate resolve to act at once.
Turning the situation over and over in his anxious thoughts, two things stood out in special prominence. One was that Celia loved him. The other was that the boy in Gorringe's law office, and possibly Gorringe, and heaven only knew how many others besides, had reasons for suspecting this to be true.
And what about Celia? Side by side with the moving rapture of thinking about her as a woman, there rose the substantial satisfaction of contemplating her as Miss Madden. She had kissed him, and she was very rich. The things gradually linked themselves before his eyes. He tried a thousand varying guesses at what she proposed to do, and each time reined up his imagination by the reminder that she was confessedly a creature of whims, who proposed to do nothing, but was capable of all things.
And as to the boy. If he had blabbed what he saw, it was incredible that somebody should not take the subject up, and impart a scandalous twist to it, and send it rolling like a snowball to gather up exaggeration and foul innuendo till it was big enough to overwhelm him. What would happen to him if a formal charge were preferred against him? He looked it up in the Discipline. Of course, if his accusers magnified their mean suspicions and calumnious imaginings to the point of formulating a charge, it would be one of immorality. They could prove nothing; there was nothing to prove. At the worst, it was an indiscretion, which would involve his being admonished by his Presiding Elder. Or if these narrow bigots confused slanders with proofs, and showed that they intended to convict him, then it would be open to him to withdraw from the ministry, in advance of his condemnation. His relation to the church would be the same as if he had been expelled, but to the outer world it would be different. And supposing he did withdraw from the ministry?
Yes; this was the important point. What if he did abandon this mistaken profession of his? On its mental side the relief would be prodigious, unthinkable. But on the practical side, the bread-and-butter side? For some days Theron paused with a shudder when he reached this question. The thought of the plunge into unknown material responsibilities gave him a sinking heart. He tried to imagine himself lecturing, canvassing for books or insurance policies, writing for newspapers-and remained frightened. But suddenly one day it occurred to him that these qualms and forebodings were sheer folly. Was not Celia rich? Would she not with lightning swiftness draw forth that check-book, like the flashing sword of a champion from its scabbard, and run to his relief? Why, of course. It was absurd not to have thought of that before.
He recalled her momentary anger with him, that afternoon in the woods, when he had cried out that discovery would mean ruin to him. He saw clearly enough now that she had been grieved at his want of faith in her protection. In his flurry of fright, he had lost sight of the fact that, if exposure and trouble came to him, she would naturally feel that she had been the cause of his martyrdom. It was plain enough now. If he got into hot water, it would be solely on account of his having been seen with her. He had walked into the woods with her-"the further the better" had been her own words-out of pure kindliness, and the desire to lead her away from the scene of her brother's and her own humiliation. But why amplify arguments? Her own warm heart would tell her, on the instant, how he had been sacrificed for her sake, and would bring her, eager and devoted, to his succor.
That was all right, then. Slowly, from this point, suggestions expanded themselves. The future could be, if he willed it, one long serene triumph of love, and lofty intellectual companionship, and existence softened and enriched at every point by all that wealth could command, and the most exquisite tastes suggest. Should he will it! Ah! the question answered itself. But he could not enter upon this beckoning heaven of a future until he had freed himself. When Celia said to him, "Come!" he must not be in the position to reply, "I should like to, but unfortunately I am tied by the leg." He should have to leave Octavius, leave the ministry, leave everything. He could not begin too soon to face these contingencies.
Very likely Celia had not thought it out as far as this. With her, it was a mere vague "sometime I may." But the harder masculine sense, Theron felt, existed for the very purpose of correcting and giving point to these loose feminine notions of time and space. It was for him to clear away the obstacles, and map the plans out with definite decision.
One warm afternoon, as he lolled in his easy-chair under the open window of his study, musing upon the ever-shifting phases of this vast, complicated, urgent problem, some chance words from the sidewalk in front came to his ears, and, coming, remained to clarify his thoughts.
Two ladies whose voices were strange to him had stopped-as so many people almost daily stopped-to admire the garden of the parsonage. One of them expressed her pleasure in general terms. Said the other-
"My husband declares those dahlias alone couldn't be matched for thirty dollars, and that some of those gladiolus must have cost three or four dollars apiece. I know we've spent simply oceans of money on our garden, and it doesn't begin to compare with this."
"It seems like a sinful waste to me," said her companion.
"No-o," the other hesitated. "No, I don't think quite that-if you can afford it just as well as not. But it does seem to me that I'd rather live in a little better house, and not spend it ALL on flowers. Just LOOK at that cactus!"
The voices died away. Theron sat up, with a look of arrested thought upon his face, then sprang to his feet and moved hurriedly through the parlor to an open front window. Peering out with caution he saw that the two women receding from view were fashionably dressed and evidently came from homes of means. He stared after them in a blank way until they turned a corner.
He went into the hall then, put on his frock-coat and hat, and stepped out into the garden. He was conscious of having rather avoided it heretofore-not altogether without reasons of his own, lying unexamined somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Now he walked slowly about, and examined the flowers with great attentiveness. The season was advancing, and he saw that many plants had gone out of bloom. But what a magnificent plenitude of blossoms still remained!
Thirty dollars' worth of dahlias-that was what the stranger had said. Theron hardly brought himself to credit the statement; but all the same it was apparent to even his uninformed eye that these huge, imbricated, flowering masses, with their extraordinary half-colors, must be unusual. He remembered that the boy in Gorringe's office had spoken of just one lot of plants costing thirty-one dollars and sixty cents, and there had been two other lots as well. The figures remained surprisingly distinct in his memory. It was no good deceiving himself any longer: of course these were the plants that Gorringe had spent his money upon, here all about him.
As he surveyed them with a sour regard, a cool breeze stirred across the garden. The tall, over-laden flower-spikes of gladioli bent and nodded at him; the hollyhocks and flaming alvias, the clustered blossoms on the standard roses, the delicately painted lilies on their stilt-like stems, fluttered in the wind, and seemed all bowing satirically to him. "Yes, Levi Gorringe paid for us!" He almost heard their mocking declaration.
Out in the back-yard, where a longer day of sunshine dwelt, there were many other flowers, and notably a bed of geraniums which literally made the eye ache. Standing at this rear corner of the house, he caught the droning sound of Alice's voice, humming a hymn to herself as she went about her kitchen work. He saw her through the open window. She was sweeping, and had a sort of cap on her head which did not add to the graces of her appearance. He looked at her with a hard glance, recalling as a fresh grievance the ten days of intolerable boredom he had spent cooped up in a ridiculous little tent with her, at the camp-meeting. She must have realized at the time how odious the enforced companionship was to him. Yes, beyond doubt she did. It came back to him now that they had spoken but rarely to each other. She had not even praised his sermon upon the Sabbath-question, which every one else had been in raptures over. For that matter she no longer praised anything he did, and took obvious pains to preserve toward him a distant demeanor. So much the better, he felt himself thinking. If she chose to behave in that offish and unwifely fashion, she could blame no one but herself for its results.
She had seen him, and came now to the window, watering-pot and broom in hand. She put her head out, to breathe a breath of dustless air, and began as if she would smile on him. Then her face chilled and stiffened, as she caught his look.
"Shall you be home for supper?" she asked, in her iciest tone.
He had not thought of going out before. The question, and the manner of it, gave immediate urgency to the idea of going somewhere. "I may or I may not," he replied. "It is quite impossible for me to say." He turned on his heel with this, and walked briskly out of the yard and down the street.
It was the most natural thing that presently he should be strolling past the Madden house, and letting a covert glance stray over its front and the grounds about it, as he loitered along. Every day since his return from the woods he had given the fates this chance of bringing Celia to meet him, without avail. He had hung about in the vicinity of the Catholic church on several evenings as well, but to no purpose. The organ inside was dumb, and he could detect no signs of Celia's presence on the curtains of the pastorate next door. This day, too, there was no one visible at the home of the Maddens, and he walked on, a little sadly. It was weary work waiting for the signal that never came.
But there were compensations. His mind reverted doggedly to the flowers in his garden, and to Alice's behavior toward him. They insisted upon connecting themselves in his thoughts. Why should Levi Gorringe, a money-lender, and therefore the last man in the world to incur reckless expenditure, go and buy perhaps a hundred dollars, worth of flowers for his wife's garden? It was time-high time-to face this question. And his experiencing religion afterward, just when Alice did, and marching down to the rail to kneel beside her-that was a thing to be thought of, too.
Meditation, it is true, hardly threw fresh light upon the matter. It was incredible, of course, that there should be anything wrong. To even shape a thought of Alice in connection with gallantry would be wholly impossible. Nor could it be said that Gorringe, in his new capacity as a professing church-member, had disclosed any sign of ulterior motives, or of insincerity. Yet there the facts were. While Theron pondered them, their mystery, if they involved a mystery, baffled him altogether. But when he had finished, he found himself all the same convinced that neither Alice nor Gorringe would be free to blame him for anything he might do. He had grounds for complaint against them. If he did not himself know just what these grounds were, it was certain enough that THEY knew. Very well, then, let them take the responsibility for what happened.
It was indeed awkward that at the moment, as Theron chanced to emerge temporarily from his brown-study, his eyes fell full upon the spare, well-knit form of Levi Gorringe himself, standing only a few feet away, in the staircase entrance to his law office. His lean face, browned by the summer's exposure, had a more Arabian aspect than ever. His hands were in his pockets, and he held an unlighted cigar between his teeth. He looked the Rev. Mr. Ware over calmly, and nodded recognition.
Theron had halted instinctively. On the instant he would have given a great deal not to have stopped at all. It was stupid of him to have paused, but it would not do now to go on without words of some sort. He moved over to the door-way, and made a half-hearted pretence of looking at the photographs in one of the show-cases at its side. As Mr. Gorringe did not take his hands from his pockets, there was no occasion for any formal greeting.
"I had no idea that they took such good pictures in Octavius," Theron remarked after a minute's silence, still bending in examination of the photographs.
"They ought to; they charge New York prices," observed the lawyer, sententiously.
Theron found in the words confirmation of his feeling that Gorringe was not naturally a lavish or extravagant man. Rather was he a careful and calculating man, who spent money only for a purpose. Though the minister continued gazing at the stiff presentments of local beauties and swains, his eyes seemed to see salmon-hued hollyhocks and spotted lilies instead. Suddenly a resolve came to him. He stood erect, and faced his trustee.
"Speaking of the price of things," he said, with an effort of arrogance in his measured tone, "I have never had an opportunity before of mentioning the subject of the flowers you have so kindly furnished for my-for MY garden."
"Why mention it now?" queried Gorringe, with nonchalance. He turned his cigar about with a movement of his lips, and worked it into the corner of his mouth. He did not find it necessary to look at Theron at all.
"Because-" began Mr. Ware, and then hesitated-"because-well, it raises a question of my being under obligation, which I-"
"Oh, no, sir," said the lawyer; "put that out of your mind. You are no more under obligation to me than I am to you. Oh, no, make yourself easy about that. Neither of us owes the other anything."
"Not even good-will-I take that to be your meaning," retorted Theron, with some heat.
"The words are yours, sir," responded Gorringe, coolly. "I do not object to them."
"As you like," put in the other. "If it be so, why, then all the more reason why I should, under the circumstances-"
"Under what circumstances?" interposed the lawyer. "Let us be clear about this thing as we go along. To what circumstances do you refer?"
He had turned his eyes now, and looked Theron in the face. A slight protrusion of his lower jaw had given the cigar an upward tilt under the black mustache.
"The circumstances are that you have brought or sent to my garden a great many very expensive flower-plants and bushes and so on."
"And you object? I had not supposed that clergymen in general-and you in particular-were so sensitive. Have donation parties, then, gone out of date?"
"I understand your sneer well enough," retorted Theron, "but that can pass. The main point is, that you did me the honor to send these plants-or to smuggle them in-but never once deigned to hint to me that you had done so. No one told me. Except by mere accident, I should not have known to this day where they came from."
Mr. Gorringe twisted the cigar at another angle, with lines of grim amusement about the corner of his mouth. "I should have thought," he said with dry deliberation, "that possibly this fact might have raised in your mind the conceivable hypothesis that the plants might not be intended for you at all."
"That is precisely it, sir," said Theron. There were people passing, and he was forced to keep his voice down. It would have been a relief, he felt, to shout. "That is it-they were not intended for me."
"Well, then, what are you talking about?" The lawyer's speech had become abrupt almost to incivility.
"I think my remarks have been perfectly clear," said the minister, with dignity. It was a new experience to be addressed in that fashion. It occurred to him to add, "Please remember that I am not in the witness-box, to be bullied or insulted by a professional."
Gorringe studied Theron's face attentively with a cold, searching scrutiny. "You may thank your stars you're not!" he said, with significance.
What on earth could he mean? The words and the menacing tone greatly impressed Theron. Indeed, upon reflection, he found that they frightened him. The disposition to adopt a high tone with the lawyer was melting away.
"I do not see," he began, and then deliberately allowed his voice to take on an injured and plaintive inflection-"I do not see why you should adopt this tone toward me-Brother Gorringe."
The lawyer scowled, and bit sharply into the cigar, but said nothing.
"If I have unconsciously offended you in any way," Theron went on, "I beg you to tell me how. I liked you from the beginning of my pastorate here, and the thought that latterly we seemed to be drifting apart has given me much pain. But now it is still more distressing to find you actually disposed to quarrel with me. Surely, Brother Gorringe, between a pastor and a probationer who-"
"No," Gorringe broke in; "quarrel isn't the word for it. There isn't any quarrel, Mr. Ware." He stepped down from the door-stone to the sidewalk as he spoke, and stood face to face with Theron. Working-men with dinner-pails, and factory girls, were passing close to them, and he lowered his voice to a sharp, incisive half-whisper as he added, "It wouldn't be worth any grown man's while to quarrel with so poor a creature as you are."
Theron stood confounded, with an empty stare of bewilderment on his face. It rose in his mind that the right thing to feel was rage, righteous indignation, fury; but for the life of him, he could not muster any manly anger. The character of the insult stupefied him.
"I do not know that I have anything to say to you in reply," he remarked, after what seemed to him a silence of minutes. His lips framed the words automatically, but they expressed well enough the blank vacancy of his mind. The suggestion that anybody deemed him a "poor creature" grew more astounding, incomprehensible, as it swelled in his brain.
"No, I suppose not," snapped Gorringe. "You're not the sort to stand up to men; your form is to go round the corner and take it out of somebody weaker than yourself-a defenceless woman, for instance."
"Oh-ho!" said Theron. The exclamation had uttered itself. The sound of it seemed to clarify his muddled thoughts; and as they ranged themselves in order, he began to understand. "Oh-ho!" he said again, and nodded his head in token of comprehension.
The lawyer, chewing his cigar with increased activity, glared at him. "What do you mean?" he demanded peremptorily.
"Mean?" said the minister. "Oh, nothing that I feel called upon to explain to you."
It was passing strange, but his self-possession had all at once returned to him. As it became more apparent that the lawyer was losing his temper, Theron found the courage to turn up the corners of his lips in show of a bitter little smile of confidence. He looked into the other's dusky face, and flaunted this smile at it in contemptuous defiance. "It is not a subject that I can discuss with propriety-at this stage," he added.
"Damn you! Are you talking about those flowers?"
"Oh, I am not talking about anything in particular," returned Theron, "not even the curious choice of language which my latest probationer seems to prefer."
"Go and strike my name off the list!" said Gorringe, with rising passion. "I was a fool to ever have it there. To think of being a probationer of yours-my God!"
"That will be a pity-from one point of view," remarked Theron, still with the ironical smile on his lips. "You seemed to enter upon the new life with such deliberation and fixity of purpose, too! I can imagine the regrets your withdrawal will cause, in certain quarters. I only hope that it will not discourage those who accompanied you to the altar, and shared your enthusiasm at the time." He had spoken throughout with studied slowness and an insolent nicety of utterance.
"You had better go away!" broke forth Gorringe. "If you don't, I shall forget myself."
"For the first time?" asked Theron. Then, warned by the flash in the lawyer's eye, he turned on his heel and sauntered, with a painstaking assumption of a mind quite at ease, up the street.
Gorringe's own face twitched and his veins tingled as he looked after him. He spat the shapeless cigar out of his mouth into the gutter, and, drawing forth another from his pocket, clenched it between his teeth, his gaze following the tall form of the Methodist minister till it was merged in the crowd.
"Well, I'm damned!" he said aloud to himself.
The photographer had come down to take in his showcases for the night. He looked up from his task at the exclamation, and grinned inquiringly.
"I've just been talking to a man," said the lawyer, "who's so much meaner than any other man I ever heard of that it takes my breath away. He's got a wife that's as pure and good as gold, and he knows it, and she worships the ground he walks on, and he knows that too. And yet the scoundrel is around trying to sniff out some shadow of a pretext for misusing her worse than he's already done. Yes, sir; he'd be actually tickled to death if he could nose up some hint of a scandal about her-something that he could pretend to believe, and work for his own advantage to levy blackmail, or get rid of her, or whatever suited his book. I didn't think there was such an out-and-out cur on this whole footstool. I almost wish, by God, I'd thrown him into the canal!"
"Yes, you lawyers must run against some pretty snide specimens," remarked the photographer, lifting one of the cases from its sockets.
CHAPTER XXVI
Theron spent half an hour in aimless strolling about the streets. From earliest boyhood his mind had always worked most clearly when he walked alone. Every mental process which had left a mark upon his memory and his career-the daydreams of future academic greatness and fame which had fashioned themselves in his brain as a farm lad; the meditations, raptures, and high resolves of his student period at the seminary; the more notable sermons and powerful discourse by which he had revealed the genius that was in him to astonished and delighted assemblages-all were associated in his retrospective thoughts with solitary rambles.
He had a very direct and vivid consciousness now that it was good to be on his legs, and alone. He had never in his life been more sensible of the charm of his own companionship. The encounter with Gorringe seemed to have cleared all the clouds out of his brain, and restored lightness to his heart. After such an object lesson, the impossibility of his continuing to sacrifice himself to a notion of duty to these low-minded and coarse-natured villagers was beyond all argument. There could no longer be any doubt about his moral right to turn his back upon them, to wash his hands of the miserable combination of hypocrisy and hysterics which they called their spiritual life.
And the question of Gorringe and Alice, that too stood precisely where he wanted it. Even in his own thoughts, he preferred to pursue it no further. Between them somewhere an offence of concealment, it might be of conspiracy, had been committed against him. It was no business of his to say more, or to think more. He rested his case simply on the fact, which could not be denied, and which he was not in the least interested to have explained, one way or the other. The recollection of Gorringe's obvious disturbance of mind was especially pleasant to him. He himself had been magnanimous almost to the point of weakness. He had gone out of his way to call the man "brother," and to give him an opportunity of behaving like a gentleman; but his kindly forbearance had been wasted. Gorringe was not the man to understand generous feelings, much less rise to their level. He had merely shown that he would be vicious if he knew how. It was more important and satisfactory to recall that he had also shown a complete comprehension of the injured husband's grievance. The fact that he had recognized it was enough-was, in fact, everything.
In the background of his thoughts Theron had carried along a notion of going and dining with Father Forbes when the time for the evening meal should arrive. The idea in itself attracted him, as a fitting capstone to his resolve not to go home to supper. It gave just the right kind of character to his domestic revolt. But when at last he stood on the doorstep of the pastorate, waiting for an answer to the tinkle of the electric bell he had heard ring inside, his mind contained only the single thought that now he should hear something about Celia. Perhaps he might even find her there; but he put that suggestion aside as slightly unpleasant.
The hag-faced housekeeper led him, as before, into the dining-room. It was still daylight, and he saw on the glance that the priest was alone at the table, with a book beside him to read from as he ate.
Father Forbes rose and came forward, greeting his visitor with profuse urbanity and smiles. If there was a perfunctory note in the invitation to sit down and share the meal, Theron did not catch it. He frankly displayed his pleasure as he laid aside his hat, and took the chair opposite his host.
"It is really only a few months since I was here, in this room, before," he remarked, as the priest closed his book and tossed it to one side, and the housekeeper came in to lay another place. "Yet it might have been years, many long years, so tremendous is the difference that the lapse of time has wrought in me."
"I am afraid we have nothing to tempt you very much, Mr. Ware," remarked Father Forbes, with a gesture of his plump white hand which embraced the dishes in the centre of the table. "May I send you a bit of this boiled mutton? I have very homely tastes when I am by myself."
"I was saying," Theron observed, after some moments had passed in silence, "that I date such a tremendous revolution in my thoughts, my beliefs, my whole mind and character, from my first meeting with you, my first coming here. I don't know how to describe to you the enormous change that has come over me; and I owe it all to you."
"I can only hope, then, that it is entirely of a satisfactory nature," said the priest, politely smiling.
"Oh, it is so splendidly satisfactory!" said Theron, with fervor. "I look back at myself now with wonder and pity. It seems incredible that, such a little while ago, I should have been such an ignorant and unimaginative clod of earth, content with such petty ambitions and actually proud of my limitations."
"And you have larger ambitions now?" asked the other. "Pray let me help you to some potatoes. I am afraid that ambitions only get in our way and trip us up. We clergymen are like street-car horses. The more steadily we jog along between the rails, the better it is for us."
"Oh, I don't intend to remain in the ministry," declared Theron. The statement seemed to him a little bald, now that he had made it; and as his companion lifted his brows in surprise, he added stumblingly: "That is, as I feel now, it seems to me impossible that I should remain much longer. With you, of course, it is different. You have a thousand things to interest and pleasantly occupy you in your work and its ceremonies, so that mere belief or non-belief in the dogma hardly matters. But in our church dogma is everything. If you take that away, or cease to have its support, the rest is intolerable, hideous."
Father Forbes cut another slice of mutton for himself. "It is a pretty serious business to make such a change at your time of life. I take it for granted you will think it all over very carefully before you commit yourself." He said this with an almost indifferent air, which rather chilled his listener's enthusiasm.
"Oh, yes,", Theron made answer; "I shall do nothing rash. But I have a good many plans for the future."
Father Forbes did not ask what these were, and a brief further period of silence fell upon the table.
"I hope everything went off smoothly at the picnic," Theron ventured, at last. "I have not seen any of you since then."
The priest shook his head and sighed. "No," he said. "It is a bad business. I have had a great deal of unhappiness out of it this past fortnight. That young man who was rude to you-of course it was mere drunken, irresponsible nonsense on his part-has got himself into a serious scrape, I'm afraid. It is being kept quite within the family, and we hope to manage so that it will remain there, but it has terribly upset his father and his sister. But that, after all, is not so hard to bear as the other affliction that has come upon the Maddens. You remember Michael, the other brother? He seems to have taken cold that evening, or perhaps over-exerted himself. He has been seized with quick consumption. He will hardly last till snow flies."
"Oh, I am GRIEVED to hear that!" Theron spoke with tremulous earnestness. It seemed to him as if Michael were in some way related to him.
"It is very hard upon them all," the priest went on. "Michael is as sweet and holy a character as it is possible for any one to think of. He is the apple of his father's eye. They were inseparable, those two. Do you know the father, Mr. Madden?"
Theron shook his head. "I think I have seen him," he said. "A small man, with gray whiskers."
"A peasant," said Father Forbes, "but with a heart of gold. Poor man! he has had little enough out of his riches. Ah, the West Coast people, what tragedies I have seen among them over here! They have rudimentary lung organizations, like a frog's, to fit the mild, wet soft air they live in. The sharp air here kills them off like flies in a frost. Whole families go. I should think there are a dozen of old Jeremiah's children in the cemetery. If Michael could have passed his twenty-eighth year, there would have been hope for him, at least till his thirty-fifth. These pulmonary things seem to go by sevens, you know."
"I didn't know," said Theron. "It is very strange-and very sad." His startled mind was busy, all at once, with conjectures as to Celia's age.
"The sister-Miss Madden-seems extremely strong," he remarked tentatively.
"Celia may escape the general doom," said the priest. His guest noted that he clenched his shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a gritty hardness in its tone. "THAT would be too dreadful to think of," he added.
Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut his mind against the thought.
"She has taken Michael's illness so deeply to heart," the priest proceeded, "and devoted herself to him so untiringly that I get a little nervous about her. I have been urging her to go away and get a change of air and scene, if only for a few days. She does not sleep well, and that is always a bad thing."
"I think I remember her telling me once that sometimes she had sleepless spells," said Theron. "She said that then she banged on her piano at all hours, or dragged the cushions about from room to room, like a wild woman. A very interesting young lady, don't you find her so?"
Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips. "What, our Celia?" he said. "Interesting! Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the world. She is as unique as-what shall I say?-as the Irish are among races. Her father and mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she-she might be the daughter of a hundred kings, except that they seem mostly rather under-witted than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and best. There in Ireland you got a strange mixture of elementary early peoples, walled off from the outer world by the four seas, and free to work out their own racial amalgam on their own lines. They brought with them at the outset a great inheritance of Eastern mysticism. Others lost it, but the Irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and brooded on it, and rooted their whole spiritual side in it. Their religion is full of it; their blood is full of it; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody else. The Ireland of two thousand years ago is incarnated in her. They are the merriest people and the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile, the most talented and the most unproductive, the most practical and the most visionary, the most devout and the most pagan. These impossible contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood. When I look at Celia, I seem to see in my mind's eye the fair young-ancestral mother of them all."
Theron gazed at the speaker with open admiration. "I love to hear you talk," he said simply.
An unbidden memory flitted upward in his mind. Those were the very words that Alice had so often on her lips in their old courtship days. How curious it was! He looked at the priest, and had a quaint sensation of feeling as a romantic woman must feel in the presence of a specially impressive masculine personality. It was indeed strange that this soft-voiced, portly creature in a gown, with his white, fat hands and his feline suavity of manner, should produce such a commanding and unique effect of virility. No doubt this was a part of the great sex mystery which historically surrounded the figure of the celibate priest as with an atmosphere. Women had always been prostrating themselves before it. Theron, watching his companion's full, pallid face in the lamp-light, tried to fancy himself in the priest's place, looking down upon these worshipping female forms. He wondered what the celibate's attitude really was. The enigma fascinated him.
Father Forbes, after his rhetorical outburst, had been eating. He pushed aside his cheese-plate. "I grow enthusiastic on the subject of my race sometimes," he remarked, with the suggestion of an apology. "But I make up for it other times-most of the time-by scolding them. If it were not such a noble thing to be an Irishman, it would be ridiculous."
"Ah," said Theron, deprecatingly, "who would not be enthusiastic in talking of Miss Madden? What you said about her was perfect. As you spoke, I was thinking how proud and thankful we ought to be for the privilege of knowing her-we who do know her well-although of course your friendship with her is vastly more intimate than mine-than mine could ever hope to be."
The priest offered no comment, and Theron went on: "I hardly know how to describe the remarkable impression she makes upon me. I can't imagine to myself any other young woman so brilliant or broad in her views, or so courageous. Of course, her being so rich makes it easier for her to do just what she wants to do, but her bravery is astonishing all the same. We had a long and very sympathetic talk in the woods, that day of the picnic, after we left you. I don't know whether she spoke to you about it?"
Father Forbes made a movement of the head and eyes which seemed to negative the suggestion.
"Her talk," continued Theron, "gave me quite new ideas of the range and capacity of the female mind. I wonder that everybody in Octavius isn't full of praise and admiration for her talents and exceptional character. In such a small town as this, you would think she would be the centre of attention-the pride of the place."
"I think she has as much praise as is good for her," remarked the priest, quietly.
"And here's a thing that puzzles me," pursued Mr. Ware. "I was immensely surprised to find that Dr. Ledsmar doesn't even think she is smart-or at least he professes the utmost intellectual contempt for her, and says he dislikes her into the bargain. But of course she dislikes him, too, so that's only natural. But I can't understand his denying her great ability."
The priest smiled in a dubious way. "Don't borrow unnecessary alarm about that, Mr. Ware," he said, with studied smoothness of modulated tones. "These two good friends of mine have much enjoyment out of the idea that they are fighting for the mastery over my poor unstable character. It has grown to be a habit with them, and a hobby as well, and they pursue it with tireless zest. There are not many intellectual diversions open to us here, and they make the most of this one. It amuses them, and it is not without its charms for me, in my capacity as an interested observer. It is a part of the game that they should pretend to themselves that they detest each other. In reality I fancy that they like each other very much. At any rate, there is nothing to be disturbed about."
His mellifluous tones had somehow the effect of suggesting to Theron that he was an outsider and would better mind his own business. Ah, if this purring pussy-cat of a priest only knew how little of an outsider he really was! The thought gave him an easy self-control.
"Of course," he said, "our warm mutual friendship makes the observation of these little individual vagaries merely a part of a delightful whole. I should not dream of discussing Miss Madden's confidences to me, or the doctor's either, outside our own little group."
Father Forbes reached behind him and took from a chair his black three-cornered cap with the tassel. "Unfortunately I have a sick call waiting me," he said, gathering up his gown and slowly rising.
"Yes, I saw the man sitting in the hall," remarked Theron, getting to his feet.
"I would ask you to go upstairs and wait," the priest went on, "but my return, unhappily, is quite uncertain. Another evening I may be more fortunate. I am leaving town tomorrow for some days, but when I get back-"
The polite sentence did not complete itself. Father Forbes had come out into the hall, giving a cool nod to the working-man, who rose from the bench as they passed, and shook hands with his guest on the doorstep.
When the door had closed upon Mr. Ware, the priest turned to the man. "You have come about those frames," he said. "If you will come upstairs, I will show you the prints, and you can give me a notion of what can be done with them. I rather fancy the idea of a triptych in carved old English, if you can manage it."
After the workman had gone away, Father Forbes put on slippers and an old loose soutane, lighted a cigar, and, pushing an easy-chair over to the reading lamp, sat down with a book. Then something occurred to him, and he touched the house-bell at his elbow.
"Maggie," he said gently, when the housekeeper appeared at the door, "I will have the coffee and FINE CHAMPAGNE up here, if it is no trouble. And-oh, Maggie-I was compelled this evening to turn the blameless visit of the framemaker into a venial sin, and that involves a needless wear and tear of conscience. I think that-hereafter-you understand?-I am not invariably at home when the Rev. Mr. Ware does me the honor to call."
CHAPTER XXVII
That night brought the first frost of the season worth counting. In the morning, when Theron came downstairs, his casual glance through the window caught a desolate picture of blackened dahlia stalks and shrivelled blooms. The gayety and color of the garden were gone, and in their place was shabby and dishevelled ruin. He flung the sash up and leaned out. The nipping autumn air was good to breathe. He looked about him, surveying the havoc the frost had wrought among the flowers, and smiled.
At breakfast he smiled again-a mirthless and calculated smile. "I see that Brother Gorringe's flowers have come to grief over night," he remarked.
Alice looked at him before she spoke, and saw on his face a confirmation of the hostile hint in his voice. She nodded in a constrained way, and said nothing.
"Or rather, I should say," Theron went on, with deliberate words, "the late Brother Gorringe's flowers."
"How do you mean-LATE" asked his wife, swiftly.
"Oh, calm yourself!" replied the husband. "He is not dead. He has only intimated to me his desire to sever his connection. I may add that he did so in a highly offensive manner."
"I am very sorry," said Alice, in a low tone, and with her eyes on her plate.
"I took it for granted you would be grieved at his backsliding," remarked Theron, making his phrases as pointed as he could. "He was such a promising probationer, and you took such a keen interest in his spiritual awakening. But the frost has nipped his zeal-along with the hundred or more dollars' worth of flowers by which he testified his faith. I find something interesting in their having been blasted simultaneously."
Alice dropped all pretence of interest in her breakfast. With a flushed face and lips tightly compressed, she made a movement as if to rise from her chair. Then, changing her mind, she sat bolt upright and faced her husband.
"I think we had better have this out right now," she said, in a voice which Theron hardly recognized. "You have been hinting round the subject long enough-too long. There are some things nobody is obliged to put up with, and this is one of them. You will oblige me by saying out in so many words what it is you are driving at."
The outburst astounded Theron. He laid down his knife and fork, and gazed at his wife in frank surprise. She had so accustomed him, of late, to a demeanor almost abject in its depressed docility that he had quite forgotten the Alice of the old days, when she had spirit and courage enough for two, and a notable tongue of her own. The flash in her eyes and the lines of resolution about her mouth and chin for a moment daunted him. Then he observed by a flutter of the frill at her wrist that she was trembling.
"I am sure I have nothing to 'say out in so many words,' as you put it," he replied, forcing his voice into cool, impassive tones. "I merely commented upon a coincidence, that was all. If, for any reason under the sun, the subject chances to be unpleasant to you, I have no earthly desire to pursue it."
"But I insist upon having it pursued!" returned Alice. "I've had just all I can stand of your insinuations and innuendoes, and it's high time we had some plain talk. Ever since the revival, you have been dropping sly, underhand hints about Mr. Gorringe and-and me. Now I ask you what you mean by it."
Yes, there was a shake in her voice, and he could see how her bosom heaved in a tremor of nervousness. It was easy for him to be very calm.
"It is you who introduce these astonishing suggestions, not I," he replied coldly. "It is you who couple your name with his-somewhat to my surprise, I admit-but let me suggest that we drop the subject. You are excited just now, and you might say things that you would prefer to leave unsaid. It would surely be better for all concerned to say no more about it."
Alice, staring across the table at him with knitted brows, emitted a sharp little snort of indignation. "Well, I never! Theron, I wouldn't have thought it of you!"
"There are so many things you wouldn't have thought, on such a variety of subjects," he observed, with a show of resuming his breakfast. "But why continue? We are only angering each other."
"Never mind that," she replied, with more control over her speech. "I guess things have come to a pass where a little anger won't do any harm. I have a right to insist on knowing what you mean by your insinuations."
Theron sighed. "Why will you keep harping on the thing?" he asked wearily. "I have displayed no curiosity. I don't ask for any explanations. I think I mentioned that the man had behaved insultingly to me-but that doesn't matter. I don't bring it up as a grievance. I am very well able to take care of myself. I have no wish to recur to the incident in any way. So far as I am concerned, the topic is dismissed."
"Listen to me!" broke in Alice, with eager gravity. She hesitated, as he looked up with a nod of attention, and reflected as well as she was able among her thoughts for a minute or two. "This is what I want to say to you. Ever since we came to this hateful Octavius, you and I have been drifting apart-or no, that doesn't express it-simply rushing away from each other. It only began last spring, and now the space between us is so wide that we are worse than complete strangers. For strangers at least don't hate each other, and I've had a good many occasions lately to see that you positively do hate me-"
"What grotesque absurdity" interposed Theron, impatiently.
"No, it isn't absurdity; it's gospel truth," retorted Alice. "And-don't interrupt me-there have been times, too, when I have had to ask myself if I wasn't getting almost to hate you in return. I tell you this frankly."
"Yes, you are undoubtedly frank," commented the husband, toying with his teaspoon. "A hypercritical person might consider, almost too frank."
Alice scanned his face closely while he spoke, and held her breath as if in expectant suspense. Her countenance clouded once more. "You don't realize, Theron," she said gravely; "your voice when you speak to me, your look, your manner, they have all changed. You are like another man-some man who never loved me, and doesn't even know me, much less like me. I want to know what the end of it is to be. Up to the time of your sickness last summer, until after the Soulsbys went away, I didn't let myself get downright discouraged. It seemed too monstrous for belief that you should go away out of my life like that. It didn't seem possible that God could allow such a thing. It came to me that I had been lax in my Christian life, especially in my position as a minister's wife, and that this was my punishment. I went to the altar, to intercede with Him, and to try to loose my burden at His feet. But nothing has come of it. I got no help from you."
"Really, Alice," broke in Theron, "I explained over and over again to you how preoccupied I was-with the book-and affairs generally."
"I got no assistance from Heaven either," she went on, declining the diversion he offered. "I don't want to talk impiously, but if there is a God, he has forgotten me, his poor heart-broken hand-maiden."
"You are talking impiously, Alice," observed her husband. "And you are doing me cruel injustice, into the bargain."
"I only wish I were!" she replied; "I only wish to God I were!"
"Well, then, accept my complete assurance that you ARE-that your whole conception of me, and of what you are pleased to describe as my change toward you, is an entire and utter mistake. Of course, the married state is no more exempt from the universal law of growth, development, alteration, than any other human institution. On its spiritual side, of course, viewed either as a sacrament, or as-"
"Don't let us go into that," interposed Alice, abruptly. "In fact, there is no good in talking any more at all. It is as if we didn't speak the same language. You don't understand what I say; it makes no impression upon your mind."
"Quite to the contrary," he assured her; "I have been deeply interested and concerned in all you have said. I think you are laboring under a great delusion, and I have tried my best to convince you of it; but I have never heard you speak more intelligibly or, I might say, effectively."
A little gleam of softness stole over Alice's face. "If you only gave me a little more credit for intelligence," she said, "you would find that I am not such a blockhead as you think I am."
"Come, come!" he said, with a smiling show of impatience. "You really mustn't impute things to me wholesale, like that."
She was glad to answer the smile in kind. "No; but truly," she pleaded, "you don't realize it, but you have grown into a way of treating me as if I had absolutely no mind at all."
"You have a very admirable mind," he responded, and took up his teaspoon again. She reached for his cup, and poured out hot coffee for him. An almost cheerful spirit had suddenly descended upon the breakfast table.
"And now let me say the thing I have been aching to say for months," she began in less burdened voice.
He lifted his brows. "Haven't things been discussed pretty fully already?" he asked.
The doubtful, harassed expression clouded upon her face at his words, and she paused. "No," she said resolutely, after an instant's reflection; "it is my duty to discuss this, too. It is a misunderstanding all round. You remember that I told you Mr. Gorringe had given me some plants, which he got from some garden or other?"
"If you really wish to go on with the subject-yes I have a recollection of that particular falsehood of his."
"He did it with the kindest and friendliest motives in the world!" protested Alice. "He saw how down-in-the-mouth and moping I was here, among these strangers-and I really was getting quite peaked and run-down-and he said I stayed indoors too much and it would do me all sorts of good to work in the garden, and he would send me some plants. The next I knew, here they were, with a book about mixing soils and planting, and so on. When I saw him next, and thanked him, I suppose I showed some apprehension about his having laid out money on them, and he, just to ease my mind, invented the story about his getting them for nothing. When I found out the truth-I got it out of that boy, Harvey Semple-he admitted it quite frankly-said he was wrong to deceive me."
"This was in the fine first fervor of his term of probation, I suppose," put in Theron. He made no effort to dissemble the sneer in his voice.
"Well," answered Alice, with a touch of acerbity, "I have told you now, and it is off my mind. There never would have been the slightest concealment about it, if you hadn't begun by keeping me at arm's length, and making it next door to impossible to speak to you at all, and if-"
"And if he hadn't lied." Theron, as he finished her sentence for her, rose from the table. Dallying for a brief moment by his chair, there seemed the magnetic premonition in the air of some further and kindlier word. Then he turned and walked sedately into the next room, and closed the door behind him. The talk was finished; and Alice, left alone, passed the knuckle of her thumb over one swimming eye and then the other, and bit her lips and swallowed down the sob that rose in her throat.
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was early afternoon when Theron walked out of his yard, bestowing no glance upon the withered and tarnished show of the garden, and started with a definite step down the street. The tendency to ruminative loitering, which those who saw him abroad always associated with his tall, spare figure, was not suggested today. He moved forward like a man with a purpose.
All the forenoon in the seclusion of the sitting-room, with a book opened before him, he had been thinking hard. It was not the talk with Alice that occupied his thoughts. That rose in his mind from time to time, only as a disagreeable blur, and he refused to dwell upon it. It was nothing to him, he said to himself, what Gorringe's motives in lying had been. As for Alice, he hardened his heart against her. Just now it was her mood to try and make up to him. But it had been something different yesterday, and who could say what it would be tomorrow? He really had passed the limit of patience with her shifting emotional vagaries, now lurching in this direction, now in that. She had had her chance to maintain a hold upon his interest and imagination, and had let it slip. These were the accidents of life, the inevitable harsh happenings in the great tragedy of Nature. They could not be helped, and there was nothing more to be said.
He had bestowed much more attention upon what the priest had said the previous evening. He passed in review all the glowing tributes Father Forbes had paid to Celia. They warmed his senses as he recalled them, but they also, in a curious, indefinite way, caused him uneasiness. There had been a personal fervor about them which was something more than priestly. He remembered how the priest had turned pale and faltered when the question whether Celia would escape the general doom of her family came up. It was not a merely pastoral agitation that, he felt sure.
A hundred obscure hints, doubts, stray little suspicions, crowded upward together in his thoughts. It became apparent to him now that from the outset he had been conscious of something queer-yes, from that very first day when he saw the priest and Celia together, and noted their glance of recognition inside the house of death. He realized now, upon reflection, that the tone of other people, his own parishioners and his casual acquaintances in Octavius alike, had always had a certain note of reservation in it when it touched upon Miss Madden. Her running in and out of the pastorate at all hours, the way the priest patted her on the shoulder before others, the obvious dislike the priest's ugly old housekeeper bore her, the astonishing freedom of their talk with each other-these dark memories loomed forth out of a mass of sinister conjecture.
He could bear the uncertainty no longer. Was it indeed not entirely his own fault that it had existed thus long? No man with the spirit of a mouse would have shilly-shallied in this preposterous fashion, week after week, with the fever of a beautiful woman's kiss in his blood, and the woman herself living only round the corner. The whole world had been as good as offered to him-a bewildering world of wealth and beauty and spiritual exaltation and love-and he, like a weak fool, had waited for it to be brought to him on a salver, as it were, and actually forced upon his acceptance! "That is my failing," he reflected; "these miserable ecclesiastical bandages of mine have dwarfed my manly side. The meanest of Thurston's clerks would have shown a more adventurous spirit and a bolder nerve. If I do not act at once, with courage and resolution, everything will be lost. Already she must think me unworthy of the honor it was in her sweet will to bestow." Then he remembered that she was now always at home. "Not another hour of foolish indecision!" he whispered to himself. "I will put my destiny to the test. I will see her today!"
A middle-aged, plain-faced servant answered his ring at the door-bell of the Madden mansion. She was palpably Irish, and looked at him with a saddened preoccupation in her gray eyes, holding the door only a little ajar.
Theron had got out one of his cards. "I wish to make inquiry about young Mr. Madden-Mr. Michael Madden," he said, holding the card forth tentatively. "I have only just heard of his illness, and it has been a great grief to me."
"He is no better," answered the woman, briefly.
"I am the Rev. Mr. Ware," he went on, "and you may say that, if he is well enough, I should be glad to see him."
The servant peered out at him with a suddenly altered expression, then shook her head. "I don't think he would be wishing to see YOU," she replied. It was evident from her tone that she suspected the visitor's intentions.
Theron smiled in spite of himself. "I have not come as a clergyman," he explained, "but as a friend of the family. If you will tell Miss Madden that I am here, it will do just as well. Yes, we won't bother him. If you will kindly hand my card to his sister."
When the domestic turned at this and went in, Theron felt like throwing his hat in the air, there where he stood. The woman's churlish sectarian prejudices had played ideally into his hands. In no other imaginable way could he have asked for Celia so naturally. He wondered a little that a servant at such a grand house as this should leave callers standing on the doorstep. Still more he wondered what he should say to the lady of his dream when he came into her presence.
"Will you please to walk this way?" The woman had returned. She closed the door noiselessly behind him, and led the way, not up the sumptuous staircase, as Theron had expected, but along through the broad hall, past several large doors, to a small curtained archway at the end. She pushed aside this curtain, and Theron found himself in a sort of conservatory, full of the hot, vague light of sunshine falling through ground-glass. The air was moist and close, and heavy with the smell of verdure and wet earth. A tall bank of palms, with ferns sprawling at their base, reared itself directly in front of him. The floor was of mosaic, and he saw now that there were rugs upon it, and that there were chairs and sofas, and other signs of habitation. It was, indeed, only half a greenhouse, for the lower part of it was in rosewood panels, with floral paintings on them, like a room.
Moving to one side of the barrier of palms, he discovered, to his great surprise, the figure of Michael, sitting propped up with pillows in a huge easy-chair. The sick man was looking at him with big, gravely intent eyes. His face did not show as much change as Theron had in fancy pictured. It had seemed almost as bony and cadaverous on the day of the picnic. The hands spread out on the chair-arms were very white and thin, though, and the gaze in the blue eyes had a spectral quality which disturbed him.
Michael raised his right hand, and Theron, stepping forward, took it limply in his for an instant. Then he laid it down again. The touch of people about to die had always been repugnant to him. He could feel on his own warm palm the very damp of the grave.
"I only heard from Father Forbes last evening of your-your ill-health," he said, somewhat hesitatingly. He seated himself on a bench beneath the palms, facing the invalid, but still holding his hat. "I hope very sincerely that you will soon be all right again."
"My sister is lying down in her room," answered Michael. He had not once taken his sombre and embarrassing gaze from the other's face. The voice in which he uttered this uncalled-for remark was thin in fibre, cold and impassive. It fell upon Theron's ears with a suggestion of hidden meaning. He looked uneasily into Michael's eyes, and then away again. They seemed to be looking straight through him, and there was no shirking the sensation that they saw and comprehended things with an unnatural prescience.
"I hope she is feeling better," Theron found himself saying. "Father Forbes mentioned that she was a little under the weather. I dined with him last night."
"I am glad that you came," said Michael, after a little pause. His earnest, unblinking eyes seemed to supplement his tongue with speech of their own. "I do be thinking a great deal about you. I have matters to speak of to you, now that you are here."
Theron bowed his head gently, in token of grateful attention. He tried the experiment of looking away from Michael, but his glance went back again irresistibly, and fastened itself upon the sick man's gaze, and clung there.
"I am next door to a dead man," he went on, paying no heed to the other's deprecatory gesture. "It is not years or months with me, but weeks. Then I go away to stand up for judgment on my sins, and if it is His merciful will, I shall see God. So I say my good-byes now, and so you will let me speak plainly, and not think ill of what I say. You are much changed, Mr. Ware, since you came to Octavius, and it is not a change for the good."
Theron lifted his brows in unaffected surprise, and put inquiry into his glance.
"I don't know if Protestants will be saved, in God's good time, or not," continued Michael. "I find there are different opinions among the clergy about that, and of course it is not for me, only a plain mechanic, to be sure where learned and pious scholars are in doubt. But I am sure about one thing. Those Protestants, and others too, mind you, who profess and preach good deeds, and themselves do bad deeds-they will never be saved. They will have no chance at all to escape hell-fire."
"I think we are all agreed upon that, Mr. Madden," said Theron, with surface suavity.
"Then I say to you, Mr. Ware, you are yourself in a bad path. Take the warning of a dying man, sir, and turn from it!"
The impulse to smile tugged at Theron's facial muscles. This was really too droll. He looked up at the ceiling, the while he forced his countenance into a polite composure, then turned again to Michael, with some conciliatory commonplace ready for utterance. But he said nothing, and all suggestion of levity left his mind, under the searching inspection bent upon him by the young man's hollow eyes. What did Michael suspect? What did he know? What was he hinting at, in this strange talk of his?
"I saw you often on the street when first you came here," continued Michael. "I knew the man who was here before you-that is, by sight-and he was not a good man. But your face, when you came, pleased me. I liked to look at you. I was tormented just then, do you see, that so many decent, kindly people, old school-mates and friends and neighbors of mine-and, for that matter, others all over the country must lose their souls because they were Protestants. At my boyhood and young manhood, that thought took the joy out of me. Sometimes I usen't to sleep a whole night long, for thinking that some lad I had been playing with, perhaps in his own house, that very day, would be taken when he died, and his mother too, when she died, and thrown into the flames of hell for all eternity. It made me so unhappy that finally I wouldn't go to any Protestant boy's house, and have his mother be nice to me, and give me cake and apples-and me thinking all the while that they were bound to be damned, no matter how good they were to me."
The primitive humanity of this touched Theron, and he nodded approbation with a tender smile in his eyes, forgetting for the moment that a personal application of the monologue had been hinted at.
"But then later, as I grew up," the sick man went on, "I learned that it was not altogether certain. Some of the authorities, I found, maintained that it was doubtful, and some said openly that there must be salvation possible for good people who lived in ignorance of the truth through no fault of their own. Then I had hope one day, and no hope the next, and as I did my work I thought it over, and in the evenings my father and I talked it over, and we settled nothing of it at all. Of course, how could we?"
"Did you ever discuss the question with your sister?" it occurred suddenly to Theron to interpose. He was conscious of some daring in doing so, and he fancied that Michael's drawn face clouded a little at his words.
"My sister is no theologian," he answered briefly. "Women have no call to meddle with such matters. But I was saying-it was in the middle of these doubtings of mine that you came here to Octavius, and I noticed you on the streets, and once in the evening-I made no secret of it to my people-I sat in the back of your church and heard you preach. As I say, I liked you. It was your face, and what I thought it showed of the man underneath it, that helped settle my mind more than anything else. I said to myself: 'Here is a young man, only about my own age, and he has education and talents, and he does not seek to make money for himself, or a great name, but he is content to live humbly on the salary of a book-keeper, and devote all his time to prayer and the meditation of his religion, and preaching, and visiting the sick and the poor, and comforting them. His very face is a pleasure and a help for those in suffering and trouble to look at. The very sight of it makes one believe in pure thoughts and merciful deeds. I will not credit it that God intends damning such a man as that, or any like him!'"
Theron bowed, with a slow, hesitating gravity of manner, and deep, not wholly complacent, attention on his face. Evidently all this was by way of preparation for something unpleasant.
"That was only last spring," said Michael. His tired voice sank for a sentence or two into a meditative half-whisper. "And it was MY last spring of all. I shall not be growing weak any more, or drawing hard breaths, when the first warm weather comes. It will be one season to me hereafter, always the same." He lifted his voice with perceptible effort. "I am talking too much. The rest I can say in a word. Only half a year has gone by, and you have another face on you entirely. I had noticed the small changes before, one by one. I saw the great change, all of a sudden, the day of the picnic. I see it a hundred times more now, as you sit there. If it seemed to me like the face of a saint before, it is more like the face of a bar-keeper now!"
This was quite too much. Theron rose, flushed to the temples, and scowled down at the helpless man in the chair. He swallowed the sharp words which came uppermost, and bit and moistened his lips as he forced himself to remember that this was a dying man, and Celia's brother, to whom she was devoted, and whom he himself felt he wanted to be very fond of. He got the shadow of a smile on to his countenance.
"I fear you HAVE tired yourself unduly," he said, in as non-contentious a tone as he could manage. He even contrived a little deprecatory laugh. "I am afraid your real quarrel is with the air of Octavius. It agrees with me so wonderfully-I am getting as fat as a seal. But I do hope I am not paying for it by such a wholesale deterioration inside. If my own opinion could be of any value, I should assure you that I feel myself an infinitely better and broader and stronger man than I was when I came here."
Michael shook his head dogmatically. "That is the greatest pity of all," he said, with renewed earnestness. "You are entirely deceived about yourself. You do not at all realize how you have altered your direction, or where you are going. It was a great misfortune for you, sir, that you did not keep among your own people. That poor half-brother of mine, though the drink was in him when he said that same to you, never spoke a truer word. Keep among your own people, Mr. Ware! When you go among others-you know what I mean-you have no proper understanding of what their sayings and doings really mean. You do not realize that they are held up by the power of the true Church, as a little child learning to walk is held up with a belt by its nurse. They can say and do things, and no harm at all come to them, which would mean destruction to you, because they have help, and you are walking alone. And so be said by me, Mr. Ware! Go back to the way you were brought up in, and leave alone the people whose ways are different from yours. You are a married man, and you are the preacher of a religion, such as it is. There can be nothing better for you than to go and strive to be a good husband, and to set a good example to the people of your Church, who look up to you-and mix yourself up no more with outside people and outside notions that only do you mischief. And that is what I wanted to say to you."
Theron took up his hat. "I take in all kindness what you have felt it your duty to say to me, Mr. Madden," he said. "I am not sure that I have altogether followed you, but I am very sure you mean it well."
"I mean well by you," replied Michael, wearily moving his head on the pillow, and speaking in an undertone of languor and pain, "and I mean well by others, that are nearer to me, and that I have a right to care more about. When a man lies by the site of his open grave, he does not be meaning ill to any human soul."
"Yes-thanks-quite so!" faltered Theron. He dallied for an instant with the temptation to seek some further explanation, but the sight of Michael's half-closed eyes and worn-out expression decided him against it. It did not seem to be expected, either, that he should shake hands, and with a few perfunctory words of hope for the invalid's recovery, which fell with a jarring note of falsehood upon his own ears, he turned and left the room. As he did so, Michael touched a bell on the table beside him.
Theron drew a long breath in the hall, as the curtain fell behind him. It was an immense relief to escape from the oppressive humidity and heat of the flower-room, and from that ridiculous bore of a Michael as well.
The middle-aged, grave-faced servant, warned by the bell, stood waiting to conduct him to the door.
"I am sorry to have missed Miss Madden," he said to her. "She must be quite worn out. Perhaps later in the day-"
"She will not be seeing anybody today," returned the woman. "She is going to New York this evening, and she is taking some rest against the journey."
"Will she be away long?" he asked mechanically. The servant's answer, "I have no idea," hardly penetrated his consciousness at all.
He moved down the steps, and along the gravel to the street, in a maze of mental confusion. When he reached the sidewalk, under the familiar elms, he paused, and made a definite effort to pull his thoughts together, and take stock of what had happened, of what was going to happen; but the thing baffled him. It was as if some drug had stupefied his faculties.
He began to walk, and gradually saw that what he was thinking about was the fact of Celia's departure for New York that evening. He stared at this fact, at first in its nakedness, then clothed with reassuring suggestions that this was no doubt a trip she very often made. There was a blind sense of comfort in this idea, and he rested himself upon it. Yes, of course, she travelled a great deal. New York must be as familiar to her as Octavius was to him. Her going there now was quite a matter of course-the most natural thing in the world.
Then there burst suddenly uppermost in his mind the other fact-that Father Forbes was also going to New York that evening. The two things spindled upward, side by side, yet separately, in his mental vision; then they twisted and twined themselves together. He followed their convolutions miserably, walking as if his eyes were shut.
In slow fashion matters defined and arranged themselves before him. The process of tracing their sequence was all torture, but there was no possibility, no notion, of shirking any detail of the pain. The priest had spoken of his efforts to persuade Celia to go away for a few days, for rest and change of air and scene. He must have known only too well that she was going, but of that he had been careful to drop no hint. The possibility of accident was too slight to be worth considering. People on such intimate terms as Celia and the priest-people with such facilities for seeing each other whenever they desired-did not find themselves on the same train of cars, with the same long journey in view, by mere chance.
Theron walked until dusk began to close in upon the autumn day. It grew colder, as he turned his face homeward. He wondered if it would freeze again over-night, and then remembered the shrivelled flowers in his wife's garden. For a moment they shaped themselves in a picture before his mind's eye; he saw their blackened foliage, their sicklied, drooping stalks, and wilted blooms, and as he looked, they restored themselves to the vigor and grace and richness of color of summer-time, as vividly as if they had been painted on a canvas. Or no, the picture he stared at was not on canvas, but on the glossy, varnished panel of a luxurious sleeping-car. He shook his head angrily and blinked his eyes again and again, to prevent their seeing, seated together in the open window above this panel, the two people he knew were there, gloved and habited for the night's journey, waiting for the train to start.
"Very much to my surprise," he found himself saying to Alice, watching her nervously as she laid the supper-table, "I find I must go to Albany tonight. That is, it isn't absolutely necessary, for that matter, but I think it may easily turn out to be greatly to my advantage to go. Something has arisen-I can't speak about it as yet-but the sooner I see the Bishop about it the better. Things like that occur in a man's life, where boldly striking out a line of action, and following it up without an instant's delay, may make all the difference in the world to him. Tomorrow it might be too late; and, besides, I can be home the sooner again."
Alice's face showed surprise, but no trace of suspicion. She spoke with studied amiability during the meal, and deferred with such unexpected tact to his implied desire not to be questioned as to the mysterious motives of the journey, that his mood instinctively softened and warmed toward her, as they finished supper.
He smiled a little. "I do hope I shan't have to go on tomorrow to New York; but these Bishops of ours are such gad-abouts one never knows where to catch them. As like as not Sanderson may be down in New York, on Book-Concern business or something; and if he is, I shall have to chase him up. But, after all, perhaps the trip will do me good-the change of air and scene, you know."
"I'm sure I hope so," said Alice, honestly enough. "If you do go on to New York, I suppose you'll go by the river-boat. Everybody talks so much of that beautiful sail down the Hudson."
"That's an idea!" exclaimed Theron, welcoming it with enthusiasm. "It hadn't occurred to me. If I do have to go, and it is as lovely as they make out, the next time I promise I won't go without you, my girl. I HAVE been rather out of sorts lately," he continued. "When I come back, I daresay I shall be feeling better, more like my old self. Then I'm going to try, Alice, to be nicer to you than I have been of late. I'm afraid there was only too much truth in what you said this morning."
"Never mind what I said this morning-or any other time," broke in Alice, softly. "Don't ever remember it again, Theron, if only-only-"
He rose as she spoke, moved round the table to where she sat, and, bending over her, stopped the faltering sentence with a kiss. When was it, he wondered, that he had last kissed her? It seemed years, ages, ago.
An hour later, with hat and overcoat on, and his valise in his hand, he stood on the doorstep of the parsonage, and kissed her once more before he turned and descended into the darkness. He felt like whistling as his feet sounded firmly on the plank sidewalk beyond the gate. It seemed as if he had never been in such capital good spirits before in his life.
CHAPTER XXIX
The train was at a standstill somewhere, and the dull, ashen beginnings of daylight had made a first feeble start toward effacing the lamps in the car-roof, when the new day opened for Theron. A man who had just come in stopped at the seat upon which he had been stretched through the night, and, tapping him brusquely on the knee, said, "I'm afraid I must trouble you, sir." After a moment of sleep-burdened confusion, he sat up, and the man took the other half of the seat and opened a newspaper, still damp from the press. It was morning, then.
Theron rubbed a clear space upon the clouded window with his thumb, and looked out. There was nothing to be seen but a broad stretch of tracks, and beyond this the shadowed outlines of wagons and machinery in a yard, with a background of factory buildings.
The atmosphere in the car was vile beyond belief. He thought of opening the window, but feared that the peremptory-looking man with the paper, who had wakened him and made him sit up, might object. They were the only people in the car who were sitting up. Backwards and forwards, on either side of the narrow aisle, the dim light disclosed recumbent forms, curled uncomfortably into corners, or sprawling at difficult angles which involved the least interference with one another. Here and there an upturned face gave a livid patch of surface for the mingled play of the gray dawn and the yellow lamp-light. A ceaseless noise of snoring was in the air.
He got up and walked to the tank of ice-water at the end of the aisle, and took a drink from the most inaccessible portion of the common tin-cup's rim. The happy idea of going out on the platform struck him, and he acted upon it. The morning air was deliciously cool and fresh by contrast, and he filled his lungs with it again and again. Standing here, he could discern beyond the buildings to the right the faint purplish outlines of great rounded hills. Some workmen, one of them bearing a torch, were crouching along under the side of the train, pounding upon the resonant wheels with small hammers. He recalled having heard the same sound in the watches of the night, during a prolonged halt. Some one had said it was Albany. He smiled in spite of himself at the thought that Bishop Sanderson would never know about the visit he had missed.
Swinging himself to the ground, he bent sidewise and looked forward down the long train. There were five, six, perhaps more, sleeping-cars on in front. Which one of them, he wondered-and then there came the sharp "All aboard!" from the other side, and he bundled up the steps again, and entered the car as the train slowly resumed its progress.
He was wide-awake now, and quite at his ease. He took his seat, and diverted himself by winking gravely at a little child facing him on the next seat but one. There were four other children in the family party, encamped about the tired and still sleeping mother whose back was turned to Theron. He recalled now having noticed this poor woman last night, in the first stage of his journey-how she fed her brood from one of the numerous baskets piled under their feet, and brought water in a tin dish of her own from the tank to use in washing their faces with a rag, and loosened their clothes to dispose them for the night's sleep. The face of the woman, her manner and slatternly aspect, and the general effect of her belongings, bespoke squalid ignorance and poverty. Watching her, Theron had felt curiously interested in the performance. In one sense, it was scarcely more human than the spectacle of a cat licking her kittens, or a cow giving suck to her calf. Yet, in another, was there anything more human?
The child who had wakened before the rest regarded him with placidity, declining to be amused by his winkings, but exhibiting no other emotion. She had been playing by herself with a couple of buttons tied on a string, and after giving a civil amount of attention to Theron's grimaces, she turned again to the superior attractions of this toy. Her self-possession, her capacity for self-entertainment, the care she took not to arouse the others, all impressed him very much. He felt in his pocket for a small coin, and, reaching forward, offered it to her. She took it calmly, bestowed a tranquil gaze upon him for a moment, and went back to the buttons. Her indifference produced an unpleasant sensation upon him somehow, and he rubbed the steaming window clear again, and stared out of it.
The wide river lay before him, flanked by a precipitous wall of cliffs which he knew instantly must be the Palisades. There was an advertisement painted on them which he tried in vain to read. He was surprised to find they interested him so slightly. He had heard all his life of the Hudson, and especially of it just at this point. The reality seemed to him almost commonplace. His failure to be thrilled depressed him for the moment.
"I suppose those ARE the Palisades?" he asked his neighbor.
The man glanced up from his paper, nodded, and made as if to resume his reading. But his eye had caught something in the prospect through the window which arrested his attention. "By George!" he exclaimed, and lifted himself to get a clearer view.
"What is it?" asked Theron, peering forth as well.
"Nothing; only Barclay Wendover's yacht is still there. There's been a hitch of some sort. They were to have left yesterday."
"Is that it-that long black thing?" queried Theron. "That can't be a yacht, can it?"
"What do you think it is?" answered the other. They were looking at a slim, narrow hull, lying at anchor, silent and motionless on the drab expanse of water. "If that ain't a yacht, they haven't begun building any yet. They're taking her over to the Mediterranean for a cruise, you know-around India and Japan for the winter, and home by the South Sea islands. Friend o' mine's in the party. Wouldn't mind the trip myself."
"But do you mean to say," asked Theron, "that that little shell of a thing can sail across the ocean? Why, how many people would she hold?"
The man laughed. "Well," he said, "there's room for two sets of quadrilles in the chief saloon, if the rest keep their legs well up on the sofas. But there's only ten or a dozen in the party this time. More than that rather get in one another's way, especially with so many ladies on board."
Theron asked no more questions, but bent his head to see the last of this wonderful craft. The sight of it, and what he had heard about it, suddenly gave point and focus to his thoughts. He knew at last what it was that had lurked, formless and undesignated, these many days in the background of his dreams. The picture rose in his mind now of Celia as the mistress of a yacht. He could see her reclining in a low easy-chair upon the polished deck, with the big white sails billowing behind her, and the sun shining upon the deep blue waves, and glistening through the splash of spray in the air, and weaving a halo of glowing gold about her fair head. Ah, how the tender visions crowded now upon him! Eternal summer basked round this enchanted yacht of his fancy-summer sought now in Scottish firths or Norwegian fiords, now in quaint old Southern harbors, ablaze with the hues of strange costumes and half-tropical flowers and fruits, now in far-away Oriental bays and lagoons, or among the coral reefs and palm-trees of the luxurious Pacific. He dwelt upon these new imaginings with the fervent longing of an inland-born boy. Every vague yearning he had ever felt toward salt-water stirred again in his blood at the thought of the sea-with Celia.
Why not? She had never visited any foreign land. "Sometime," she had said, "sometime, no doubt I will." He could hear again the wistful, musing tone of her voice. The thought had fascinations for her, it was clear. How irresistibly would it not appeal to her, presented with the added charm of a roving, vagrant independence on the high seas, free to speed in her snow-winged chariot wherever she willed over the deep, loitering in this place, or up-helm-and-away to another, with no more care or weight of responsibility than the gulls tossing through the air in her wake!
Theron felt, rather than phrased to himself, that there would not be "ten or a dozen in the party" on that yacht. Without defining anything in his mind, he breathed in fancy the same bold ocean breeze which filled the sails, and toyed with Celia's hair; he looked with her as she sat by the rail, and saw the same waves racing past, the same vast dome of cloud and ether that were mirrored in her brown eyes, and there was no one else anywhere near them. Even the men in sailors' clothes, who would be pulling at ropes, or climbing up tarred ladders, kept themselves considerately outside the picture. Only Celia sat there, and at her feet, gazing up again into her face as in the forest, the man whose whole being had been consecrated to her service, her worship, by the kiss.
"You've passed it now. I was trying to point out the Jumel house to you-where Aaron Burr lived, you know."
Theron roused himself from his day-dream, and nodded with a confused smile at his neighbor. "Thanks," he faltered; "I didn't hear you. The train makes such a noise, and I must have been dozing."
He looked about him. The night aspect, as of a tramps' lodging-house, had quite disappeared from the car. Everybody was sitting up; and the more impatient were beginning to collect their bundles and hand-bags from the racks and floor. An expressman came through, jangling a huge bunch of brass checks on leathern thongs over his arm, and held parley with passengers along the aisle. Outside, citified streets, with stores and factories, were alternating in the moving panorama with open fields; and, even as he looked, these vacant spaces ceased altogether, and successive regular lines of pavement, between two tall rows of houses all alike, began to stretch out, wheel to the right, and swing off out of view, for all the world like the avenues of hop-poles he remembered as a boy. Then was a long tunnel, its darkness broken at stated intervals by brief bursts of daylight from overhead, and out of this all at once the train drew up its full length in some vast, vaguely lighted enclosure, and stopped.
"Yes, this is New York," said the man, folding up his paper, and springing to his feet. The narrow aisle was filled with many others who had been prompter still; and Theron stood, bag in hand, waiting till this energetic throng should have pushed itself bodily past him forth from the car. Then he himself made his way out, drifting with a sense of helplessness in their resolute wake. There rose in his mind the sudden conviction that he would be too late. All the passengers in the forward sleepers would be gone before he could get there. Yet even this terror gave him no new power to get ahead of anybody else in the tightly packed throng.
Once on the broad platform, the others started off briskly; they all seemed to know just where they wanted to go, and to feel that no instant of time was to be lost in getting there. Theron himself caught some of this urgent spirit, and hurled himself along in the throng with reckless haste, knocking his bag against peoples' legs, but never pausing for apology or comment until he found himself abreast of the locomotive at the head of the train. He drew aside from the main current here, and began searching the platform, far and near, for those he had travelled so far to find.
The platform emptied itself. Theron lingered on in puzzled hesitation, and looked about him. In the whole immense station, with its acres of tracks and footways, and its incessantly shifting processions of people, there was visible nobody else who seemed also in doubt, or who appeared capable of sympathizing with indecision in any form. Another train came in, some way over to the right, and before it had fairly stopped, swarms of eager men began boiling out of each end of each car, literally precipitating themselves over one another, it seemed to Theron, in their excited dash down the steps. As they caught their footing below, they started racing pell-mell down the platform to its end; there he saw them, looking more than ever like clustered bees in the distance, struggling vehemently in a dense mass up a staircase in the remote corner of the building.
"What are those folks running for? Is there a fire?" he asked an amiable-faced young mulatto, in the uniform of the sleeping-car service, who passed him with some light hand-bags.
"No; they's Harlem people, I guess-jes' catchin' the Elevated-that's all, sir," he answered obligingly.
At the moment some passengers emerged slowly from one of the sleeping-cars, and came loitering toward him.
"Why, are there people still in these cars?" he asked eagerly. "Haven't they all gone?"
"Some has; some ain't," the porter replied. "They most generally take their time about it. They ain't no hurry, so long's they get out 'fore we're drawn round to the drill-yard."
There was still hope, then. Theron took up his bag and walked forward, intent upon finding some place from which he could watch unobserved the belated stragglers issuing from the sleeping-cars. He started back all at once, confronted by a semi-circle of violent men with whips and badges, who stunned his hearing by a sudden vociferous outburst of shouts and yells. They made furious gestures at him with their whips and fists, to enforce the incoherent babel of their voices; and in these gestures, as in their faces and cries, there seemed a great deal of menace and very little invitation. There was a big policeman sauntering near by, and Theron got the idea that it was his presence alone which protected him from open violence at the hands of these savage hackmen. He tightened his clutch on his valise, and, turning his back on them and their uproar, tried to brave it out and stand where he was. But the policeman came lounging slowly toward him, with such authority in his swaying gait, and such urban omniscience written all over his broad, sandy face, that he lost heart, and beat an abrupt retreat off to the right, where there were a number of doorways, near which other people had ventured to put down baggage on the floor.
Here, somewhat screened from observation, he stood for a long time, watching at odd moments the ceaselessly varying phases of the strange scene about him, but always keeping an eye on the train he had himself arrived in. It was slow and dispiriting work. A dozen times his heart failed him, and he said to himself mournfully that he had had his journey for nothing. Then some new figure would appear, alighting from the steps of a sleeper, and hope revived in his breast.
At last, when over half an hour of expectancy had been marked off by the big clock overhead, his suspense came to an end. He saw Father Forbes' erect and substantial form, standing on the car platform nearest of all, balancing himself with his white hands on the rails, waiting for something. Then after a little he came down, followed by a black porter, whose arms were burdened by numerous bags and parcels. The two stood a minute or so more in hesitation at the side of the steps. Then Celia descended, and the three advanced.
The importance of not being discovered was uppermost in Theron's mind, now that he saw them actually coming toward him. He had avoided this the previous evening, in the Octavius depot, with some skill, he flattered himself. It gave him a pleasurable sense of being a man of affairs, almost a detective, to be confronted by the necessity now of baffling observation once again. He was still rather without plans for keeping them in view, once they left the station. He had supposed that he would be able to hear what hotel they directed their driver to take them to, and, failing that, he had fostered a notion, based upon a story he had read when a boy, of throwing himself into another carriage, and bidding his driver to pursue them in hot haste, and on his life not fail to track them down. These devices seemed somewhat empty, now that the urgent moment was at hand; and as he drew back behind some other loiterers, out of view, he sharply racked his wits for some way of coping with this most pressing problem.
It turned out, however, that there was no difficulty at all. Father Forbes and Celia seemed to have no use for the hackmen, but moved straight forward toward the street, through the doorway next to that in which Theron cowered. He stole round, and followed them at a safe distance, making Celia's hat, and the portmanteau perched on the shoulder of the porter behind her, his guides. To his surprise, they still kept on their course when they had reached the sidewalk, and went over the pavement across an open square which spread itself directly in front of the station. Hanging as far behind as he dared, he saw them pass to the other sidewalk diagonally opposite, proceed for a block or so along this, and then separate at a corner. Celia and the negro lad went down a side street, and entered the door of a vast, tall red-brick building which occupied the whole block. The priest, turning on his heel, came back again and went boldly up the broad steps of the front entrance to this same structure, which Theron now discovered to be the Murray Hill Hotel.
Fortune had indeed favored him. He not only knew where they were, but he had been himself a witness to the furtive way in which they entered the house by different doors. Nothing in his own limited experience of hotels helped him to comprehend the notion of a separate entrance for ladies and their luggage. He did not feel quite sure about the significance of what he had observed, in his own mind. But it was apparent to him that there was something underhanded about it.
After lingering awhile on the steps of the hotel, and satisfying himself by peeps through the glass doors that the coast was clear, he ventured inside. The great corridor contained many people, coming, going, or standing about, but none of them paid any attention to him. At last he made up his mind, and beckoned a colored boy to him from a group gathered in the shadows of the big central staircase. Explaining that he did not at that moment wish a room, but desired to leave his bag, the boy took him to a cloak-room, and got him a check for the thing. With this in his pocket he felt himself more at his ease, and turned to walk away. Then suddenly he wheeled, and, bending his body over the counter of the cloak-room, astonished the attendant inside by the eagerness with which he scrutinized the piled rows of portmanteaus, trunks, overcoats, and bundles in the little enclosure.
"What is it you want? Here's your bag, if you're looking for that," this man said to him.
"No, thanks; it's nothing," replied Theron, straightening himself again. He had had a narrow escape. Father Forbes and Celia, walking side by side, had come down the small passage in which he stood, and had passed him so closely that he had felt her dress brush against him. Fortunately he had seen them in time, and by throwing himself half into the cloak-room, had rendered recognition impossible.
He walked now in the direction they had taken, till he came to the polite colored man at an open door on the left, who was bowing people into the breakfast room. Standing in the doorway, he looked about him till his eye lighted upon his two friends, seated at a small table by a distant window, with a black waiter, card in hand, bending over in consultation with them.
Returning to the corridor, he made bold now to march up to the desk and examine the register. The priest's name was not there. He found only the brief entry, "Miss Madden, Octavius," written, not by her, but by Father Forbes. On the line were two numbers in pencil, with an "and" between them. An indirect question to one of the clerks helped him to an explanation of this. When there were two numbers, it meant that the guest in question had a parlor as well as a bedroom.
Here he drew a long, satisfied breath, and turned away. The first half of his quest stood completed-and that much more fully and easily than he had dared to hope. He could not but feel a certain new respect for himself as a man of resource and energy. He had demonstrated that people could not fool with him with impunity.
It remained to decide what he would do with his discovery, now that it had been so satisfactorily made. As yet, he had given this hardly a thought. Even now, it did not thrust itself forward as a thing demanding instant attention. It was much more important, first of all, to get a good breakfast. He had learned that there was another and less formal eating-place, downstairs in the basement by the bar, with an entrance from the street. He walked down by the inner stairway instead, feeling himself already at home in the big hotel. He ordered an ample breakfast, and came out while it was being served to wash and have his boots blacked, and he gave the man a quarter of a dollar. His pockets were filled with silver quarters, half-dollars, and dollars almost to a burdensome point, and in his valise was a bag full of smaller change, including many rolls of copper cents which Alice always counted and packed up on Mondays. In the hurry of leaving he had brought with him the church collections for the past two weeks. It occurred to him that he must keep a strict account of his expenditure. Meanwhile he gave ten cents to another man in a silk-sleeved cardigan jacket, who had merely stood by and looked at him while his boots were being polished. There was a sense of metropolitan affluence in the very atmosphere.
The little table in the adjoining room, on which Theron found his meal in waiting for him, seemed a vision of delicate napery and refined appointments in his eyes. He was wolfishly hungry, and the dishes he looked upon gave him back assurances by sight and smell that he was very happy as well. The servant in attendance had an extremely white apron and a kindly black face. He bowed when Theron looked at him, with the air of a lifelong admirer and humble friend.
"I suppose you'll have claret with your breakfast, sir?" he remarked, as if it were a matter of course.
"Why, certainly," answered Theron, stretching his legs contentedly under the table, and tucking the corner of his napkin in his neckband.-"Certainly, my good man."
CHAPTER XXX
At ten o'clock Theron, loitering near the bookstall in the corridor, saw Father Forbes come downstairs, pass out through the big front doors, get into a carriage, and drive away.
This relieved him of a certain sense of responsibility, and he retired to a corner sofa and sat down. The detective side of him being off duty, so to speak, there was leisure at last for reflection upon the other aspects of his mission. Yes; it was high time for him to consider what he should do next.
It was easier to recognize this fact, however, than to act upon it. His mind was full of tricksy devices for eluding this task of serious thought which he sought to impose upon it. It seemed so much pleasanter not to think at all-but just to drift. He found himself watching with envy the men who, as they came out from their breakfast, walked over to the bookstall, and bought cigars from the row of boxes nestling there among the newspaper piles. They had such evident delight in the work of selection; they took off the ends of the cigars so carefully, and lighted them with such meditative attention,-he could see that he was wofully handicapped by not knowing how to smoke. He had had the most wonderful breakfast of his life, but even in the consciousness of comfortable repletion which pervaded his being, there was an obstinate sense of something lacking. No doubt a good cigar was the thing needed to round out the perfection of such a breakfast. He half rose once, fired by a sudden resolution to go over and get one. But of course that was nonsense; it would only make him sick. He sat down, and determinedly set himself to thinking.
The effort finally brought fruit-and of a kind which gave him a very unhappy quarter of an hour. The lover part of him was uppermost now, insistently exposing all its raw surfaces to the stings and scalds of jealousy. Up to this moment, his brain had always evaded the direct question of how he and the priest relatively stood in Celia's estimation. It forced itself remorselessly upon him now; and his thoughts, so far from shirking the subject, seemed to rise up to meet it. It was extremely unpleasant, all this.
But then a calmer view asserted itself. Why go out of his way to invent anguish for himself? The relations between Celia and the priest, whatever they might be, were certainly of old standing. They had begun before his time. His own romance was a more recent affair, and must take its place, of course, subject to existing conditions.
It was all right for him to come to New York, and satisfy his legitimate curiosity as to the exact character and scope of these conditions. But it was foolish to pretend to be amazed or dismayed at the discovery of their existence. They were a part of the situation which he, with his eyes wide open, had accepted. It was his function to triumph over them, to supplant them, to rear the edifice of his own victorious passion upon their ruins. It was to this that Celia's kiss had invited him. It was for this that he had come to New York. To let his purpose be hampered or thwarted now by childish doubts and jealousies would be ridiculous.
He rose, and holding himself very erect, walked with measured deliberation across the corridor and up the broad staircase. There was an elevator near at hand, he had noticed, but he preferred the stairs. One or two of the colored boys clustered about the foot of the stairs looked at him, and he had a moment of dreadful apprehension lest they should stop his progress. Nothing was said, and he went on. The numbers on the first floor were not what he wanted, and after some wandering about he ascended to the next, and then to the third. Every now and then he encountered attendants, but intuitively he bore himself with an air of knowing what he was about which protected him from inquiry.
Finally he came upon the hall-way he sought. Passing along, he found the doors bearing the numbers he had memorized so well. They were quite close together, and there was nothing to help him guess which belonged to the parlor. He hesitated, gazing wistfully from one to the other. In the instant of indecision, even while his alert ear caught the sound of feet coming along toward the passage in which he stood, a thought came to quicken his resolve. It became apparent to him that his discovery gave him a certain new measure of freedom with Celia, a sort of right to take things more for granted than heretofore. He chose a door at random, and rapped distinctly on the panel.
"Come!"
The voice he knew for Celia's. The single word, however, recalled the usage of Father Forbes, which he had noted more than once at the pastorate, when Maggie had knocked.
He straightened his shoulders, took his hat off, and pushed open the door. It WAS the parlor-a room of sofas, pianos, big easy-chairs, and luxurious bric-a-brac. A tall woman was walking up and down in it, with bowed head. Her back was at the moment toward him; and he looked at her, saying to himself that this was the lady of his dreams, the enchantress of the kiss, the woman who loved him-but somehow it did not seem to his senses to be Celia.
She turned, and moved a step or two in his direction before she mechanically lifted her eyes and saw who was standing in her doorway. She stopped short, and regarded him. Her face was in the shadow, and he could make out nothing of its expression, save that there was a general effect of gravity about it.
"I cannot receive you," she said. "You must go away. You have no business to come like this without sending up your card."
Theron smiled at her. The notion of taking in earnest her inhospitable words did not at all occur to him. He could see now that her face had vexed and saddened lines upon it, and the sharpness of her tone remained in his ears. But he smiled again gently, to reassure her.
"I ought to have sent up my name, I know," he said, "but I couldn't bear to wait. I just saw your name on the register and-you WILL forgive me, won't you?-I ran to you at once. I know you won't have the heart to send me away!"
She stood where she had halted, her arms behind her, looking him fixedly in the face. He had made a movement to advance, and offer his hand in greeting, but her posture checked the impulse. His courage began to falter under her inspection.
"Must I really go down again?" he pleaded. "It's a crushing penalty to suffer for such little indiscretion. I was so excited to find you were here-I never stopped to think. Don't send me away; please don't!"
Celia raised her head. "Well, shut the door, then," she said, "since you are so anxious to stay. You would have done much better, though, very much better indeed, to have taken the hint and gone away."
"Will you shake hands with me, Celia?" he asked softly, as he came near her.
"Sit there, please!" she made answer, indicating a chair in the middle of the room. He obeyed her, but to his surprise, instead of seating herself as well, she began walking up and down the length of the floor again. After a turn or two she stopped in front of him, and looked him full in the eye. The light from the windows was on her countenance now, and its revelations vaguely troubled him. It was a Celia he had never seen before who confronted him.
"I am much occupied by other matters," she said, speaking with cold impassivity, "but still I find myself curious to know just what limits you set to your dishonesty."
Theron stared up at her. His lips quivered, but no speech came to them. If this was all merely fond playfulness, it was being carried to a heart-aching point.
"I saw you hiding about in the depot at home last evening," she went on. "You come up here, pretending to have discovered me by accident, but I saw you following me from the Grand Central this morning."
"Yes, I did both these things," said Theron, boldly. A fine bravery tingled in his veins all at once. He looked into her face and found the spirit to disregard its frowning aspect. "Yes, I did them," he repeated defiantly. "That is not the hundredth part, or the thousandth part, of what I would do for your sake. I have got way beyond caring for any consequences. Position, reputation, the good opinion of fools-what are they? Life itself-what does it amount to? Nothing at all-with you in the balance!"
"Yes-but I am not in the balance," observed Celia, quietly. "That is where you have made your mistake."
Theron laid aside his hat. Women were curious creatures, he reflected. Some were susceptible to one line of treatment, some to another. His own reading of Celia had always been that she liked opposition, of a smart, rattling, almost cheeky, sort. One got on best with her by saying bright things. He searched his brain now for some clever quip that would strike sparks from the adamantine mood which for the moment it was her whim to assume. To cover the process, he smiled a little. Then her beauty, as she stood before him, her queenly form clad in a more stiffly fashionable dress than he had seen her wearing before, appealed afresh and overwhelmingly to him. He rose to his feet.
"Have you forgotten our talk in the woods?" he murmured with a wooing note. "Have you forgotten the kiss?"
She shook her head calmly. "I have forgotten nothing."
"Then why play with me so cruelly now?" he went on, in a voice of tender deprecation. "I know you don't mean it, but all the same it bruises my heart a little. I build myself so wholly upon you, I have made existence itself depend so completely upon your smile, upon a soft glance in your eyes, that when they are not there, why, I suffer, I don't know how to live at all. So be kinder to me, Celia!"
"I was kinder, as you call it, when you came in," she replied. "I told you to go away. That was pure kindness-more kindness than you deserved."
Theron looked at his hat, where it stood on the carpet by his feet. He felt tears coming into his eyes. "You tell me that you remember," he said, in depressed tones, "and yet you treat me like this! Perhaps I am wrong. No doubt it is my own fault. I suppose I ought not to have come down here at all."
Celia nodded her head in assent to this view.
"But I swear that I was helpless in the matter," he burst forth. "I HAD to come! It would have been literally impossible for me to have stayed at home, knowing that you were here, and knowing also that-that-"
"Go on!" said Celia, thrusting forth her under-lip a trifle, and hardening still further the gleam in her eye, as he stumbled over his sentence and left it unfinished. "What was the other thing that you were 'knowing'?"
"Knowing-" he took up the word hesitatingly-"knowing that life would be insupportable to me if I could not be near you."
She curled her lip at him. "You skated over the thin spot very well," she commented. "It was on the tip of your tongue to mention the fact that Father Forbes came with me. Oh, I can read you through and through, Mr. Ware."
In a misty way Theron felt things slipping from his grasp. The rising moisture blurred his eyes as their gaze clung to Celia.
"Then if you do read me," he protested, "you must know how utterly my heart and brain are filled with you. No other man in all the world can yield himself so absolutely to the woman he worships as I can. You have taken possession of me so wholly, I am not in the least master of myself any more. I don't know what I say or what I do. I am not worthy of you, I know. No man alive could be that. But no one else will idolize and reverence you as I do. Believe me when I say that, Celia! And how can you blame me, in your heart, for following you? 'Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me!'"
Celia shrugged her shoulders, and moved a few steps away from him. Something like despair seized upon him.
"Surely," he urged with passion, "surely I have a right to remind you of the kiss!"
She turned. "The kiss," she said meditatively. "Yes, you have a right to remind me of it. Oh, yes, an undoubted right. You have another right too-the right to have the kiss explained to you. It was of the good-bye order. It signified that we weren't to meet again, and that just for one little moment I permitted myself to be sorry for you. That was all."
He held himself erect under the incredible words, and gazed blankly at her. The magnitude of what he confronted bewildered him; his mind was incapable of taking it in. "You mean-" he started to say, and then stopped, helplessly staring into her face, with a dropped jaw. It was too much to try to think what she meant.
A little side-thought sprouted in the confusion of his brain. It grew until it spread a bitter smile over his pale face. "I know so little about kisses," he said; "I am such a greenhorn at that sort of thing. You should have had pity on my inexperience, and told me just what brand of kiss it was I was getting. Probably I ought to have been able to distinguish, but you see I was brought up in the country-on a farm. They don't have kisses in assorted varieties there."
She bowed her head slightly. "Yes, you are entitled to say that," she assented. "I was to blame, and it is quite fair that you should tell me so. You spoke of your inexperience, your innocence. That was why I kissed you in saying good-bye. It was in memory of that innocence of yours, to which you yourself had been busy saying good-bye ever since I first saw you. The idea seemed to me to mean something at the moment. I see now that it was too subtle. I do not usually err on that side."
Theron kept his hold upon her gaze, as if it afforded him bodily support. He felt that he ought to stoop and take up his hat, but he dared not look away from her. "Do you not err now, on the side of cruelty?" he asked her piteously.
It seemed for the instant as if she were wavering, and he swiftly thrust forth other pleas. "I admit that I did wrong to follow you to New York. I see that now. But it was an offence committed in entire good faith. Think of it, Celia! I have never seen you since that day-that day in the woods. I have waited-and waited-with no sign from you, no chance of seeing you at all. Think what that meant to me! Everything in the world had been altered for me, torn up by the roots. I was a new being, plunged into a new existence. The kiss had done that. But until I saw you again, I could not tell whether this vast change in me and my life was for good or for bad-whether the kiss had come to me as a blessing or a curse. The suspense was killing me, Celia! That is why, when I learned that you were coming here, I threw everything to the winds and followed you. You blame me for it, and I bow my head and accept the blame. But are you justified in punishing me so terribly-in going on after I have confessed my error, and cutting my heart into little strips, putting me to death by torture?"
"Sit down," said Celia, with a softened weariness in her voice. She seated herself in front of him as he sank into his chair again. "I don't want to give you unnecessary pain, but you have insisted on forcing yourself into a position where there isn't anything else but pain. I warned you to go away, but you wouldn't. No matter how gently I may try to explain things to you, you are bound to get nothing but suffering out of the explanation. Now shall I still go on?"
He inclined his head in token of assent, and did not lift it again, but raised toward her a disconsolate gaze from a pallid, drooping face.
"It is all in a single word, Mr. Ware," she proceeded, in low tones. "I speak for others as well as myself, mind you-we find that you are a bore."
Theron's stiffened countenance remained immovable. He continued to stare unblinkingly up into her eyes.
"We were disposed to like you very much when we first knew you," Celia went on. "You impressed us as an innocent, simple, genuine young character, full of mother's milk. It was like the smell of early spring in the country to come in contact with you. Your honesty of nature, your sincerity in that absurd religion of yours, your general NAIVETE of mental and spiritual get-up, all pleased us a great deal. We thought you were going to be a real acquisition."
"Just a moment-whom do you mean by 'we'?" He asked the question calmly enough, but in a voice with an effect of distance in it.
"It may not be necessary to enter into that," she replied. "Let me go on. But then it became apparent, little by little, that we had misjudged you. We liked you, as I have said, because you were unsophisticated and delightfully fresh and natural. Somehow we took it for granted you would stay so. But that is just what you didn't do-just what you hadn't the sense to try to do. Instead, we found you inflating yourself with all sorts of egotisms and vanities. We found you presuming upon the friendships which had been mistakenly extended to you. Do you want instances? You went to Dr. Ledsmar's house that very day after I had been with you to get a piano at Thurston's, and tried to inveigle him into talking scandal about me. You came to me with tales about him. You went to Father Forbes, and sought to get him to gossip about us both. Neither of those men will ever ask you inside his house again. But that is only one part of it. Your whole mind became an unpleasant thing to contemplate. You thought it would amuse and impress us to hear you ridiculing and reviling the people of your church, whose money supports you, and making a mock of the things they believe in, and which you for your life wouldn't dare let them know you didn't believe in. You talked to us slightingly about your wife. What were you thinking of, not to comprehend that that would disgust us? You showed me once-do you remember?-a life of George Sand that you had just bought,-bought because you had just discovered that she had an unclean side to her life. You chuckled as you spoke to me about it, and you were for all the world like a little nasty boy, giggling over something dirty that older people had learned not to notice. These are merely random incidents. They are just samples, picked hap-hazard, of the things in you which have been opening our eyes, little by little, to our mistake. I can understand that all the while you really fancied that you were expanding, growing, in all directions. What you took to be improvement was degeneration. When you thought that you were impressing us most by your smart sayings and doings, you were reminding us most of the fable about the donkey trying to play lap-dog. And it wasn't even an honest, straightforward donkey at that!"
She uttered these last words sorrowfully, her hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes sinking to the floor. A silence ensued. Then Theron reached a groping hand out for his hat, and, rising, walked with a lifeless, automatic step to the door.
He had it half open, when the impossibility of leaving in this way towered suddenly in his path and overwhelmed him. He slammed the door to, and turned as if he had been whirled round by some mighty wind. He came toward her, with something almost menacing in the vigor of his movements, and in the wild look upon his white, set face. Halting before her, he covered the tailor-clad figure, the coiled red hair, the upturned face with its simulated calm, the big brown eyes, the rings upon the clasped fingers, with a sweeping, comprehensive glare of passion.
"This is what you have done to me, then!"
His voice was unrecognizable in his own ears-hoarse and broken, but with a fright-compelling something in it which stimulated his rage. The horrible notion of killing her, there where she sat, spread over the chaos of his mind with an effect of unearthly light-red and abnormally evil. It was like that first devilish radiance ushering in Creation, of which the first-fruit was Cain. Why should he not kill her? In all ages, women had been slain for less. Yes-and men had been hanged. Something rose and stuck in his dry throat; and as he swallowed it down, the sinister flare of murderous fascination died suddenly away into darkness. The world was all black again-plunged in the Egyptian night which lay upon the face of the deep while the earth was yet without form and void. He was alone on it-alone among awful, planetary solitudes which crushed him.
The sight of Celia, sitting motionless only a pace in front of him, was plain enough to his eyes. It was an illusion. She was really a star, many millions of miles away. These things were hard to understand; but they were true, none the less. People seemed to be about him, but in fact he was alone. He recalled that even the little child in the car, playing with those two buttons on a string, would have nothing to do with him. Take his money, yes; take all he would give her-but not smile at him, not come within reach of him! Men closed the doors of their houses against him. The universe held him at arm's length as a nuisance.
He was standing with one knee upon a sofa. Unconsciously he had moved round to the side of Celia; and as he caught the effect of her face now in profile, memory-pictures began at once building themselves in his brain-pictures of her standing in the darkened room of the cottage of death, declaiming the CONFITEOR; of her seated at the piano, under the pure, mellowed candle-light; of her leaning her chin on her hands, and gazing meditatively at the leafy background of the woods they were in; of her lying back, indolently content, in the deck-chair on the yacht of his fancy-that yacht which a few hours before had seemed so brilliantly and bewitchingly real to him, and now-now-!
He sank in a heap upon the couch, and, burying his face among its cushions, wept and groaned aloud. His collapse was absolute. He sobbed with the abandonment of one who, in the veritable presence of death, lets go all sense of relation to life.
Presently some one was touching him on the shoulder-an incisive, pointed touch-and he checked himself, and lifted his face.
"You will have to get up, and present some sort of an appearance, and go away at once," Celia said to him in low, rapid tones. "Some gentlemen are at the door, whom I have been waiting for."
As he stupidly sat up and tried to collect his faculties, Celia had opened the door and admitted two visitors. The foremost was Father Forbes; and he, with some whispered, smiling words, presented to her his companion, a tall, robust, florid man of middle-age, with a frock-coat and a gray mustache, sharply waxed. The three spoke for a moment together. Then the priest's wandering eye suddenly lighted upon the figure on the sofa. He stared, knitted his brows, and then lifted them in inquiry as he turned to Celia.
"Poor man!" she said readily, in tones loud enough to reach Theron. "It is our neighbor, Father, the Rev. Mr. Ware. He hit upon my name in the register quite unexpectedly, and I had him come up. He is in sore distress-a great and sudden bereavement. He is going now. Won't you speak to him in the hall-a few words, Father? It would please him. He is terribly depressed."
The words had drawn Theron to his feet, as by some mechanical process. He took up his hat and moved dumbly to the door. It seemed to him that Celia intended offering to shake hands; but he went past her with only some confused exchange of glances and a murmured word or two. The tall stranger, who drew aside to let him pass, had acted as if he expected to be introduced. Theron, emerging into the hall, leaned against the wall and looked dreamily at the priest, who had stepped out with him.
"I am very sorry to learn that you are in trouble, Mr. Ware," Father Forbes said, gently enough, but in hurried tones. "Miss Madden is also in trouble. I mentioned to you that her brother had got into a serious scrape. I have brought my old friend, General Brady, to consult with her about the matter. He knows all the parties concerned, and he can set things right if anybody can."
"It's a mistake about me-I 'm not in any trouble at all," said Theron. "I just dropped in to make a friendly call."
The priest glanced sharply at him, noting with a swift, informed scrutiny how he sprawled against the wall, and what vacuity his eyes and loosened lips expressed.
"Then you have a talent for the inopportune amounting to positive genius," said Father Forbes, with a stormy smile.
"Tell me this, Father Forbes," the other demanded, with impulsive suddenness, "is it true that you don't want me in your house again? Is that the truth or not?"
"The truth is always relative, Mr. Ware," replied the priest, turning away, and closing the door of the parlor behind him with a decisive sound.
Left alone, Theron started to make his way downstairs. He found his legs wavering under him and making zigzag movements of their own in a bewildering fashion. He referred this at first, in an outburst of fresh despair, to the effects of his great grief. Then, as he held tight to the banister and governed his descent step by step, it occurred to him that it must be the wine he had had for breakfast. Upon examination, he was not so unhappy, after all.
CHAPTER XXXI
At the second peal of the door-bell, Brother Soulsby sat up in bed. It was still pitch-dark, and the memory of the first ringing fluttered musically in his awakening consciousness as a part of some dream he had been having.
"Who the deuce can that be?" he mused aloud, in querulous resentment at the interruption.
"Put your head out of the window, and ask," suggested his wife, drowsily.
The bell-pull scraped violently in its socket, and a third outburst of shrill reverberations clamored through the silent house.
"Whatever you do, I'd do it before he yanked the whole thing to pieces," added the wife, with more decision.
Brother Soulsby was wide awake now. He sprang to the floor, and, groping about in the obscurity, began drawing on some of his clothes. He rapped on the window during the process, to show that the house was astir, and a minute afterward made his way out of the room and down the stairs, the boards creaking under his stockinged feet as he went.
Nearly a quarter of an hour passed before he returned. Sister Soulsby, lying in sleepy quiescence, heard vague sounds of voices at the front door, and did not feel interested enough to lift her head and listen. A noise of footsteps on the sidewalk followed, first receding from the door, then turning toward it, this second time marking the presence of more than one person. There seemed in this the implication of a guest, and she shook off the dozing impulses which enveloped her faculties, and waited to hear more. There came up, after further muttering of male voices, the undeniable chink of coins striking against one another. Then more footsteps, the resonant slam of a carriage door out in the street, the grinding of wheels turning on the frosty road, and the racket of a vehicle and horses going off at a smart pace into the night. Somebody had come, then. She yawned at the thought, but remained well awake, tracing idly in her mind, as various slight sounds rose from the lower floor, the different things Soulsby was probably doing. Their spare room was down there, directly underneath, but curiously enough no one seemed to enter it. The faint murmur of conversation which from time to time reached her came from the parlor instead. At last she heard her husband's soft tread coming up the staircase, and still there had been no hint of employing the guest-chamber. What could he be about? she wondered.
Brother Soulsby came in, bearing a small lamp in his hand, the reddish light of which, flaring upward, revealed an unlooked-for display of amusement on his thin, beardless face. He advanced to the bedside, shading the glare from her blinking eyes with his palm, and grinned.
"A thousand guesses, old lady," he said, with a dry chuckle, "and you wouldn't have a ghost of a chance. You might guess till Hades froze over seven feet thick, and still you wouldn't hit it."
She sat up in turn. "Good gracious, man," she began, "you don't mean-" Here the cheerful gleam in his small eyes reassured her, and she sighed relief, then smiled confusedly. "I half thought, just for the minute," she explained, "it might be some bounder who'd come East to try and blackmail me. But no, who is it-and what on earth have you done with him?"
Brother Soulsby cackled in merriment. "It's Brother Ware of Octavius, out on a little bat, all by himself. He says he's been on the loose only two days; but it looks more like a fortnight."
"OUR Brother Ware?" she regarded him with open-eyed surprise.
"Well, yes, I suppose he's OUR Brother Ware-some," returned Soulsby, genially. "He seems to think so, anyway."
"But tell me about it!" she urged eagerly. "What's the matter with him? How does he explain it?"
"Well, he explains it pretty badly, if you ask me," said Soulsby, with a droll, joking eye and a mock-serious voice. He seated himself on the side of the bed, facing her, and still considerately shielding her from the light of the lamp he held. "But don't think I suggested any explanations. I've been a mother myself. He's merely filled himself up to the neck with rum, in the simple, ordinary, good old-fashioned way. That's all. What is there to explain about that?"
She looked meditatively at him for a time, shaking her head. "No, Soulsby," she said gravely, at last. "This isn't any laughing matter. You may be sure something bad has happened, to set him off like that. I'm going to get up and dress right now. What time is it?"
"Now don't you do anything of the sort," he urged persuasively. "It isn't five o'clock; it'll be dark for nearly an hour yet. Just you turn over, and have another nap. He's all right. I put him on the sofa, with the buffalo robe round him. You'll find him there, safe and sound, when it's time for white folks to get up. You know how it breaks you up all day, not to get your full sleep."
"I don't care if it makes me look as old as the everlasting hills," she said. "Can't you understand, Soulsby? The thing worries me-gets on my nerves. I couldn't close an eye, if I tried. I took a great fancy to that young man. I told you so at the time."
Soulsby nodded, and turned down the wick of his lamp a trifle. "Yes, I know you did," he remarked in placidly non-contentious tones. "I can't say I saw much in him myself, but I daresay you're right." There followed a moment's silence, during which he experimented in turning the wick up again. "But, anyway," he went on, "there isn't anything you can do. He'll sleep it off, and the longer he's left alone the better. It isn't as if we had a hired girl, who'd come down and find him there, and give the whole thing away. He's fixed up there perfectly comfortable; and when he's had his sleep out, and wakes up on his own account, he'll be feeling a heap better."
The argument might have carried conviction, but on the instant the sound of footsteps came to them from the room below. The subdued noise rose regularly, as of one pacing to and fro.
"No, Soulsby, YOU come back to bed, and get YOUR sleep out. I'm going downstairs. It's no good talking; I'm going."
Brother Soulsby offered no further opposition, either by talk or demeanor, but returned contentedly to bed, pulling the comforter over his ears, and falling into the slow, measured respiration of tranquil slumber before his wife was ready to leave the room.
The dim, cold gray of twilight was sifting furtively through the lace curtains of the front windows when Mrs. Soulsby, lamp in hand, entered the parlor. She confronted a figure she would have hardly recognized. The man seemed to have been submerged in a bath of disgrace. From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, everything about him was altered, distorted, smeared with an intangible effect of shame. In the vague gloom of the middle distance, between lamp and window, she noticed that his shoulders were crouched, like those of some shambling tramp. The frowsy shadows of a stubble beard lay on his jaw and throat. His clothes were crumpled and hung awry; his boots were stained with mud. The silk hat on the piano told its battered story with dumb eloquence.
Lifting the lamp, she moved forward a step, and threw its light upon his face. A little groan sounded involuntarily upon her lips. Out of a mask of unpleasant features, swollen with drink and weighted by the physical craving for rest and sleep, there stared at her two bloodshot eyes, shining with the wild light of hysteria. The effect of dishevelled hair, relaxed muscles, and rough, half-bearded lower face lent to these eyes, as she caught their first glance, an unnatural glare. The lamp shook in her hand for an instant. Then, ashamed of herself, she held out her other hand fearlessly to him.
"Tell me all about it, Theron," she said calmly, and with a soothing, motherly intonation in her voice.
He did not take the hand she offered, but suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his knees at her feet. He was so tall a man that the movement could have no grace. He abased his head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the skirts at her ankles. She stood still for a moment, looking down upon him. Then, blowing out the light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp on the piano near by. The daylight made things distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, throughout the room.
"I have come out of hell, for the sake of hearing some human being speak to me like that!"
The thick utterance proceeded in a muffled fashion from where his face grovelled against her dress. Its despairing accents appealed to her, but even more was she touched by the ungainly figure he made, sprawling on the carpet.
"Well, since you are out, stay out," she answered, as reassuringly as she could. "But get up and take a seat here beside me, like a sensible man, and tell me all about it. Come! I insist!"
In obedience to her tone, and the sharp tug at his shoulder with which she emphasized it, he got slowly to his feet, and listlessly seated himself on the sofa to which she pointed. He hung his head, and began catching his breath with a periodical gasp, half hiccough, half sob.
"First of all," she said, in her brisk, matter-of-fact manner, "don't you want to lie down there again, and have me tuck you up snug with the buffalo robe, and go to sleep? That would be the best thing you could do."
He shook his head disconsolately, from side to side. "I can't!" he groaned, with a swifter recurrence of the sob-like convulsions. "I'm dying for sleep, but I'm too-too frightened!"
"Come, I'll sit beside you till you drop off," she said, with masterful decision. He suffered himself to be pushed into recumbency on the couch, and put his head with docility on the pillow she brought from the spare room. When she had spread the fur over him, and pushed her chair close to the sofa, she stood by it for a little, looking down in meditation at his demoralized face. Under the painful surface-blur of wretchedness and fatigued debauchery, she traced reflectively the lineaments of the younger and cleanlier countenance she had seen a few months before. Nothing essential had been taken away. There was only this pestiferous overlaying of shame and cowardice to be removed. The face underneath was still all right.
With a soft, maternal touch, she smoothed the hair from his forehead into order. Then she seated herself, and, when he got his hand out from under the robe and thrust it forth timidly, she took it in hers and held it in a warm, sympathetic grasp. He closed his eyes at this, and gradually the paroxysmal catch in his breathing lapsed. The daylight strengthened, until at last tiny flecks of sunshine twinkled in the meshes of the further curtains at the window. She fancied him asleep, and gently sought to disengage her hand, but his fingers clutched at it with vehemence, and his eyes were wide open.
"I can't sleep at all," he murmured. "I want to talk."
"There 's nothing in the world to hinder you," she commented smilingly.
"I tell you the solemn truth," he said, lifting his voice in dogged assertion: "the best sermon I ever preached in my life, I preached only three weeks ago, at the camp-meeting. It was admitted by everybody to be far and away my finest effort! They will tell you the same!"
"It's quite likely," assented Sister Soulsby. "I quite believe it."
"Then how can anybody say that I've degenerated, that I've become a fool?" he demanded.
"I haven't heard anybody hint at such a thing," she answered quietly.
"No, of course, YOU haven't heard them!" he cried. "I heard them, though!" Then, forcing himself to a sitting posture, against the restraint of her hand, he flung back the covering. "I'm burning hot already! Yes, those were the identical words: I haven't improved; I've degenerated. People hate me; they won't have me in their houses. They say I'm a nuisance and a bore. I'm like a little nasty boy. That's what they say. Even a young man who was dying-lying right on the edge of his open grave-told me solemnly that I reminded him of a saint once, but I was only fit for a barkeeper now. They say I really don't know anything at all. And I'm not only a fool, they say, I'm a dishonest fool into the bargain!"
"But who says such twaddle as that?" she returned consolingly. The violence of his emotion disturbed her. "You mustn't imagine such things. You are among friends here. Other people are your friends, too. They have the very highest opinion of you."
"I haven't a friend on earth but you!" he declared solemnly. His eyes glowed fiercely, and his voice sank into a grave intensity of tone. "I was going to kill myself. I went on to the big bridge to throw myself off, and a policeman saw me trying to climb over the railing, and he grabbed me and marched me away. Then he threw me out at the entrance, and said he would club my head off if I came there again. And then I went and stood and let the cable-cars pass close by me, and twenty times I thought I had the nerve to throw myself under the next one, and then I waited for the next-and I was afraid! And then I was in a crowd somewhere, and the warning came to me that I was going to die. The fool needn't go kill himself: God would take care of that. It was my heart, you know. I've had that terrible fluttering once before. It seized me this time, and I fell down in the crowd, and some people walked over me, but some one else helped me up, and let me sit down in a big lighted hallway, the entrance to some theatre, and some one brought me some brandy, but somebody else said I was drunk, and they took it away again, and put me out. They could see I was a fool, that I hadn't a friend on earth. And when I went out, there was a big picture of a woman in tights, and the word 'Amazons' overhead-and then I remembered you. I knew you were my friend-the only one I have on earth."
"It is very flattering-to be remembered like that," said Sister Soulsby, gently. The disposition to laugh was smothered by a pained perception of the suffering he was undergoing. His face had grown drawn and haggard under the burden of his memories as he rambled on.
"So I came straight to you," he began again. "I had just money enough left to pay my fare. The rest is in my valise at the hotel-the Murray Hill Hotel. It belongs to the church. I stole it from the church. When I am dead they can get it back again!"
Sister Soulsby forced a smile to her lips. "What nonsense you talk-about dying!" she exclaimed. "Why, man alive, you'll sleep this all off like a top, if you'll only lie down and give yourself a chance. Come, now, you must do as you're told."
With a resolute hand, she made him lie down again, and once more covered him with the fur. He submitted, and did not even offer to put out his arm this time, but looked in piteous dumbness at her for a long time. While she sat thus in silence, the sound of Brother Soulsby moving about upstairs became audible.
Theron heard it, and the importance of hurrying on some further disclosure seemed to suggest itself. "I can see you think I'm just drunk," he said, in low, sombre tones. "Of course that's what HE thought. The hackman thought so, and so did the conductor, and everybody. But I hoped you would know better. I was sure you would see that it was something worse than that. See here, I'll tell you. Then you'll understand. I've been drinking for two days and one whole night, on my feet all the while, wandering alone in that big strange New York, going through places where they murdered men for ten cents, mixing myself up with the worst people in low bar-rooms and dance-houses, and they saw I had money in my pocket, too, and yet nobody touched me, or offered to lay a finger on me. Do you know why? They understood that I wanted to get drunk, and couldn't. The Indians won't harm an idiot, or lunatic, you know. Well, it was the same with these vilest of the vile. They saw that I was a fool whom God had taken hold of, to break his heart first, and then to craze his brain, and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a dog. They believe in God, those people. They're the only ones who do, it seems to me. And they wouldn't interfere when they saw what He was doing to me. But I tell you I wasn't drunk. I haven't been drunk. I'm only heart-broken, and crushed out of shape and life-that's all. And I've crawled here just to have a friend by me when-when I come to the end."
"You're not talking very sensibly, or very bravely either, Theron Ware," remarked his companion. "It's cowardly to give way to notions like that."
"Oh, I 'm not afraid to die; don't think that," he remonstrated wearily. "If there is a Judgment, it has hit me as hard as it can already. There can't be any hell worse than that I've gone through. Here I am talking about hell," he continued, with a pained contraction of the muscles about his mouth-a stillborn, malformed smile-"as if I believed in one! I've got way through all my beliefs, you know. I tell you that frankly."
"It's none of my business," she reassured him. "I'm not your Bishop, or your confessor. I'm just your friend, your pal, that's all."
"Look here!" he broke in, with some animation and a new intensity of glance and voice. "If I was going to live, I'd have some funny things to tell. Six months ago I was a good man. I not only seemed to be good, to others and to myself, but I was good. I had a soul; I had a conscience. I was going along doing my duty, and I was happy in it. We were poor, Alice and I, and people behaved rather hard toward us, and sometimes we were a little down in the mouth about it; but that was all. We really were happy; and I-I really was a good man. Here's the kind of joke God plays! You see me here six months after. Look at me! I haven't got an honest hair in my head. I'm a bad man through and through, that's what I am. I look all around at myself, and there isn't an atom left anywhere of the good man I used to be. And, mind you, I never lifted a finger to prevent the change. I didn't resist once; I didn't make any fight. I just walked deliberately down-hill, with my eyes wide open. I told myself all the while that I was climbing uphill instead, but I knew in my heart that it was a lie. Everything about me was a lie. I wouldn't be telling the truth, even now, if-if I hadn't come to the end of my rope. Now, how do you explain that? How can it be explained? Was I really rotten to the core all the time, years ago, when I seemed to everybody, myself and the rest, to be good and straight and sincere? Was it all a sham, or does God take a good man and turn him into an out-and-out bad one, in just a few months-in the time that it takes an ear of corn to form and ripen and go off with the mildew? Or isn't there any God at all-but only men who live and die like animals? And that would explain my case, wouldn't it? I got bitten and went vicious and crazy, and they've had to chase me out and hunt me to my death like a mad dog! Yes, that makes it all very simple. It isn't worth while to discuss me at all as if I had a soul, is it? I'm just one more mongrel cur that's gone mad, and must be put out of the way. That's all."
"See here," said Sister Soulsby, alertly, "I half believe that a good cuffing is what you really stand in need of. Now you stop all this nonsense, and lie quiet and keep still! Do you hear me?"
The jocose sternness which she assumed, in words and manner, seemed to soothe him. He almost smiled up at her in a melancholy way, and sighed profoundly.
"I've told you MY religion before," she went on with gentleness. "The sheep and the goats are to be separated on Judgment Day, but not a minute sooner. In other words, as long as human life lasts, good, bad, and indifferent are all braided up together in every man's nature, and every woman's too. You weren't altogether good a year ago, any more than you're altogether bad now. You were some of both then; you're some of both now. If you've been making an extra sort of fool of yourself lately, why, now that you recognize it, the only thing to do is to slow steam, pull up, and back engine in the other direction. In that way you'll find things will even themselves up. It's a see-saw with all of us, Theron Ware-sometimes up; sometimes down. But nobody is rotten clear to the core."
He closed his eyes, and lay in silence for a time.
"This is what day of the week?" he asked, at last.
"Friday, the nineteenth."
"Wednesday-that would be the seventeenth. That was the day ordained for my slaughter. On that morning, I was the happiest man in the world. No king could have been so proud and confident as I was. A wonderful romance had come to me. The most beautiful young woman in the world, the most talented too, was waiting for me. An express train was carrying me to her, and it couldn't go fast enough to keep up with my eagerness. She was very rich, and she loved me, and we were to live in eternal summer, wherever we liked, on a big, beautiful yacht. No one else had such a life before him as that. It seemed almost too good for me, but I thought I had grown and developed so much that perhaps I would be worthy of it. Oh, how happy I was! I tell you this because-because YOU are not like the others. You will understand."
"Yes, I understand," she said patiently. "Well-you were being so happy."
"That was in the morning-Wednesday the seventeenth-early in the morning. There was a little girl in the car, playing with some buttons, and when I tried to make friends with her, she looked at me, and she saw, right at a glance, that I was a fool. 'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,' you know. She was the first to find it out. It began like that, early in the morning. But then after that everybody knew it. They had only to look at me and they said: 'Why, this is a fool-like a little nasty boy; we won't let him into our houses; we find him a bore.' That is what they said."
"Did SHE say it?" Sister Soulsby permitted herself to ask.
For answer Theron bit his lips, and drew his chin under the fur, and pushed his scowling face into the pillow. The spasmodic, sob-like gasps began to shake him again. She laid a compassionate hand upon his hot brow.
"That is why I made my way here to you," he groaned piteously. "I knew you would sympathize; I could tell it all to you. And it was so awful, to die there alone in the strange city-I couldn't do it-with nobody near me who liked me, or thought well of me. Alice would hate me. There was no one but you. I wanted to be with you-at the last."
His quavering voice broke off in a gust of weeping, and his face frankly surrendered itself to the distortions of a crying child's countenance, wide-mouthed and tragically grotesque in its abandonment of control.
Sister Soulsby, as her husband's boots were heard descending the stairs, rose, and drew the robe up to half cover his agonized visage. She patted the sufferer softly on the head, and then went to the stair-door.
"I think he'll go to sleep now," she said, lifting her voice to the new-comer, and with a backward nod toward the couch. "Come out into the kitchen while I get breakfast, or into the sitting-room, or somewhere, so as not to disturb him. He's promised me to lie perfectly quiet, and try to sleep."
When they had passed together out of the room, she turned. "Soulsby," she said with half-playful asperity, "I'm disappointed in you. For a man who's knocked about as much as you have, I must say you've picked up an astonishingly small outfit of gumption. That poor creature in there is no more drunk than I am. He's been drinking-yes, drinking like a fish; but it wasn't able to make him drunk. He's past being drunk; he's grief-crazy. It's a case of 'woman.' Some girl has made a fool of him, and decoyed him up in a balloon, and let him drop. He's been hurt bad, too."
"We have all been hurt in our day and generation," responded Brother Soulsby, genially. "Don't you worry; he'll sleep that off too. It takes longer than drink, and it doesn't begin to be so pleasant, but it can be slept off. Take my word for it, he'll be a different man by noon."
When noon came, however, Brother Soulsby was on his way to summon one of the village doctors. Toward nightfall, he went out again to telegraph for Alice.
CHAPTER XXXII
Spring fell early upon the pleasant southern slopes of the Susquehanna country. The snow went off as by magic. The trees budded and leaved before their time. The birds came and set up their chorus in the elms, while winter seemed still a thing of yesterday.
Alice, clad gravely in black, stood again upon a kitchen-stoop, and looked across an intervening space of back-yards and fences to where the tall boughs, fresh in their new verdure, were silhouetted against the pure blue sky. The prospect recalled to her irresistibly another sunlit morning, a year ago, when she had stood in the doorway of her own kitchen, and surveyed a scene not unlike this; it might have been with the same carolling robins, the same trees, the same azure segment of the tranquil, speckless dome. Then she was looking out upon surroundings novel and strange to her, among which she must make herself at home as best she could. But at least the ground was secure under her feet; at least she had a home, and a word from her lips could summon her husband out, to stand beside her with his arm about her, and share her buoyant, hopeful joy in the promises of spring.
To think that that was only one little year ago-the mere revolution of four brief seasons! And now-!
Sister Soulsby, wiping her hands on her apron, came briskly out upon the stoop. Some cheerful commonplace was on her tongue, but a glance at Alice's wistful face kept it back. She passed an arm around her waist instead, and stood in silence, looking at the elms.
"It brings back memories to me-all this," said Alice, nodding her head, and not seeking to dissemble the tears which sprang to her eyes.
"The men will be down in a minute, dear," the other reminded her. "They'd nearly finished packing before I put the biscuits in the oven. We mustn't wear long faces before folks, you know."
"Yes, I know," murmured Alice. Then, with a sudden impulse, she turned to her companion. "Candace," she said fervently, "we're alone here for the moment; I must tell you that if I don't talk gratitude to you, it's simply and solely because I don't know where to begin, or what to say. I'm just dumfounded at your goodness. It takes my speech away. I only know this, Candace: God will be very good to you."
"Tut! tut!" replied Sister Soulsby, "that's all right, you dear thing. I know just how you feel. Don't dream of being under obligation to explain it to me, or to thank us at all. We've had all sorts of comfort out of the thing-Soulsby and I. We used to get downright lonesome, here all by ourselves, and we've simply had a winter of pleasant company instead, that s all. Besides, there's solid satisfaction in knowing that at last, for once in our lives we've had a chance to be of some real use to somebody who truly needed it. You can't imagine how stuck up that makes us in our own conceit. We feel as if we were George Peabody and Lady Burdett-Coutts, and several other philanthropists thrown in. No, seriously, don't think of it again. We're glad to have been able to do it all; and if you only go ahead now, and prosper and be happy, why, that will be the only reward we want."
"I hope we shall do well," said Alice. "Only tell me this, Candace. You do think I was right, don't you, in insisting on Theron's leaving the ministry altogether? He seems convinced enough now that it was the right thing to do; but I grow nervous sometimes lest he should find it harder than he thought to get along in business, and regret the change-and blame me."
"I think you may rest easy in your mind about that," the other responded. "Whatever else he does, he will never want to come within gunshot of a pulpit again. It came too near murdering him for that."
Alice looked at her doubtfully. "Something came near murdering him, I know. But it doesn't seem to me that I would say it was the ministry. And I guess you know pretty well yourself what it was. Of course, I've never asked any questions, and I've hushed up everybody at Octavius who tried to quiz me about it-his disappearance and my packing up and leaving, and all that-and I've never discussed the question with you-but-"
"No, and there's no good going into it now," put in Sister Soulsby, with amiable decisiveness. "It's all past and gone. In fact, I hardly remember much about it now myself. He simply got into deep water, poor soul, and we've floated him out again, safe and sound. That's all. But all the same, I was right in what I said. He was a mistake in the ministry."
"But if you'd known him in previous years," urged Alice, plaintively, "before we were sent to that awful Octavius. He was the very ideal of all a young minister should be. People used to simply worship him, he was such a perfect preacher, and so pure-minded and friendly with everybody, and threw himself into his work so. It was all that miserable, contemptible Octavius that did the mischief."
Sister Soulsby slowly shook her head. "If there hadn't been a screw loose somewhere," she said gently, "Octavius wouldn't have hurt him. No, take my word for it, he never was the right man for the place. He seemed to be, no doubt, but he wasn't. When pressure was put on him, it found out his weak spot like a shot, and pushed on it, and-well, it came near smashing him, that's all."
"And do you think he'll always be a-a back-slider," mourned Alice.
"For mercy's sake, don't ever try to have him pretend to be anything else!" exclaimed the other. "The last state of that man would be worse than the first. You must make up your mind to that. And you mustn't show that you're nervous about it. You mustn't get nervous! You mustn't be afraid of things. Just you keep a stiff upper lip, and say you WILL get along, you WILL be happy. That's your only chance, Alice. He isn't going to be an angel of light, or a saint, or anything of that sort, and it's no good expecting it. But he'll be just an average kind of man-a little sore about some things, a little wiser than he was about some others. You can get along perfectly with him, if you only keep your courage up, and don't show the white feather."
"Yes, I know; but I've had it pretty well taken out of me," commented Alice. "It used to come easy to me to be cheerful and resolute and all that; but it's different now."
Sister Soulsby stole a swift glance at the unsuspecting face of her companion which was not all admiration, but her voice remained patiently affectionate. "Oh, that'll all come back to you, right enough. You'll have your hands full, you know, finding a house, and unpacking all your old furniture, and buying new things, and getting your home settled. It'll keep you so busy you won't have time to feel strange or lonesome, one bit. You'll see how it'll tone you up. In a year's time you won't know yourself in the looking-glass."
"Oh, my health is good enough," said Alice; "but I can't help thinking, suppose Theron should be taken sick again, away out there among strangers. You know he's never appeared to me to have quite got his strength back. These long illnesses, you know, they always leave a mark on a man."
"Nonsense! He's strong as an ox," insisted Sister Soulsby. "You mark my word, he'll thrive in Seattle like a green bay-tree."
"Seattle!" echoed Alice, meditatively. "It sounds like the other end of the world, doesn't it?"
The noise of feet in the house broke upon the colloquy, and the women went indoors, to join the breakfast party. During the meal, it was Brother Soulsby who bore the burden of the conversation. He was full of the future of Seattle and the magnificent impending development of that Pacific section. He had been out there, years ago, when it was next door to uninhabited. He had visited the district twice since, and the changes discoverable each new time were more wonderful than anything Aladdin's lamp ever wrought. He had secured for Theron, through some of his friends in Portland, the superintendency of a land and real estate company, which had its headquarters in Seattle, but ambitiously linked its affairs with the future of all Washington Territory. In an hour's time the hack would come to take the Wares and their baggage to the depot, the first stage in their long journey across the continent to their new home. Brother Soulsby amiably filled the interval with reminiscences of the Oregon of twenty years back, with instructive dissertations upon the soil, climate, and seasons of Puget Sound and the Columbia valley, and, above all, with helpful characterizations of the social life which had begun to take form in this remotest West. He had nothing but confidence, to all appearances, in the success of his young friend, now embarking on this new career. He seemed so sanguine about it that the whole atmosphere of the breakfast room lightened up, and the parting meal, surrounded by so many temptations to distraught broodings and silences as it was, became almost jovial in its spirit.
At last, it was time to look for the carriage. The trunks and hand-bags were ready in the hall, and Sister Soulsby was tying up a package of sandwiches for Alice to keep by her in the train.
Theron, with hat in hand, and overcoat on arm, loitered restlessly into the kitchen, and watched this proceeding for a moment. Then he sauntered out upon the stoop, and, lifting his head and drawing as long a breath as he could, looked over at the elms.
Perhaps the face was older and graver; it was hard to tell. The long winter's illness, with its recurring crises and sustained confinement, had bleached his skin and reduced his figure to gauntness, but there was none the less an air of restored and secure good health about him. Only in the eyes themselves, as they rested briefly upon the prospect, did a substantial change suggest itself. They did not dwell fondly upon the picture of the lofty, spreading boughs, with their waves of sap-green leafage stirring against the blue. They did not soften and glow this time, at the thought of how wholly one felt sure of God's goodness in these wonderful new mornings of spring.
They looked instead straight through the fairest and most moving spectacle in nature's processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some faces of men, then more behind them, then a great concourse of uplifted countenances, crowded close together as far as the eye could reach. They were attentive faces all, rapt, eager, credulous to a degree. Their eyes were admiringly bent upon a common object of excited interest. They were looking at HIM; they strained their ears to miss no cadence of his voice. Involuntarily he straightened himself, stretched forth his hand with the pale, thin fingers gracefully disposed, and passed it slowly before him from side to side, in a comprehensive, stately gesture. The audience rose at him, as he dropped his hand, and filled his day-dream with a mighty roar of applause, in volume like an ocean tempest, yet pitched for his hearing alone.
He smiled, shook himself with a little delighted tremor, and turned on the stoop to the open door.
"What Soulsby said about politics out there interested me enormously," he remarked to the two women. "I shouldn't be surprised if I found myself doing something in that line. I can speak, you know, if I can't do anything else. Talk is what tells, these days. Who knows? I may turn up in Washington a full-blown senator before I'm forty. Stranger things have happened than that, out West!"
"We'll come down and visit you then, Soulsby and I," said Sister Soulsby, cheerfully. "You shall take us to the White House, Alice, and introduce us."
"Oh, it isn't likely I would come East," said Alice, pensively. "Most probably I'd be left to amuse myself in Seattle. But there-I think that's the carriage driving up to the door."